From the period of the Reformation, when the English language became settled, with the Anglo-Saxon of the vulgar for its groundwork, and with valuable additions from the Norman tongue, it becomes no longer difficult to trace the current of popular opinion; nor are we forced to search out in black letter volumes the scanty relics of popular songs.

There are few things which more distinctly mark the commencement of the period of modern history, than the settlement of language, although we may, perhaps, refer this mainly to that great invention which communicated a simultaneous impulse to all classes-which gave to the higher ranks their Shakespeare and the classics-to the peasantry their broadside ballads,-and to both the revelation of the Almighty in the common tongue. We know, however, very little of the state of feeling among the lower classes during the golden age of English literature. The attention of the student of history is absorbed by certain "bright particular stars," which, by their very brilliancy, obscure the "lesser lights" around them. We know that the rule of Queen Elizabeth bore harshly on her nobles and the squirearchy, whom it was ever the policy of the Tudor race to bring into abject submission, but her memory is still cherished among the people of England; even Cromwell, in his speeches, refers affectionately to her "glorious days;" and it was not until the reign of her successor, when the dig nity of the crown was lowered, while the kingly prerogative was strainedwhen the Protestant cause was abandoned on the continent, and the Scots, exasperated by changes in church-discipline, made league with the Puritans of the North, that we find the robles, for the first time since the Conquest, again in league with royalty, and the people of England in opposition to their king.

What causes were at work beneath the surface of society to produce these political changes, which break suddenly upon the reader of history, and which a knowledge of the condition of the lower orders of society during the reigns of the Tudors would best explain?

The political poetry of England during the reigns of Elizabeth and Mary is extremely scanty. The great bards, whose writings we so proudly inherit, wrote only for the educated classes, and on subjects not likely to interest "the million." In the time of James I., we find

a considerable change, not only in the dialect of political poetry, but in its character, its adaptation, and its themes. About this time the manners of society in England appear to have experienced a very perceptible change, and the reign of James I. is perhaps the time at which we may date the decline of the "old English hospitality." A change frequently alluded to, especially in the well known song "The Fine Old English Gentleman," and its counterpart, which. in nearly the same language that we have them now, were written in King James' reign, to describe the change of manners so distasteful to the public, and to compare "the queen's old courtiers" with those of the Scottish king.

Whoever has read Mr. Macaulay's spirited ballad upon "the entry of the Cavaliers into London," has caught the very echo of the verses of the Long Parliament times. The language, style and sentiments are precisely those of the ballads embalmed in the thin, square and long-forgotten volumes with which the press of England (as much of it as was in the hands of the king's party), during this period of English history teemed. The Cavalier poets even vouchsafed an ironical assistance to the Roundheads. The following stanzas (though very unlike his usual manner) are by the mystical, quaint, emblem-loving Francis Quarles:

Know then, my brethren, Heaven is clear, And all the clouds are gone,

The righteous now shall flourish, and

Good days are coming on:

Come then, my brethren, and be glad,

And eke rejoice with me; Lawn sleeves and rochets shall go down, And hey! then up go we!

We'll break the windows which the whore Of Babylon has painted;

And when the Popish saints are down,

Then Barrow shall be sainted;

There's neither cross nor crucifix

Shall stand for men to see!

Rome's trash and trumperies shall go down,

And hey! then up go we!

We cannot conclude this brief review of the popular superstitions of the middle, ages, without remarking the effect they have produced upon the current opinions of more recent times, especially that belief in fairies and familiar spirits, which, as we have seen, dates from the days of the Druids, and as far back as we can trace the history of any portion of the Celtic race. These popular delusions

even directed the earliest enquiries of science; and while we mourn over the talent abused, the time and money wasted in searchings after the philosopher's stone, or the elixir of immortality, we must not forget that these pursuits were paving the paths of modern science from the Aristotelian system of mere verbal definitions to that of experimental investigation and discovery.

The astrologer of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries was supposed to hold communications with the spiritual world, and indeed all science was regarded by the vulgar as under the especial patronage of the Evil One. The fairies were always believed to be dwellers in dens, and lakes, and trees, and the astrologer conjured them into his glass or crystal, to direct him to the hidden treasures which they only knew. The witch differed from the astrologer, inasmuch as her power over the spirits was believed to be the result of a compact with the Spirit of Darkness, whereby he bound himself to serve her for a time, on condition that he should afterwards be her master for ever. witches were among the peasantry what astrologers were in rather more refined society, in their intercourse with the spirits. Royalty, religious feeling, and popular superstition, agreed during the first half of the seventeenth century upon a single subject only. King Jamie gave his loving lieges a treatise upon witchcraft; the Puritans applied verses from the Old Testament (directed against the magicians and astrologers of the East) to the miserable old women whom circumstances or local prejudices invested with the character of witches; up to that period all scientific discoveries had been connected with

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astrology; professors of philosophy were learned in the Cabala, and societies for the advancement of magic and of alchemy were not uncommonly formed.

If we examine the reports of the trials for witchcraft which the Camden Society has reprinted within the last few years, we shall find that the greater part of the stories alleged in evidence were mere mischievous freaks, in which we immediately recognize the mad pranks of Robin Goodfellow. If we are not mistaken, one of the last executions for witchcraft, which took place in Norfolk, so late as the eighteenth century, was preceded by a trial based almost entirely upon a charge of suddenly startling teams of horses, and overturning harvest carts without apparent cause, an amusement in which Puck and his fellow elves of happier memory were wont very largely to indulge. Unless indeed we are willing to admit that the familiar spirits of a pagan age became the grotesque and popular demons of our own, it would be difficult to account for the extraordinary and inconsistent attributes which the great author of evil has assumed. Whence has he borrowed the cloven foot he wears? Certainly not on the authority of Scripture; but the familiar spirits which haunted the houses of our forefathers, and presided over their household arrangements when they lived in caves and dens, are always thus described. One of the earliest woodcuts that has come down to us is appended to a ballad of Robin Goodfellow, and represents him with horns, hoofs, and tail, deformed and hairy, dancing in the midst of a ring of subject elves, such as the astrologers afterwards divided into legions, tribes, and bands of devils.

HE announcement THE of philosopher Fourier, that "Attractions are proportioned to destinies," albeit false in many, is, nevertheless, true in some respects. Thus, in literature, every longing and every susceptibility of the soul, and, in fact, every mental want, creates for itself a satisfaction and a supply. So, too, we may regard every phasis of literature as a typal manifestation of some profounder necessity that underlies and procreates it. For example: The Epos gives utterance to all the untold heroisms of our nature; and the Iliad is at once the embodiment of a nation's warlike daring, and the realization, to a certain extent, of a heroic ideal that finds its home and birth-place in every soul of man. Each man is, in a measure, an Achilles, and burns with the flame of his awful ire [Mìves Ovλóμévn]; but genius alone, in

elevating everything she touches to the dignity of apotheosis, has touched with her mystic wand this side of the manysided soul; and lo! it lives and breathes perennially.

History, again, develops the infinite in man; and, as Frederick Schlegel remarks, "replies to the first problem of philosophy-the restoration in man of the lost image of God; as far as this relates to Science."

So, both the physical and the metaphysical sciences respond to opposite and distinctive poles in our mental organism; while the fine arts, which hold a maesothetic position between the two, are, in all their provinces, an effort after the realization of that which finds full expression only in that absolute, which is the birth-place of the soul. Thus, the mind, unsatisfied with itself and subjec

tive existences, ever struggles after objective forms and embodiment; for "nature," as Emerson tells us, "will be reported."

But, besides those faculties and tendencies already named, and which find expression in some form or other, we have to take cognizance of that class which have relation to the imagination and the fancy; and which also find for themselves "a local habitation and a name," as well as a place in the world of letters. I refer to romance literature.

That this species of composition is a normal and legitimate development of the mind, mankind have endorsed by the fact of every nation's having given birth to productions of this kind, and by the extreme avidity with which fabulous and romantic narratives have in all times been received. Finding its primeval home in the gorgeous East-amid scenes of vastness and of splendor, where the magnificence of nature's visible forms, and the voluptuous quiescence of life, invite to lolling repose, giving birth to dreamy fancies; while every balsamic breeze and Sabean odor wafts on its wings reveries of grandeur—it reached its full Eastern perfection in those wonderful phantasies: The Thousand and One Tales.

Of Eastern romance, we may remark, en passant, that it will be found the almost unmixed product of fancy (or phantasy). The tendency of the oriental mind was not sufficiently introspective to elevate them to the dignity of works of imagination; and, besides, everything in nature was symbolical and suggestive, and speech itself was nearly pure metaphor. The East is the home of the language of flowers, and the poetry of mathematics.

Transported to the West, romance assumed a more intellective and also a more emotional cast; losing many of its outer splendors, it clothed itself in a stronger garb, and partook of the active form of Western life. This is the heyday of the European chivalry and romance epoch, displayed in the genial satire and the glorious humor of its brightest exponent, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra; and the gallant or amatory harp of the Troubadours and the Minnesingers.

The subsequent course of romance literature, down to the present time, is known to every one, and need not here be pursued; as it modified its original

form, and extended the boundaries of its province of action-now taking in one field, and again another-jutting out in strange extravagances and outre developments, and then rising to the natural and the true; till now, when its domain einbraces infinity and absorbs every subject of human feeling and action, thought and emprise. Carlyle says that romance has not ceased to exist; that, on the other hand, it is now in its full meridian splendor. And verily, we are inclined to believe it-if not in life, yet in literature.

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Nothing is more easy or gratuitous than the vituperative condemnation and contempt that have so often been lavished on novels and novel writing. They are “trash," yellow-covered literature," "wishy-washyism, namby-pambyism," &c., &c. The guardian makes it a point to keep his ward as carefully from a novel as from the measles, and would as lief that she would dose herself with ratsbane as devour a romance. Our venerated ancestor (peace to his manes), who, in early manhood, was so annoyed by the flirtations of his gay younger sister, which seemed always to succeed profound and long-continued brooding over the pages of the novels sent her from London, had, one should say, some reason for cautioning us, among his last words of advice, to "Beware of novels."

Uncle Greybeard, too, imagines that he has completely annihilated the whole tribe when he utters a "Pshaw!" and something about "vapid sentimentality," and "man-millinerism." True, O grave Greybeard; those which chiefly filled the shelves of your village library were most deserving of the epithets, and even at the present day many a heated press labors day and night to satiate the public appetite for just such "trash."

The truth, however, is, that the domain of romance-composition has been so materially extended within the last quarter of a century, the fields of thought and feeling commented upon so altered, and the type of popular novels so completely changed, that what could, to a great extent, be very well predicated of novels fifty years ago, is totally false in its sweeping application to our present species. We have now no desire for the extravagances of sentiment and action that, with a few brilliant exceptions, characterized English novels of former times. On the other hand, we are disgusted with such productions, and covet, above all, the natural in thought and