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but little of the hereditary characteristics of race, who think that social and mental inferiority, thus engendered, and continued from generation to generation, can be rapidly or easily dispelled.

The superiority of the means of education, and the general spread of intelligence among the artisan classes of continental Europe in the middle ages, were greatly owing to the transit through it of the commerce of the East; and still more so to the system of Wanderschaft, or the migration of apprentices from place to place, associating, wherever they went, with their superiors in age, station, and experience, and deriving (though so poor that they begged their way from town to town, as indeed they still do) all the advantages which travel gives to the richer classes, in the expansion and information of the mind.

The magnificent public galleries, and great and ample libraries which were and are spread so profusely over every civilized European country (save our own), were freely open to these men ; and there is little wonder, that while our peasants were serfs, and our artisans mechanics of the roughest order, the working classes abroad were filling the old world with those beautiful monuments of art which are still models of unparalleled excellence and beauty, and will perish as such only with time itself.*

Permit me now to name the great degree in which all these obstacles and disadvantages to the education of the English poor have been aggravated by the fact that, until comparatively modern times, the educated classes spoke one language, and the poorer classes another; that it was a cherished distinction, a pitiable, but not the less an admitted, badge of gentility to speak in a tongue which the people could not understand; and I regret to be compelled to say, that we are nowise free from the relics of this bilingual evil at the present day; for it needs but to question peasants or a class of poor children closely, and one by one, as to the meaning of many of the commonest words bequeathed to us by our Norman ancestors, to find that they have no conception of them; and yet such words are used daily and weekly by the instructors of the poor alike in school and pulpit !

Now, whilst all these gigantic adversities were holding fast the English people in the hoodwinks and bondage of ignorance during many centuries of this millennium, how different was the fate of the Gallic, Teutonic, and

* Many other causes contributed to the superior intelligence of the people of central Europe over the Anglo-Saxons. The Crusades far more effectually fostered kingly power and abated the rude ascendancy of the feudal Barons there than here; developing the growth of those popular energies, which the monarch, piercing through the intermediate orders of society, enlisted and enlarged. The Crusades also exercised a far more direct effect on commerce, manufactures, and the spirit of adventure, both in Southern and in Northern Europe; opening a very fruitful relation between its enterprise and the riches of the Oriental world, as the rapid rise of nearly every mercantile city of the continent from the Baltic to the Mediterranean amply testifies. Add to this the far earlier decline of predial servitude under the emancipating influences of that social and civic power which attained maturity and vigour in the towns and boroughs of the continent long before urban communities of similar importance arose in England. Nor can we overlook the wars of the Roses, the struggles of antagonistic churches, the battles of the Commonwealth, or the feuds bequeathed by the dynasty of the Stuarts, which for so long a time afflicted the English people with those terrible hindrances to progress especially incidental to civil war, within the narrow boundaries which hem in and exasperate the long, lingering animosities of insular strife.

even of the Southern nations. Whilst with us knowledge was the privilege of the priest, with them, at least comparatively speaking, it was the inheritance of the poor. Whilst our piebald and shifting language embarrassed learning, the vast centre and north of Europe enjoyed the pure masculine and expressive Germanic languages. The Southern nations, though somewhat less stably and with dialectic distinctions, spoke the equally general Romance language, derived from the Latin; and even the less-civilized tribes, who now people Bohemia and the Russian empire, held undisturbed possession of the Slavonian language.

Since the subsidence of the great Gothic wave, each country on the continent has had its vernacular tongue continued to this hour; and it would not be difficult to prove a remote existence (by means of the great writers alike in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) of the very languages still in use. But he would be a bold man who should take upon him to stand up and date the origin of English. Historical books, which mostly use chronology as if it were the life-blood of history, are accustomed to cling to Chaucer, and call him the father of English literature. He may have been so; but considering that he lived in the fifteenth century, it has in that case but modern parentage, and Mr. Bell, the annotator of the last edition of his poems, expresses a judicious suggestion, namely, that to modernize his orthography, is a necessary expedient to render Chaucer intelligible to the general reader. A comparison of the great monumental works of English literature, beginning with the metrical chronicle of Robert the Monk of Gloucester, and tracing them through the successive eras marked by Chaucer and Shakspeare, Bacon, Spencer, Brown, Milton, and de Foe, Burke and Junius, William Cobbett, Macaulay's Essays, Tennyson's Poems, and the "Times Newspaper, will, I think, vindicate these remarks on the shifting character and phases of the English tongue.

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As regards the United States, I have simply to remark that they were chiefly peopled by educated classes, whose general intelligence has been and is annually aided by immigration from the Irish, whose natural capacities infinitely surpass those of the Anglo-Saxon race; and also by large bodies of emigrants from England, who are rarely from among the ignorant poor. Nor has education there had to contend with aristocratic aversion to its free dissemination among the lower orders of the people. It has, on the contrary, had every possible furtherance alike from national interests, social example, and the direct and uniform aid of the institutions of the Republic.-From Mr. Symons's " Address on Aspect of Education." (Printed by the Boys at the Painswick National School.)

THOROUGHLY GOOD EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE A GREAT SAVING."I assert it as my most deliberate conviction, a conviction growing clearer and stronger every hour of my life, that, putting it on the lowest ground of a pecuniary speculation or investment, the country would save millions of money, ay, as many millions as would yearly pay the interest of the national debt, if it were to provide for the thorough education of the people, both male and female. * It is easy at any time to provide the machinery for intellectual improvement; it is a question simply of time and money. To amend the moral habits of a people is something very different."-Lecture on Female Education, by Rev. Dr. Booth.

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METHOD OF TEACHING SINGING IN ELEMENTARY

THE

SCHOOLS.

HE great drawback to the progress of musical instruction in our schools at present seems to be the want of sufficient attention on the part of teachers to the principles which ought to guide such instruction. There are so many different methods offered for their adoption, and they have so little power of judging between them, that they frequently try first one and then another, and end by teaching on no method at all.

This is in great measure to be attributed to defective instruction at the Normal Colleges. To judge by the questions which are set to the students of these institutions by the Committee of Council at the Christmas examinations, a great deal of time appears to be expended in teaching the students the theory of musical composition, for which they will probably never have any use as teachers of elementary schools, while there is nothing to show that their attention is specially directed to the mode in which the subject should be taught in elementary schools, which is the one important thing for them to know. In this particular subject, the Normal Colleges appear to forget their excellent rule of making their instruction in some measure the type of what the instruction of the elementary school should be.

A diversity of methods for teaching singing prevails in France as well as in England at the present time, and we agree with a French writer in regarding this diversity as a sign of weakness rather than as a sign of strength. It exhibits uncertainty as to the principles on which a method of teaching the subject should be based. It is no doubt very charitable and courteous on the part of the promoters of the various methods to speak of one another as fellow-workers in the same cause, who are taking different paths to the same goal. But a teacher knows that it is of vital importance what path he takes that one path may be very circuitous, and cause a great loss of time and labour; that another may stop short before reaching the goal, and, as people say, lead nowhere; and that there will assuredly be some one track, marked out by nature and improved by art, and well trodden by successive generations of men, which will bring him most speedily and comfortably to the point in view.

In order that teachers may be able to discriminate between the relative merits of the various methods which are proposed, it is necessary that they should have a clear and definite perception of the general principles on which a method of teaching singing ought to be based. We propose, therefore, to enter into an investigation of those principles, in this and the next article.

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF A METHOD OF TEACHING SINGING.

I. A first or elementary course of instruction should limit itself to the Major Scales.

The reasons for this are as follows:

1. The minor mode is not practically required by children. Music written in this mode is generally of a mournful and melancholy character, and is therefore unsuited to the joyous and jubilant feelings

of youth; this fact is recognised in all collections of children's music, from which tunes in the minor mode are carefully excluded.

2. The subject of the minor scale is one of the most doubtful and difficult portions of the science of music. Mr. Spencer has shown conclusively, in his very able rudimentary treatise on music, that there are at least nine normal or model forms of the minor scale, and therefore one hundred and thirty-five minor scales in all. Even taking the minor scale as usually given in books of instruction, we have to teach two different forms, one for ascending, and the other for descending; and this difference, both as a matter of theory and as a matter of practice, is always perplexing to beginners.

We

For these reasons, the minor scale should be deferred to a more advanced course of instruction. Perhaps it will be said that the pupils of an elementary school are not likely to have an opportunity of attending such a course, and that, if they do not learn the minor scale while they are in the elementary school, they will not learn it at all. We reply that this only shows the want of gradation among our schools. cannot expect to teach the whole range of any subject in an elementary school; and it is important that we should understand what portion of a subject is within the province of such a school, and what portion may properly be considered beyond its province; for it is in consequence of attempting too much at the outset that we frequently end by accomplishing nothing at all. If we attempt only the major mode in the elementary course, we shall have a fair chance of succeeding within this range; but, if we attempt both the major and the minor mode, we shall probably succeed in neither. Any reasonable elementary teacher will have enough to do in teaching the theory and practice of the major scales. The pupils may not receive a second course of lessons. But the elementary school will have done its duty by building a good solid basework, which will always be useful, and will admit of being carried higher at any future time.

II. The common character of the Major Scales should be recognised by a common nomenclature.

We have in the musical scales a beautiful example of what Leigh Hunt calls the principle of variety in unity. The scales have a character of unity in this respect, that they are all formed by the same ratios of sound, they are all developments of the same type or model. They have a character of variety arising from the different absolute pitch or elevation of the sounds on which these ratios are built up.

Now, to represent these scales in their variety, a different set of names is necessary for each; but to represent them in their unity, the same set of names will do for all.

We distinguish different scales from one another by calling their sounds by different series of letters, and we name each scale after its initial sound; thus, the scale of A, the scale of B, &c. In order to represent the scales in their common character, as all springing from the same ratios, or, in other words, to represent a normal or model diatonic major scale, the names most generally adopted are the first eight numerals. Thus, then, the series of letters C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, will denote a particular scale, beginning on an absolute sound, which we always call C; while the series of numerals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, will denote the normal or model scale, and will be applicable alike to all.

It was to serve the same purpose in practice which the numerals serve in theory, that the syllables do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do, were in the first instance employed. The application of these syllables to the notes of the gamut was considered at the time a very great invention and a method of singing in itself; and, together with a reformation of the ancient scale, it has gained for its inventor a permanent place in the temple of fame.

A contemporary ecclesiastical historian, in relating the event, tells us that in the pontificate of Benedict VIII., Guido Aretinus, a monk, and an excellent musician, to the admiration of all invented a method of teaching music, so that a boy in a few months might learn what no man, though of great ingenuity, could, before that, attain in several years.

We must bear in mind that the scale to which the syllables were first applied consisted of only six notes. These were the first six of our present scale, which was formed from Guido's hexachord by the addition of the seventh and the octave subsequently by the French. This being understood, let us bring before our readers some of the remarks which are made by the greatest of musical historians in elucidation of the significance of this invention.

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"The view of Guido in this contrivance (says Sir John Hawkins) 66 was to impress upon the minds of learners an idea of the powers of the several sounds as they stood related to the first sound in the hexachord ; for he saw that, from an habitual application of the syllables to their respective notes, it must follow that the former would become a common measure for the five intervals included within the limits of the hexachord, and that, in a short time, the idea of association between the syllables and the notes would become so strong, as to make it almost impossible to misapply them.

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"The result of the invention was clearly this, that, in a regular succession of six sounds in their natural order, beginning from G, from C, or from F, taking in B b, the progression with respect to the tones and semitone in each was precisely the same and supposing the learner to have acquired by constant practice a habit of expressing with his voice the interval G C, which is an exact fourth, by the syllables U T F A, the two sounds proper to the interval G C would become a kind of tune, which he must necessarily apply to UT FA, wherever those syllables should occur; and in what other situation they occur, the above constitution of the different hexachords shows; for, as in the hexachord from G to C, the syllables U T F A express the fourth G C, so in that from C to A do they express the fourth C F, and in the hexachord from F to D, the fourth F Bb.

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"The intervals thus adjusted in the several hexachords became alike commensurable in each by the syllables; and UT м I would as truly express the ditone (third) C E, or F A, as G B, to which they were originally adapted. The same may be said of every other interval in each of the hexachords."

All this applies with far greater force to our present scales of eight sounds than it did to the hexachords.

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