wore real living flowers in their ears, -a small bouquet at each side of the head. Well did such gorgeous and resplendent heads deserve to be gloriously surmounted, and they were so. A hat of that age was a hat indeed. It was made of silk, or taffeta, or velvet-the edges were embroidered with gold and silver-the band sparkled with gems-the crown of the hat itself, like the " spear or shaft of a steeple,' stood high above the head, and over all hung a lofty plume of feathers. Imagine such a HAT lying on a table beside a hat of the present day! Imagine such a HAT entering into Blackwood's back shop, or Mr Millar's! Imagine it hanging on a peg at Bill Young's, and gazed on--aye reported on-by a Committee of Dilettanti! The gentlemen's ruffs emulated those worn by the ladies, till, in one of her sumptuary laws, they were limited by Queen Elizabeth "to a nayle of a yeard in depth." It would lead me into an endless article, were I to describe fully and minutely the male dress of those days. Up to the eighth year of Elizabeth, the doublet had been of an enormous size; and even after that time, Stubbs tells us that it was so hard-quilted," that the wearer could not bow himself to the ground, so stiff and sturdy it stood about him." It was made of cloth, or silk, or satin, fitting the body like a waistcoat, surmounted with a large cape, and accompanied either with long close sleeves, or with very wide ones, called Danish sleeves. Over this hung a cloak embroidered with silver and gold, and sometimes faced with sables, which were so sumptuous, that a thousand ducats were given for a single suit. This makes the pelisses or surtouts of our half-pay officers, which seldom cost above twenty guineas, seem very paltry. But what shall be said of the BREECHES of the early part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth? It would be difficult to handle such a topic. They were so puckered, stuffed, bolstered, and distended with hair, and attained so preposterous a magnitude, that Strutt relates, on the authority of a MS. in the Harleian col

*The divisions of the ruffe were termed Piccadillies. It is supposed, by the author of London and its Environs described,' that a shop for Spanish ruffs, the Piccadilly shop, gave name to the street now so called.

lection, "there actually was a scaffold erected round the inside of the Parliament House for the accommodation of such members as wore those huge breeches, and that the said scaffoid was taken down when, in the eighth of Elizabeth, those absurdities went out of fashion." These enormous breeches, having fallen under the displeasure of the queen, gradually wore out of fashion, for I never can believe, with Dr Drake, that they were laid aside all at once, on a certain day, in the eighth year of her virgin Majesty's reign. So violent a change would have most probably produced a revo lution. But that the breeches, hose, or gallygaskins, shrunk in bulk, is a historical fact, though, in the next age, they swelled out again into even: more than their pristine rotundity, shewing that, though the mere breeches themselves obeyed the nod of a fastidious and arbitrary monarch, the principle and the passion on and by. which they had been worn remained in the soul of the nation, and waited only for a male reign to break forth, Even during the time that the law was in force against the use " of bags for stuffing breeches," Bulmer, in his pedigree of the English gallant, relates, "that a man was brought before a court of justice, charged with wearing the prohibited article;" upon which, in order to refute the accusation, he produced from within "a pair of sheets, two table-cloths, ten napkins, four shirts, a brush, a glass, a comb, nightcaps, and a complete miscellany of other auxiliaries. In a note to the reprint of S. Rowland's "Letting of humours blood in the head vaine," by Walter Scott (1814, Ballantyne), the author of Waverley says, "the breeches in James I. time swelled to a most uncouth and preposterous size, and were stuffed out with bags and other bombast, and sometimes with bran. Bulmer, in the Artificial Changeling, tells of a gallant in whose immense gullygaskins a small hole was torn by a nail of the chair he sat upon, so that, as he turned and riggled to pay his court to the ladies, the bran poured forth as from a mill that was grinding, without his perceiving it, till half the cargo was unloaded on the floor." Even Queen Elizabeth herself allowed these comprehensive breeches to appear on the stage, after they had been banished from real life, for we know that the

constituted part of the clown's dress, in which character Tarleton was so famous. I presume, that at no period were they worn by the military. A field of battle would, in that case, have exhibited a singular appearance.

I find that I have already occupied too much of your valuable pages, and must therefore leave the farther consideration of this subject to a future discourse. I have said enough to shew that our present beaux are a rationallooking set of mortals, in comparison with those of the very noblest era of dramatic poetry in this country. And as my chief object was to vindicate the appearance of our young ladies and gentlemen from your sarcasms, I hope that I have not altogether failed to do 80. I am confident that I have done the ladies ample justice, and if I have said less about the others, perhaps I may, ere long, hold half an hour's conversation in your pages with one whom 1, in common with all the rest of the world, daily admire passing to and fro before the stately pillars of the Albion Club. Meanwhile, I remain,

MR EDITOR, THERE is a pretty numerous class of your readers who, though pleased with those masterly and original dissertations on poetry which frequently appear in your Magazine, justly complain of your neglect of the sister arts. This they consider as the more extraordinary, as, in some of your earlier Notices, you promised them a Series of Essays on the Merits of the Living Scottish Painters; and indeed you produced such a specimen in the admirable critique on the genius of ALLAN, as gave just cause for regret that its author had ceased to treat of a subject to which he was eminently qualified to do justice. MUSIC you had almost entirely neglected, and I was therefore both surprised and pleased when I saw the paper "On the State of Music in Scotland," which appeared in your last Number. Not that I regarded the essay as containing very sound views of the subject of which it treats, but as affording a beginning to

a discussion on a subject of no inconsiderable interest.

Your statement of the causes of the

present abject state of music in Scotfand is what I have now chiefly to de with, and I am sorry to say, that that statement seems to me most unsatisfactory. You have discovered that the excellence of our native Scottish melodies (which, as you yourself acknowledge, bear about the same relation to the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, as Chevy Chace does to Paradise Lost), is the cause of our unsuccessful cultivation of the higher departments of the art of music. One might have thought, that the slightest reflection on the nature of your own comparative illustration would have shewn you the absurdity of your proposition. Can you really conceive, that a man's capability of relishing the beauties of the Iliad could be in any degree modified by his having, in early life, like our own immortal Scott, listened with: enthusiasm to the romantic ballads of his native country? Is not the light of the olden times shed over every scene where his muse loves to linger? Is there not, as Burns expresses it, a

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sprinkling" of the ancient, romantic, and amatory ballad diffused over the works of many of the most popu lar poets of the day, and that with the happiest effect? If these questions are answered, as I think they must be, in the affirmative, where is your theory? If even the almost exclusive stu dy, in early life, of the ancient homely ballad can, in numerous instances, be shewn to have no effect in limiting the efforts of the first poets of the first poetical country in the world, it is impossible to conceive that the converse should hold in music. Our ancient melodies are, like our ancient ballads, of a character highly original and striking, awakening the most delightful and varied associations, by alternations of pathos and gaiety; but, like them too, they are mixed up with much of a broad and vulgar character. They have no doubt a very powerful hold over the imaginations of all ranks in Scotland, but it is by no means an exclusive one, for there are many foreign airs of the most refined character, even those of Mozart, which are familiar to the lower orders

of society; such, for instance, is that air of his, well known to them by the name of Taste Life's Glad Mo

ments," which they firmly believe to be of native origin. In truth, there is no foreign air, be it ever so delicate, that does not become generally familiar in this country, when heard under favourable circumstances.

It is beyond dispute that the cultivation of the elegant arts begins in the higher ranks of society; thence they in due time descend to the inferior orders, till, as is the case in several of the southern countries of Europe, a refined taste becomes so universally diffused, that one may see the Lazzaroni of Naples as fully alive to the peculiar beauties of a refined musical air as their countrymen of the more elevated classes of society. But advancement in musical knowledge is yet to begin among the higher ranks in Scotland: we therefore cannot look for it in general society. The cause of this backwardness in the prosecution of the study of an art so generally acceptable to the most generous spirits the world has produced, and the practice of which was considered by the master spirits of antiquity as equally beneficial and delightful, may well be deemed a subject of interesting inquiry; but in order to be satisfactory, it must be conducted in a very different way from that which you or your correspondent has adopted.

In England, as you yourself have stated, there is no such thing as a body of national melody to impede the introduction of classical music, and there is an ecclesiastical establishment, in the service of which music makes a very prominent figure; yet I will say, without hesitation, or fear of contradiction by any impartial foreigner, that, in proportion to its population, Scotland contains a greater share of good musical feeling, I mean of relish for classical music, than England. I am aware, that in two, or at most three, of the central provinces of the latter country, a taste for sacred musics pretty generally diffused among the manufacturing classes, and that many of them are capable of executing the old church compositions, in parts, with sufficient correctness; but there is little or none of that love for refined instrumental or vocal music, which can stamp the people of these districts as true musicians. Indeed there is no country in Europe, the peasantry of which are so indifferent to melody as that of England,and, I may add, no

country in which, with every aid from opulence, and a spirit of national emulation, the higher classes have cultivated it with so little success.

It is a fact allowed by all foreign musicians, that in proportion to the population and wealth of Edinburgh, there is more money expended by the upper and middle ranks in the musi cal education of their children, than in almost any other city of Europe, We have excellent masters both for vocal and instrumental music,-some of them of the very first order of merit, and many of them conscientious in their endeavours to promote the advancement of their pupils. Ask any of these gentlemen, how many young ladies he thinks there are in Edinburgh, who may be called good players? I am confident he will answer that there are not twelve. I know, Mr Editor, that you will stare at this statement, and so will hundreds of your readers. They will exclaim, What! don't we see Mr Yaniewicz playing accompaniments to many of his pupils in large societies, where there are necessarily many good judges? Would he run the risk of exposing a young lady, by allowing her to sit down to the piano-forte to play a difficult lesson of Beethoven, without being equal to the task? And if he does so frequently (and we all know he does), then there must be a greater number of good players. But let us pause a little. A good performer is one who can sit down to the instru ment, and play all ordinary music with steadiness, judgment, and feeling,-who, in accompanying a song, can listen to the singer,—in short, one who can play at sight, as it is called, with tolerable precision, and who does not require the aid of a master to teach her the lesson note by note. I am quite sure that the number possessed of these qualifications is not greater than the one I have given ;— indeed it is pretty generally allowed by the professors, that there are only a very few ladies in Edinburgh, out of the profession, who are thoroughly at home on the piano-forte. With regard to the amateurs, they are pretty much in the same situation. I know that I cannot be contradicted when I say, that there is not, at this moment, in Edinburgh, one amateur violin-player, who could pretend to play a Scottish melody in good taste, or an accompa

niment to a modern lesson without much previous study; and I state, with equal certainty of being correct, that there is only one amateur violoncello-player who is capable of doing it. As for flutes, we have, God knows, enough of them; but though there are hundreds of performers, there are not more than three worth listening to, and of these only one has reached excellence.

It may be thought that I am talk ing dogmatically, on a subject with which, in a populous town like Edinburgh, one may be but partially acquainted. Those, however, who have resided in it, as I have done, are aware that no Edinburgh amateur is in use to hide his talent in a napkin! Occasions for display are numerous, and they are seized with the most laudable avidity. At the private concerts, got up during the gay season to render a rout more intellectual, there are as many exhibitions of paltry jealousy among the amateurs as ever occur in the green-room of a provincial theatre. One refuses to play second tenor,another conceives himself insulted if asked to play the second violin, and a third assumes the airs of a leader when playing the double bass. -All this squabbling, too, is about nothing worth listening to, the effect of the music being just such as might be expected from such a set of performers.

Such, then, I maintain to be the state of music in Edinburgh, and of course in Scotland,-and such, under the present system, must it continue. Mr Logier's pretended miracles have turned out miserable impostures, as every man of reflection predicted; and we are just going on in the old beaten path of musical education, which, however unavailing it may hitherto have been, is at least free from the despicable quakery of the "LOGIERIAN SYSTEM."

You will have already anticipated, that the sole cause to which I would attribute the infant state of the art in Edinburgh, is the way in which musical education is conducted. It never seems to be regarded as the source of delightful and rational amusement in private life; on the contrary, it is of the nature of a mere pageant, got up for the sake of a little display before company. In what are absurdly called musical parties in the fashionable

world of Edinburgh, a young lady sitting down to the piano-forte is the signal for general whispering, and very often for loud talking. Nobody seems to care whether the performance is good or bad; they hear a musical noise, and take it for granted that it is all as it should be. We occasionally, indeed, hear a sonata well played, but then it is uniformly something got up for the occasion, and by no means proves that the performer is a good musician: for, notwithstanding the imperfections of early musical education, natural genius, aided by some lessons from Yaniewicz, and a good deal of occasional labour, puts a young lady in possession of two or three sonatas ; these are played a thousand times, till she and all her friends become tired of them, when, being unable of herself to acquire variety, and her musi cal education being supposed to be finished, she generally gives up the study in disgust. Her piano-forte becomes a mere piece of furniture in the drawing-room, and is seldom opened except to play the Copenhagen waltz, or Mr Gow's annual sheet of reels, and other music equally delightful and difficult!

It very seldom happens that, in a family of three or four daughters, there is more than one who unites to a good ear, and good musical feeling, habits of perseverance for musical study. Now one would think, that the application of the good ordinary rule, which every father of a family follows in directing his sons to particular studies, with reference to the peculiar bent of their genius, might here be far from improper. He never dreams of educating a son for the bar, who has naturally a defective utterance, nor for any profession to which he seems to have an unconquerable aversion. Yet the same man inost probably compels many of his daughters to devote the greater part of their time to the practice of music, who have not the slightest relish for it; in short, it is the fashion, and every one must play in some way or other. If one happen to have a musical genius, she has no greater facilities afforded her than the others, and by the time they all arrive at the age of seventeen or eighteen, the father is usually tired of the expense which has been so unproductive, and the daughter who might have become a proficient, had she been al

lowed to go on, is obliged to stop short, and necessarily forgets every thing she has learned. This, sir, is the true secret of the wretched state of music in Edinburgh. Nobody seems to think that perfection is out of the reach of those who are born with a tolerable ear, and the system of forcing goes on, but produces no fruit. The fact is, that to make a good musician, much more than correctness of ear is required; something of a much rarer, and more valuable quality, and more intimately connected with mind than is generally believed. That the number of those who have the natural talent alluded to is considerable, must be generally admitted, and as so few of them make good musicians, it follows, that the defect arises from the limited nature of their musical education. You surely cannot pretend that the excellence of native Scottish melody can have any effect in impeding their progress in instrumental music. There are in fact almost no sonatas founded on Scottish subjects; the few we have are unpopular, and it is worthy of observation, that although the whole body of Scottish melodies passed through the hands of Haydn and Beethoven, they have in almost no instance taken them for subjects of Composition. The singular fact that, while these great composers have ingrafted many of their best compositions on the national melodies of every other country in Europe, they should have rejected those of Scotland, would seem to indicate an opinion of their general unfitness for combination with regular music.

As to the practice of vocal music in Edinburgh, it is pretty much the same as our instrumental. We have two teachers of this branch of the art, Miss Schetky and Mr Magrath, both of distinguished talents, and perfectly skilled in (what very few professors, by the by, know any thing about,) the art of communicating knowledge with perspicuity and elegance. These teachers had, and still have, all the most promising pupils, and I am sure, are anxious to forward their progress; yet if you will take the trouble to ask either of them as to the ultimate progress made by any particular favourite pupil, they will tell you, that "she was extremely clever, and was making rapid advances to the point at which the difficulty of the art would have

been overcome, when she was unfortunately removed," and they will add," that every thing she acquired must doubtless soon be forgotten."

I am afraid I am running on without reflecting on the length to which my letter is extending; I may sum up, however, all I have said on what I conceive to be the checks to the advancement of music in this country in a very few sentences. It is not, as I have already mentioned, for the pleasure that is afforded by music, as an elegant and rational relaxation and amusement in the family circle, that parents affect so great a desire that their children should excel in it; on the contrary, it is merely for the sake of display at occasional parties that it is studied at all. The teacher, being quite aware of this, necessarily abandons all thoughts of grounding his pupil thoroughly in the first principles of the art; and in compliance with the wishes and expectations of the parents, sets about teaching her, as by rote, one or two sonatas, or a few songs. In due time, the exhibition of the young lady's progress is made: she is heard with applause three or four times every winter, but having learned the art mechanically, she advances no farther; and in due time, that is, immediately after marriage, bids adieu to music for ever. Though to some this may appear rather a caricature than an accurate portraiture, the fidelity of the picture will be very generally acknowledged.

You seem to augur much that is favourable to the progress of music in Scotland, from the enthusiasm excited by the festival of 1815. I confess I am not so sanguine on this point. It appears to me, that nine-tenths of those who attended (as indeed you yourself allow) did so on account of the novelty of the entertainment; and that no lasting effect has been produced by it, is apparent from the history of the "Institution for Sacred Music,' to which you allude. From the annual reports, it appears that the subscriptions are a mere trifle; and that, while the public affected to regard its progress with something like interest, the subscriptions, small as they are, could not be procured without giving public performances, even in the first year after the institution was formed. I know little of its proceedings, but if the annual report be correct, its Direc