We should gladly dilate, if space allowed, upon the various methods that are at work at the present day, for the spread of religion amongst the working-classes; for assuredly we look to these as among the surest instruments for promoting sobriety, as well as all the other virtues. But we can only remark generally, that if the drinking class is to be reached, these means must be of an aggressive character. That class must be sought out in the byeways and lanes, and compelled to come in,-by Scripture readers, city missionaries, out-door preaching, ragged churches, and so forth. Building splendid churches is a very useful work, but the same money would go still further were rooms taken and fitted up in all the most beggarly parts of our great cities, and men of homely eloquence employed to give addresses in them every Sunday, and on one or two evenings besides. What we want is a more retail system of distribution, to carry religion like bread to an easy distance from every door, and, as it were, hold it up before the eyes of the populace.

We have only one more suggestion to make, and it has already been acted upon in Manchester with much spirit and success. It is, that those interested in the welfare of the poor should everywhere form local associations, for inquiring into the state of public-houses and beer-shops, and for watching their conduct. Not only would the publicans be made cautious if an eye were thus fixed on them, but the police would receive that stimulus without which our best legislation is vain.

Such, then, are some of the ordinary practical means, which, in our opinion, statesmen and private individuals might adopt to abate drunkenness in the British isles. And now a conclud

ing word about Teetotalism.

There exists in many quarters a feeling of dislike to Teetotalism. It would root up the use, it is said, in order to remove the abuse of stimulating drink. Some object to it, because they think it substitutes low and material motives for the higher ones, that ought to conduct to sobriety; and others view it with dislike, because they think its results can only be temporary.

Whatever weight may lie in these objections, there is one not ineffective reply to them. Multitudes of drunkards have become sober men by means of the pledge, who probably could not have been reclaimed in any other way. We must have material facilities before moral influences can begin to work, and that is just what the pledge affords. It arrests the drunkard in his career, and gives him the opportunity of listening to the voice of reason and conscience. As to the alleged exaggeration, unquestionably the best thing for a man to do, who cannot resist the temptation to take too much, is to take nothing at all. So insidious a fiend is drunkenness, that he who parleys with it is

undone. Nor is there much substance in the objection, that the teetotaller uses low motives, where high ones ought to bear sway. Providence has kindly given great force to the influence of public opinion upon man, and why should we not use the weapon which has thus been placed in our hands? When men associate themselves in bands to resist a certain vice, they as it were organize the force contained in the wills of all, and bring the aggregate to bear upon each. Each member is so much one with the body to which he belongs, that partly from sympathetic feeling, partly from the direct dread of what his brethren will say, his will is stayed upon theirs, till it has grown strong enough to stand alone. Is this a moral influence which a wise man would cast aside as unworthy and deleterious? The real defect in Teetotalism is, that it is often the child of excitement or fanaticism, and is apt to die if not nursed by influences of that class. But this is so far a defect, which it has in common with every other special and one-sided effort for the good of the poor. They must all languish if their promoters be not kept steadily in earnest. One element in them that without doubt tends to the decay of Teetotal Associations, is, that they are essentially negative not positive. The members say, We will not do this, whereas all vital energy arises from saying, This we will do. We would suggest, that such associations should in all cases become benefit, or clothing, or coal, or shoe clubs, as well as teetotal associations; and the comforts thus secured by the members would give respectability to such bodies in the eye of their neighbours. We fully believe that Teetotalism may thus be made an engine of real usefulness, if taken up by the clergy and other persons of influence, and worked with enlightened vigour. It is the Maine Law in its best form, when men of their own accord combine to protect themselves from temptation, to which single-handed they must fall a prey.

66

one

That Teetotalism, whether sound or not in theory, has already done good work, is proved by the extraordinary results produced by it in Ireland,-"The falling off in the consumption of spirits in that country in the year 1840-1841, is," says Mr. Porter, of the most remarkable events of the day. It resulted entirely from the efforts of one man, the Rev. Theobald Mathew, a Catholic clergyman, who availed himself of his power of influencing his fellow-men to produce a sudden change in the habits of vast numbers, reclaiming them from the vice of drunkenness. and its accompanying evils to an extent which nothing short of the fact itself could induce us to think possible." In the five years, 1835-39, the number of gallons of spirits charged with duty for home consumption in Ireland amounted to fiftyeight millions, or eleven millions and a half per annum. În

the five following years, when Father Mathew's mission had taken effect, the number of gallons amounted to thirty-one millions, or six millions and a quarter per annum, being a decrease of five millions per annum ! And the blow thus struck still retains a great part of its force, as it would seem; for in the five years ending in 1852, the number of gallons has amounted to thirty-seven millions, which is still short of the first amount by more than twenty millions, being a decrease of four millions per annum."

We conclude, earnestly commending the suggestions thrown out in the previous pages to the consideration, if not to the adoption of our readers. We are face to face with the most prolific source of sin and misery in our age. Let us not be misled by a spurious humanity to deal with it softly. The evil is mighty. The remedies must be strong. But we feel about Parliament, what a certain lady once felt about her lord,

"Yet do I fear thy nature,

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness,
To catch the nearest way."

In truth, the real responsibility rests ultimately with the public. The gales must blow off the "popularis aura," or the Legislature will not have the courage or the vigour, perhaps hardly the right, to rid the people of a yoke from which they show no zeal to be set free.

* Nor did these effects arise from greater evasions of the law. In the first five years we have mentioned, there were 15,800 such evasions detected by the police. In the second five years there were but 9500. In the last there were

but 4900.

ART. VII.—1. Reliquiæ Antiquæ: Scraps from Ancient Manuscripts, illustrating chiefly early English Literature and the English Language. Edited by THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., and JAMES ORCHARD HALLIWELL, Esq., F.R.S., F.S.A. Two Vols. London, John Russell Smith, 1845.

2. The Illustrated Book of English Songs, from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century. Illustrated London Library. London, 1854.

3. Songs from the Dramatists.

Edited by ROBERT BELL.

London, John W. Parker and Son, 1854.

By far the greatest proportion of our earliest English literature-that is, of the rude literary attempts which were made in the genuine English tongue before Chaucer enriched it and made it plastic by his genius-consisted, as all scholars know, of metrical narratives or romances, possessing little other merit than that of plot or incident. Literary historians attribute this fact to the influence of the Norman taste introduced at the Conquest. The very distinction between the Trouveurs, or minstrels of Northern France, and the Troubadours, or minstrels of Southern France, was, that the former occupied themselves chiefly in the production of narrative pieces of greater or less length, under the various names of contes, lais, romans, fabliaux, and the like, while the latter regaled the lords and ladies in the castles of the more sunny south chiefly with luxurious love-ditties, and other soft lyrical effusions natural to the lands of the olive and the vine. Whether this predilection of the Normans for the narrative over the lyrical form of literary composition was owing to their Scandinavian origin, we need not inquire. It is enough that such was the fact, and that the Normans, in coming over to this island, brought with them the taste for the narrative rather than the lyrical mode of literary production, and impressed it upon the nation which they helped to form. During the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, one of the chief in-doors amusements of the Normans in their castles, both in England and Normandy, was listening to lays and romances in French verse, recited to them, with more or less of musical accompaniment, by professional minstrels who carried them about in their memory, and earned their bread by repeating them wherever they were wanted. Sometimes priests and monks, or lords and ladies of literary culture, employed themselves in composing such romances and committing them to

writing; but, in addition to these more ambitious compositions, some of which survive, the minstrels had a stock prepared by themselves, and better adapted for their purposes. The essential thing, in each case, was to have a story, no matter of what kind, so long as it interested the hearers. The passion of the time was for stories; and the business of the minstrel was to purvey stories from every possible quarter. Tales of actual Norman history were, of course, in demand; but, where these failed, tales taken from Scripture history, or from ancient Greek or Roman history, or from the times of Charlemagne and the Moors, or from the rich magazine of British and Armorican legends, were equally welcome. Moreover, besides the heroic tales or romances proper, there were facetious and satirical tales of real life, suited for special company and for lighter occasions. Still, essentially, it was the narrative, the succession of incidents, that pleased; it was this that the minstrels attended to, and it was by their superior adaptation to the prevailing taste in this respect that certain romances and jocose tales became more popular than others.

Precisely as it was among the lords of the Norman castles and their retainers, so, with but the difference of language, was it among the English-speaking part of the community. They, too, in their households and villages, required some kind of literary amusement, after their hard work in the fields and the workshops; and they, too, whatever were their original AngloSaxon tastes, learned to like best those rude narrative compositions in metre which their Norman masters had brought into fashion. Whether there ever was a class of English minstrels in the same strict sense as there was a class of Norman minstrels, may be doubted; Percy supposes that there was, and Ritson maintains that there was not; it seems certain, however, that, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, if not as early as the twelfth, there were lame and blind old wanderers-the true ancestors of our popular men of letters-who earned their bread and their night's lodging by going about the country with their budgets of stories, and reciting them to delighted audiences in barns and at rustic firesides. Originally, these stories of the English minstrels, if so they may be called, were chiefly versions into the vernacular tongue of the stories which their more privileged brethren, the French minstrels, rehearsed in the halls and kitchens of the castles; and of the early English metrical romances that survive, the French originals of some may be yet identified. Occasionally, however, the Saxon genius would purvey for itself by going to new sources, and inventing stories out of fresh material. The fourteenth century was the most flourishing time of the English metrical romance. In that cen