religion are entirely founded on the obligations of reason; and (3.) That on this ground, religion, whether natural or revealed, stands very firm and secure. Balguy collected these tracts and published them in a single volume in 1734, the Letter to a Deist and the Foundation of Moral Goodness having previously passed through three editions. In 1741 he published an Essay on Redemption, containing somewhat peculiar views. Redemption as taught in Scripture means, according to him, "the deliverance or release of mankind from the power and punishment of sin, by the meritorious sufferings of Jesus Christ," but involves no translation of guilt, substitution of persons, or vicarious punishment. Freed from these ideas, which have arisen from interpreting literally expressions which are properly figurative, the doctrine, he argues, satisfies deep and urgent human wants, and is in perfect consistence and agreement with reason and rectitude. His last publication was a volume of sermons, pervaded by good sense and good feeling, and clear, natural, and direct in style, but bearing few traces of the influence of the most distinctive and potent Christian motives. He died at Harrowgate, September 21, 1748. A second volume of sermons appeared shortly afterwards. The edition of his sermons most commonly met with is the 3d, in 2 vols., published in 1760. The notice of his life in the Biographia Britannica was written by his son. See also Hunt's Religious Thought in England, vol. ii. 362-4, 454-6, iii. 87-9. Mr. Hunt erroneously represents Shaftesbury and not Hutcheson as the philosopher assailed in the Foundation of Moral Goodness.

(R. F.)

with a belief in Kalas, or evil spirits. To appease these offerings are made to them either direct or through the mediation of the Devas (domestic or agrarian deities); and if these avail not, the Menyepi, or Great Sacrifice, is resorted to. Buddhism prevails only in three districts The Mahometan religion is said to be on the wane, in spite of the good influence it has exerted upon the people. Of the early history of their island the Balinese know nothing. The oldest tradition they possess refers to a time shortly after the overthrow of the Majapahit dynasty in Java, about the middle of the 15th century; but, according to Lassen, who identifies Bali with the island visited by Jambulos, there must have been Indian settlers there before the middle of the 1st century, by whom the present name, probably cognate with the Sanskrit balin, strong, was in all likelihood imposed. It was not till 1633 that the Dutch attempted to enter into alliance with the native princes, and their earliest permanent settlement at Port Badong only dates from 1845. Their influence was extended by the results of the war which they waged with the natives about 1847-9. A geological survey of the whole island is at present (1874-5) in progress under their auspices. The Balinese language belongs to the same group of the Malayan class as the Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, &c., but is as distinct from each of these as French is from Italian. It is most nearly akin to the Sasak language spoken in Lombok and on the east coast of Bali. The literary language has embodied many of its ingredients from the Old Javanese, as spoken in Java at the time of BALI, or LITTLE JAVA, one of the Sunda Islands, in the fall of Majapahit (15th century), while the vulgar the Eastern Seas, separated from Java by the straits of the dialect has kept free from such admixture. Javanese same name, which are a mile and a half wide. It is 75 influence is also traceable in the use of three varieties of miles in length; its greatest breadth is 50 miles. A chain speech, as in the Javanese language, according to the rank of mountains crosses the island in a direction E. and W., of the people addressed. The alphabet is with some modiand terminates on the E. in the volcanic peak Gunung-fications the same as the Javanese, but more complicated. agung, 12,379 feet above the sea-level. The climate and The material universally used for writing on is the presoil are the same as in Java; it has mountains of propor- pared leaf of the lontar palm. The sacred literature of tionate height, several lakes of great depth, and streams the Balinese is written in the ancient Javanese or Kawi well fitted for the purposes of irrigation. Rice is produced language, which appears to be better understood here than in great quantities, and is even exported to Madura, it is in Java. (See R. van Eck, Beknopte handleiding bij Celebes, Timor, and Java. The other productions are de beoefening van het Balineesche taal, Utrecht, 1874.) In tobacco, maize, pulses, oil, and salt; also cotton of an the years 1871 and 1872, 15,000 people died of small-pox excellent quality. Coffee is now grown with great success; in the island; since then vaccination has been introduced in the district of Teja Kulo alone, 150,000 trees were by the Dutch. In September, 1874, several districts were planted in the first four months of 1873. The inhabitants fearfully ravaged by cholera; in Sampidi alone out of its (estimated at about 800,000), though originally sprung 3000 inhabitants 700 fell victims to the scourge; the rest from the same stock as those of Java, exceed them in fled into the woods. stature and muscular power, as well as in activity and enterprising habits. They have," says Sir Stamford Raffles, "a higher cast of spirit, independence, and manliness than belongs to any of their neighbors." They are good agriculturists and skilful artisans, especially in textile fabrics and the manufacture of arms. The imports are iron and cotton cloths, and opium to a great extent; in the district of Tabanan alone, forty chests of this drug are annually consumed. Both imports and exports are on the increase; but trade is chiefly in the hands of Europeans, Chinese, and Arabs, who have their firms or agents in Batavia, Surabaya, Makassar, and Singapore. The trade returns in the port of Padang Cove are estimated at £500.000 to £600,000 per annum; those of Buleleng and Jembrana were about £500,000 in 1873. The island is divided into the eight independent principalities of Buleleng, Karang Asam, Bangli, Tabanan, Mengui, Klongkong, Gyanyar, and Badong, each under its own ruler. The deputy-commissioner of Banyuwangi in east Java is also charged with the superintendence of the island of Bali in behalf of the Dutch Government. Though native rule is described as very tyrannical and arbitrary, especially in the principalities of Badong and Tabanan, trade and industry could not flourish if insecurity of persons and property existed to any great extent. The natives have also a remedy against the aggression of their rulers in their own hands: it is called Metilas, consists in a general rising and renunciation of allegiance, and proves mostly successful. Justice is administered from a written civil and criminal code. Slavery is abolished. Hinduism, which was once the religion of Java, but has been extinct there for four centuries, is still in vogue in the islands of Bali and Lombok, where the cruel custom of widow burning is still practised, and the Hindu system of the four castes, with a fifth or Pariah caste (called Chandála), adhered to. It appears partly blended with Buddhism, partly overgrown

"

Crawfurd's Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands, 1856; P. J. Veth, Woordenboek van Nederlandsch Indie, 1869; Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indie for 1874, vol. ii. p. 439, ff.; Lassen's Indische Alterthumskunde, iii. iv., passim; Friedrich's "Verslag van Bali" in Trans. of Batavian Soc. of Arts and Sci., xxiii., and a paper in the Journal of the Ind. Arch., 1849; M. de Carnbée's "Essai sur Bali" in Le Moniteur des Indes Orient., 1846-47; Dubois's Vies des Gouverneurs-généraux ; Backer's L'Archipel Indien, 1874; Jaarboek van het Mijnwezen in N. Ost.-Indie, 1874.

BALIOL, or BALLIOL, SIR JOHN DE, an English baron after whom Balliol College in Oxford has been named, was the son of Hugh Baliol, of Bernard's Castle, in the diocese of Durham. His great wealth and power raised him to a prominent position in the kingdom, and he rendered good service to Henry III. in his contest with De Montfort and the revolted barons. In 1263 he endowed several scholarships at Oxford, and formed the intention of founding a college. This he did not accomplish, but after his death in 1269, his widow, Devorgille or Devorguill, carried out his design, and the foundation received the name of Balliol College. Sir John's son was the well-known John Baliol, the competitor with Bruce for the throne of Scotland.

BALKAN (the ancient Hamus), a mountain range that separates the waters of the Lower Danube from those that flow into the Archipelago; or, in the more extended application of the name, the whole mountain system from the Adriatic to the Euxine. The main chain has a mean elevation of 4000 or 5000 feet, and rises in various parts to a height of 7000 or 8000. Especially towards the east it breaks up into a number of parallel chains, and sends out various offshoots both south and north. Mount Scardus, the highest point of the Char-Dagh, attains to 9700 feet above the sea. The most of the rivers of the northern watershed find their way to the Black Sea, while those from the southern fall into the Mediterranean. The range

is crossed by numerous defiles, most of which are left in a nearly impassable condition, though they might in many cases be turned into serviceable routes. Communication is kept up between Vienna and Constantinople by the pass usually known as Trajan's Gate. Others of importance are the Nadir-Derbent, the Karnabad, and the BasardshikSophia. The mountains are for the most part of granitic formation, and are said to contain a variety of valuable minerals, but are still imperfectly known, in spite of the labors of Pouqueville, Boué, Viquesnel, Grisebach, Hahn, Barth, &c. Kanitz, between 1870 and 1874, crossed the eastern part no fewer than seventeen times by different passes. See Journey across Balkan by the Passes of Selimno and Pravadi, London, 1831; Jochinus's "Journey," 1847, in Journ. Roy. Geog. Soc., 1854; Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, 2d series, vol. x.; Petermann's Mittheil., 1873-74.

which has passed through a great many editions, and has been in common use as a Puritan catechism. His Treatise of Faith, and Friendly Trial of the Grounds tending to Sepa ration, the latter of which defines his position with regard to the church, are also valuable works.

BALLADS. The word ballad is derived from the Old French baller, to dance, and originally meant a song sung to the rhythmic movement of a dancing chorus. Later, the word became the technical term for a particular form of old-fashioned French poetry, remarkable for its involved and recurring rhymes. "Laisse moi aux Jeux Floraux de Toulouse toutes ces vieux poésies Françoises comme ballades," says Joachim du Bellay in 1550; and Philaminte, the lady pedant of Molière's Femmes Scavantes, observes"La ballade, à mon gout, est une chose fade,

Ce n'en est plus la mode, elle sent son vieux temps." BALKH, the ancient Bactra or Zariaspa, was formerly In England the term has usually been applied to any a great city, but is now for the most part a mass of ruins, simple tale, told in simple verse, though attempts have situated on the right bank of the Adirsiah or Balkh river, been made to confine it to the subject of this paper, namely, in a large and fertile plain 1800 feet above the sea. The Popular Songs. By popular songs we understand what the modern name is, according to Vámbéry, the Turkish balik, Germans call Volks-lieder, that is, songs composed by the or balikh, a city. The ruins, which occupy a space of about people, for the people, handed down by oral tradition, and twenty miles in circuit, consist chiefly of fallen mosques in style, taste, and even incident, common to the people in and decayed buildings of sun-burnt brick. No monuments all European countries. The beauty of these purely popof pre-Mahometan date have been pointed out, if we except ular ballads, their directness and freshness, has made them the bricks with cuneiform inscriptions which Ferrier asserts admired even by the artificial critics of the most artificial he observed; but nothing like a proper investigation of periods in literature. Thus Sir Philip Sydney confesses the site has yet been effected. The antiquity and great- that the ballad of Chevy Chase, when chanted by "a blind ness of the place are recognized by the native populations, crowder," stirred his blood like the sound of trumpet. Adwho speak of it as the Mother of Cities. Its foundation is dison devoted two articles in the Spectator to a critique of mythically ascribed to Kaiomurs, the Persian Romulus; the same poem. Montaigne praised the naïveté of the viland it is at least certain that, at a very early date, it was the rival of Ecbatana, Nineveh, and Babylon. For a long to all the poems of Ronsard. These, however, are rare inlage carols; and Malherbe preferred a rustic chansonette time the city and country was the central seat of the Zoroastrian religion, the founder of which is said to have ish ballads were collected and printed in the middle of the stances of the taste for popular poetry, and though the Dandied within the walls. From the Memoirs of Hwen Thsang, 16th century, and some Scotch collections date from the a Chinese traveller, we learn that, at the time of his visit beginning of the 18th, it was not till the publication of in the 7th century, there were in the city, or its vicinity, Allan Ramsay's Evergreen and Tea Table Miscellany, and about a hundred Buddhist convents, with 3000 devotees, of Bishop Percy's Reliques, that a serious effort was made and that there was a large number of stupas, and other to recover Scotch and English folk-songs from the recitareligious monuments. The most remarkable was the Naution of the old people who still knew them by heart. At Behar, Nava Bihara, or New Convent, which possessed a very costly statue of Buddha. A curious notice of this building is found in the Arabian geographer Yakût. IbnHaukal, an Arabian traveller of the 10th century, describes Balkh as built of clay, with ramparts and six gates, and extending half a parasang. He also mentions a castle and a mosque. El Edrisi, in the 12th century, speaks of its possessing a variety of educational establishments, and carrying on an active trade. There were several important commercial routes from the city, stretching as far east as India and China. In 1220 Genghis Khan sacked Balkh, butchered its inhabitants, and levelled all the buildings capable of defence,-treatment to which it was again sub-ed age even of French poetry, translated some of the Rojected in the 14th century by Timur. Notwithstanding this, however, Marco Polo can still, in the following century, describe it as a noble city and a great." Balkh formed the government of Aurungzebe in his youth. In 1736 it was conquered by Nadir Shah. Under the Durani monarchy it fell into the hands of the Afghans; it was conquered by Shah Murad of Kunduz in 1820, and for some time has been subject to the Khan of Bokhara.

the time when Percy was editing the Reliques, Madame de Chénier, the mother of the celebrated French poet of that name, composed an essay on the ballads of her native land, modern Greece; and later, Herder and Grimm and Goethe, in Germany, did for the songs of their country what Scott did for those of Liddesdale and the Forest. It was fortific study of the ballads, that they were mainly regarded tunate, perhaps, for poetry, though unlucky for the scienfrom the literary point of view. The influence of their the lyrics of Goethe and of Coleridge, of Wordsworth, of artless melody and straightforward diction may be felt in Heine, and of André Chénier. Chénier, in the most affectmaic ballads; one, as it chanced, being identical with that which Shakspeare borrowed from some English reciter and put into the mouth of the mad Ophelia. The beauty of forgeries. It is probable that Hogg was as great a culprit the ballads and the interest they excited led to numerous tion of Servian imitations, in France. Editors could not in Scotland as Prosper Mérimée with his Guzla, or collec resist the temptation to interpolate, to restore, and to improve the fragments that came in their way. The Marquis de la Villemarqué, who first drew attention to the ballads of Brittany, is not wholly free from this fault. Thus a very BALL, JOHN, a Puritan divine, of whom Baxter speaks general skepticism was awakened, and when questions came in very high terms, was born, in 1585, at Cassington, or to be asked as to the date and authorship of the Scottish Chessington, near Woodstock, and died in 1640. He traditional ballads, it is scarcely to be wondered at that Dr. entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1602, and remained Chambers attributed most of them to the accomplished there five years. He then migrated to St. Mary's Hall, Lady Wardlaw, who lived in the middle of the 18th century. from which he took his bachelor's degree in 1608. Soon after graduating he went into Cheshire to act as tutor to the children of Lady Cholmondeley. While there he was thrown into the company of some enthusiastic Puritans, whose views he quickly adopted. He resolved upon entering the church, and, going up to London, obtained ordination from an Irish bishop. He was afterwards appointed to the small curacy of Whitmore, near Stoke, in Staffordshire, and here he passed the remainder of his life, eking out his miserable stipend by teaching a small school. The most popular of his numerous works was the Short Treatise, containing all the Principal Grounds of Christian Religion,

See Houen Thsang, tr. by Julien, vol. i. pp. 29-32; Burnes's Travels in Bokhara, 1831-33; Ferrier's Travels; Vámbéry's Bokhara, 1873.

The vexed and dull controversy as to the origin of Scottish folk-songs was due to ignorance of the comparative method, and of the ballad literature of Europe in general The result of the discussion was to leave a vague impres sion that our native ballads were perhaps as old as the time of Dunbar, and were the production of a class of professional minstrels. These minstrels are a stumbling-block in the way of the student of the growth of ballads. The domestic annals of Scotland show that her kings used to keep court-bards, and also that strollers, jongleurs, as they were called, went about singing at the doors of farm-houses and in the streets of towns. Here were two sets of min

in his account of ballads in the Highlands of Turkey, remarks on this fact, and attributes it to Eastern influences. But the horses' shoes of silver, the knives of fine gold, the talking "birds with gold on their wings," as in Aristophanes, are common to all folk-song. Everything almost is gold in the Kalevala, an epic formed by putting into juxtaposition all the popular songs of Finland. Gold is used as freely in the ballads, real or spurious, which M. Verkovitch has had collected in the wilds of Mount Rhodope. The captain in the French song is as lavish in his treatment of his runaway bride,—

"Son amant l'habille,

Tout en or et argent;"

and the rustic in a song from Poitou talks of his faucille d'or, just as a variant of Hugh of Lincoln introduces gold chairs and tables. Again, when the lover, in a ballad common to France and to Scotland, cuts the winding sheet from about his living bride-"il tira ses ciseaux d'or fin." If the horses of the Klephts in Romaic ballads are gold shod, the steed in Willie's Lady is no less splendidly accoutred,

strels who had apparently left no poetry; and, on the other | is the lavish and reckless use of gold and silver. M. Tozer, side, there was a number of ballads that claimed no author. It was the easiest and most satisfactory inference that the courtly minstrels made the verses, which the wandering crowders imitated or corrupted. But this theory fails to account, among other things, for the universal sameness of tone, of incident, of legend, of primitive poetical formulæ, which the Scotch ballad possesses, in common with the ballads of Greece, of France, of Provence, of Portugal, of Denmark, and of Italy. The object, therefore, of this article is to prove that what has long been acknowledged of nursery tales, of what the Germans call Märchen, namely, that they are the immemorial inheritance at least of all European peoples, is true also of ballads. The main incidents and plots of the fairy tales of Celts, and Germans, and Slavonic and Indian peoples, their unknown antiquity and mysterious origin are universally recognized. No one any longer attributes them to this or that author, or to this or that date. The attempt to find date or author for a genuine popular song is as futile as a similar search in the case of a Märchen. It is to be asked, then, whether what is confessedly true of folk-tales,-of such stories as the Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, is true also of folk-songs. Are they, or have they been, as universally sung as the fairy tales have been narrated? Do they, too, bear traces of the survival of primitive creeds and primitive forms of consciousness and of imagination? Are they, like Märchen, for the most part, little influenced by the higher religions, Christian or polytheistic? Do they turn, as Märchen do, on the same incidents, repeat the same stories, employ the same machinery of talking birds and beasts? Lastly, are any specimens of ballad literature capable of being traced back to extreme antiquity? It appears that all these questions may be answered in the affirmative; that the great age and universal diffusion of the ballad may be proved; and that its birth, from the lips and heart of the people, may be contrasted with the origin of an artistic poetry in the demand of an aristocracy for a separate epic literature, destined to be its own possession, and to be the first developinent of a poetry of personality,- -a record of individual passions and emotions. After bringing forward examples of the identity of features in European ballad poetry, we shall proceed to show that they all sprang from the same primitive custom of dance, accompanied by improvised song, which still exists in Greece and Russia, and even in valleys of the Pyrenees.

There can scarcely be a better guide in the examination of the notes or marks of popular poetry than the instructions which M. Ampère gave to the committee appointed in 1852-53 to search for the remains of ballads in France. M. Ampère bade the collectors look for the following characteristics:-"The use of assonance in place of rhyme, the brusque character of the recital, the textual repetition, as in Homer, of the speeches of the persons, the constant use of certain numbers,-as three and seven,-and the representation of the commonest objects of every-day life as being made of gold and silver." M. Ampère might have added that French ballads would probably employ a "birdchorus," the use of talking-birds as messengers; that they would repeat the plots current in other countries, and display the same non-Christian idea of death and of the future world, the same ghostly superstitions and stories of metamorphosis, and the same belief in elves and fairies, as are found in the ballads of Greece, of Provence, of Brittany, Denmark, and Scotland. We shall now examine these supposed common notes of all genuine popular song, supplying a few out of the many instances of curious identity. As to brusqueness of recital, and the use of assonance instead of rhyme, as well as the aid to memory given by reproducing speeches verbally, these are almost unavoidable in all simple poetry preserved by oral tradition. In the matter of recurring numbers, we have the

eternal

"Silver shod before,

And gowden shod behind."

Readers of Homer, and of the Chanson de Roland, must have observed the same primitive luxury of gold in these early epics.

Next as to talking-birds. These are not so common as in Märchen, but still are very general, and cause no surprise to their human listeners. The omniscient popinjay, who "up and spoke" in the Border minstrelsy, is of the same family of birds as those that, according to Talvj, pervade Servian song; as the rpá novλakiά which introduce the story in the Romaic ballads; as the wise birds whose speech is still understood by exceptionally gifted Zulus; as the wicked dove that whispers temptation in the sweet French folk-song; as the "bird that came out of a bush, on water for to dine," in the Water o' Wearies Well. ballads of various lands, it is to be regretted that no such In the matter of identity of plot and incident in the comparative tables exist as Von Hahn tried, not very exof Märchen. A haustively, to make of the "story-roots common plot is the story of the faithful leman, whose a braw new bride," and who recovers lord brings home his affection at the eleventh hour. In Scotland this is the ballad of Lord Thomas, and Fair Annie; in Danish it is Skiaen Anna. It occurs twice in M. Fauriel's collection of Romaic songs. Again, there is the familiar ballad about a girl who pretends to be dead, that she may be borne on bier to meet her lover. This occurs not only in Scotland, but in the popular songs of Provence (collected by Damase Arbaud) and in those of Metz (Puymaigre), and in both countries an incongruous sequel tells how the lover tried to murder his bride, and how she was too cunning, and drowned him. Another familiar feature is the bush and brier, or the two rose trees, which meet and plait over the graves of unhappy lovers, so that all passers-by see them, and say in the Provençal,—

66

"Diou ague l'amo

Des paures amourous."

Another example of a very wide-spread theme brings us to the ideas of the state of the dead revealed in folk-songs. how a dead brother, wakened from his sleep of death by The Night Journey, in M. Fauriel's Romaic collection, tells the longing of love, bore his living sister on his saddleScotland this is the story of Proud Lady Margaret; in bow, in one night, from Baghdad to Constantinople. In Germany, it is the song which Bürger converted into Lenore; in Denmark it is Aagé and Elsé; in Brittany the dead foster-brother carries his sister to the apple close of the Celtic paradise (Barzaz Breiz). Only in Brittany do the sad-hearted people think of the land of death as an island of Avalon, with the eternal sunset lingering behind who appear in old French ballads, as well as the "Three the flowering apple trees, and gleaming on the fountain of Sailors," whose adventures are related in the Lithuanian forgetfulness. In Scotland the channering worm doth and Provençal originals of Mr. Thackeray's Little Billee. chide even the souls that come from where, "beside the Then there is "the league, the league, the league, but gate of Paradise, the birk grows fair enough." The Romaic barely three," of Scotch ballads; and the rpá rovnaká, idea of the place of the dead, the garden of Charon, whence three golden birds, which sing the prelude to Greek folk-"neither in spring or summer, nor when grapes are gleaned songs, and so on. A more curious note of primitive poetry in autumn, can warrior or maiden escape," is likewise pre

"Treis belles filles

L'y en a'z une plus belle que le jour,”

Christian. In Provençal, Danish, and Yorkshire folk-song, the cries of children ill-treated by a cruel step-mother awaken the departed mother,

"'Twas cold at night and the bairnies grat,

The mother below the mouls heard that."

She reappears in her old home, and henceforth, "when dogs howl in the night, the step-mother trembles, and is kind to the children." To this identity of superstition we may add the less tangible fact of identity of tone. The ballads of Klephtic exploits in Greece match the Border songs of Dick of the Law and Kinmont Willie. The same simple delight of living animates the short Greek Scholia and their counterparts in France. Everywhere in these happier climes, as in Southern Italy, there are snatches of popular verse that make but one song of rose trees, and apple blossom, and the nightingale that sings for maidens loverless,―

"Il ne chante pas pour moi,
Je'n ai un, Dieu merci,"

says the gay French refrain.

It would not be difficult to multiply instances of resemblance between the different folk-songs of Europe; but enough has, perhaps, been said to support the position that they are popular and primitive in the same sense as Märchen. They date from times, and are composed by peoples who find, in a natural improvisation, a natural utterance of modulated and rhythmic speech, the appropriate relief of their emotions, in moments of high-wrought feeling or on solemn occasions. "Poesie" (as Puttenham well says in his Art of English Poesie, 1589) "is more ancient than the artificiall of the Greeks and Latines, and used of the savage and uncivill, who were before all science and civilitie. This is proved by certificate of merchants and travellers, who by late navigations have surveyed the whole world, and discovered large countries, and wild people strange and savage, affirming that the American, the Perusine, and the very Canniball do sing and also say their highest and holiest matters in certain riming versicles." In the same way Aristotle, discoursing of the origin of poetry, says (Poet, c. iv.), ἐγέννησαν τήν ποιήσιν ἐκ τῶν áνтοoxεdiασμáτwv. M. de la Villemarqué in Brittany, M. Pitré in Italy, Herr Ulrich in Greece, have described the process of improvisation, how it grows out of the custom of dancing in large bands and accompanying the figure of the dance with song. "If the people," says M. Pitré, "find out who is the composer of a canzone, they will not sing it." Now in those lands where a blithe peasant life still exists with its dances, like the kolos of Russia, we find ballads identical in many respects with those which have died out of oral tradition in these islands. It is natural to conclude that our ballads too were first improvised, and circulated in rustic dances. We learn from M. Bujeaud and M. de Puymaigre in France, that all ballads there have their air or tune, and that every dance has its own words, for if a new dance comes in, perhaps a fashionable one from Paris, words are fitted to it. Is there any trace of such an operatic, lyrical, dancing peasantry in austere Scotland? We find it in Gawin Douglas's ac

count of

"Sic as we clepe wenches and damosels,

In gersy greens, wandering by spring wells,
Of bloomed branches, and flowers white and red,
Plettand their lusty chaplets for their head,

Some sang ring-sangs, dances, ledes, and rounds." Now, ring-sangs are ballads, dancing songs; and Young Tamlane, for instance, was doubtless once danced to, as we know it possessed an appropriate air. Again, Fabyan, the chronicler (quoted by Ritson) says that the song of triumph over Edward II., "was after many days sung in dances, to the carols of the maidens and minstrels of Scotland." We might quote the Complaynt of Scotland to the same effect. "The shepherds, and their wyvis sang mony other melodi sangs, than efter this sueit celestial harmony, tha began to dance in ane ring." It is natural to conjecture that, if we find identical ballads in Scotland, and in Greece, and Italy, and traces of identical customs customs crushed by the Reformation, by Puritanism, by modern so-called civilization - the ballads sprang out of the institution of dances, as they still do in warmer and pleasanter climates. It may be supposed that legends on which the ballads are composed, being found as

they are from the White Sea to Cape Matapan, are part of the stock of primitive folk-lore. Thus we have an immemorial antiquity for the legends, and for the lyrical choruses in which their musical rendering was improvised. We are still at a loss to discover the possibly mythological germs of the legends; but, at all events, genuine ballads may be claimed as distinctly popular, and, so to speak, impersonal in matter and in origin. It would be easy to show that. survivals out of this stage of inartistic lyric poetry linger in the early epic poetry of Homer and of the French épopées, and that the Greek drama sprang from the sacred choruses of village vintagers. In the great early epics, as in popular ballads, there is the same directness and simplicity, the same use of recurring epithets, the green grass," the "salt sea," the "shadowy hills," the same repetition of speeches, and something of the same barbaric profusion in the use of gold and silver. But these resemblances must not lead us into the mistake of supposing Homer to be a collection of ballads, or that he can be properly translated into ballad metre. The Iliad and the Odyssey are the highest form of an artistic epic, not composed by piecing together ballads, but developed by a long series of noble doído, for the benefit of the great houses which entertain them, out of the method and materials of popular song. Ballads sprang from the very heart of the people, and flit from age to age, from lip to lip of shepherds, peasants, nurses, of all the class that continues nearest to the state of natural men. They make music with the plash of the fisherman's oars and the hum of the spinning-wheel, and keep time with the step of the ploughman as he drives his team. The country seems to them, the tree has lent her whispers, the stream its murhave aided man in their making; the bird's note rings in mur, the village-bell its tinkling tune. The whole soul of the peasant class breathes in their burdens, as the great sea resounds in the shells cast up on the shores. Ballads are a voice from secret places, from silent peoples, and old times long dead; and as such they stir us in a strangely intimate fashion to which artistic verse

never attain.

can

The works of the following authors will be found useful to the student of ballads: Talvj,1Charakteristik der Volkslieder, dealing chiefly with the northern races of Europe, and with some African and Asiatic tribes; Kretschmar's Volkslieder; J. Grimm, in several treatises. Villemarqué's Barzaz Breiz; also M. Luzels's Chansons Popu For Brittany-Marquis de la laires. For France-Bugeaud, Chansons Populaires; De Puymaigre (for the Metz district), Damase Arbaud (for Provence); Champfleury's large collection is rather miscellaneous. The quarterly journal, Roumania, publishes many folk-songs. For Greece, Fauriel, Passow, Le Grand. For Italy-Pitré and Nigra. For Scotland-Scott, Jamieson, and Motherwell. (A. L.)

philosopher of the theocratic school, was born at Lyons in 1776. His health from infancy was extremely delicate, his nervous system was weak, and he was frequently subject to hallucinations and mental disorders. This weakness was much aggravated by his experience of the horrors consequent on the insurrection at Lyons and the siege of that town, during which he and his mother were compelled to take refuge in the country. His education seems never to have been very complete; but he was early imbued with ideas on the construction of society, which naturally sprang from the events of the revolutionary period. His first literary effort was an epic poem, describing the occurrences at Lyons; this he never published. In 1801 he wrote an essay Du Sentiment considéré dans la littérature et dans les Arts, a work which shows very well the defects as well as the merits of his style and manner of thinking. It is essentially unsystematic; and the few good ideas contained in it are expressed in language so figurative that it costs an effort to discover what is really being said. Ballanche, indeed, was essentially unsystematic and unscientific, and seems to have had no conception of what is truly required in a philosophy. His style is not external to the thinking, but is undissolubly connected with it; strange thoughts and bizarre expressions arise together.

BALLANCHE, PIERRE SIMON, a distinguished French

His next great work, the Antigone, a prose poem, published in 1814, was the fruit of long and quiet meditation, and was received with great favor by the brilliant literary society surrounding Chateaubriand and Mme. Récamier, into which Ballanche had been introduced. From this [Talvi is an anagram of Mrs. E. Robinson's initials. See Vol. XX., p. 623, note.—AM. ED.]