Old Nat cleared his throat with one or two preliminary ahems, and then, in a high treble, trolled a nautical ballad――the first verse of which described the loves of a youth and village maiden, who plighted their troth under a linden tree; the verse ended with a mournful refrain, which was as follows:―― Now this ere Jack he was hard-hearted, Which no true lovyer ought for to be; And this here Sall he soon desarted, All for to sail on the salt sea. The words of the ballad described the anguished feelings of the forlorn and broken-hearted girl, who wanders about her old haunts in the village in a half demented state――for never a word does she hear from her cruel and heartless lover. There is, it would appear, very good reason for this, for the ship in which the young man sailed foundered at sea, and Jack was cast upon a tropical island, where he remained for three years. At the expiration of that time he was taken on board a passing vessel, and returned home to find his Sall dead beneath the turf in the village churchyard. The pathetic ditty concludes thus. The young sailor is supposed to be addressing some villagers assembled in the churchyard:―― Says this ere Jack, with deep emotion, “In this world there’s now no rest for me; My poor Sall’s heart I’ve surely broken, All through my sailing on the salt sea.” It was evident enough that old Nat must have had at one time a sweet and sympathetic voice, and even in his decline there was something of it remaining. Any one who has travelled through the rural districts of England and paid an occasional visit to old roadside inns cannot fail to have been struck by the quaint and curious ditties that are trolled by the villagers. Many of them are singularly characteristic. Where these extraordinary specimens of musical composition all come from――for their name is legion――is perfectly surprising. In most cases the singers never had a copy of the song they sang; and, indeed, if they had, they would in all probability have been none the wiser, seeing that they were quite unable to read the notes. They learnt it from some one, and he or she learnt it from somebody else, and so on till the original source of the melody is lost in the deep “backward abyss of time.” When we consider with how easy a transition we may pass from the accents of speaking to diatonic sounds, when we observe how early children adopt the language of their amusements to measure and melody, however rude――when we consider how early and universally these practices take place, there is no avoiding the conclusion that the idea of music is co-natural with man, and implied in the original principles of his constitution. The principles on which it is founded, and the rules by which it is conducted, constitute a science. The same maxims when applied to practice form an art; hence its first and most capital diversion is into speculative and practical music.