She ceased her charm; and from the chapel then She saw approach four bare-foot fishermen. The aged dame in tears fell on her knees And cried, "I knew they would escape the seas!" Then cleansing sand and sea-weed o'er them spread, With happy lips she kissed each cherished head. THE DIFFUSION OF BALLADS. I.--LORD RONALD IN ITALY. Several causes have combined to give the professional minstrel a more tenacious hold on life in Italy than in France or Germany or England. One of them is, that Italian culture has always been less dependent on education--or what the English poor call "book-learning"--than the culture of those countries. To this day you may count upon finding a blind ballad-singer in every Italian city. The connection of blindness with popular songs is a noteworthy thing. It is not, perhaps, a great exaggeration to say that, had there been no blind folks in the world, there would have been few ballads. Who knows, indeed, but that Homer would not have earned his bread by bread-making instead of by enchanting the children and wise men of all after-ages, had he not been "one who followed a guide"? Every one remembers how it was the singing of a "blinde crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style," that moved the heroic heart of Sidney more than the blare of trumpets. Every one may not know that in the East of Europe and in Armenia, "blinde crowders" still wander from village to village, carrying, wheresoever they go, the songs of a former day and the news of the latest hour; acting, after a fashion, as professors of history and "special correspondents," and keeping alive the sentiment of nationality under circumstances in which, except for their agency, it must almost without a doubt have expired. When the Austrians occupied Trebinje in the Herzegovina, they forbade the playing of the "guzla," the little stringed instrument which accompanies the ballads; but the ballads will not be forgotten. Proscription does not kill a song. What kills it sometimes, if it have a political sense, is the fulfilment of the hopes it expresses; then it may die a natural death. I hunted all over Naples for some one who could sing a song which every Neapolitan, man and boy, hummed through the year when the Redshirts brought freedom: _Camicia rossa, camicia ardente_. It seemed that there was not one who still knew it. Just as I was on the point of giving up the search, a blind man was produced out of a tavern at Posilippo; a poor creature in threadbare clothes, holding a wretched violin. He sang the words with spirit and pathos; he is old, however, and perhaps the knowledge of them will not survive him.