A maxim is current among us which has been successively ascribed to many great thinkers, which shows the value usually set on compositions of this kind. It is this: "Let me make the songs of a people and I care not who makes their laws." A ballad is a story in verse whose incidents awaken the sympathies and excite the passions of those who listen. The song is designed to express deep emotion, joy or sorrow, hope or fear and appeals directly to the feelings. Here, often, the singing is more than the sentiment; the tones of the chanter are often more touching than the thoughts of the Emperor. A national ode must have a national element in it; it must reflect the passions that burn in the people's breasts. Local topics, too, may call forth a general interest when they describe trials or triumphs which all may share. Says Carlyle: "In a peasant's death-bed there may be the fifth act of a tragedy. In the ballad which details the adventures and the fate of a partisan warrior or a love-lorn knight,--the foray of a border chieftain or the lawless bravery of a forrester; a Douglass, or a Robin Hood,--there may be the materials of a rich romance. Whatever be the subject of the song, high or low, sacred or secular, there is this peculiarity about it, it expresses essentially the popular spirit, the common sentiment, which the rudest breast may feel, yet which is not beneath the most cultivated. It is peculiarly the birth of the popular affections. It celebrates some event which the universal heart clings to, which, for joy or sorrow, awaken the memories of every mind." Hence we learn the history of a nation's heart from their songs as we learn their martial history from their armor. The oldest song, set to music, which is now known is the following: "Summer is y-comen in, Loude sing cuckoo: Groweth seed, And bloweth mead, And springeth the wood now; Sing Cuckoo! Ewe bleateth after lamb, Lowth after calf cow; Bullock starteth, Buck resteth Merry sing cuckoo! Cuckoo, Cuckoo! Well sings thou cuckoo! Ne swick thou never now." The old ballads seem to have no paternity. They spring up like flowers, spontaneously. Most of them are of unknown date and unknown authorship. The structure, language, and spelling of many have been so modified, by successive reciters, that their original form is now lost. We have a short summary of King Arthur's history, the great hero of romance, in a comparatively modern ballad. I will quote it: