250 On educating the Feelings of the Laborious Classes. 



to be an itinerant, as he could in all parts of his country find 

 an agreeable home. 



I certainly agree with Mr. Spence, that music, dancing, and 

 the drama, have great weight in the scale of humanisation and 

 moral education, but I differ from him as to the manner of 

 their application. That the common people of England dance 

 little at present, is not because they want tuition in that art or 

 encouragement to practise it, or that they are simply poor *, but 

 is, I am persuaded, rather to be attributed to the depression in- 

 cident to their pi'esent degraded condition. They have, I think, 

 neither a dislike to dancing nor inability to practise it. For 

 though country-dancing has given way to foreign elegancies of 

 perhaps a higher order, in the shape of quadrilles, waltzes, 

 &c., when I recollect the skill, as well as grace, which I have 

 formerly seen displayed by the commonest people in these 

 national dances, I cannot help thinking that neither encour- 

 agement nor tuition is necessary, in the common walks of life, 

 for an art of which nature and content are the most efficient 

 teachers we can have. 



With respect to music, I cannot help thinking that the true 

 remedy for the little felicity displayed by the common people 

 of England in this charming art, would be found in an im- 

 provement of our national church music, and in the manner in 

 which it is performed. For this purpose the clerk of every 

 church should be a real singing-master, and a regularly bred 

 musician, so as to be able to set the music in parts, according 

 to the voices with which he has to do ; and the children, or 

 men and women who are to compose his choir, should be re- 

 gularly taught by him, more especially those who might show 

 any marked or particular talent. To the present drawling and 

 bawling style pursued in even the greatest of our metropolitan 

 churches, may, I am convinced, be attributed the style of the 

 street singers, the itinerant musicians of our countiy ; and 

 even the bad taste displayed at these little singing clubs which 

 are held in the pai'loui's of public-houses, and which are often 

 so annoying to us in the back rooms of our houses in the me- 

 tropolis, is, I feel convinced, referable to the same cause. 



I am, like Mr. Spence, a very great friend to the drama, 

 but think that, for such an audience as he supposes, the re- 

 presentations should be for the most part composed of pastoral 

 opera and caustic farce : the one ennobhng, by the charms of 

 poetry and song, a species of primitive and simple life, which, 

 in some degree, must at all times be the lot of a great part of 

 mankind ; and the odier, by ridicule, aimed, as one may say, 



* The Irish are very poor, and yet dancing is a favourite amusement 

 amongst them. 



