ndifferent, which have
added so vastly to the happiness of mankind, have increased beyond
powers of computation; nor do I believe that there is any reason to
think that they have elbowed out their more serious and important
brethren. It is perfectly possible for a man, not a professed student,
and who only gives to reading the leisure hours of a business life, to
acquire such a general knowledge of the laws of nature and the facts of
history that every great advance made in either department shall be to
him both intelligible and interesting; and he may besides have among his
familiar friends many a departed worthy whose memory is embalmed in the
pages of memoir or biography. All this is ours for the asking. All this
we shall ask for, if only it be our happy fortune to love for its own
sake the beauty and the knowledge to be gathered from books. And if this
be our fortune, the world may be kind or unkind, it may seem to us to be
hastening on the wings of enlightenment and progress to an imminent
millennium, or it may weigh us down with the sense of insoluble
difficulty and irremediable wrong; but whatever else it be, so long as
we have good health and a good library, it can hardly be dull.

THE BALLAD

(Popular or Communal)

BY F.B. GUMMERE

The popular ballad, as it is understood for the purpose of these
selections, is a narrative in lyric form, with no traces of individual
authorship, and is preserved mainly by oral tradition. In its earliest
stages it was meant to be sung by a crowd, and got its name from the
dance to which it furnished the sole musical accompaniment. In these
primitive communities the ballad was doubtless chanted by the entire
folk, in festivals mainly of a religious character. Explorers still meet
something of the sort in savage tribes: and children's games preserve
among us some relics of this protoplasmic form of verse-making, in which
the single poet or artist was practically unknown, and spontaneous,
improvised verses arose out of the occasion itself; in which the whole
community took part; and in which the beat of foot--along with the
gesture which expressed narrative elements of the song--was inseparable
from the words and the melody. This native growth of song, in which the
chorus or refrain, the dance of a festal multitude, and the spontaneous
nature of the words, were vital conditions, gradually faded away before
the advance of cultivated verse and the vigor of production in wha