In fact, only the choral lines of this song have brought it into general favor.

"And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."

But even in regard to this, who cannot but wish that the spangles could be taken out, and a good, honest flag be substituted for the banner!

"The Star-Spangled Banner," though for these reasons so utterly inadequate to the requirements of a national hymn that the people stood mute while in some instances it was sung by a single voice, or in most cases it was only played by a band, is yet far the best of the three songs which, for lack of better, have until now been called American national airs. Of the other two, Yankee Doodle has the claim of long association, and will probably always retain a certain degree of a certain kind of favor. But no sane person would ever dream of regarding it as a national hymn. Its words, as all know who have ever heard them, are mere childish burlesque; and its air, if air it must be called, is as comical as its words, and can hardly be regarded as being properly music. To set serious or even earnest words to this grotesque tune, would be only to excite laughter by absurd incongruity. It has been attempted; and the best result appears in the following spirited verses, in which the author of "The New Priest at Conception Bay" commemorated the encounter of the Sixth Massachusetts regiment with the secession mob in Balti

more, on the anniversary of the skirmish at Lexing ton, April 19th, 1775.

THE MASSACHUSETTS LINE.

AIR: "Yankee Doodle."

I.

Still first, as long and long ago,

Let Massachusetts muster;
Give her the post right next the foe;
Be sure that you may trust her.
She was the first to give her blood
For freedom and for honor;
She trod her soil to crimson mud:
God's blessing be upon her!

II.

She never faltered for the right,
Nor ever will hereafter;

Fling up her name with all your might,
Shake roof tree and shake rafter.
But of old deeds she need not brag,
How she broke sword and fetter;
Fling out again the old striped flag!
She'll do yet more and better.

IV.

God bless, God bless the glorious State !
Let her have her way to battle!

She'll

go

where batteries crash with fate,

Or where thick rifles rattle.

Give her the Right, and let her try,
And then, who can, may press her;
She'll go straight on, or she will die;
God bless her! and God bless her!

DUANESBURGH, May 7, 1861.

Excellent this, and all the better because it is true, which cannot be said of the greater number of national lyrics. But attempt to sing it to the air to the rhythm of which it is written, and you will not be able to finish the first stanza for laughing. To intone the benediction at the end of the first and last stanzas to the notes of the last phrase of the air, would put the gravity of the Reverend writer to a test which not all his sense of professional decorum would enable him to sustain. And so although we must partly admit the truth of the following lines from one of the proposed National Hymns, sent to the New York Committee,

"Familiar too as household name,

Is Yankee Doodle's thrilling song;
It cheers the warrior in the field,

It triumphs in the festive throng;"

we must yet confess that the "thrilling song" in question hardly meets the requirements of the present state of civilization.

"Hail Columbia" is really worse than "Yankee

Doodle." That has a character, although it is comic; and it is respectable, because it makes no pretence. But both the words and music of "Hail Columbia " are common-place, vulgar, and pretentious; and the people themselves have found all this out.*

*The "Star-Spangled Banner" is an old French air, long known in England as "Anacreon in Heaven," and in America as " Adams and Liberty," until the song so designated was supplanted by Key's. The air to which Hopkinson wrote "Hail Columbia was a march written by a German band-master on occasion of a visit of Washington, when President, to the old John street theatre in New York. It was called the "President's March." Yankee Doodle is an old English air.

II.

And so we are practically without a national hymn. That we have thus far remained so, must be attributed in part to the brevity of our national existence, partly to the peaceful and prosperous course of that existence until now-for national peril, or, at least, national triumph, is needful to the strong development of the sentiment of nationality-and partly to the fact that it is only of late years that music, excepting psalmody, has been cultivated by all sorts and conditions of men among us.

For music is not a spontaneous product of the English race; and we are but Englishmen under new skies and new circumstances. The emigration from other races that has reached these shores, is, to all intents and purposes, as nothing. Comparatively very small, it is at once' swallowed up, and becomes an undistinguishable part of the native element. By intermarriage, and yet more by dominant influence, in a generation or two, Irishmen, Germans, and