A Sunday evening which I spent in Copenhagen on my return from the north afforded me an additional insight into the habits of the Danes in this respect. Sunday, it must be premised, is held all over Scandinavia much less strictly than in England, and its religious character is considered as terminating at six in the evening. What I had seen in Norway made me not quite unprepared for what I found at Copenhagen; nevertheless it was somewhat startling. The evening being fine, the whole of the broad shady walks between the west gate of the city and the palace of Fredericksberg, two miles off, were crowded with groups of people in their best clothes; not merely peasants and artisans, or even shopkeepers, but persons of superior condition, though perhaps not in such great proportion. The peasant women, with their gaudy gold-laced caps and ribbons, gave a striking character to the scene. There were no drunk or disorderly people—all perfectly quiet and well-behaved. Along the side of the road are numerous tea-gardens, some of them having little theatres, others merry-go-rounds and nine-pins, and so forth. These were all in full operation. It was astounding to see old women, identical in aspect with those who in Scotland sit on pulpit-stairs, and spend the Sunday evening over Boston's 'Fourfold State' and 'Crook in the Lot,' here swimming along in the circular railway to the music of a band. I tell, however, but a simple fact when I say that such was the case. Scores of little parties were enjoying themselves in the recesses along the walks. I observed that many of these were family parties, whose potations consisted only of tea. As the only variation to a laborious life for a whole week, it must have been intensely enjoyed. In one garden connected with a third-rate tavern there was a dancing saloon, with a clarionet, two fiddles, and a bass, to which a few lads and lasses were waltzing; and this seemed no solitary case. There was evidence of enjoyment everywhere, but not the slightest symptom of a sense that there was anything wrong in it. All seemed to be done openly and in good faith. I could not help contrasting the scene with the Sunday evenings of my own country. There the middle-classes spend the time at least quietly, if not religiously, at home; and having the power, use it, to forbid all public or acknowledged means of amusement to their inferiors. It is well known, however, that the taverns frequented by the common people are very busy that evening. It has been stated that in Glasgow, on the evening of the Sunday on which the Communion was administered last winter, one thousand and eighty public-houses were found in full business. The difference, therefore, between Denmark and Britain is mainly this—that in the one country amusements of a comparatively innocent nature are partaken of without a sense of guilt, while in the other enjoyments of a degrading kind are enjoyed clandestinely, and with the feeling of a reprobation hanging over them which must add to their anti-moral tendency. We must pause, then, I conceive, before we express the feelings which are most apt to arise in our minds regarding the Scandinavian mode of spending the Sunday evening.
The Museum of Northern Antiquities may perhaps be admitted to divide the palm of interest with the Thorvaldsen Museum; but I postpone all reference to the subject till a proper groundwork shall have been laid by the description of my journeyings in Sweden and Norway.
R. C.
[PIANOS FOR THE MILLION.]
There seems to be an increasing disposition among us to regard music as an agent of civilisation, and therefore an increasing anxiety to diffuse a taste for the art throughout all classes of the people. The simple songs that are found in countries in an early stage of progress cannot constitute the music of a refined nation, any more than their rude ballads can be the staple, instead of the mere germ, of their poetry. Both, however, serve as an excellent foundation for the superstructures of taste; and to both we return occasionally from amid the complications of art, to snatch from them a healthy inspiration.
It is not in mere refinement that the operation of music is obvious and powerful: it humanises, and 'makes the whole world kin.' 'There is no free-masonry so intimate and immediate, I believe,' says a recent author when relating a conversation with Mrs Hemans, 'as that which exists among the lovers of music; and although, when we parted, I could not tell the colour of her eyes and hair, I felt that a confidence and a good understanding had arisen between us, which the discussion of no subject less fascinating could have excited.' It is in this point of view that music should be regarded by philanthropists: the science should be given to the masses of the people as a bond of sympathy between them and the upper stratum of society. But while many efforts are making in this direction, there is still great sluggishness in one important branch of the business: the lower classes have no good instruments, and have no great artists; the inspiration derived from a Jenny Lind or a Sontag never descends beneath a certain line in the social scale; and the pianoforte, the most useful of all musical instruments, has never served for a rallying-point in the domestic circles of the poor.
To deal with the former of these two difficulties is arduous—perhaps impossible. Even in this country, where everything bears a money value, including even the light that enters our houses, there are some galleries where the works of great painters are patent to the public. But the sister art is a monopoly of the rich, because the efforts of performers produce no permanent creations, but merely an evanescent sound, which may elevate the mind and linger on the memory, but can never be reproduced by the listener. A painter lives by the sale of works which survive even himself perhaps for hundreds of years; but a musician retails performances that are not prolonged even by an echo. The great singer, however, demands a higher reward than the great poet; and the great actor grows rich while the great dramatist barely lives. Who can help it? We give willingly what they demand: there is no compulsion in the case, and the day of sumptuary laws is gone by.
But this deprivation does not press so much upon the poor as upon a great portion of the middle-classes. We cannot find fault with musical artists for demanding half a guinea or a guinea from every one who chooses to listen to a few songs; because such sums are voluntarily paid, and all dealers, even those who deal in harmonious sounds, have the same right to sell them in the dearest market that they have to buy their wines and jewels in the cheapest. But unluckily the deprivation is felt by the very class which would benefit the most, and confer the most benefit, by being admitted on reasonable terms to such exhibitions of high art. It is neither from among the poor nor the rich that great artists usually spring, but from that large middle-class in which the genius of individuals receives an impulse from pecuniary necessity. In that rank large sums cannot be paid for a song, and their claims to gentility will not permit them to class themselves even at a concert with the grade beneath them, permitted to listen for a lower price in organ lofts and at the back of galleries. We do not say that there is no remedy even for this evil. The genius of the present age is fertile in expedients, and perhaps some plan may be hit upon to satisfy the exorbitant expectations of musical artists, by providing a larger and more frequent audience at prices better adapted to ordinary means. So long as the present system, however, continues, music cannot be expected to make any rapid progress among us; for the effect of the system is to degrade art to the level of fashion, and thus repress the noble and generous aspirations of genius.
But the difficulty arising from the enormous expense of such musical instruments as the piano is less complicated; and indeed it would appear at first sight to be very extraordinary that in an age of almost unbounded speculation and competition it should exist at all. There is nothing in the construction of the machinery of a piano which ought to prevent it from being found in tens of thousands of houses in this country from which it is at present entirely excluded. The existing piano, however, is a traditional instrument—an heir-loom of the wealthy; and for them alone it must be manufactured. Its case must be of expensive foreign woods, and its keys of ivory; its legs must be elegantly turned; its handsome feet must roll on brazen wheels adapted for the rich carpet; and generally it must be decorated with carvings in wood, such as of themselves, entirely superfluous as they are, add several pounds to the expense. The manufacturers say that all this is so because the instruments must be made exclusively for the rich, who would not purchase them if they were not elegant in form, and costly in material and workmanship. But this, we strongly suspect, is no longer true. Music has now descended lower in the social scale than it did in the last generation, and thousands of hearts are beating with the feeling of art and its aspirations, which were formerly cold and silent. The comparatively poor and the really economical do not buy pianos, simply because they are far beyond their means; and in England the cause of musical science and kindly feeling is deprived of the aid of a family instrument, which in Germany is found even in the parlour of the village public-houses.