What sweet tears dim the eyes unshed,
What wild vows falter on the tongue,
When 'Scots wha ha' wi' WALLACE bled,'
Or 'Auld Lang Syne' is sung!'

The association however is touching, not _alone_ because it awakens old
recollections, but because the music is _natural_; it is the language of
the heart. Affectation has not interpopolated tortuous windings and trills
and shakes, to mar its beauty, and to clip the full melodious notes of
their fair proportions. It is pleasant to think that fashion, though never
so potent, can neither divert nor lessen the popular attachment to the
simpler melodies. We have the authority of the WOODS, WILSON, SINCLAIR,
POWER, and other eminent artists for stating that 'Black-eyed Susan,'
'John Anderson my Jo,' 'The Last Rose of Summer,' and kindred airs, could
always 'bring down the house,' no matter what the antagonistical musical
attraction might be. We could wish that the VENERABLE TAURUS, or 'OLD
BULL,' as many persons call him, would take a hint from this. Let him try
it once; and we venture to say that no one, however uninitiated, will
again retire from his splendid performances as a country friend of ours
did lately, assigning as a reason: 'I waited till about ha'-past nine; and
_then_ he hadn't got done _tunin' his fiddle_!' A touch of 'music for the
general heart' would have enchained him till morning. CHRISTOPHER NORTH,
we perceive, in the last BLACKWOOD, fully enters into the spirit of our
predilection. He has just returned from a concert of fashionable music,
where he 'tried to faint, that he might be carried out, but didn't know
how to do it,' and was compelled to sit with compressed lips, and listen
to 'sounds from flat shrill signorinas, quavering to distraction,' for two
long hours. When he gets _home_, however, he 'feeds fat his grudge'
against modern musical affectations. Let us condense a few of his
objurgations:

'It is a perfect puzzle to us by what process the standard of
music has become so lowered, as to make what is ordinarily served
up under that name be received as the legitimate descendant of
harmony. There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous,
and this entrancing art, it seems, has taken it; sorely
dislocating its graceful limbs, and injuring its goodly
proportions in the unseemly escapade. We hate your crashing,
clumsy chords, and utterly spit at and defy chromatic passages,
from one end of the instrume