Page:Political ballads of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (IA politicalballads01wilk).pdf/12

 the edimentary rock the latent impreions of ome primeval torm, or the footprints of races long extinct, determines the coure of the one and the character of the other.

“The popular ongs of a nation (remarks an able writer on Political Literature) contitute one of the mot palpable manifetations of its political feelings and ympathies; and this is more trikingly the cae, if other legitimate channels for the expreion of public entiment be choked or dried up by the repreive hand of power. The ong-writer is an ubiquitous and privileged character. He purues his avocation in the family circle, in the workshop, in the tavern, at the gay fetival, in the qualid alley, in the barrack-room, and in the mess-room of the ailor. His trains are hearty, bold, and genial; the embodiment of thought, emotion, and melody. The popular ong is eay, imple, and born of the incidents of the day. It is the intellectual peronification of the feelings and opinions of a people. It is the delight of the multitude, the joy and olace of the many. It laughs in deriion at depotic power, lightens the ocial burdens of life, and inpires the patriot with hope. Of the popular atirical ong much has been written, but nothing