punch, strong beer, and cigars, were ordered to be carried for consumption between the heats. Stephen played and drank beer till the "heels begun to hoperate," when he retired to prevent an unpleasant catastrophe by the application of a series of brandies-and-waters, under the able administration of the landlady. Stephen's retirement spoilt the side; and as Tittleback resolutely refused to dirty his fingers by handling the ball, they had serious thoughts of pulling home again to have a little hazard, when three of the men from the neighbouring mill, which was then used for grinding corn, came in from their work to enjoy a game and a pot of beer. As these men were very famous players, a challenge was immediately given and received, much to Tittleback's disgust, who thought the neighbourhood of a snob was not "the correct thing." He therefore withdrew into the remotest corner with a cigar, though albeit unused to fumigation, and having once returned a box of cigars because they smelt so very strong of tobacco. The consequence was that he got very tipsy in a short time, and was forced to seek the advice of Stephen, who was getting very drunk fast, and filling up a glass of hot brandy-and-water, presented it to the disgusted Tittleback, telling him to "down with that and hup with the heels, and he'd soon be right." In the alley the game was very interesting; first the snobs won, and then the gentlemen, and of course each victory was celebrated, and each defeat consoled by copious libations of beer and punch-an amusement the snobs promoted, as they knew they should have nothing to pay. When it grew almost too dark to play any longer, for all the party confessed they could not see the pins clearly, cigars and pipes were lighted, and the snobs induced to sing a song, the gentlemen to join chorus and make speeches: then, unluckily, somehow or other, fighting and wrestling began to be talked about, and after a little time trials of strength were proposed, which led, as is usually the case, to a quarrel, which ended, as usual, in a fight; and I regret to say, that after being on such friendly terms with them for so many hours, Ninny and his friends gave the snobs a tremendous "licking," and then a tremendous quantity of strong beer to allay the pain of their bruises. The score was paid, and they left the alley to find Stephen and Tittleback, and return to Oxford; but both those individuals were too far gone to sit in the boat, so they agreed to walk to Oxford and leave the cad to tow Stephen and their friend back in the bottom of the four-oar, which, as he was rather "consarn'd in licker," was not an easy task, and they must have slept on the "midnight deep," had not a barge come up and taken them in tow. As Rattlebones never left any place without doing a little mischief, he amused himself by putting two-dozen of eggs under the cushion of the landlady's chair, and emptying the sugar-basin into her bonnet which hung upon a hook in the beam; then wishing her a polite good night, pulled down the signboard which misrepresented a fish of some sort, and threw it into the Isis, and to prevent it being fished out again that night, locked the outer door and threw the key after it. As they proceeded through the village of Sandford to gain the highroad, he contented himself with letting the sheep out of farmer Allen's fold, and removing the gates from the farmyard, to allow the cows an opportunity of relieving themselves from the irksomeness of confine ment. No opportunity of showing his capabilities presented itself, until, after crossing the church-close, they arrived at the turnpike-gate; this was lifted carefully from its hinges and deposited in a neighbouring ditch, which must have saved pikey an immensity of annoyance during the night, and the travellers a great many threepences and sixpences. The road was very dull until they reached Littlemore, where they fortunately found a public with a farmer's horse hung up to the wall by its bridle. To take off this and allow the horse to go where he pleased, was the work of a moment. The noise of his horse's shoes on the hard road roused the farmer, who ran out to see what was the matter as fast as a heavy pair of topboots and a large Witney topcoat would allow him. He instantly accused Ninny, who happened to be nearest to him, of loosing his nag, and threatened to lay a heavy whip, which he held in his hand, across his shoulders; for which piece of impertinence, Rattlebones and Balamson, seizing his Witney each by one skirt, by a sudden jerk ripped it up from the waist to the shoulders, and wrapping the skirts round his arms, made them act as a very effective straightwaistcoat. The shouts of the farmer, who bellowed for help as loudly as one of his own bulls, brought out several clods, who were doing their best to fulfil the orders of the Act of Parliament-" to be drunk on the premises," and a general fight ensued, in which "blood" was getting the better of "bone," until the noise increased so greatly, as to arouse the neighbouring cottagers, who, thinking that Mr. Swing was being apprehended for firing ricks, hastened to the spot with lanterns and pitchforks. Rattlebones was too good a general to suffer himself to be outnumbered, so he beat a retreat, and the trio disengaging themselves from the mêlée by a few well-applied blows, and starting off at the top of their speed, soon distanced their pursuers. They arrived safely at Tittleback's lodgings, Rattlebones having done nothing in his road but pull up a few of Mr. Costar's best early Yorks, and giving them to Jack Hutton's pigs; carried off Hewitt the barber's pole, and Betteris's sign, the "Oxford Arms." Tittleback had just got home, and was reclining on his sofa feeling very ungentlemanly at having got intoxicated, which was not "the correct thing," and indignant at being called "old fellow" by Stephen Davis, who was sitting opposite to him, and enjoying a tankard of Snuggins's admirable ale. On the following morning the farmer who had traced the party to Sandford by the mischief that had been done, learned their names, and was disposed to " pull them up" before the Vice-chancellor, but he fortunately called on Rattlebones before he did so, from whom he received a present of a new coat and a dozen of port wine, which not only pacified him, but made him wish for such a piece of luck every night of his life. (To be continued.) ON THE NATIONAL SONGS AND MUSIC OF SWITZERLAND. AMONGST a people whose history is so intimately blended with the progress of free institutions, and whose very name is proverbially synonimous with the glorious struggles for independence, it might, perhaps, reasonably be expected, that their national songs should be found to partake largely of the spirit of political freedom; and to be rife with those lofty aspirations and yearnings after liberty, for which the Swiss, as a people, have ever been remarkable. But few traces, however, of this spirit are discoverable in their popular songs, which, for the most part, will be found to contain but simple, natural, and unpretending descriptions of pastoral life, and of the joys and pleasures of a mountain-existence. Unlike their surrounding neighbours, French, German, or Italian, the "bleak Swiss," content with the reality of their hard-fought-for independence, seem to place but little store by the high-sounding expressions of declamatory and theoretical freedom. As their occupations and mode of life, so is their political faith, simple and devoid of ostentation and display. The deputies from Appenzell had already in the early part of the fourteenth century, condensed in few words all that could then, or that can now be usefully said upon the subject. We are convinced that mankind are born for order, but not for servitude: that they must have magistrates whom they themselves elect, but not masters to grovel under."* The essentials of true freedom being therefore at once, and at so early a date, reduced to such slender and accurately-defined limits, we may feel the less surprised at the paucity of poetical or figurative allusion to the subject in the songs and ballads of a people with whom the practical enjoyment of liberty has become a matter of such common and every-day routine as to afford but little ground for the embellishments of poetry, whose province is more especially, and to a certain extent, more naturally circumscribed to the indefinite and ideal. Not but there exist, among the Swiss people, some very ancient and curious" songs of war and triumph," which it may be the object of a future paper to introduce to the notice of the English reader. For the present, however, our object will be to treat in succession of the popular songs and music illustrative of the peculiar habits and customs of the country, viz.—of the * "If," remarks Ebel, in his Reisebuch durch die Schweiz, "the nature and productions of the Alps are original and remarkable, the character and political institutions of the inhabitants are not less so. * The Swiss have based all their constitutions on the equality of civil rights, and have placed the choice of all the authorities in the hands of the citizens. In some of the cantons, indeed, the people exercise the direct right of sovereignty. In Switzerland are to be seen neither masters, nor slaves, nor privileged castes, personal servitude, paid troops, insatiable publicans, monopolists, grinding imposts, arbitrary power, nor unjust favour,-fruits of the partiality and tyranny of the great. In this point of view I would recommend Switzerland to the notice of the foreigner, as a school in which he may learn to contemplate mankind under an aspect different from that to which he has been accustomed to regard them from his early youth; as a school wherein he may learn to appreciate individuals without regard to their name or their dress; to think and to act towards all the world from the impulse of cordial and fraternal goodwill; and to consider the whole human kind as forming but one single family."-p. 12. * "Heimweh" or Swiss Mal-de-Pays-the "Senn-hirts-lieder, or, Herdsmen's songs-the Ranz-des-Vaches-the "Alpine horn"-the “ Chilter, or nocturnal courtship, and of some other points descriptive of Helvetian manners. The language in which these songs are written, is the Swiss patois, the dialects of which vary according to the situation of the different cantons. Ebel and other writers describe this patois as a mixture derived from the ancient Celtic, the Latin, Greek, Italian, and ancient Burgundian languages: there are five principal dialects of this idiom, namely, of the Valais, the district of Aigle and the Romand portion of the Oberland, the canton of Friburg, the borders of the Lake Léman, and of the canton of Neuchâtel, the inhabitants of which various places have some difficulty in understanding each other. Of these dialects, the most ancient, and at the same time most in use, is the patois which the peasants themselves term the Roman or Réman, but for what reason does not at the present day very clearly appear, as neither the Latin nor Italian is found to constitute, as its name would import, its peculiar basis, which is more probably to be traced to the Celtic. This similarity of various words of this latter idiom, with those of the same meaning in English, is somewhat curious. We do not here, of course, allude to all those words which the Swiss dialects possess in common with the German, French, and Italian, but of those which, being derivable neither directly nor indirectly through either of the above languages, yet exhibit an absolute identity both in sound and meaning (and in most instances in orthography also) with corresponding words in the English language. The following are the most remarkable of these Swiss patois words, amongst which it is not a little curious, that the majority relate to articles of food, and that food, too, of the most simple and primitive description. The corresponding German and French words will sufficiently illustrate the immediate affinity between the patois and the English, and their mutual derivation from one common source, in all probability the ancient Celtic. To these might be added many words, which, although evidently of the same origin as the corresponding ones in German and French, yet approach much nearer to the English than do the latter: for instance: The absolute identity of this word with the English has not escaped Ebel, who, in his short glossary of the patois dialects, affixes to the word a remark expressive of his surprise at the coincidence. PATOIS. (BOUES. Banch, Germ. Boyaux, Fr. ( BOWELS. EBOUELLE, v. a. AE, indef. art. [ae man, ae wyb, &c.] I, pron. Ich, Germ. Je, Fr. ENGLISH. {EMBOWEL, v. a. A. indef. art. [the ein of the Germ. and un of the Fr.] I, pron. ME. MEADOW, MI. MEADOW. Mäeder is also the term in patois for haymaker, the macher of the Germ. THE "SCHWeitzer-HeimwEH." [Swiss Home-sickness, or Mal-de-Pays.] The peculiar attachment of the Swiss to their native land, has at all times been proverbial. This feeling, which has ever been found to have stood the proof both of the incitement of pecuniary gain, and, what to the inhabitant of a bleak and barren soil might naturally be thought to offer a still more seductive attraction, the allurements of a more genial clime, in exchange for the rugged mountain-side and stern glacier, has afforded an interesting theme for the lucubrations of the philosopher and political economist, all tending to support the paradoxical conclusion, that in proportion to the barrenness and ingratitude of soil, and the absence of all outward inducement as a choice of residence in countries within the range of human habitation, the abstract love of country is found to exist. This may possibly, in great measure, be traced to the consequent necessity of a mutual reliance of the scattered inhabitants of such a country on each other for mutual protection and support, superinducing a frame of mind the most calculated for the cultivation of its best and kindest feelings,-good-will towards man, and the observance of the sacred rights of hospitality; feelings which, nurtured in the outset of youth, fail not to shed their benign influence upon after life, and to foster those endearing recollections which no change of climate, no vicissitudes of fortune and adventure, are capable of obliterating from the heart: rendering the scenes of their early exercise and development ever present to the imagination; and tinting the former home of the wanderer in distant lands, however chill and rude, and stinted by the churlish hand of nature that home may be, with all the charms and colours of a Paradise. Nay, that very chilliness and rudeness may in their stern reality possess a charm,— "And as a child, when scaring sounds molest, Clings close and closer to his mother's breast,- Goldsmith's Traveller (Switzerland). Certain it is, that in the breast of the "bleak Swiss," this innate love of country is found to glow with a warmth and fixed intensity, comparatively unknown to the inhabitants of more gifted regions; to an extent sufficient to produce in many well-known and authenticated in |