The National Register. — London, England, 1819-04-19 00:00:00

/(for/-,A eel - I /i l~ No. 1174.—V0L. XII.] ASSAULT UPON THE MILITARY. Onn Legislators have determined that they may leave the Nation, without f ar, to take care of itself under the anxious solicitude of the followers of our " heaven-born Minister," while they enjoy the necessary relaxation of a fortnight's recess; thus are we deprived even of their good deeds es a subject on which we might indulge in panegyric ; under this privation we may, with pride iu the institution of Juries, refer our readers to the report of a trial at the Westminster Sessions, where it was attempt ed by strong swearing on the part of some soldiers, " mere instruments perhaps," to establish a privilege in favour of the Military, to shove, to push, to trample upon a respectable Tradesman, only because they were a guard returning from " duty" at Co- ' vent Garden Theatre. We are and always have been, averse to so frequent incroachments us we are doomed every day to witness on the liberties of Englishmen, which have their rise in the inclina. tion constantly ahewn since the first Regency Act to introduce German military parade ; it is a system we are fully persuaded, to whicit the natural pro. pensities of Englishmen can never be brought to submit. We well remember that when a great inclination to riot showed itself in London, during the shriev alty of Mr. Alderman Wood, a few troops of Horse Guards were kindly sent to the assistance of the Civil power. The worthy Sheriff, however, ordered the Commanding Officer to return immediately and wait till he was sent for, adding, " Till I find the civil power unequal to the preservation of the Peace I will never allow the appearance of the soldiery." The exertions of the Peace Officers were sufficient, and probably many lives were saved by the laudable firmness of one man. While on this subject we may be allowed to p:.int out the inconvenience to the public of the manner of marching the Guards night and morning, be tween the Bank and the Barracks ; they uniformly march two abreast, and invariably pass as it were, purposely, through the most crowded streets, with as little consideration as may be for those who un fortunately cannot get out of their way : the recent Verdict, however, has established the fact that they are not invested by their uniforms with the privilege of assaulting the public with impunity. Letters and papers to the Wth ult. from Havannah bare been received, by which we learn that the fleet of Spanish ships which from that port on the :6th of February, under convoy of a frigate and sloop of wai, for Cadiz, had a few clays after their departure experi enced severe sveather, and were compelled to return to tile island. Several of them narrowly e , caped being raptured by the Patriot privateers; and had the vessels continued on their voyage, no doubt several of them would have laden into the hands of the corsairs, if se p 'rated from the ships of war aecompansing them. The Blase trade with the coast of Africa in January and Fe bruary last hail been less active than usual. The Ha vannah Diary contains only a small list of ships which had arrived within that period, but a number of vessels wrre preparing to leave Cuba, and would return after having obtained fresh supplies of negroes. In the u rt Alinanack, published at Berlin by M. de Ruch, Bonaparte Is designated as a knight of the Order of the Black Eagle. ic4•o/1/di4,7 ji,_ationat -te ) *'h Sgn taitittr+ [PRICE VII music, it appears to us the very worst and the very longest we ever beheld. We de not doubt that man ladies and gentlemen thick it very wooderfol to see little masters sod misses of five tir six years old scribbling double sharps and flats upon a huge black board, but to those who are at all acquainted with what is going on, the process rather calculated to provoke a smile than to create any astonishment. Upon what principles the young gentle/nes and ladies (our future Handels and Minarts) have arrived at what small degree of knowledge they possess, we are tumble to discover, bait that they are ignorant of the first rudiments of music as a science, we have no hesitation in affirming. It has been well remarked, that "an attempt to teach the theory or the practice of music indiscrimi. nately to children ; whether they may happen to be clever or stupid, whether they possess musical taste or none at all, is, to say the very least of it, a process by no means conneeted with good sense or reason. In by ire the greater number of cases, the little animals have their feeble brains loaded with a number of technical terms, and stirred info hopeless caufusion by rules and principles, which they neither understand in their abstract 'maniocs, nor iu their relation to the general system of musical com position." We have thought it our duty thus freely to give onr ori nion of Mr. Logier's pretensions, because we know that few, very few indeed, are at all competent to form a correct one. It is right, when a stranger confidently talks of " the attempts of interested individuals to mislead the public," when he thus wantonly endeavones to impute unworthy motives to those who are now engaged in teach ! ing movie, to sift his own qualifications, and see I.ow fair he is competent to what lie undertakes. That children may be taught music scientifically and practically by Mr. L6gier's system we admit, lint that they can he taught to play so well as by the mode of instruction now in nse is this city and its neighbourhood, we utterly deny; and we ' feel confident that every well educated and respect able master would be able to intraprreeter and sooners knowledge of music as a sciettliu could be given by Mr. Logier's system within tsanie period. They 5....5t lay their account, here, as else re, to suffer some temporary loss by Logieriaidsm—the sliktitude gre eager followers of novelty; but the delusion will pass away, sod their own exertions and their uwu merits will in future be more justly Rom related. ANECDOTE OF SIOZART.—His charity was asked one day, in the streets of Vienna, by a person who had known better days ; and as the great musician knew better how to heap up silver sounds than sil ver coin, he felt his pocket fur the poor fellow in vain. Uneasy at his want of money at this parti cular moment, a benevolent thought suddenly struck him, and he asked the man to wait while he went into a tavern, where. calling for pen and ink, he sat down and composed a minuet on the spot ; then folding up the paper, he returned, and givinglt to his petitioner, told him to carry it to a music*pub lisher in the city, who would give him something when he saw the contents. He did so, and received five double ducats. The circumstance deserves to be recorded, and the minuet itself is worthy of the occasion. It exhibits a singular mixture of science (which Mozart perhaps took a just pride in•exhibit ing at such a sudden call), with that exquisite na tural beauty which is so appareut throughout his works. It teaches us this practical lesson—that there arc few, if any, who want the power of cluing good in some way or other, if they are possessed of the desire. Anecdote of a Picture.-.-A valuable picture sass a • French paper) was recently purchased by a bailie at the sale of a few articles of hide value, in the village of Verttur, near Paris. The picture, put up at a low mice, rose rapidly to 3t francs, and the brokers, who only un derstood how to 'hake their market of old funtitore„ were at a loss to judge whether they ought to abandon it or bid higher. At that moment a matt, who was known to he a§tulge, offcred ton francs. 'Elvis sum re newed the confidence alike bidders, and it was knocked down to the bailiff for '2.5 loins. The picture, the subject of which is " Venus a Ike Bath," is ack 'kard to he the work of N. Poussin, and the cimunisiseurs have since purchased it, according to report, fur i'.:0100 francs. Sin,:u.inr. 1.4(1.—M0 lovers of natural history may find amusement in the following article :—MIr. Gray, of Tower -street. Chichester, has at this time en his 1)04. session a ban k and pigeon, both of which for some • months past, have been wether in a small garden. 1111 l domiciliary treatment, their natural asuipailtiesare (mite obliterated, and tile pigeon is completely maswr of his contortion, which he never fails to evince, if 41 any time the latter encroach on his detoesne. Our t'ug► Conolitution anb It atu4. MONDAY, APRIL 19, 1819 MR. LOGIER'S SYSTEM. This system of Instruction,s for some litassoecupied the attention of the musical world in London, Dublin, Edinburgh, and some of out principal provincial towns. —As its pretensions are very lofty, its author having distinctly announced it to be his intention " to change the whole system of nossicel instruction," and as it certainly has engaged the attention of some men of pro. fessionsl eminence, it becomes the duty of those who feel an interest in music to examine its pretensions. We m anioc the advantages which Mr. Logier or his disciples have to offer, arc—a more ready acquisition of ninsical knowledge, and a more correct and finished method of fingering the piano-forte.. This be proposes to effect by teaching in classes. With regard to piano forte playing, any one who is at all conversant with the difficulties attending the acquisition of a finished st le of performance, must, we should think, be impressed with the impossibility of acquit hie it by any other system than that of iudividnal tuition. The requisites to make a god piano forte player are so numerous, that, in our view of the subject, they ate incommunicable by any other method. A dry, dull, mechanical execution may be obtained by teaching in classes, but the scholar will assuredly never go beyond this. The din and discord of a dozen instruments are completely incompatible with that delicacy ut touch and expression which distinguish the true piano-forte player. And what has Mr. Logier to offer which can counter. balance this manifest disadvantage? Is his mode of fin gering more correct, or his touch more expressive, than that of Cramer or Clementi? We presume not. At least as far as we can judge by the performance of' his pupils, we should say quite the reverse. Their playing is pre cisely what we should expect from the system by which they have been taughtos hully mechanical and inexpressive. But this system either has or pretends to have some mys tery, some secret, by the possession of which its author thinks himself entitled to lay claim to the public atten tion, and for the communication of which he demands a considerable sum. We hardly know which to despise the most—the ignorance or the impudence of his claim. Who is Mr. Logier ? What is he? that he should thee exalt himself above the 11105 l highly gifted musicians of the age? Where are the proofs of his knowledge or the evidences of his genies? We have sought for them in vain. We know not of a single composition bearing his name. But like all other quacks, he shroud. his ignorance under the veil of mystery, and thus thinks to impose on the credulity of' the multitude. To talk of mystery as connected with the practice of music is manifestly aliurd. There are—there can he no secrets in it. To obtain the perfect command of any instrument requires patience and close attention, but to imagine that there is any short road by which it can be acquired; any 'met, which if once imparted, will enable every pupil to start up • pesformer; is an absurdity too gross fur the most implicit credulity to admit. There is something very imposing, we admit, in this public exhibition. A large and fashionable audience, and a dozen pianolortes going at once, combine to give some eclat to the system. The Clan era and the Clementis, must toil on adapting their mode of instruction to the tem per and the ability of each pupil ; they have no reins. biting scholars, no summoning together of the fashionable world to witness the effects of their blot uctions, hot the Logierian system is evidently one of display. Wherever introduced, it has been accompanied wills this sort o f stage effect. It is merely the performance of a certain set of lessons, expressly gut up for the occasion, and sipoi the performance of which no ordinary degree of prepara tion bat, been employed. These lessons, considered as specimens of composition, are to the last degree contemptible, and we really 11111151 give the Logierian professors credit for no small degree of awn afire in calling the world together to hear a dozen children playing music about as difficult as the easiest va riations of PIIICEIVS Grounds. One advantage which Mr. Logier says in his prospectus, will resnit from his sys tem of simultaneous instruction, ix too extraordinary to be passed over in silence. "By the social practice," says he," of teaching in (lessee, a continuality of intellect becomes unequivocally established." This, in truth, is a discovery so trenscentlantly surpassing any thing we ever heard or read of in connection with the subject of education, that Mr. Logier's mere musical pretensions sink into insignifi cance when compared with the power he possesses over the intellect of his scholais. What a genius must he be, who can unequivocally establish a constaubily of intellect thronghosit Isis classes! One word more with Mr. Logier's pialm-forte playlug, and we have douse. He 'immerses a list of authors from whose writing' he purposes to instruct his pupils, at the bead of whom stand Corelli and Handel, both of whom happened to be dead long before the piano forte was invented, and the former of whose writings are adapted exclusively for !towed instruments, and utterly incapable of being played with any effect by the piano. forte, Of Mozart's ninsic too, we fled Mr. Logier select that which is the least adapted fur the instrument he ban to teach. The playing part of the exhibition is interspersed with elucidation , ' of the mode its which lie teaches music as a science. We have seen some of his eehelars' books, and so far from regarding Mr. Logier's sea osorg rea d to - - - * 'l?\ ~e , • 1, 3 i r ;4:••` 4 .1!V" T4 - :: i •l i. A :111 • • . lit • • , , .......•