As to Marseilles, we know what Marseilles is.  It sent
    the most insurrectionary tune into the world that was
    ever composed.

Without disputing the decided opinion expressed by the speaker, there is no doubt that some would give the palm to ‘Ca ira,’ which the novelist refers to in one of his letters.  The words of this song were adapted in 1790 to the tune of ’Carillon National.’  This was a favourite air of Marie Antoinette, and she frequently played it on the harpsichord.  After her downfall she heard it as a cry of hatred against herself—­it followed her from Versailles to the capital, and she would hear it from her prison and even when going to her death.

When Martin Chuzzlewit and Mark Tapley were on their way to America, one of their fellow travellers was

an English gentleman who was strongly suspected of having run away from a bank, with something in his possession belonging to its strong-box besides the key [and who] grew eloquent upon the subject of the rights of man, and hummed the Marseillaise Hymn constantly.

In an article on this tune in the Choir (Nov., 1911) it is stated that it was composed in 1792 at Strasburg, but received its name from the fact that a band of soldiers going from Marseilles to Paris made the new melody their marching tune.  A casual note about it appears to be the only musical reference in A Tale of Two Cities.

From America we have ‘Hail Columbia’ and ‘Yankee Doodle.’  In Martin Chuzzlewit we meet the musical coach-driver who played snatches of tunes on the key bugle.  A friend of his went to America, and wrote home saying he was always singing ‘Ale Columbia.’  In his American Notes Dickens tells about a Cleveland newspaper which announced that America had ’whipped England twice, and that soon they would sing “Yankee Doodle” in Hyde Park and “Hail Columbia” in the scarlet courts of Westminster.’

II.—­Songs from 1780-1840

We then come to a group of songs dating, roughly, from 1780.  This includes several popular sea songs by Charles Dibdin and others, some ballad opera airs, the Irish Melodies and other songs by Thomas Moore, and a few sentimental ditties.  Following these we have the songs of the early Victorian period, consisting of more sentimental ditties of a somewhat feebler type, with a few comic and nigger minstrel songs.  The task of identifying the numerous songs referred to has been interesting, but by no means easy.  No one who has not had occasion to refer to them can have any idea of the hundreds, nay, of the thousands, of song-books that were turned out from the various presses under an infinitude of titles during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  There is nothing like them at the present day, and the reasons for their publication have long ceased to exist.  It should be explained that the great