a Cerberus, and the terrors of a Tartarus. He is not by any means the only instance of a man-for the sake of his wife-going to the dogs first, and to the devil afterwards.

Yet, we have had men of modern days who have done as much as Orpheus. He may have drawn after him rocks and forests by the power of his voice, but our Orphei have drawn cabs after them by the attraction of theirs.

One night, L—— G——, H— Cl——, and another, were walking home from Covent Garden, just about the time when the small hours were growing into large ones, when they remarked a cab hard up for a fare, crawling after them-Cabby, whenever he imagined he had caught the attention of one or other of the three, putting in his interrogative for hire.

"I'll teaze that fellow a bit," said G.

Whereupon he began singing or rather humming the words of a chorus, the source and pathos of which every one will immediately recognise :

Hi, tiddle dum, tiddle dum de day.

Now, the first was word uttered loudly, like a call or hail—thus,

Cab, hearing the well known sound-the Hi!-so stereotyped by long usage on his mind, was alongside in a crack of his whip. "Want a cab, sirs?"

This inquiry was of course not heard by the trio, who were intently engaged in taking stormy firsts, seconds, and thirds in three different songs, Lovely night"-"I have a silent sorrow here," and "Nix, my dolly pals."

The inquiry was affectionately repeated by the son of Nim shi, till, wearied out, he fell again into the rear.

He had scarcely taken up his position, when the same hail summoned him once more.

Hi! tiddle dum, tiddle dum de day!

Up flew Cabby again. "Want a cab, gen'elmen?-Cab, sir?-Take you very cheap, gen'elmen!"

Same result. Not a word could Cabby get out of the three. The bass of" Nix, my dolly," was coquetting with the treble of the other gentlemen's "Silent sorrow," and the "Lovely night," being very drunk-alas, for lovely nights that take to such pernicious ways-was staring" consumedly" at a particular gas-lamp, and screeching out a mighty alto.

The poor man, who with his horse, did duty as audience to this soiree and trimmings, could make nothing of them, but did not, nevertheless, like to give it up as a bad job.

Three times was the trick practised, and a third time did Cabby (thinking, perhaps, there was luck in odd numbers) make a dash for a fare. By that, they had drawn him all the way down to Curzonstreet, May Fair, and there-wished him good night.

Did Orpheus ever perform such a feat? Drawing woods and forrests (there being no commissioners in those days) was a fool to it; and we may doubt if the lute-player ever drew even a cheque, a truck, or an inference. Drawing!-pshaw!-I would back a common blister against him any day.

France has been designated by one of its early and wittiest writers -Champfort-as une monarchie absolue, temperée par des chansons. In England, we are fast approaching the period when our "Singing for the Million," is to have a like power in moderating the absoluteness of Whig or Tory rule. In France, a mercurial people have, in all times, consoled themselves for the oppressions of power by ridiculing, through the medium of song, the peculiarities-personal or politicalof their oppressors; thus passing rapidly from the sense of suffering to the perception of the ridiculous. In England, there will, shortly, be nothing left for us but to do the same; or, in other words, instead of "grin and bear it," as we have hitherto done, we must sing and bear it, that's all.

Much ridicule has been sought to be thrown on the " Singing for the Million," because men never contemplated the grave office that singing is to take, and has taken as a political agent.

It is related of Cardinal Mazarin, minister of Louis XIV., that after having passed some rather oppressive financial measures, he asked a

person

"Eh bien, que dit le peuple des nouveaux edits ?"

The answer was, 66

Monsiegneur, le peuple chante!" "Il paiera, donc !" rejoined the wily Italian.

What a powerful engine, then, will the "Singing for the Million" become in the hands of Sir Robert Mazarin Peel; since if he can but make le peuple chante-"il paeira!" In France, we are told, tout finit par des chansons in like manner, this singing will be the finishing of us!

:

(Here the professor paused once more. He begged emphaticallymost emphatically-to state that one gentleman had, for some time past, been blowing his nose in G sharp; another, sneezing in A flat; while a third was, even then, snoring in Q natural, with a dominant sixth, in the shape of a grunt. 'Pon his reputation, he could not stand it, and most sincerely hoped that during the remainder of the lecture, the gentlemen, generally, would do him the favour to sneeze, snore, grunt, and blow their nasabilities in unison.)

ARTISTS! IN THEIR ORDER AND CLASSIFICATION.

However gorgeously yellow may be the flap topped boots, however elegantly wavy may be the plumed cap, however sumptuous the bespangled silk tunic, and fleshly imitative tights of the troubadour of the present day-on the stage; there is cause to doubt that he was in reality, quite the jaunty, jimmy, well-fed, and white-gloved gentleman that fiction has delighted to picture him.

About the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, musicians were a set of poor devils (for that matter, by the way, one might fancy this either of the aforesaid centuries), who were obliged to join the arts of poetry and music with the professions of buffoon, juggler, rope-dancer, and posture-master: that is to say, forced at a pinch to open their mouths to emit a harmony, or to pull out a bushel of gulped shavings; swallow hard words, or swallow a sword; execute a chant d'amours, or a frightful grimace; receive kicks or coppers; and mount up to A, or mount a ladder to be hanged, according to the surly will and pleasure of some mighty baron whose favour they sought to gain, and whose favour, when gained, might extend to the munificence of a bone in the kitchen, and a shake-down in the stable. In some countries, and in certain times, musicians were excommunicated en masse. In others, the powers of the time being were not content with this spiritual ban. In Sweden, for instance, a little before the reign of Gustavus Vasa, there existed a law which not only banished all musicians from the kingdom, but allowed them to be killed wherever they were met. The following is taken literally from Archenholz's Histoire de Gustave Vasa, vol. i., p. 113.

"This assassination was considered as a very good joke" (capital fun! The poor musicians must have died with laughing.) "The murderer was only bound to give the heir of the murdered musician a pair of new shoes, a pair of gloves, and a THREE-YEAR OLD CALF!! And this miserable indemnity even, was a little illusory and contingent; seeing that the heir had no right and title to it, till after he had been subjected to a curious and doubtful proof. The calf's tail was greased, and the animal was led to the top of a high hill; the heir then took this tail into his hands, while the murderer lashed the calf with a whip and endeavoured to make him take flight down the hill. If the heir could hold him, the animal belonged to him; but if the tail slipped through his fingers, he lost his rights, and was exposed to the raillery of the assembly."

Alas, for the poor musicians! Their airs and heirs were alike treated with contumely, and themselves with barbarity. "Come weal, come woe," they might have hoped for an inheritance in tail of another kind-but no;-no alternative was offered them : the woe came first, and the weal after.

THE STREET MUSICIAN.

Look at the wretched object whose shoeless feet are plashing in the wet and mire; whose greasy tattered dress-dabbled with rain-barely conceals a discoloured skin, pinched up with the effects of disease, intemperance, and exposure to the bitter blast. Look at this miserystricken being, stretching his iron throat, and

alas, unheeded, unremunerated-save, perhaps, by a copper or two glancing brightly upon his dimmed vision, about as often as the sun breaks through a November fog.

Shall I trace this man from his beginning as an able mechanic? Follow him to that aditum orci-the gin-palace-to get any where from home, and from the just reproaches of a wife and family whom he is ruining? Indolence and apathy become the consequence of forestalled wages; more intemperance and utter recklessness are the result of getting discharged from his employment. The tears, prayers, and entreaties of the wife are met with brutality-the trifle she can earn, snatched away by him, and devilishly squandered before her eyes. Credit gone, friends disgusted, no character wherewith to obtain other employment; no bread, and what is worse to him, no drink. Misery unalloyed, unmitigable misery becomes their portion. Hungry, thirsty-what is to be done? They must sing through the

streets.

How strange that matchless music should be the dernier resort of all who have lost their fitness for any thing else.

Of a rather higher grade in the scale of ambulant musicians, are the glee-singers, who, with their hands in their pockets, stroll from street to street, looking up at every window, to which, if a momentary curiosity should draw the occupier, a most profound and obsequious bow is made

generally by the falsetto of the party, who is, most frequently, the leader. It cannot be said that these men are remarkable for any peculiar characteristics, save an unctuous dirtiness of person, and an extreme shabby gentility of appearance, together with an intense and superabundant vanity which prompts them to wink at all servant-maids at bedroom windows, and urges them to take the flattering unction to their souls, that they are achieving most Cæsarian-like conquests. Nor can more be said of the sundry and manifold instrumentalists whose nature is peripatetic, and whose most striking features may be set down as noise, dirt, beer, tobacco, and other recklessness of time, tune, or the healthy preservation of the tympana of their auditory. By the playing of a few bars, Tyrtous gained battles; and Joshua overthrew the walls of Jericho by a vigorous attack of trumpets. Of what vital service to the country would it not have been to have cleared poor musically-deluded England of these hosts of puffers of reedy clarionets, eructators of French-horns, and blasters of trumpets, and have shipped the whole lot to Affghanistan, China, or any other seat of war. If we keep them at home, there will not be a four-walled house safe from these Joshuas!

The blind man, who plays the clarionet through his nose, is still about town, exhibiting to crowded and delighted audiences of little unwashed boys, and sauntering nurse-maids with no coppers in their pockets, and uncleanly-nosed "olive branches" in their arms. He is open to engagements for evening parties, at one shilling the hour with "heavy" à discretion—that is, his own discretion, which, it is said, is of rather an illimitable cast.

No small portion of the harmony of the highways and byways is absorbed by the organ. There is the common organ, with its grinder standing behind it, at such an angle, that you imagine every minute that he must topple back and be crushed under the weight of his own

melody. There is the little tinkling pianoforte organ, stuck upon a long stick, and with its red-silk, puckered up face, seeming to blush at its own temerity, in daring to utter such nasty little tin-kettle sounds in presence of its more sonorous brethren. Then there is the organ with a glass-case at the top, in which you see the figures of sundry lords and ladies, and marshals in uniform, and generals in ditto, and kings and queens, all waltzing round and round, without ever once making a false step, or treading down each other's shoes, or bumping up against one another, and then begging ten thousand pardons only to do the same the next round, or without appearing at all out of breath, and not in the least fatigued. It is really quite delightful to see them, and makes one wish that one could meet with an evening party in real life where the waltzers were conducted in so very orderly a manner. Then mark the courage and presence of mind of the lady figures-regular heroines; they don't shriek a bit, nor do they faint, they don't even stop or turn round, or take the slightest notice of the regiment of horse-soldiers that walks through the ball-room, as if the troopers were on their march down Regent-street to relieve at the Horse-Guards. It is reported in the highest circles, and upon the authority of certain persons, whose unerring information may always be relied on, that this" wrinkle" will be adopted at the ensuing balls given at a certain palace by an exalted personage!

I have not yet spoken of the grand orchestral organ, with its two lamps and its four wheels, and its drum, and cymbals, and its trumpets, and the man standing erect to grind it, and its other man who goes round with the large tin tobacco-box, into which he first puts a few sixpences and fourpenny bits, merely to show that you may do the sameif you like. This class of instrument seems to have worked an entire revolution in the public mind. On its first appearance, some three or four years ago, it produced a complete organic disease-a sort of organomania; people turned up their noses at the other poor men standing in perilous positions at an angle of forty-five degrees-romantic bonnet-builders went into hysterics with sheer delight-skittish young ladies could scream nothing but " All is Lost," forgetting (perhaps unable) to add with Henri IV. of France, hors l'honneur-young gentlemen could do nothing but ride upon counters, a yard-measure for a whip, and sing the "Postillon de Longjumeau"-some admired how nicely the drums and cymbals came in others declared what an improvement the trumpets were-and then the novel dignity of its going about on a carriage with four wheels, together with the two lamps, so necessary in London streets, where the English have not, of course, arrived at the refinement of gas, as the French have in Paris!

Organs were invented (so we are assured) about the beginning of the reign of Napoleon. Can any thinking mind doubt the use that the emperor intended to make of them? From some curious papers in my possession relating to this subject, and which I obtained in Paris from a seller of pommes-de-terre cuites, who was ignorantly and lavishly dispensing them to his customers with his greasy edibles,-from these documents, it is clear "as mud in a wine-glass," that the much talkedof flotilla, prepared at Boulogne, was to be filled with organ-boys and their instruments (of torture) like another Spanish Armada;—that these