all pipes; but many of them might with equal propriety be called 'boxes of Jews-harps,' being all reeds, or rather vibrating metal tongues—and more still are of a mixed character, having pipes for the upper notes, and metal reeds for the bass. The effect is a succession of sudden hoarse brays as an accompaniment to a soft melody, suggesting the idea of a duet between Titania and Bottom. But this is far from the worst of it. The profession of hand-organist having of late years miserably declined, being in fact at present the next grade above mendicancy, the element of cheapness has, per force, been studied in the manufacture of the instrument. The barrels of some are so villainously pricked that the time is altogether broken, the ear is assailed with a minim in the place of a quaver, and vice versâ—and occasionally, as a matter of convenience, a bar is left out, or even one is repeated, in utter disregard of suffering humanity. But what is worse still, these metal reeds, which are the most untunable things in the whole range of sound-producing material, are constantly, from contact with fog and moisture, getting out of order; and howl dolorously as they will in token of their ailments, their half-starved guardian, who will grind half an hour for a penny, cannot afford to medicate their pains, even if he is aware of them, which, judging from his placid composure during the most infamous combination of discords, is very much to be questioned.[1]

2. The monkey-organist is generally a native of Switzerland or the Tyrol. He carries a worn-out, doctored, and flannel-swathed instrument, under the weight of which, being but a youth, or very rarely an adult, he staggers slowly along, with outstretched back and bended knees. On the top of his old organ sits a monkey, or sometimes a marmoset, to whose queer face and queerer tricks, he trusts for compensating the defective quality of his music. He dresses his shivering brute in a red jacket and a cloth cap; and, when he can, he teaches him to grind the organ, to the music of which he will himself dance wearily. He wears an everlasting smile upon his countenance, indicative of humour, natural and not assumed for the occasion: and though he invariably unites the profession of a beggar with that of monkey-master and musician, he has evidently no faith in a melancholy face, and does not think it absolutely necessary to make you thoroughly miserable in order to excite your charity. He will leave his monkey grinding away on a door-step, and follow you with a grinning face for a hundred yards or more, singing in a kind of recitative: 'Date qualche cosa, signer! per amor di Dio, eccellenza, date qualche cosa!' If you comply with his request, his voluble thanks are too rapid for your comprehension; and if you refuse, he laughs merrily in your face as he turns away to rejoin his friend and coadjutor. He is a favourite subject with the young artists about town, especially if he is very good-looking, or, better still, excessively ugly; and he picks up many a shilling for sitting, standing, or sprawling on the ground, as a model in the studio. It sometimes happens that he has no organ—his monkey being his only stock in trade. When the monkey dies—and one sees by their melancholy comicalities, and cautious and painful grimaces, that the poor brutes are destined to a short time of it—he takes up with white mice, or, lacking these, constructs a dancing-doll, which, with the aid of a short plank with an upright at one end, to which is attached a cord passing through the body of the doll, and fastened to his right leg, he keeps constantly on the jig, to the music of a tuneless tin-whistle, bought for a penny, and a very primitive parchment tabor, manufactured by himself. These shifts he resorts to in the hope of retaining his independence and personal freedom—failing to succeed in which, he is driven, as a last resource, to the comfortless drudgery of piano-grinding, which we shall have to notice in its turn.

3. The handbarrow-organist is not uncommonly some lazy Irishman, if he be not a sickly Savoyard, who has mounted his organ upon a handbarrow of light and somewhat peculiar construction, for the sake of facilitating the task of locomotion. From the nature of his equipage, he is not given to grinding so perpetually as his heavily-burdened brethren. He cannot of course grind, as they occasionally do, as he travels along, so he pursues a different system of tactics. He walks leisurely along the quiet ways, turning his eyes constantly to the right and left, on the look-out for a promising opening. The sight of a group of children at a parlour-window brings him into your front garden, where he establishes his instrument with all the deliberation of a proprietor of the premises. He is pretty sure to begin his performance in the middle of a tune, with a hiccoughing kind of sound, as though the pipes were gasping for breath. He puts a sudden period to his questionable harmony the very instant he gets his penny, having a notion, which is tolerably correct, that you pay him for his silence and not for his sounds. In spite of his discordant gurglings and squealings, he is welcomed by the nursery-maids and their infant tribes of little sturdy rogues in petticoats, who flock eagerly round him, and purchase the luxury of a half-penny grind, which they perform con amore, seated on the top of his machine. If, when your front garden is thus invaded, you insist upon his decamping without a fee, he shews his estimate of the peace and quietness you desiderate by his unwillingness to retire, which, however, he at length consents to do, though not without a muttered remonstrance, delivered with the air of an injured man. He generally contrives to house himself as night draws on in some dingy taproom, appertaining to the lowest class of Tom-and-Jerry shops, where, for a few coppers and 'a few beer,' he will ring all the changes on his instrument twenty times over, until he and his admiring auditors are ejected at midnight by the police-fearing landlord.

4. The handcart-organists are a race of a very different and more enterprising character, and of much more lofty and varied pretensions. They generally travel in firms of two, three, or even four partners, drawing the cart by turns. Their equipage consists of an organ of very complicated construction, containing, besides a deal of very marvellous machinery within its entrails, a collection of bells, drums, triangles, gongs, and cymbals, in addition to the usual quantity of pipes and metal-reeds that go to make up the travelling organ. The music they play is of a species which it is not very easy to describe, as it is not once in a hundred times that a stranger can detect the melody through the clash and clangor of the gross amount of brass, steel, and bell-metal put in vibration by the machinery. This, however, is of very little consequence, as it is not the music in particular which forms the principal attraction: if it serve to call a crowd together, that is sufficient for their purpose; and it is for this reason, we imagine, that the effect of the whole is contrived to resemble, as it very closely does, the hum and jangle of Greenwich Fair when heard of an Easter Monday from the summit of the Observatory Hill. No, the main attraction is essentially dramatic. In front of the great chest of heterogeneous sounds there is a stage about five or six feet in width, four in height, and perhaps eighteen inches or two feet in depth. Upon this are a variety of figures, about fourteen inches long, gorgeously arrayed in crimson, purple, emerald-green, blue, and orange draperies, and loaded with gold and tinsel, and sparkling stones and spangles, all doubled in splendour by the reflection of a mirror in the background. The figures, set in motion by the same machinery which grinds the incomprehensible