'Carlos,' said the priest to the younger boy, 'go, bring water to the gentleman; and add some wine, if he will accept it. Go quickly!' At this moment, the carriage-door opened, and a gentleman, apparently about fifty years old, alighted.

'Are these your nephews?' said he to the priest.

'They are more than that, señor; they are my children—the children of my adoption.'

'How is that?'

'I will tell you, señor; for I am old and poor, and know but little of the world, and am in much need of advice; for I know not what to do with these two children.' He related the story we have just told. 'And now, señor, what do you advise me to do?'

'Apply to one of the nobles of the court, who must assign you a pension of four thousand ducats.'

'I asked you for advice, señor, and not for jest.'

'And then, your church must be rebuilt. We will call it the Church of the Cup of Cold Water. Here is the plan. See, this is to be the vicarage; and here, divided by this paling'——

'What does this mean? What would you say? And, surely, I remember that voice, that face'——

'I am Don José della Ribeira; and twelve years ago, I was the brigand José. I escaped from prison; and—for the revolution made great changes—am now powerful. My children'——

He clasped them in his arms. And when at length he had embraced them a hundred times, with tears, and smiles, and broken sentences; and when all had in some degree recovered their composure, he took the hand of the priest and said: 'Well, father, will you not accept the Church of the Cup of Cold Water?' The old man, deeply affected, turned to Margarita, and repeated:

'Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.'

'Amen!' replied the aged woman, her voice tremulous from emotion.

A short time afterwards, Don José della Ribeira and his two sons were present at the consecration of the church of San-Pietro-del-Vaso-di-Aqua-Fria, one of the prettiest churches in the neighbourhood of Sevilla.

MUSIC-GRINDERS OF THE METROPOLIS.

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Perhaps the pleasantest of all the out-door accessories of a London life are the strains of fugitive music which one hears in the quiet by-streets or suburban highways—strains born of the skill of some of our wandering artists, who, with flute, violin, harp, or brazen tube of various shape and designation, make the brick-walls of the busy city responsive with the echoes of harmony. Many a time and oft have we lingered entranced by the witchery of some street Orpheus, forgetful, not merely of all the troubles of existence, but of existence itself, until the strain had ceased, and silence aroused us to the matter-of-fact world of business. One blind fiddler, we know him well, with face upturned towards the sky, has stood a public benefactor any day these twenty years, and we know not how much longer, to receive the substantial homage of the music-loving million. But that he is scarcely old enough, he might have been the identical Oxford-Street Orpheus of Wordsworth:—

Decidedly not—there is nothing to match it; and so thinks 'the one-pennied boy' who spares him his one penny, and deems it well bestowed. Then there are the harpers, with their smooth French-horn-breathing and piccola-piping comrades, who at the soothing hour of twilight affect the tranquil and retired paved courts or snug enclosures far from the roar and rumble of chariot-wheels, where, clustered round with lads and lasses released from the toils of the day, they dispense romance and sentiment, and harmonious cadences, in exchange for copper compliments and the well-merited applause of fit audiences, though few. Again, there are the valorous brass-bands of the young Germans, who blow such spirit-stirring appeals from their travel-worn and battered tubes—to say nothing of the thousand performers of solos and duets, who, wherever there is the chance of a moment's hearing, are ready to attempt their seductions upon our ears to the prejudice of our pockets. All these we must pass over with this brief mention upon the present occasion; our business being with their numerous antitheses and would-be rivals—the incarnate nuisances who fill the air with discordant and fragmentary mutilations and distortions of heaven-born melody, to the distraction of educated ears and the perversion of the popular taste.

'Music by handle,' as it has been facetiously termed, forms our present subject. This kind of harmony, which is not too often deserving of the name, still constitutes, notwithstanding the large amount of indisputable talent which derives its support from the gratuitous contributions of the public, by far the larger portion of the peripatetic minstrelsy of the metropolis. It would appear that these grinders of music, with some few exceptions which we shall notice as we proceed, are distinguished from their praiseworthy exemplars, the musicians, by one remarkable, and to them perhaps very comfortable characteristic. Like the exquisite Charles Lamb—if his curious confession was not a literary myth—they have ears, but no ear, though they would hardly be brought to acknowledge the fact so candidly as he did. They may be divided, so far as our observation goes, into the following classes:—1. Hand-organists; 2. Monkey-organists; 3. Handbarrow-organists; 4. Handcart-organists; 5. Horse-and-cart-organists; 6. Blindbird-organists; 7. Piano-grinders; 8. Flageolet-organists and pianists; 9. Hurdy-gurdy players.

1. The hand-organist is most frequently a Frenchman of the departments, nearly always a foreigner. If his instrument be good for anything, and he have a talent for forming a connection, he will be found to have his regular rounds, and may be met with any hour in the week at the same spot he occupied at that hour on the week previous. But a man so circumstanced is at the head of the vagabond profession, the major part of whom wander at their own sweet will wherever chance may guide. The hand-organ which they lug about varies in value from L.10 to L.150—at least, this last-named sum was the cost of a first-rate instrument thirty years ago, such as were borne about by the street-organists of Bath, Cheltenham, and the fashionable watering-places, and the grinders of the West End of London at that period, when musical talent was much less common than it is now. We have seen a contract for repairs to one of these instruments, including a new stop and new barrels, amounting to the liberal sum of L.75: it belonged to a man who had grown so impudent in prosperity, as to incur the penalty of seven years' banishment from the town in which he turned his handle, for the offence of thrashing a young nobleman, who stood between him and his auditors too near for his sense of dignity. Since the invention of the metal reed, however, which, under various modifications and combinations, supplies the sole utterance of the harmonicon, celestina, seraphina, colophon, accordian, concertina, &c. &c. and which does away with the necessity for pipes, the street hand-organ has assumed a different and infinitely worse character. Some of them yet remain what the old Puritans called 'boxes of whistles'—that is, they are