Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 | Page 8

enough, he might have been the identical Oxford-Street Orpheus of Wordsworth:--
'His station is there; and he works on the crowd, He sways them with harmony merry and loud; He fills with his power all their hearts to the brim-- Was aught ever heard like his fiddle and him?'
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 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