These nautical melodists, with voices as rough as their beards, are to be met with everywhere; but they abound chiefly in the neighbourhood of Deptford and Wapping, where they seem to be indigenous.  The most remarkable specimen of the class may, however, frequently be seen about the streets of London, carrying at his back a good-sized box, inside which, and peeping through a sort of port-hole, a pretty little girl of some two years old exhibits her chubby face.  Surmounting the box, a small model of a frigate, all a-tant and ship-shape, represents “Her Majesty’s (God bless her!) frigate Billy-ruffian, on board o’ which the exhibitor lost his blessed limb.”

Jack—­we call him Jack, though we confess we are uncertain of his baptismal appellation—­because Jack is a sort of generic name for his species—­Jack prides himself on his little Poll and his little ship, which he boasts are the miniature counterparts of their lovely originals; and with these at his back, trudges merrily along, trusting that Providence will help him to “keep a southerly wind out of the bread-bag.”  Jack’s songs, as we have remarked, all relate to the sea—­he is a complete repository of Dibdin’s choice old ballads and fok’sl chaunts.  “Tom Bowling,” “Lovely Nan,” “Poor Jack,” and “Lash’d to the helm,” with “Cease, rude Boreas,” and “Rule Britannia,” are amongst his favourite pieces, but the “Bay of Biscay” is his crack performance:  with this he always commenced, when he wanted to enlist the sympathies of his auditors,—­mingling with the song sundry interlocutory notes and comments.

Having chosen a quiet street, where the appearance of mothers with blessed babbies in the windows prognosticates a plentiful descent of coppers, Jack commences by pitching his voice uncommonly strong, and tossing Poll and the Billy-ruffian from side to side, to give an idea of the way Neptune sarves the navy,—­strikes, as one may say, into deep water, by plunging into “The Bay of Biscay,” in the following manner;—­

  “Loud roar’d the dreadful thunder—­
    The rain a deluge pours—­
  Our sails were split asunder,
    By lightning’s vivid pow’rs.

“Do, young gentleman!—­toss a copper to poor little Poll.  Ah! bless you, master!—­may you never want a shot in your locker.  Thank the gentleman, Polly—­

  “The night both drear and dark,
  Our poor desarted bark,
  There she lay—­(lay quiet, Poll!)

  “There she lay—­Noble lady in the window, look with pity on poor Jack,
          and his little Polly—­till next day,
  In the Bay of Biscay O.”

“Pray, kind lady, help the poor shipwrecked sailor—­cast away on his voyage to the West Ingees, in a dreadful storm.  Sixteen hands on us took to the long-boat, my lady, and was thrown on a desart island, three thousand miles from any land; which island was unfortunately manned by Cannibals, who roast and eat every blessed one of us, except the cook’s black boy; and him they potted, my lady, and I’m bless’d but they’d have potted me, too, if I hadn’t sung out to them savages, in this ’ere sort of way, my lady—­