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 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 versa—­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]