It is easy to recognise the rule adopted in the distribution of the instruments among the grinders:  the stoutest fellow, or he who can take the best care of it, gets the best piano; while the shattered and rickety machine goes to the urchin of ten or twelve, who can scarcely drag it a hundred yards without resting.  It is to be supposed that the instruments are all rated according to their quality.  There is at this moment wandering about the streets of London a singular and pitiable object, whose wretched lot must be known to hundreds of thousands, and who affords in his own person good evidence of the strictness of the rule above alluded to, as well as of the rigour with which the trade is carried on.  We refer to a ragged, shirtless, and harmlessly insane Italian lad, who, under the guardianship of one of the piano-mongers, is driven forth daily into the streets, carrying a blackened and gutted, old piano-case, in which two strings only of the original scale remain unbroken.  The poor unwashed innocent transports himself as quickly as possible to the genteelest neighbourhood he can find, and with all the enthusiasm of a Jullien, commences his monotonous grind.  Three turns of the handle, and the all but defunct instrument ejaculates ‘tink;’ six more inaudible turns, and then the responding string answers ‘tank.’  ‘Tink—­tank’ is the sum-total of his performance, to any defects in which he is as insensible as a blind man is to colour.  As a matter of course, he gets ill-treated, mobbed, pushed about, and upset by the blackguard scamps about town; and were it not for the police, who have rescued him times without number from the hands of his persecutors, he would long ere now have been reduced to as complete a ruin as his instrument.  In one respect, he is indeed already worse off than the dilapidated piano:  he is dumb as well as silly, and can only utter one sound—­a cry of alarm of singular intensity; this cry forms the climax of pleasure to the wretches who dog his steps, and this, unmoved by his silent tears and woful looks, they goad him to shriek forth for their express gratification.  We have stumbled upon him at near eleven at night, grinding away with all his might in a storm of wind and rain, perfectly unconscious of either, and evidently delighted at his unusual freedom from interruption.

8.  Flageolet-organists and pianists.  It is a pleasure to award praise where praise is due, and it may be accorded to this class of grinders, who are, to our minds, the elite of the profession.  We stated above that some of the piano-grinders contrive, notwithstanding their difficult position, to save money and set up for themselves.  It is inevitable that the faculty of music must be innate with some of these wandering pianists, and it is but natural that these should succeed the best, and be the first to improve their condition.  The instrument which combines a flageolet-stop with a piano is generally found in the possession of young fellows who, by dint