of a persevering and savage economy, have saved sufficient funds to procure it.  Indeed, in common hands, it would be of less use than the commonest instrument, because it requires frequent—­more than daily—­tuning, and would therefore be of no advantage to a man with no ear.  Unless the strings were in strict unison with the pipes, the discordance would be unbearable, and as this in the open air can hardly be the case for many hours together, they have to be rectified many times in the course of a week.  As might be reasonably supposed, these instruments are comparatively few.  When set to slow melodies, the flageolet taking the air, and the piano a well-arranged accompaniment, the effect is really charming, and, there is little reason to doubt, is found as profitable to the producer as it is pleasing to the hearer.  They are to be met with chiefly at the west end of the town, and on summer evenings beneath the lawyers’ windows in the neighbourhood of some of the Inns of Court.

9.  The hurdy-gurdy player.  We have placed this genius last, because, though essentially a most horrid grinder, he, too, is in some sort a performer.  In London, there may be said to be two classes of them—­little hopping, skipping, jumping, reeling Savoyard or Swiss urchins, who dance and sing, and grind and play, doing, like Caesar, four things at once, and whom you expect every moment to see rolling on the pavement, but who continue, like so many kittens, to pitch on their feet at last, notwithstanding all their antics—­and men with sallow complexions, large dark eyes, and silver ear-rings, who stand erect and tranquil, and confer a dignity, not to say a grace, even upon the performance of the hurdy-gurdy.  The boys for the most part do not play any regular tune, having but few keys to their instruments, often not even a complete octave.  The better instruments of the adult performers have a scale of an octave and a half, and sometimes two octaves, and they perform melodies and even harmonies with something like precision, and with an effect which, to give it its due praise, supplies a very tolerable caricature of the Scotch bagpipes.  These gentry are not much in favour either with the genuine lovers of music or the lovers of quiet, and they know the fact perfectly well.  They hang about the crowded haunts of the common people, and find their harvest in a vulgar jollification, or an extempore ‘hop’ at the door of a suburban public-house on a summer night.  There are a few old-women performers on this hybrid machine, one of whom is familiar to the public through the dissemination of her vera effigies in a contemporary print.

The above are all the grinders which observation has enabled us to identify as capable of classification.  The reader may, if he likes, suppose them to be the metropolitan representatives of the nine Muses—­and that, in fact, in some sort they are, seeing that they are the embodiments to a certain extent of the musical tastes of a section at least of the inhabitants of London; though, if we are asked which is Melpomene? which is Thalia? &c. &c. we must adopt the reply of the showman to the child who asked which was the lion and which was the dog, and received for answer:  ‘Whichever you like, my little dear.’