markable, 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