46

THE ORGAN FIEND.

horrible organ which is murdering Ah, che la morte' beneath my window." To the author of Half a Million of Money, for an onslaught against "the inevitable street-organ-that 'most miraculous organ,' which can no more be silenced than the voice of murder itself."* To the author of Twice Round the Clock, for his fling at the "Italian organ-grinder, hirsute, sunburnt, and saucy," who grinds airs from the Trovatore six times over, follows with a selection from the Traviata, repeated half a dozen times, finishes with the Old Hundredth, and then begins again. To one of Blackwood's most favoured poets, too early dead, (perhaps the "organ-fiend" helped to kill him,) who recorded. once among the pleasures of memory the fact that "The Organ-fiend was wanting there.

Not till the Peace had closed our quarrels
Could slaughter that machine devise,
(Made from his useless musket-barrels)
To slay us 'mid our London Cries.

"Why did not Martin in his Act

Insert some punishment to suit
This crime of being hourly rack'd

To death by some melodious Brute?

* “And which in Transpontia hath its chosen home. The oldest inhabitant of Brudenell Terrace confessed to never having known the hour of any day (except Sunday) when some native of Parma or Lucca was not to be heard grinding his slow length along from number one to number twentyour."-Chap. 1.

SUFFERERS' PROTESTS.

From ten at morn to twelve at night
His instrument the Savage plies,
From him alone there's no respite,

Since 'tis the Victim, here, that cries.

"Macaulay! Talfourd! Smythe! Lord John!*
If ever yet your studies brown
This pest has broken in upon,

Arise, and put the Monster down.

By all distracted students feel,

When sense crash'd into nonsense dies
Beneath that ruthless ORGAN'S wheel,

We call! O hear our London Cries!"

47

A Saturday Reviewer can name no native nuisance to compare with that inflicted by itinerant musicians on those who have "no soul for popular Italian music." He assumes that there is a class of our fellow-citizens who love to steep their senses in the eccentric melodies ground out of tortured music-chests by able-bodied Piedmontese. He knows too well that there is another class, the softness of whose hearts is only surpassed by that of their heads, who, compassionating the sorrows of the victims of a cruel system, do their best to make it perpetual by subsidizing it. But he submitsand with grateful earnestness we enforce the plea -that a certain consideration should be shown for intelligible differences of taste; that even assuming the harmonies of the organ to be the music of the

* This appeal was penned in 1849.

48

A DAY OF DELIVERANCE.

spheres, THEIR ABSENCE WOULD INFLICT LESS

PAIN ON THEIR RARE ADMIRERS THAN THEIR PRESENCE DOES ON THE MANY WHOSE NERVES IT

JARS. This is a very mild and temperate way of putting the question; but it may be all the more likely to commend itself to the calmly commonsensical who will give it a thought. And, for commonest charity' sake, it deserves one.

The day will dawn, it may not be too extravagant a hope to cherish, when no father of a family that cares whether or not his neighbours suffer, will allow the peripatetic grinder to grind within earshot of his doors and windows, be they shut or open; and when no mother that cares for her children having a jot of musical taste will allow her servants to fee and retain the carrier of that box of instrumental torture, in their delighted recognition of music-hall monstrosities and teagardens melodies,-flashy, flabby, frowsy, flatulent stuff, as loud and flaring as it is weary, stale, flat, and (except to the grinder) most unprofitable. The day will dawn,-for the sake of human nature and of civilization, one cannot but hope it,-when there shall be realized the pictorial prophecy outlined by John Leech, or by some fellow-artist who felt like him as well as drew like him: the picture of a child-visitor at Madame Tussaud's starting back in terror from the grim presence in waxwork of a

NOTICE TO QUIT.

49

hirsute grinder in full play, horrible to the eye (the bodily eye), and horrible to the ear (the mind's ear). The child's alarm is soothed by a gentle mother's reviving assurance that the man is not real, not alive; and she adds, "Why, I can remember when creatures of that sort were allowed to go loose in the streets all about London!" Happy the people that are in such a case as the lady and little boy in that prospective picture. May the day for its entire realization dawn ere long! Meanwhile, every householder is a public benefactor who exercises his legal right to send out and stop the grinding that is, not merely opposite, but even near, his house. He sets a good example. He encourages more timid but also more sensitive neighbours to do likewise; and he is not only doing what is right, and what is his right, but, in behalf of all near him who are suffering, and desolate, and oppressed, he is doing a work of real charity.

"AS

IV.

As Winegar upon Nitre.

Proverbs xxv. 20.

S vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart." There are people who, it has been said, are so irresistibly impelled to sing songs, that, in a world where heavy hearts are unfortunately common, it is difficult always to keep the vinegar and nitre apart. They cannot sympathize with, for they cannot in the least understand, the temperament which tends to constitute what Sir Henry Taylor calls

"A recreant from festivities that grieve

The heart not festive."

The lament of the lady in the old ballad of Jamie Douglas has this among other touches of nature:

"As on to Embro' town we came,

My guid father he welcomed me ;
He caused his minstrels meet to sound,—
It was no music at a' to me."