the deck in those ten days. At an equally moderate calculation, each whale was worth four hundred pounds. Their gross value was, therefore, one hundred thousand pounds!"

THE MONSTER PROMENADE

CONCERTS.

Yet this is a land of liberty, and every man's house is his castle!

A man may have every comfort this world can afford-the prettiest house, the sweetest wife, the most unexceptionable cook, lovely children, and a good library-but what are these when the enjoyment they afford is destroyed by an endless charivari; when do"CHARMING place this," said a mad lady to mestic happiness is made misery by street dis us while looking out of a window of the cord; when an English gentleman is denied finest Lunatic Asylum in North Britain; what is insured to every Pentonville prisoner "so retired, so quiet, so genteel, so remote-peace; when a wise legislation has pafrom the busy hum of men and women. The tented the silent system for convicts only, and view you perceive is lovely-quite sylvan supplies no free-born Briton with a defence (there were two trees in the remote distance) from hideous invasions of his inmost privacy: 'Silence reigns around,' as the poet says, and a legislature which, here, in London, in the then you see, Sir, we do not allow street bands year of grace eighteen hundred and fifty, to come here." where civilisation is said to have made some advances-permits bag-pipes!

On inquiry, we were told that this patient was a London literary lady. Her mania, like Morose in Ben Jonson's Epicure, was against noise. She constantly prayed for deafness. She walked in list shoes, and spoke in a whisper as an example to others. The immediate cause of her confinement had not been ascertained, but we have no doubt that she had been driven stark mad by the street discord of the Metropolis. We firmly believe her case not singular. Judging from our own experience of the extremest brink of insanity, to which we have been occasionally driven by the organic and Pandean persecutions to which we have been subjected, we should say that much of the madness existing and wrought in this County of Middlesex originates in street music. If Dr. Connolly cannot bear us out in this opinion, we shall be rather astonished.

This is a subject upon which it is impossible, without the most superhuman self-control, to write with calmness."

Justice is supposed in this country to be meted out with an even hand. A humane maxim says, "Better let ten guilty men escape, than one innocent man suffer." Yet what have the public, especially of "quiet neighbourhoods," done; what crimes have we committed; what retribution have we invoked; that we are to be visited with the indiscriminating punishment, the excruciating agony, squealed and screeched into our ears out of that instrument of ineffable torture, the Scotch bagpipe? If our neighbour be a slanderer, a screw, a giver of bad dinners, or any other sort of criminal for whom the law has provided no punishment, and a bag-pipe serenade be A man of thoughtful habit, and of a timid, your mode of revenge on him, shut him up or nervous temperament, has only to take with a piper or pipers in the padded room apartments in what lodging-house-keepers in Bedlam, or take him out to the Eddystone wickedly call in their advertisements, "a lighthouse; but for the love of mercy, do not quiet neighbourhood," to be tolerably sure of make us, his unoffending neighbours, parmaking his next move in a strait waistcoat takers of his probably just, but certainly to an asylum for the insane. In retired streets, condign, punishment ! squares, terraces, or "rows," where the more We have, however, a better opinion or pleasing music of cart, coach, and cab wheels human nature than to believe in such extreme does not abound, the void is discordantly vindictiveness. We rather attribute these filled up by peripatetic concerts, which last public performances of sonorous savagery to all day long. You are forced, each morning, the perverted taste of a few unfortunate into shave to the hundredth psalm groaned out dividuals, who pretend to relish the discords, from an impious organ; at breakfast you are and who actually pay the kilted executioners stunned by the basses of a wretched waltz of harmony. The existence of such wretched belched forth from a bass trombone; and amateurs might be doubted if we did not your morning is ruined for study by the remember that the most revolting propentinkling of a barrel piano-forte; at luncheon sities are to be found among mankind. There acute dyspepsia communicates itself to your are people who chew tobacco; a certain tribe vitals in the stunning buldering of a big-drum; of Polynesian aborigines deem assafoetida the tuneless trumpets, discordant cornets, and most delicious of perfumes; and Southey, in blundering bass-viols form a running accom- his Travels in Spain, states that the Galician paniment of discord to your afternoon walk: carters positively refused to grease their hurdy-gurdies, peradventure, destroy your wheels because of the delight the creaking dinner; fiddles and harps squeak away the gave them. Yet although the grating of peace your whole evening; and, when you wooden axles, or even the sharpening of saws, lay your distracted head on your pillow you is music to the pibroch, it appears from a are robbed of sleep by a banditti of glee variety of evidence that bad taste can actually singers, hoarsely croaking, "Up rouse ye reach, even in the female mind, to the acme or then, my merry, merry men!" encouraging and patronising street bagpipers.

of

We scarcely believed our eyes when we read,
some days since, the following police report :-
"MARLBOROUGH-STREET. - Two boys, named
Campbell, dressed as Highland pipers, and each
provided with a pair of bagpipes, were charged
with having refused to quit Suffolk-street, where
they were playing, when requested to do so.

"A clerk to Mr. Garratt, an inhabitant, said, about 11 o'clock the boys put their pipes at work, and kept up such a concert of groaning and screeching with them, that his employer gave him directions to tell them to remove. Witness did so, and the boys refusing to comply with the request, a constable was employed, and they were brought to this court.

"The boys said they were the sons of a Scotch piper. They got their living by playing on the bagpipes, and they had been employed by a lady who liked bagpipe harmony, to play before the door of the hotel in Suffolk-street, where she was staying.

"MR. HARDWICK told the boys they must not adopt such a mode of getting their own living as would hinder other people from getting theirs. It would be impossible for professional men or tradesmen to carry on their daily avocations in the hearing of such a din of discordant sounds as would be caused by a couple of pairs of Scotch bagpipes. To the street musical abominations of the Italian boys had recently been added that of Scotch bagpipers,-a kind of concert sufficient to drive invalids and ordinary people crazy. The street musicians must be told that the law obliged them to go away whenever they were told to do so by any housekeeper in streets where they were playing. For the present offence he would inflict a fine of one shilling only, which should be made twenty shillings on the next occasion."

Mr. Hardwick did the best he could. If he could have transported the patroness of bagpipes for life to Staffa or to the lesser Cumbraes, the justice of the case would have been fully met. But, as we have before complained, the law, as applicable to nuisancenoises, is exceedingly defective.

even these choice pavé professionists have us at a disadvantage is in their discoursing their excellent music at precisely the times when we do not want the sounds of the charmer, charm he never so wisely. The habitant of the "quiet neighbourhood," fond as he is of Casta Diva or the Rosen Waltz, would rather not be indulged with them just as he is commencing to study a complicated brief, or while he is computing the draft of a difficult survey. When he wants music he likes to go to it; he never wants it to come to him.

Upon this premise we propose, for the benefit of the world at large, a sweeping street-music reform; and any enterprising member of Parliament is quite welcome to the draft of a bill on the subject, with which we now conclude:

The bill should be entitled,

"An Act for the better Preservation of the Public Peace by the better Regulation of some certain kinds of Street Music, and by the utter Abolition of certain other kinds of Street Music."

The first proviso should give authority to certain competent musicians, and bands of musicians, to play at certain appointed places at certain appointed hours of the day, and under certain regulations.

That the places appointed shall be, in summer, the Parks and Public Gardens and around London; and in winter certain covered spaces, to be set apart and appointed by the proper authorities.

That the performers shall have no other remuneration than the contributions of their listeners, which will be naturally regulated by the pleasure they give, consequently, by their proficiency.

illicit

That no unauthorised grinder of organs, music-mills, or hurdy-gurdies; no blower of bagpipes, Pan's-pipes, horns, cornopeans, trombones, trumpets, clarionets, or bassoons; Do we wish to banish all music from the no scraper of fiddles or violoncellos; no busy haunts of men? By no means. Good scratchers of harps or guitars; no beaters of music is sometimes emitted from our pave- drums, dulcimers or tamborines,-be allowed ments—the kerb sends forth here and there, to disturb the public thoroughfares, under and now and then, sounds not unworthy of pain of various penalties, to be afterwards the best appointed orchestra. Where these agreed and settled on; whereof the lightest superior street performers received their mu-shall be imprisonment and hard labour for sical education it is not our business to in- no less a period than ten days (for, say quire; but their arrangements of some of the flutes, hautboys, or Pan's-pipes), and the most popular opera music, show that their heaviest-only applicable to bagpipes-transtraining has been strictly professional. portation for life beyond the Border. Quintette, Sestette, and Septette bands of brass and string are occasionally heard in the open street, whose performances show that the pieces have been regularly scored and rigidly rehearsed. "Tune, time, and distance" are excellently kept; the pianos and fortes are admirably coloured-there is no vamping of basses; no "fudging" of difficult passages. We look upon such players as musical missionaries who purvey the best music from the opera houses and from the saloons of the nobility to the general public, to the improvement of its musical taste. But where

Vivat Regina!

Now ready, Price 5s. 6d., neatly Bound in Cloth,
THE FIRST VOLUME
HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

OF

Publishing Monthly, Price 2d., Stamped, 3d. THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE

OP

CURRENT EVENTS.

This Monthly Supplement of Household Words, containing a history of the previous month, is issued regularly with the Magazines.

Published at the Office, No 16, Wellington Street North, Strand. Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.

I often run up to London. I like London. The way I look at it, is this. London is not a cheap place, but, on the whole, you can get more of the real thing for your money there -I mean the best thing, whatever it is-than you can get in most places. Therefore, I say to the man who has got the money, and wants the thing, "Go to London for it, and treat yourself.' When I go, I do it in this manner. I go to Mrs. Skim's Private Hotel and Commercial Lodging House, near Aldersgate Street, City, (it is advertised in "Bradshaw's Railway Guide," where I first found it), and there I pay, "for bed and breakfast, with meat, two and ninepence per day, including servants." I am-leave us alone!

in the moming, satisfied me that all was well. The atmosphere of the coffee-room was odoriferous with Turtle, and the steams of thousands of gallons, consumed within its walls, hung, in savoury grease, upon their surface. I could have inscribed my name with a penknife, if I had been so disposed, in the essence of innumerable Turtles. I preferred to fall into a hungry reverie, brought on by the warm breath of the place, and to think of the West Indies and the Island of Ascension.

All mankind are my brothers, and I don't Turtle, and a tender juicy steak." His think it Christian-if you come to that to manner, added to the manner of Mr. Groggles tell my brother that he is ignorant, or degraded, or dirty, or anything of the kind. I think it's abusive, and low. You meet me with the observation that I am required to love my brother. I reply, "I do." I am sure I am always willing to say to my brother, "My good fellow, I love you very much; go along with you; keep to your own road; leave me to mine; whatever is, is right; whatever isn't, is wrong; don't make a disturbance!" It seems to me, that this is at once the whole duty of man, and the only temper to go to dinner in.

Going to dinner in this temper in the City of London, one day not long ago, after a bed at Mrs. Skim's, with meat-breakfast and servants included, I was reminded of the observation which, if my memory does not deceive me, was formerly made by somebody on some occasion, that man may learn wisdom from the lower animals. It is a beautiful fact, in my opinion, that great wisdom is to be learnt from that noble animal the Turtle.

I had made up my mind, in the course of the day I speak of, to have a Turtle dinner. I mean a dinner mainly composed of Turtle. Just a comfortable tureen of soup, with a pint of punch; and nothing solid to follow, but a tender juicy steak. I like a tender juicy steak. I generally say to myself when I order one, "Snoady, you have done right."

When I make up my mind to have a delicacy, expense is no consideration. The question resolves itself, then, into a question of the very best. I went to a friend of mine who is a Member of the Common Council, and with that friend I held the following conversation.

Said I to him, "Mr. Groggles, the best Turtle is where ?"

Says he, "If you want a basin for lunch, my opinion is, you can't do better than drop into Birch's."

My dinner came-and went. I will draw a veil over the meal, I will put the cover on the empty tureen, and merely say that it was wonderful-and that I paid for it.

I sat meditating, when all was over, on the imperfect nature of our present existence, in which we can eat only for a limited time. when the waiter roused me with these words.

Said he to me, as he brushed the crumbs off the table, "Would you like to see the Turtle, Sir?"

"To see what Turtle, waiter?" said I (calmly) to him.

"The tanks of Turtle below, Sir," said he to me.

Tanks of Turtle! Good Gracious! "Yes!" The waiter lighted a candle, and conducted me down stairs to a range of vaulted apart ments, cleanly whitewashed and illuminated with gas, where I saw a sight of the most astonishing and gratifying description, illus trative of the greatness of my native country. "Snoady," was my first observation to myself, Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves!"

There were two or three hundred Turtle in the vaulted apartments-all alive. Some in tanks, and some taking the air in long dry walks littered down with straw. They were of all sizes; many of them enormous. Some of the enormous ones had entangled themselves with the smaller ones, and pushed and squeezed themselves into corners, with their fins over water-pipes, and their heads downAwards, where they were apoplectically struggling and splashing, apparently in the Says Mr. Groggles, without a moment's last extremity. Others were calm at the consideration, and in a determined voice. bottom of the tanks; others languidly rising Right opposite the India House, Leadenhall Street."

Said I, "Mr. Groggles, I thought you had known me better, than to suppose me capable of a basin. My intention is to dine. tureen."

We parted. My mind was not inactive during the day, and at six in the afternoon I repaired to the house of Mr. Groggles's recommendation. At the end of the passage, leading from the street into the coffee-room, I observed a vast and solid chest, in which I then supposed that a Turtle of unusual size might be deposited. But, the correspondence between its bulk and that of the charge made for my dinner, afterwards satisfied me that it must be the till of the establishment.

I stated to the waiter what had brought me there, and I mentioned Mr. Groggles's name. He feelingly repeated after me, "A tureen of

to the surface. The Turtle in the walks littered down with straw, were calm and motionless. It was a thrilling sight. I admire such a sight. It rouses my imagination. If you wish to try its effect on yours, make a call right opposite the India House any day you please-dine-pay-and ask to be taken below.

Two athletic young men, without coats, and with the sleeves of their shirts tucked up to the shoulders, were in attendance on these noble animals. One of them, wrestling with the most enormous Turtle in company, and dragging him up to the edge of the tank, for me to look at, presented an idea to me which I never had before. I ought to observe that

I like an idea. I say, when I get a new one, "Snoady, book that!"

My idea, on the present occasion, was,-Mr. Groggles! It was not a Turtle that I saw, but Mr. Groggles. It was the dead image of Mr. Groggles. He was dragged up to confront me, with his waistcoat-if I may be allowed the expression-towards me; and it was identically the waistcoat of Mr. Groggles. It was the same shape, very nearly the same colour, only wanted a gold watch-chain and a bunch of seals, to BE the waistcoat of Mr. Groggles. There was what I should call a bursting expression about him in general, which was accurately the expression of Mr. Groggles. I had never closely observed a Turtle's throat before. The folds of his loose cravat, I found to be precisely those of Mr. Groggles's cravat. Even the intelligent eye -I mean to say, intelligent enough for a person of correct principles, and not dangerously so-was the eye of Mr. Groggles. When the athletic young man let him go, and, with a roll of his head, he flopped heavily down into the tank, it was exactly the manner of Mr. Groggles as I have seen him ooze away into his seat, after opposing a sanitary motion in the Court of Common Council!

cussion. One eloquent speaker objected to the French as wearing wooden shoes; and a friend of his reminded him of another objection to that foreign people, namely, that they eat frogs. I had feared, for many years, I am sorry to say, that these wholesome principles were gone out. How delightful to find them still remaining among the great men of the City of London, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty! It made me think of the Lively Turtle.

But, I soon thought more of the Lively Turtle. Some Radicals and Revolutionists have penetrated even to the Common Council -which otherwise I regard as one of the last strongholds of our afflicted constitution; and speeches were made, about removing Smithfield Market-which I consider to be a part of that Constitution-and about appointing a Medical Officer for the City, and about preserving the public health; and other treasonable practices, opposed to Church and State. These proposals Mr. Groggles, as might have been expected of such a man, resisted; so warmly, that, as I afterwards understood from Mrs. Groggles, he had rather a sharp attack of blood to the head that night. All the Groggles party resisted them too, and it was "Snoady," I couldn't help saying to myself, a fine constitutional sight to see waistcoat "you have done it. You have got an idea, after waiscoat rise up in resistance of them and Snoady, in which a great principle is involved. subside. But what struck me in the sight I congratulate you!" I followed the young was this, "Snoady," said I, "here is your idea man, who dragged up several Turtle to the carried out, Sir! These Radicals and Rebrinks of the various tanks. I found them volutionists are the athletic young men in all the same—all varieties of Mr. Groggles-all shirt sleeves, dragging the Lively Turtle to extraordinarily like the gentlemen who usually the edges of the tank. The Groggleses are eat them. 66 Now, Snoady," was my next the Turtle, looking out for a moment, and remark, "what do you deduce from this?" flopping down again. Honour to the "Sir," said I, "what I deduce from this, is, Groggleses! Honour to the Court of Lively confusion to those Radicals and other Re- Turtle! The wisdom of the Turtle is the volutionists who talk about improvement. hope of England! Sir," said I, "what I deduce from this, is, There are three heads in the moral of what that there isn't this resemblance between the I had to say. First, Turtle and Groggles are Turtles and the Groggleses for nothing. It's identical; wonderfully alike externally, wonmeant to show mankind that the proper derfully alike mentally. Secondly, Turtle is model for a Groggles, is a Turtle; and that a good thing every way, and the liveliness of the liveliness we want in a Groggles, is the the Turtle is intended as an example for the liveliness of a Turtle, and no more. "Snoady," liveliness of man; you are not to go beyond was my reply to this, "You have hit it. You that. Thirdly, we are all quite comfortable. are right! Leave us alone!

I admired the idea very much, because, if I hate anything in the world, it's change. Change has evidently no business in the world, has nothing to do with it, and isn't intended. What we want is (as I think I have mentioned) to be comfortable. I look at it Let us be comfortable, and leave as alone. Now, when the young man dragged a Groggles-I mean a Turtle-out of his tank, this was exactly what the noble animal expressed as he floundered back again.

that way.

I have several friends besides Mr. Groggles in the Common Council, and it might be a week after this, when I said, "Snoady, if I was you, I would go to that court, and hear the debate to-day." I went. A good deal of it was what I call a sound, old English dis

HIRAM POWER'S GREEK SLAVE.
THEY say Ideal Beauty cannot enter
The house of anguish. On the threshold stands
This alien Image with the shackled hands,
Called the Greek Slave: as if the artist meant her
(The passionless perfection which he lent her,
Shadowed, not darkened, where the sill expands)
To, so, confront man's crimes in different lands,
With man's ideal sense. Pierce to the centre,
Art's fiery finger! and break up erelong
From God's pure heights of beauty, against man's
The serfdom of this world. Appeal, fair stone,

Catch up, in thy divine face, not alone
wrong!
East griefs, but west, and strike and shame the

strong,

By thunders of white silence, overthrown.