I offered Mumchance several small sums,
increasing in amount at every bid, for the
volume. He seemed at tirst disposed to
acquiesce, but requested time in order that he
might consult Fisher. The upshot of it was
that Fisher (seconded no doubt by Colonel
Bubb) strongly advised him not to sell the
book until the arrival of a lady — name
unknown—then sojourning at Jerusalem, who
knew all languages, and could read the
volume, as easy as a glove. As I never saw
the oak-bound volume again, and as I heard
that Mumchance had sold it to the trustees of
a public library for forty guineas, I concluded
either that the lady possessing the lingual
accomplishments had comeback from Jerusalem
rather sooner than was expected, or that
Mumchance was not so mad as his neighbours
took him to be.

Thus have I drawn the portrait of Prince
Regent Mumchance, en pied, yet still grossly,
broadly, sketchily. Were I to stay to define,
to detail, to stipple the little points of his
character, as Mr. Holman Hunt does his
faces, I should weary myself and you; nay,
more than that, I should leave no space
for a three-quarter portrait of another
eccentric party in the Rents, old Signor
Fripanelli.

What Gian Battisto Girolamo Fripanelli of
Bologna, professor of singing and the pianoforte,
could have been about when he came to
lodge at Miss Drybohn's, number eighteen
in the Rents, I am sure I don't know, yet with
Miss Drybohn he has lodged for very nearly
twenty years. They say that he came over
to England at the Peace of Amiens, that he
was chapel-master to Louis the Sixteenth, and
that he only escaped the guillotine during the
reign of terror, by composing a Sonata for the
fête of the Goddess of Liberty. At any rate
he is of a prodigious age, although his stature
is but diminutive. I regret to state that the
boys call him Jacko, and shout that derisive
appellation after him in the street. These
unthinking young persons affect to trace a
resemblance between the venerable Signor
Fripanelli, and the degraded animal which
eats nuts and grins between the bars of a cage
in the Zoological Gardens. To be sure, the
Signor is diminutive in stature. His head is
narrow and long, his ears are large, his eyes
small, his cheekbones high, his complexion
sallow and puckered into a thousand wrinkles;
to be sure his hands are singularly long
and bony, and he walks with a sort of
stumbling hop, and is generally munching
something between his sharp teeth, and has a
shrill squeaking voice, and gesticulates
violently when excited; but is a gentleman to be
called Jacko—to be likened to a low monkey
for these peculiarities? Signor Fripanelli
wears, summer and winter, a short green
cloak, adorned with a collar of the woolly
texture, generally denominated poodle; a
white hat stuck at the very back of his head,
threadbare black pantaloons, and very roomy
shoes with rusty strings. This costume he
never varies. In it he goes out giving lessons;
in it, less the hat, he sitsat home at Miss
Drybohn's; in it he goes twice every Sunday, in
his own simple, quiet, honest fashion to tin:
Roman Catholic Chapel in Lateran-street, out
of Turk's lane.

It would seem to favour the insolent Jacko
theory concerning the poor Signor that Miss
Drybohn,who it is generally acknowledged has
the worst tongue in her head of any spinster
in the Rents, and who, though Fripanelli lias
lodged with her for twenty years, and has
never been a fortnight behindhand with his
rent—that Miss Drybohn, I say, declares
that when the Signor returns home at night and
retires to his bed-room, which is immediately
above hers, she always hears (though she
knows that he is alone) the noise of four feet
pattering above. She accuses nobody, she
states nothing, but such (she says) it is and
the by-standers shake their heads and whisper
that the Signor, on return home, fatigued
with teaching, assumes his natural position
in other words, that he crawls about on
all-fours, like a baboon on the branch of a tree.
Horror!

Seriously, although the little man is like a
monkey, he is one of the bravest, worthiest,
kindest creature alive. He has very little
money; none but those who know what the
life of an obscure foreign music-master is can
tell how difficult it is for him to live, much
less to save, in England; but from his scanty
means he gives freely to his poor fellow-
countrymen, yea, and to aliens of other climes
and other creeds. Fifteen years ago, the
Signor had a fine connection among the
proudest aristocracy of this proud land. Yes,
he taught singing at half a guinea a lesson, in
Grosvenor Square, and Park Lane, and May
Fair. You may see some of his old songs now,
yellow tattered and fly-blown on the music
book-stalls: Cabaletto, dedicated by permission
to the most noble the Marchioness of
Antidiloof,by her obliged, faithful, and humble
servant, Gian Battisto Girolamo Fripanelli.
Aria, inscribed with the most devoted sentiments
of respect and reverence to Her Grace
the Duchess of Fortherfludd, by her Grace's,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There have been
scores of the fairest and noblest young
English ladies, whose taper fingers have been
taught by poor old Jacko to fall harmoniously
upon the ivory keys, whose ruby lips and
pearly teeth he has tutored with much stress
of sol-faing, to give due and proper, and gentle,
and impassioned utterance to the silver
strains of Italian song. Gian Battisto has
been asked to lunch by Dukes—aye, and to
dinner too. and has sat next to Ambassadors and
Plenipotentiaries— parties to the Holy Alliance
and hung with stars and crosses. as that patient
gentleman near the Bank of England(who also
sells pocket-books) is with dog-collars, lie has
played the grandest of grand sonatas and
symphonies on the grandest of pianofortes, at