scientific and sentimental disquisitions
upon the merits of the last new song, and
answer — which is the hardest business of all—
the innumerable questions on subjects as
innumerable, addressed to them not only by
the customers, but by the professionals who
throng the shop.

The professionals! Where are they? They
gesticulate behind harps, or declaim from
music-stools, or congregate at the angles of
Erard's grands. They may be heard of in
the back shop fantastically torturing musical
instruments, in the hope, perhaps, that some
English marquis, enraptured by their strains,
may rush from the titled crowd, and cry,
"Herr, signor, or monsieur," as the case may
be, "write me six operas, teach all my family
at five guineas per lesson, and at the end of a
year, the hand of my daughter, Miss Clarissa,
is yours." They waylay the courteous
publishers, Messrs. Octave and Piccolo, in counting-
houses — at doors — everywhere. Octave
is a pleasant man, tall, an undeniable
judge of port wine, and rides to the
Queen's hounds. Piccolo is a dapper man,
who speaks scraps of every European
language, and is supposed to have been madly
in love, about the year eighteen hundred and
twenty-seven, with the great contralto, Madame
Rostolati, who married, if you remember,
Prince Popadochoff: he who broke the bank
at Baden Baden, just before he shot himself
at Ems, in the year thirty-three.

Here is a gentleman just stepped out
of a handsome brougham at Octave and
Piccolo's door. His hair is auburn, curling
and luxuriant; his beard and
moustache ample, and a monument to the genius of
his hairdresser; he is covered with jewellery;
his clothes are of the newest cut, and the
most expensive materials. He is perfumed;
the front of his shirt — lace and studs — is
worth twenty guineas, and leaning from the
window of his brougham, you can descry a
kid-gloved hand, with rings outside the glove,
a bird of paradise feather, and the head of a
King Charles's spaniel. The hair, the beard,
the moustache, the jewellery, the shirt, the
brougham, the bird of Paradise, and the
King Charles all belong to Orpheus Basserclyffe,
fashionable singer of the day.

Snarling people, envious people, crooked-
minded people, of course, aver that Basserclyffe
roars; that he sings out of tune; that he doesn't
sing as well as formerly; that he can't sing at
all; that he has a fine voice, but is no
musician; that he can read at sight well enough,
but has no more voice than a jackdaw. What
does Basserclyffe care? What do people not
say about professionals? They say Joe
Nightingale's mother (he preceded Basserclyffe
as fashionable), kept a coal and potato
shed in Bermondsey; yet he made twenty
thousand pounds, and married a baronet's
daughter. They say Ap Llewellyn, the
harpist's name is not Ap, or Llewellyn, but
Levi, and that he is not a Welshman at all,
and that he used to play his harp in the
streets, sitting on a little stool, while his sister
went round with a hat for the coppers. They
say that Madame Fioriture, the prima donna,
does not know a note of music, and that old
Fripanelli, the worn-out music-master of Tatty-
boys Rents, has to teach her every part she plays.
Let them say on, says Basserclyffe. So that
I sing on and sing well, what does it matter?
He is right. If he had sung at the Italian
Opera — as William, in Black-eyed Susan,
was said to play the fiddle — like an
angel, there would have been soon found worthy
people and astute critics to whisper—
Ah, yes, very sweet, but after all, he's not an
Italian! He is too sensible to change his name
to Bassercliffi or Basserclifficini. He is content,
perfectly content, with making his four or
five thousand a year by singing at concerts,
public and private, oratorios, festivals, and
philharmonic associations, in town and country.
It is perfectly indifferent to him at
what species of entertainment he gets his
fifteen guineas for a song. It may be at the
Queen's palace, or in the large room of some
vast provincial music hall. I will say this
for him, however, that while he will have
the fifteen guineas (and quite right), if
those who employ him can pay, he will sing
gratuitously, and cheerfully too, where real
need exists, and, for the benefit of a distressed
anybody, will pipe the full as melodiously as
when his notes are exchanged by those of the
Governor and Company of the Bank of
England. He has a fine house; he gives grand
dinner parties; he is an exemplary husband
and father; he has no serious care in the
world, except for the day when his voice
will begin to fail him. "He is beast like
that," says Bambogetti, the cynic of the
musical world, striking the sounding-board
of a pianoforte.

But there has sidled into the shop, and up to
the urbane Mr. Octave, and held whispered
converse with him, which converse has ended in
a half shake of the head on Octave's part, a
shrug of the shoulder, and a slipping of
something into the creature's hand, a dirty, ragged,
shameful old man, in a trailing cloak, with an
umbrella that would seem to have the palsy
as well as the hand that holds it. This is
Gaddi. About the time that the allied
sovereigns visited England, after the battle of
Waterloo, Teodoro Gaddi was the great
Italian tenor, the king of tenors, the emperor
of tenors. He was more largely paid than
Farinelli, and more insolent than Cuzzoni.
They talked scandal of queens in connection
with Gaddi. Sovereigns sent semi-ambassadors
to tempt him to their courts. He sang,
and the King's Theatre was in raptures. He
was the idol of routs, the admired of ladies in
chip hats and leg-of-mutton sleeves; he spent
weeks at the country-seats of lords who wore
hair powder and Hessian boots, or high-collared
coats and Cossack trousers. He was praised in
the Courier, the Day, the News, and the Belle