I AM no theologian, but my idea of hell is a perpetual concert, or everlasting musical festival. The only nusic I can abide is the music of the spheres, which has this immeasurable advantage over all other kinds of melody-one never hears it! I am of Dr. Johnson's way of thinking a lady had tortured him, "a full hour by Shrewsbury clock," with the performance of some execrable sonata on the harpsichord, and when it was done somebody remarked that it was a very difficult piece. "I wish," said the Doctor with indignant energy," it had been IMPOSSIBLE !"

I have often been asked whom I considered the best and greatest king that ever sat on the throne of England, and I have always replied, Edward the First, decidedly. He made the best use of the sword of justice that ever was made by monarch; he issued orders for a general persecution and massacre of all the bards, minstrels, fiddlers, and ballad-singers in his dominions. It was a good work, and I glorify his name for it. Could I but see the return of such days, and another such sovereign on the British throne, I should die content. Heavens! what would I not give to be king myself for a single day! I should not leave so much as a hurdygurdy player alive in any corner of the empire. I should guillotine Mr. Braham and Madam Pasta. Paganini I should break on the wheel.

What a delightful spectacle it would be to see a regiment of heavy dragoons charging the Russian horn band with drawn sabres, and putting the melodious miscreants to indiscriminate slaughter; or a battalion of guards with fixed bayo nets falling upon the orchestra of the King's Theatre, and, in the middle of one of their infernal overtures, or accompaniments, dispatch the whole gang of sonorous scoundrels, from the first

violin down to the last fife and kettledrum! By Jupiter! I should turn their instrumental music into vocal, and their allegros into mæstosos. I should make them sing for quarter louder than they ever sounded their bassoons and bugles. Then I should employ companies of light horse to scour the streets, lanes, and alleys, to cut down all stragglers, street-performers, and serenaders, with particular directions to make actual mince-meat of every creature, without distinction of age or sex found chanting "Home, sweet Home," "Cherry Ripe," or " Oh! no, I'll never mention her." What I have suffered from these three "popular songs," as they are called, is not to be expressed by words, and nothing short of the most terrible vengeance upon all who perpetrate them would content me. They must be made actual mince-meat of, wherever they are met with. The police, too, should have plenty of employment, as well as the military; I would invest them with power to break into all musical academies, boarding-schools for young ladies, and all private houses from whence a single squeak might be heard to issue; strangle every young woman, plain or beautiful, found at harp, guitar, or piano-forte; and take the masters and professors alive, to be put to death at leisure by the slowest and most ingenious tortures. Were I monarch for a single day, I should do all this and a great deal more-so utterly, so bitterly, so implacably, do I loathe, abhor, and abominate the whole singing, scraping, blowing, thumping, bellowing fraternity, called the musical world. Some future Gray should have cause to begin another ode with

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!

Confusion on thy banners wait!"

I should have something better going forward in my reign than operas, orato

rios, and catch-clubs. Have we no squalling children, no squeaking pigs, no venders of free-stone, no howling curs, no braying donkeys, no scolding wives? In the name of all that is pious, is there not din enough in the world, abroad and at home, without the help of barrel-organs, and ballad-singers, the aid of the Mozarts, Handels, and Beethovens? Are there not battles enough, without battles set to music, and storms in abundance, particularly in married life, without storms on the harpsichord? Now stop-you may save yourself the trouble-I know Sir! what you are going to say perfectly well

"The man that has not music in his soul, And is not moved by concord of sweet sounds, &c."

Aye, and then comes something about stratagems, and treasons, and a long list of the like atrocities. Why, Sir, I have had that unlucky quotation dinned into my ears, I suppose a hundred thousand times. My sisters, aunts, and cousins favour me with it incessantly. There is not a boarding-school girl of my acquaintance who has got beyond the letter G on the gamut, but thinks herself entitled to exclaim, as she sees me hurrying from the room to hide myself in dens and caverns of the earth to escape her quavers and semiquavers,

"The man that has not music in his soul,

And is not moved by concord of sweet sounds."

Now, there never was a worse-chosen quotation; for I will venture to say there is not that person living who has been more "moved" than I have been by what you choose to call "the concord of sweet sounds." "Moved!" In the first place, my choler has been "moved;" I have broken the heads of three Savoyards, four Tyrolese minstrels, two Welsh harpers, half-a-dozen Scotch pipers, and kicked more mendicant vocalists down the steps of my hall-door than I could easily count. They can tell you whether I have been "moved" or not by their performances. But there is another sense of the word, Sir, in which music has "moved" me as often as any gentleman in the king's dominions. I have changed my lodgings three times in the week, so ing" have I found the powers of music. When I was in London, a few years back, I lived the migratory life of a

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Tartar. Collins' " Heavenly Maid” chased me from one part of the town to another so rapidly that some of my friends began to suspect I was engaged in some swindling transaction which made such frequent shifting of domicile a point of prudence. The German flute drove me from Russel-square to Chelsea; " Cherry Ripe" banished me from Chelsea to Camden Town; from Camden Town I fled before two hurdygurdys and a flageolet, and never looked behind me until I reached Cecil-strect in the Strand; there the calamity took the common shape of a piano and a tambourine; I made for Brompton that very evening; I stipulated for "quiet lodgings;" my landlady pledged her salvation that not a mouse should molest me; I entered into possession; I dined-all was tranquil; after dinner I went out and walked through some of the pretty lanes about Kensington; it was eight o'clock when I returned; I ordered tea; while it was being prepared I congratulated myself on the quiet creek into which I had at length pushed my little bark, after a long odyssey of mischances; there were some voices audible from a room adjoining, which was tenanted, I had been told, by a single gentleman who was never at home except in the evenings; the voices were not loud ; just the conversational key; the single gentleman had some friends to take tea with him ;-what harm ?-the house was as still as any reasonable man could desire, and I began to think myself in Elysium, when, just as I had finished the third cup of my favourite beverage, the maid-servant entered with a message from her mistress, who hoped-horror of horrors!that I had no objection to music-no objection to music!-as Mr. Catgut― just figure to yourself Mr. Catgut!-my neighbour in the next room, who was a teacher of the violin, had some professional friends with him, and they were just going to get up a little concert, to help to pass away the time before supper!

Such was my landlady's message. "Good Master Barnardine, get up and be hanged," was just as palatable. "A little concert!"-a little devil! I struck the table with my clenched fist, broke two cups, three saucers, and