ed to run through the same round of melodious misery. Since then I have been in vain expecting a finale; "the cry is still they come:" fiddlers, singers, masters, and amateurs, besiege my house, and there is no end to my wife's parties, or my remonstrances. I find I have married a musician, who perpetually reminds me of Dr. Pangloss's distinction between a concert and a consort. Accustomed to admiration, she cannot live without it; and her home becomes insipid, unless it is crowded with listeners and flatterers, and converted into an arena for display. I have no voice in my own house, because my wife has so much, and every body keeps time so rigorously, that I cannot find any for my own occupations. From morning to night I am distracted with harmony-my head seems to be a thoroughfare for crotchets, quavers, and semiquavers—a common sewer, into which is disgorged a perpetual stream of noise, under every possible variety which the modulation of air can produce. Even in my sleep I have a constant singing in my head; the nerves of my brain, like an Æolian harp, vibrate of themselves; and if I dream, it is of the jarring, scraping, and tuning of ten thousand instruments.

Man has been defined, by physiologists, as a featherless biped, but I have been sometimes struck with the capricious contrast between the human and the winged subject. In peacocks, pheasants, and all the gallinaceous tribe, it is the male who is dressed out in gorgeous colours and fine feathers, while the female is as plain and unadorned as a quakeress. Singing birds are all small, the black-bird being the largest ;

and it is the gentleman who tunes his pipe while the domestic lady sits brooding over her eggs. Mine broods over nothing but the harpsichord, and my "callow nestlings of domestic bliss" are rondos, sonatas, and canzonettas. How can I expect her to be a good housekeeper, in any sense of the word? That left hand, so conversant in thorough-bass, would you, desecrate it with a roll of tradesmen's bills? those dexter fingers, such volant summoners of sound, would you condemn them to a thimble and needle, or require them to handle any keys but those of the instrument? and that voice, would you have the heart to bid it scold her servants and add up accounts? None but a Goth or a Vandal would dream of such degradations, and yet I am ashamed to confess how much of a barbarian I am become. "The piece which your wife is about to play is extremely difficult," said a friend the other night. "I wish to God it was impossible," was my reply; and shortly after I exclaimed, in the midst of a most complicated fugue-"sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus," to the great scandal of all the bystanders, the casting of angry glances from the performers, the holding up of fore-fingers, and the general exclamation of "Hush!" My guests are fonder of music than I am; a great many walk away into another room to play cards or chat during the performance of any favourite piece, but they invariably return when it is finished, to cry "Bravo! charming! beautiful! divine !-Whose composition is that? Do pray oblige us with it once more."

Let none but the rich man aspire to the possession of a musical wife, for he must expect to pay for the luxury in proportion to its annoyance; a computation which renders it extravagant indeed! If ever a Congress of Sovereigns find themselves assembled in my pocket, they are presently dispersed for benefit tickets and subscription concerts. One meeting is no sooner over than another is announced; singers are never out of breath, fiddlers' arms never ache, my wife's tarantula is never cured, her fingers are never out of her harpsichord, and mine never out of my purse. The "No Song no Supper" of former days is now converted into "No Dinner no Song," for my table is beleaguered two or three times a week with a whole irruption of hungry harmonists, who commit grievous havock upon fish, flesh, and poultry, and cultivate the decanter as if they were drinking for a voice. At first I had no conception that a song could ever emerge from such a superincumbent mass of viands, deeming it as improbable an event as that the giants should upheave from beneath Mount Pelion, or that the bottom shelf of a tavern-larder should warble one of Moore's melodies. I found a malicious pleasure in believing, that even the ghost of a voice was laid, when lo!-with no other conjuration than a preliminary "Hem," these ventripotent melodists called up from the Red Sea of my port and claret all their buried swells, shakes, and cadences, as loud, clear, and lively, as ever they existed before dinner!

But the crowning misery-the master mischief of the musico-mania, is the converting my dwelling into

an opera-house or common hotel, for the benefit concert of some squalling Italian, when hundreds of utter strangers, upon the strength of their guinea tickets, stare me out of countenance in my own abode, hustling, elbowing, and pinioning me up into a corner where I can see and hear nothing, or compelling me to take my stand half way down stairs with a cold wind blowing up my back, and some gaping vulgarian treading upon my toes in front.. This I hold to be so degrading as well as offensive a proceeding, that I should never submit to be a personal witness of the outrage, but for certain considerations which I hardly know how to mention to "ears polite." Suffice it to say, that I find it necessary to look as well as listen upon these occasions, for among my visitants I have had amateurs of other things than music; gentlemen, who have learned the new art of fingering, without the assistance of the chiroplast; shrewd conveyancers, who can make a transfer from a chimney-piece to a pocket in a demi-semiquaver. I accuse nobody-the whole six hundred at my last invasion were, doubtless, "all honourable men," though I had not the honour of knowing them; and the phenomena I am about to relate, are unquestionably attributable to the music. We know what magical effects it produced among the

ancients.

Orpheus and old Amphion play'd

Strange tunes to entertain our sires,
Enlivening stocks and stones, 'tis said;
But then we know they had their Lyres.

I firmly believe that the walls of Thebes built themselves to the tune of "The Freemasons' March," and that tigers and kids, lambs and lions, raised themselves upon their hind legs and waltzed lovingly together, when Orpheus sang to Chiron; for I have witnessed enchantments in my own house not a whit less miraculous. A small antique Apollo, that stood upon a bracket in my drawing-room, although he had but one leg, hopped clean away, probably imagining, from the concord of sweet sounds, that he was regaining his favourite Parnassus. By what arrangement of muscles Mercury could ply the wings attached to his cap, I could never comprehend; but it is obvious that he possesses the power, for a little bronze image of that god has flown away from my chimney-piece. This, however, may be the pious abduction of some one who recognised his appropriate deity, and so bore him off in triumph. A beautiful skipping nymph has jumped from my writing-table, and eloped from the paternal roof. If the gentleman with whom she has taken refuge will return her to her disconsolate owner, he may retain the rope for his own use. Philip the Fifth of Spain fell once into such a fit of low spirits, that for several months he refused to be shaved, until the soothing sweetness of Farinelli's strains induced him to submit his chin to the razor with great cheerfulness and resolution. Well, I had a large medal of this monarch in his bearded state, which must have recognised, in some of my Italian warblers, such approximation to Farinelli's notes, that