IRON BARS OF MUSIC.
We have often wished that we could suggest anything that would afford some scope for the unemployed ability of the artists of our almost extinct English Opera. Here, in an advertisement out of the Times, appears to be something like an opening for one of them—if the foreign predilections of our superior classes have not starved them all:—
ORGAN.—WANTED, a respectable man to act as TURNKEY in a County Prison. One who understands music, can play the Organ, and sing bass would be preferred. For further particulars apply, post paid, to T. T. S., Post-office, Bath.
The popular air of "Still so gently o'er me stealing," will immediately suggest itself as one of the first airs that would be called for from the musical turnkey, having been transposed so as to be sung in the bass, which "would be preferred." Any one who had personated the gaoler in the vernacular version of Fidelio would, however, be the man for the situation; and it is pleasing to imagine such a respectable vocalist leading the Prison Chorus at the head of real convicts. A pretty idea, too, is that of a Nightingale within four stone walls, beguiling the tedium of confinement with his "jug-jug." Of course the harmonious turnkey would enchant his incarcerated audience by his performance of the Witch music of Matthew Locke. That he should also be an organist is a good notion; phrenologists will admit it to be judicious to play the organ of tune against that of acquisitiveness or theft, and all other human organs out of tune and discordant with man's better nature. Talking of the organ, Sebastian Bach would have been just the very turnkey in request, for he was a master of that noble instrument; and the kind of piece which he most delighted in performing thereon was a Quod-libet.
It is to be hoped that the cultivation of music will be introduced at Newgate; and then, perhaps, we shall at last witness a genuine representation of the Beggar's Opera.
OUR TOURIST IN PARIS.—No. 4.
WHEN, Sir, you selected me from the crowd of eminent persons who solicited the honour of furnishing you with their impressions of the French metropolis, you were good enough to attribute to me an uncommon impartiality and serenity of mind. "That impartiality," you observed with your usual force and felicity of language, "will preserve your communications from the onesidedness that usually deforms a traveller's views of foreign country." My modesty, Sir, (almost amounting to bashfulness) is well known to you, but I will venture to say that you were correct in your estimate. I feel myself equally free from the sturdy prepossessions nourished by Mr. Dowlas of Mecklenburgh Square and the rose-coloured delusions which captivate young Threadpaper of the Foreign Office. The former gentleman marches through this city in company with Mrs. D. and the girls, armed with a guide-book and a pocket map, and finds all barren. The latter wishes to introduce absolute government into England, supported by an army of five hundred thousand men and a censorship of the press. Threadpaper is of tender years; his moustache is downy, indeed hardly visible without a glass; he will grown wiser with time, but Mr. Dowlas, I very much fear, is beyond all cure.