f he had taken the
evidence only of his ears. Alas, in those days for the refined ears that
_were_ musical! great was their torture when discord, with its thousand
diversities of tone, struck up this appalling anthem--there was no escape
from it. The migratory minstrels of Savoy caught the strain, and pealed it
down the long vistas of quiet streets, till their innermost and snuggest
apartments re-echoed with the sound. Men were obliged to endure this
crying evil for full six months, wearied to desperation, and made
_sea_-sick on the dry land.

Several other songs sprang up in due succession, afterwards, but none of
them, with the exception of one, entitled "All round my Hat," enjoyed any
extraordinary share of favour, until an American actor introduced a vile
song called "Jim Crow." The singer sang his verses in appropriate costume,
with grotesque gesticulations, and a sudden whirl of his body at the close
of each verse. It took the taste of the town immediately, and for months
the ears of orderly people were stunned by the senseless chorus--

"Turn about and wheel about,
And do just so--
Turn about and wheel about,
And jump, Jim Crow!"

Street-minstrels blackened their faces in order to give proper effect to
the verses; and fatherless urchins, who had to choose between thieving and
singing for their livelihood, took the latter course, as likely to be the
more profitable, as long as the public taste remained in that direction.
The uncouth dance, its accompaniment, might be seen in its full perfection
on market nights in any great thoroughfare; and the words of the song
might be heard, piercing above all the din and buzz of the ever-moving
multitude. He, the calm observer, who during the hey-day popularity of
this doggrel,

"Sate beside the public way,
Thick strewn with summer dust, and saw the stream
Of people there was hurrying to and fro,
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,"

might have exclaimed with Shelley, that

"The million, with fierce song and maniac dance,
Did rage around."

The philosophic theorist we have already supposed soliloquising upon the
English character, and forming his opinion of it from their exceeding love
for a sea-song, might, if he had again dropped suddenly into London, have
formed another very plausible theory to account for our unremitting
efforts for the abolition of the slave-trade. "Benevolent people!" he
might hav