d be so low. The landlord is in the
chair, and a professional man presides at the piano. As to the songs,
they are partly professional and partly by volunteers. I cannot say much
for their character. The costermongers have not very strict notions of
_meum_ and _tuum_; they are not remarkable for keeping all the
commandments; their reverence for the conventional ideas of decency and
propriety is not very profound; their notions are not peculiarly polished
or refined, nor is the language in which they are clothed, nor the mode
in which they are uttered, such as would be recognised in Belgravia.
Dickens makes Mrs General in "Little Dorrit" remark, "Society never forms
opinions, and is never demonstrative." Well, the costermongers are the
reverse of all this, and as the pots of heavy and the quarterns of
juniper are freely quaffed, and the world and its cares are forgotten,
and the company becomes hourly more noisy and hilarious, you will
perceive the truth of my remarks. Anybody sings who likes; sometimes a
man, sometimes a female, volunteers a performance, and I am sorry to say
it is not the girls who sing the most delicate songs. The burdens of
these songs are what you might expect. In one you were recommended not
to go courting in the kitchen when the master was at home, but, instead,
to choose the "airey." One song, with a chorus, was devoted to the deeds
of "those handsome men, the French Grenadiers." Another recommended beer
as a remedy for low spirits; and thus the harmony of the evening is
continued till twelve, when the landlord closes his establishment, to the
great grief of the few who have any money left, who would only be too
happy to keep it up all night. Let me say a word about costermonger
literature. I see Mr Manby Smith calculates its pecuniary value at
twelve thousand a year. It is wretched in every way,--in composition, in
printing, in cuts, and paper. These street ballads--we are all familiar
with them--are sold by a class of men called patterers, and are written
so as to bear on the events of the day. Thus, at the last Lord Mayor's
day we had a song sung in the streets, of which the following is a
specimen:--

"Away they go, the high and low,
Such glorious sights was never seen,
But still the London Lord Mayor's show
Is not as it has former been,
When old Dick Whittington was mayor,
And our forefathers had to go;
They had not got no Peelers there,