ere was a
lady so addicted to playing variations. No more does Honeyman. On a
Saturday, when he is composing his valuable sermons (the rogue, you may
be sure, leaves his work to the last day, and there are, I am given to
understand, among the clergy many better men than Honeyman, who are as
dilatory as he), he begs, he entreats with tears in his eyes, that
Miss Cann's music may cease. I would back little Cann to write a sermon
against him, for all his reputation as a popular preacher.

Old and weazened as that piano is, feeble and cracked her voice, it
is wonderful what a pleasant concert she can give in that parlour of a
Saturday evening, to Mrs. Ridley, who generally dozes a good deal, and
to a lad, who listens with all his soul, with tears sometimes in his
great eyes, with crowding fancies filling his brain and throbbing at his
heart, as the artist plies her humble instrument. She plays old music of
Handel and Haydn, and the little chamber anon swells into a cathedral,
and he who listens beholds altars lighted, priests ministering, fair
children swinging censers, great oriel windows gleaming in sunset, and
seen through arched columns and avenues of twilight marble. The young
fellow who hears her has been often and often to the opera and the
theatres. As she plays Don Juan, Zerlina comes tripping over the
meadows, and Masetto after her, with a crowd of peasants and maidens:
and they sing the sweetest of all music, and the heart beats with
happiness, and kindness, and pleasure. Piano, pianissimo! the city is
hushed. The towers of the great cathedral rise in the distance, its
spires lighted by the broad moon. The statues in the moonlit place cast
long shadows athwart the pavement: but the fountain in the midst is
dressed out like Cinderella for the night, and sings and wears a crest
of diamonds. That great sombre street all in shade, can it be the famous
Toledo?--or is it the Corso?--or is it the great street in Madrid, the
one which leads to the Escurial where the Rubens and Velasquez are? It
is Fancy Street--Poetry Street--Imagination Street--the street where
lovely ladies look from balconies, where cavaliers strike mandolins
and draw swords and engage, where long processions pass, and venerable
hermits, with long beards, bless the kneeling people: where the rude
soldiery, swaggering through the place with flags and halberts, and fife
and dance, seize the slim waists of the daughters of the people, and bid
the piffera