the mountains, ἐσ between the gloaming and the mirk,” made an impression upon me which I shall not easily forget. Long after we parted from them we could hear their voices, softening in sound as the distance grew, chanting on their way down the echoing glen; and the effect was wonderfully fine. This little incident upon the top of Swinshaw is representative of things which often occur in the country parts of Lancashire, showing how wide-spread the love of music is among the working classes there. Even in great manufacturing towns, it is very common, when passing cotton mills at work, to hear some fine psalm tune streaming in chorus from female voices, and mingling with the spoom of thousands of spindles. The "Larks of Dean," like the rest of Lancashire operatives, must have suffered in this melancholy time; but I hope that the humble musicians of our county will never have occasion to hang their harps upon the willows.

Now, when fortune has laid such a load of sorrow upon the working people of Lancashire, it is a sad thing to see so many workless minstrels of humble life "chanting their artless notes in simple guise" upon the streets of great towns, amongst a kind of life they are little used to. There is something very touching, too, in their manner and appearance. They may be ill-shod and footsore; they may be hungry, and sick at heart, and forlorn in countenance; but they are almost always clean and wholesomelooking in person. They come singing in twos and threes, and sometimes in more numerous bands, as if to keep one another in countenance. Sometimes they come in a large family all together, the females with their hymn-books, and the men with their different musical instruments,-bits of pet salvage from the wrecks of cottage homes. The women have sometimes children in their arms, or led by the hand; and they sometimes carry music-books for the men. I have seen them, too, with little handkerchiefs of rude provender for the day. As I said before, they are almost invariably clean in person, and their clothing is almost always sound and seemly in appearance, however poor and scanty. Amongst these poor wanderers there is none of the reckless personal negligence and filth of hopeless reprobacy; neither is there a shadow of the professional ostentation of poverty amongst them. Their faces are sad, and their manners very often singularly shame-faced and awkward; and any careful observer would see at a glance that these people were altogether unused to the craft of the trained minstrel of the streets. Their clear,

healthy complexion, though often touched with pallor,-their simple, unimportunate demeanour, and the general rusticity of their appearance, shows them to be

Suppliants who would blush

To wear a tatter'd garb, however coarse;
Whom famine cannot reconcile to filth;
Who ask with painful shyness, and refused,
Because deserving, silently retire.

The females, especially the younger ones, generally walk behind, blushing, and hiding themselves as much as possible. I have seen the men sometimes walk backwards, with their faces towards those who were advancing, as if ashamed of what they were doing. And thus they went wailing through the busy streets, whilst the listening crowd looks on them pityingly and wonderingly, as if they were so many hungry shepherds from the mountains of Calabria. This flood of strange minstrels partly drowned the slang melodies and the monotonous strains of ordinary street musicians for a while. The professional gleeman 'paled his ineffectual fire" before these mournful songsters. I think there never was so much sacred music heard upon the streets of Manchester before. With the exception of a favourite glee now and then, their music consisted chiefly of fine psalm tunes, often plaintive old strains, known and welcome to all, because they awaken tender and elevating remembrances of life. "Burton," "French," "Kilmarnock," "Luther's Hymn," the grand "Old Hundred," and many other fine tunes of similar character, have floated daily in the air of our city for months together. I am sure that this choice does not arise from the minstrels themselves having craft enough to select “a mournful muse, soft pity to infuse." It is the kind of music which has been the practice and pleasure of their lives; and it is a fortuitous thing that now, in addition to its natural plaintiveness, the sad necessity of the times lends a tender accompaniment to their simplest melody. I doubt very much whether Leech's minor tunes were ever heard upon our streets till lately. Leech was a working man, born near the hills, in Lancashire; and his anthems and psalm tunes are great favourites among the musical population, especially in the country districts. Leech's harp was tuned by the genius of sorrow. Several times, lately, I have heard the tender complaining notes of his psalmody upon the streets of the city. About three months ago I heard one of his most pathetic tunes sung in the market-place, by an old man and two young

women. The old man's dress had the peculiar hue and fray of factory work upon it, and he had a pair of clogs upon his stockingless feet. They were singing one of Leech's finest minor tunes, to Wesley's hymn:

And am I born to die,

To lay this body down?
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown?
A land of deepest shade,
Unpierced by human thought;
The dreary country of the dead,
Where all things are forgot.

It is a tune often sung by country people in Lancashire at funerals; and, if I remember right, the same melody is cut upon Leech's gravestone, in the old Wesleyan chapelyard at Rochdale. I saw a company of minstrels of the same class going through Brown-street the other day, playing and singing,

In darkest shades, if Thou appear,

My dawning is begun.

The company consisted of an old man, two young men, and three young women. Two of the women had children in their arms. After I had listened to them a little while, thinking the time and the words a little appropriate to their condition, I beckoned to one of the young men, who came "sidling" slowly up to me. I asked him where they came from, and he said, "Ash'n." In answer to another question, he said, "We're o' one family. Me an' yon tother's wed. That's his wife wi' th' chylt in her arms; an' hur wi' th' plod shawl on's mine" I asked if the old man was his father. "Ay," replied he; "we're o' here, nobbut two. My mother's ill i' bed, an' one o' my sisters is lookin' after her." "Well, an' heaw han yo getten on?" said I. "Oh, we'n done weel; but we's come no moor,' replied he. Another day, there was an instrumental band of these operatives playing sacred music close to the Exchange lamp. Amongst the crowd around, I met with a friend of mine. He told me that the players were from Stalybridge. They played some fine old tunes, by desire, and, among the rest, they played one called "Warrington." When they had played it several times over, my friend turned to me and said, "That tune was composed by a Rev. Mr. Harrison, who was once minister of Cross-street Unitarian Chapel, in Manchester; and one day an old weaver, who had come down from the hills, many miles, staff in hand, knocked at the minister's door, and

asked if there was 'a gentleman co'de Harrison lived theer?' 'Yes.' 'Could aw see him?' 'Yes." When the minister came to the door, the old weaver looked hard at him for a minute, and said, 'Are yo th' mon 'at composed that tune co'de Warrington?' 'Yes,' replied the minister, 'I believe I am.' 'Well,' said the old weaver, 'gi' me your hond! It's a good un!' He then shook hands with him heartily again; and, saying 'Well, good day to yo,' he went his way home again, before the old minister could fairly collect his scattered thoughts.

I do not know how it is that these workless minstrels are gradually becoming rarer upon the streets than they were a few months ago. Perhaps it is because the unemployed are more liberally relieved now than they were at first. I know that, now, many who have concealed their starving condition are ferreted out, and relieved as far as possible. Many of these street wanderers have gone home again, disgusted, to pinch out the hard time in proud obscurity; and there are some, no doubt, who have wandered away to other parts of England. Of these last, we may naturally expect that a few may become so reconciled to a life of wandering minstrelsy, that they may probably never return to settled labour again. But "there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." Let us trust that the Great Creator may comfort and relieve them, “according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions."

A Wayside Incident during the Cotton Famine.

Take physic, pomp!

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel;
That thou may'st shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.

-KING LEar.

NE Saturday a little incident fell in my way, which I thought worth taking note of at the time. On that day I went up to Levenshulme, to spend the afternoon with an old friend of mine, a man of studious habits, living in a retired part of that green suburb. The time went pleasantly by whilst I was with the calm old student, conversing upon the state of Lancashire, and the strange events which were upheaving the world in great billows of change, and drinking in the peaceful charm which pervaded everything about the man, and his house, and the scene which it stood in. After tea, he came with me across the fields to the Midway Inn, on Stockport Road, where the omnibuses call on their way to Manchester. It was a lovely evening, very clear and cool; and twilight was sinking upon the scene. Waiting for the next omnibus, we leaned against the long wooden watering-trough, in front of the inn. The irregular old building looked picturesque in the soft light of declining day; and all around was so still that we could hear the voices of bowlers who were lingering upon the green, off at the north side of the house, and retired from the highway by an intervening garden. The varied tones of animation, and the phrases uttered by the players on different parts of the green, came through the quiet air with a cheery ring. The language of the bowling-green sounds very quaint to people unused to the game.

"Too much land, James!" cries one