When we first meet Mark Tapley he is singing merrily, and there are dozens of others who sing either for their own delight or to please others. Even old Fips, of Austin Friars, the dry-as-dust lawyer, sang songs to the delight of the company gathered round the festive board in Martin Chuzzlewit's rooms in the Temple. Truly Dickens must have loved music greatly himself to have distributed such a love of it amongst his characters. It is not to be expected that Sampson Brass would be musical, and we are not surprised when on an occasion already referred to we find him humming in a voice that was anything but musical certain vocal snatches which appeared to have reference to the union between Church and State, inasmuch as they were compounded of the Evening Hymn and 'God Save the King.' Whatever music he had in him must have been of a sub-conscious nature, for shortly afterwards he affirms that the still small voice is a-singing comic songs within me, and all is happiness and joy. His sister Sally is not a songster, nor is Quilp, though he quotes 'Sally in our Alley' in reference to the former. All we know about his musical attainments is that he occasionally entertained himself with a melodious howl, intended for a song but bearing not the faintest resemblance to any scrap of any piece of music, vocal or instrumental, ever invented by man. Bass singers, and especially the Basso Profundos, will be glad to know that Dickens pays more attention to them than to the other voices, though it must be acknowledged that the references are of a humorous nature. 'Bass!' as the young gentleman in one of the _Sketches_ remarks to his companion about the little man in the chair, 'bass! I believe you. He can go down lower than any man; so low sometimes that you can't hear him.' And so he does. To hear him growling away, gradually lower and lower down, till he can't get back again, is the most delightful thing in the world. Of similar calibre is the voice of Captain Helves, already referred to on p. 62. Topper, who had his eye on one of Scrooge's niece's sisters (_C.C._), could growl away in the bass like a good one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead or get red in the face over it. Dickens must certainly have had much experience of basses, as he seems to know their habits and eccentricities so thoroughly. In fact it seems to suggest that at some unknown period of his career, hitherto unchronicled by his biographers, he must have been a choirmaster. He also shows a knowledge of the style of song the basses delighted in