It will have struck the reader that all the street lays quoted as popular have a sort of burthen or jingle at the end of each verse. I was corrected, however, by a street chaunter for speaking of this burthen as a jingle. “It’s a chorus, sir,” he said. “In a proper ballad on a subject there’s often twelve verses, none of them under eight lines, and there’s a four-line chorus to every verse; and, if it’s the right sort, it’ll sell the ballad.” I was told, on all hands, that it was not the words that ever made a ballad, but the subject, and, more than the subject,--the chorus; and, far more than either,--_the tune_! Indeed, many of the street-singers of ballads on a subject, have as supreme a contempt for words as can be felt for any modern composer. To select a tune for a ballad, however, is a matter of deep deliberation. To adapt the ballad to a tune too common or popular is injudicious; for then, I was told, any one can sing it--boys and all. To select a more elaborate and less-known air, however appropriate, may not be pleasing to some of the members of “the school” of ballad-singers who may feel it beyond their vocal powers; neither may it be relished by the critical in street songs, whose approving criticism induces them to purchase as well as to admire. The license enjoyed by the court jesters, and in some respects by the minstrels of old, is certainly enjoyed, undiminished, by the street writers and singers of ballads on a subject. They are unsparing satirists, who, with rare impartiality, lash all classes and all creeds, as well as any individual. One man, upon whose information I can rely, told me that, many years ago, he himself had “worked” in town and country, twenty-three different songs at the same period and the same subject--the Marriage of the Queen. They all “sold”--but the most profitable was one “as sung by Prince Albert in character.” It was to the air of “Dusty Miller;” and “it was good,” said the ballad-man, “because we could easily dress up to the character given to Albert. And what’s more, sir,” continued my informant, “not very long after the honeymoon, the Duchess of L---- drove up in her carriage to the printer’s, and bought all the songs in honour to Victoria’s wedding, and gave a sovereign for them and wouldn’t take the change. It was a Duchess. Why I’m sure about it--though I can’t say whether it were the Duchess of L---- or S----; for didn’t the printer, like an honest man, when he’d stopped the price of the papers, hand over to us chaps the balance to drink, and _didn’t_ we drink it! There can’t be a mistake about _that_.” The “Ballads on a Subject” are certainly “the rude uncultivated verse in which the popular tale of the times is recorded,” and what may be the character of the nation as displayed in them, I leave to the reader’s judgment.--_Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor._