ORGAN.--WANTED, a respectable man to act as TURNKEY in a County
Prison. One who understands music, can play the Organ, and sing bass
would be preferred. For further particulars apply, post paid, to T.
T. S., Post-office, Bath.
The popular air of "_Still so gently o'er me stealing_," will
immediately suggest itself as one of the first airs that would be called
for from the musical turnkey, having been transposed so as to be sung in
the bass, which "would be preferred." Any one who had personated the
gaoler in the vernacular version of _Fidelio_ would, however, be the man
for the situation; and it is pleasing to imagine such a respectable
vocalist leading the Prison Chorus at the head of real convicts. A
pretty idea, too, is that of a Nightingale within four stone walls,
beguiling the tedium of confinement with his "jug-jug." Of course the
harmonious turnkey would enchant his incarcerated audience by his
performance of the Witch music of MATTHEW LOCKE. That he should also be
an organist is a good notion; phrenologists will admit it to be
judicious to play the organ of tune against that of acquisitiveness or
theft, and all other human organs out of tune and discordant with man's
better nature. Talking of the organ, SEBASTIAN BACH would have been just
the very turnkey in request, for he was a master of that noble
instrument; and the kind of piece which he most delighted in performing
thereon was a QUOD-_libet_.
It is to be hoped that the cultivation of music will be introduced at
Newgate; and then, perhaps, we shall at last witness a genuine
representation of the _Beggar's Opera_.
* * * * *
OUR TOURIST IN PARIS.--No. 4.
[Illustration: W]
When, Sir, you selected me from the crowd of eminent persons who
solicited the honour of furnishing you with their impressions of the
French metropolis, you were good enough to attribute to me an uncommon
impartiality and serenity of mind. "That impartiality," you observed
with your usual force and felicity of language, "will preserve your
communications from the onesidedness that usually deforms a traveller's
views of foreign country." My modesty, Sir, (almost amounting to
bashfulness) is well known to you, but I will venture to say that you
were correct in your estimate. I feel myself equally free from the
sturdy prepossessions nourished by MR. DOWLAS of Mecklenburgh Square and
the rose-coloured delusions which captivate young THREADPAPER of the
Foreign Office. The former gentleman marches through this city in
company with MRS. D. and the girls, armed with a guide-book and a pocket
map, and finds all barren. The latter wishes to introduce absolute
government into England, supported by an army of five hundred thousand
men and a censorship of the press. THREADPAPER is of tender years; his
moustache is downy, indeed hardly visible without a glass; he will grown
wiser with time, but MR. DOWLAS, I very much fear, is beyond all cure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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