[Illustration: LONDON CAROL SINGERS.--_Page 215._] A very curious part of the business, however, is, that these people actually expect to get money for what they are doing! With the most perfect good faith, they really calculate upon making a profit by their outrages upon men's feelings! It is for the purpose of "putting bread into their mouths" that those mouths are opened in that portentous manner. For ourselves, we have a strong conviction that the spread of the emigration mania has been greatly promoted by the increase of ballad-singers in the land. We have frequently resolved to emigrate, on that account, ourselves; and if we could be perfectly certified of any desirable colony, to which no removals had taken place from the class in question, we believe we should no longer hesitate. The existence of that class is a grievous public wrong, and calls loudly for legislation. We have frequently thought that playing a hurdy-gurdy in the streets should be treated as a capital crime. Of the annual sheets and of such other carols as may be recoverable from traditional or other sources, it is to be regretted that more copious collections are not made, by the lovers of old customs, ere it be too late. Brand speaks of an hereditary collection of ballads, almost as numerous as the Pepysian collection at Cambridge, which he saw, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in the printing-office of the late Mr. Saint, amongst which were several carols for the Christmas season. Hone, in his "Ancient Mysteries," gives a list of eighty-nine carols in his possession, all in present use (though likely soon to become obsolete), and exclusive of the modern compositions printed by religious societies, under the denomination of carols. He furnishes a curious proof of the attachment which the carol-buyers extend, from the old carols themselves, to the old rude cuts by which they are illustrated. "Some of these," he says, "on a sheet of Christmas carols, in 1820, were so rude in execution that I requested the publisher, Mr. T. Batchelar, of 115, Long Alley, Moorfields, to sell me the original blocks. I was a little surprised by his telling me that he was afraid it would be impossible to get any of the same kind cut again. When I proffered to get much better engraved, and give them to him in exchange for his old ones, he said, 'Yes, but better are not so good; I can get better myself. Now these are old favorites, and better cuts will not please my customers so well.'" We have before us several of the sheets for the present season, issued from the printing-office and toy warehouse of Mr. Pitts, in the Seven Dials; and we grieve to say that, for the most part, they show a lamentable improvement in the embellishments, and an equally lamentable falling-off in the literary contents. One of these sheets, however, which bears the heading title of "Divine Mirth," contains some of the _old_ carols, and is adorned with impressions from cuts, rude enough, we