the climax of the three royal favourites for
dismal and revolting offensiveness. The
language is not to be understood without a
garotter's or a burglar's glossary to explain
the "slang," the "flash," the "cant," and the
"rommany," with which it is interlarded.
One stanza will be more than sufficient for
our pages. "Chickaleerie," it appears, stands
for Whitechapel, and "bloke" is nineteenth
century English for a man, or for a thing
that so calls itself when it does not call itself
a "swell."

I'm a Chickaleerie bloke with my one, two, three,
  Whitechapel was the village I was born in,
For to get me on the hop, or on my tibby drop,
  You must wake up very early in the morning;
I have a rorty gal, also a knowing pal,
  And merrily together we jog on,
I do not care a flatch, as long as I've a tatch,
  Some pannum for my chest and a tog on.

Let those who will, refer to Mr. Hotten's
"slang dictionary" for an explanation of the
strange words in this thieves' vocabulary. For
ourselves we can say, that with every disposition
to be tolerant, to make allowances for
defects of education and for evil culture, and
above all, with a desire to discover a soul of
goodness in things evil, it is difficult to
understand how any one claiming even on the
most inadequate pretence to possess the most
average share of human intelligence can take
pleasure, with or without the accompaniment of
beer and tobacco, in the hearing or the reading
of such inane trash as this. We have heard
it pleaded as some excuse for the disgraceful
success of these songs, that the melodies to which
they are sung are lively, sometimes even pretty,
and always easily caught by the ear, and that
the public of the Music Halls tolerates the
words for the sake of the music. There is
undoubtedly a certain truth expressed in this view.
But the main question remains unaffected by it.
What is to be said of the popular taste which,
under any circumstances or for any reason,
tolerates the words at all?

A great portion of the very thin, attenuated,
and all but imperceptible "fun" of the comic
songs of the present day, or at least of such of
them as flourish at the Music Halls, consists in
calling women "feminines," or "female
women." To take a walk with a "feminine" on a
Sunday, or to be jilted by a "false feminine,"
and to relieve the misfortune by "gin," or a
flirtation with a "new feminine," or to steal
down the area of a gentleman's house to visit
a "feminine," or a "female woman," who acts
as cook, and to be regaled by her on the cold
beef and mutton of her master, until the alarm
is raised that the "missus" is coming, when
the visitor is safely stowed away in the
coal-cellar until the danger of discovery is past; these
are the telling hits at the Music Halls, if the
Music Hall song-books tell the truth. Of course
the policeman does not escape caricature when
any little incident of this kind is to be described;
though if the comic song-books are to be believed,
not only policemen, but mechanics,
linen-draper's assistants, and merchants' or lawyers'
clerks, are just as fond of the cook's mutton,
as the policeman, and just as ready to descend
to low manœuvres and mean arts to get a share
of it. It is not that this picture of the
unmarried portion of the lower stratum of the youth
of the middle class in our age is a true one;
but it is the fact, that it should be accepted as
true, and laughed at as such, that shows the
deplorable vitiation of the popular taste of
London.

Anyone who enjoys such literary offal as
we here describe, may find it at the Music
Halls, where one performer earns his thousand
or fifteen hundred pounds a year, and rides in
his brougham from one place to another, singing
the same song eight or ten times in the evening,
to new and delighted audiences. Or if our
investigator recoil from such haunts, he may
read comic song-books, closely protected by a
copyright that will not permit the infringement
or piracy of anything so valuable—and
so ignoble. Extracts from the song-books
lie before us; but we cannot in justice to our
readers, degrade these pages by presenting any
more specimens of that combination of stupidity
and vulgarity in their most offensive form which
produces the Music-Hall literature of the
present day. Let it be enough to say, that the
three extracts already given are perfectly fair
samples by which to estimate all the rest.

The all but worn-out saying of the nameless
friend of Fletcher of Saltoun, who, in
the days before newspapers, declared that he
would rather be the song-writer than the
law-giver of the people, has a side to it that its first
utterer never imagined; for if the song-writers
of the people are of the class that provide the
Music Halls with their "fun" and their morality,
the administrators of the law, if not the
law-makers, are likely to have extra work. When
the song-writer teaches virtue, celebrates true
love, exalts patriotism, and has no ridicule
to throw except at the harmless follies and
small vices of the people, he is a power in
the state. When he reverses the process,
sneers at virtue, ridicules the great and the
heroic in character, and borrows, as his
choicest vehicles of expression, the language of
burglars and beggars, he also becomes a power
in the state, but a power for evil. The greater
the popularity which he achieves, the more
certain the mischief he causes. The question is a
large one—too large for adequate discussion
here. All that needs to be said on the
subject is, that he who would thoroughly
understand the present sordid and dirty vulgarity
of our great cities, should dip into the literature
of the Music Halls. The study will not be
pleasant, but may prove to be instructive. The
English were said, by the old French chronicler,
to amuse themselves sadly; and anything sadder,
in every sense of the word, than the comic
songs that are popular in London in the year
1868 is difficult to imagine. There is no escaping
the conclusion that the taste of a large