entire work with their own hands, have produced fiddles almost rivalling the old Cremonas in tone, and excelling them in workmanship; and I have seen some few specimens of this class realise by auction fifteen times the amount paid for their manufacture. The inundation of German fiddles, which may be bought new for a few shillings, has swamped the English makers of cheap instruments, of which there are by this time five times as many in the market as there is any occasion for. Hence it is that fiddles meet us everywhere; they cumber the toy-shop; they house with the furnituredealer; they swarm by thousands in the pawnbroker's stores, and block out the light from his windows; they hang on the tobacconist's walls; they are raffled at public-houses; and they form an item in every auctioneer's catalogue.

Meanwhile, the multiplication of rubbish only enhances the value of the gold; and a fiddle worthy of an applauding verdict from old Borax is more difficult of acquisition than ever. So I shall keep my Cremona.

GENESIS OF THE WORKERS.

66

THERE can be but few persons who have not occasionally remarked in the course of their dealings with the multifaced world of commerce, that certain trades and professions, and industrial employments, as well of the lowest as of the highest grade, have at least an apparent tendency to run, as it were, in certain channels, and to remain from one generation to another in the hands of a particular race, or of the inhabitants of a particular district-as though monopolised exclusively by them. Old clothes, and the trade in old clothes, is a case in point. A cast-off coat, a napless hat, a pair of seedy pantaloons, recalls the image of the perambulating Jew with his corpulent bag on his shoulders, and, it may be, seven several crowns to his hoary pate, and his familiar cry of Old Clo," by which, from time immemorial, he has asserted his prescriptive right to all such exuviæ. But this industrious and heavy-laden patriarch affords but a single illustration of a spirit, or a habit, or a destiny, or a something or other that perhaps Carlyle would call " an inevitable course of things," which does, in a rather singular and not very accountable manner, characterise the history of many of the various modes by which man transforms his industrial energies into a marketable commodity. No one well acquainted with the streets of Paris will have failed to observe the operation of a curious law, by which it would seem to be decreed, that the various out-door occupations of Parisian life are all severally monopolised by immigrants of the various departments, who come to the capital young, spend the best years of their lives in the

toilsome acquisition of just money enough to buy a couple of roods of ground in their native district, and that grand desideratum accomplished, retire to their homes, where, living upon the produce of their half-acre, with the reputation of landed proprietors, they spend the rest of their days. Every knife-grinder in Paris has the same "story to tell;" they all come from Auvergne, Savoy, Lorraine, or Piedmont; and they gratify at once their nomadic taste and their ambition, by trundling their rickety misshapen machines through the by-streets of the capital, grinding for bread or broken food, upon which they live, and rarely spending a coin when they receive coin for their labours. The hare-skin dealers are all from Auvergne-the charcoal-porters from the same place; the water-carriers, once a most numerous race, are either from the Cantal of Auvergne, or from Normandy, "that other Auvergne," whence come so many of the ragged naiads of the fruit, the flower, the vegetable, and the fish markets; the street-porters are invariably from the Puy-de-Dôme. There is no mistaking any of these for Parisians-the abominable dialect they speak, intelligible only to themselves, betraying their origin, and effectually confining them to their own class. We have no exact parellel to this in any occupations carried on in our metropolis; but we shall proceed, with the reader's permission, to notice some facts bearing on the physiology of trades and employments in some degree analogous to it, and which will not perhaps be found useless or uninteresting.

To begin with the bakers: an immensely disproportionate number of these are Scotchmen, who are said to be attracted to London by the margin of profit, which is a fraction wider here than it is in the north. They mostly do well; do not generally affect low prices, which are the ruin of many bakers; and the majority of the most respectable household bakeries are in their hands. Next to the Scotchmen, the most numerous are the men from Devonshire and the west of England. There are also a good many Germans, and one

or two Frenchmen, in the trade-the latter figuring only at the West End, and catering principally for the wants of their own countrymen. Londoners, of course, are not wanting; but of the whole batch it may truly be said, they enjoy the least credit, and are most involved in difficulties with their factors. It may be worth while to remark, that the inhabitants of London will not eat wholesome bread; if it is not whiter than the best wheat-flour will make it, a Cockney disdains it; so alum comes into use, causing about 10,000 indigestions a week; and then comes the doctor, to whom the baker is the best friend he has. We have a private opinion of our own, that if London bread were nothing but bread, the London mortality-bills would decrease a remarkable percentage.

Next door to our baker lives a barber, who tells us that half the barbers in London are London born, but that a good many of the fashionable hairdressers are from the wateringplaces and genteel towns. Both classes of workmen, he says, have a good character in town, and are sure of employment. People imagine that London sends hairdressers to all parts of the kingdom; but the fact is that every barber in the country comes to London, at some time or other, to improve, working for nothing the while, for the sake of learning the ladies' department. "After their return," says our oracle, "they announce themselves as 'from London,' finding their account in so doing. Some of the London hairdressers dub themselves Professors, and make large incomes by grease, cosmetics, and hair-dye, which latter, if once used, must always be used, and is generally sold at half-a-guinea the bottle, and costs a premium of a guinea to be taught how to use it. Sometimes, from constitutional peculiarity, it turns the hair green; and then, mayhap, a young lady of sixty requires to have her head shaved, and to shut herself up while a fresh crop is growing. Immense sums are made by hair-dye, some of the professors having a European con

nection, and travelling express to foreign capitals, disseminating youthfulness and beauty wherever they go." Our communicative barber, who is not perpetually shaving, ekes out his time by retailing tobacco, snuff, and eigars; by weav ing at a wig occasionally, and by breeding, and teaching, and doctoring canary-birds; upon all of which matters he has something to say that may be worth hearing. The tobacco trade, he says, is in the hands of Londoners, but the best tobacco decidedly comes from Bristol. The Jews have a good deal to do with cheap cigars, which are manufactured both by men and women; and some of them, he avers, may be made to smell uncommonly like a dish of cabbage by simply boiling them for an hour. In fine tobaccos and cigars, he adds, a most enormous trade is done; good tobacco ought to be smoked in a seasoned meerschaum. A meerschaum is seasoned in the following way: it is first swaddled ten or twelve deep in flannel cases; then it is consigned to the hands of a responsible life-guardsman, together with maybe twenty pounds of shag tobacco; the soldier undertakes that, once lighted, the pipe shall not be suffered to grow cold for six months; it becomes the pipe of perpetual peace in his keeping, and passes from comrade to comrade, day and night, till the whole period has expired, by which time it is burned. to a deep Vandyke-brown, and thoroughly seasoned. It costs perhaps £30, and takes a whole regiment of soldiers to do it! As to wig-making, all he does is in human hair, for which, using but a small quantity, he does not go to the hair-merchants, of whom there are but two or three in London; the hair is nearly all imported, as English girls are not fond of selling theirs: a good deal comes from Brittany, where a girl will sell her head of hair to buy a weddingdress. Touching the canaries, he knows all about them. The canary originally came from the Canary Islands; but he wouldn't buy birds from those islands now if they were offered to him, as the most part of them cannot stand our