HERE is nothing which more astonishes a foreigner, and frights a country squire,

T a than

the cries of London. My good friend Sir Roger often declares, that he cannot get them out of his head, or go to sleep for them the first week that he is in town. On the contrary, Will Honeycomb calls them the ramage de la ville, and prefers them to the sounds of larks and nightingales, with all the music of the fields and woods. I have lately received a letter from some very odd fellow upon this subject, which I shall leave with my reader without saying anything further of it.

Ί

'SIR,

'I AM a man AM a man out of all business, and would willingly turn my head to anything for an honest livelihood. I have invented several projects for raising many millions of money without burthen

1 The state of the streets under Queen Anne is described in Lauron's Habits and Cries of the City of London,' 1709. In The Funeral' (Act iv. sc. 3) Steele makes Trim say to some ragged soldiers: There's a thousand things you might do to help one about this town, as to cry, "Puff, puff pies! "_"Have you any knives or scissors to grind?" or late in an evening, "Whip from Grub Street, strange and bloody news from Flanders "Votes from the House of Commons "Buns, rare buns "Old silver lace, cloaks, suits, or coats “Old shoes, boots, or hats."> Other passages from Tom Brown, &c., will be found in Ashton's Social Life under Queen Anne,' ii. 152 seq.

ing the subject, but I cannot get the Parliament to listen to me, who look upon me, forsooth, as a projector; so that despairing to enrich either myself or my country by this public-spiritedness, I would make some proposals to you relating to a design which I have very much at heart, and which may procure me a handsome subsistence, if you will be pleased to recommend it to the cities of London and Westminster.

'The post I would aim at is to be comptrollergeneral of the London cries, which are at present under no manner of rules or discipline. I think I am pretty well qualified for this place, as being a man of very strong lungs, of great insight into all the branches of our British trades and manufactures, and of a competent skill in music.

'The cries of London may be divided into vocal and instrumental. As for the latter, they are at present under a very great disorder. A freeman of London has the privilege of disturbing a whole street for an hour together, with the twanking of a brass kettle or a frying-pan. The watchman's thump at midnight startles us in our beds, as much as the breaking in of a thief. The sow-gelder's horn has indeed something musical in it, but this is seldom heard within the liberties. I would therefore propose, that no instrument of this nature should be made use of, which I have not tuned and licensed, after having carefully examined in what manner it may affect the ears of her Majesty's liege subjects.

Vocal cries are of much larger extent, and indeed so full of incongruities and barbarisms, that we appear a distracted city to foreigners, who do not 1. A crack and a projector' (folio).

comprehend the meaning of such enormous outcries. Milk is generally sold in a note above Elah, and in sounds so exceeding shrill, that it often sets our teeth on edge. The chimney-sweeper is confined to no certain pitch; he sometimes utters himself in the deepest bass, and sometimes in the sharpest treble; sometimes in the highest, and sometimes in the lowest note of the gamut. The same observation might be made on the retailers of small-coal, not to mention broken glasses or brick-dust. In these, therefore, and the like cases, it should be my care to sweeten and mellow the voices of these itinerant tradesmen, before they make their appearance in our streets; as also to accommodate their cries to their respective wares; and to take care in particular that those may not make the most noise who have the least to sell, which is very observable in the venders of card-matches, to whom I cannot but apply that old proverb of "Much cry but little wool."

'Some of these last-mentioned musicians are so very loud in the sale of these trifling manufactures that an honest splenetic gentleman of my acquaintance bargained with one of them never to come into the street where he lived: but what was the effect of this contract? Why, the whole tribe of cardmatch makers which frequent that quarter passed by his door the very next day in hopes of being bought off after the same manner.

'It is another great imperfection in our London cries that there is no just time nor measure observed in them. Our news should indeed be published in a very quick time, because it is a commodity that will not keep cold. It should not, however, be cried with the same precipitation as "Fire': yet this

is generally the case: a bloody battle alarms the town from one end to another in an instant. Every motion of the French is published in so great an hurry that one would think the enemy were at our gates. This likewise I would take upon me to regulate in such a manner that there should be some distinction made between the spreading of a victory, a march, or an encampment, a Dutch, a Portugal, or a Spanish mail. Nor must I omit under this

head those excessive alarms with which several boisterous rustics infest our streets in turnip season; and which are more inexcusable, because these are wares which are in no danger of cooling upon their hands.

'There are others who affect a very slow time, and are in my opinion much more tunable than the former; the cooper in particular swells his last note in an hollow voice that is not without its harmony; nor can I forbear being inspired with a most agreeable melancholy when I hear that sad and solemn air with which the public is very often asked if they have any chairs to mend. Your own memory may suggest to you many other lamentable ditties of the same nature in which the music is wonderfully languishing and melodious.

'I am always pleased with that particular time of the year which is proper for the pickling of dill and cucumbers; but alas this cry, like the song of the nightingales, is not heard above two months. It would therefore be worth while to consider whether the same air might not in some cases be adapted to other words.

'It might likewise deserve our most serious consideration how far, in a well-regulated city, those humorists are to be tolerated who, not contented

with the traditional cries of their forefathers, have invented particular songs and tunes of their own: such as was, not many years since, the pastry-man, commonly known by the name of the Colly-MollyPuff; and such as is at this day the vender of powder and washballs, who, if I am rightly informed, goes under the name of Powder Watt.

'I must not here omit one particular absurdity which runs through this whole vociferous generation, and which renders their cries very often not only incommodious, but altogether useless to the public. I mean that idle accomplishment which they all of

be very proper that some man of good sense and sound judgment should preside over these public cries, who should permit none to lift up their voices in our streets that have not tunable throats, and are not only able to overcome the noise of the crowd, and the rattling of coaches, but also to vend their respective merchandises in apt phrases, and in the