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But one of the most curious features of the scene is the number of sailor ballad-singers, who, after singing their verses, hand you a printed copy, and beg you to buy. One of these persons, dressed like a man-of-war's-man, I observed every day standing at a corner in the middle of the street. He had a full, noble voice, like a church-organ; and his notes rose high above the surrounding din.
Many of our ballad-singers are disguised emigrants; and I know a ci-devant Marquis who is, incognito, a groom to a contractor, the son of his uncle's porter. Our old pedlars complain that their trade is ruined by the Counts, by the Barons and Chevaliers who have monopolized all their business.
That was figured with white fleurs-de-lis, and that too was drenched with tears. Whereupon, all being in readiness, Misery smiled craftily, and said: "In the time that is passed I have overthrown high kings and prophets, and sorcerers also, as when Misery half carelessly made sport of Mithridates and of Merlin and of Moses, in ways that ballad-singers still delight to tell of.
Here were the tub-thumpers of the Revolution holding forth at every public place; the strident voices of ballad-singers at the street corners; hawkers of the latest pamphlets hot from the Quai des Augustins; the sellers of journals crying the Père Duchesne, L'Ami du Peuple, the Jean Bart, the Vieux Cordelier. Crowds gathered round Bassett's famous shop for caricature at the corner of the Rue St.
My readers may perhaps be inclined to smile, when I mention among the causes of Napoleon's elevation, the use made by him of ballad-singers, newsmongers, pedlars, &c. But really, on a deliberate view of his system of juggling and deception, I am inclined to believe, that it was one of his most powerful engines. The people of France are not only the most vain, but the most credulous in the world.
Each night between the bonfires there was entertainment men who walked tight-ropes, wrestlers, a performing horse, ballad-singers and, dearest delight of all, the tellers of Eastern tales, who sat with silent rings of men about them and reeled off the old, loved, impossible adventures of the days when the gods walked with men on earth stories of miracles and love and derring-do, with heroes who could fight a hundred men unscathed, and heroines to set the heart on fire.
His negotiations were foiled by the frenzy of the one country and the pride of the other. At home his enemies assailed him with a storm of abuse. Pope and Johnson alike lent their pens to lampoon the minister. Ballad-singers trolled out their rimes to the crowd on "the cur-dog of Britain and spaniel of Spain."
In fact the regiment, superficially viewed, looks like an immeasurable motley flood of discharged play-actors, funambulists, false prophets, drunken ballad-singers; and marches not as a regiment, but as a boundless canaille, without drill, uniform, captaincy or billet; with huge over-proportion of drummers; you would say, a regiment gone wholly to the drum, with hardly a good musket to be seen in it, more a canaille than a regiment.
From the street came a confused uproar of ballad-singers, bawling women, babies, and drunken sailors. And this is England?
The master of his chapel he called a bishop, who had under him his deans, archdeacons, and vicars, each receiving great salaries; the bishop four hundred crowns a year, and the rest in proportion. He also maintained a whole troop of players, including ten dancing-girls and as many ballad-singers, besides morris-dancers, jugglers, and mountebanks of every description.
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