ITINERANT MUSICIANS. 
55 
professors who in every country are the bane of true 
taste, and libellers of the art which they profess to 
illustrate. 
It must be admitted, however, that in spite of the 
extreme discordances of their popular music, it would 
be a grave mistake to suppose they have nothing more 
refined than what is generally heard at their feasts, 
processions, and village revels. There cannot be a 
more substantive fallacy than that which takes for 
granted that the itinerant musicians of India give a 
just idea of the progress of musical art among a people 
who were in the highest degree civilized, when in this 
land of social refinement the wicker idol yearly con- 
sumed its holocaust of human victims. We should have 
just as perfect an idea of musical science in England 
from the fiddle, bagpipe, and drum, of those vulgar har- 
monists who frequent the pothouses of St. Giles’s and 
Petticoat Lane, as we can form of that of the Hindoos 
from the wretched performances of their itinerant musi- 
cians. The fact is, that in all countries these are the 
very worst of their class, being for the most part com- 
mon vagabonds, who pick up a precarious livelihood in 
various ways, music being their ostensible profession ; 
but frequently exercising their ingenuity in the art of 
manual appropriation, when detection leads in this 
country to the gallows or the hulks, and in India to 
imprisonment or stripes. 
Ward, in his “ View of the History, Literature, 
and Mythology of the Hindoos,” mentions at least 
forty different kinds of musical instruments peculiar 
to their community ; and I have seen drawings of no 
less than thirty-six sorts, in which not more than 
