I have this week given a daguerreotype of a well-known long-song seller, and have preferred to give it as the trade, especially as regards London, has all but disappeared, and it was curious enough. "Long songs" appeared between and years ago.

The long-song sellers did not depend upon patter—though some of them pattered a little— to attract customers, but on the veritable cheapness and novel form in which they vended popular songs, printed on paper rather wider than this page, " songs abreast," and the paper was about a yard long, which constituted the "" yards of song. Sometimes slips were pasted together. The vendors paraded the streets with their " yards of new and popular songs" for a penny. The songs are, or were, generally fixed to the top of a long pole, and the vendor "cried" the different titles as he went along. This branch of "the profession" is confined solely to the summer; the hands in winter usually taking to the sale of song-books, it being impossible to exhibit "the yards" in wet or foggy weather. The paper songs, as they fluttered from a pole, looked at a little distance like huge much-soiled white ribbons, used as streamers to celebrate some auspicious news. The cry of man, in a sort of recitative, or, as I heard it called by street-patterers, "singsong," was, " yards a penny! yards a penny! Beautiful songs! Newest songs! Popular Songs! yards a penny! Song, song, songs!" Others, however, were generally content to announce merely " yards a penny!" cried " under a fardy!" As if songs were to be sold for a farthing. The whole number of songs was about . They were afterwards sold at a halfpenny, but were shorter and fewer. It is probable that at the best had the songs been subjected to the admeasurement of a jury, the result might have been as little satisfactory as to some tradesmen who, however, after having been detected in attempts to cheat the poor in weights and scales, and to cheat them hourly, are still "good men and true" enough to be jurymen and parliamentary electors. The songs, I am informed, were often about yards, (not as to paper but as to admeasurement of type); yards, occasionally, at , and not often less than yards.

The crying of the titles was not done with any other design than that of expressing the great number of songs purchasable for "the small charge of penny." Some of the patterers I conversed with would have made it sufficiently droll. man told me that he had cried the following songs in his yards, and he believed in something like the following order, but he had cried penny song books, among other things, lately, and might confound his more ancient and recent cries:

"I sometimes began," he said, "with sing- ing, or trying to sing, for I'm no vocalist, the few words of any song, and them quite loud. I'd begin

The Pope he leads a happy life,

He knows no care——

'Buffalo gals, come out to-night;' 'Death of Nelson;' The gay cavalier;' 'Jim along Josey;' 'There's a good time coming;' 'Drink to me only;' 'Kate Kearney;' 'Chuckaroo--choo, choo--choo--choot--lah;' 'Chockala--roony--ninkaping--nang;' 'Pagadaway-dusty-kanty-key;' 'Hottypiegunnypo- china-coo' (that's a Chinese song, sir); 'I dreamed that I dwelt in marble halls;' 'The standard bearer;' 'Just like love;' 'Whistle o'er the lave o't;' 'Widow Mackree;' 'I've been roaming;' 'Oh! that kiss;' 'The old English gentleman,' &c., &c. &c. I dares say they was all in the yards, or was once, and if they wasn't there was others as good."

The chief purchasers of the "long songs" were boys and girls, but mostly boys, who expended or for the curiosity and novelty of the thing, as the songs were not in the most readable form. A few working people bought them for their children, and some women of the town, who often buy anything fantastic, were also customers.

When "the yards was at their best," the number selling them was about ; the wholesale charge is from to a dozen, according to size. The profit of the vendors in the instance was about a dozen. When the trade had all the attractions of novelty, some men sold dozen on fine days, and for or of the summer months; so clearing between and a day. This, however, was not an average, but an average might be at a week profit. I am assured that if persons were selling long songs in the street last summer it was "the outside," as long songs are now "for fairs and races and country work." Calculating that each cleared in a week, and to clear that took , the profit being smaller than it used to be, as many must be sold at each—we find expended in long songs in the streets. The character of the vendor is that of a patterer of inferior genius.

The stock-money required is to ; which with for a pole, and for paste, is all the capital needed. Very few were sold in the public-houses, as the vendors scrupled to expose them there, "for drunken fellows would snatch them, and make belts of them for a lark."