I also miss the legitimate artistic successors of the two reduced Signori who were formerly wont to execute pleasing feats in concert upon a wiry piano on wheels, harnessed to a duet-proof white horse with un-commonly hirsute fetlocks, and upon a weak violin, which its owner or lessee used to extract from a gloomy-looking black leather case with a tender care that would not have been exaggerated in connection with the handling of a priceless Guamerius or Amati. Those dejected but able executants used to play, moreover, duos of a class that has long been forgotten in this country — thinly spun-out arrangements of obscure Italian operas by Mercadante and Paesiello, which had never taken root in popular favour on this side of the Channel. Why, I would ask, has so much of this eccentric but eminently entertaining alfresco music disappeared from our streets, leaving open-air London so much duller and less eventful than it was between the date of Her Majesty's accession to the Throne and the outbreak of the Crimean war?