Orders Grey, represented by a little girl in a hoop,
with a ship in the distance. All these as of yore,
when they were infinite delights to me.

On one of his explorations he met a landsman who told him
about the running down of an emigrant ship, and how he heard
a sound coming over the sea 'like a great sorrowful flute or
Aeolian harp.' He makes another and very humorous reference to
this instrument in a letter to Landor, in which he calls to mind

that steady snore of yours, which I once heard piercing
the door of your bedroom ... reverberating along the
bell-wire in the hall, so getting outside into the
street, playing Aeolian harps among the area railings,
and going down the New Road like the blast of a trumpet.

The deserted watering-place referred to in _Out of the Season_
is Broadstairs, and he gives us a further insight into its
musical resources in a letter to Miss Power written on July 2,
1847, in which he says that

a little tinkling box of music that stops at 'come'
in the melody of the Buffalo Gals, and can't play 'out
to-night,' and a white mouse, are the only amusements
left at Broadstairs.

'Buffalo Gals' was a very popular song 'Sung with great
applause by the Original Female American Serenaders.' (_c._
1845.) The first verse will explain the above allusion: