University of Virginia Library

AFTER THE OPERA.
A FEW GRAVE REMARKS WHILE SUPPER IS COMING.

The Cinderella-tude of Madame Pico's own situation,
in the operatic corps, and her still disputed claim
to the “glass slipper” of preference, sent us to Palmo's,
to-night, with somewhat of an owl upon our
shoulder. We dreaded Prince Public's final choice
between her and the favorite daughter of Don Magnifico—for
the real-life opera had come to its last act,
and, as she should or should not, make the most of
the opportunity (of which we had done our best to
be the “Pilgrim Alidoro”), she would, or would not,
wear to-morrow the crown of Palmo-dom. The curtain
is down, and—

ENTER SUPPER FOR NO. 184.

Before we grow too enthusiastic for the nice distinctions
of criticism, let us say a word of the general
performance of the opera. Why the frisky Signor
Antognini, whose conceit,

was cast in a part that the unemployed Perozzi would
have done so much better, and so much more agreeably
to the public, we have no Italian spectacles to
see. And—apropos—if it is the object of the company
to please and draw, why did not Borghese (except
that silver is less tractile than gold) take the second
role in this opera, as Pico did in Lucrezia Borgia?
The part sustained by Miss Moss has rather
more scope in it than that of Orsini, and how vastly
more attractive the opera, so cast, would be to the
public! Signor Tomasi showed the vertebræ in his
voice, to-night, more than he did in Belisario—probably
from stooping with difficulty to the comic; but
Sanquirico—what shall we say of his admirable personable
of Don Magnifico? We'll drink his health
by way of answer. (A lei, Sanquirico!) And so
ends our fault-finding.

SECOND GLASS.

This glass of purple Tinta, steeped in the latitude
of Italy, tastes, of course, of the climate of Pico's
voice; and we are glad to vary, with this redolent
bumper, the avenue to our heart—so breaking up the
ear's monopoly of toll. Health to Cinderella triumphant!
Her voice has a flavor—(if this wine be
like it—and it is the sun's fault if it is not like it—for
the same cupful of his mellow light fed the grape
from which gushed the wine and the lip from which
poured the melody)—worthy of the immortality of
Falernian. (For this discovery of homogeneousness
of pulp we beg a medal from the Institute.)

We were afraid, as we said before, that Pico, “like
a careless farrier, would lame her well-shod glory
with the last nail,” but she sang throughout with unblemished
deliciousness, and the “piu mestar,” at the
close, fairly took the town! Nothing has been heard
like it, in this city, since Malibran, either in voice or
execution. We have made up our mind about Pico.
Her abandon is like the apparent carelessness of all
kinds of genius—fearless trust after finished study.
Of that desperate and intoxicating let-go, Borghese
has none. She is artistic and careful in the most passionate
extremity, dying, even, “with her wits all
about her.” Pico fastens each link of the composer's
melody in her brain, with workmanlike fidelity; but
when she comes out from her music-smithy, she
brings with her no memory of the clink of hammer
and rivet. In that relying forgetfulness lies the mystery
of her charm. It is recognised, by the instinct
men have that this is the quality of those who do
best—statesmen or soldiers, poets or lovers—the most
successful, in all enterprises, throwing themselves on
what they have once made up their minds to, as a
bird launches from the cliff. Nature prodigally seconds
the unhesitating trust of Pico's execution. Her
voice follows her concerted thought with the certainty
of a shadow and the fulness of a floodtide. The
plentitude of every shade and semi-tone, insures,
in the first five minutes of hearing her, an absence
of all dread of flaw or falling off—an assurance,

that whatever height or depth she stoops her neck to
swoop for, it will bring, for the listener,

WE DRINK TO THE JACOB'S LADDER OF MUSIC.

A new light breaks upon us as to the uses of the
opera. As (to the wicked) common speech is a convenience
and swearing a luxury, so poetry is a convenience
to passion, and music its luxury. An unharmonized
shout—a succession of cries—may mean
anything; but a chorus, or a concerted transition of
cries, has a meaning to convey floodtides out of the
soul. Poetry may fall cold upon the eye, but music
must melt in the ear. These premises allowed, the
opera becomes (does it not?) a healthful vent to the
passions of a metropolis—a chance (for those who
long to swear and do violence), by a more innocent
“giving way,”

How common the feeling “to want a spree!” and
who that for three hours has choked back tears in his
throat, and been enraptured with a contralto across
the footlights, is not ready to go to bed like a gentleman?
An opera is a blessed succedaneum to the
many. To the few it is the loan of a dictionary from
Heaven! Thoughts otherwise mute—feelings whose
dumbness is the inner man buried alive, leap to free-breathing
utterance with music. It is for this reason
that an unknown language is the best vehicle for an
opera. We wish to hear the harmony, and let our
souls furnish the articulation. Don't you see, now,
my dear “Bohemian Girl!” the plain reason of the
platitude of English opera! Italian music has words
to it, and so has a dancing-girl a carotid artery—but
you wish to feel your own heart beat delightfully, and
not to count the quickening pulses of Taglioni's—
you wish to embark your own thoughts in music's enchanted
boat, and not see how it was first laden with
other people's. A man's soul can have nothing in it
unsaid, when he wants a libretto to help him listen
understandingly to Pico!

And now, having translated into grammatical English,
the inarticulate contents of a chicken's breast,
and a pint-bottle of Tinta (for the benefit of a public
to whom these eloquent midnight companions would
otherwise have spoken in vain), let us to bed—apropos-imously
remarking, that, in the paragraph precedent
to this, there is a hint as to the uses of an opera,
worthy the attention of the society of moral reform.
As the clergy are, probably, asleep at this hour (3
o'clock), we say no more.

(Exit “184,” with a candle.)

The Mirror held up to the Times.—It is a
trick of ours to begin at the other end, when the subject
would otherwise open dry—bespeaking attention,
as it were, by first naming the inducement. As we
have lately been pulled up for not giving credit, we
may as well mention, that we took this peculiarity of
style from Mother Goose's politic inducement to the
five reluctant patrons of the milkpail:—

Silk gown:—we are about to show how we have
arrived at the conclusion, that, in the state of the
country now “opening up,” it will be necessary for
every gentleman to be a pugilist.

We beg to premise, that the state of things we are
about to show forth is by no means a sign of republican
retrogression. We are about to record no dis
paragement to the outline of the republic. It is a
pyramid, in fair progression, but refinement sits within
it like an hourglass. Half-way up the ascent of
political perfection, the social diagram within is at its
inevitable “tight place;” and while we remember on
what a breadth of polite foundation public opinion
built up society at the Revolution, and while we believe
that, half a century hence, we shall have as refined
standards as any country on earth, we believe
that, now, there is a squeeze upon good-breeding in
this country (less protection for private rights and
feelings than there was once, and will be again), and it
is as well that those who are to suffer by the tight
place should be prepared to stand it.

To protect that upon which the proprictor has a right
to put a value, is the object of law and civilization.
Five dollars, paid back, will satisfy a man who has
been robbed of five dollars; but the thief goes to
prison besides. A wound given to a man is soon
healed and forgotten, but the assailant is condemned
for a felon. A newspaper-attack upon a man, for peculiarities
with which the public have no business,
may be a deeper offence to him than the loss of half
his fortune, yet the attempt at remedy by law is worse
than bearing it in silence. The damages given are
trifling and nominal, and the prosecution propagates
the evil.

The above is a skeleton statement, to which the
memory of every newspaper-reader will supply the
flesh-and-blood illustrations. A late decision in Massachusetts,
justifying an unnecessary libel on the
ground of its truth, threw off, to our thinking, the last
skin of the metamorphosis. There is left, now, no
protection, by law or public opinion, to anything but
the pocket and the person of the citizen. His private
feelings, his domestic peace, his hard-won respect
from other men, his consciousness of respectability
abroad—commodities of more value to him than
money—are outlawed, and, if wronged, left to his individual
avenging.

Few republicans need to be told that the law casts
no formidable shadow unless shone upon by public
opinion. The law of libel is powerless, because the
license of the press is agreeable to the public. If it
were not so, the libeller would not find himself, after
conviction, still on the sunny side of public favor—
nor would judges charge juries with the little emphasis
they do—nor would juries give, as they do, damages
that turn the plaintiff into ridicule!

There is another thing that republicans need not be
told: that where a just remedy is denied by the law,
the individual takes the penalty into his own hands—
the same public that left him to administer it, kindly
warding off the law when he is tried for the retributive
assault and battery. A case of this sort lately
occurred in the tabernacle city. A family of the
most liberal habits and highest private worth—just
risen to wealth by two generations of honest industry
—chose to marry a daughter with entertainments proportionate
to their fortune. A malicious editor, avowedly
“to make his paper sell,” and for no other reason,
came out with a foul-mouthed ridicule of the
festivities, that completely destroyed the happiness of
the brightest domestic event of their lives. One hundred
thousand dollars would have been no inducement
to the family to suffer the pain and mortification that
were, and will be for years, the consequences of that
unprovoked outrage. But where lay the remedy?
The law would perpetuate the ridicule, without giving
damages that would outweigh the additional sale
of the paper. It chanced, in this case, that the injured
man was of athletic habits and proportions, and
the editor was small and puny. The plaintiff (that
would have been, had there been public opinion to
give power to the law) called on the defendant (that
would have been) and whipped him severely; and

when tried for the assault and battery, was punished
with a fine next to nothing. The public opinion of
the city of “broad philacteries” virtually justified
both outrages. But where would have been the remedy,
if the physical superiority had been on the other
side, or if the popular blight-monger had been an
unassailable cripple?

Another case of legal justification of club-law lately
occurred in this city. It is so marked an instance,
also, of the social impunity of printed injuries (the inflictor,
Mr. Gliddon, being still a popular lecturer,
and glorified daily by the model family-newspaper of
Boston), that we venture to quote three or four passages
from the libel. Mr. Cooley, the flogger, had
described, with humorous ridicule, some people he
saw in Egypt, and Mr. Gliddon takes it for granted
(though it is denied by Mr. Cooley) that the ridicule
was aimed at himself and his father. A pamphlet of
thirty or forty pages of abuse of Cooley is the retort
to this supposed allusion, and from a notice of the
pamphlet in a daily paper, we copy three or four of
its quoted sentences:—

“If, since the publication of `The American in
Egypt,' it be a work of supererogation on his part
(Gliddon's) to place upon public record the petulant
vagaries of an upstart, to recall the petty shifts of an
itinerant miser, to unmask the insidious insipidities of
a would-be author, or to refute the falsehoods of a
literary abortion, it will be allowed that the deed is
none of his seeking, but has been fastened on him, as
the only course within the letter of American laws
whereby a poltroon can receive chastisement from
those who would have gladly vindicated their honor
by means to them far more satisfactory.”

“Again Mr. Gliddon says: `I grieved that, not having
been gifted with prophetic vision. I neglected to
apply it [the corbash] in the Thebaid to Mr. Cooley
himself, for I may never have such an eligible chance
again.”'

“Had he been in Cairo at the time [of my departure
from that city], he should have laid aside all official
character, even at the risk of eventual censure,
and Mr. Cooley should not have perpetrated his pasquinade
in `Arabia Petrea and Palestine,' before he
[Giddon] had hung a `cowskin on those recreant
limbs!”'

“If he [Gliddon] do not now apply a horsewhip to
Mr. Cooley's shoulders, it is solely because, in a community
among which both are residing, the satisfaction
he should derive from a physical expression of
his obligations to Mr. Cooley, might prove more expensive
than the pleasure is worth.”

“Our relative positions have been, and, so far as
may depend on him, will remain perfectly distinct;
for possible affluence will never raise Mr. Cooley to
the social standing of a gentleman.”

“Mr. Cooley's fractiousness is confined to paper
pellets. Innate cowardice is a guaranty for his never
resorting to a different manifestation of his vicious,
though innocuous waspishness.”

The first time Mr. Cooley saw Mr. Gliddon after
these expressions of restrained warlike impatience, he
gave him a beating. Mr. Gliddon prosecuted him for
assault and battery, recovered “five dollars damages,”
and went on lecturing with high popular favor. What
was Mr. Cooley's remedy for being published as “no
gentlemen,” a “miser,” and a “coward,” who had
three times escaped personal chastisement? Mr.
Cooley is not the “loafer” these epithets would seem
to make him. He is a man of fortune, and a most
excellent citizen, with highly-respectable connexions,
and a hearth blessed with the presence of beauty and
refinement. A duel would have brought upon him
a ridicule more formidable than personal danger—the
law on the subject is a cipher—and, to remove the
pointed finger from waiting on him at his very table,
he was obliged to chastise the man who stigmatized
him.

One more proof of the same new state of things,
though in a different line. A highly-educated young
lawyer in this city, in canvassing for the whigs, during
the late political contest, was severely whipped by
three members of the leading democratic club. He
lay a-bed a week, recovering from his bruises, and, at
the end of that time, walked into a meeting of the
club referred to and demanded a hearing. Order was
called, and he stated his case, and demanded of the
president of the club that a ring should be formed,
and his antagonists turned in to him—one after the
other. It was enthusiastically agreed to, and the
three bullies being present, were handed over to him
and handsomely flogged, one after the other. Of
course this is not all we are to hear of such a man;
but who will deny, that when he comes to stand for
congress, he will not have counterbalanced, by this
act, the disadvantage of belonging to one of the most
aristocratic families of the city?

We are expressing no discontent with our country.
We are playing the Mirror only—showing the public
its face, that it may not forget “what manner of man”
it is. We have shown by facts, that there is no more
remedy among us, for the deepest injuries that can
be inflicted, than there is among wild beasts in the
forest. Duelling is as good as abolished, we rejoice
with all our hearts—but it owes its abolition to the
country's having sunk below the chivalric level at
which that weed could alone find nourishment. We
leave to others to draw conclusions and suggest remedies.
We are not reformers. We submit. But we
should think a man as improvident, not forthwith to be
rubbing up his sparring, as a gentleman would have
been in Charles the Second's time, to have walked
abroad without his sword. They have a saying in
the Mediterranean (from the custom of yoking a hog
with a donkey together for draught), “You must
plough with a hog if you stay in Minorca!”

Rev. Sidney Smith's description of himself from a
letter to a correspondent of the New York American.—
“I am seventy-four years old; and being a canon of
St. Paul's, in London, and rector of a parish in the
country, my time is equally divided between town and
country. I am living amidst the best society in the
metropolis, am at ease in my circumstances, in tolerable
health, a mild whig, a tolerating churchman, and
much given to talking, laughing, and noise. I dine
with the rich in London, and physic the poor in the
country—passing from the sauces of Dives to the sores
of Lazarus. I am, upon the whole, a happy man,
have found the world an entertaining world, and am
heartily thankful to Providence for the part allotted to
me in it.”

We can add a touch or two to the auto-sketch of
the witty prebend, who, we think, is one of the men
most thought about just now. He is a fat man,
weighing probably between two and three hundred
pounds, with a head and stomach very church-man-like
—(that is to say in the proportion of a large church
with a small belfry)—a most benevolent yet humorous
face, and manners of most un-English boisterousness
and cordiality. At a party he is followed about, like
a shepherd by his sheep, and we remember, once, at
his own house, seeing Lord Byron's sister, the Hon.
Mrs. Leigh, one of the laughing flock browsing upon
the wit that sprung up around him. One would
think, to see him and know his circumstances, that
the gods had done their best to make one of the Mr.
Smiths perfectly happy.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

(In reply to our respected private correspondent, and the
editor with his puddle against every man, and every man's
inkstand against him.)

When is a statesman beyond accusation? Not while
he is still armed in the arena!—NOT while he has
neither dismounted from the car of ambition, nor,
even once, made sign to the world, that he would fain
stop and turn his face to his Maker!

We are understood as referring to Mr. Adams.
We consider this present active member of congress
as, beyond competition, the most potent spirit in
America. “Venerable” he is—and “his hand trembles”—but
his venerableness is a cavern of power, and
his uplifted forefinger

We know there is a level on the mountain of life,
where the air is pure and cold—a height at which impurity
can scarce come, more, between the climber
and his God—but, it is above where the lightning comes
from—it is above the dark cloud where sleeps the
thunder, collected from below, and charged with inseparable
good and harm. This incorrupt level is, at
least, one step above the cloud in which Mr. Adams
has pertinaciously lingered; and if his friends insist
that he has been long enough lost to common scrutiny
to have reached the upper side of the cloud of dangerous
power, we must be excused for pointing our conductor
till he is done stirring in the thunder.

Persuade us that Mr. Adams is so “venerable” as
to have outlived all liability to the license described
by the poet:—

Persuade us that a vindictive man may be safely bowed
before, for an angel, with his hand, for the first time,
fetterlessly clutched on this world's thunderbolts!
Persuade us that Mr. Adams could not stoop his
statesmanship to resent, and that he is not one of those
dreaders of political extinction, who feel that “not to
be at all is worse than to be in the miserablest condition
of something.” Persuade us, in short, that no
provocation in argument, no lull of responsibility, no
oracular unanswerableness, no appetite for the exercise
of power, no
could tempt Mr. Adams, with his present undiminished
mental vigor, to swerve a hair line from good—by
weight thrown upon public measure, or by influence
wrongfully exercised over the fair fame of the dead
and the private feelings of the living—persuade us
of all this, and we will allow that he is beyond—
“venerably” beyond—the remindings of human censure!

But now—having arms-lengthed it, in reply to a
very formal letter we received last evening condemning
the admission into our columns of a communication
accusatory of Mr. Adams—let us come closer to the
reader with a little of our accustomed familiarity.

We were called upon a day or two since, by one
of the first scholars and most intelligent of business-men
among us—this communication in his hand.
He left us to read it at our leisure. We, at first,
were unpleasantly affected by it, and slipped it upon
our refusal hook—sorry that so great a man as Mr.
Adams should have an unbeliever (and so weighty an
unbeliever), in greatness so ready for its closing seal.
We should have stopped at this regret, probably, and
only thought of the subject again when returning the
manuscript, but that we had been previously impressed
with our friend's courage in historical justice—on a
wholly different subject. This brought about the
sober second thought, and we turned it over somewhat
as follows:—

Of the allowed Upper Triumvirate of this country
—Clay, Jackson, and Adams—the peaceful good
name of the first is, just now, closed for history, by
his willing relinquishment of public action. The
world owes him the glorified repose for which he has
signified his desire. The second has also retired;
and, though he sometimes has sent his invincible
banner to wave again in the political field, it would
be a harsh pen that would transmute, and make readable
by judicious eyes, the silly abuses syringed at
the venerable old chieftain by the Bedouin squirt of
the “Express.”

The third—Mr. Adams—we could not but feel, at
once, was off the pedestal where the world had willingly
placed him, and had come down, once more

(We shall be pardoned, by the way, for quoting what
is recalled by this chance-sprung quotation—a comparison
which seems to us singularly to picture Mr.
Clay and Mr. Adams as to loftiness of public life and
motive.) Dante says:—

We felt, at once, that this latter character—this
aliquis in omnibus, nihil in singulis—was, as displayed
in Mr. Adams's career, rather the mettle of invincible
obstinacy and unrest acting upon strong talent, than
the ring of the clear metal of human greatness. There
was nothing in Mr. Adam's life of toil that had not
fed his innate passion for antagonism. He was a born
ascetic, in whose nostrils the fiery perils of other men
were but offensive smoke—who had no temptation to
softer pleasure than a pasquinade against a political
rival—who had made the most of the morality which
came natural to him, and which, in this land, covers
more sins than charity. He was not, like Clay and
Jackson, great in spite of the impassioned nature for
which we (so inconsistently), love the man and disclaim
his greatness. He has been the terror of his
time for wounds worse than murder—yet gave no
stab that could be “stopped with parsley.” He
needed no shirt of penance to make him remember
that

He has profited by men's not remembering that (in
the zoology of the pleasures), the sin of the sloth
were a merit in the armadillo—one hating to move,
and the other hating to be still, and both tested by
their activity of motion. In short, Mr. Adams—
though he has unquestionably walked to the topmost
stone of the temple of statesmanship, and is now the
third greatest man in the country that shakes under
him—has exclusively pampered his own desires, topmost
and undermost, by the practice of the virtues
that have shielded him. The toils that have advanced
him were begun in the pastime of an aristocratic
youth; and position, up to quite the end of that
“second heat” of his ambition-race, was an inheritance
perseveringly thrust on him. Can such a man, while
our destiny is still hourly hanging on his lips, be
“venerable” beyond the possibility of censure?

With this unwilling mental review of the “boiled
peas” of Mr. Adams's pilgrimage to greatness—unwillingly,
as it was irresistibly and truthfully disparaging—we
reverted to our first picture of his present
position. We had been truly, and even tearfully, affected,
on seeing the old man, at the late festival of
the Historical Society—doubtless very near his grave,
but fighting his way determinately backward through
the gate of death—and we expressed ourself in terms
of high respect and honor, when we wrote of it the
morning after. It is a recompensing ordinance of
Nature, that the glory and virtues of a great man accompany
his person and his sins lie where they first
fall—in the furrow of history. It is hard to look upon
any man's face, and remember ill of him; and there
is many a great man, who has a halo where he comes,
and none where he is heard of.

We remembered nothing disparaging to Mr. Adams
that evening. But in our office, with a shade drawn
over our eyes, to compel a disagreeable decision of
duty, we saw that the age and decrepitude, which
apparently exacted submission to his will, had left no
joint open in his harness, looseued no finger upon his
weapons of attack. He can defend himself—he has
hundreds to defend him, should he be silent. His
much talked-of “diary” lacks no evidence that truth
can furnish; and if the charges against him are “mere
cobwebs in a church bell,” the best of prayers is, that
he may burst them with one stroke of living triumph,
and not leave even that slight violence to be done by
the knell of his departure.

The last thought that came to us, and the only one
we thought necessary for a preface to the communication,
was, that now would probably be the time chosen
by Mr. Adams himself for denying (and they MUST
BE DENIED!) these indictments against his greatness.
The five years' silence that will follow his death, had
better harden over no ulcer—to be re-opened and
cleansed, to the world's offence, hereafter. We took
some credit to ourself, for simply saying this, without
recording what we have been compelled to record now
—the reasons of our thinking gravely of the communication.
We would have taken the other side
and entered into the defence quite as willingly—but
the writer, as well as Mr. Adams, is a man not to be
denied a hearing. We may perhaps be permitted to
close this article—written in a most unwonted vein,
for us—with a little editorial comfort from Shakspere:—

“Money Article” on the Opera.—We were delighted
to hear it whispered about at the opera, last
night, that there is a movement among the people of
taste and influence to “set up,” by a liberal subscription,
the present excellent, but impoverished and
struggling operatic company. The first thought that
occurs to any one hearing of this, would, probably, be
a surprise that, with such full houses as have graced
the opera, they have not been thriving to the fullest
extent of reasonable expectation. We understand,
however, that it is quite the contrary. When the
present company commenced their engagement, there
was an arrearage of gas expenses to be paid up, the
license was to be renewed, at $500; and the house,
even when full, gives but a slender dividend over the
expenses of the orchestra, scenery, lights, stage properties,
and dresses. At the only “division of the
spoils” that has yet been made, Madame Pico received
but sixty dollars—so insufficient a sum being
all that this admirable singer has received for several
months' waiting, and one month's playing and singing!
Her dresses alone cost her twice the sum! Borghese
received twice this amount, but the other performers,
of course, much less even than Pico.

In the history of the first introduction of Italian
music into England, in 1692, it is stated that the singers
(an “Italian lady,” a basso, and a soprano) were
taken up by two spirited women of fashion, wives of
noblemen, who arranged benefit concerts at their own
houses, for the “charming foreigners,” and inviting
their friends as if to a ball—demanding five guineas
for each invitation! The rage for these expensive
concerts is recorded as a curious event of the time,
and it was a grievous mark of unfashionableness not
to be honored with a ticket.

The American public is a hard master to these
children of the sun. They take no comfort among
us, if they lay up no money. Our climate is both
dangerous and disagreeable! Our usages, and prejudices,
and manner of life, all at variance with theirs!
Their hearts are bleak here, and their pockets at
least should have a warm lining! And (by the way)
see what a difference there is, even between our country
and chilly England, in the way society treats
them! We chance to possess an autograph letter of
Julia Grisi's, given us by the lady to whom it was
addressed—a daughter of Lucien Bonaparte married
to an English nobleman. Look at the position this
little chance record reveals of a prima donna in England:—

“Aimable et tres chere Princesse!—

“Je suis vraiment desolée de ne pouvoir aller ce soir chez
Lady Morgan. Je dine chez le Prince Esterhazy ou je dois
passer la soirée. Demain au soir, j'ai un concert pour M. Laporte,
le reste de la semaine je suis libre et tout à vos ordres.
Si vous croyez de combiner quelque-choze avec Lady Morgan,
comptez sur moi! Demain je passerai chez Lady Morgan
pour faire mes excuses en personne.

“Que dirai-je de ce magnifique voile! Que la generosité e
l'amabilité sont innées dans la grande famille.

“Croyez tonjours, madame la princesse, à tout le devouement
de votre servante, Julia Grisi.

“Milady D— S—.”

We chance to have another dramatic autograph, a
note of Leontine Fay's, given us by the same noble
lady (and we may say here, apropos, that we should
be very happy to show these, and others, to persons
curious in autographs)—showing the same necessary
reliance on special patronage:—

“Theatre Francais.

“M'lle Leontine Fay a l'honneur de presenter ses humble
respects a Lady D—, et de solliciter sa puissante protection
pour la soirée qui aura lieu a son benefice Vendredi, 10 Juliet.
Le choix des pieces et les noms des artistes qui veulent bien
contribuer a son succès lin font esperer que miladi, qui aime
à encouragér les arts, daignera l'honorer de sa presence.”

This is dated from the French theatre in London,
but we treasured up the autograph with no little avarice,
for Leontine Fay was in the height of her glory,
in Paris, when we first went abroad, and, to us, she
seemed a new revelation of things adorable. She
was made for the stage by nature—as scenery is
adapted by coarse lines for distant perspective. Her
eyes were dark, luminous, and of a size that gave
room for the whole audience to “repose on velvet” in
them.—But we wander! We resume our subject,
after saying that we never envied prince or king, till
we heard, at that time, that Leontine Fay passionately
loved the prince royal—the young duke of Orleans.
He is dead, she is grown ugly, and we are left
to admire Pico. “Much after this fashion,” etc., etc.

Grave people (though by no means all grave people)
are inclined to bid the opera “stand aside” as a
thing unholy. We think this is a mistake. We believe

music to be medicinal to body and soul. With
entire reverence, we take leave to remind the religious
objector of the cure of Saul, and to quote the passage:—

The medicinal value attached to music by the ancients
is also shown in the education of Moses at the
court of Pharaoh. Clemens Alexandrinus has recorded
that “Moses was instructed by the Egyptians
in arithmetic, geometry, rhythm, harmony, but, above
all, in medicine and music.” Miriam sang and danced
in costume, and David “in his linen ephod,” and the
only reproach made by Laban to Jacob, for carrying
off his two daughters, was, that he did not give him
the opportunity to send him away “with mirth and with
songs, with tabret and with harp.” We refer to these
historic proofs, to remind the objecting portion of the
community that scenic musical representation was a
vent for domestic and religious feeling among the ancients,
and that, in an opera—particularly one unaccompanied
by modern ballet—there is no offence to
moral feeling, but, on the contrary, authorized good.

To revert to our purpose, in this article—(chronologically,
somewhat spready!)—We do not know
what shape the aroused liberality of the wealthy classes
of New York will take, but we should think that
Madame Pico—(as she has given us the most pleasure,
at the greatest expense to herself, and is an unprotected
and exemplary woman, alone among us)—
should have a special benefit by subscription concert,
or some other means as exclusive to herself. We
suggest it—but we presume we are not the first it has
occurred to. Will the wealthy gentlemen who are
nightly seen in the dress-circles, delighted with her
exquisite music, turn the subject over at their luxurious
firesides?

To and about our Correspondents.—We wish
to “define our position” with regard to our correspondents
and their opinions.

Were an editor to profess an agreement of opinion
with every writer for his paper, he would either claim
a superhuman power of decision on all possible subjects,
at first sight, or he would exclude communications
on all subjects, except his own mental hobbies
and matters of personal study and acquaintance. To
avoid both horns of this fool's dilemma, he opens a
correspondence column, in which anything (short of an
invasion of a cardinal virtue, or violation of a palpable
truth) may very properly and irresponsibly appear.
The only questions the editor asks himself are, whether
it will interest his readers, and whether it is worth its
space in the paper.

But there are people for whom it is necessary that
we should go back to the very catechism of political
economy, and show upon what principle is founded
the expediency of a FREE PRESS—a press untrammelled
by a king in a kingdom, and by the sovereign republicans
in a republic.

Opinions have been well likened to steam—powerless
when diffused abroad, resistless when shut in and
denied expansion. The unconscious apostleship of
Mr. Adams—procuring an explosion in favor of abolition,
by his obstinacy in provoking an undue suppression
of the subject—is a striking illustration of this.
Nothing makes less impression on the mind than ab
stract principles to which there is no opposition—
nothing is dearer to the heart than opinions for which
we have been called on to contend and suffer. A
free press, therefore, keeping open gate for all subjects
not prohibited by law and morals, is far safer
than a press over-guarded in its admissions to the
public eye.

Having thus repeated, as it were, a page of the
very spelling-book of freedom, let us bespeak, of our
subscribers, a let-off, as far as we personally are concerned,
for any decent opinions expressed under the
head of “correspondence.” We throw open that part
of our paper. It is interesting to know what people
think who do not agree with us. We court variety.
We would not (in anything but love) be called a bigot.
New opinions, even the truest, are reluctantly
received, and, we think, very often culpably distrusted.
As far, therefore, as the yea or nay may go, on any
proper subject, we care not a fig which side writes
first to us, and we hereby disclaim responsibility for
all articles under “our correspondence,” except on the
score of morals and readableness.

The Opera.—The Puritani is one of those operas
with which musical criticism has little or nothing
to do. If only tolerably sung, the feeling of the audience
goes on before—making no stay with fault-finding.
The applause last night, after a most limping
and ill-paced duett between Tomasi and Valtellina,
was tempestuous; and Antognini, in one passage, ran
off his voice, and was gone for several notes in some
unknown region, and yet, on spreading out his hands
immediately after, there was great approbation by the
audience! Great effort was made by the audience to
encore “Suoni la tromba,” but the two bases thought
more basely of their bases than the audience, and did
not repeat it. Is there no way to implore Valtellina
to abate a little of his overreaching of voice, in that
superb invocation? He overdoes it terribly.

We are not writing in very good humor, we are
afraid—but the enthusiasm of a crammed house needs
no propping. We would not find fault if they needed
our praise. Borghese did well—but will do better at
the next representation. She would sing with fuller
tone for a little egg beat up with brandy. We longed
to unreef her voice—in some way crowd a little more
abandon into it. She acted as she always does—to a
charm.

Pico was in one of the proscenium boxes, looking
very charming, and evidently enjoying the whole opera
with un-envious enthusiasm. She went with a
bouquet for Borghese—so said a bird in our ear.