University of Virginia Library

“Dear Willis: You frightened me to-day, terribly,
in the hint you threw out in the course of conversation
with the `brigadier,' to wit: `Shall we
make it into a monthly?'

“Make the Weekly New Mirror into a monthly!
God forbid! I forbid, anyhow. `Who are you?' I
am a live Yankee, at your service, who lives in the
land of soles and codfish, whig pow-wows and democratic
clam-bakes—one who has not been so `decorously
brought up,' perhaps as some of your readers,
but `a man for a' that'—a constant reader of the Mirror,
at any rate—proof of my manhood, eh?

Well, sir, I, Newman Noggs, Esq., of Lynn, county
of Essex, etc., etc., do hereby seriously and ardently
protest against any such nonsense as is implied
in the above question. Excuse me, sir, but I couldn't
help it. I feel so worked up at the bare idea of the
visits of the Mirror coming only monthly, that I can
hardly stick to decency. Why, sir, I shouldn't be in
trim for my sabbath-day meeting—albeit a pious man
am I—were it not for the `preparatory' study in the
Mirror, Saturday nights. Not that you are so dreadfully
religious, but there is always sure to be something
in you that makes me feel better, and when I
feel `better' I want to go to church, of course, to let
myself and the world know that I'm getting kind o'
good. As for the literary merits of the Mirror, it
don't become the like o' me to be offering an opinion.
All I've got to say is, that I `individually' like it first-rate.
There's a sort of racy, spicy, off-hand, unstudied
wittiness about it that takes my eye amazingly. So,
for God's sake, or more particularly for my sake, dear
Willis, don't ye change it. Suppose it does cost
some folks a little more for postage than it would for
something else—what o' that? Who's afraid of a
cent or two? I'm a poor man 'long side o' some folk,
and yet I rather pay letter-postage than have it stop.
So, Willis dear, just tell your postage friends to economize
in some other department, or, if they can't do
that, tell 'em I'll make it up to 'em.

“No, no, friend of my early youth, don't think of
any such thing, that is, if ye love me—for I could
better spare—something better, than the piquant dish
of conversation which weekly (oh, let it be ever weekly)
occurs between `mi-boy' and our dearly-beloved
general, the `brigadier.'

“Mrs. Noggs, too—a strong woman, by the way—
is, nevertheless, weekly on this point, very. She says
she'll never forgive you if you change the fair form
of the Mirror. Think o' that! Though not a vain
woman, she has a passion for looking into the Mirror

that is very affecting. On the other hand, she says
if you'll give up the horrid notion of changing the
form of the Mirror, she'll fry you `a nipper' as
brown as a nut, with her own fair hands, when next
you come Bostonward, and will visit our humble
cottage near the sea. I have ye now! For my well-tried
friends, Gentleman Charles (him of the Astor
house, I mean) and his handsome partner, tell me
you are a gallant youth and well affected toward the
ladies.

“We shall look anxiously in the next Mirror to find
our anxious hopes confirmed, and, if not disappointed,
shall henceforth, as in duty bound, ever pray for your
everlasting welfare, world without end.

“Dear Bel-Phœbe: I have been `twiddling my
sunbeam' (you say my letters are `perfect sunshine')
for some time, more or less, in a quandary as to what
is now resolved upon as `Dear Bel-Phœbe'—the beginning
of this (meant-to-be) faultless epistle. I
chanced to wake critical this morning, and, `dear
Phœbe,' as the beginning of this letter of mine, looked
both vulgar and meaningless. I inked it out as you
see. A reference to my etymological dictionary,
however, restored my liking for that `dear' word. It
is derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb Der-ian, which
means to do mischief. Hence dearth, which, by doing
mischief, makes what remains more precious, and
hence dear, meaning something made precious by having
escaped hurting. `Dear Phœbe,' therefore (meaning
unhurt Phœbe), struck me as pretty well—you being
one of those delicious, late-loving women, destined
to be `hurt' first at thirty. Still, the sacred word
`Phœbe' was too abruptly come upon. It sounded
familiar, and familiarity should be reserved for the
postscript. I should have liked to write `dear Lady
Phœbe,' or `dear Countess Phœbe'—but we are not
permitted to `read our title clear,' in this hideously-simple
country. Might I invent an appellative? We
say char-woman and horse-man—why not put a descriptive
word before a lady's name, by way of respectful
distance. Phœbe Lorn is a belle—why not
say Bel-Phœbe? Good! It sounds authentic. This
letter, then, is to Phœbe, unhurt and beautiful (alias),
`Dear Bel-Phœbe!'

“You are an ephemeron of a month—the month
at Saratoga, in which you get wings to come forth

from your eleven months' chrysalis in the country—
and you are now once more `gathered to your fathers,'
and mourning over the departed summer! Your
Arabian mare feels your thrilling weight again, and
you astonish your pet cow with sponge-cake over the
lawn fence, and give caraways to your top-knot hens,
and say `Sir' to your greyhound, and make-believe
care for your dahlias and tube-roses—but the pleasantest
part of the day, after all, is its heavenly twilight
of closed eyelids, when you can live over again that
month at Saratoga—myself, perhaps, then, cursorily
remembered! For you rejoice in the perils of love,
unhurt and and adorable Phœbe!

“But you know enough about yourself and you wish
to hear about the town! Well!—the flies are numb
with the first frost, the window-blinds are open nearly
to Union square, somebody has been seen with a
velvet waistcoat, starch is `looking up,' and the town
is full of palmetto-hatted and ready-made-clothing-ized
southerners. By these data judge of the epoch. I,
myself, am among my dusted household gods, and,
at this moment (writing in my bed-room) see my boots
phalanxed in their winter parade. I must say it is, so
far, pleasant! Perhaps—but you want news, not the
philosophy of boots in repose.

“You heard of the marriage of one of our wild Indians
to an English girl, not long ago in London.
She has been at the Waverley some days, and has
excited no little curiosity. She is moderately handsome,
but in such an unusual style of beauty that she
out-magnetizes many a more strictly beautiful woman.
My vaurien friend, F., the artist (who chanced to dine
opposite the chief and chief-ess at the table-d'hote a
day or two since), declares the face to be wholly
unique, and a sufficient explanation of the extraordinary
whim of her marriage. I have never, myself,
wondered at it. The crust, impenetrable upward, of
English middle life, is enough to drive genius of any
kind more mad than this! What hell like inevitable
mediocrity in anything! This fine woman, now going
to live a dog's life with an Indian in the wilderness,
would have spent her days in a brick row, and grown
idiotic with looking out upon the same sidewalk till
death. Which would you rather?

“Do you remember (for beautiful women don't always
remember beautiful women) the adorable Mrs.
C., at Saratoga—that charming specimen of a healthy
and practicable angel? She has been here a week on
her return from Niagara, and Flagg, the beauty-painter,
has stolen a copy of her on canvass. Ah, Bel-Phœbe!
You have a loss in not realizing what it is to a man
when an exquisite face holds still to be critically admired!
You can see the grain of the velvet in her
brown eye, now, and trace by what muscle her heart
pulls, to keep down that half-sad corner of her delicious
mouth! He is an appreciator, that Flagg, and paints
a woman as she looks to appreciators—differently from
the butchers'-meat estimation of common gazers on
beauty. Mrs. C., has gone to Baltimore, where
beauty is an indigenous drug—belles of that `city
rich in women' being never valued till transplanted.
But heavens! how tired you will be of reading this
long female paragraph! Hasten to speak of something
with a man in it!

“One of the most fascinating men in England is
ekeing out an exile from May fair, by singing and
lecturing on songs to the delighted Croton drinkers.
He is a man of that quiet elegance of address that
seems nothing in a woman's way till she has broken
her neck over it, and he sings as such a man shouldn't
—to be a safe man, that is to say! Fancy Moore's
songs any more bewitched than Moore intended!
Mr. McMichael's voice glides under your heart like
a gondola under a balcony—Moore's melody representing
the embellished and enriched moonlit water. It
is the enchanted perfection of lover-like, and gentle
man-like song-singing. I heard Moore sing his own
songs in England, and Mr. McMichael sings them in
the same style—only in apotheosis! (Ask your papa
to translate that big word.)

“Do you care about theatres? We have a new
tragedian, about whose resemblance to Macready the
critics are quarrelling, and a new tragedian-ess who
has put the boxes into fits by coming on the stage
without a—bustle! (Fancy Desdemona without a
bustle!) Of course you are surprised, for this is one
of these `coming events' that could not possibly `cast
their shadows before,' but fashion is imperative, and

I understand the omnibuses are to be re-licensed to
carry fourteen inside, and the shops in Broadway are
petitioning (so Alderman Cozzens told me to-day) to
put out bow-windows, in expectation of the vacated
space.

“Seriously, there has been a growing mistrust
(Pearl-streetingly speaking) of the article woman, as
shown to customers! Thank fashion, there is more
chance now of a poor youth's knowing the (`ground
covered by the imposing obligations of matrimony!')

“As to the fault found with Anderson—his resemblance
to Macready—I see it in no objectionable
particular, unless it be the incorrigible one, of a mutual
brevity of nose. He was educated to his profession
by Macready, and of course has his master's severe
taste, and smacks somewhat of his school, which is a
good one. I like him much better than I do Macready,
however, for, though he has most of his excellences,
he has none of his defects, and, in voice
and pliancy of action, he is much that artificial man's
superior. Criticism aside, Anderson plays agreeably
and makes you like him, whereas Macready, playing
ever so well, does it disagreeably, and makes you dislike
him! But I am no judge—for I would rather sit
on a sofa by most any woman than sit in a box during
most any play. Pity me!

“Hast thou great appetite, and must I vouchsafe
thee still another slice of news? The new hotel up-town
is waxing habitable, and the proprietor is in a
quandary what to call it. The natural inquiry as to
what would be descriptive, has suggested a look at the
probabilities of custom, and it is supposed that it will
be filled partly with that class of fashionables who feel
a desire to do something in life besides laboriously
`keep house,' partly by diplomatists and dandies wishing
to be `convaynient' to balls and chez-elles, and
partly by such Europeanized persons as have a distaste
for American gregariousness, and desire a voice as to
the time and place of refreshing and creature. The
arrangements are to surpass any previous cis-Atlantic
experience, and the whole project is considered as the
first public flower of the transplanted whereabout of
aristocracy. It has been proposed to call it May Fair
Hotel—`May Fair' being the name of the fashionable
nucleus of London. Hauteville Hotel has
been suggested, descriptive of its position up-town.
Hotel Recherche, Hotel Choisi, are names proposed
also, but more liable to criticism. I, myself,
proposed A L'ABI—as signifying a house aside from
the rush of travel and business. Praise that, if you
please! Billings, the lessee, is a handsome man, of a
very up-town address, with the finest teeth possible for
the welcome to new-comers—this last no indifferent
item! He is young—but young people are the
fashion. `Young England' and `Young France'
wield the power. I have not mentioned the system
of the hotel, by the way, which is that of Meurice's
at Paris—a table-d'hote and a restaurant, and dinner in
public, or private, or not at all, at your option. Charming—wont
it be?

“Crawford, the sculptor, has come home from Italy,

and, as he is the American, par excellence, in whom
resides the sense of beauty, I trust he may see you.

“What else had I to say? Something—but I'll
write it on a slip, for it will be personal, and you like
to show all your letters to `the governor.'

“Adieu, dear Bel-Phœbe, and pray tear up the slip
enclosed as soon as you have recovered from fainting.
Yours at discretion. “Cinna Beverley, jr.”

“Fanny Forester.”—We have been accused, face
to face, several times, and by letter once or twice, of
being, ourself, that bewitching masquerader. We have
conjured some variety out of our workyday quill, it is
true, and have an unfulfilled and recorded vow of a
new alias—but in “Fanny Forester” there resides a
dimpled youthfulness and elasticity that is not found
so many miles on the road as our present sojourn!
Oh no, sweet Fanny! they slander you and do too
much credit to our industry and versatility! Those
who wish to know more of Fanny Forester, may hear
of her, now, among the high-priced contributors of
Graham and Godey.

Dr. Lardner's Lecture.—We did not chance to
hear Dr. Lardner's excellent and amusing lecture on
the “London literati,” etc., but the report of it in the
“Republic” has scraped the moss from one corner of
our memory, and we may, perhaps, aid in the true
portraiture of one or two distinguished men by showing
a shade or two in which our observation of them
differed from that of the doctor. We may remark
here, that Dr. Lardner has been conversant with all
the wits and scholars of England for the last two or
three lustrums, and we would suggest to him that,
with the freedom given him by withdrawal from their
sphere, he might give us a book of anecdotical biography
that would have a prosperous sale and be both
instructive and amusing. We shall not poach upon
the doctor's manor, by the way, if we give our impression
of one of these literati—himself—as he appeared
to us, once in very distinguished company, in
England. We were in a ball in the height of the
season, at Brighton. Somewhere about the later
hours, we chanced to be in attendance upon a noble
lady, in company with two celebrated men. Mr.
Ricardo and Horace Smith (the author of Brambletye
House, and Rejected Addresses), Lady Stepney,
authoress of the “New Road to Ruin,” approached
our charming centre of attraction with a proposition
to present to her the celebrated Dr. Lardner. “Yes,
my dear! I should like to know him of all things!”
was the reply, and the doctor was conjured forthwith
into the magic circle. He bowed “with spectacles
on nose,” but no other extraneous mark of philosopher
or scholar. We shall not offend the doctor by stating
that, on this evening, he was a very different looking
person from his present practical exterior. With
showy waistcoat, black tights, fancy stockings and
small patent-leather shoes, he appeared to us an elegant
of very bright water, smacking not at all, in manner
no more than in dress, of the smutch and toil of
the laboratory. We looked at and listened to him,
we remember, with great interest and curiosity. He
left us to dance a quadrille, and finding ourself accidentally
in the same set, we looked at his ornamental
and lover-like acquittal of himself with a kind of wonder
at what Minerva would say! This was just before the
doctor left England. We may add our expression of
pleasure that the Protean facility of our accomplished
and learned friend has served him in this country—
making of him the best lecturer on all subjects, and
the carver out of prosperity under a wholly new
meridian.

But, to revert to the report of the lecture:—

“The doctor gave some very amusing descriptions
of the personal peculiarities of Bulwer and D'Israeli,
the author of `Coningsby,' observing that those who
have read the works of the former, would naturally
conclude him to be very fascinating in private society.
Such, however, was not the case. He had not a
particle of conversational facility, and could not utter
twelve sentences free from hesitation and embarrassment.
In fact, Bulwer was only Bulwer when his
pen was in his hand and his meerschaum in his mouth.
He is intimate with Count D'Orsay, one of the handsomest
men of the day, and in his excessive admiration
of that gentleman has adopted his style of dress,
which is adapted admirably to the figure of the second
Beau Brummell, but sits strangely on the feeble, rickety
and skeleton form, of the man of genius.”

Now it struck us, on the contrary, that there was no
more playful, animated, facile creature in London
society than Bulwer. He seemed to have a horror
of stilted topics, it is true, and never mingled in general
conversation unless merrily. But at Lady Blessington's,
where there was but one woman present
(herself), and where, consequently, there could be no
têtes-á-têtes, Bulwer's entrance was the certain precursor
of fun. He was a brilliant rattle, and as to any
“hesitation and embarrassment,” we never saw a
symptom of it. At evening parties in other houses,
Bulwer's powers of conversation could scarce be fairly
judged, for his system of attention is very concentrative,
and he was generally deep in conversation with
some one beautiful woman whom he could engross.
We differ from the doctor, too, as to his style of dandyism.
Spready upper works, trousers closely fitting to
the leg, a broad-brimmed hat, and cornucopial whiskers,
distinguished D'Orsay, while Bulwer wore always
the loose French pantaloon, a measurable hat-brim,
and whiskers carefully limited to the cheek. We
pronounce the doctor's astrology (as to these stars)
based upon an error in “observation.”

The reporter adds:—

“D'Israeli he described as an affected coxcomb,
with a restless desire to appear witty; yet he never
remembered him to have said a good thing in his life
except one, and that was generally repeated with the
preface, `D'Israeli has said a good thing at last.”'

That D'Israeli is not a “bon-mot” man, is doubtless
true. It never struck us that he manifested a “desire
to appear witty.” He is very silent in the general
melée of conversation, but we have never yet seen him
leave a room before he had made an impression by
some burst in the way of monologue—either an eloquent
description or a dashing new absurdity, an anecdote
or a criticism. He sits indolently with his head on
his breast, taking sight through his eyebrows till he
finds his cue to break in, and as far as our observation
goes, nobody was ever willing to interrupt him. The
doctor calls him an “affected coxcomb,” but it is only
of his dress that this is any way true. No schoolboy
is more frank in his manners. This is true, even since
D'Israeli's “gobble up” of the million with a widow.
When we were first in London, he was the immortal
tenant of one room and a recess, and with manners
indolently pensive. Three years after, returning to
England, we found him master of a lordly establishment
on Hyde Park, and, except that he looked of a
less lively melancholy, his manners were as untroubled
with affection as before. We do not in the least
doubt the sincerity of the doctor's report, but it shows
how even acute observers (we two are that, doctor!)
will see the same thing with different eyes. This
article is too long.

New York has an unsupplied want—no less a thing
than a FASHIONABLE PROMENADE. Broadway, that

used to be the parade of all that was feminine, fashionable
and fair, has been, for some time, only a walk of
plain-dress-necessity to the noli-me-tangeries, and it
will soon be left entirely to the deaf and the humble
—so intolerable is the Bedlam racket of its abominable
omnibuses! (To get an audible answer to the “How
do you do?” one has need to take one's friend into a
store.)

Our ladies have done like the English, in giving up
shopping and walking the street in full dress, and now,
where is to be the English or French substitute—
our Hyde park or our Bois de Boulogne? Ladies,
in London, are supposed to be so incapable of walking
at all in the street, that, if they do so, it is rather
well-bred not to recognise them in passing. But
after shopping in disguise in Regent street (their
Broadway) they go home and “dress for the carriage,”
and drive out to meet all the world in the “Rotten
row” of the park. Up and down this half mile they
follow in slow procession, meeting as slow a procession
going the other way, and bowing at every carriage
length, and, no public hack being admitted into the
park, those who have no carriages have no promenade!

Don't let us improve with our eyes shut! We have
taken off our foot of fashion from one round of the
ladder. How long is it to be suspended in the air—
for, a driving park is the next inevitable step upward?

Odd Enough.—The best view of Trinity steeple and
almost the only view of Trinity church, is across some
old one-story wooden groceries in Greenwich street,
the spectator standing upon the opposite sidewalk!
“We never know to whom we look best,” said we to
the steeple, when we discovered it! To Broadway-gazers,
Trinity steeple is a Gothic column. The body
of the church is wholly lost as to effect, and it was a
great mistake not to set it sidewise upon the street.
But, let us suggest something to the enormously
wealthy vestry of that church. There is not a valuable
building, nor scarce a lot unoccupied by a nuisance,
between this splendid fabric and Greenwich street.
How easy to buy this advantageous slope, and make
of it an ascending foreground, unequalled except by
the ascent to the capitol at Washington! Besides
the addition to the beauty of the city, it would give
another “lungs” to the neighborhood of Wall street,
and grace, fitly and with additional beauty, the resting-place
of the gallant and lamented Lawrence.

Change in New York Habits.—The great peculiarity
of America—our gregariousness, as shown in
our populous hotels—has taken a large stride on its
way to the exclusivism of Europe. The office of the
lessee of the new hotel up-town has been overrun with
applicants, and most of them, we understand, with a
view of availing themselves of its privileges as a hotel
garni—or furnished house where the meals are discretionary,
as to place, time, and price. Let us look
a little into this.

A gentleman arrives at a London hotel. He alights
at the door of what resembles a private house. He is
shown to a small parlor and bed-room, and left alone
with his baggage and the peculiarly neat and unsociable
chairs and table. He orders his dinner and tea,
and it is served to him alone. He is as much alone
the remainder of the day and evening, and from that
time to doomsday, if he stay so long; and there is no
place about the house where he can vary this loneliness,
except the coffee-room, where the parlor class
of lodgers have no errand and rarely go. His engagement
with the landlord is to pay so much, by the day,
for his rooms, and for whatever else he chooses to order.
What with the absence of books, and all the comforts
and trifles that give a look of home, and, on the other
hand, the lack of the American compensations, such
as reading-room, ladies' drawing-room, sitting-rooms,
and thronged halls and entries, the solitude and gloom
of a hotel in the heart of London could scarce be
exceeded.

But, admirably suited as is the American system of
hotel to the relief and pleasure of the stranger and
traveller, there is a class of hotel-lodgers who would
be more comfortable in New York were there a hotel
after the European fashion—and it is with a view to
this class, mainly, that the new hotel up-town has
been designed. We refer to the class who wish a
luxurious home, but can not afford time, trouble, or
money, to be housekeepers. There are many families
of this description—families who pass the summer in
the country, but in the winter reside in town, and,
dreading the trouble and expense of a town house,
would still prefer a private table and drawing-room.
For such, a hotel garni, with elegant suites of apartments
and a restaurant on the floor before, is the well-adepted
provision, and this class is sufficiently large
to more than warrant the enterprise of the hotel up-town.

The great mass, however, even of families (and
certainly of bachelors), prefer the gregarious hotel,
where two or three hundred people form almost one
family, where eating and dancing and social pleasures
are all enjoyed in common, and where business and
amusement are closely, and without foresight or
trouble, closely intermingled. This style of living
best suits the great mass of a business community, and
it will not be till we have a ruling proportion of aristocratic
idlers, that the gregarious hotel will go out of
fashion. That may be fifty years hence, or our “gregariousness”
may become a national peculiarity, and
the Astor “stay put” for a century.

We speak the Tuscan, and lively Mr. Palmo is
betrayed by his soft c to be a Piedmontese or a Venetian—else
we should venture to give him the ideas
here-below embodied, in his own lingua de belleza.
We beg his worthy and eloquent legal counsellor,
however (whom we have the pleasure to know), to
translate to him, through some medium more pellucid
than the last, the nicer shades of our meaning. We
put up our prayer for its happy voyage to the manager's
harbor of comprehension.

An OPERA, like a woman, is never to be taken literally.
It is not, exclusively or mainly, a place wherein
to hear good music. If the music be the best that
can be procured (though it were only the best in
Ethiopia), the uncrowned but very executive King
Public is content. “Our” ear is merciful! But the
opera is a place for the advancing of two ends more—
human tenderness and human vanity. Ten go thither
to flirt, and forty to be seen, where one goes to pamper
his auricular nerve upon a cadenza. We don't see
that this requires enlarging upon.

We wish to enlighten those who have hitherto been
proudly content with their own country (haven't travelled,
and that's the reason), as to the true uses of the
opera abroad—the way it is truly used, that is to say,
where sing Rubini and his starry troupe. First, as to
construction. The London opera-house (like the
Parisian) is composed of a hundred or more private
boxes, and a pit. The private boxes are used by their
lady-proprietors to receive company during the evening,
and the pit is used to reconnoitre the boxes, to lounge,
to chat, and to be visible in white gloves and opera-glass
(this last a most necessary demonstration by
those who would not otherwise be considered “men
about town”). We have not yet mentioned the listening

to the opera. This very subordinate part of the
evening's entertainment commences at the signal
“sh!” “sh!” from the connoisseurs, indicating that
some favorite aria is commencing which is worth listening
to, or a duett or quartette, or fine point of
action, coming off, and, till this is past, the audience,
above and below, is breathlessly still and attentive. At
all other times during the performance of the opera,
it is rather green than otherwise to pay attention to
the stage, and anybody who should request that his
neighbors would not converse during the recitativo
secco, would be smiled at as “capital fun!” The
opera, in short, is considered as a help, an accompaniment
(or, if you like, a stop-gap) to conversation, and
the consequence is that nowhere are people so much at
their ease, and nowhere are so many bright and merry
things said as at the opera! We'll mend our pen,
dear reader, while you compare this with the quaker-meeting
attention so tediously given at Palmo's.

But this is to be mended (the practice, we mean—
the pen does pretty well), and the first thing we wish
to suggest to Mr. Palmo is an improvement in the
“fop's alley” part of it. To go round behind the
boxes, as the house is constructed now, is formidably
conspicuous, unless one has a direct errand to the lady
next the stage; yet this, with the exception of having
a seat in the pit, and sitting in it, is the only way to
get a look at the house and “see who is there.” Let
Mr. Palmo drop a staircase, passing under the stage-box
to the front of the pit, and there would be an excusable
lounge of observation all round the house—a
prodigious difference in the attraction for the dandies,
let us assure you, signor! You need the dandies!
You wish to make it among the necessities of
a “man about town,” that he should have a season-ticket
to the opera. But it is no pleasure to sit
cramped and silent in one seat, and no pleasure to
come in and stand behind the audience for the whole
evening, or for an hour. It would be a pleasure to
see the audience from the front, and that can not be
done now, without a pretty “cool” walk to the orchestra
and back. Now could it?

We have two or three other propositions to make
for the improvement of the social opportunities of
the opera, but this will do for to-day. Addio, signore!

We cordially approve of the reason for, and the
feeling which prompted the following paragraph.
We have the pleasure of knowing the three gentlemen
mentioned in it, particularly the urbane captain,
and we wish the Howards a happy retirement, and
Captain Roe a-bounding prosperity—but this done,
we wish to note a nationality as it passes; and first,
to quote a paragraph:—

“It has been announced in various quarters that
the Messrs. Howard, who have established the hotel
so extensively and favorably known as Howard's Hotel,
have disposed of that establishment to Captain
Roe, of the “Empire” steamboat. * * *
As for the Howards, we are glad that they have done
so well. We presume that, being relieved now from
the labor of keeping such a large establishment, they
will retire to some of those beautiful retreats with
which their native state, Vermont, abounds.”

It will be seen at once that a traveller who should
measure this trio by the European scale of condition
in life—(rank these gentlemen, that is to say, with
“mine host” in any other part of the world)—would
make a blunder. The difference between an American
hotel-proprietor, and a London Boniface, is not
merely that our hotels are six times as large. It is
not merely that he is six times as great a “proprietor.”
The vocation is almost wholly different—and
the difference is a result of the totally different hab
its of the two countries. In London, you may, by
chance, see the “land-lady,” daily, but you may be
months in the house without seeing the “land-lord.”
(Two terrible misnomers, by-the-way, for the hostess,
though she has no land, is not a lady but as a landlady,
and mine host is far enough from a lord with
land, though he is no lord except as a land-lord!)
The English host, therefore, is never an acquaintance
of his guest, and the guest knows his hostess only in
the quality of an upper servant. The reader will
have recognised the difference we wish to point to.
The American hotel-keeper has charge, not of twenty
or thirty people living wholly in their own private
rooms, but of two or three hundred, whose habits are
all gregarious, and to almost every one of them he (the
landlord) is a personal and familiar friend. The extent
of this friendly intercourse with persons mostly
of the better class, gives to the hotel-proprietor a
mass of influence, direct and indirect, which makes
him a very important person in the community. He
is continually appealed to for knowledge on popular
subjects, such as is got only by great facilities of hearsay.
He is often made a reference in disputes, from
his necessary habit of impartiality. He is intrusted
with deposites of great value by his guests, and is the
confidant-general of the secrets and difficulties of
strangers, and of travelling lovers and mourners.
Ladies and families are committed to his charge.
Public entertainments are given by his advice and direction;
and, in short, he has so much harm, and so
much good influence, in his power, that he is, necessarily,
a person of high moral character, superior
judgment, discretion, and information—without all
which public opinion would not tolerate him in his
place—and, with which, while in the full exercise of
his vocation, he naturally holds a high station of republican
social rank. It is in tacit obedience to this
scale of valuation, that the change of masters in a
public hotel is made the subject of newspaper announcement
and comment—a notice of the fact which
would seem to a London editor wholly beyond its consequence
and value.

We are aware that it is rather Utopian to give nominal
rank to people according to their actual worth
and influence; but let us have our little bit of fancy
now and then! We should be afraid to call public
attention to the rank of editors—measuring it by their
power!

Ole Bull and his missing “spot.”—As we predicted,
this great luminary took the light of the
world to himself on Saturday night, and became visible
above the horizon of the footlights precisely at
eight,

Mrs. Child (the moon who reflects the masculine
gold of his music in the feminine silver of language)
sat in the stage-box, somewhat obscured in the penumbra
of a shocking cap. (We rely upon Miss
Dorsey to invent a “silver cloud,” or, at any rate,
some headdress more becoming for the waxing glory
of this charming reflector.) The Memnonian music
awoke, of course, with the appearance of Ole-Apollo,
and the crammed world of fashion sat breathless.
By the time the first piece was played, however, it
was felt that there was something wrong. The audience
was irresponsive. The ivory inside edge of the
moon's disk (disclosed by the tranquil smile at first),
became less and less visible, and disappeared. The
applause was mechanical. Madame Burkhardt arose
like a morning vapor, and clouded the horizon with
an abominable song. Ole Bull broke out again, and
though the shadows had shortened somewhat before
he finished his second piece, there was still a lack—
still but a dull acknowledgment of his glory.

We presently discovered the cause. A heavy forelock
of hair, which used to drop over the forehead
of the inspired Norwegian, descending “with the
linked sweetness long drawn out” of a cadenza, and
then tossed back like an absorbed comet with the revulsive
sweep of a return to the flon-flon of the air—
this expressive forelock, with the steeped sweetness
of the Niagara it had overheard, and the dreams of
melody it had stirred to, was gone to “— and scissors.”
The “sun was (the day before) shorn of his
beams”—by Cristadoro! Mingled with the hair of
the uninspired, that magic lock had been swept into
Broadway from the floor of the undiscriminating barber,
and, fallen from the heaven of harmony, is now
sticking to the wheels of omnibuses in a purgatory
of Sysiphus. Those in other cities who remember
the toss back of that wild lock of hair in the convulsive
transitions of Ole Bull's music, will understand
that there must have been, emphatically, a spot missing
on his luminous face.

Spite of politics and attractions elsewhere, the
house was crammed; and in spite of the missing
lock, Ole Bull recovered his power over the audience.
The last piece he played was electric, and the
curtain fell amid unlimited plaudits.

The pay for Periodical-Writing.—What a
butcher would think of veal, as a marketable article,
if everybody had an ambition to raise calves to give
away, is very near the conclusion that a merely business-man
would arrive at, on inquiring into the saleableness
of fugitive literature. It is as pleasant for
people not hackneyed in authorship to see their
thoughts transferred to print, as it is for beauties to
see their faces transferred to canvass; and, if customary,
most contributors to periodicals would pay the
publisher as willingly as women pay the portrait-painter.
Another thing. Females are naturally facile
writers, and the attention paid to the mental culture
of women in our day, has set their thoughts
a-flow upon paper, as the letting in of sunshine upon
the dark floor of the forest draws to the surface new
springs of water. These facts to begin with, the
reader will easily understand the pourquoi of the unpromising
literary market we have to “open up” to
him.

There are several of the magazines that pay for
articles, but no one of them, we believe, pays for all
its contents. Graham and Godey (two men of noble
liberality to authors) pay prices to some of their contributors
that would far outbid the highest rates of
magazine-payment in England. Their prose-writers
receive from two to twelve dollars a page, and their
poets from five to fifty dollars an article. The Columbian
and the Ladies' Magazine also pay well.
The North American Review used to think it liberal
enough to pay Edward Everett a dollar a page. All
the paying magazines and reviews, however, reject
fifty articles to one that they accept, and they pay
nobody whose “name” would not enrich their table
of contents. In point of fact, but for the necessity of
a brag, and the misfortune that a writer, once made
famous, esteems pay a desirable manner of compliment
(whether he wants the money or not), the literary
periodicals in this country might do well, relying
only on the editor's pen and the epidemic “cacoethes.”
The Mirror did so—and was as cleverly contributed
to, we think, as any periodical in the country. The
rejected articles (offered to us, of course, as a gratuity)
would have filled, at least, a barrel a month!

Newspapers pay for reporting and editing, but seldom
or never for “articles.” The favor, on the con
trary, of giving room and circulation to another man's
ideas, is growing into a saleable commodity—the editor
(on the ground that he risks the popularity of
his paper by relinquishing the chance of a better article)
charging rent for his columns instead of hiring
a tenant. To every scheme of public interest—to
every society—to everything which newspapers can
hinder or further—there is attached some person who
is both desirous and able to present the subject
forcibly on paper; and, quite as readily and zealously,
if there be an objectionable side to it, springs up a
pen-and-ink caviller in opposition. Between them,
and with the desire to figure in print which besets
very many able men, newspaper-editors need pay for
little aid except eyewater and scissors, and they get
credit for a world of zeal in good causes by articles
they neither write nor pay for. We have got to the
footboard of our Procrustes bed.

Authors' Pay in America.—We have hot coals
smouldering in the ashes of “things put off,” which
we poke reluctantly to the surface just now—reluctantly
only because we wish to light beacons for an
author's crusade, and we have no leisure to be more
than its Peter the Hermit. We solemnly summon
Edgar A. Poe to do the devoir of Cœur de Lion—
no man's weapon half so trenchant! And now let
us turn the subject round, small end foremost.

These are days when gentlemen paint their own
boots, and we have latterly been our own publisher.
We have thereby mastered one or two statistics which,
we know not well why, never looked us in the face
before, and which we proceed to hold up by the nape
of the neck for the encouragement of the less stuffy
or less inquiring. Authors who can not find publishers,
and authors who, having found them, have been
as much respected by them as pig-iron by the razormaker,
are invited to “lend us their ears”—on interest.

What proportion should an author have of the net
profits of a book? This seems a shallow question
enough, but there is a deep hole in it. Remember,
in the first place, that the author wrote the book—
that God gave him the monopoly of the vein from
which it is worked—that he has been at the expense
and toil of an education, and to other expenses and
toils—(as in travel)—that his mind's lease is far shorter
than his lease of life—and that thoughtsmiths should
be better paid than blacksmiths or goldsmiths (that is
to say, if the credit the work does to the country goes
for anything in the valuation). The question of the
division of profit is between author and publisher, and
the publisher gives his uneducated mental attention
to the sale, a brief use of his credit for the printing
and binding, and runs a most partial risk as to the result—for
he need not purchase the book except in
obedience to his own judgment and his readers', and
the cost is paid, of course, before there are any “net
receipts.” (There is great capital made of this
“risk,” but ninety-nine books in a hundred more than
clear expenses!) Now, taking a stereotyped dollar-book
for example, the plates, worth four or five hundred
dollars, are paid for, with a moderate sale, in the
first month. Suppose it to be three months. The
use of the publisher's credit for $500 for ninety days
has been his only outlay of consequence; but the
author has had his outlay of brain-work, time, genius,
and years of education. The printing and getting
up, after the plates are paid for, cost about one
fifth of the retail price—twenty cents on a dollar. To
charge ten cents more on each copy for the absolute
expense of selling and circulating, is more than liberal;
and now, how shall the remaining seventy cents—
the net profit—be divided between author and publisher?

We should like to have a watchmaker's answer to
that question. How much ought the jeweller to have
for buying it from the maker, warranting it “to go”
after examining it, for advertising it, and for selling it
across a counter? Suppose the watch to sell for a
hundred dollars, and seventy dollars to be the net
profit above cost of material. What would you say,
if the maker got but ten or twenty dollars, and the
retailer fifty or sixty? Yet that is the proportion at
which author and bookseller are paid for literary production—the
seller of the book being paid from twice
to five times as much as the author of it!

Certainly, the readiest-minded man we ever knew,
as well as one of the most brilliant and highly cultivated
conversationists, is Major Davezac, the subject
of the anecdote below. Never was a man more out
of place as a stump-orator and agitator, well as he
acquits himself in these turbulent vocations. It is
none of our business to discuss that point, however.
We were only about to roll the anecdotical snow-ball
a little larger, by recording a bon mot of the major's,
at the birth of which we chanced to be present.
Davezac was chargé at Naples in eighteen hundred
and some time ago, and French being the language
he was born in, his wit of course played freely in the
court vernacular. He was quite the idol of the diplomatic
corps, and an “indispensable” at all dances and
masquerades. We were dining one evening in his
company during the carnival. The major sat opposite
to us, next to a very pretty German countess.
During the procession and the pelting of sugar-plums
which had occupied the early part of the day, the
countess had received a slight bruise upon her cheek.
Davezac wore court-plaster on his lip—a hit also from
the sugared ammunition. They were both complaining.
“Eh, Monsieur Davezac,” said the countess,
mournfully, “il faut reunir nos douleurs!”—“Oui,
madam, et nos blessures!” replied the major instantly,
placing his lip upon the cheek of the surprised sufferer.

Cosmopolite Attraction in Broadway.—Within
a few doors, in the neighborhood of Prince street,
are collected accidentally, at present, four most vivid
representations of four very distant and different
countries—Spain, India, Paris, and Constantinople—
the “Alhamra,” the “Panorama of Madras,” the
“Panorama of Paris,” and the new shop of “Turkish
curiosities.” He who wishes to realize what balloons
are to do for us in '55, can astonish and confuse
his geographical impressions to his entire satisfaction,
by a visit to all these in one morning.

The Turkish shop has articles for sale that could
seldom before be obtained except by a voyage to the
Orient. We brought some curiosities from Constantinople,
but we have a thousand times regretted, since,
that we had not quadrupled our purchases in the bazars
and bezestein—so much were the articles admired,
and so impossible was it, even in the curiosity-shops
of Europe, to find specimens of them. No person
who is luxurious in personal habits would willingly
be, for example, without the Turkish shirts—having
once seen them. They are the poetry of negligé
costume—the idealized romance of the drapery of
dishabille. Those who have time to make a luxury
of dressing-room or boudoir—the beautiful and idle
of either sex—should take a look at the gossamer
shirts from Constantinople. But there are all manner
of things in this shop beside. There are beautiful
gold-embroidered slippers, small carpets and ottoman-cloths,
attars in gold bottles, gold-embroidered
handkerchiefs and gilded pastilles—everything, in
short, that one buys of old Mustapha, near the Hippodrome
in Stamboul, confectionary included. We
inquired after old Mustapha yesterday, and the Greek
who keeps the shop (who was himself a confectioner
in Constantinople) delighted us with talking of him,
as if he had seen him yesterday! Picturesque and
jolly old turbaned Mustapha!—what fun it was to
have the curtain lifted by his grinning Abyssinian in
anklets and wristlets, and step into the back shop to
take coffee and try his essences! It quite came over
us like a dream yesterday—the chat with this Broadway
Constantinopolitan. If you have any curiosity,
dear reader, call and taste the confectionary at this
shop, and look at the translucent shirts, and see the
Persian inkstands, and handle the graceful cimeters,
and look at the Brusa silks and seraglio slippers—in
short, see Constantinople—for that is a palpable slice
of it!

Jumping the Pew.—We were once in the gallery
of a country church when an address was to be delivered
to a Sunday school. The body of the house
was reserved for the adult audience, and the boys were
confined to one of the side aisles. There was evidently
an understanding, however, that if not otherwise
wanted, the well-cushioned seat facing the chancel
was to be given up to as many lads as could occupy it.
It would hold, perhaps, twenty, and a hundred of
them were packed in the aisle like figs, waiting till the
class leader at the head should “open up.” Looking
on with some amusement, we found our eye arrested
by the bright face of a lad, half way down, who bore
the keeping back very impatiently. His struggles to
pass the other boys were vehement, but of no use.
He was slight, and his neighbors were bold and sturdy.
Presently he bit his lips, entered a pew, jumped the
partition into the central aisle, and walked round to
the front. There was a murmur of indignation among
the boys, and a general smile among the spectators,
but he secured his pick of seats. The clergyman, in
the course of his address, thought proper to get up
an impromptu colloquy, and, to the evident annoyance
of the other boys, selected the pew-jumper, who sat
just before him, for the honor. The lad arose, when
questioned, and surprised the whole audience with
the clearness of his replies. He sat down amid general
applause, and (whatever reproof he got in private
for his daring) he was the envied hero of the day. We
have often since had the successful boldness of this
lad recalled to our memory by the class of things it
illustrates, and our mental reply, after reading a letter
to which this was the preface, was—“Better jump
the pew!”

Our correspondent can not get a hearing from the
public! Few things are more difficult. We have
not read his book, but it may be excellent snuff to
keep a fame going, and yet not the stuff to start one.
Genius is expected “never to go into the water till it
knows how to swim”—never to expect to be read but
for having been read before! With any degree of
ability, more or less, it is easy to be almost hopelessly
overlaid. We, ourself, are a very humble example.
We “jumped the pew” unconsciously, in England,
with our furiously abused “Pencillings,” and immediately
sold, for the highest price, an edition of “Inklings
of Adventure”—a series of tales that had fallen
still-born into the lap of Boston, and for the first printing
of which we paid more than a thousand dollars on
our return to their birth-place. Instances of “jumping
the pew” will occur to every observer of men—
every reader of biography. It is the shabby door to
many a path of glory. Almost every profession begins
with a dilemma—hope deferred, or a pew to jump!
The starving lawyer in the west, who flogged his
neighbor to have a case to plead, jumped the pew!

The veteran Buckingham, one of the most judicious,
able and respected editors in the country, was starving
in Boston, when he “jumped the pew” with the abusive
“Galaxy”—making himself read from terror till
he was famous enough to be read for merit. The
game is dangerous, however, and the principle lies
in most questionable neighborhood. For one who
would succeed in it there are ninety-nine who would
fail, and failure is hopeless extinction! The pew can
be jumped but once. The attention of the public can
be but once summoned by a rude pluck at its beard;
and, to keep attention long enough to have the rudeness
forgotten, there must be merit that the public
would regret overlooking—merit, indeed, of which the
neglect was injury enough to justify violent extrication.

The Mirror Steam-Press.—It would be curious
not to lose sight of the Latin word, dropped for translation
into the scholar's ear, till it re-appears in English
on his tongue, but a half-hour's watching of the steam-press
on which the Mirror is printed would be hardly
a less instructive spectacle of contrivance. To complete
the assimilation of the second process to the
first, it would have been necessary, till lately, to employ
a boy to pull the word off the scholar's tongue;
but, by the ingenuity of R. Hoe & Co., the great
organ of public opinion is endowed with a happy delivery
of its own—laying off the sheet that was printed
and ready for utterance, that is to say, and drawing in
its iron tongue, unaided, to be laden with the meantime
coinage of another.

The improvements in printing-presses within the
last ten or fifteen years are probably far less remarkable
than some other progresses of mechanic invention,
yet they are wonderful enough to use up quite
as much curiosity as it is comfortable to find epithets
for, in a day. The difference between the old Ramage
press, and the steam-miracle in our present office, is
peculiarly impressive to ourself. There is a small
bar of iron in this press which fulfils precisely the
same destiny to which we were at one time devoted.
We were considered in an exemplary line of life while
performing exactly its office—that of inking the type
—during a long year of disgust with Latin—(when a
sensible papa took us at our word, and allowed us to
prefer a trade to a satchel!)

The ink was in those days kept in a wooden box,
and, with two stuffed leather balls, a boy or man, beside
the press, distributed it over the face of the type,
while the pressman was fixing the sheet for the impression.
We remember balling an edition of “Watts's
Psalms and Hymns,” which it took weeks to print,
and, by the same token, there are lines in that good
book of which we caught glimpses on the “frisket,”
that, to this day, go to the tune we played with the
ink-balls while conning them over! Reviving ambition
sent us back to school, however, and invention
soon after superseded the ink-boy's elbows (encumbered
with a stomach), by a bit of machinery that
neither required to be fed, nor committed verses to
memory while inking the type! This getting rid of
the boy was the peculiarity of the Smith press, and
then followed the Napier press, which dispensed with
the man, and needed only the tending of two girls or
boys; and now (thanks to Mr. Hoe), we have a steam-press,
which puts up three iron fingers for a sheet of
white paper, pulls it down into its bosom, gives it a
squeeze that makes an impression, and then lays it into
the palm of an iron hand which deposites it evenly on a
heap—at the rate of two thousand an hour! We often
stop with curiosity to look at the little arrangement
which does the work our elbows have ached with, and
we think the Mirror press altogether is a sight worth
your coming to see, dear reader!

The First Day of the World's New Lease
was clasped upon the last yesterday of the completed
series, by as glorious a retiring moon, and as brilliant
a rising sun, as were ever coveted by the “old gray-beard,”
at whose funeral they are to be the expiring
candles. A finer night than last night—a finer day
than to-day—never relieved watch upon the “tented
heavens.” We stood looking up a steeple from our
bed-room window at midnight (having first finished
an article for to-day's paper, upon the venture of its
being wanted), and we stood shaving at the same
window when the gold smile of the unexpected sunrise
called upon the surprised weather-cock to look
about him as usual! We, therefore, certify to the
world's coming honestly by its “situation.” Go about
your business, oh, mankind!

Coming down the front steps of the Astor, at half-past
six, we naturally enough took a look up Broadway,
to see if, perchance, some blessed change in the
pavement might not give the first sign of a new Jerusalem.
But if the sapphire paviors had called upon
Mayor Harper, he had struck at something in the
contract. The old holes were there, with stones of
the accustomed complexion—(chafed “trap,” mineralogically
speaking)—and the mud evidently unaware
of a miracle. But, hey! how! WHAT! a rainbow
across Broadway?? Could we believe our eyes?—
a many-colored arch completely spanning the street,
hung with flowers, and men walking over it!!! Was
an advent forthcoming, after all?

While we write, that Advent is in progress! It is
the Advent of Youth—Juvenocracy in the ascendant!
A flowery arch spans the breadth of
Broadway, and under it winds, at this moment, the
procession in honor of first maturity—manhood in
youth! It scarce needed, it is true, that the world
should be born again before its new monarch should
make formal entry. It was, ten years ago, discovered
in France—two years ago in England—last year in
America—that the gray head was only the wisest while
there were no books but experience! That which men
once waited to know till the hair was silvered, is now
taught the child at school—conned in the ambitious
dream of the youth in his puberty. The world has
“hung fire” in other ages, from the damp of burnt-out
enthusiasm spread like a blanket over its brain-powder.
Improvement has gone upon crutches.
Action waited for enterprise to cough. Courage
stayed to fumble for spectacles. The forenoon
shadows of the sun of human intellect were of untrustworthy
measure, and the dial to begin to work by
was shadowed till post-meridian!

Without touching upon the political articulation in
“the roar of the Young Lion,” WE MARK THE EPOCH
—the epoch of “Young France,” “Young England,”
“Young America!” We could show, had we time,
how strikingly the peculiar habits of our land have
more prepared us than other countries, for the sovereignty
of Youth! We have no time now. We must
go forth with the crowd and see the bright cheek and
curling beard of the Young Monarch in his hour of
triumph. The cannon are pealing! The drums
shake upon the prophetic sunshine in the air!

12 o'clock.—We have been to Broadway. The
procession is soon to form. The mounted marshals
of the day are galloping to and fro with their ribanded
insignia—the pictorial outside of the Museum is perfectly
embroidered with petticoats (a charming relief!)
—the windows on both sides of Broadway are crammed
with gayly-dressed spectators—the 500 Boston
young men (fine, wholesome-looking fellows, who
certainly do credit to their “parsley bed”), are assembled
with their badges in front of the Astor—the town
is full of what the ladies would call “handsome young

strangers”—the omnibuses carry flags—the whole
street, from the triumphal arch to the pinnacles of
Trinity, looks impassable with the glittering crowd.
We never saw comparable preparation for a festal
march. It will be a day to be remembered—mocked
at, perhaps, as the first after a millenial crisis, but
glorified as the first in the great era of Youthfulhood!

Mass Meeting of Newsboys.—We may be permitted,
perhaps, to please our friends with the announcement
that we at least stand well upon the sidewalk!
The exhaustion of our large edition at four
o'clock, yesterday afternoon, and a general return of
the newsboys from their routes with eager demands
for more, occasioned a multitudinous holding of
counsel among those piping potentates, and to the astonishment
of our corner and the neighborhood, the
assembled varlets actually gave the Evening Mirror
three cheers! We bow to the tattered vox populi, and
own the soft impeachment. Gentlemen newsboys!
give us your hand (with a newspaper between!) and
permit us to offer you a business suggestion. Astonish
one of your insinuating number with a white shirt,
and try the new trick of selling us with a smile to the
ladies! Call him the ladies' boy, and treat him delicately
when he is dressed and can't afford the results
of your familiarity! Your powerful body amounts at
present to some three or four hundred, and your
profits will soon tempt the competition of older gentlemen,
unless you find more worlds to conquer.
Hurrah for the ladies, gentlemen (waving whatever
you have to represent a pocket-handkerchief)—and
now, if you will graciously withdraw your attention,
we would speak to those over whom you have the advantage
of youth.

We have to thank the press all over the country for
the most flattering mention and the kindest encouragement.
Our own craft seem to love us. We thought
of quoting some of their felicitous notices, but our
grateful pride would thus fall into a shape used for
puffing, and we shrink from the medium. Thanks to
our friends—simply but fervently.

Gold Inkstand to the Authoress of the Scottish
Chiefs.—The works of Jane Porter have
probably brought more money into the hands of
booksellers than those of any writer except, perhaps,
Scott, and at this moment steam-presses are
employed in printing large editions of her delightful
novels. An enthusiastic man, a great admirer
of Miss Porter, has, for the second time, started a
subscription among the booksellers of this city to present
her with a gold inkstand, and the Harpers, Appletons,
Langleys, and others, have subscribed with
enthusiastic liberality. Perhaps a description of Jane
Porter with a little of her hitherto unwritten history may
not be unacceptable.

Miss Porter was the daughter of a gallant English
officer, who died, leaving a widow, and three children,
then very young, but all destined to remarkable fame
Sir Robert Ker Porter, Jane Porter, and Anna
Maria Porter. Sir Robert, as is well known, was
the celebrated historical painter, traveller in Persia,
soldier, diplomatist, and author, lately deceased. He
went to Russia with one of his great pictures when
very young, married a wealthy Russian princess, and
passed his subsequent years between the camp and
diplomacy, honored and admired in every station and
relation of his life. The two girls were playmates
and neighbors of Walter Scott. Jane published her
“Scottish Chiefs” at the age of eighteen, and became
immediately the great literary wonder of her time.
Her widowed mother, however, withdrew her immediately
from society to the seclusion of a country
town, and she was little seen in the gay world of London
before several of her works had become classics.
Anna Maria, the second sister, commenced her admirable
series of novels soon after the first celebrity of
Jane's works, and they wrote and passed the brightest
years of their life together in a cottage retreat. The
two sisters were singularly beautiful. Sir Thomas
Lawrence was an unsuccessful suitor to Anna Maria,
and Jane (said by Sir Martin Shee to have been the
handsomest woman he ever saw) was engaged to a
young soldier who was killed in the Peninsula. She
is a woman to have but one love in a lifetime. Her
betrothed was killed when she was twenty years of
age, and she has ever since worn mourning, and remained
true to his memory. Jane is now the only
survivor of her family, her admirable mother and her
sister having died some twelve or fourteen years ago,
and Sir Robert having died lately, while revisiting
England after many years' diplomatic residence in
Venezuela.

Miss Porter is now near sixty. She has suffered
within the last two or three years from ill-health, but
she is still erect, graceful, and majestic in person, and
still possessed of admirable beauty of countenance.
Her large dark eyes have a striking lambency of lustre,
her smile inspires love in all who see her, and her
habit of mind, up to the time we last saw her (three
or four years ago), was that of reflecting the mood of
others in conversation, thinking never of herself, and
endeavoring only to make others shine, and all this
with a tact, a playfulness and simplicity, an occasional
unconscious brilliancy and penetration, which have
made her, up to sixty years of age, a most interesting,
engaging, and lovely woman. We have had
the good fortune to pass several months, at different
times, under different hospitable roofs, with Jane
Porter, and, considering the extent of her charm,
over old and young, titled and humble, masters and
servants, we sincerely think we never have seen a
woman so beloved and so fascinating. She is the
idol of many different circles of very high rank, and
passes her time in yielding, month after month, to
pressing invitations from the friends who love her.
The dowager queen Adelaide is one of her warmest
friends, the highest families of nobility contend for
her as a resident guest, distinguished and noble foreigners
pay court to her invariably on arriving in
England, she has been ennobled by a decree of the
king of Prussia, and with all this weight of honor on
her head, you might pass weeks with her (ignorant of
her history) without suspecting her to be more than
the loveliest of women past their prime, and born but
to grace a contented mediocrity of station.

This is an impartial and truthful sketch of the celebrated
person for whom the above-mentioned compliment
is intended. We trust it may find her alive, and
with her accustomed bright smile upon her lips—God
guard and preserve her!

Rocking-Chair vice Inkstand resigned. We gave,
“by authority,” an account of a subscription paper,
the purpose of which was to present to Jane Porter
an inkstand of gold. Our publisher-mayor Mr. Harper,
headed the list with $40. We wrote a paragraph
on the subject, and the same evening were called to
see a rocking-chair into which the inkstand had been
suddenly converted by a rub against the Aladdin's lamp
of propriety. We went into Meeks's museum of
sumptuous furniture, and the chair was disrobed, for
us, of a beautiful chintz cover presented to Miss Porter
by Messrs. Meeks, the makers. The chair is a
bijou. The model is appropriately Elizabethan—(a

chair for the virgin queen of English romance, made
in the style of the virgin queen of English history)—
the carving in rosewood relief, and the lining of crimson
velvet. The exact model of the chair was sent
to Queen Victoria not long since, as a specimen of
American furniture, by a club of English gentlemen.
The cadeau goes out consigned by the mayor of New
York to the lord-mayor of London, for his worshipful
presentation, Mr. Griswold, the packet owner, giving
it an honorary passage. The following letter, written
on parchment and sealed with the city arms, accompanies
it:—

We have still another light to throw upon this famous
chair. The Wood, without which it might not
have been built, did not come from the West Indies
in planks of amyris balsamifera (rosewood), but from
Canandaigua, in the shape of a gentleman whose
heart distils a better balsam—of courtesy! We first
heard of Mr. Wood and the proposed presentation of
an inkstand, from Miss Porter herself. She inquired
whether we knew Mr. Wood, and gave us the history
of his project to compliment her, apropos of promising
us a sight of barrels of presents which had showered
upon her from all parts of the world. She expressed
a most simple-hearted delight in the extent
of her American reputation, and wished to see a copy
of one of the American editions.

On our return to this country we found a small
copy of the “Scottish Chiefs,” almost illegible with
grease and thumbing, in the kitchen of a remote tavern
in Pennsylvania. We sent it to her with a little
water added unintentionally to its romance—having
fallen overboard with it in our pocket while ferrying a
skiff across the Susquehannah. By the way, let us
here record an act of liberality in an English publisher,
which is apropos of this present from the
American bibliopoles. We were one day requested
by Mr. George Virtue, the enterprising publisher of
the American Scenery, to be the bearer of a message
to Miss Porter. He wished to publish her Scottish
Chiefs in a beautifully-embellished edition. The copyright,
by English law limiting duration, had long since
expired—but Mr. Virtue wished to give Miss Porter
£200—one thousand dollars—FOR HER FORMAL CONSENT.
The check was sent the next day, and the
edition, one of the most superb specimens of embellished
edition in the language, is since completed.

The old proverb says of a burn,

and we had a burn at our fingers' end as to the real
mover's getting his share of the credit of this compliment
to Miss Porter. There is little enough enthusiasm
for others' glory in the world—little enough to
prevent all fear of surfeit by mention. We have recorded,
therefore, against his express orders, the disinterested
zeal of William Wood in this matter.

The Overcoat Dilemma.—We have received a
note from a dismayed tailor in a thriving inland town
of Massachusetts, begging us, “for charity's sake,”
to inform him “what is the fashion for overcoats.”
He protests that the models sent him from the city
are inelegant and unbecoming—and he begs us to inquire
of some dandy, regnant or ci-devant, as to the
existence, among knowing men, of some outer habiliment
more becoming than the prevailing type. This
is our summing up of his wishes as expressed in a letter
of three pages.

Before venturing to tamper with so ticklish a subject,
let us fortify the ground by an extract from a
very grave and well-considered lecture on the “Changes
of the Fashions,” lately delivered before a lyceum in
Portsmouth:—

Although the inventors of new fashions and the
leaders in them are highly culpable for the injury
they do society—yet nine tenths of those whom we
see in fashionable attire are persons on whom no imputation
can be cast: neither is there one in a hundred
of their dressmakers or tailors, hatters or cordwainers,
who are deserving a breath of censure for doing
their work in a fashionable style. So powerful
an impetus has been moving the fashionable world,
that no individual can with safety hold up a resisting
hand. Nothing but a combined strength can over-come
it.

Common sense asks—why is it that a coat of a few
years' standing, with a broad back and long waist,
which the prudent man has kept for his holyday
wear, is not as really valuable as one in which the
seams are more nearly allied, or the buttons placed in
a different position?

Public opinion replies—the man is not in fashion.
The observers point him out among the multitude—
“There is a sample of old times”—“There goes a
miser who can't afford a new coat:” and a soft voice
whispers as he passes—“I wonder who would have
that old-fashioned man!” How frequently is the
public sympathy excited for an adroit rogue in fashionable
attire, who has received the just sentence of
the law—while the poorly-clad culprit by his side,
not more guilty, passes almost unpitied to the gallows.

Thus to be out of fashion a man is generally regarded
as wanting in spirit or purse; and it becomes
a matter of necessity for a modest man, who wishes
to elude the notice of the world, to follow along in
the wake of fashion. However much a person in
common life may be disgusted with its fluctuations,
he must bear the imputation of vanity, and in some
degree lose his influence in society, if he either has a
new dress made in an old style, or for convenience
appears in any new clothing which is made more

with a view to general utility than in subservience to
fashion.

With this warrant for giving a grave opinion on the
subject, we proceed to huddle together our kerseymere
ideas as follows:—

The sack-coat belongs to the climate of England,
and is wholly desorienté in this country. It was invented
as a kind of body-umbrella in which elegant
men could pass unwet from club to cab, in that climate
of eternal moisture, and was never meant to be
used but as a garment of transit. A dandy bien pointu
in his kid and varnish extremities, may certainly walk
the street safely in a sack-coat, as his quality would be
known by his gloves and boots only, were he otherwise
parenthesized in a barrel. But, unless redeemable
by the point of his boot or a finger of his glove, no
man is “dressed” in a sack. By universally making
sack-coats of coarse cloth in England, they class them
very definitely with hackney-coaches and umbrellas—
temporary conveniences of which the material is by
no means a point of honor.

In England, however, dandies dress to drive, and in
this country they dress to walk, and, of course, it is
more important here that the street coat should be becoming
to the shape than is thought necessary in England.
The palctot (for a description of which see
“Scott's” authentic “Mirror of Fashion”) is becoming
to men of fine carriage, and the “Taglioni,” when
cut into the back adroitly, is becoming to slender figures.
In the present anarchy of overcoat, however,
every man can choose for himself, and our pastoral
querist of the shears, we venture to assure him, is
perfectly safe in first suiting his customers, and then
swearing it to be the fashion. We would just hint,
in conclusion, that there is a mixture of cloak and
overcoat that we have seen on a “slap-up” man lately
from Paris, and this chanced to hit our weakness.
Any man who has genius in his shears will require no
broader hint of what the combination looks like!

Young Men's Procession.—The procession of
yesterday, was less remarkable for its numbers (estimated
at 3,000) than for the unusual interest taken in
it by the spectators—the enthusiasm of the ladies and
more quiet lookers-on, and the boundless heartiness
of the cheers by the people in the streets. The quality
of the general feeling, to our thinking, was more
nearly up to the warmth of the Lafayette Ovation,
than any procession that has taken place since. We
remarked, also, that in the escorts and cavalcade, there
was a large mixture of fashionable young men, which
is a new feature in the public processions of this city.
There were also more clergymen, who had errands in
town and about the streets, than usual—the white
cravat in rather uncommon proportion. Altogether,
we think the bed of this new party has a longer and
broader blanket—covering higher toward the fastidious
public head, and falling more kindly upon the serviceable
public feet—than any new-party blanket spread
within our recollection. Youth is beloved. Its hopes
are contagious. Its opinions are supposed free from
selfishness. Its ardor is credited with inspiration.
The party of youth, whenever it is combined for one
object, must triumph, it seems to us—for it carries
with it an outside atmosphere of electric sympathies
exclusively its own, while, within, it has the energy
of enthusiastic first manhood, and confidence unsubdued
by experience.

Opening of the Railroad to White Plains.—
The first rush of blood through the heart of Pygmalion's
statue, and the first rush of a rail-car, on Saturday,
through the bosom of the Bronx valley, would
seem to us a well-matched fable and fact, were not the
fact, both as a surprise and a change, more electric
than the fable. To realize it, one must get at the way
it is looked at by the rustic dwellers in the plains beyond.
They were called upon to believe that a city
which has, all their lives, been four hours distant,
“good driving,” would, after the forthcoming celebration,
be slid up to within one hour, “easy going.”
Their potatoes are to glide to market, and coal and
groceries to glide back, with magical facility—their
women-folks are to go to town, stop and get home between
dinner and supper—the morning newspapers
are to arrive from New York a little after breakfast—
the citizens are to come out by hundreds for an afternoon
walk—New York, in short, is four times as near
as it used to be, only the land is not knocked away between!
A gentleman told us, just before the cars
started on their return, from White Plains, that the
country-people, around, were not only incredulous as
to the completion of the road, up to the time of the
arrival of the cars, but that they still (6 o'clock
P. M.) looked upon the whole affair—celebration,
train, music and guns—as a humbug that could never
hold out—got up for some Millerite or political hocus-pocus,
and to end only in the ruin of their credulous
neighbors!

To start fair, however. We were invited to join
the worshipful society of aldermen, bank-directors,
stockholders, and judiciary, who, on Saturday afternoon,
were to invade, for the first time, by public rail-road,
the virgin seclusion of the White Plains. The
access, through the valley of the Bronx, promised something
attractive in the way of landscape, and there
was a pull out of town in the soft air of the morning.
We were at the cars punctually at one, found a friend
inside, and a band of music a-top, and rolled away
from the City Hall with a double momentum—steam
to draw the cars, and the gentlemen in the cars who
are drawn on for the steam! We went on our musical
way through Centre street, embellishing it (by the
beauty attracted to the chamber-windows) as the moon
brightens the clouds in passing through, and with a
momentary chill from the deserted propriety of streets
up-town, were soon in the fields—fields by the way,
which are secured to Nature and shorn of their chief
value (nearness to town) by the railroad which makes
fields beyond quite as come-at-able.

We gave Harlem an outbreak of music in passing
through, stopped a moment at Williams' bridge, where
the road has hitherto terminated, and then proceeded
upon the new track through the Bronx valley.[1] The
scenery for the next twelve miles was as primitive and
fresh as if a three-days' journey lay between it and a
great city—the most unconscious looking old water-mills
on the stream, the woods and hill-sides with a
look most innocent of snob and suburb, and a universal
gape of amazement on the faces of cottagers and
their cows. The seclusion and thorough country of
the whole twelve miles were enchanting, and we promised
ourselves a ramble to twenty successive nooks
that we saw (and twenty successive times of course
had occasion to remember that we had become a
utensil of daily use, labelled “never to be taken out
of the kitchen!” We are sorry to say the grass will
probably do pretty well without us, now, till we disturb
it to ask leave to pass under.)

The hill-sides suddenly fell back and we glided into
an open plain, where two or three hundred rustic-looking
people were assembled—six or seven of them

busy on a knoll near by, ramming a welcome up a gun.
The report rang as the engine stopped, and—White
Plains was cosmopolized! Out jumped Wall street
and City Hall. An old negro and his very old wife
commenced furiously opening oysters at a bench near
by. The cars stood in the middle of a corn-field.
The country people gathered around and looked hard
at the boots of the company. Two or three barrels
of crackers were rolled over the corn-hills to a new
stable building in the field. Everybody from the city
seemed exclusively occupied with smelling the ploughed
ground. Horses were tied to the fences all about.
The landscape (breasted with fine, fertile hills, and
having the White Plains for its lap), was slumbering
in a soft haze, with just sunshine enough to content
a man who would be contented without it, and altogether
the scene was simple and fresh near by, and
the distance more picturesque than the name of
“White Plains” had suggested.

On the floor of the new barn, half boarded and
nearly shingled, were spread four long tables, laden
with a very profuse and substantial repast, and, in
fifteen minutes after arrival, the president was in his
place, and the stockholders and their guests seated
and “in a fair way” to be enthusiastic. After a round
or two of champagne, the president's health was drank
and his report called for—but we will give the statistics
in another paragraph.

Pretty sure of hearing the report and reading the
speeches “in the way of business,” we accepted the
invitation of Mr. Lyon, and drove to his beautiful
residence, near by—a Gothic cottage of most absolute
taste, a sketch of which we had seen in the new edition
of “Downing's Rural Architecture.” It is
enough to make one doubt all the ills of life to see
such a place to pass it in. The table-land of the
White Plains lies behind the house, and a valley—
folded slope over slope, and sunk, knoll below knoll—
drops away from the lawn in front, showing miles of
wild-wood and fertile fields, with a shady glen leading
away to the left—the whole combination, for an inland
view, unsurpassed in variety and beauty. The cottage
is in the Tudor style, faultless within and without.
We wish we had time and space to say more of it and
its surroundings. We should add that Mr. Lyon has
been the zealous apostle of the road, and that a procession
was formed after the collation to make him a
complimentary visit. They went to his house, preceded
by the band, but were unfortunately missed by
Mr. Lyon, who was conducting his friends back by a
shorter path across the fields.

The White Plains moon rose to see us off, and, as
we got under way with music and cheers, she added
another full face to the gazing rustics, and, when last
seen, was apparently climbing up on a barrel to look
over the spectators' shoulders. As she was in town
when we arrived at half past nine, and as there were
no ladies invited by the directors, she must have got
a ride somehow behind, and whatever the conductor
may say (for we know her well!) the paying her passage
was probably “all moonshine.”

Labor and Brains.—We hear much about “protection
for labor,” and very little about protection for
brains—(except in the way of a hat). The working
men, those who use their hands skilfully and industriously,
have many advocates of their claims. The
politicians and the law-makers and the newspaper
press, take up their cause loudly and sincerely, but
those who “can not dig,” who are “ashamed to beg”
and have nothing but their brains—their intellect, to
depend upon—are whistled down the wind, “the prey
to fortune.”

One class of these luckless personages, is that of
editors and assistant editors, and their remuneration is
not only inadequate, generally speaking, to their support,
but far below their real merit. What would the
newspaper press of this city be but for these men?
Nothing! They are the indirect means of giving a
livelihood to thousands, and are never thanked for it.
For example. We know of a newspaper in this city
which owes its success to a small corps of editors,
whose whole pay is about two thousand dollars per
annum. If they should withdraw their aid, the paper
would stop beyond a question.

Let us see what their brains do for others. The
paper-makers receive from the establishment, $18,000
a year. The compositors receive about $10,000 more
—the reporters and clerks about $3,000 more. The
type-makers and ink-manufacturers about $2,000 more.
And this expenditure goes on from year to year. It
would be utterly impossible for this $32,000 to be received
and expended in this way, but for the talent and
tact of two or three persons connected with the paper.
A large number of persons is actually supported by
their brains, and yet there is not one among the number
thus supported, who does not think his own personal
labor and toil, far more important and praiseworthy
than that of the men who actually furnish them with
employment! This is the justice of the world! This
is the result of the ridiculous notions prevailing, that
the lifting of the sledge-hammer is more deserving of
reward than the skill which guides its blows. Mechanical
labor of all kinds is better paid than literary
labor, and it is time that just impressions prevailed on
this subject. Let us honor the working men, but
when they are aided by talent and literary industry,
they should honor them in return.

The editorial corps are making the fortunes of many
newspaper and magazine establishments in this country,
and yet many men of talent are starving under the
effort.

Portrait of Wordsworth by Henry Inman.—
Without wishing to compare our great painter to a
worm—except as having used up one system (of artistic
ideas) and being fairly on wing in a new one—we
think the worm in chrysalis and its emergent new
creature very fair types of the Inman that was, in
America, and the Inman that is, in England. Before
this time we think he would have gone abroad prematurely.
Genius requires to complete its first identity
—to ripen fully—to acquire the perfection of command
over, and familiarity with, its in-born peculiarities—before
trusting itself in a sphere which is both
removed from habit and aids to concentration, and
bewildering with the glitter and supremacy of other
models. No matter what the pursuit, there is a
natural mental chrysalis—a time after completed manhood,
when a change of scene, change of habits,
change of influences, external and internal, renew the
life of both mind and body, open chambers in the soul
hitherto unseen, and incredibly beautify and enrich
the whole existence. How many painters have we
seen confirmed into tame copyists—crushed by the
weight of the masters above them—by going abroad
with a new-born style just struggling into shape and
seeming of its own! In a minor way, how many
characters are smothered by being forced into a too
trying element of society before completing their
natural idiosyncrasy!

Power went abroad at the right stage of his existence
as a sculptor—Grenough, perhaps, too early.
Inman might, possibly, have gone earlier, with equal
advantage. He has been, for some time, gaining little
in his art. The easily-given and ill-weighed praise
of our country had long ago satiated him. He had
little stimulus beyond the profit of his pencil. But
the mind that lies fallow under such torpor, ripens and

collects richness under the surface, and ploughed
again, before it is mastered by weeds and tangle, it
shows wondrous fertility and vigor.

We have put down, now, what passed through our
mind while looking yesterday at a head of Wordsworth,
which is just received from Inman. It is a
masterly piece of work, though but a sketch. The
truth to nature convinces you that it is an infallible
portrait, without your ever having seen the original.
It is Wordsworth. It is the shell of the meat in his
books. His feeblenesses and his philosophic simplicities
are there. You see how he came to write
what we have read. He has done his own portrait—
a faithful copy, in poetry, of the same as this on canvass.
Majestic and weak, wise and silly, far-sighted
and credulous old man! He looks like his poetry,
and to a man who could read characters as some do,
there would be nothing new in his books after seeing
Inman's picture, nor any surprise in Inman's picture,
after seeing his books.

What will Broadway be like, with omnibuses excluded,
and two lines of railcars plying its entire length?
Where will the tracks be?—both in the middle,
or one on each side? If the latter, how will carriages
stand by the sidewalk with safety? If the
former, will there be room left for two carriages to
pass each other on either side? Will not the frequent
taking-up and setting-down of passengers, and
the consequent hinderance of cars behind, make the
passage up and down tediously slow? These are
questions that, with sundry others on the same subject,
will furnish table-talk to the city for the ensuing
week—the announcement of the corporation's intention
to have a railroad there being yesterday made
public. Let us mumble about it a little. The slowness
of the motion would justify a very narrow track.
By placing the seats lengthwise, and back to back,
the cars themselves might be made very narrow, and
with a roof overhead, and no sides (or sides removable
in fair weather), passengers might easily jump on
and off, and be sufficiently protected. They will
probably stop for passengers at the crossings only.
The fare will be taken by a boy inside, as soon as the
passenger is seated, to prevent delay. We shall have
the comfort (sitting back to back) of not becoming so
compulsively acquainted with anybody's face, breath,
knees, and umbrella. Our chances of being the subject
of a coroner's inquest will be diminished 100 per
cent.—the present rate and manner of omnibus-driving
having (we presume) nearly doubled the cost of life-insurance
to those who live in the upper part of the city.
There will probably be fast lines established in the
streets nearly parallel to Broadway, and the great tide
of human life, now concentrated in one thoroughfare,
will be divided into three. McNair & Scarpa, and
other sellers of “acoustic oil,” will languish under
the suspended deafening of Broadway, and that charming
lounge will be once more susceptible of enjoyment
by walk and talk. The danger of prying off a
wheel upon the railtrack, or coming in contact with
the cars, will deter the timid from taking their carriages
into Broadway, and we shall meet all the pretty
shopperesses on foot (the greatest Amelia-ration)!
The “Kipp & Brown” 'buses will be obliged to come
down Church street, and have their terminus at the
corner of Fulton street and Broadway—or (query?)
will the lower part of Broadway, between the Park
and Bowling-green, be necessarily left open to the
converging lines from east and west?

“Taglioni is coming to this country.” So say the
papers; and if it prove true, we shall see the differ
ence between the apparent efforts of a football and a
balloon—between common and rarefied air (in manner
as well as in motion)—between a smile which, beautifully
dissected from the muscles that might else move
it, is left stereotyped upon the face, and a smile timid,
natural, and impulsive—in short, the difference between
the “divine Fanny” and the womanly Taglioni.
(We prefer a woman to “a divinity” and day!) Like
all women permitted to be desirably famous, Taglioni
paid the inexorable penalty of being undesirably
mated. She has amassed a fortune or two from the
“gold dust” at the toe of her white slipper—dissipated,
they say, without pity, by her husband, and she
has at last cut him (in toto), and goes entirely upon
her own legs. We hope they and the Cunard paddles
will, indeed, bring her to this country. In seeing
any other stage-exhibition, one is conscious of
the seat he sits on and the trouble of holding his hat.
To see Taglioni is to be in a trance, during which
one might almost be content with the seat of St.
Lawrence—on a gridiron. We shall remember (talking
of seats), “while memory holds her seat” (and
has any pleasure in sitting on it), the first performance
of La Sylphide at Paris—by far the most entrancing
and intoxicating spectacle we ever witnessed. We
venture to refer the reader to our description of it in
“Pencillings.” We wonder whether Taglioni will
come! Echo—“come!”

Major Noah and his Apology for the Crucifixion.—Our
friend, the lecturer on the Restoration,
has written us a letter, phrased with great forbearance
and kindness, but finding grievous fault with our yesterday's
notice of his discourse at the Tabernacle.
His letter is too long to publish, as he requests, but
we will give its substance, and leave out only his expressions
of good will. He says he “understood
from a friend that we were fast asleep before the lecture
commenced, and slept throughout the whole of
it.” With his letter, the major sent us a copy of
the Mirror with the objectionable passages of our report
underlined. Here they are:—

“Major Noah arose and commenced with an apology
for the Jews as to the crucifixion of our Savior.”

“With the exception of his very adroit disparagement
of the Savior,” &c., &c.

Some extracts from the lecture, copied from his
MS. into the Express, were also sent us by the major,
and we extract the page which, in the delivery,
impressed us as represented in our objectionable sentences.

“The Jews were amazed, perplexed, and bewildered
at all they saw and heard. They knew Jesus
from his birth: he was their neighbor; they knew his
father Joseph, and Mary his mother, his brothers,
James and Judas; he was in constant intercourse
with his brethren in their domestic relations, and surrounded
by their household gods; they remembered
him a boy, disputing, as was the custom, most learnedly
with the doctors in the temple; as a man pursuing
to the age of thirty, the modest and laborious
calling of his profession; and yet he proclaimed himself
the Son of God, and performed most wonderful
miracles, was surrounded by a number of disciples,
poor, but extraordinary gifted men, who sustained his
doctrines, and had an abiding faith in his mission;
he gathered strength and followers as he progressed;
he denounced the whole nation, and prophecied
its destruction, with their altars and temples;
he preached against whole cities, and proscribed
their leaders with a force which, even at this day,
would shake our social systems. The Jews became
alarmed at his increasing power and influence, and
the Sanhedrim resolved to become his accuser, and

bring him to trial under the law as laid down in the
13th of Deuteronomy.

“In reflecting deeply on all the circumstances of
this, the most remarkable trial and judgment in history,
I am convinced, from the whole tenor of the
proceedings, that the arrest, trial, and condemnation
of Jesus of Nazareth, was conceived and executed under
a decided panic.”

Now it seemed to us, and it seems to us (for we are
wide awake now), that to represent the Son of God,
while on a mission from Jehovah for the salvation of
a world, made the victim of a “decided panic”—the
“earth quaking, the rocks rent, the sun darkened, the
graves opened, and the veil of the temple rent in
twain,” as the consequence of a “decided panic,” under
the influence of which the Jews had crucified one
whom they “knew as a boy,” and as an industrious
laborer—this does seem to us a “disparagement of the
Savior,” and of the dignity of his mission, and it
does seem to us as intended to “apologise for the
Jews.” What other aim or relevancy has this very
new and original reason for the crucifixion, but to
apologise for the act?

As this is the “first time for centuries” that the
Jews have had an apologist, our readers will be interested
to know more particularly how the crucifixion
is defended. We therefore yield to our own wish,
and give the following more extended extract from
Major Noah's lecture, underlining those passages
which we offendingly described as “adroit disparagement,”
and “apology for the Jews:”—

“The title of God was a title of power and dominion,
and frequently was conferred by the Almighty
himself on earthly rulers. `See, I have made thee a
God to Pharaoh,' as God supreme said to Moses.
Son of God was a title frequently conferred on those of
distinguished piety and learning, and on those possessing
the emanations of the divinity, and this title the
apostles themselves carry out in their writings.

“`The Son,' `My Son,' not the Father; the humanity,
not the divinity, the image of the invisible
God, not the invisible God himself; and as Paul said,
there is one God and one mediator between God and
man. Could the Almighty delegate a mediatorial
character to any one on earth? Who can doubt it?
God said to Moses, `Behold, I send an angel before
thee to keep thee in the way; provoke him not, for he
will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is
in him; my spirit is in him.' It was not therefore altogether
on the charge of Jesus having called himself
Son of God, that the Sanhedrim accused and condemned
him; political considerations mingled themselves,
and in a measure controlled the decision of the
council, and this is demonstrable from the declaration
of Caiaphas himself, as stated in the Gospel: `Better
that one man should die than that the nation should
be destroyed.'

“It was the sedition, and not altogether the blasphemy,
the terror and apprehension of political overthrow,
which led to conviction, and this political and national
characteristic was maintained throughout; it was that
consideration which induced the Jews to urge upon Pilate
a confirmation of the sentence. It was the charge
of assuming the prerogatives of Cesar, not the name
of the Divinity, which overcame the well-founded objections
of the Roman governor, and crucifixion itself
was a Roman and not a Jewish punishment. The
opprobrious insults heaped upon the master came
from the Roman soldiers, and that mixed rabble,
which, even in our day, desecrate all that is held sacred.

“I place these most absorbing events before you,
my countrymen, not to contrast things sacred with
those which are profane, but that you should understand
the exact position of the Jews at that time;
their painful situation, their prostrate condition, their
timidity, their hesitation, without even a ray of hope;
a people so venerable for their antiquity, so beloved
and protected for their fidelity, on the very threshold
of political destruction.

“It is not my duty to condemn the course of our ancestors,
nor yet to justify the measures they adopted
in that dire extremity; but if there are mitigating circumstances,
I am bound by the highest considerations
which a love of truth and justice dictates, to spread
them before you, at the same time to protest against
any entailing upon us, the responsibility of acts committed
eighteen hundred years ago by our fathers, and
thus transmit to untold generations the anger and hatred
of a faith, erroneously taught to believe us the
aggressors.

“The Jews, my friends, were but the instruments
of a higher power, and in rejecting Jesus of Nazareth, we
have a great and overwhelming evidence of the infinite
wisdom of the Almighty. Had they acknowledged him
as their Messiah at that fearful crisis, the whole nation
would have gradually sunk under the Roman
yoke, and we should have had at this day paganism
and idolatry, with all their train of terrible evils, and
darkness and desolation would have spread over the
earth. But the death of Jesus was the birth of
Christianity; the Gentile church sprang from the ruins
which surrounded its primitive existence; its
march was onward, beset with darkness and difficulties,
with oppression and persecution, until the Sun
of Reformation rose upon it, dissipating the clouds
of darkness which had obscured its beauties, and it
shone forth with a liberal and tolerant brightness,
such as the Great Master had originally designed it.
Had not that event occurred, how would you have been
saved from your sins? The Jews in this did nothing
but what God himself ordained, for you will find it
written in the Acts of the Apostles, `And now, brethren,
I know that through ignorance ye did it, as did
also your rulers!”'

We leave it to any Gentile (saved by the “decided
political panic” of the Jews under Caiaphas), whether
it was not reasonable enough—at least for a man
“fast asleep”—to fancy he could detect in the above
argument, an “apology for the Jews,” and a “disparagement
of the Savior.” We were quite too fast
asleep to detect anything else!

No, dear major, we were not “asleep” when this
was delivered! Our head was down—for you had
two unshaded lamps, looking like blazing earrings, on
either side of your benevolent head, and our eyes are
as weak as your heartstrings—but we went to the
Tabernacle, not only with the interest of friendship
for yourself, but with high excitement in the unparalleled
background of your theme! We could not tell
you, without a seeming rhapsody—we could not trust
ourself to record, out of blank verse—the scope your
subject seemed to possess, the tragic sublimity of
your position, the climax of events you wished to be
instrumental in bringing to a close, and the interest
that might be awakened in the Christian world by an
eloquent, life-devoted, fervent apostle of the restoration!
There is no theme for eloquence with a thousandth
part of the pathos, depth, splendor, and present
convergency of this! Heavens! what a theme!
The key of the whole Christian era! The winding
up of a cycle of two thousand years numbered from
the crucifixion! The close of the one expiation
which is the theme of scripture-prophecy, and with
the closing of which comes in the millenial glory,
and the renewal of Paradise on earth! This theme,
on the lips of genius, one would think—genius accursed
eighteen hundred years ago, and to be one of
the forgiven at the second coming of the Messiah—
might burn like the fire upon the lips of Paul, and
turn all eyes toward waiting Jerusalem. This was
the view of the subject with which we went to the

Tabernacle, dear major!—almost envying you your
qualification by birth for the using of it. We meant
no disrespect in our notice. We were only a little
disappointed and annoyed that you did not kindle into
a crusader, or try on Peter the Hermit, till we gazed
at you, spite of your earrings!

And now—(“to step out of the carriage and see
ourselves go by”)—you are wrong if you are right,
major, and right if you are wrong! If your Jewish
creed be right, you are wrong to deny its manifest deduction.
If your Jewish creed be wrong, you are
right in wishing to explain it away. But you can
not have your cake and eat it, too. You can not reconcile
the church with the synagogue, nor can you
lecture palatably and frankly from the synagogue to
Christians. The time, at least, is not come. “At
the end of the world” (says a commentator on the Bible),
“Christ will unite the church with the synagogue,
the Jew with the Christian, the Christian with
the Gentile; then all things will be restored to a perfect
union, and there will be but one shepherd and
one flock.”

Prices of Women—cold and warm.—A lovely
female slave, warm from the mountains of Circassia,
and warranted not to be second-hand, may be bought
at Constantinople for three hundred dollars. A lovely
female statue, cold from the marble mountains of Carrara
(and spotless as the snow, without a doubt), was
lately sold by Mr. Power to the Hon. William Preston,
for three thousand dollars. Something would
seem to be wrong here—the “clay-tariff”—or the Ottoman
“protection”—or something! Various questions
arise. Is an original woman a favorite article?
Is the imitation by Power of the fabrics of Nature & Co.
an improvement upon the model? Is the presence of
the faculty of speech in the cheaper article any special
indication of a preference that can be relied upon in
the buyer? Perhaps some extensive dealer in both
articles will oblige us with a solution of this mercantile
problem.

We had a bonne bouche of opera last night at Niblo's
which made us long for the whole feast—a hint of a
ballet which provoked great desire for more—and just
such a sprinkling of judicious white gloves as satisfied
the cognoscents that there was something in the bill
that had a pull upon the town's fashion. Then, as
if it were to be nothing but an appetizer, Madame
Pico appeared in a private box, and the audience saw,
that, whatever the warble might be, the throat it would
come from was of the most capable fulness of beauty.
We have had our suspicions, from the quietness with
which she “bides her time,” that Madame Pico is a
star conscious of the swing for a large orbit, and very
sure of “putting a circle round the” town, whenever
she rises. It is a considerable spoke in the wheel of
this same orbit that she is a very superb woman. She
has the adorable low Greek forehead, like Mrs. Norton's
(the poetess), and a certain maintien of bust and
neck which shows the kind of passionate uppishness
the old gods used to be fond of. (Vide the gods'
old pictures.) We were not surprised last night to
overhear a foreigner telling one of his countrymen
that Madame Pico would make more impression in
New York than any prima donna since Malibran.
What say, Corbyni! Light up your dress-circle with
a little more gas, and give us ballet and opera with
Borghese and Pico on alternate nights!

In every civilized country but this, the government
backs up the opera, as an important public refinement.
The royal treasurer is always half a stage manager.
With us, the people are the sovereign, but Chancellor
Bibb, not having, as far as we know, offered terms to
Madame Pico, we, as one of the royal pores, do our
part of the insensible perspiration, and express the
warm desire of the public, that Madame Pico should
appear. It is manifest dulness of enterprise, to have
no opera now. There are no parties, the autumn
weather is moderate, the strangers hang about town,
till after the Indian summer, and there is no room for
doubt that the thing would be supported.

There was a demonstration of enthusiasm, last night,
which appeared to be quite a l'improvista, at the performance
of the Polka, by “Master Wood and la
Petite Carline.” These two little miniatures—of
the size of children six years old—danced, to our
thinking, quite wonderfully. We are likely to have
no grown-up dancers, this year at least, who, reduced
to the same size by an inverted opera-glass, would do
the Polka any better. The necessary air of galliardise,
the precision, combined with abandon, the look
and gesture, were all capitally well done. They are
charming little people, and a good deal of a “good
card” for any theatre. Query, for Corbyn—Would
not a ballet, by these Lilliputians, got up for children,
to commence at four o'clock in the afternoon, and last
about one hour, be a paying enterprise?

One hint more: Is there not the making of a fine
actress and singer in Miss Rosina Shaw? She has
beauty, remarkable voice, grace and confidence—four
“pretty wells.” Keep an eye on her, Mr. Manager!

The Day after the Ballot.—The contention
for the favors of Mrs. Vox Populi is over. The difficult
dame has made her election. The future president
is in the ballot-box, and that womb of authority
is now silently waited upon by the paternal majority.
God bless whatever is to be brought forth!

Thank Heaven the town is stiller! There is more
noise upon the blacksmith's anvil and the shoemaker's
lap-stone—more clatter upon the tinman's vice and
the coppersmith's rivet—but the town's heart beats
less audibly, to-day, and the town's pulse less feverishly
and wildly. The political bully is looking around
unwillingly but peacefully for work. The club
wrangler's vocation is gone. The working-man will
give less of his evening to the bar-room and caucus.
Wives rejoice. Children are glad.

Considering only individuals, the immediate tumult
and recoil of politics seem only evil and violence.
The pore and the pediculus will complain of bloodletting
and blister. We believe the country at large
is benefited by the bringing of these bad humors to
the surface, however. We are sure at least that we
see all there is, in our body popular, that is dangerous.
There is evil disposition, antagonism, discontent, craving
for excitement, love of combination, dormant
energy, and ambition—qualities everywhere distributed,
and hungering, every one, for a field of action.
Where better would they break out, than in politics?
How, easier, should we know our neighbor's length
of conscience-string and proneness to trick and unfairness,
than by watching him when his passions are
roused and his cautiousness forgotten? What man
in a political committee knows too little of his fellows
for future living with them?

But, thank God, the tumult once over, the city returns
to peace, industry, and prosperity. Injury and
calumny stand no more behind the editor's chair—
literature and commerce, instead, look promptingly
over his shoulder. The merchant is relieved from
anxiety, and knows how to shape his venture. The
mechanic “hangs” politics for a plague and a bother.
The republic has set up its master, and is content to
be governed while it toils and prospers.

There is one feature of the late contest, however,
for which we can find no philosophical offset. We

refer to the unparallelled and insane extent to which
betting has been carried. Of any good this practice
does we do not see even a shadowing. Of its intolerable
evils we hear mournful accounts at every turn.
It seems to have infected, with a gambling mania,
those who never before hazarded money on a question
of chance or uncertainty. We have heard several
really most lamentable instances of fatuity and disaster
in this new demon-shape of party-spirit. Families
are ruined, creditors robbed, children deprived of education
and bread—by men who would as soon cut off
their hands as throw a stake at a gaming-table! Is
there no power in the law to put a stop to this new
evil of politics? We ask this question to provoke, if
possible, an answer.

And now—as politics walk out from the public mind,
and there is room for something else to walk in—let
us mention a great evil in this country of ours, and
tell some news that has an example by which to
mend it.

We toil too much!

Ladies' Dictionary—the word Alpaca. The Alpaca
is a South American animal, much used as a
beast of burden by the Indians, with long hair, principally
black, but slightly grizzled. It is an excessively
irritable animal, and indomitable till soothed. The
importance of this animal has already been considered
by the English, in their hat, woollen, and stuff trade,
and an essay on the subject has been published by
Dr. Hamilton of London. The wool is so remarkable,
being a jet black, glossy, silk-like hair, that it is fitted
for the production of texile fabrics differing from all
others, occupying a medium position between the
wool and the silk. It is now mingled with other materials
in such a singular manner, that while a particular
dye will affect those, it will leave the Alpaca
wool with its original black color, thus giving rise to
great diversity.

Who wants a Dress-Opera?—There is a large
class in every metropolis who are fond of gayety,
dress, and “a place to go to,” but who do not like
private parties for three or more reasons: 1st, the
lateness of the hours; 2d, the trouble of making the
agreeable; 3d, the card-and-visit nuisance, the management
and ceremony, necessary to keep up fashionable
vogue. The part of the evening between eight
and eleven is, to this class, the time of the twenty-four
hours in which they wish to be abroad, to be admired,
to be amused. The less trouble with it the better;
and they would rather give a dollar and think no more
about it, than leave a card at an expense of memory,
time, equipage, and politic calculation. They want a
place where everybody dresses; where it is light;
where they will see beauty, and be seen themselves
by appreciative eyes; where there is music to hear
and a show to look at if they like to be silent, or
friends in a box near by if they wish to converse—a
place where they can hear the gossip, have singers
to criticise, and “see the world”—in short, an Opera.

To the great majority of ball-goers—particularly to
the men—the time from eight to eleven hangs heavily.
They would gladly dress early and go first to the
opera, if it were habitually a dress-resort.

There are many well-off people to whom a dress-opera
is the only tolerable amusement—lame people;
ladies who only look well sitting, or look best in shawls
and opera-dress; foreigners who do not speak the
language; timid persons, who wish to see the gay
world without encountering it; and the many families
who have a competency to live and can afford
amusement, but want a handle to the door of society.

The first object of strangers in town (of whom there
are always several thousands), is to go where they can
see the well-dressed and fashionable people. Most
strangers, in a large city, would rather see the exclusives
in an opera-box, than the Croton reservoirs, or
the monsters in a menagerie.

People in ceremonious mourning find a great relief
in seeing the gay world from an opera-box.

Last (not least, unless you please!) some people
would frequent the opera, the season through, for the
music. It “soothes” our “savage breast”—for one,
and we think the “hang” of opera-music in the town
hum and whistle is a desirable and refining variety.

Now, with all this desirableness and frequentability,
is it not wonderful that no larger capitalist than Signor
Palmo (pocket edition), should have ventured to embark
in a scheme for an opera-house! It is not a
scheme to prosper—done by halves. It must be a splendid
affair, or a failure. There must be comfort in the
seats, breadth in the alleys, boundless prodigality in
the lights, luxury in the saloons and entrances, and
Alhambrian excellence in the refreshments. The
manager should be a mixture of Cæsar, Talleyrand,
and Bluebeard—awful, politic, punctual in pay, and
relentless to the caprices of primadonnas. Two slashing
critics should be employed to annihilate each other
daily, in opposing preferences for the performers.
The exaction of full dress for all comers should be
rigidly enforced. The names of the belles at every
last night's opera should be disembowelled and paragraphed
every morning. Prestige, celebrity, show,
humbug, and ceremony, should be added to the most
indefatigable real merit in the management, and then
the shareholders would make money.

Then, too, we should have a DRESS-RESORT—what
no theatre now is or ever has been in New York, but
what, of all refinements and resources, is the most
delightful and indispensable. We could write a
column about the blessing of beauty seen in public,
the chastening and refining influences of music, the
restraining proprieties of dress and observance, etc.,
etc., etc.—but we confine ourself to tangibilities. One
more fact—the existence of such an opera-house, so
conducted, would link New York in the operatic chain
of star-travel; and Grisi, Lablache, and the rest, would
as certainly come here from London and Paris, as go
to Vienna and St. Petersburgh, Berlin and Naples.
Our readers in Wall street will please consider this
as a “money article.”

PROMISCUOUS REPLIES TO LETTERS.

Dear Jack: Since my compulsory budding, flowering,
and bearing fruit, have been accelerated to one
season per diem, to feed a daily paper, you will easily
understand that I found it necessary at first to work
all my sap into something useful—omitting as it were,
the gum deposite of superfluous correspondence. I
accordingly left you off. Your last letter was slipped
into the no-more-bother hole, without the usual endorsement
of “answered,” and I considered you like
a trinket laid aside before a race—not to encumber
me. I miss the writing of trumpery, however. I miss
the sweeping out of the corners of my mind—full of
things fit only for the dust-pan, but still very possibly
hiding a silver-spoon.

Do you want any more explanation of why you get
a letter from me for one cent, printed, instead of a
written one at eighteen and three quarters? It is
wonderful how much cheaper printing is than writing!

I left off my envy of your country life as usual with
my summer trowsers, not caring to see the death of
anything—even the resigned summer. As soon as I
have occasion to button my coat to keep out the air,
I am content with that part of the earth's breast that
is paved over. The town is honored now by the presence

of those who could go away if they wished, and,
as, human-like, the town values those who can do
without it, “New York is gay.” Shopping is this
month's pastime, however. The ladies have no need
of parties while they can yield reluctant dollars to insidious
temptation. It was in competition with the
“fall goods” that the opera failed a month ago—opened
on the supposition that people had nothing to amuse
them! A manager, and not know the sex! Kech!
Palmo!

The town is to be illuminated on Monday next by
the apparition of a new base and a brace of prima-donnas.
Madame Pico has been biding her time like
game in the larder, and the town is quite ready to
sweeten her with the current condiment and devour
her. She is a beautiful woman, and though I never
could get my sentiment over the foot-lights, I love to
see the town fascinated. Pray Heaven she sings well
—after all the heralding I have done for her! If that
well-chiselled throat should have an awkward corner
in it, we should have to restore to Borghese her divided
throne and go back to our worship of her toilet
and other utmost-possibles, with an indifferent grace.
Happy queen of Sheba, who ordained that no woman
should reign after her!

Well, sir, what do you want to know? There are
few things above ground that I do not hear of, some
hundreds of newspapers doing their best to make news
and send it to me—to cook to your liking! He who
subscribes to the Mirror appoints me his fashioner of
things palatable to know, and though, like other cooks,
I pass under my nose a vast deal I should not choose
for my own relishing, I do my best to give it with due
spice and proportion. Indeed, what with serving so
many people with so many different kinds of knowledge,
I feel like the omnificent man called for in Ben
Jonson's “Staple of news:”—

When Saturday comes round with the life, business,
fun, and literature of the whole week in one—a mirror'd
E Pluribus Unum—it seems wonderful to me
how so much, and of such endless variety, could have
been gathered into one week's history! That weekly
Mirror is worth binding and keeping, if it were only
as a choice record of the events of the buyer's times
—set down, point by point, with the life he lived
amidst their occurrings. There is nothing good,
brilliant, or important, that is not recorded in it, and,
if a man wants to forget as he goes along, that pack-horse
will take the load off his memory, and for three
dollars a year bring it safe after him!

And now, dear Jack, assuring you that this letter
is wholly confidential, and that you are not at liberty
to give it away as an autograph, I record myself,

ETIQUETTE OF WEDDING-CARDS.

Messrs. Editors: My friend John Smith is to be
married to Lucy Jones. She issues a card of invitation
like this:—

MR. AND MRS. JOHN SMITH
AT HOME,
No. 69 B—street, Tuesday Evening,
November 14th.

John Smith,
Lucy Jones.

Now he intends to use this for inviting to the ceramony;
but I tell him it is wrong, and can only be used
to invite to the party after the ceremony. He contends
that this is the usual form—so the engraver
tells him, etc.

Please give us the law in these matters (we can appeal
to no higher authority in matters of etiquette
and fashion); let us have the two customary forms,
for wedding and party, for the enlightenment of inexperienced
candidates who wish to follow the fashions,
and much oblige,

REPLY.

Dear Custom: Your friend is wrong, from the
egg to the apple. Miss Lucy Jones has a mother, or
father, guardian, or friend, at whose house she is to be
married. The invitation should come from the person
under whose protection she is given away—(sent,
if you please, to Mr. Smith's friends, with Mr. Smith's
card, but understood by Miss Lucy Jones's friends,
without card or explanation). It is tampering with
serious things, very dangerously, to circulate the three
words, “and Mrs. John Smith,” one minute before
the putting on of the irrevocable ring. The law
which permits ladies (though not gentlemen) to
change their minds up to the last minute before wed
lock, exacts also that the privileged angels should not
be coerced by the fear of seeing the escaped name
afterward on a wedding card! Besides, such a card,
so issued, would be received from Mrs. Smith before
there was any such person.

The first proper use of the wedded name is to send
it with parcels of wedding-cake, the morning after the
ceremony, to friends and persons desired as visiting
acquaintances. This is considered an excusable advance
on the part of persons entering newly upon life,
and the promptness with which a return-card is left
upon the bride is an indication of the degree of pleasure
with which the proposition of acquaintance is received.
Another advantage of cake and card:—the
etiquette of (exacting that a new nail should be thus
driven in all acquaintances that are to be kept up) enables
bride and bridegroom to drop, without offence,
such acquaintances of each as are respectively undesirable—persons
inseparable from the set in which the
lady has lived, who are not agreeable to the bridegroom,
and bachelor acquaintances of the bridegroom,
who may be thought too free for the fireside. Wedded
life is thus begun with a “culled posy of friendship,”
the door of society open before, and mischiefmakers
shut out behind.