University of Virginia Library

OLE BULL'S NIAGARA.

(AN HOUR BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE.)

Saddle, as, of course, we are, under any very striking
event, we find ourselves bestridden, now and then,
with a much wider occupancy than the plumb-line
of a newspaper column. Ole Bull possesses us over
our tea-table; he will possess us over our supper-table—his
performance of Niagara equi-distant between
the two. We must think of him and his violin for
this coming hour. Let us take pen and ink into our
confidence.

The “origin of the harp” has been satisfactorily
recorded. We shall not pretend to put forward a
credible story of the origin of the violin; but we wish
to name a circumstance in natural history. The
house-cricket that chirps upon our hearth, is well
known as belonging to the genus Pneumora. Its insect
size consists almost entirely of a pellucid abdomen,

crossed with a number of transverse ridges. This,
when inflated, resembles a bladder, and upon its tightened
ridges the insect plays like a fiddler, by drawing
its thin legs over them. The cricket is, in fact, a
living violin; and as a fiddler is “scarce himself”
without his violin, we may call the cricket a stray
portion of a fiddler.

Ole Bull “is himself” with his violin before him—
but without it, the commonest eye must remark that
he is of the invariable build of the restless searchers
after something lost—the build of enthusiasts—that is
to say, chest enormous, and stomach, if anything,
rather wanting! The great musician of Scripture, it
will be remembered, expressed his mere mental affliction
by calling out “My bowels! my bowels!” and,
after various experiments on twisted silk, smeared
with the white of eggs, and on single threads of the
silk-worm, passed through heated oil, the animal fibre
of cat-gut has proved to be the only string that answers
to the want of the musician. Without trying to reduce
these natural phenomena to a theory (except by
suggesting that Ole Bull may very properly take the
cricket as an emblem of his instinctive pursuit), we
must yield to an ominous foreboding for this evening.
The objection to cat-gut as a musical string is its
sensibility to moisture; and in a damp atmosphere it
is next to impossible to keep it in tune. The string
comes honestly enough by its sensitiveness (as any
one will allow who has seen a cat cross a street after
a shower)—but, if the cat of Ole Bull's violin had the
least particle of imagination in her, can what is left of
her be expected to discourse lovingly of her natural
antipathy—a water-fall?

But—before we draw on our gloves to go over to
Palmo's—a serious word as to what is to be attempted
to-night.

Old Bull is a great creature. He is fitted, if ever
mortal man was, to represent the attendant spirit in
Milton, who

but it seems to us that, without a printed programme,
showing what he intends to express besides the mere
sound of waters, he is trusting far too rashly to the
comprehension of his audience and their power of
musical interpretation. He is to tell a story by music!
Will it be understood?

We remember being very much astonished, a year
or two ago, at finding ourself able to read the thoughts
of a lady of this city, as she expressed them in an admirable
improvisation upon the piano. The delight
we experienced in this surprise induced us to look
into the extent to which musical meaning had been
perfected in Europe. We found it recorded that a
Mons. Sudre, a violinist of Paris, had once brought
the expression of his instrument to so nice a point
that he “could convey information to a stranger in
another room,” and it is added that, upon the evidence
thus given of the capability of music, it was proposed
to the French government to educate military bands
in the expression of orders and heroic encouragements
in battle! Hayden is criticised by a writer on music
as having failed in attempting (in his great composition
“The Seasons”) to express “the dawn of day,”
“the husbandman's satisfaction,” “the rustling of
leaves,” “the running of a brook,” “the coming on
of winter,” “thick fogs,” etc., etc. The same writer
laughs at a commentator on Mozart, who, by a “second
violin quartette in D minor,” imagines himself
informed how a loving female felt on being abandoned,
and thought the music fully expressed that it was
Dido! Beethoven undertook to convey distinct pictures
in his famous Pastoral Symphony, but it was
thought at the time that no one would have distinguished
between his musical sensations on visiting
the country and his musical sensations while sitting
beside a river—unless previously told what was coming!

Still, Ole Bull is of a primary order of genius, and
he is not to wait upon precedent. He has come to
our country, an inspired wanderer from a far away
shore, and our greatest scenic feature has called on
him for an expression of its wonders in music. He
may be inspired, however, and we, who listen, still
be disappointed. He may not have felt Niagara as we
did. He may have been subdued where a meaner
spirit would be aroused—as

(Seven o'clock, and time to go.)

(AFTER THE PERFORMANCE.)

We believe that we have heard a transfusion into
music—not of “Niagara,” which the audience seemed
bona-fide to expect, but—of the pulses of the human
heart AT Niagara. We had a prophetic boding of the
result of calling the piece vaguely “Niagara”—the
listener furnished with no “argument,” as a guide
through the wilderness of “treatment” to which the
subject was open. This mistake allowed, however,
it must be said that Ole Bull has, genius-like, refused
to mis-interpret the voice within him—refused to play
the charlatan, and “bring the house down”—as he
might well have done by any kind of “uttermost,” from
the drums and trumpets of the orchestra.

The emotion at Niagara is all but mute. It is a
“small, still voice” that replies within us to the thunder
of waters. The musical mission of the Norwegian
was to represent the insensate element as it was to
him—to a human soul, stirred in its seldom-reached
depths by the call of power. It was the answer to
Niagara that he endeavored to render in music—not
the call! We defer attempting to read further, or
rightly, this musical composition till we have heard
it again. It was received by a crowded audience, in
breathless silence, but with no applause.

Miss Julia Northall's first appearance as a public
singer was very triumphant. If her heart had not
kept beating just under her music-maker, she would
have made much better music, however. When we
tell the lovely debutante, that persons in besieged
fortresses can detect the direction of the enemy's approach
under ground, by placing sanded drums on
the surface, which betray the strokes of the mining
pickaxes by the vibrations of the particles, she will
understand how the beating of her heart may disturb
the timbre of her voice—to say nothing of the disturbance
in the air by the accelerated beating, of the
anxious hearts of her admirers! She has great advantages—a
rich voice deep down with an upper
chamber in it (what the musicians call a contralto
sfogato), and a kind of personal beauty susceptible of
great stage embellishments. “Modest assurance”
(with a preponderance of assurance if anything), is her
great lack.

Sanquirico sang admirably—but his black coat
spoiled it for all but the cognoscenti.

We came out of the opera-house amid a shower of
expressions of disappointment, and we beg pardon of
“the town” for remembering what Antigenides of
Athens said to a musical pupil who was once too little
applauded. “The next time you play,” said Antigenides,
“shall be to me and the Muses.”

The two new Fashions, White Cravats and
Ladies' Tarpaulins.—Here and there a country
reader will, perhaps, require to be informed that no
man is stylish, now, “out” in the evening, without a

white cravat. To those who frequent the opera this
will be no news, of course; as no eye could have
failed to track the “milky way,” around the semicircle,
from stage-box to stage-box. The fact thus
recorded, however, we proceed to the diagnosis of the
fashion (and of another fashion, of which we shall
presently speak)—premising only that we are driven
to the discussion of these comparatively serious
themes, by the frivolous character of other news, and
the temporary public surfeit of politics, scandal, and
murder.

The white cravat was adopted two years since, in
London, as the mark of a party—“Young England.”
Our readers know, of course, that for ten years, they
have been worn only by servants in that country, and
that a black coat and white cravat were the unmistakable
uniform of a family butler. The cravat having
been first worn as the distinction of a certain reforming
club, in Cromwell's parliament, however, the
author of Vivian Grey adopted it as the insignium of
the new political party, of which he is the acknowledged
leader; and, as the king of the white cravats, he
has set a fashion for America. The compliment we
pay him is the greater, by the way, that we do not
often copy the tight-legged nation in our wearables.

It was established in Brummell's time that a white
cravat could not be successfully tied, except upon the
critical turn preceding the reaction of a glass of champagne
and a cup of green tea. A felicitous dash of
inspired dexterity is the only thing to be trusted, and
failure is melancholy! As to dressiness, a white cravat
is an intensifier—making style more stylish, and the
lack of it more observable; but artistically it is only
becoming to light complexions—by its superior whiteness,
producing an effect of warmth on a fair skin,
but impoverishing the brilliancy of a dark one. As a
sign of the times, the reappearance of the white cravat
is the forerunner of a return to old-fashioned
showiness in evening dress, and, as the wheel comes
round again, we shall revive tights, buckles, and shoes
—expelling the levelling costume of black cravat and
boots, and making it both expensive and troublesome
to look like a gentleman after candlelight. So tilts
the plank in republics—aristocratic luxury going up
as aristocratic politics are going down!

But what shall we say of trains and tarpaulins for
ladies wear! Jack's hat, copied exactly in white satin,
is the rage for a head-dress, now—(worn upon the
side of the head with a ruinous feather)—and a velvet
train is about becoming indispensable to a chaperon!
It will be a bold poor man that will dare to marry a
lady ere long—what with feathers and trains and
pages' wages! We rejoice that we had our fling in
the era of indifferent pocket. Keep the aristocracy
unemployed on politics for another administration or
two, and we shall drive matrimony to the extremities
of society—none but the very rich, or very poor, able
to afford the luxury!

Merry Christmas.—Our paper of this evening—
(Christmas eve)—is to be read by the light of the
“YULE LOG,”—or whatever else represents the bright
centre around which, dear reader! your family does
its Christmas assembling. We shall perhaps amuse
you by suggesting a comparison between the elegant
lamp, which diffuses its light over your apartment,
and the expedient resorted to by your English ancestors
to brighten the hall for their Christmas evening.
“I myself,” says an old historian, “have seen table-cloths,
napkins, and towels, which being taken foul
from the table, have been cast into the fire, and there
they burned before our faces upon the hearth.” This,
of course, was by way of illustrating the greasy habits
of our ancestors at table, and gives an amusing piquan
cy to the injunction of wisdom that we should cherish
the “lights of the past.”

There are two points of freedom in which we envy
the condition of slaves at the south—FREEDOM from
responsibility at all times, and FREEDOM from all manner
of work from Christmas to New Year. “The
negroes” (says a writer on the festivals, games, and
amusements, in the southern states), “enjoy a week's
recreation every winter, including Christmas and New
Year's; during which they prosecute their plays and
sports in a very ludicrous and extravagant manner,
dressing and masking in the most grotesque style, and
having, in fact, a complete carnival.” We confess
this let-up from the pressure of toil is enviable. The
distinction between horse and man, in the latter's requiring
mental as well as bodily rest, should be legislated
upon—all business barred with penalties, except
for the necessaries of life, during the Christmas holydays
and during another week somewhere in June.
We are a monotonous people in this country. The
festivals of the Jews occupied a quarter of the year,
and eighty days were given to festivals among the
ancient Greeks! We do not fairly keep more than
one in New York—New Year's day—the only day,
except Sundays, when newspapers are not issued and
shops are all shut.

We are sorry we can not paragraph America into
more feeling for holydays, but we may perhaps prevent
a gradual desuetude of even keeping Christmas, by
heaping up our regrets when it comes round. We
shall join the procession of visiters to the toy-shops
and confectioners to-night, and we think, by the way,
that these rounds to the gift-venders, might be made
exceedingly agreeable. “Guion,” “Sands,” “Thompson,”
“Tiffany & Young,” “Stuart's Candy
Palace,” “Bonfanti's,” and “the Alhamra,” are
beautiful places for a range of soirees in hat and bonnet,
and we went this round last Christmas eve with
great amusement. Happy children are beautiful
sights, and we can still see bons-bons with their eyes.

Reader! a merry Christmas! and let us repeat
once more to you the old stanza (tho' old Trinity is
no longer what it was when this was written):—

The other side of Broadway.—It is time that
the decline of the era of shopping a-foot was fairly announced
as at its fall—an epoch gone over to history.
Washington Hall has been purchased as a property
no longer objectionable from its being the other side
of mud, and is to be speedily converted into the most
magnificent “ladies store” within the limits of silk
and calico. We are credibly assured that this last
assertion is fully borne out by the plans of Mr. Stuart,
the projector. No shop in London or Paris is to
surpass it. But the best part of it remains to be told:
—The building is to have a court for carriages in the
centre, so that shoppers will thunder in at a porte
cochére, like visiters to the grand duke of Tuscany!
There will of course be a spacious door on the street,
for those who can cross Broadway without a carriage
—(poor zealous things!)—but the building is contrived
for those to whom the crowded side of the street
is rather an objection, and who wish their hammer-cloths
to stand out of the spatter of omnibuses while
they shop!! There is a comment on “the times”
in this plan of Mr. Stuart's which we commend to the
notice of some other parish.

Farther down-town, however (156) the shilling side
of Broadway has been embellished by a new store, intended
for all comers and customers, and certainly an
ornament to the town—occupied by Beebe & Costar,
hatters. No more showy and sumptuous saloon
could possibly be contrived than this “hatter's shop;”
and it is very well that they keep one article of ladies'
wear—(riding-hats)—for it is altogether too pretty a
place for a monastery. The specimen hats stand on
rows of marble tables, and the room is lined with mirrors
and white panels—the effect very much that of a
brilliant French café. As to the article of merchandise,
Beebe & Costar have made tributary the “lines
of beauty” to a degree which gives their hats a most
peculiar elegance of shape, and it is worth the while
of those who are nice in their tegmen, to “look in.”

Apropos:—The only god who employed a hatter
was Mercury—why is not that “English clever”
deity, with his winged hat, installed as a hatter's
crest? The propriety of it must have occurred to the
hatters. Possibly we are so mercurial a nation, that
it was thought impolitic—no man wanting any more
mercury in his hat—at least when it is on. We see
that the annual hatters' ball comes off on the 26th.
May we venture to suggest as topics of discussion in
the quadrilles—1st, Mercury's claims to the arms of
the assembly, and, 2d, what peltry was probably used
by the hatter of Olympus, and 3d, whether (as it was
a winged hat) it must not have been made of the only
quadruped that flies fur, the flying squirrel? “Curious
questions, coz!”

France versus England, or the Black Cravat
versus the White.—We have received, in a very
London-club-y handwriting, a warlike reply to the
note we published lately from a French gentleman on
the subject of the white cravat. The two nations
seem to have separated into hostile array on the subject.
Our English correspondent certainly brings
cogent arguments in favor of the white, and indeed
of English costume generally. After asking very
naturally what our French correspondent's phrase,
“perfidious Albion,” had to do with it, and suggesting
that “black cravat” had better “reflect on the late
conduct of the French in the Pacific,” he goes on
with the matter in question:—

“The English fashion for gentlemen's dress is never
to sacrifice comfort to appearance, which the French
fashion invariably does; the clothes of the English
are loosely made, so that every limb of the body is
free. You see nothing in the dress that can be called
effeminate; they appear to eschew everything that
approaches the `Miss Nancy school;' no man with
them is considered well-dressed, however costly his
attire, if he be not manly in his appearance. Now, a
Frenchman's clothes are made to fit so tight, that it
is impossible for him to look at his ease. A Frenchman
dressed looks as if he had just come out of a
band-box; he looks like a pretty doll which you see
in the shop windows in Paris. To hand a lady a
chair, he runs the danger of bursting his coat, or
cracking his waist-band; he can not stoop to pick up
a lady's fan, without danger to his inexpressibles.
The Frenchman dressed is no longer the easy, pliant,
laughing man, that we know him to be when in dishabille—but
he is stiff, unnatural, and effeminate.

“The English fashion abhors display; the French,
on the contrary, invites it. With the Frenchman
dress is a great affair, for he intends to make a sensation.
With the Englishman it is but secondary, for
he does not believe that mere dress can have any influence.
You may form an idea of the sentiments
of both nations from this national character—the
English (and Americans) are proud, but not vain;
the French are very vain, but have little pride.

“Again: we like the Englishman's fondness for
white linen, and in this we can not imitate him too
closely. It is not only in the evening, as with the
Frenchman, that he puts on his fine linen, but at
rising he must have it.—Though he may wear a
shaggy morning coat, his under garments must be
spotless. You may know him when travelling on the
continent, by the unrivalled whiteness of his linen.
The same cleanliness makes the white cravat preferable.
It has its recommendation in being a clean
fashion—for no gentleman can wear it more than
once; whereas, the black satin cravat, which your
correspondent so much extols, is an exceedingly dirty
fashion—for, after dancing, the perspiration settles in
the satin; and with the dust in the room, &c., it becomes
unfit to wear more than twice, whereas the
French wear their cravats until they are worn out.”

The sun “kept Christmas” yesterday, by appearing
“in his best.” We never saw a more joyous, kindly,
holyday quality of sunshine. All who had hearts to
go abroad with, went abroad, and a-Broadway was a
long aisle of beauty in nature's roofless cathedral.
God help all who were not happy yesterday! We
picked up a bit of real-life poetry (by-the-way) in a
very unexpected place yesterday—a confectioner's
shop! The circumstance is at such a distance from
poetry, that the flash comes before the report—a
laugh before the eye is moistened. At Thompson's,
the best confectioner of the city, we saw a large pound-cake,
with a figure of a nun standing on it, dressed in
white, and we were told that a cake had just gone to
the sisters of the Barclay-street convent, with this little
figure in mourning instead of white—sent by a
young catholic lady who had just lost her mother.
As a conveyance of a thought, intended to be entirely
between the mourner and the sympathising sisters,
we think this was very beautiful. Perhaps we
spoil it by giving the coarse-minded a chance to ridicule
it.

We wish to introduce to the reader the word tonality.
Let us show its availableness at once by using
it to express the secret of Pico's overwhelming effect
upon the audience on Saturday evening. As musical
people know, melody is the natural “concord of sweet
sounds,” and harmony may be tolerably defined as the
artificial creation of surprises to vary melody. Malibran
saw, for instance, that one of her rustic audiences
could feel melody, but was incapable of appreciating
harmony, when they tumultuously encored her in
“Home, Sweet Home,” and let her “Di tanti palpiti”
go by without applause! It takes more than
one hearing, for persons not learned in music, to appreciate
the harmony of an opera, though if there be
in it an air of simple melody, a child will listen to
it, for the first time, with delight. But there are operas,
much cried up, where the melody and harmony
are not in TONE; and though people may be made to
like them against nature (as they like olives), the majority
of the audience will feel incredulous as to its
being “good music.” (We were two or three years
opera-going before these unwritten distinctions got
through our dura mater, dear reader; and if you are
not in a hurry, perhaps you will pay us the compliment
of reading them over again, while we mend our
pen for a new paragraph.)

Pico sang a part in the opera of Saturday night,
which, in our opinion, owed its electric power to three
tonalities: tone No. 1, between the harmony and melody
of the music—tone No. 2, between the music

and her own impression on the public as a woman—
and tone No. 3, between the opera and the mood of
the public for that evening.

Tone No. 1 is already explained. Tone No. 3 was,
perhaps, a combination of pleasurable accidents—
both the donnas in one piece, the house crammed
with fashion, and graced with more beauty than usual,
and (last, not least) the change in the weather. A sudden
south wind in December, makes even fashion affectionate,
and, with such influences in the air, music
that is “the food of love,” may “play on”—with
entire confidence as to its reception. Of tone No. 2
(the part in Donizetti's opera) we wish to speak more
at large, but we can not trust ourself afloat with it in
a paragraph already under headway.

Donizetti is commonly rated as a trite and not very
vigorous composer. As a musical convoy, he never
drops the slowest sailor below the horizon. But, that
he lets his heart steer the music whenever he can persuade
science to give up the helm, everybody must
have felt who has embarked a thought in one of his
operas. The music written down for Orsini (Pico's
part) expresses the character that Shakspere's words
give to Mercutio—the prince of thoughtless good
fellows, careless, loveable, and amusing. Between
this and Pico's personal qualities (as made legible
across the footlights), there is a tonality the town has
felt—a joyous recognition, by the audience, of a complete
correspondence between the good-fellow music
she sings and the good fellow nature has made her.
There is a class of such women—some of them the
most captivating of their sex, and every one of them
the acknowledged “best creature in the world” of the
circle she lives in. Here and there a person will understand
better what we mean if we mention that
Pico sat in the proscenium-box on the night of Ole
Bull's concert, and, with a full house looking at her
with eager curiosity, sat and munched her under-lip
most unbecomingly, in perfect unconsciousness of
any need of forbearing to do in public what she would
have done if she were alone! We must say we like
women that forget themselves!

We heard twenty judicious persons comment on
the opera of Saturday, and with but one expression
of never, in any country, having enjoyed opera more.
The universal tonality, to which we have tried to play
the interpreter, is partly a matter of coincidence, and
may not happen again; but we assure the two donnas
and our friend Signor Sacchi, that with the remembrance
of it, and with them both in the glorious opera
of Semiramide, next week, they will want a larger
house than Palmo's.

And, by-the-way, this amiable “Quintius Curtius”
of the opera, who has procured us the luxury of a
temple of music by jumping into the gulf with his
$47,000—excellent Signor Palmo—claims of the public
a slight return; no more than that they should acknowledge
the fact of his disaster! It has been doubted
that he has lost money, and some of the world's
cruelty has been dealt out to him in the shape of a
sneer at his sincerity. We copy (literally) the explanation
sent us on the subject, and bespeak for him
present public regard, and some future more tangible
demonstration:—

“Being attracted by a statement made in the Mirror
in reference to the Italian company at Palmo's
opera-house, showing the receipts and disbursements
for twelve nights, leaving but a small amount to be
divided by the company, after having as good and better
houses than when under the auspices of Signor
Palmo, whose honesty has been imputed to have made
money, and made the public and his creditors believe
the contrary, now the mystery is solved, and the public
should be satisfied of Signor Palmo's integrity,
who is ready to show by bills paid, and his books, that
he has lost $47,000 the last four years.”

SUPER AFTER THE OPERA.

Private room over the Mirror office, corner of Ann and
Nassau—Supper on the round table, and brigadier
mixing summat and water—Flagg, the artist, fatiguing
the salad with a paper-folder—Devil in waiting—Quarter
past ten, and enter “Yours Truly”
from the opera.

Brig.—Here he comes, like a cloud dropping from
Olympus—charged with Pico-tricity! Boy (to the
“devil”), stick a steel pen in my hat for a conductor!
Now—let him rain!

Flagg.—Echo—let him reign!

Yours Truly—(looking at the salad-dish).—Less
gamboge for me, if you please, my dear artist! Be
merciful of mustard when you mix for public opinion!
But, nay! brigadier!

Brig.—Thank you for not calling on me to bray,
mi-boy! What shall I neigh at?

Yours Truly.—How indelicate of you to call on
an artist to exercise his profession on a party of pleasure!

Brig.—How?

Yours Truly—Setting him to grind colors in a salad-dish!
What are you tasting with that wooden
ladle, my periodical sodger?

Brig.—Two of “illicit” to one of Croton—potheen
from a private still in the mountains of Killarny!
Knowles sent it to me! You have no idea what a
flavor of Kate Kearney there is about it!—(fmff! fmff!)

Flagg—(absently).—I smell the color of the heath-flowers
in it—crocus-yellow on a brown turf!

Brig.—Stick a pin there, mi-boy!—a new avenue
to the brain for things beautiful! Down with privileged
roads in a republic! Why should the colors
mixed for a limitless sense of beauty go in only at the
eye?

Flagg.—No reason why. I wish we could hear
colors!

Brig.—So you can, my inspired simplicity! and
taste them, too! You can hear things that are read,
and you can taste the brown in a turkey! (Turning
to Yours Truly)—Was that well said, my dear boy?

Yours Truly.—Pardon me if I suggest still an improvement
in the aristocracy of the senses! The
eye has a double door of fringed lids, and the mouth
an inner door of fastidious ivory; and, with the power
to admit or exclude at will, these are the exclusive organs!
The republicans are the nose and ear—open
to all comers, and forced to make the best of them!

Flagg.—A new light, by Jupiter! Let us pamper
the aristocracy! An oyster for my ivory gate, if you
please, general, and let us spite the ear's monopoly
of Pico by drinking her in silence! (—)

Brig.—(—)

Yours Truly.—(—)

Brig.—Touching Pico—is she, or isn't she?—you
know what I want to know, my boy! Disembowel
your mental oyster! What ails Borghese? What
is a “contralto?” Is it anything wrong—or what?

Yours Truly.—A contralto, my particular general,
is a voice that touches bottom—rubs your heart with
its keel, as it were, while floating through you—comparing
with a soprano, as the air on a mountain-top
compares with a breeze from lower down.

Brig.—Best possible description of yourself, mi-boy!
Go on, my contralto!

Flagg.—Yes—go on about Borghese—what is the
philosophy of Borghese's salary being the double of
Pico's?

Yours Truly.—Ah! now you touch the weight
that keeps Borghese down! The public, like yourself,
ask why the prima-donna who gives them the
more pleasure is the poorer paid! Borghese—but
first let me tell you what I think of her, comparison

apart. (Boy, light a cigar, and keep it going with the
bellows, a la pastille! I like the smoke, but to talk
with a cigar in the mouth spoils the delicacy of discrimination.)

Brig.—Spare us the scientific, mi-boy!

Yours Truly.—Why, what do you mean? I am as
ignorant of music, my dear sodger, as an Indian is of
botany—but he knows a weed from a flower, and I
talk of music as the audience judge of it—by what I
hear, “mark, and inwardly digest.”

Brig.—But the big words, my dear contralto!

Yours Truly.—“Foreign slip-slops,” I grant you—
but nothing more!—I lived three years in Italy, and,
of course, heard Italian audiences express themselves,
and here and there a phrase sticks to me—but if I
know “B sharp” from “B flat” (which is more than
some musical critics know), it is the extent of my
knowledge. No, general! there is no sillier criticism
of music than technical criticism. You might as well
paint cannon-balls piebald and then judge of their
effect by remembering which color showed through
the touch-hole before priming! Notes go to the ear;
effects shower the nerves. A musician who is a critic,
judges of a prima-donna by the accuracy with which
she imitates what he (the musician) has played on
an instrument—like a tight-rope dancer criticising his
brother of the slack-rope, because he don't swing over
the pit! Analyze the applause at an opera! There
are, perhaps, ten persons in a Palmo audience who are
scientific musicians. These ten admire most what
they can most exclusively admire—rapid and difficult
passages (what the Italians call fiorituri, or “flourishes”)
executed with the most skilful muscular effort
of the vocal organs. These ten, however, pass over,
as very pleasant accidents of the opera, the part which
pleases the rest of the audience—the messa di voce—
the tender expression of slower notes which try the
sweetness of the voice—the absoluteness of the “art
concealing art,” and which, more than all, betrays the
personal sensibility and quality of the actress's mind.
My dear brigadier, true criticism travels a circle, and
ends where it began—with nature. But as the art of
the prima-donna brings her to the same point, the unscientific
audience are most with the most skilful prima-donna—nearer
to a just appreciation of her than
musicians are.

Brig.—Now I see the reason I am so enchanted
with Pico, mi-boy! I was afraid I had no business to
like her—as I didn't know Italian music! What a
way you have of making me feel pleasant!

Yours Truly.—Pico has enchanted the town, brigadier!
and I have endeavored to put the flesh and
blood of language to the ghost of each night's enchantment.
That ghost of remembrance sticks by us
through the next day, and I thought it would be
agreeable to the Mirror readers to have the impression
of the music recalled by our description of it.
Have I done it scientifically? Taste forbid!—even if
I knew how! I interpret for “the million”—not for
“the ten.”

Flagg.—But about Borghese!

Yours Truly.—Well—I have a great deal to say
about Borghese—I have a great deal of the “flesh
and blood” I just spoke of, in reserve for Borghese;
but I shall follow a strong public feeling, and not
clothe her enchantments with language, till she slacks
her hold upon the purse-strings, and shares equally,
at least, with the donna whom the public prefer.
There goes the brigadier—fast asleep! Good night,
gentlemen! (Exit “Yours Truly.”)

Ole Bull's Concert.—We longed last night for
one of “Curtis's acoustic chairs,” by which all the
sound that approaches a man is inveigled into his ear
and made the most of, for we heard Niagara attentively
through, and at every change in the music
wished it louder. We thought even the “dying fall”
too expiring. It occurred to us, by the way, that if
the text of this discoursed music had been one of the
psalms instead of God's less interpretable voice in the
cataract, the room for enthusiasm, as well as the
preparation for it, on the part of the audience, would
have been vastly greater. In a mixed assembly (of
the quality of that at Palmo's last night) no chamber
of imagination is furnished or tenanted except that of
religion, and the very name of a bible psalm on the violin
would have clothed any music of Ole Bull's performing
with the aggrandizing wardrobe of association
kept exclusively for “powerful sermons” and
“searching prayers.” We rather wonder that this
ready access to the excitability of the mass has not
been taken advantage of by the violinists.

We confess to a little surprise in Ole Bull's organization.
With the

a superb build for a gladiator or an athlete—his violin
is a woman! The music he draws from it is all delicacy,
sentiment, pathos, and variable tenderness—
never powerful, masculine, or imposing. “The
Mother's Prayer,” and the “Solitude of a Prairie,”
are more effective than “Niagara,” for that reason.
The audience are prepared for a different sex in a
cataract. We know very well that the accordatura of
a violin is of all compass, and that Paganini “played
the devil” on it, as well as the angel, and we repeat
our surprise, that, even in a piece whose name suggests
nothing but masculine power, the burthen should
be wholly feminine! Fact, as this unquestionably is,
we leave it to our readers to reconcile with another fact
—that the applause at one of Ole Bull's concerts bears
no proportion to the enthusiasm, as the ladies, without
exception, are enchanted with him, and the men (who
do the applauding) are, almost without exception, dissatisfied
with him.

Even at the high price of tickets, nobody draws
like the Norwegian. A very sensible correspondent
of ours proposed to him (through the Mirror) to lower
his price, and allow those who could not afford the
dollar to have an opportunity of hearing him. He is
the soul of kindness and charity, and we should suppose
this would strike him as a felicitous hint.

Battle of the Cravats.—The front row of the
opera resembles a pianoforte with its white and black
keys—the alternation of black and white cravats is so
evenly distributed. The Frenchmen are all in black
cravats of course, and the English and Americans in
white, and a man might stop his ears and turn his
back to the orchestra (when the two donnas are on
the stage together) and tell who is singing, Pico or
Borghese, by the agitation of the black cravats or the
white. It is a strong argument in favor of the white
cravats, apropos, that the Americans, whose sympathy
is with the French in almost everything, should
have joined the English in this division of opinion.
We have received two or three most bellicose letters
on each side of this weighty argument, and would
publish them if we had a spare page.

The Opera.—Madame Pico was evidently struggling,
last evening, against the effects of her late illness;
but she delighted the audience as usual, with
her impassioned and effective singing. The opera

is a very trying one, and, to us, not the most agreeable
in its general character—particularly in the lachrymose
tone, throughout, of the part allotted to Pico.
Sanquirico was a relief to this ennui, and he so
charmed one lady in the house, that she threw him a
bouquet! He played capitally well—barring one little
touch of false taste in using two English words by
way of being funny. It let him down like the falling
out of the bottom of a sedan.

Several of our French friends, by the way, have requested
us to contradict the on dit we mentioned in
the Mirror, touching a “cabal to keep Pico subservient
to Borghese.” A regularly-formed one there
doubtless is not—but the French are zealous allies,
and every one of them does as much for Borghese as
he can, and, of course, as much as he could do in a
cabal. On the contrary, there seems to be no one individual
taking any pains about Pico—the general enthusiasm
at the opera excepted. Let us state a fact:
We have received many visits and more than a dozen
letters, to request even our trifling critical preference
for Borghese; and no sign has been given, either by
Pico or her friends, that our critical preference was
wished for, or otherwise than tacitly acknowledged.
This being true of a mere newspaper, what must be
probably the difference of appeal to more direct sources
of patronage? One or two persons have talked
feelingly of pity for Borghese's mortification! We
are watching to see when her mortification will be so
insupportable that she will slacken her grasp upon
Pico's just share of the profits! We are not only the
true exponent of public opinion in reference to the
merits of these ladies, but, if we are not personally
impartial, it is because (though we have no acquaintance
with either of the two ladies) we chance to know
most of Borghese's friends. Pico is evidently a kind-hearted
person, indolently careless of her pecuniary
interests, and it is impossible to see the shadows of
mental suffering in her face and not wish to aid her—
but we should not sacrifice critical taste to do even
that, and we have not written a syllable that her effect
on the public has not more that justified. At the
same time we have never said a syllable to disparage
Borghese, and have only forborne to say as much of
her merits as we should otherwise have done, because
she was overpaid and strongly hedged in with supporters.

Servants in Livery, Equipages, etc.—There is
a stage of civilization at which a country will not—and
a subsequent stage at which a country will—tolerate
liveried servants. In a savage nation, an able-bodied
man who should put on a badge of hopeless and submissive
servitude for the mere certainty of food and
clothing, would be considered a disgrace to his tribe.
The further step of making that badge ornamental to
the servile wearer, would probably be resented as an
affront to the pre-eminence of display which is the
rightful prerogative of chiefs and warriors.

In a crowded and highly-civilized country, it is
found convenient for patricians to secure the tacit
giving-way of plebeian encounter in thronged places—
convenient for them to distinguish their own servants
from other people's in a crowd at night—and, more
particularly, in large and corrupt cities, it is convenient
to have such attendants for ladies as may secure
them from insult in public—the livery upon the follower
showing that the person he follows is not only respectable,
but of too much consequence to be annoyed
with impunity. The ostentation of servants in livery
is scarce worth a comment, as, unless newly assumed,
it is seldom thought of by the owner of the equipage,
nor is it offensive to the passer-by, except in a country
where it is not yet common.

The question whether a country is ready for liveries
—that is to say, whether it has arrived at that stage
where the want they imply is felt, and where the distinctions
they imply are acknowledged—is the true
point at issue. It is a curious point, too, for, in every
other nation, liveries may be excused as traditional
—as being only modifications of the dresses of feudal
retainers—while Americans, without this apology,
must defend the abrupt adoption of liveries on the
mere grounds of propriety and convenience.

We certainly have not yet arrived at that point of
civilization where liveries are needed—as in England
—to protect a lady from insult in the street. A female
may still walk the crowded thoroughfares of
New York by daylight—as she dare not do in London—unattended,
either by a gentleman or a servant
in livery. (We live in hope of overtaking the civilization
of the mother-country!) Neither has a liveried
equipage, as yet, the tacit consequence, in America,
which secures to it in London the convenient concessions
of the highway. We are republican enough,
thus far, to allow no privileges to be taken for granted;
and he who wishes to ride in a vehicle wholly invisible
to omnibus-drivers, and at the same time to
have his lineage looked into and perpetuated without
the expense of heraldic parchment, has only to appear
in Broadway with liveried equipage!

We differ from some of our luxurious friends, by
thinking, that, as long as the spending of over five
thousand dollars a year makes a gentleman odious in
the community, liveries are a little premature. It
is a pity to be both virtuous and unpopular. The
moving about in a cloud of reminded lordship is a
luxury very consistent with high morality, but it
comes coldly between republicans and the sun—
whatever fire of heaven the offending cloud may embosom.
We wonder, indeed, at the remaining in this
country, of any persons ambitious of distinctions in
the use of which we are thus manifestly “behind the
age.” It is so easy to leave the lagging American
anno domini of aristocracy, and sail for the next century—by
the Havre packet!

That Heaven does not disdain such love of each
other as is quickened by personal admiration, is
proved by the injunctions to the children of Israel to
appear in cheerful and becoming dresses on festal days
—those days occupying rather more than a quarter of
a year. The Jews also ornamented their houses on
holydays, not as we do with evergreens (a custom we
have taken from the Druid “mistletoe, cut with the
golden knife”), but with such ornaments as would
best embellish them for the reception of friends. The
French nation is to be admired for supremacy, in this
age, in the exhibition of the kindly feelings and the
brightening of the links of relationship and friendship.
It has been stated (among statistics) that for bons-bons
alone, in Paris, on new year's day, were expended
one hundred thousand dollars! We copy the French
with great facility in this country, and (until the proposed
“annexation of Paris”) we rejoice in the prosperity
of Stuart's candy quarry in New York, and
the myriad cobwebs of affection that stick, each by
one thread, to the corner of Chambers and Greenwich
streets! If not quite a “pilgrimage to Jerusalem,”
it is a pilgrimage to our best signs and emblems of
Jerusalem usages, to go the rounds of the gift-shops
during the holydays; and no kindly Christian parent,
who wishes to throw out an anchor for his children
against the storm of political ruffianism, should neglect
to bind friendship and family by a new tie in the
holydays! We see a use in the skill at temptation
shown by such admirable taste-mongers as Tiffany

& Young, Woodworth, Guion, and others,
which is beyond the gratification of vanity, and far
from provocatives to “waste of money.” But this is
no head under which to write a sermon.

We have (ourselves) a preference among the half
dozen curiosity-shops of the city—a preference which
may, perhaps, be called professional—springing from
love for the memory of a departed poet. The son of
Woodworth, the warm-hearted author of the “Old
Oaken Bucket” and other immortal embodiments of
the affections, in verse, is the present proprietor of the
establishment known as Bonfanti's—(by our just mentioned
theory of the holy ministration of gifts, employed
on somewhat the same errand in life as the bard who
went before). It may not be improper to mention
here, that the last few painful years of the poet's life
were soothed with a degree of filial devotion and tenderness
which makes the Woodworths cherished
among their friends, and this is a country, thank God,
where such virtues bring prosperity in business!

BREAKFAST ON NEW YEAR'S DAY.

Astor house, No. 184—nine o'clock in the morning—
breakfast for two on the table—enter the brigadier.

Brig.(Embracing “us”).—Mi-boy! GOD BLESS
YOU!!!

“We.” (With his hand to his forehead.)—With
what a sculptured and block-y solidity you hew out
your benedictions, my dear general! You fairly
knock a man over with blessing him! Sit down and
wipe your eyes with that table-napkin!

Brig.—Well—how are you?

“We.”—Hungry! I'll take a wing of the chicken
before you—killed probably last year. How many
“friends, countrymen, and lovers,” are you going to
call on to day?

Brig.—I wish I knew how many I shall not call on!
What is a—(pass the butter if you please)—what is
a pat of butter, like me, spread over all the daily bread
of my acquaintance?

“We.”—

I'll tell you what I have done, general. Here is a list
of all my circle of pasteboard. It begins with those
I love, and ends with those with whom I am ceremonious.
Those whom I neither love nor am ceremonious
with, form a large betweenity of indifference;
and though you may come to love those with whom
you are ceremonious, you never can love those you
are wholly indifferent to. I have crossed out this betweenity.
Life is too short to play even a game of
acquaintance in which there is no possible stake.

Brig.—How short life is, to be sure!

“We.”—Shorter this side the water than the other!
In Europe a man is not bowed out till he is ready to
go! Here, he is expected to have repented and made
his will at thirty-seven! I shall pass my “second
childhood” in France, where it will pass for a continuation
of the first!

Brig.—My dear boy, don't get angry! Eat your
breakfast and talk about New Year's. What did the
Greeks used to do for cookies?

“We.”—Well thought of—they made presents of
dates covered with gold leaf! Who ever gilds a date
in this country? No! no! general! You will see
dozens of married women to-day who have quietly
settled down into upper servants with high-necked
dresses—lovely women still—who would be belles for
ten years to come, in France! Be a missionary,
brigadier! Preach against the unbelievers in mulie
brity! It's New Year and time to begin something!
Implore your friends to let themselves be beautiful
once more! (Breast-bone of that chicken, if you
please!) I should be content never to see another
woman under thirty—their loveable common-sense
comes so long after their other maturities!

Brig.—What common-place things you do say, to
be sure! Well, mi-boy, we are going to begin another
year!

“We.”—Yes—prosperously, thank God! And,
oh, after the first in-haul of rent from these well-tenanted
columns, what a change we shall make in
our paper! Let us but be able to afford the outlay
of laborious aid, which other editors pay for, and see
how the Mirror will shine all over! I have a system
in my brain for a daily paper—the fruit of practical
study for the last three months—which I shall begin
upon before this month has made all its icicles; and
you shall say that I never before found my true vocation!
The most industriously edited paper in the
country is but the iron in the razor; and thought it is
not easy to work that into shape, anybody can hire it
done, or do it with industry. The steel edge, we shall
find time to put on, when we are not, as now, employed
in tinkering the iron!

Brig.—Black-and-white-smiths—you and I!

“We.”—No matter for the name, my dear general!
—one has to be everything honesty will permit, to
get over the gulf we have put behind us. Civilized
life is full of the most unbridged abysses. Transitions
from an old business to a new, or from pleasure to
business, or from amusing mankind to taking care of
yourself, would be supposed, by a “green” angel, to
be good intentions, easy enough carried out, in a
world of reciprocal charities. But let them send
down the most popular angel of the house of Gabriel
& Co., to borrow money for the most brilliant project,
without bankable security! And the best of it is, that
though your friends pronounce the crossing of a business-gulf,
on your proposed bridge of brains, impossible
and chimerical, they look upon it as a matter of
course when it is done! You and I are poets—if the
money and fuss we have made will pass for evidence
—yet nobody thinks it surprising that we have taken
off our wings, and rolled up our shirt-sleeves to carry
the hod! Not to die without having experienced all
kinds of sensations, I wish to be rich—though it will
come to me like butter when the bread is gone to
spread it on. Heigho!

Brig.—How you keep drawing similitudes from
what you see before your eyes! Let me eat my
breakfast without turning it into poetry! It will sour
on my stomach, my dear boy!

“We.”—So you are ordered out to smash the Helderbergers,
general!

Brig.—Ordered to hold myself in readiness—that's
all at present. I wish they'd observe the seasons, and
rebel in pleasant weather! Think of the summit of
a saddle with the thermometer at zero! Besides, if
there is any fighting to do one likes an enemy. This
campaign to help the constable, necessary as it is, goes
against my stomach.

“We.”—Fortify it, poor thing! What say to a
drop of curacoa before you begin your New Year's
round? (Pouring for the general and himself.) Burke
states, in his “Vindication of Natural Society,” that
your predecessor, Julius Cesar, was the means of
killing two millions one hundred thousand men! How
populous is Helderberg—women and all?

Brig.—Twelve o'clock, my dear boy, and time to
be shaking hands and wishing. Take the first wish
off the top of my heart—a happy New Year to you,
and—

“We.”—Gently with that heavy benediction!

Brig.—God bless you, mi-boy!

(Exit the brigadier, affected.)

Themes for the Table.—Among the “upper
ten thousand,” there are, of course, many persons, not
only of really refined taste, but of practical common
sense, and to them we wish to proffer a hint or two,
touching the usages just now in plastic and manageable
transition among the better classes. The following
note, received a day or two since, suggests one of
the improvements that we had marked down for comment:—

There is another very burthensome matter, the
annoyance of which might be transferred to the penny-post—
card leaving! When men are busy and ladies
ill (the business and the illness equally unlikely to be
heard of by way of apology) it would often be a most
essential relief to commit to envelopes a dozen cards,
and, with an initial letter or two in the corner,[1] expressive
of good-will but inability to call in person,
make and return visits without moving from counting
house or easy-chair. This, in a country where few
keep carriages, and where every man worth knowing
has some business or profession, should be an easy
matter to bring about; and, if established into a usage
that gave no offence, would serve two purposes—relieving
the ill or busy, and compelling those, who
really wish to keep up an acquaintance, at least to
send cards once in a while, as reminders.

We wish that common sense could be made fashionable
among us—vigorously applied, we mean, to the
fashions of the best style of people. Why should not
the insufferable nuisance of late parties be put down
in this country by a plot between a hundred of our
sensible and distinguished families? In England they
are at the dinner-table between six and ten; but why
should we, who seldom dine later than three or four,
yawn through a long unoccupied evening before going
out, merely because they go to parties at eleven in
London? Why should it not be American, to revise,
correct, and adapt to differences of national character,
the usages we copy from other countries? The subject
of late parties is constantly talked over, however,
and as all are agreed as to the absurdity of the fashion,
a hint at it, here, is enough.

There are other usages which require remodelling
by this standard, but while we defer the mention of
them at present, we wish to allude to another argument
(in favor of common sense applied to fashion)
remoter and perhaps weightier than mere convenience.
It is simply, that, if an aristocracy is to be formed in
this country, the access to its resorts must be kept
convenient for men of sense, or society will be left exclusively
to fools. Believers in the eternity of de
mocracy might wish fashion kept inconvenient, for this
very purpose; but our belief is, that there is no place
like a republic for a positive and even violent aristocracy,
and, if inevitable, it is as well to compound it
of good elements in the beginning. Simply, then, no
intellectual man, past absolute juvenility, would consent
to enfeeble his mind by fashionable habits injurious
to health. Late hours and late suppers (in a
country where we can not well sleep till noon as they
do in Europe) are mental suicide. Hours and usages,
therefore, which are not accommodated to the convenience
of the best minds of the country, will drive
those minds from the class to which they form the
objection, and the result is easily pictured. We
shall resume the topic.

Liveries and Opera-Glasses.—There is really no
way of foreseeing what the Americans will stand and
what they will not. An aristocratic family or two,
unwilling to compete with the working-classes in personal
attire, choose to transfer the splendors of their condition
to the backs of their servants. They dress plainly
themselves and set up a liveried equipage—as they
have an absolute and (one would think) an unoffending
right to do. This, however, the American publie
will not bear—and the persons so doing are insulted
by half the presses in the country.

But what they will bear is much more remarkable.
In the immense theatres of Europe, where the upper
classes are all in private boxes, with blinds and curtains
to shut out observation if they please, the use of opera-glasses
has gradually become sanctioned. It is found
convenient for those classes to diminish the distance
across the house, since they have the choice of seclusion
behind curtains—which those in the pit have not.
Abstractly, of course, the giving to a vulgarian the
power to draw a lady's face close to him for a half-hour's
examination, would be permitting a gross license.
This being the custom in Europe, however,
it is adopted with no kind of comparisons of reasons
why, in New York. We build an opera-house, scarce
larger than a drawing-room, and light it so well, and
so arrange the seats, that people are as visible to each
other as they would be in a drawing-room; and in
this cosy place, allow people to coolly adjust their
opera-glasses and turn them full into the faces of those
they wish to scrutinize. So near as the glass is, too,
it is utterly impossible not to be conscious of being
looked at, and the embarrassment it occasions to very
young ladies is easy enough shown. We have used
this impertinence ourself (because in Rome we do as
Romans do), but we never yet have levelled a glass
upon a face without seeing that the scrutiny was at
once detected. Since we have preached on the subject,
however, we shall “go and sin no more.”

“We ask for information:”—is the difference of
reception, for these two European customs, explainable
on the ground that opera-glasses are a luxury
within the reach of most persons, and liveries are not?
Do republicans only object to exclusive impertinences?

Opera last night.—We presume we are safe in
saying that no four inhabitants in New York gave as
much pleasure last night as Pico, Borghese, Perozzi,
and Valtellina. We certainly would not
have missed our share for any emotion set down
among the pleasures of Wall street—well as we know
the let-up of an opportune discount! That emperor
of Rome who poisoned Britannicus because he was
a better tenor than himself, and slept in his imperial
bed with a plate of lead on his stomach to improve
his voice, knew where music went to, and of what

recesses, within his empire, he was not monarch without
it. (We suggest a meeting of gentlemen up-town
to erect a monument to Nero, now for the first time
appreciated!)

Let us tell the story of Semiramide—and we must
take the liberty, for clearness sake, to use the names
of the performers without the Siamese-ry of the names
of the characters.

Borghese is queen of Babylon. She and Valtellina,
who is an old lover of hers, have killed her former
husband, a descendant of Belus by whom she had a
child. This child is Pico, rightful heir to the throne.
At the time the curtain rises, Borghese and Valtellina
suppose that Pico also is killed, and the throne
vacant for a new husband to Borghese. Valtellina
wishes to be that husband; but Borghese, partly from
dislike of him, and partly from having had enough of
matrimony, takes advantage of a thunder-storm to put
off her expected decision. Meantime Pico arrives
(acquainted only with Mr. Meyer, apparently, who is
a high-priest of Belus), and Queen Borghese, not
knowing that it is her own child, falls in love with
him! There is a Miss Phillips who is a descendant
of this same Belus, and who is to have the throne if
Borghese does not marry Valtellina. Pico loves Miss
Phillips for some reason only hinted at, and has come
to Babylon to see her. Mr. Meyer, who is the only
one aware that Pico is the prince supposed to be lost,
takes him down into the tomb of the dead king, tells
him who he is, gives him his father's “things” in a
box, and leaves him there to have a conversation with
his mother who happens to drop in. It is all cleared
up between them, and they sing a duet together, and
go out for a little fresh air. Valtellina, mousing about
after the queen, comes afterward to the tomb and
meets the high-priest there; and one after another
drops in, till the tomb is full, and the ghost of the old
king takes the opportunity to get up and mention
what he died of. Great confusion of course; and,
soon after, Pico, feeling called upon to kill the murderer
of the sleepless old gentleman, stabs at somebody
in the dark and kills his mother! Valtellina is
led off by the police, Pico faints in the arms of Mr.
Meyer, the satraps and Babylonians rush in, and the
curtain falls—leaving Pico to marry Miss Phillips and
succeed to the throne. All this of course took place
in a city built two generations after Ham (brother of
Shem and Japhet) but what with the look of the
“tombs,” and the way people were stabbed and poisoned,
it was impossible not to wonder what Justice
Matsell would have done in the premises.

We shall hear Semiramide again to-night, and speak
more advisedly of the music on Monday. At present,
we can not convince ourself that Grisi and Persiani
sang any better when we heard them in London. We
can never hope for—and we need not wish—a better
opera. Borghese is a most accomplished creature,
with (among other things) an intoxicating way of
crushing her eyes up to express passion (in a way that
none but people of genius do) and she does nothing
indifferently. Pico, with her wonderful at-home-ative-ness
anywhere between the lowest note and the highest,
faultless in her science, and personally of the kind
of women most loveable, is enough, of herself, to keep
a town together. Perozzi, with his sweet, pure
voice, and gentlemanly taste (he was king of Egypt
last night, by the way, and a candidate for Borghese's
hand), is worthy to be a third star in any such Orion's
belt, and the fourth may well be Valtellina, whose
thorough base, we have no doubt, first suggested the
idea of the forty-horse excavator lately patented by
congress.

But what shall we say of the scenery? We were
taken completely by surprise, with the taste as well as
splendor of it, and we think Stanfield himself, the
great artist who produces occasionally such marvels
in the spectacles of Drury Lane, would have taken a
pride in claiming it. Certainly no comparable scenery
has been exhibited, to our knowledge, in this
country. The costumes were also admirable.

Abstaining as we do, for to-day, from musical
criticism, we can not help alluding to the electric effect,
upon the audience, of the duet between Pico
and Borghese—the well-known “Giorno d'orrore.”
The house was uncomfortably crammed, but a pin
might have been heard to drop, at any moment during
the singing of it. It was a case of complete musical
intoxication. The applause was boundless, but
unluckily the encore (which we trust will not be foiled
again to-night) was defeated by an evident fear on the
part of the audience of interrupting a part of the duet
not yet completed. If you love your public, dear
Semiramide, nod, to-night, to the orchestra, after the
bouquets have descended!

BEHIND THE CURTAIN.

Brig.—Oh, mi-boy! To think of the trouble of
“getting along,” and the very small place in which
we sleep, when we get there! I wonder whether a
man would be much behind the time at his own funeral
if he stopped working! I'm tired, Willis! I'll
send my ticket for the afterpiece, and “go home,” as
the Moravians say.

“We.”—You forget! Editors are on the “free
list” in the theatre of life, and “not entitled to a
check.”

Brig.—Talk plain to me, my dear boy, and save
your heliotropes for the paper! The work I have
done this week! Is it you that say somewhere,
“there's no poetry in a steamboat?” Think of the
blessed cry of “stop her!”

“We.”—And so you are fairly fagged, my “martial
Pyrrhus!”

Brig.—Fagged and dispirited! Moving the printing
office—getting all the advertisements set up in
new type—little indispensable nothings plaguing my
life out—new arrangements in every corner, and the
daily paper going on besides—

“We.”—I don't wonder you're dead!

Brig.—That is the least of my trouble, I was going
to say—(though, to be sure, what we have done this
last week, changing office, and renewing type, without
stopping the daily, is very much like shoeing
your horse without slacking his trot)—but the “benefit,”
my dear boy, the benefit.

“We.”—So long since you have had any money to
lend—is that what you mean? You are afraid you
have lost the art of making yourself out poorer
than the man who comes to borrow. Why, my poor
general!

Brig.—Doesn't it strike you as a dreadful mortification,
my dear Willis?

“We.”—The whole business?

Brig.—The whole business.

“We.”—Inasmuch as for genius to be rich, after
being poor, would make a god of the man so enriched
(by the intensity of his enjoyment, and his natural
inoculation against catching the canker from his
money)—it is wisely ordained by Providence that we
shall not receive it in sums larger than $3, city bill,
without mental agony. We should else be in heaven

before our time, my dear general—purgatory omitted!

Brig.—But isn't your pride wounded for me, my
dear boy?

“We.”—As Cassio says (who, by the way, loved
general Othello very much as I do you),

I have no tear to shed on the subject. I have
thought it all over, and would have stood in your
place and received the painful thousands myself, if I
had thought it more than you could bear—but let me
tell you how I look at it.

Brig.—Do, mi-boy, and don't joke more than you
can help!

“We.”—Editors are the pump-handles of charity,
always helping people to water, and never thought to
be thirsty themselves!

Brig.—You funny Willis!—so we are!

“We.”—You, particularly, have not only been
bolted to the public cistern for every benefit of the
last twenty years, the fag and worky of every possible
charitable committee, but your paper has been called
upon (and that people think nothing of) to blow wind
into the sail of every scheme of benevolence, every
device for the good of individuals or the public. People
see your face on every printed note that comes to
them. You are the other-folks-beggar of the town.
When you die—

Brig.—No painful allusions now, mi-boy!

“We.”—I was only going to say, my dear general,
that they will wish they had unmuzzled the ox that
trod out the corn!

Brig. (swallowing something apparently). But I have
had so many misgivings about this benefit concert, my
dear Willis!

“We.”—The pump-handle changing places with
the pail! Well—it will be a shower-bath at first, but
you'll be full when it's over!

Brig.—There you go again!

“We.”—I was letting that simile trickle off my
lips while I fished up, from my practical under-current,
another good reason for your benefit. Suffer
me to be tedious a moment!

Brig.—Be so, mi-boy—be so! I love you best
when you're tedious!

“We.”—Well, then! Political economy differs
from the common estimates of things, by taking into
consideration not only their apparent value at the
time of sale, but what it has cost, directly or indirectly,
to attain that value. Do you understand me?

Brig.—No.

“We.”—For example, then!—a leg of mountain
mutton may weigh no more than a leg of lowland
mutton—but as the fibre of the meat is finer from being
fed on highland grass, it is reasonable to estimate
it by something besides its weight—i. e., the shepherd's
risk of losing it by wild beasts, and the trouble
of driving it up and down the mountain.

Brig.—True.

“We.”—Thus, a lawyer charges you fifty dollars
for an opinion which it takes him but ten minutes to
dictate to his clerk. A savage would laugh at the
price, and offer to talk twice the time for half the
money—but a civilized man pays it, allowing for the
education, study, and talent, which it cost to give the
opinion value.

Brig.—True again. Now for our “mutton.”

“We.”—You and I, my dear general, are brain-mongers—which
is an exceedingly ticklish trade. We
start with our goods in supposition, like the capital
of a western bank—locked up in a safe, that is to say
(the skull), to which the “teller” alone has the key.
We are never sure, in point of fact, that the specie is
there, and we are likely at any moment to be “broke”
by the critics “making a run upon the bank.”

Brig.—Now that's what I call clear!—

“We.”—Don't interrupt me! The risks of success
in literature, the outlay for education, the delay
in turning it to profit, the endurance of the gauntlets
of criticism, and the rarity of the gift of genius from
God, should be added to the usually fragile shop in
which its wares are embarked for vending. The poet,
by constitution least able to endure rude usage, is the
common target of coarseness and malice. Here and
there, to be sure, a man is born, like me—with brains
enough, but more liver than brains—and such men
sell thoughts as they would potatoes, and don't break
their hearts if customers find specks in them; but the
literary profession, generally, is of another make, and
“political economy” should compensate proportionally.
They do it for clergymen! What clergyman
feels it an indignity to be sent abroad by subscription,
if his health fails? He considers that he is inadequately
paid unless his parish take the risks of his
health! And you!—besides the reason you have,
wholly apart from our joint business, for needing this
benefit—here you are, after passing your life in serving
people, with a pair of eyes you can scarce sign
your name by, and a prospect of a most purblind view
of the City Hall when they make you mayor.

Brig.—Mi-boy! oh!

“We.”—There's but one pair of well-endorsed eyes
between us, and suppose somebody leaves me money
enough to unharness me from this omnibus, and turn
me out to grass at Glenmary! What will become of
you?

Brig.—Heaven indissolubly Siamese us, my dear
boy!

“We.”—And I have not even named yet, the ostensible
ground for this concert—the songs you have
loaded the women's lips with, and never received
even a kiss for your trouble!

Brig.—What a fellow you are for reasons, Willis!

“We.”—My dear friend, I am going to state all
this to the committee for your benefit! By the way
—did you ever hear of Ismenias, the D'Orsay of ancient
Corinth?

Brig.—Never.

“We.”—Ismenias commissioned a friend to buy a
jewel for him. The friend succeeded in purchasing
it at a sum below its value. “Fool!” said Ismenias,
“you have disgraced the gem!” Did you suppose,
general, that I was going to give the public the pleasure
of paying you this tribute without taxing their
admiration as well as their pockets! No! (Hear
him!) No! I trust every woman who has sung, or
heard sung, a song of yours, will be there to wave a
handkerchief for you! I hope every man who loves
literature, and has a corner in his heart for the poet
who has pleased him, will be there to applaud you!
I hope David Hale will give us gas enough to see
you on the platform. I hope—God bless me, twelve
o'clock!

Operatic Party.—As our readers are aware, a
private sparkle from the stars of an operatic constellation,
is one of the luxuries rated as princely in Europe
—a proper fitness in the other circumstances of the
entertainment requiring a spaciousness of saloons and
a magnificence of menu which only the very wealthiest
have to offer. The private dwelling-houses of
this city, till within a few years, have been much too
small for the introduction of this advanced phase of
pleasure. Last night, however, a sumptuous residence,
that might compare to advantage with any interior
in Europe, was thrown open, and its “wilderness
of beauty” delighted with private performances
by the operatic company now in such admirable combination.

As being the head of a new chapter of national
refinement, it would, perhaps, be posthumously
worth while to depict the scene—not only as to its
sumptuary splendors and costumes, but with a description
of the “beauty that bewitched the light”—
but however posterity might thank us for such an inky
Arethusa, we have too much to do with what is above
ground, just now, to bury charms for the future.

Madame Pico remarked, before the commencement
of the performance, that it was almost as trying for
singers used to a theatre to adapt the voice, impromptu,
to a saloon, as for an amateur to calculate, at once,
the volume of voice necessary to fill a theatre. The
first two or three pieces were, notwithstanding this
judicious apprehension, a little too loud. Signor
Valtellina must have the credit of having been the
first to reduce the “fill of the empyrean” to the capacity
of a saloon, and, after the measure was taken,
the music was exquisitely enjoyable. After tea
(served in an adjoining apartment at the close of the
first part) the artists assumed, to a charm, the necessary
abandon, and the singing between tea and supper
was, to our ear, faultless. The pianist only, M.
Etienne seemed lacking in the magnetism to quicken
the movement with the acceleration of Pico's climax,
and we wished a younger or more sympathetic hand
in the accompaniment; but this charming cantatrice
has too infallible an ear to outrun the instrument, and
the effect was sufficiently enchanting. She and Signorina
Borghese were rapturously encored, and a
laughing terzetto between Borghese, Sanquirico, and
Perozzi, was called for, a second time, with boundless
delight and enthusiam.

We had never before seen Madame Pico off the
stage. Care has left no foot-print on the threshold
of the gate of music, and her mouth is infantine in
texture and expression; but her eyes have that indefinable
look which betrays

Her person shows to more advantage in a drawing-room
than on the stage, and her manners, like those of
all gifted Italians, are of a natural sculpture beyond
the need of artificial chiseling. Borghese, too, has
charming manners, and we were pleased with the cordial
accueil given to the prima-donnas by the ladies
of the party. Altogether, the absolute good taste of
the entertainment, and the unusually choice mixture
of elements, social, sumptuous, and professional, made
the evening one of high enchantment.

Opera Singers.—At the benefit of Mademoiselle
Borghese, lately, the centre of the ceiling suddenly
gave birth (at the close of the first act) to a shower of
billets-doux, which, being immediately followed by the
descent of the drop-scene, representing Jupiter feeling
the pulse of Juno, was understood by the audience
“as well as could be expected.” The delivery was
rather a relief to the feeling of the house, for the
crowd and pressure had been very uncomfortable,
and some critical event was needed to relieve the endurance.

We have been pleased at the example, set by the
good authority of the party of Monday evening, of
giving a cordial, social welcome to distinguished musical
strangers. America profits by having two nations
marching immediately before her in civilization—
each unwilling to imitate the other, but both open to
study, by us, with no impediment as to our selection
of points for imitation or rejection. The French and
English are wholly at variance on the point we have
just alluded to—the social position given to celebrated
musicians. In the high circles of France, when a
party is given at which the operatic singers perform a
concert, the reception for the musicians consults only
their personal comfort.—Chairs are placed for them,
which they rarely leave to mix with the party, and
their supper is always separate from that of the guests

There is no intention shown, of treating them like
equals. In England, on the contrary, the operatic
company are the pets of society. Pasta, Catalani,
Persiani, Grisi, and the male singers, Lablache,
Rubini, Ivanhoff, and others, were free of all exclusion
on the score of rank, and “dined and têted”
familiarly like noble strangers from other countries.
We have seen the duke of Wellington holding the
gloves of Grisi, while she pulled to pieces a bunch of
grapes at the supper table of Devonshire house; and
we have a collection of autographs of public singers
(two of which we published the other day), addressed
to persons of high rank, and expressed in terms of
the most confessed feeling of ease as to relative position.

We repeat that we rejoice in the power to select
footsteps to follow in civilization (from those of two
nations gone on before), and we take pride, that, in
this latest instance, we have copied the more liberal
and kindly-hearted usage. These children of a passionate
clime are not justly measured by our severe
standards: and we should receive them like airs from
a southern sky, without cooling them first by a chymical
analysis. They are, commonly, ornaments to
society—joyous, genial, free from the “finikin” superfineries
of some of those inclined to abase them—and
the difference of the pleasure they give, when their hearts
are in it, is offset enough for any sacrifice made in excusing
the “low breeding” of their genius!

Borghese, whose benefit came off so triumphantly
last night, is a woman of very superior mind, of manners
faultlessly distinguished, and (essential praise to
a woman) a model of toilet-ability. She is, besides, a
remarkable actress, and a very accomplished musician.
This is a pretty good description of an agreeable acquaintance;
and, if we were to sketch Madame Pico,
it would be in terms still more warmly eulogistic.
We leave to the ladies who throw bouquets to Sanquirico,
to laud the men of the opera, and wind up
this essay of political economy, by drawing an instructive
example, of the effect of what we preach, from
the manufacture of a prima-donna into a queen and
goddess, in the days of venerable antiquity.

“Among the female performers of antiquity, Lamia
is certainly the most celebrated; how much her fame
may have been aided by her beauty we can not determine.
She was everywhere received with honor, and
according to Plutarch, equally admired for her wit,
beauty, and musical performance. She was a native
of Athens, but travelled into Egypt to hear the celebrated
flute-players of that country. During her residence
at the court of Alexandria, Ptolemy Soter was
defeated in a naval engagement by Demetrius, and all
his wives and domestics fell into the hands of the
conqueror. Lamia was among the number; but
Demetrius was so attracted by her beauty and skill,
that he raised her to the highest rank, and from her
solicitations, conferred such benefits on the Athenians,
that they gave him divine honors and dedicated a temple
to `Venus Lamia.”'

Madame Pico's Benefit.—We should be happy
if Europe would inform us why this remarkable cantatrice
comes to us “new as a tooth-pick,” as to fame,
and whether (the same lack of previous trumpeting
having given us a surprise in Malibran), we are to
have the credit also of the eccalobeion of Pico! Even
without the “deep-sea plummet” of her contralto
(which certainly does touch bottom for which most

voices lack fathoms of line) she has a compass as a
mezzo soprano, which would alone serve for remarkable
success in her profession. She is a most correct
musician too—(the only false note we have heard
from her, having been occasioned by her striking her
chest too violently while singing defiance to Valtellina)
—and, withal, a most gifted and charming woman,
every way formed to be an idol for the public. We
have written a great deal about Madame Pico, and,
her benefit being the last occasion we shall find, to do
more than chronicle her movements, we shall send
this quill to our friend Kendall of the Picayune (as
the Highlanders send the lighted brand), enveloped
in a stanza addressed by an Italian poet to Lady
Coventry:—
We leave the rest to the Picayune's prophetic divination.

Adieu, Pico, l'in-cantatrice! A clear throat and a
plethoric pocket to you!

Madame Arnoult's Concert.—It looked very
queer (and a little wicked withal) to see opera-glasses
and ladies with their heads uncovered, in the pews of
the Tabernacle; and we are not sure that our “way
we should go” did not twitch us for a “departure,”
when we found ourselves applauding with kid gloves
in the neighborhood of the altar! We were applauding
Pico; and the next thought that came to us was,
a regret that such voices should not be consecrated to
church choirs; for (granting the opera to be a profane
amusement, as is thought by the worshippers at the
Tabernacle), “it is a pity,” as a celebrated divine once
said, “that the devil should have all the good music.”
And, apropos—was not this capital remark—(attributed,
we believe, to Wesley)—suggested by one, recorded
of the pope Gregory of the fifth century? Britain
at that time was, to Rome, what Africa is now to us
—a savage country they brought slaves from; and
the introduction of Christianity into that heathen land
is said to have been prompted by the pope's admiration
of the beauty of two or three young John Bulls
who were for sale in the market-place of Rome. On
inquiring of the merchant if they were Christians,
and being informed they were pagans, he exclaimed,
“Alas, what a pity that the author of darkness should
be in possession of men of such fair countenances!” He
commissioned Pelagius forthwith to send missionaries
to the handsome British pagans, and hence the church
of England—probably the only church, the members
of which owe their salvation to their personal beauty!
(Pardon this historical digression, dear readers!)

Madame Arnoult took New York by surprise—
she is so much better a singer than was supposed.
With less effort, and in a smaller room than the nave
of the Tabernacle, she would, however, appear to much
more advantage. Her voice, to our ear, lacked fledging,
or lining, or something to make it warmer or
more downy—but it is a clear and most cultivable
soprano, and she manages it with wonderful skill for a
beginner at public singing. We predict great popularity
for her. Madame Pico sang, with her, the
duet from Semiramide, and it was enough to steep
even the pulpit cushion in a this world's trance of
music.

Armlets.—We have observed that there is a late
fashionable promotion of the jewels of the arm to the
more lovely round above the elbow, where, it must
be confessed, a bracelet sits much more enviably imbedded.
We rather think this renewal of the fashion
of armlets is a clean jump from the rape of Helen to
1845, for the latest mention we can find of it is in the
account of the Trojan nymphs, who laid aside their
armlets to dance in the choirs on Mount Ida. It
takes an arm, plump and not too plump, to wear this
clasp with a grace, but where the arm is really beautiful,
no ornament could be more fitly and captivatingly
located. We were very much struck with the effect
upon the dazzling arm on which we lately noticed it.

Views of Morris's Concert.—There are few
buttons on the motley coat of human dependance, to
which the button-hole is not serviceably correspondent
—the button (conferring the favor) commonly drawing
the same garment closer by aid of the button-hole
(receiving the favor). There is one very striking instance
however, of constant services unreciprocated, in
what editors do for signers and actors. Our attention
has been called to this by a series of paragraphs—
(part silly, part malicious)—expressing surprise that
Ole Bull and others, who had never been in any way
benefited by Gen. Morris, should have been asked to
contribute their services gratuitously to his benefit
concert.

It is needful, of course, in a newspaper, to make
some mention and some critical estimate of all public
performers. It may be done favorably or unfavorably;
and there is a way of being abundantly paid for
either. “Black mail” is willingly paid where commendation
is sold in shambles, but the editor is better
paid, still, if, with skilful roasting and dissection of
the faults of public performers, he cruelly enriches
his paper (like a paté de foie gras with the liver of the
goose roasted alive), and so sends it, palatably spiced,
to the uninquiring appetite of the public. He who
has a hair of his head left undamned, to creep with
shame at the “black mail” sale of his approbation—
and he who has common human kindness to prevent
his murdering the hopes of strangers to make his
paper readable—both these are of classes that go unpaid,
and commonly unthanked, for services most
essential to others, and forbearance most costly to
themselves.

The editor's business is to make his paper readable.
The most difficult task he has to do is to be readably
good-natured. The easiest writing in the world is
criticism amusingly severe. If any one doubts, for
example, that with the same pains we have taken,
glowingly to interpret between Ole Bull and the public,
we could have ridiculed him into a comparative
failure—sending a laugh before him through the
country that would have armed every listener with an
impenetrable incredulity—if any one doubts our power
to have done this, as easily as we have ushered him
into hearts we made ready for a believing reception
of his music, he does not know either the press or the
public—neither the arbitrary license of the press, nor
the public's weak memory for everything but ridicule.
Where Ole Bull now stands, the press is comparatively
powerless. He is stamped with success. But,
when he stood on the threshold of this country's favor
—a musician, whose peculiarities at first seemed tricks,
and whom few heard for the first time with a confident
appreciation—if, then, ridicule had met him, boldly
and unsparingly, even though this one paper had alone
opened the cry, he would have had us to thank, we
believe, for the tide turned back on which he now rides
triumphantly onward. Certain as it is that we could
not, all alone, have made his present good fortune, it
is quite as certain that we could, all alone, have marred
it—and that, too, to the profitable spicing of our somewhat
praise-ridden columns. We need not stop to

tell the reader that we are describing the fiend Siamesed
to Liberty—an Irresponsible Press which can not
be chained without chaining Liberty too—but we wish
to show that there is some merit in not harnessing
this fiend to our own slow vehicle of fortune. There
never was an opportunity so ready as Ole Bull's advent
for amusing ridicule—but we were the first, or
among the first, to call for faith in him, and aid in his
appreciation. We did it from love of the man and
belief in his genius, and would as soon have been
marked on the brow with a hot iron as bargain for a
syllable of it. But—the unforeseen opportunity presenting
itself, when, apparently, he might return our
paper's service by a favor to our associate—he was
invited without scruple to do so. Suppose he had
played ten minutes on the violin for the benefit of the
proprietor of a paper devoted, for a year, invariably to
his interests? Would it have been the “act of charity”
for which a paragraphist says that “Ole Bull was
unreasonably called upon?” The high-spirited Norwegian
placed his regret, that he could not be here to
comply, upon no such footing.

While we are calling things by their real names,
we may as well change the label of another matter—
the motive of the benefit to Gen. Morris. As the
public know, our estimable associate, by twenty years
of literary labor, amassed a moderate fortune, which,
in the disasters of an era of bankruptcy, he suddenly
lost. A part of his property was invested in the
beautiful country-seat of Undercliff on the Hudson—
the residence of his family for several years. His
friends—with a provident hope, looking beyond the
clouds that enveloped him—fastened, to the transfer
of this lovely spot, a condition by which he might,
if able, repurchase it at a certain time, and at its then
reduced valuation. He has since been suffered to
tenant it for a trifling rent. He has improved it, embellished
it, increased its value. His children have
grown up in it. But, meantime, the limit came around
—(now only a short time off)—when the purchase
must be made or the home lost. His old friends came
to inquire into the probable result of their forethought
for him. We need not give the particulars of our
business—General Morris was partly prepared to redeem
the property. The lack was a sum that might
be covered by a benefit concert—so suggested by one
of the parties. It was urged upon him and declined.
He was told that Beranger had three subscriptions
(one of twenty thousand dollars)—that Campbell
had several—that Scott's children were relieved of
his debts by a posthumous subscription of two hundred
thousand dollars—and that private subscriptions
for literary men were of common occurrence in
England.

The public know the sequel. He refused, till the
concert was agreed upon by his friends without him.
The Italians, whom our paper had more especially
served, sprang, generously and with acclamation, to
reciprocate our constant advocacy of their company's
attraction. The musicians resident here were all
friends of General Morris, for he alone, more than all
other men in New York taken together, had served the
dramatic and musical profession. They, too, joyously
sprang to the chance of benefiting him. Never
was service more eagerly rendered than that by the
performers last night at the Tabernacle—never came
good purpose before the public, so lamely and disparagingly
construed.

In making up our mind to allow the public to be
intimate with us, we expect now and then to expose
the lining of our gaberdine. We conform to the exitgences
of the latitude we live in—but upon dishabille explanations,
we hope for dishabille constructions. What
we have written here, between five o'clock, A. M., and
breakfast (wholly without the knowledge of General
Morris), goes to press with the ink undried, and we
have no security against errors but that of writing as
we would talk to our confessor. If the time should
ever arise when really good intentions may be trusted
to stand, in public opinion:—

we may cease to explain “why our stocking is ungartered.”
Meantime, we expect to die.

The Opera Bereavement.—What is to become
of this widower of a town when it has lost its fairly-espoused
Pico, we must leave to the survivor's obituary
to record. We may as well have our ears boxed and
stowed away!—Their vocation is as good as gone!
No more Pico? Faith, it will go hard for the first
week or two! But—by the way—as those “lost from
us” are invariably supposed to be crowned in the next
place they go to, and as, of course, Pico will be
crowned in the presence of St. Charles and the brunet
angels of New Orleans, we must take upon ourselves,
as her New York “gold stick in waiting,” to summon
one at least, of her liege subjects to his duty. (We
happen, fortunately, to possess an autograph of
George the Fourth, signed to the necessary formula.)

“To G— W— K—, Marquis of `Picayune:'

“Right Trusty and Right Well-beloved
Cousin.—We greet you well. Whereas, the 1st day
of March next (or thereabouts) is appointed for our
coronation.—These are to will and command you (all
excuses set apart) to make your personal attendance
on us at the time above-mentioned, furnished and appointed
as to your rank and quality appertaineth.—
There to do and perform all such services as shall be
required and belong to you.—Whereof you are not to
fail.—And so we bid you heartily farewell.

“Given at our court at Palmo's, the 21st day of
January, 1845, in the first year of our reign.

“Pico Prima (donna).”

Star returning to its Meridian.—Pico has
changed her mind! Jubilate! She has declined to
go to New Orleans with the Borgheses, and will remain
here to be the nucleus for a new operatic crystalization.
We beg New York and Boston to shake
hands in felicitation! And now that it is settled (as
we understand it was, yesterday, by a decisive letter
to Signor Borghese), let us splinter a ray or two of
light upon the diamond that has so wisely refused resetting.
New Orleans is a French city, with a French
opera; and Mademoiselle Borghese is a French woman,
with lost laurels to win back from the Italian
Pico. This new arena, little likely to have been an
impartial one, is a great way off, the journey dangerous
and tedious, and, to go there, Madame Pico must
abruptly leave a wave of fortune, which she is now
riding “at the flood,” and give up three admiring cities
for one that might be dubious! A new opera-house
is about to be built here, of which she will be the first
predominant star; her concerts, in the meantime, in
the different cities, will profitably employ her; and,
as to the company, there is a substitute lying perdu
for Borghese, and a tenor might soon be found to replace
Perozzi. Out of these facts, the public can
pick the good reasons Madame Pico has for abandoning
her journey to New Orleans. Let us do our best
to show her that she has not made a mistake in preferring
us

Taking the White Veil.—The Undine of the
Bowling-green (Miss Undine W—g, if named after

the gentleman to whose liberality she owes her existence)
was shown last evening, with her radiant beauty
enveloped in glittering white, to the assembled
friends of the author of her being. To alight from
the poetry of the matter:—Mr. W—g invited, yesterday,
a party of his friends to see an illumination of the
superb fountain with which he has embellished that
part of the city. The rocky structure through which
it leaps, is completely encrusted with ice, and it looked
like—like more things than we have room to mention.
The colored light covered the fountain first
with a suffused blush of the tenderest pink, and this
deepened to crimson, and the glow upon ice and water
was really superb beyond any effect of the kind we
have ever witnessed. It made even a Dry Dock omnibus
(which chanced to be passing at the moment),
look rosily picturesque and fairy-like. The black sky
overhead; the delicate tracery of the naked branches
of the trees; the enclosure of architecture with lights
in the windows (which seemed completely to shut it
in like the court of an illuminated palace), were all
striking additions to the effect. We would inquire,
by the way, whether this couleur de rose could not be
adapted to the brightening of the ice with which the
fountains of the mind are sometimes crusted over.
Phlogistic chymists will please explain.

Improvements on the American Language.—
The making an improvement in one's mother's property
is, of course, a praise worthy filial service, and we
find that we have succeeded in enriching our “mother
language” by successfully breaking, to new and valuable
service, a pair of almost useless and refractory
terminations. “-Dom” and “-tricity” may now be
hitched by a single hyphen to any popular word, name,
or phrase, and, without the cumbrous harness of a
periphrasis, may turn it out in the full equipage of a
collective noun! Our first experiment in this economy
of parts of speech was the describing a charming
class of society by the single word Japonica-dom.
This musical substantive could hardly be displaced by
a shorter sentence than “the class up town who usually
wear in their hair the expensive exotic commonly
called a japonica.” The second experiment was the
word Pico-tricity—a condensation of “the power,
brilliancy, and electric effect of the singing of Madame
Rosina Pico.” We see by the papers that these
expeditig inventions (for which we liberally refrained
from taking out a patent) are freely used already by
our brother administrators of the mother language,
and we have only respectfully to suggest a proper
economy and fitness in their application.

Early-hours-dom.—We scarcely need explain, we
presume, that we have undertaken the wholesome
mission of giving interest, as far as in us lies, to the
more refined occupancy of that portion of the day comprised
between twilight and go-to-bed time—becoming,
so to speak, the apostle of fashionable early-hours-dom.
Of course we are entirely too practical to dream
of “reforming out,” by mere force of argument, the
four-hours' unprofitable yawn and the night's restitution-less
robbery of sleep. Every one knows that the
reasons for the late hours of European fashion are
wholly wanting in this country—but every one consents
to follow the fashion without the reasons. The only
way to diminish the attraction of late amusements
is to anticipate them by more attractive early amusements.
It will be remembered that we commenced
our vigorous support of the opera with this view of
the use of it. It was a well-put though unsuspected
blow to the habit of late hours, for many gave up par
ties they would otherwise nave gone to, from having
been sufficiently amused at the opera; and others
foud out, practically, that to dress and go to the opera
from seven till ten, gave all the relaxation they required,
and their natural night's sleep into the bargain!

It is with this ultimate view of making a fashionable
Kate

giving us a substitute that shall make late hours more
easily dispensed with—that we look upon the plan of
this new opera-house as a national benefit. If built
luxuriously, lavishly lighted, made to serve all the purposes
of a sumptuous festal saloon, and give exquisite
music besides, it will be a preferable resort to a ball-room;
and we believe that it is only from the lack of
a preferable resort in evening dress, that late parties
are any way endurable. Early parties on the off
nights of the opera, would soon follow, we think—the
habit of early hours of gayety, once relished—and so
would creep out this servile and senseless imitation of
foreign fashion.

Untilled Field of Literature in New York.
—The one country we have lived in, without loving
a native, is the country that, on the whole, gave us
the most to admire—France. We embroidered a
year and a half of our memory with the grace and wit
of the world's capital of taste, and we have left a heart
(travellers' pattern) in every other country between
Twenty-second street and the Black sea; but, that
we do not even suspect the color of a French heartache
we solemnly vow—and marvel. We admire the
French quite enough, however (perhaps there lies the
philosophy of it!) to leave no fuel for sentiment to
mourn over as wastage, and now—(apropos des bottes)
—why have we no vehicle for French wit in New
York—no battery for the friction and sparkle of French
electricity? How can the French live without a
“Charivari?” Twenty thousand French inhabitants
and no savor in the town, as if the gods had “dined
below stairs!” Ten thousand French women (probably),
and either no celebrity, of wit or beauty, among
them, or no needful newspaper-cloud in which the
thunder and lightning of such pervading electricities
could be collected!

We wonder whether the “Courrier des Etats Unis”
(the Anchises French paper which we read, as the
pious æneas carried his father on his back, to have
something to cherish, out of the city left behind—
something French, that is to say)—we wonder whether,
on their alternate days, the editors of that sober
tri-weekly paper could not give us something spiced
à la Parisienne—and whether such a vehicle, for the
French wit that must be here, benumbed or hidden,
would not be a profitable speculation! The “Courrier”
is the best of useful and grave papers, and entirely
fulfils its destiny, but it is small pleasure to the
ten thousand people in New York, who relish French
literature, to re-peruse the matter of the daily papers,
rechauffé in a foreign language. If the lack of Parisian
material, here, were an apparent objection, what a
delightful luxury it would be to have a paper made up,
at first, entirely, with the condensed essence of the
gay papers of Paris? A feature of New York charivari-ty
might be gradually worked in—but, meantime
a well-selected bouquet of the prodigal wit and fun of
the capital (made comprehensible by a correspondence
kept up with Paris, which should explain allusions,
etc.) would be, we should really suppose, most
attractive to the better classes of our society, and, to
the French of New Orleans and other more remote
cities, an indispensable luxury.

There is a natural homeopathy for everything French
in this city—much stronger than for the same things

a l'Anglaise. We would wish, too, that the barrier
of a different language were gradually broken down,
so that some of the delightful peculiarities of Paris
might ooze into out city manners through a conduit
of periodical literature. Heigho!—to think of the
brilliant intellectual lamps blazing like noonday in
France, while, with the material for the same brightness
about us, we sit by the glimmer of fire-light!
Oh, Jules Janin! “American in Paris!”—come over
with your prodigal brain and be a Parisian in America!
Ordain yourself as a missionary of wit, and Janin-ify
a continent by a year's exile beyond the Boulevards!
You'll laugh at us when you return, but
streams chafe the channels they refresh, and we will
take you with your murmur!

It would hardly be inferred—but we really sat
down to write the following paragraph, and not the
foregoing one:—

The Prima-donnas at Fault.—The “Courrier
des Etats Unis” has now and then an ebullition of national
spirituality, in the shape of a half column of
theatrical gossip, and we have had on our table, for
several days, a cut-out paragraph, very well hit off,
touching one or two of the town's pleasure-makers.
The editor is, of course, behind the curtain, as the
natural centre of the foreign circle of New York, and
he writes with knowledge. He gives as a fact that
Borghese cleared $550 by her benefit, but he disparages
the performance of that evening, and hauls the
ladies seriously over the coals for having exhausted
themselves at a private party the night before! He
detects an anachronism in Semiramide, and calls Pico
to account for appearing before the queen (as Arsace)
with his mother's crown on, when the good lady had
as yet only promised it to him! The first thing in the
succeeding duet, says the “Courrier,” should have
been a remark from Semiramide (who has promised
him the crown as a lover, not knowing it is her son)
to this effect: “Vous étes un peu pressé, mon bel
amoureux!” ou bien, “De quel droit portez-vous
cette couronne, que je n'ai fait que vous offrir?” The
crown given him by the high-priest, out of the paternal
box, was, of course, only symbolic, as the queen
was still on the throne.

Korponay's Fall, from a Faux Pas.—Another
matter touched in the same paragraph is the non-rising
of the new ballet-star promised for that evening.
The leader of the constellation chanced to be taken
ill (below the horizon) at Philadelphia, but the Courrier
states that the illness was owing to a fall, from a
faux pas, and that the faux pas was an engagement
by the tumbler (Korponay) to go to Philadelphia
once a week for twenty-four dollars, when his expenses,
wife and all, were twenty-six! The Courrier does
not state, what we think highly probable, that Korponay's
blood has come through too many generations
of gentlemen to be good at a dancing-master's bargains.

The new Danseuse.—A third topic of this same
pregnant paragraph is the contention between two
dancing-masters, Charruaud and Mons. Korponay, for
the honor of having given the finishing grace to the
“light fantastic toe” of Miss Brooks, the new wonder.
Monsieur Charruaud (Frenchman-like) declares
that she is not only his pupil, but by no means the best
of his pupils! Monsieur Korponay simply advertises
her as his; and the star, and the star's mamma, confess
to her Korponay-tivity. But—

What blood does the public think is running in the
veins of this same “fantastic toe?”—James Brooks—
the “Florio,” who, ten years ago, was the poetical
passion of this country—was the father of this dancing
girl! What would that sensitive poet have written
(prophetically) on the first appearance of his daughter
in a pas seul!

Longfellow's Waif.—A friend, who is a very fine
critic, gave us, not long since, a review of this delightful
new book. Perfectly sure that anything from that
source was a treasure for our paper, we looked up
from a half-read proof to run our eye hastily over it,
and gave it, to the printer—not, however, without
mentally differing from the writer as to the drift of
the last sentence, as follows:—

“We conclude our notes on the `Waif' with the
observation that, although full of beauties, it is infected
with a moral taint—or is this a mere freak of
our own fancy? We shall be pleased if it be so—but
there does appear, in this exquisite little volume, a
very careful avoidance of all American poets who may
be supposed especially to interfere with the claims of
Mr. Longfellow. These men Mr Longfellow can
continuously imitate (is that the word?) and yet never
even incidentally commend.”

Notwithstanding the haste with which it passed
through our attention (for we did not see it in proof), the
question of admission was submitted to a principle in
our mind; and, in admitting it, we did by Longfellow as
we would have him do by us. It was a literary charge,
by a pen that never records an opinion without some
supposed good reason, and only injurious to Longfellow
(to our belief) while circulating, un-replied-to,
in conversation-dom. In the second while we reasoned
upon it, we went to Cambridge and saw the poet's
face, frank and scholar-like, glowing among the busts
and pictures in his beautiful library, and (with, perhaps
a little mischief in remembering how we have
always been the football and he the nosegay of our contemporaries)
we returned to our printing-office arguing
thus: Our critical friend believes this, though we do
not; Longfellow is asleep on velvet; it will do him
good to rouse him; his friends will come out and
fight his battle; the charge (which to us would be a
comparative pat on the back) will be openly disproved,
and the acquittal of course leaves his fame brighter
than before—the injurious whisper in conversation-dom
killed into the bargain!

That day's Mirror commenced its

We expected the return mails from Boston to bring
us a calmly indignant “Daily Advertiser,” a coquettishly
reproachful “Transcript,” a paternally severe
“Courier,” and an Olympically-denunciatory “Atlas.”
A week has elapsed, and we are still expecting. Thunder
is sometimes “out to pasture.” But, meantime,
a friend who thinks it the driver's lookout if stones
are thrown at a hackney-coach, but interferes when it
is a private carriage—(has loved us these ten years,
that is to say, and never objected to our being a target,
but thinks a fling at Longfellow is a very different
matter)—this friend writes us a letter. He thinks as
we do, exactly, and we shall, perhaps, disarin the
above-named body-guard of the accused poet by quoting
the summing-up of his defence:—

“It has been asked, perhaps, why Lowell was neglected
in this collection? Might it not as well be
asked why Bryant, Dana, and Halleck, were neglected?
The answer is obvious to any one who candidly

considers the character of the collection. It professed
to be, according to the proem, from the humbler poets;
and it was intended to embrace pieces that were anonymous,
or which were not easily accessible to the general
reader—the waifs and estrays of literature. To
put anything of Lowell's, for example, into a collection
of waifs, would be a peculiar liberty with pieces
which are all collected and christened.”

It can easily be seen how Longfellow, and his
friends for him, should have a very different estimate
from ourself as to the value of an eruption, in print, of
the secret humors of appreciation. The transient
disfiguring of the skin seems to us better than disease
concealed to aggravation. But, apart from the intrinsic
policy of bringing all accusations to the light,
where they can be encountered, we think that the peculiar
temper of the country requires it. Our national
character is utterly destitute of veneration.
There is a hostility to all privileges, except property
in money—to all hedges about honors—to all reserves
of character and reputation—to all accumulations of
value not bankable. There is but one field considered
fairly open—money-making. Fame-making, character-making,
position-making, power-making, are privileged
arenas in which the “republican many” have
no share.

The distrust with which all distinction, except
wealth, is regarded, makes a whispered doubt more
dangerous to reputation than a confessed defect. The
deslike to inheritors of anything—birthrights of anything—family
names or individual genius—metamorphoses
the first suspicion greedily into a belief. A
clearing-up of a disparaging doubt about a man is a
public disappointment. “That fellow is all right
again, hang him!” is the mental ejaculation of ninety-nine
in a hundred of the readers of a good defence or
a justification.

P. S. We are not recording this view of things by
way of assuming to be, ourself, above this every-day
level of the public mind—too superfine to be a part
of such a public. Not a bit of it. We can not afford
superfinery of any kind. We are trying to make a
living by being foremost in riding on a coming turn of
the tide in these matters. The country is at the lowest
ebb of democracy consistent with its intelligence.
The taste for refinements, for distinctions, for aristocratic
entrenchments, is moving with the additional
momentum of a recoil. We minister to this, in the
way of business, as the milliner makes a crown-shaped
head-dress for Mrs. President Tyler. It has its penalty,
but that was reckoned at starting. We knew,
of course, that we could not sell fashionable opinions
at our counter without being assailed as assuming to
be the representative of fashion[2] —just as if we could
not even name a tribute of libertinism to virtue without
being sillily called a libertine by the Courier,
Commercial, and Express. However, there is some
hope, by dint of lifetime fault-culture, that, in the sod
over a man's grave, there will be no slander-seed left
to flower posthumously undetected.

Popularity of Madame Pico.—During the past
week we received a letter from a serious writer (a lady),
confessing to her own great delight in Madame Pico,
but wishing us to impress upon our religious readers,
by arguments more at length, the sacredness of good
music, even by an operatic singer. We remember a
passage in Burnet's Records, which shows that even
these operatic singers, if enlisted to sing in the choirs
of churches, would become the special subjects of
prayer. “Also ye shall pray for them that find any
light in this church, or give any behests, book, bell,
chalice or vestment, surplices, water-cloth or towel,
lands, rents, lamp or light, or other aid or service,
whereby God's worship is better served, sustained and
maintained in reading and SINGING.” It has long been
our opinion that to heighten the character of church
music would be aiding and giving interest and consequence
to religious service, and the inviting of professed
singers to the choirs, for the sabbaths they pass
in the city, would make them particularity (according
to Burnet) special subjects of prayer.

The four-feet precipice between the carriage wheel
and the side walk, and the back slope to the range of
racing omnibuses and drunken sleigh-riders, prevent
ladies from embarking in carriages at present, and this
is one thing that reconciles us to the opera people's
having chosen to

Madame Pico has found a rich oasis in Boston appreciation,
and we trust the snow will have melted away
before the Tabernacle so that it will not be an inaccessible
desert when she returns. Her concert there will
be like a dawn after a month's night of music.

Two or three new Fashions in France.—In a
French pamphlet handed in to our office a few days
ago, purporting to be Monsieur Grousset's justification
for having been shot down in Broadway by Mohsieur
Emeric, Mr. Grousset describes a previous affair with
the same gentleman, lately, in France. On that occasion,
he states, Mr. Emeric went to the field attended
by nine persons, one of whom was a lady!

We find, also, by a private letter from a friend in
Paris, that the now common FEMALE practice of SMOKING
CIGARS is considered (by connoisseurs in knowing-dom)
as a most engaging addition to the attractions
of some particular styles of beauty! “The play of the
mouth upon the cigar, the reddening of the lips by the
irritation of the tobacco, and the insouciant air, altogether,
which it gives to the smoker, adds to the
peculiar quality of a dashing and coquettish woman, as
much as it would detract from that of a retiring and
timid one.” The eyes (he adds) gleam with a peculiar
softness, through the smoke. Our correspondent had
just returned from a call on a charming American
lady, whom he found with a cigar in her rosy mouth!

Wellington boots have been sported during the
late bad weather for walking, by some of the fashionable
ladies of Paris. They are made of patent leather,
reaching to the knee, with a small tassel in front (at
least so exhibited in shop-windows) and the leg of the
boot rounded and shaped in firm leather, like the
fashion of boots twenty years ago. The high heel
(keeping the sole of the foot from the wet pavement),
is “raved about,” in Paris—the ladies wondering how
such a sensible thing as a heel should have been so
long disused by the sex most in need of its protection.
The relief of the ankles from contact with the cold or
wet edge of the dress in wet weather is dwelt upon in
the description, as is also the increased beauty of the
foot from the heightening of the arch of the instep by
the high heel.

Fashions for country belles.—The following
appeal to our gallantry pulls very hard:—

We have omitted the bulk of Miss Kate's letter,
giving rather too long an account of two or three expensive
disasters from being misguided by magazines
as to the fashions—but it is easily to be seen that it is
a matter that concerns outlay which “comes home to
business and bosom.” We shall take it into consideration.
Our present impression is, that we shall
set apart half a column, weekly, bi-weekly, or tri-weekly,
devoted to “the fashions by an eye-witness.”
This, however, immediately suggests a dilemma:
There are two schools of taste among the ladies!
Some women dress for men's eyes, and this style is
both striking and economical. Other women (most
women indeed), dress for ladies' approval only, and
this style is studiously expensive, sacrifices becomingness
to novelty, and is altogether beyond male appreciation.—
Which style should we shape our report for?

Canadian Gossip.—The chief of the Scotch clan,
McNab, has lately emigrated to Canada with a hundred
clansman. On arriving at Toronto, he called on
his newly illustrious namesake, Sir Allan, and left his
card as “The McNab,” Sir Allan returned his visit,
leaving as his card, “The other McNab.” The unusual
relish of this accidental bit of fun, has elevated
the definite article into a kind of provincial title, and,
in common conversation, the leading individual of a
family name is regularly the-ified. Among the officers
at Montreal there was lately a son of the late celebrated
“Jack Mytton,” the most game-y sportsman
in England. Meeting Sir Allan McNab at a mess-dinner,
young Mytton sent wine to him with the message:
“The Mytton” would be happy to take wine
with “The Other McNab.” We should not wonder
if this funny use of the definite article became the
germ of the first American title. The Tyler! The
Mrs. Tyler!

This same young Mytton, by the way, inherited his
father's adventurous temper, and though the first
favorite of Montreal society, be alone, of all the officers,
could find no lady willing to sleigh-ride with him.
They openly declared their fear of his pranks of driving.
One fine day, however, when all the town was on runners,
Mytton was seen with a dashing turn-out, and a
lady deeply veiled, sitting beside him, to whose comfort
he was continually ministering, and to whom he
was talking with the most merry glee. It was, to all
appearance, a charming and charmed auditor, at least.
The next day, there was great inquiry as to who was
driving with Mr. Mytton. The mystery was not
solved for a week. It came out at last, that in a
certain milliner's shop in Montreal had stood a wooden
“lay figure” for the exhibition of caps and articles
of dress. The despairing youth had bought this, had
it expensively and fashionably dressed, and still keeps
it at his lodgings (under the name of “Ma'm'selle
Pis-Aller”) for his companion in sleigh-riding!