 | CHAPTER I. The miscellaneous works of N.P. Willis |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
“I gazed into the dimness and vacancy that surrounded
me—I conjured the guardian spirit of the
room to come before me, and communicate some of
the secrets of his wards. How many hearts, thought
I, have beat with joy and sorrow, with hope, and with
anguish unutterable in this room. But no guardian
spirit appeared, and I began to think that the tee-total
pledge of this hotel had really banished all sorts of
spirits, neurology to the contrary notwithstanding. I
closed my eyes, laid my hand on the bewitching
point in my forehead, and lo! my eyes were opened,
not literally but neurologically. At first a figure was
revealed dimly and indistinctly—gradually its outlines
grew more defined, and a graceful young man stood
before me. He was enveloped in the folds of an ample
cloak, a jewelled hand held it in front, and he
stood as if waiting to be known and noted. While
gazing on him I found myself endowed with new and
marvellous powers—every line of his face had its
language, and told me a broad history. His attitude,
his hand, the manner in which the folds of his cloak
fell about him, constituted a library that I was skilled
to read, if I would. Here was the signatura rerum,
I looked and looked—it was like looking into a library
and determining what you shall read, and what you
shall leave unread. Some one has said that `the
half is greater than the whole.' This may be a physical,
yet not a metaphysical paradox. Here I saw the
said I will first look at one week of his life. In a
moment I beheld him pacing fitfully the room—
his thoughts came before me—they were such as
these,” &c., &c.
Miss Juniper goes on with an account of half a
dozen different characters, who (by a very natural
vein of revery) she imagines may have occupied the
room before her. The specimen we have given simply
shows the free dash of her pen, and we think we
see in it the capability of better things.
Female Stock Brokers, Etc.—A letter from
Paris to the London Times describes the stock exchange
of Paris (the Bourse) as thronged by female
speculators—not less than a hundred in attendance on
any one day. To do this, too, they are obliged to
stand in the open square in front of the building, as
they have been excluded from the interior by a special
regulation! Every five minutes during the sale
of stocks, two or three bareheaded agents rush down
the steps of the Bourse to announce to the fair speculators
the state of the market; and they buy and sell
accordingly.
Fancy a few of the customs of the “most polite nation”
introduced into New York! What would “Mrs.
Grundy” say of a hundred ladies standing about on
the sidewalk in Wall street, speculating in stocks, and
excluded by a vote of the stock-brokers from the floor
of the Exchange! When will the New York ladies
begin to smoke in their carriages, as they do in Paris?
When will they wear Wellington boots with
high heels? When will they frequent the billiard-rooms
and public eating-houses? When will those who
are not rich enough to keep house, use “home” only
as birds do their nests, to sleep in—breakfasting, dining,
and amusing themselves, at all other hours, out
of doors, or in cafes and restaurants? When will the
more fashionable ladies receive morning calls in the
prettiest room in the house—their bed-room—themselves
in bed, with coquettish caps and the most soignée
demi-toilet any way contrivable? Funny place,
France! Yet in no country that we were ever in,
seemed woman so insincerely worshipped—so mocked
with the shadow of power over men. We should
think it as great a curiosity to see a well-bred Frenchman
love-sick (when he supposed himself alone) as to
see an angel tipsy, or a marble bust in tears. This
condition of the “love of the country,” and the dissipation
of female habits, are mutual consequences—so
to speak. Men are constituted by nature to love
women, and in proportion as women become man-ified
they feel toward them as men do to each other—selfish
and unimpressible. We remember once asking a
French nobleman who was very fond of London, what
was the most marked point of difference which he (as
a professed love-maker) found between French and
English women. The reply was an unfeeling one,
but it will be a guide to an estimate of the effect of
the different national manners on female character.
“The expense of a love affair,” said he, “falls on the
man in France, and on the woman in England. English
women make you uncomfortable by the quantity
of presents they give you, and French women quite
as uncomfortable by the quantity they exact from
you.” We only quote this remark as made by a very
great beau and a very keen observer—the fact that a
high-bred man weighed women at all in such abominable
scales being a good argument (at least) against inviting
the ladies to Wall street and the billiard-rooms!
And now let us say a word of what made the letter
in the Times more suggestive than it otherwise would
have been—Miss Fuller's book on “Woman in the
Nineteenth Century.”
This book begins with an emblematic device resembling,
at first view, the knightly decoration called
by our English neighbors a star. On further examination,
a garter seems to be included in the figure;
but upon still closer view, we discover, within the
rays which form the outer border, first an eternal
serpent—then the deeper mystery of two triangles—
one of light, the other of darkness and shadow. We
should not have been thus particular in describing a
new decoration, but we conceive that the figure is
very significant of the tone and design of the book.
It belongs to what is called the transcendental school
—a school which we believe to have mixed up much
of what is noble and true with much of what is merely
imaginary and fantastic. Truth, freedom, love, light
—these are high and holy objects; and though they
may be sought, sometimes, by modes which we may
think susceptible of improvement, we honor those
who propose to themselves such objects, according to
their aims and not according to their ability of accomplishment.
The character and rights of woman
form naturally the principal subject of Miss Fuller's
book; and we hope it may have an influence in convincing,
if not “man,” at least some men, that woman
was born for better things than to “cook him something
good.”
The English Premier.—We see a text for the
least-taste-in-life of a sermon, in the following touch-up
of Sir Robert Peel by the London Examiner:—
“Wanted, a Premier's Assistant.—Our friend
Punch, who has written some excellent lessons for
ministers, `suited to the meanest capacity,' in words
from one syllable to three, by easy upward ascent,
should take Sir Robert Peel's education in hand, and
teach him how to write a decent note.
“Notwithstanding the proverb to the contrary, a man
may do a handsome thing in a very awkward way.
“It was quite becoming and right to give a pension
of £20 a year to Miss Brown, but what a note about
it is this, with its parenthetical dislocations, and its
atrocious style as stiff as buckram:—
“`Madam: There is a fund applicable, as vacancies
may occur, to the grant of annual pensions of very
limited amount, which usage has placed at the disposal
of the lady of the first minister. On this fund
there is a surplus of £20 per annum.
“`Lady Peel has heard of your honorable and successful
exertions to mitigate, by literary acquirements,
the effects of the misfortune by which you have been
visited; and should the grant of this pension for your
life be acceptable to you, Lady Peel will have great
satisfaction in such an appropriation of it.
“If Punch had been over Sir Robert Peel when he
wrote this, he would have hit him several sharp raps
on the knuckles with his baton, we are quite certain.
The model of the note may be in Dilworth, very
probably, or even in the Complete Letter-Writer, by
the retired butler; but, nevertheless, it is not a true
standard of taste.
“Not to mention the clumsy parenthetical clauses
so much better omitted, or the long-tailed words so
out of place in a note about a matter of £20 a year,
Sir Robert Peel has to learn that none but he-milliners
and haberdashers talk of their “ladies.” Sir Robert
Peel, as a gentleman and a prime minister, needs
not be ashamed of writing of his wife. He may rest
quite assured that the world will know that his wife is
a lady without his studiously telling it so.
“Foreigners will ask what is the distinction between
a gentleman's lady and his wife; whether they are
convertible terms; whether there are minister's wives
who are not ladies; or whether there are ladies who
to the distinct one; and why the wife is treated if
it were the less honorable.
“Formerly men used to have wives, not ladies; but
in the announcement of births it has seemed finer to
Mr. Spruggins and Mr. Wiggins to say that his lady
has been delivered than his wife, the latter sounding
homely and low.
“But Sir Robert Peel should not be led away by
these examples. He is of importance enough in the
world to afford to mention his wife in plain, honest,
homely old English.
“Any one who is disposed to give lessons in letter-writing
can not do better than collect Sir Robert
Peel's notes as warning examples. From the Velveteens
to MissBrown's £20 a year, they have all the
same atrocious offences of style and taste. It is another
variety of the Yellow Plush school.
“It distresses us to see it. We should like to see
Miss Brown's £20 a year rendered into plain, gentlemanly
English.
“As prizes are the fashion, perhaps some one will
give a prize for the best translation of Sir Robert
Peel's notes into the language of ease, simplicity, and
with them, good taste.”
Sir Robert's crockery note proves, not that his premiership
still shows the lint of the spinning-jenny, but
that he employed one of his clerks (suitably impressed
with his duty to Lady Peel) to write the letter. We
wish to call attention, however, to the superior simplicity
of the taste contended for by the critic, and to
the evidence it gives that extremes meet in the usages
of good breeding as in other things—the highest refinement
fairly lapping over upon what nature started
with. The application of this is almost universal, but
perhaps we had better particularize at once, and confess
to as much annoyance as we have a right to express
(in “a free country”) at the affected use of the
word lady in the United States, and the superfine
shrinking from the honest words wife and woman.
Those who say “this is my lady, sir!” instead of
“this is my wife, sir!” or those who say “she is a
very pretty lady,” instead of “she is a very pretty
woman,” should at least know what the words mean,
and what they convey to others.
In common usage, to speak of one's wife as one's
lady, smacks of low-breeding, because it expresses a
kind of announcement of her rank, as if her rank
would not otherwise be understood. It is sometimes
used from a dread of plain-spoken-ness, by men who
doubt their own manners—but, as it always betrays
the doubt, it is in bad taste. The etymology of the
plainer words is a better argument in their favor, however.
In the Saxon language from which they are
derived, wœepman signifies that one of the conjugal
pair who employed the weapons necessary for the defence
of the family, and wif-man signified the one
who was employed at the woof, clothing the family by
her industry. (The terms of endearment, of course,
were “my fighter,” and “my weaver!”) instead of
this honestly derived word (wife), meaning the one
who has the care of the family, the word lady is used,
which (also by derivation from the Saxon) signifies
one who is raised to the rank of her conjugal mate!
But, in this country, where the males invariably burrow
in trade, while the females as invariably soar out
of their reach in the sunshine of cultivation, few women
are raised to the rank of their husbands. It is an
injustice to almost any American woman to say as
much—by calling her a lady.
It is one part, though ever so small a part, of patriotism,
to toil for improving the manners of the country.
If we can avoid the long round of affectations,
and make a short cut to good taste by at once submitting
every question of manners to the three ultimate
standards of high-breeding—simplicity, disinterestedness,
and modesty, it might save us the century
or two of bad taste through which older countries
have found their way to refinement. Amen!
LETTER TO FANNY FORESTER.
Dear Fanny: Would your dark eyes vouchsafe
to wonder how I come to write to you? Thus it
befell:—
You live in the country and know what log-hauling
is like—over the stumps in the woods. You have,
many a time, mentally consigned, to condign axe and
fire, the senseless trunk that, all its life, had found
motion enough to make way for every silly breeze
that flirted over it, but lay in unyielding immoveableness
when poor oxen and horses were tortured to make
it stir! If you knew what a condition Broadway is in
—what horses have to suffer to draw omnibuses—and
how many pitiless human trunks are willing doggedly
to sit still to be drawn home to the fire by brute agony—
you would see how, while walking in Broadway, I was
reminded of log-hauling—then of the country—and
then, of course, of Fanny Forester.
Before setting the news to trickle from my full
pen let me quote from a book (one that is my present
passion), a fine thought or two on the cruelty to animals
that has, this day, in Broadway, made me—no
better than Uncle Toby in Flanders!
What! art thou not content thy sin hath dragged down suffering and death
Upon the poor dumb servants of thy comfort, and yet must thou rack them with thy spite?
For very shame be merciful, be kind unto the creatures thou hast ruined;
Earth and her million tribes are cursed for thy sake;
Liveth there but one among the million that shall not bear witness against thee,
A pensioner of land or air or sea, that hath not whereof it will accuse thee?
From the elephant toiling at a launch, to the shrew-mouse in the harvest-field,
From the whale which the harpooner hath stricken, to the minnow caught upon a pin,
From the albatross wearied in its flight, to the wren in her covered nest,
From the death-moth and the lace-winged dragon-fly, to the lady-bird and the gnat,
The verdict of all things is unanimous, finding their master cruel:
The dog, thy humble friend, thy trusting, honest friend,
The horse, thy uncomplaining slave, drudging from morn to even,
The lamb, and the timorous hare, and the laboring ox at plough,
And all things that minister alike to thy life and thy comfort and thy pride,
Testify with one sad voice that man is a cruel master.
The galled ox can not complain, nor supplicate a moment's respite;
The spent horse hideth his distress, till he panted out his spirit at the goal;
Behold, he is faint with hunger; the big tear standeth in his eye;
His skin is sore with stripes, and he tottereth beneath his burden;
His limbs are stiff with age, his sinews have lost their vigor,
And pain is stamped upon his face, while he wrestleth unequally with toil;
Yet once more mutely and meekly endureth he the crushing blow;
That struggle hath cracked his heart-strings—the generous brute is dead!”
I doubt whether fifty years of jumping toothache
would not be a lesser evil, hereafter, than the retribution
charged this day against each passenger from
Wall street to Bleecker. And, as if to aggravate the
needlessness of the sin, the sidewalk was like the sidewalks
in June—dry, sunny, and besprinkled with adorable
shoppers. With the sides of the street thus
each one of which required the utmost strength of a
pair of horses to toil out of—the wheels continually
cutting in to the axletrees, each sinking of the wheels
bringing down the whip on the guilty horses, and,
with all the lashing, cursing, toiling and breaking of
harness, people (with legs to carry them) remaining
heartlessly inside the omnibuses. Oh, for one hour's
change of places—horses inside and passengers in
harness!
But why break your country heart for sins in
Broadway? Think rather of the virtues and the
fashions. Large parasols (feminized, from male umbrellas,
only by petticoats of fringe and the changeableness
of the silk) are now carried between heaven
and bright eyes, to the successful banishment of the
former. Ladies sit in the shops smoking camphor
cigars while their daughters buy ribands. French
lap-dogs, with maids to lead them, are losing singularity,
as pairs of spectacles. People in the second
story are at the level of very fine weather. Literature
is at a dead stand-still. The “father of evil” has not
yet told us what the next excitement is to grow out
of; and meantime (to-night) we are to have an English
song from Madam Pico at the Tabernacle.
So you have been ill and are mortal after all!
Well! I presume—whatever stays to keep the violets
company—“Fanny Forester” goes to Heaven; so you
must have your reminders, like the rest of us, that
the parting guest is to be looked after. What a to-morrow-dom
life is! Eve's fault or Adam's—to-day
was left in Eden! we live only for what is to come. I
am, for one, quite sick of hoping; and if I could put
a sack of money at my back to keep my heels from
tripping, I would face about and see nothing but the
to-day of the children behind me. (Bless me, how
grave I am getting to be!)
Write to me, dear Fanny! As I go to market on
this river of ink, write me such a letter as will ride
without damage in the two-penny basket that brings
this to you.
And now adieu—or rather au soin de Dieu—for I
trust that the first lark that goes up with the spring
news will bid the angels not to expect you, yet awhile.
Take care of your health.
Madame Pico's Concert.—We should guess that
between two and three thousand persons were listeners
in the vast hall of the Tabernacle at the concert. The
five hundred regular opera-goers, who were apparently
all there, were scattered among a mass of graver
countenances, and Madame Pico saw combined her
two bailiwicks of fashion and seriousness. She seems
to be equally popular with both, and her “good-fellow”
physiognomy never showed its honest beauty to
more advantage. She wore a Greek cap of gold braid
on the right-side organ of conscientiousness, and probably
magnetized very powerfully the large gold tassel
that fell from it over her cheek. The English song
was the qui-vive-ity of the evening, however, and
English, from a tongue cradled in a gondola, is certainly
very peculiar! But, preserve us, Rossini-Bellini!
After hearing exclusively Italian music from a
songstress, the descent to Balfe is rather intolerable.
A lark starting for its accustomed zenith with “chicken
fixings” would represent our soul as it undertook to
soar last night with Balfeathered Pico!—What should
make that same song popular is beyond our divining.
Most of its movement works directly in the joint between
the comfortable parts of the voice, and nobody
ever tilted through its see-saw transitions, in our hearing,
without apparent distress.
Madame Arnoult made a very strong impression on
the audience last night. She sang with more dew in
her throat than when we heard her before, and we
fancy that the hard enamel of her tones, at that time,
was from the bracing up against timidity, and not from
the quality of the organ. She has only to draw a
check for what popularity she wants, we presume.
Town-Hunger for Poets.—The appetite for live
bards (like other scarce meats, commonly liked best
when pretty well gone) is probably peculiar to old
countries. We have stumbled lately on the following
letter touching Petrarch, written in 1368, by the
Seigneury of Florence, to Pope Urban V.:—
“The celebrity and talent of our fellow-citizen, M.
Francesco Petrarca, inspire us with a great desire to
attract him back to reside in Florence, for the honor
of the city and for his own tranquillity; for he has
greatly harassed himself by bodily fatigues and scientific
pursuits in various countries. But as he has
here no patrimony nor means of support, and little
fancy for a secular life, be pleased to grant him the
favor of the first canonry vacant in Florence; and this
notwithstanding any previous promise, so that no one
may be appointed canon in preference to him. And
you will ascertain from Pitti in what manner this appointment
may be obtained for him in the most ample
manner.”
How long it will be before Newburyport will send
to the governor of Arkansas for Albert Pike—before
New Haven will send to Mayor Harper for Mr. Halleck—before
Portland will send to President Quincy
for Longfellow—before other great cities will send
for the now peripatetic ashes of their future honorary
urns, and confer on them “appointments in the most
ample manner”—we are not prophet enough to know
—nor do we know what the locofocos would say to
such appointments. We suggest, however, that the
poets should combine to vote for Mayor Harper on
condition that he inquire what poets New York needs
to have back “for the honor of the city and their own
tranquillity.”
Japonica-dom in Italy.—We have often thought
that it would amuse, and possibly instruct, New-Yorkers,
to know exactly what class of Europeans
have, as nearly as possible, their own pretensions to
aristocracy, and where such persons “stand,” in the
way of go-to-the-devil-dom, from the titled classes.
There is scarce a man of fortune or fashion in New
York who is not what they call in Europe a roturier
—a man, that is to say, whose position is made altogether
by his money. The treatment which a
roturier gets, therefore, from those above him, presents
a fair opportunity for contrasting his value (measured
by this scale) with that of a rich, but grandfatherless
New-Yorker. Besides other profit in the comparison,
it is as well, perhaps, to form a guess as to what sort
of a sore the upper ten thousand will make, when they
come to a head in Manhattan.
A letter to the Foreign Quarterly Review from a correspondent
in Italy, gives an account of the celebration
of a scientific anniversary which draws together
the accessible celebrities of Europe, and which was
held this year in Milan. Incidentally the writer
speaks of Milanese society—thus:—
“Yes! the congress, whatever its other claims to
consideration may have been, was deficient in `quarterings,'
and was therefore, no company for Milanese
noblesse. Nowhere, in Europe, is the effete barbarism
of `castes' more in vigor than at Milan. The
result of course, and of necessity, is, that the exclusive
there are the least advanced in social and moral
civilization of all the great cities of Italy. Will it be
for themselves and their females, to whose festivities
the more distinguished of their non-noble fellow-citizens
are invited—after what manner does the civilized
nineteenth century Englishman think? Thus: A
gallery has been constructed, looking from above into
the ball-room. There such more distinguished roturiers
(men of low descent), with their families, as the privileged
caste may condescend to invite—not to share—but to
witness their festivities, being duly fenced in with an
iron grating, may gaze through the bars at the paradise
that they can never enter. It is at least something!
They may there see what it is to be noble!' The
happy ones, thus permitted to feast their eyes, may,
at least, boast to their less fortunate fellow-citizens,
of the condescension with which they have been
honored, and thus propagated, in some degree the
blessings of exclusiveness among the ranks of the
swinish multitude! In their happy gallery, at the
top of the noble ball-room, they may at least inhale the
refuse breath streaming up from noble lungs—delicious
gales from Araby the blest. Surely this is something.
The wealthy citizens of Milan feel that it is; and they
value the so-condescendingly-granted privilege accordingly.
“Yes! the roturier citizens of Milan—incredible
as it may seem to those whose more civilized social
system has given them the feelings of men in the place
of those of slaves—do gratefully and gladly accept
these invitations. Yes for one of the curses most
surely attendant on the undue separation of a privileged
caste, is the degradation of both parties—the real
abasement of the pariah, as well as the fancied exaltation
of the noble.”
Our readers' imaginations will easily transfer this
state of things to New York (fancying one class of
rich men inviting another class of men, quite as rich,
but with not the same sort of grandfathers, to look at
a ball through an iron grating!) but, leaving our friends
to pick out the “customers” for the two sides of the
grate, we turn to another difference still, between the
nether-graters and the mechanics. There is even a
more impassable barrier between these, and it is almost
as impassable in England and France as in the more
monarchical portions of Europe. A letter from abroad
in the Ledger of yesterday, states this phase of social
distinction very clearly:—
“The present state of society in France presents,
therefore, a new and almost incurable evil—the entire
separation of the capitalists, the merchants and manufacturers,
from the laboring portion of the community;
and what is worse, a hostile attitude of these social
elements to each other. In Germany, and partly even
in England, the interests of the manufacturers and
capitalists are parallel with those of the laborers, and
kept so by the pressure of a wealthy overbearing aristocracy
in Great Britain; while on the continent the
industrious pursuits are not yet sufficiently developed
to effect the separation. Whenever the laborers (the
pariahs) of England make common cause with their
employers, or rather, whenever their demands coincide
with those of their masters, the aristocracy is generally
obliged to yield: but whenever, as in the case
of the chartists, the laborers or inferior orders of the
industrious section of society demand anything for
itself which does not agree with the views of their employers,
they are perfectly powerless—a mere play-ball,
tossed to and fro between the landlords and the cotton-lords.
“In France, as I have observed, the separation of
the higher bourgeoisie from those who help them by
their labor to amass wealth, is complete; but so powerless
is the latter section that it is not only not represented
in the chambers, but not even thought or spoken
of, except when it is thought necessary to teach
it a lesson by putting it down and teaching it obedi
ence. The misery of the laboring classes has not yet
found an orator.”
We have given, here-above, an attractive nucleus
for table-talk and speculation, and we leave it to our
friends.
Poets and Poetry of America.—An hour's
lecture on this subject by Mr. Poe is but a “foot of
Hercules,” and though one can see what would be
the proportions of the whole, if treated with the same
scope and artistic minuteness, it is a pity to see only
the fragment. What we heard last night convinced
us, however, that one of the most readable and saleable
of books would be a dozen of such lectures by
Mr. Poe, and we give him a publisher's counsel to
print them.
After some general remarks on poetry and the uses
of impartial criticism, Mr. Poe gently waked up the
American poetesses. He began with Mrs. Sigourney,
whom he considered the best known, and who, he
seemed to think, owed her famousness to the same
cause as “old boss Richards”—the being “kept before
the people.” He spoke well of her poetry abstractly,
but intimated that it was strongly be-Hemans'd, and
that without the Hemanshood and the newspaper
iteration, Mrs. Sigourney would not be the first
American poetess. He next came to Mrs. Welby as
No. 2, and gave her wholesome muse some very stiff
laudation. Mrs. Osgood came next, and for her he
prophesied a rosy future of increasing power and renown.
He spoke well of Mrs. Seba Smith, and he
spent some time in showing that the two Miss Davidsons,
with all their merit, were afloat “on bladders in
a sea of glory.” The pricking of these bladders, by-the-way,
and the letting out of Miss Sedgwick's
breath, and Professor Morse's, and Mr. Southey's,
was most artistically well done.
Of the inspired males Mr. Poe only took up the
copperplate five—Bryant, Halleck, Longfellow,
Sprague, and Dana. These, as having their portraits
engraved in the frontispiece of Griswold's
“Poets and Poetry of America,” were taken to represent
the country's poetry, and dropped into the
melting-pot accordingly. Mr. Bryant came first as
the allowed best poet; but Mr. Poe, after giving him
high praise, expressed a contempt for “public opinion,”
and for the opinion of all majorities, in matters
of taste, and intimated that Mr. Bryant's universality
of approval lay in his keeping within very narrow limits,
where it was easy to have no faults. Halleck, Mr.
Poe praised exceedingly, repeating with great beauty
of elocution his Marco Bozzaris. Longfellow, Mr.
Poe said, had more genius than any other of the five,
but his fatal alacrity at imitation made him borrow,
when he had better at home. Sprague, but for
one drop of genuine poetry in a fugitive piece, was
described by Poe as Pope-and-water. Dana found
very little favor. Mr. Poe thought his metre harsh
and awkward, his narrative ill-managed, and his conceptions
eggs from other people's nests. With the
copperplate five, the criticisms abruptly broke off, Mr.
Poe concluding his lecture with the recitation of three
pieces of poetry which he thought had been mistakenly
put away, by the housekeeper of the temple of
fame, among the empty bottles. Two of them were
by authors we did not know, and the third was by an
author whom we have been exhorted to know under
the Greek name of Seauton (“gnothi seauton”)—
ourself! (Perhaps we may be excused for mentioning
that the overlooked bottle of us contained “unseen
spirits,” and that the brigadier, who gave us twenty
dollars for it, thought it by no means “small beer!”)
Mr. Poe had an audience of critics and poets—
between two and three hundred of victims and victimizers—and
he was heard with breathless attention. He
statuary embodiment of discrimination; his accent
drops like a knife through water, and his style is so
much purer and clearer than the pulpit commonly
gets or requires, that the effect of what he says, beside
other things, pampers the ear. Poe's late poem of
“The Raven,” embroidered him at once on the quilt
of the poets; but as the first bold traverse thread run
across the parallelisms of American criticism, he
wants but a business bodkin to work this subordinate
talent to great show and profit. We admire him none
the less for dissenting from some of his opinions.
Asylum for Indigent Women.—A benevolent
friend surprised us, on Saturday, into one of the most
agreeable visits we ever made—a visit to an institution
of whose existence we were not even aware. We
presume that others have shared our ignorance, and
that the name we have written above will convey to
most readers an idea either vague or entirely novel.
Poetry alone would express truly the impression left
on our mind by this visit, but we will confine ourself
to a brief description in prose.
Our friend informed us, on the way, that an entrance
fee of fifty dollars was required, and that the claims of
the proposed inmate (as to respectability and such circumstances
as would affect the social comfort of the
establishment) were decided upon by the board of
management. Once there, she has a home for life,
with perfect command of egress, absence for visits,
and calls from friends, books, medical attendance, occupation,
&c. Each inmate commonly adds some
furniture to the simple provision of the room.
We entered a large building, with two spacious
wings, standing on Twentieth street, near the East
river. Opposite the entrance, the door opened into a
cheerful chapel, and we turned to the left into a
drawing-room, which had all the appearance of an
apartment in the most comfortable private residence.
We descended thence through warm corridors, to the
refectory in the basement, and here the ladies (between
fifty and sixty of them) chanced to be taking
their tea. We really never saw a pleasanter picture
of comfort. The several tables were scattered irregularly
around the room, and each little party had separate
teapot and table furniture, the arrangements
reminding one of a café in a world grown old. The
gay chatting, the passing of cups and plates, the nodding
of clean caps, and the really unusual liveliness
of the different parties, took us entirely by surprise—
took away, in fact, all idea of an asylum for sickness
or poverty. What with the fragrant atmosphere of
souchong, and the happy faces, it would have been a
needlessly fastidious person who would not have sat
down willingly as a guest at the meal.
We looked into the kitchen and household arrangements
for a few minutes, finding everything the model
of wholesome neatness, and then, as the ladies had
returned to their rooms, we made a few visits to
them, chez elles, introduced by the attendant. Here
again, the variety of furniture, the comfortable rocking-chairs,
the curtains, and pictures, and ornamental
trifles, removed all idea of hospital or asylum-life, and
gave us the feeling of visiters in private families.
The ladies were visiting from room to room, and those
we conversed with assured us that they had everything
for their comfort, and were as happy as they well
could be—though they laughed very heartily when we
expressed some envy of the barrier between them and
the vexed world we must return to, and at our wish
that we could “qualify” and stay with them. We
have rarely had merrier conversation in a call, and we
think that this asylum for age holds at least one or
two very agreeable women.
But what charity can the angel of mercy so smile
upon, as this waiting upon life to its gloomy retiring-door,
lighting the dark steps downward, and sending
home the weary guest with a farewell, softened and
cheerful! God bless the founder of this beautiful
charity! Who can hear of it and not wish to aid it?
Who has read thus far, our truthful picture, and does
not mentally resolve to be one (though by ever so
small a gift) among its blest benefactors.
We begged a copy of the last report, and we find
that the society, which supports the asylum, has some
eighty pensioners out of the house, and that there is
some fear entertained, from the low state of the funds,
as to the ability to continue these latter charities.
We can not conceive the treasury of such an institution
in want. We are not authorized to make any
appeal to the public, but those who are inclined to
give can easily find out the way.
Sacred Concert.—We have once or twice, when
writing of musical performers, given partial expression
to a feeling that has since been very strongly
confirmed—the expediency of addressing music, in
this country, to the more serious instead of the gayer
classes, for its best support and cultivation. The
high moral tone, this side the water, of all those strata
of society to which refined amusement looks for support,
gives music rather an American rebuke than an
American welcome—coming as a pleasure in which
dissipated fashionables are alone interested. Italian
opera, properly labelled and separated from its needless
association with ballet, would rise to the unoffending
moral level of piano-music, sight-seeing, concert-going,
or what the serious commonly call innocent
amusements.
Till lately it has been generally understood that the
only hope for patronage of fine music, in New York,
was the exclusive class which answers to the court
circles of Europe; and, so addressed, the opera has
very naturally languished.
The truth is, that the great mass of the wealthy
and respectable population of New York is at a level
of strict morality, or of religious feelings rising still
higher, and any amusement that goes by a doubtful
name among moralists, is at once excluded. But
music need never suffer by this exclusion, and as the
favor of these stricter classes, once secured, would be
of inexhaustible profit to musicians, it would be worth
while for some master-spirit among them to undertake
the proper adaptation of music to moral favor.
Why should the best singers be considered almost
profane—was the question that naturally enough occurred
to us the other night on hearing the Tabernacle
fill, to its vast capacity, with the voice of Madame
Pico giving entrancing utterance to Scripture! Here
were a thousand lovers of music sitting breathless together,
with their most hallowed feelings embarked
upon a voice usually devoted to profane uses. Many
whose tears flow only at hallowed prompting, listened
with moist eyes to the new-clad notes of familiar sacred
music—perhaps half-sighing with self-reproach
that the enchantment of an opera-singer should have
reached such sacred fountains of emotion. Why
should not the best musical talent, as well as the
more indifferent, be made tributary to religion? Why
should not sacred operas be written for our country
exclusively? Why should not the highly dramatic
scenes and events of Scripture be represented on the
stage, and seen with reverence by the classes who
have already seen them in their imaginations, during
perusal of the inspired volume. And why should not
the events of human life, as portrayed in unobjectionable
operas, be alternated with these, and addressed to
the moral approbation of our refined serious classes?
delivered over to the evil spirit among us)
would be willingly taken charge of by the angel of
good influences.
We can not give a critical notice of the performances
at the sacred concert, as we were unable to remain
after the conclusion of the first part, but we heard a
single remark which seems to us worth quoting. At
the conclusion of Madame Pico's first air, a gentleman,
standing near us, observed that it was very odd
a foreigner should sing with perfect articulation, while
he could scarce understand a word from those who
sang in their native tongue! The instrumental music
was admirable, and the scenic effect of the female
choir (all dressed in white, and getting up with a
spontaneous resurrection for the chorus) was at least
impressive.
P. S. Just as we are going to press we have received
a critique of the concert, speaking very glowingly
of Madame Pico, and the
From her white throat dim,”
of Brough, so long lost to us,” and “Miss Northall
and Mr. Meyer,” as having “given full satisfaction.”
The Famine at Washington.—The city is alive
with laughable stories of the distress for bed and provender
during the late descent upon the scene of the
inauguration.
While fast behind them runs the blaze of fire,”
crowding back to the regions of steady population,
aghast at the risks of famine run in the capital of a
land of proverbial abundance. The stories are mostly
such as would easily be imagined taking place in any
country, under the circumstances, but we heard of one
worth recording—a Yankee variation of an expedient
tried some years ago by an Englishman at Saratoga.
John Bull, in that instance (it may be remembered),
after calling in vain to the flying attendants at the
crowded table, splashed a handful of silver into his
plate and handed it to a waiter with a request for “a
clean plate and some soup.” A Massachusetts judge,
probably remembering this, drew a gold piece from
his pocket last week while sitting hungry at the stripped
table at Washington, and tapping his tumbler
with it till he attracted attention, laid it beside his
plate and pointed to it while he mentioned what he
wanted. He was miraculously supplied of course,
but, when he had nothing more to ask, he politely
thanked the waiter and—returned the gold piece to
his own pocket!
The German Concert.—The great wilderness
of Pews-y-ism—the boundless Tabernacle—was filled
to its remotest “seat for one” on Saturday evening,
and a more successful concert could scarcely have
been given. The nation cradled away from salt air,
showed their naturally fresh enthusiasm for the performances,
and it seemed to have an effect upon
Madame Pico, for her friends thought she never had
sung so enchantingly, as in the second of the pieces
set down for her—“la casta Diva.” She was applauded
to the utmost tension of Mr. Hale's roof and
rafters. The German chorus by a score of amateurs
was admirably given, and Schaffenburg's piano-music
was done to the utmost probable of excellence.
“Mine Host.”—Some time ago, in some speculations
on American peculiarities, we commented on the
hotel-life so much more popular in this country than
elsewhere, and the necessity, bred by the manners
and habits of our people, that hotel-keepers should be
well-bred men, of high character and agreeable manners.
The trusts reposed in them by their guests,
and the courtesy they are called on to exercise, make
it almost inevitable that such men should alone be
encouraged to assume the direction of hotels. This
tendency of fitness has lately put the Howard house
into the hands of one of our most courteous, capable,
and agreeable friends, Capt. Roe, and the public will
find that central hotel all that they can require.
The Geode.—We remember being pitched for a
week into Query-dom, while attending college lectures,
by Prof. Silliman's astounding story of the
mine in (we think) Meriden, Connecticut—a single
cave in which had been found a specimen of almost
every known precious stone. It was a kind of omnibus
geode, and with a boy's imagination, we speculated
endlessly on how so many rare gems could have
chanced to have come together in this world of loose
distribution. We have come, now, however, to the
astounding knowledge of a geode of poetesses—the
centre of which is Fanny Forester—and though there
are astonishing resemblances between the material
and spiritual world, we were not prepared for this!
Fanny herself, as a prose writer and poetess, has now
an assured fame. But, on St. Valentine's day, we
received an original Valentine from one of her intimate
friends, which was as beautiful poetry as fame
wants in her trumpet, and two or three weeks ago we
published a most delicious poem from another friend
of Fanny Forester's, and here comes a fourth gem
which seems to hint (and this is too sad a possibility
to trifle upon) that gifted Fanny Forester is beckoned
to, from a better world. God send her health with
this coming spring—thousands will pray fervently.
Here follows a prayer for it, expressed in touching
verse by one who seems a familiar friend:—
“BY MISS MARY FLORENCE NOBLE.
“Saw you ever a purer light
More still and fair than the harvest moon
When day has died in a shadowless night?
And the air is still as a summer's noon?
No?—Ah, sweet one, your eyelids shrine
A light far purer, and more divine.
“Heard you ever the silvery gush
Of a brook, far down in its rocky dell;
And stilled your breath with a tremulous hush,
As its mystic murmurs rose and fell?
'Tis thus I list to the liquid flow
Of your silvery accents, soft and low.
“Yet, sweet `Fanny,' the light that gleams
'Neath the sweeping fringe of your radiant eyes,
Too purely chaste, and too heavenly seems
To dwell in the glare of our earthly skies;
And, too soft and low your tones have birth
To linger long mid the din of earth
“The sweet brow shrined in your clustering hair
Has gathered a shadow wan, and deep,
And the veins a darker violet wear,
Which over your hollow temples creep;
And your fairy foot falls faint and slow,
As the feathery flakes of the drifting snow.
“'Tis said the gods send swift decay
To the bright ones they love, of mortal birth;
And your angel `Dora' passed away
In her youth's sweet spring-time, from the earth,
Yet stay, sweet `Fanny!' your pinions fold,
'Till the hearts that love you now, are cold.”
Yankee-Parisian Aristocracy.—Our agreeable
neighbor of the “Etats-Unis” gives a letter from
Paris which states that “another rich American is
about taking the place of the retiring Col. Thorn.
Mr. Macnamara has opened a superb house in the
rue de la Madeleine, and is sending out invitations
par milliers. In the commencement of a fashionable
career as an entertainer, a thousand invitations will
hardly bring persons enough to form a quadrille.
Mr. Tudor, another American, is just now in that stage
where he has commenced weeding his saloons!”
The same agreeable letter states that two sisters of
the Hon. Mrs. Norton, Lady Seymour (the Queen
of Beauty at Eglinton), and Lady Dufferin (the Mrs.
Blackwood whose songs are well known in this country),
have been playing at the English embassy in
private theatricals. The characters were nearly all
personated by lords and ladies, yet one Baltimore
belle sustained the part of “Mary Copp” in the play
of Charles the Second—Miss Mactavish. The
two sisters of Mrs. Norton and the “Undying One”
herself, were by much the three most beautiful women
we saw abroad—magnificent graces between
whom it was hard to choose the most beautiful.
Newell's Patent Lock.—Mr. Newell's wonderful
lock (one of which costs as much as a pianoforte)
is not wholly original. On the world's first washing-day,
Monday No. 1, a human mind was created on
precisely the same principle. Without going into
the details either of this lock or a human mind (in
either of which we should lose ourself of course) we
will simply give the principle of Nature's patent and
Mr. Newell's, viz: that the lock is constructed not
only to be un-openable to all keys but the right one,
but to become just what that right one makes it. Newell's
lock is a chaos of slides, wards, and joints, till the key
turns in it; and it then suddenly springs into order,
simplicity, and beauty of construction. Another
resemblance to Nature's plastic lock, is this feature
of Newell's, that by the slightest change in the key
(provided for by bits inserted at will) the whole interior
responds differently; so that a bank director, like a
mind director, may change his key every day in the
year, and (preserving only the harmony between lock
and key) will find the lock every day responsive to the
change. Fair dealing required, we think, that the
proper credit should have been given to the original
inventor, and that the patent should be called “Newell's,
after Nature.”
Having shown the way the invention struck us,
however, we copy by request what was said of it by
the Journal of Commerce:—
“Mr. Newell denominates this new masterpiece of
ingenuity, the Parautoptic Toiken Permutation Lock.
Parautoptic, being a Greek word, signifying preventive
of an internal inspection, and toiken meaning
walled, hence the name. This lock has been named
after its peculiar properties. Phosphoric or other
light may be introduced into it in vain in order to
view its interior construction. The tumblers being
separated from the essential actional parts of the lock,
which constitute its safety, by a perpendicular wall of
solid steel forming two distinct and separate chambers
in the same, thus counteracting all burglarious designs.
The front chamber will, on close inspection, either by
phosphoric light or reflection, exhibit nothing but solid
walls of steel or iron. This lock is susceptible of an
infinity of changes from thousands to millions, enabling
the possessor to change or vary it at pleasure,
simply by transposing or altering the bits in the key,
before using it to lock the door, in a manner
which is truly surprising. It therefore follows that
a person may make himself a different lock every
moment of his life, if such be his disposition, thereby
frustrating the skill of the maker, and placing him on
a footing with the merest novice. We are, therefore,
fully persuaded of its being the ultimatum of lockmaking,
and sincerely congratulate the inventor of
this admirable contrivance, in thus being able to
counteract so effectually the various plans and schemes
of burglars and pick-locks, and we feel warranted in
stating that after due inspection, all those connected
with banking institutions, and the public generally,
will adopt it at once as preferable to all others, for the
safe-keeping and protection of their property.”
The New York “Rocher de Cancale.”—To
dine tête-á-tête with a friend, in Paris, or to give a dinner
party, you must go to the above-named renowned
restaurant, where have dined, probably, all the gentlemen
now existing. Private room, faultless dinner,
apt and prompt service, and reasonable charges, constitute
the charm, and all this we are to have (or so
says that communicative “little bird in the air”) at
the corner of Reade st., in the new Maison Lafarge.
That “unrecognised angel,” Signor Bardotte, is to
be the chef des details, and, in partnership with him,
a gentleman well fatigued with travel and experience
is to act as partner. Of course we would much rather
record the establishment, at the same corner, of an
asylum for unavoidable accomplishments, but since
luxury will cut its swarth, we like to see the rake with
a clean handle.
The Misses Rice and the Bears.—The Portland
Advertiser states that in a secluded part of Oxford
county, called “The Andover Surplus,” there
reside two female farmers, who occupy a few acres,
and “do their own chores,” hiring male help only for
haying and harvesting. Out in the woods lately with
the ox-team, cutting and drawing winter's wood, one
of the Misses Rice was attracted by the barking of the
dog at a hollow tree. One of the young ladies was
absent for the moment, and the other chopped a hole
in the tree and came to a bear-skin! Nothing
daunted at the sight, she gave a poke, and out scrambled
bruin, whom she knocked down and despatched.
A second bear immediately made his appearance, and
she despatched him! A third bear then crept from
the tree, and the same axe finished him! This,
Miss Rice considered a good morning's work, for
there is a two-dollar bounty on bears, and the skins
and grease are worth five dollars, at least. We should
like to see Miss Rice, of the “Andover Surplus!”
Inconstancy made Romantic.—“The Countess
Faustina” (the new book now in everybody's hands)
is the first novel we remember to have read, the whole
burthen of which is a glorification of inconstancy in
love! The heroine is charmingly drawn—the model
of divine women—but after quite innocently using up
all that was most loveable in two men and deserting
them, she gets tired of a third, and goes into a convent
to finish the story! The lovers are all described
as worthy of a deathless passion, and the love on both
sides, while it lasts, is of the loftiest lift and devotion,
but the countess has the little peculiarity of liking no
love except love in progress, and she deserts, of course,
at the first premonishing of the halt of tranquillity.
The following passage, descriptive of her enlightening
her last love as to the coming break-off, will show how
neatly she wrapped up the bitter pill:—
“`Be silent,' she exclaimed, when I was about to
answer her, `be silent! Does not the water-lily
then returns back into its depths, satisfied, tranquil,
with a treasure of sweet recollections? Flowers
know when their time is passed, and man tries, all he
can, not to be aware of it. This year with you,
Mario, was the height of my blossoming!'
“`You love me no longer,' I exclaimed bitterly.
“`Fool!' she replied, with that ecstatic smile which
I never saw on any brow but hers, `have you not
touched the tabernacle of my heart? Is not my son
yours? No, Mario! I love you; I have loved
nothing so much; I shall never love anything after
you—but, above you, God! My soul has squandered
itself in such transports of love and inspiration with
yours, that all it can ever meet in this region will be
but a repetition, and perhaps an insipid one. We
have so broken up my heart in searching for its treasure,
that the gold mines are probably exhausted,
before the sad certainty comes upon us.'
“`Faustina!' I know not in what tone I said this,
but she sank trembling into my arms, and said very,
very softly.
“`Oh, if you are angry, I shall not have the courage
to open my heart to you!'
“I knew I ought not to alarm her, and I embraced
her tenderly, and inquired what she thought of doing.
“She replied, `I will close the mine! If there is
any valuable metal within, it may rest quietly in the
depths. And above I will plant flowers.'
“`But what can—what would you do?' I inquired
with terrible anxiety.
“`Belong entirely to God, and enter a convent!'
she replied,” &c., &c.
Six months of convent-life sufficed to finish the
Countess Faustina, who “discovered too late” (says
the narrator) “that, during our life, we can but look,
like Moses, toward the promised Canaan” (of a man
worth being constant to) “but never reach it!” It
strikes us this is a naughtyish book—at least, if, as we
read in Spenser:—
Than lightness or inconstancy in love.”
The book is a mark of the times, however. It
makes no mention of Fourierism, but we doubt
whether its sentiments would have been ventured
upon in print, if Fourier principles had not insensibly
opened the gates. It is no sign that principles are not
spreading, because everybody writes against them,
and because few will acknowledge them. We see by
various symptoms in literature, that the mere peep
into free-and-easy-dom given by the discussion of
Fourier tenets, has left a leaning that way. There is
no particular Fourierism, that we know of, in the two
following pieces of poetry, but they fell from that
same leaning, we rather fancy. We copy the first
from our sober and exemplary neighbor, “The Albion”:—
Must have no exclusive home,
But (young ladies, you should know it)
Wives in scores his hair to comb.
When the dears were first invented,
One a-piece Fate only gave us,
Wiser far two kings demented—
Solomon—and Hal Octavus.
“Doctors' Commons judge severely,
My belief to reason stands;
Any dolt can prove it clearly,
With ten fingers on his hands.
Smiles and glances, sighs and kisses
From one wife are sweet—what then?
That amount of wedlock's blisse
Take, and multiply by ten.
“Laughing Jane and sparkling Jessy
Shall the morning's meal prepare,
Brilliant Blanche and bright-eyed Bessy
Mid-day's lunch shall spread and share;
Ann and Fan shall grace my dinner,
Rose and Laura pour my tea;
Sue brew grog, while Kate, sweet sinner,
Lights the bedroom wax for me.
“Monk! within thy lonely cell,
What wouldst give to greet a bride?
Monckton bids thee forth to dwell
With a dozen by thy side.
Poet! in your crown one wife
Shines a jewel, past a doubt,
But in ten times married life,
Mind your jewels don't fall out!”
The next instance comes from the very heart of
holier-than-thou-dom—the exemplary state of Maine.
The St. Louis Reveille declares it to be a “well-authenticated
fact which occurred at Holton, in Maine.”
When all creation travelled slow,
And naught but trackless deserts lay,
Before the early settlers' way,
A youth and damsel, bold and fair,
Had cause to take a journey where
Through night and day, and day and night,
No house would greet their wearied sight;
And, thinking Hymen's altar should
Precede their journey through the wood,
They straightway to a justice went,
By love and circumstances sent!
The justice—good old honest pate—
Said it was quite unfortunate,
But at that time he could not bind
These two young folks of willing mind,
For his commission—sad to say—
Had just expired—but yesterday!
Yet, after all, he would not say
That single they should go away;
And so he bade them join their hands
In holy wedlock's happy bands,
And `just a little' he would marry—
Enough, perhaps, to safely carry—
As they were in connubial mood—
`Enough to do them through the wood!”'
Missionary Eyelids.—At No. 75, Fulton street,
a large emporium has lately been opened for the sale
of the plant propagated from the cut-off eyelids of the
first Christian missionary to China—in other words,
for the sale of tea! One of the partners of this establishment
(the Pekin tea company) has written a
charming little pamphlet, called a “Guide to Tea-Drinkers,”
in which he gives the following true origin
of the wakeful properties of tea:—
“Darma, the son of an Indian king, is said to have
landed in China in the year 510 of the Christian era.
He employed all his care and time to spread through
the country a knowledge of God and religion, and, to
stimulate others by his example, imposed on himself
privations of every kind, living in the open air, in fasting
and prayer. On one occasion, being worn out
with fatigue, he fell asleep against his will, and that he
might thereafter observe his oath, which he had thus
violated, he cut off his eyelids, and threw them on the
ground. The next day passing the same way, he
found them changed to a shrub (tea) which the earth
never before produced. Having eaten some of its
leaves he felt his spirits much exhilarated, and his
strength restored. He recommended this aliment to
his disciples and followers. The reputation of tea increased,
and from that time it continued to be generally
used.”
The pamphlet goes on to state the properties of the
different kinds of tea, describing Pekoe as the best of
teas (qu?—hence the prevailing of the Pico tease over
Borghese's), and declares it to be peculiarly agreeable
(Pekoe tea) to poets and ladies—as follows:—
“The warmth conveyed to the stomach of man by
tea-drinking at his various meals, becomes essential to
him, nor would the crystal steam of the poet suffice
for the healthy powers of digestion in the artificial
state of existence in which we are placed. A learned
ordinary beverage of young women, and the individual
who, until the day of her marriage, has never tasted
wine or any fermented liquor, is the one who is
most likely to fulfil the great end of her existence—
the handing down to posterity a strong and well-organized
offspring.”
A visit to this emporium is well worth curiosity's
while, and tea can there be bought in large or small
quantities, and in prices much below those of grocers.
Women in their June.—The early decay of female
beauty, consequent on neglect of physical education
and the corroding dryness of our climate, has
given an American value to the immature April and
May of female seasons, and a corresponding depreciation
to the riper June. The article which we copy
below, from the Brooklyn Star, expresses, we believe,
the opinion of the best judges of these exotics from
a better world, and emboldens us to express a long-entertained
belief that the most loveable age of unmarried
woman's life commences, at the earliest, at
twenty-five, and lasts as long after as she shows no diminution
of sensibility, and no ravages of time. Women
improve so much longer than men (improve by the
loving and suffering that spoils men), that we wonder
they have never found an historic anatomist of their
later stages. We suggest it to pens at a loss. Here
follow our contemporary's opinions:—
“My dear sir, if you ever marry, marry an old
maid—a good old maid—who is serious, and simple,
and true. I hate these double-minded misses, who
are all the time hunting after a husband. I tell you
that when a woman gets to be twenty-eight, she
settles into a calm—rather she “anchors in deep waters,
and safe from shore.” There never was a set, or
class, or community of persons, so belied as these
ancient ladies. Look upon it as no reproach to a
woman that she is not married at thirty or thirty-five.
Above all, fall not into the vulgar notion of romances,
and shallow wits—unlearned in women's hearts, because
they never had the love of a true woman—that
these are continually lying in wait to catch bachelors'
hearts. For one woman who has floated into the
calm of her years, who is anxious to fix you, I will
find you fifty maidens in their teens, and just out, who
lay a thousand snares to entrap you, and with more
cold-blooded intent—for whether is worse, that one of
singleness of purpose should seek to lean on you for
life, or that one should seek you as a lover, to excite
jealousy in others, or as a last resort.
“Marry a healthy, well-bred woman, between
twenty-eight and thirty-five, who is inclined to love
you, and never bewilder your brains with suspicions
about whether she has intentions on you or not. This
is the rock of vanity upon which many a man has
wrecked his best feelings and truest inclinations. Our
falseness, and the falseness of society, and more than
all, the false and hollow tone of language upon this
subject, leave very little courage for a straightforward
and independent course in the matter. What matter
if a woman likes you, and shows that she does, honestly,
and wishes to marry you?—the more reason for
self-congratulation but not for vanity. What matter
if she be young or not, so she be loveable? I won't
say what matter if she be plain or not—for everybody
knows that that is no matter where love is, though it
may have some business in determining the sentiment.
I don't know what has led me into this course
of remark. The last thing I should have expected
on sitting down to write, is, that I should have fallen
into a lecture on matrimony. I am not an old maid
myself, yet; but I have a clearer eye to their virtues
than I have had, and begin to feel how dignified a
woman may be `in her loneness—in her loneness—
and the fairer for that loneness.' You may think it
is bespeaking favor and patience with a vengeance.”
Refined Charities.—Our readers were made
aware, a few days since, that we had received very
great pleasure from a visit to an institution hitherto
unknown to us—the “Asylum for Aged and Indigent
Ladies.” That so beautiful a charity, conducted
with so happy a method, should never have come to
our knowledge, struck us as probably a singular
chance in our own hearsay—but we find that others,
as likely to be interested in it as ourself, were equally
in the dark, and one lady (quite the most active Dorcas
of our acquaintance) took our account to be an
ingenious device to suggest such an institution! That
a large two-winged building, with a sculptured tablet
set in front, stating its purpose, and so filled that it
might be taken up to heaven by its “knit corners,”
like the sheet full of living things let down to the
apostle on the housetop—that such a building, with
such a purpose, should exist unsuspected in one of
the streets of New York, is somewhat a marvel. But
we were not prepared for TWO such surprises! We
have since discovered another charity that was wholly
unknown to us, as delicate, if not as poetically beautiful,
and we begin to think that the old saying is
true—ministering spirits do walk the earth, unrecognised
in their tender ministrations, and
“The tears that we forget to note, the angels wipe away.”
Our second discovery is of an institution called the
“Ladies' Depository—intended for the benefit of
those persons who have experienced a reverse of fortune,
and who can not come before the public, while, at the
same time, they may, from necessity, wish to dispose of
useful and ornamental work, if it could be done privately,
and to advantage.” The institution supports
a store for the sale of needlework, &c., and any one
of its twenty-five managers may receive an application
and give a “permit” to the lady in want—this one
manager alone the possessor of the secret of the lady's
wants and mode of supplying them. Work, drawings,
&c., are thus purchased by the society's funds, and
sold by the hired saleswoman of the society, and a
veil is thus hung between delicacy and the rude contact
of open want—a veil which prevents more pain,
probably, than the food which prevents only bodily
suffering.
This beautiful charity has now been in existence
twelve years, and by its tenth report (we have no later
one) we find that fourteen hundred dollars were paid
out for work in the twelve months preceding. This
sum is not large, and it shows that the subscriptions to
the funds of the society are less liberal than could be
desired. We should think that the bare knowledge
of the existence of such societies as this and the one
beforementioned, would start streams of gift-laden
sympathy toward them, and we think they but need
wider publicity. We are not authorized to mention
in print the names of the treasurer or directresses,
but the report lies on our table, and we shall be happy
to give the information to any individual applying at
our office.
We copy the following astounding intelligence
from a Montreal paper:—
“Annexation of the State of Maine.—After
all that has been said of Texas and Oregon, and the
desire entertained by the people of the United States
to enlarge their territory by the acquisition of immense
tracts, it will surprise many, and add much to
the protocols that will be issued, to learn that the state
feeling a community of interests with those of north of
forty-five degrees, has petitioned her majesty Queen
Victoria to readmit her to the old family circle of John
Bull, where property is respected, and where there is
neither vote by ballot, Lynch law, slavery, nor repudiation.
“It is generally surmised that his honor, Judge
Preble is charged with this delicate mission, and that
the petition will be sent through his excellency Lord
Metcalfe, by the next steamer, though the ostensible
ground of his honor's visit to Montreal is the railroad
to Portland; and it is evident that if the admission is
agreed on, and is prompt and immediate, all the stock
will be at once subscribed by the home government,
and presented to the new confederation.
“Part of New Hampshire, Vermont, and that portion
of New York bordering on the St. Lawrence,
will, it is thought, follow this laudable example.
“N. B. No state that has repudiated need
apply.”
We were born in Portland, and by annexation, as
above, are likely to turn out a “a Britisher from the
provinces!” President Polk is to lose us—Queen
Victoria is to have us! Lucky we were presented to
her majesty while we were a republican court-eligible
—before we sank, that is to say, from a “distinguished
foreigner” into a provincial editor! We should never
have had formal certainty of having lodged exclusively
for the space of a minute, in the queen's eye,
had Maine annexed herself before we were brought to
the notice of “Gold Stick in Waiting.” So much,
at least, it was better to have been temporarily a
Yankee!
There is one other difference to be considered,
while we are measuring the matter at the top—we
cease to be a competitor for the presidency! Our
glorious fifteen millionth of capability for “No. 1”
drops from us as treason to Victoria! We are reduced
to the prospect of dying the inferior of Louis
Philippe(!) without the benefit of a doubt. We become
also, doubtless, the inferior of all the titled gentlemen
catalogued in the “red book,” many of whom,
till Maine was annexed, welcomed us to walk into
their houses, without mentally seeing us pass under
the yoke over the door. We are to unlearn “Yankee
Doodle,” and learn “God save the Queen.” We
are to call this half-savage country “The States,”
and keep the birthdays of the queen's annuals. We
are to glory in standing armies, national debt, and
London fog and porter, and begin to hesitate in our
speech, and wear short whiskers. The change in
our prayer-book is not much. We are to do our ciphering
in pounds, and that will plague us! We are
to be interested in Canada politics and Lord Metcalfe's
erysipelas. We are to belong to a country
where births are published, as the first sign that people
know all about you, and that you must stay put.
(This last strikes us as the worst part of it.) We are
to pass for an Englishman on our travels, in the states
and elsewhere, and that is agreeable, because our
suavity will be unexpected. The larger features of
our metamorphosis we omit for future consideration
—but, as far as these personal ones go, we fear we
had a better chance as a Yankee! We were what we
could make ourselves—we are to be what others make
us. Queen Victoria, on the whole, will oblige us by
not laying her hands on our Maine!
A Future Passion, in the Egg.—We have had a
book for some time, that is destined to be an American
passion. Once read, it infatuates—for it expresses
in a brief and beautiful figure every possible
poetic feeling, and will do for the heart, what the
single japonica does to the dress—give the finishing
expression, no way else so felicitously effective.
Those who make love before this book gets into use,
will work like savages with arrows before the discovery
of gunpowder. Those whose best thoughts die
in birth, for lack of recognition and ready-made clothing,
will wonder how they were ever comfortable
without it. Our Cumberland correspondent spent a
whole letter, wondering why we, who were constantly
quoting the book, had never written a critique upon
it. Our reason for not doing so—or rather for first
making our readers thoroughly alive to its beauty by
extract—is indirectly given in the book itself, in the
chapter called “Indirect Influences.” See how exquisitely
it is done:—
That crippled line of columns creeping in the sun,
The delicate shaft stricken midway, and the flying buttress,
Idly stretching forth to hold up tufted ivy:
Thinkest thou the thousand eyes that shine with rapture on a ruin,
Would have looked with half their wonder on the perfect pile?
And wherefore not—but that light hints, suggesting unseen beauties,
Fill the complacent gazer with self-grown conceits?
And so, the rapid sketch winneth more praise to the painter,
Than the consummate work elaborated on his easel:
And so, the Helvetic lion caverned in the living rock
Hath more of majesty and force, than if upon a marble pedestal.
“Tell me, daughter of taste, what hath charmed thine ear in music?
Is it the labored theme, the curious fugue or cento—
Nay—rather the sparkles of intelligence flashing from some strange note,
Or the soft melody of sounds far sweeter for simplicity?
Tell me, thou son of science, what hath filled thy mind in reading?
Is it the volume of detail where all is orderly set down
And they that read may run, nor need to stop and think;
The book carefully accurate, that counteth thee no better than a fool,
Gorging the passive mind with annotated notes?—
Nay—rather the half-suggested thoughts, the riddles thou mayst solve,
The fair ideas, coyly peeping like young loves out of roses,
The quaint arabesque conceptions, half-cherub and half-flower,
The light analogy, or deep allusion, trusted to thy learning,
The confidence implied in thy skill to unravel meaning mysteries!
For ideas are ofttimes shy of the close furniture of words,
And thought, wherein only is power, may be best conveyed by a suggestion:
The flash that lighteth up a valley, amid the dark midnight of a storm,
Coineth the mind with that scene sharper than fifty summers.”
The book of which this exquisite passage is a part,
is called “proverbial philosophy.” It is by Martin
Farquhar Tupper, of Christ church, Oxford, and an
American edition of it has lain in the bookstores for
two years, wholly unsaleable! It can afford to “bide
its time,” and mean-time, we shall enrich our readers
with it, bit by bit.
| CHAPTER I. The miscellaneous works of N.P. Willis | |