SECOND GLASS.
This glass of purple Tinta, steeped in the latitude
of Italy, tastes, of course, of the climate of Pico's
voice; and we are glad to vary, with this redolent
bumper, the avenue to our heart—so breaking up the
ear's monopoly of toll. Health to Cinderella triumphant!
Her voice has a flavor—(if this wine be
like it—and it is the sun's fault if it is not like it—for
the same cupful of his mellow light fed the grape
from which gushed the wine and the lip from which
poured the melody)—worthy of the immortality of
Falernian. (For this discovery of homogeneousness
of pulp we beg a medal from the Institute.)
We were afraid, as we said before, that Pico, “like
a careless farrier, would lame her well-shod glory
with the last nail,” but she sang throughout with unblemished
deliciousness, and the “piu mestar,” at the
close, fairly took the town! Nothing has been heard
like it, in this city, since Malibran, either in voice or
execution. We have made up our mind about Pico.
Her abandon is like the apparent carelessness of all
kinds of genius—fearless trust after finished study.
Of that desperate and intoxicating let-go, Borghese
has none. She is artistic and careful in the most passionate
extremity, dying, even, “with her wits all
about her.” Pico fastens each link of the composer's
melody in her brain, with workmanlike fidelity; but
when she comes out from her music-smithy, she
brings with her no memory of the clink of hammer
and rivet. In that relying forgetfulness lies the mystery
of her charm. It is recognised, by the instinct
men have that this is the quality of those who do
best—statesmen or soldiers, poets or lovers—the most
successful, in all enterprises, throwing themselves on
what they have once made up their minds to, as a
bird launches from the cliff. Nature prodigally seconds
the unhesitating trust of Pico's execution. Her
voice follows her concerted thought with the certainty
of a shadow and the fulness of a floodtide. The
plentitude of every shade and semi-tone, insures,
in the first five minutes of hearing her, an absence
of all dread of flaw or falling off—an assurance,
that whatever height or depth she stoops her neck to
swoop for, it will bring, for the listener,
“those music-wings
Lent to exalt us to the seventh sphere.”
WE DRINK TO THE JACOB'S LADDER OF MUSIC.
A new light breaks upon us as to the uses of the
opera. As (to the wicked) common speech is a convenience
and swearing a luxury, so poetry is a convenience
to passion, and music its luxury. An unharmonized
shout—a succession of cries—may mean
anything; but a chorus, or a concerted transition of
cries, has a meaning to convey floodtides out of the
soul. Poetry may fall cold upon the eye, but music
must melt in the ear. These premises allowed, the
opera becomes (does it not?) a healthful vent to the
passions of a metropolis—a chance (for those who
long to swear and do violence), by a more innocent
“giving way,”
“to wreak
Their thoughts upon expression!”
How common the feeling “to want a spree!” and
who that for three hours has choked back tears in his
throat, and been enraptured with a contralto across
the footlights, is not ready to go to bed like a gentleman?
An opera is a blessed
succedaneum to the
many. To the
few it is the loan of a dictionary from
Heaven! Thoughts otherwise mute—feelings whose
dumbness is the inner man buried alive, leap to free-breathing
utterance with music. It is for this reason
that an unknown language is the best vehicle for an
opera. We wish to hear the harmony, and let our
souls furnish the articulation. Don't you see, now,
my dear “Bohemian Girl!” the plain reason of the
platitude of English opera! Italian music has words
to it, and so has a dancing-girl a carotid artery—but
you wish to feel your
own heart beat delightfully, and
not to count the quickening pulses of Taglioni's—
you wish to embark your
own thoughts in music's enchanted
boat, and not see how it was first laden with
other people's. A man's soul can have
nothing in it
unsaid, when he wants a libretto to help him listen
understandingly to Pico!
And now, having translated into grammatical English,
the inarticulate contents of a chicken's breast,
and a pint-bottle of Tinta (for the benefit of a public
to whom these eloquent midnight companions would
otherwise have spoken in vain), let us to bed—apropos-imously
remarking, that, in the paragraph precedent
to this, there is a hint as to the uses of an opera,
worthy the attention of the society of moral reform.
As the clergy are, probably, asleep at this hour (3
o'clock), we say no more.
(Exit “184,” with a candle.)
The Mirror held up to the Times.—It is a
trick of ours to begin at the other end, when the subject
would otherwise open dry—bespeaking attention,
as it were, by first naming the inducement. As we
have lately been pulled up for not giving credit, we
may as well mention, that we took this peculiarity of
style from Mother Goose's politic inducement to the
five reluctant patrons of the milkpail:—
“Cushy cow bonny, give down your milk,
And I will give you a gown of silk.”
Silk gown:—we are about to show how we have
arrived at the conclusion, that, in the state of the
country now “opening up,” it will be necessary for
every gentleman to be a pugilist.
We beg to premise, that the state of things we are
about to show forth is by no means a sign of republican
retrogression. We are about to record no dis
paragement to the outline of the republic. It is a
pyramid, in fair progression, but refinement sits within
it like an hourglass. Half-way up the ascent of
political perfection, the social diagram within is at its
inevitable “tight place;” and while we remember on
what a breadth of polite foundation public opinion
built up society at the Revolution, and while we believe
that, half a century hence, we shall have as refined
standards as any country on earth, we believe
that, now, there is a squeeze upon good-breeding in
this country (less protection for private rights and
feelings than there was once, and will be again), and it
is as well that those who are to suffer by the tight
place should be prepared to stand it.
To protect that upon which the proprictor has a right
to put a value, is the object of law and civilization.
Five dollars, paid back, will satisfy a man who has
been robbed of five dollars; but the thief goes to
prison besides. A wound given to a man is soon
healed and forgotten, but the assailant is condemned
for a felon. A newspaper-attack upon a man, for peculiarities
with which the public have no business,
may be a deeper offence to him than the loss of half
his fortune, yet the attempt at remedy by law is worse
than bearing it in silence. The damages given are
trifling and nominal, and the prosecution propagates
the evil.
The above is a skeleton statement, to which the
memory of every newspaper-reader will supply the
flesh-and-blood illustrations. A late decision in Massachusetts,
justifying an unnecessary libel on the
ground of its truth, threw off, to our thinking, the last
skin of the metamorphosis. There is left, now, no
protection, by law or public opinion, to anything but
the pocket and the person of the citizen. His private
feelings, his domestic peace, his hard-won respect
from other men, his consciousness of respectability
abroad—commodities of more value to him than
money—are outlawed, and, if wronged, left to his individual
avenging.
Few republicans need to be told that the law casts
no formidable shadow unless shone upon by public
opinion. The law of libel is powerless, because the
license of the press is agreeable to the public. If it
were not so, the libeller would not find himself, after
conviction, still on the sunny side of public favor—
nor would judges charge juries with the little emphasis
they do—nor would juries give, as they do, damages
that turn the plaintiff into ridicule!
There is another thing that republicans need not be
told: that where a just remedy is denied by the law,
the individual takes the penalty into his own hands—
the same public that left him to administer it, kindly
warding off the law when he is tried for the retributive
assault and battery. A case of this sort lately
occurred in the tabernacle city. A family of the
most liberal habits and highest private worth—just
risen to wealth by two generations of honest industry
—chose to marry a daughter with entertainments proportionate
to their fortune. A malicious editor, avowedly
“to make his paper sell,” and for no other reason,
came out with a foul-mouthed ridicule of the
festivities, that completely destroyed the happiness of
the brightest domestic event of their lives. One hundred
thousand dollars would have been no inducement
to the family to suffer the pain and mortification that
were, and will be for years, the consequences of that
unprovoked outrage. But where lay the remedy?
The law would perpetuate the ridicule, without giving
damages that would outweigh the additional sale
of the paper. It chanced, in this case, that the injured
man was of athletic habits and proportions, and
the editor was small and puny. The plaintiff (that
would have been, had there been public opinion to
give power to the law) called on the defendant (that
would have been) and whipped him severely; and
when tried for the assault and battery, was punished
with a fine next to nothing. The public opinion of
the city of “broad philacteries” virtually justified
both outrages. But where would have been the remedy,
if the physical superiority had been on the other
side, or if the popular blight-monger had been an
unassailable cripple?
Another case of legal justification of club-law lately
occurred in this city. It is so marked an instance,
also, of the social impunity of printed injuries (the inflictor,
Mr. Gliddon, being still a popular lecturer,
and glorified daily by the model family-newspaper of
Boston), that we venture to quote three or four passages
from the libel. Mr. Cooley, the flogger, had
described, with humorous ridicule, some people he
saw in Egypt, and Mr. Gliddon takes it for granted
(though it is denied by Mr. Cooley) that the ridicule
was aimed at himself and his father. A pamphlet of
thirty or forty pages of abuse of Cooley is the retort
to this supposed allusion, and from a notice of the
pamphlet in a daily paper, we copy three or four of
its quoted sentences:—
“If, since the publication of `The American in
Egypt,' it be a work of supererogation on his part
(Gliddon's) to place upon public record the petulant
vagaries of an upstart, to recall the petty shifts of an
itinerant miser, to unmask the insidious insipidities of
a would-be author, or to refute the falsehoods of a
literary abortion, it will be allowed that the deed is
none of his seeking, but has been fastened on him, as
the only course within the letter of American laws
whereby a poltroon can receive chastisement from
those who would have gladly vindicated their honor
by means to them far more satisfactory.”
“Again Mr. Gliddon says: `I grieved that, not having
been gifted with prophetic vision. I neglected to
apply it [the corbash] in the Thebaid to Mr. Cooley
himself, for I may never have such an eligible chance
again.”'
“Had he been in Cairo at the time [of my departure
from that city], he should have laid aside all official
character, even at the risk of eventual censure,
and Mr. Cooley should not have perpetrated his pasquinade
in `Arabia Petrea and Palestine,' before he
[Giddon] had hung a `cowskin on those recreant
limbs!”'
“If he [Gliddon] do not now apply a horsewhip to
Mr. Cooley's shoulders, it is solely because, in a community
among which both are residing, the satisfaction
he should derive from a physical expression of
his obligations to Mr. Cooley, might prove more expensive
than the pleasure is worth.”
“Our relative positions have been, and, so far as
may depend on him, will remain perfectly distinct;
for possible affluence will never raise Mr. Cooley to
the social standing of a gentleman.”
“Mr. Cooley's fractiousness is confined to paper
pellets. Innate cowardice is a guaranty for his never
resorting to a different manifestation of his vicious,
though innocuous waspishness.”
The first time Mr. Cooley saw Mr. Gliddon after
these expressions of restrained warlike impatience, he
gave him a beating. Mr. Gliddon prosecuted him for
assault and battery, recovered “five dollars damages,”
and went on lecturing with high popular favor. What
was Mr. Cooley's remedy for being published as “no
gentlemen,” a “miser,” and a “coward,” who had
three times escaped personal chastisement? Mr.
Cooley is not the “loafer” these epithets would seem
to make him. He is a man of fortune, and a most
excellent citizen, with highly-respectable connexions,
and a hearth blessed with the presence of beauty and
refinement. A duel would have brought upon him
a ridicule more formidable than personal danger—the
law on the subject is a cipher—and, to remove the
pointed finger from waiting on him at his very table,
he was obliged to chastise the man who stigmatized
him.
One more proof of the same new state of things,
though in a different line. A highly-educated young
lawyer in this city, in canvassing for the whigs, during
the late political contest, was severely whipped by
three members of the leading democratic club. He
lay a-bed a week, recovering from his bruises, and, at
the end of that time, walked into a meeting of the
club referred to and demanded a hearing. Order was
called, and he stated his case, and demanded of the
president of the club that a ring should be formed,
and his antagonists turned in to him—one after the
other. It was enthusiastically agreed to, and the
three bullies being present, were handed over to him
and handsomely flogged, one after the other. Of
course this is not all we are to hear of such a man;
but who will deny, that when he comes to stand for
congress, he will not have counterbalanced, by this
act, the disadvantage of belonging to one of the most
aristocratic families of the city?
We are expressing no discontent with our country.
We are playing the Mirror only—showing the public
its face, that it may not forget “what manner of man”
it is. We have shown by facts, that there is no more
remedy among us, for the deepest injuries that can
be inflicted, than there is among wild beasts in the
forest. Duelling is as good as abolished, we rejoice
with all our hearts—but it owes its abolition to the
country's having sunk below the chivalric level at
which that weed could alone find nourishment. We
leave to others to draw conclusions and suggest remedies.
We are not reformers. We submit. But we
should think a man as improvident, not forthwith to be
rubbing up his sparring, as a gentleman would have
been in Charles the Second's time, to have walked
abroad without his sword. They have a saying in
the Mediterranean (from the custom of yoking a hog
with a donkey together for draught), “You must
plough with a hog if you stay in Minorca!”
Rev. Sidney Smith's description of himself from a
letter to a correspondent of the New York American.—
“I am seventy-four years old; and being a canon of
St. Paul's, in London, and rector of a parish in the
country, my time is equally divided between town and
country. I am living amidst the best society in the
metropolis, am at ease in my circumstances, in tolerable
health, a mild whig, a tolerating churchman, and
much given to talking, laughing, and noise. I dine
with the rich in London, and physic the poor in the
country—passing from the sauces of Dives to the sores
of Lazarus. I am, upon the whole, a happy man,
have found the world an entertaining world, and am
heartily thankful to Providence for the part allotted to
me in it.”
We can add a touch or two to the auto-sketch of
the witty prebend, who, we think, is one of the men
most thought about just now. He is a fat man,
weighing probably between two and three hundred
pounds, with a head and stomach very church-man-like
—(that is to say in the proportion of a large church
with a small belfry)—a most benevolent yet humorous
face, and manners of most un-English boisterousness
and cordiality. At a party he is followed about, like
a shepherd by his sheep, and we remember, once, at
his own house, seeing Lord Byron's sister, the Hon.
Mrs. Leigh, one of the laughing flock browsing upon
the wit that sprung up around him. One would
think, to see him and know his circumstances, that
the gods had done their best to make one of the Mr.
Smiths perfectly happy.
