University of Virginia Library

A HUMBUG FAME.

Thomas Carlyle.—We have nowhere seen a juster
view of this much-talked-of writer than is given in
the October number of the Biblical Repository, a
journal conducted with great ability by an association
of divines. The writer (Prof. J. T. Smith, of Newton
Theological Institute, Mass.) allows Carlyle to be
a “most vigorous, unique, and original thinker and
writer,” and that his “Past and Present” is “certainly
worth reading.” He allows further, that that work
contains many noble and truthful sentiments, uttered
with commanding energy. This, however, is the extent
of his commendation. “We must, on the whole,”
says the writer, “characterize it as a book, in style,
barbarous; in polities, incendiary; in philosophy, dubious;
and in theology, execrable.” This opinion
the reviewer supports by an analysis of the work, and
by a specification of particulars.

The barbarity of the style no one doubts, and no
one, except a few very warm admirers, defends. This
very barbarity seems to us only another manifestation
of that arrogance which characterizes all Carlyle's

attempts. A man who condemns everybody must
needs be an inventor.

The work is said to “breathe an overweening, morbid
admiration of the past.” Nothing of the present
satisfies Mr. Carlyle; nothing of the past but elicits
his commendation, and among other things, Scandinavian
savagery, Mohammedanism, twelfth century
catholicism, the fighting barons of feudal times, Popes
Gregory and Hildebrand, and other personages of like
stamp, each and all present to him some phase worthy
of special notice and admiration. The religion and
the systems of government of the present day, have
very hard fare at his hands, since the former is all
cant, hypocrisy, and quackery, and the latter nothing
better, to say the least. We are, in truth, recommended
to go back to the twelfth century for models
of religion and government. The HERO must be found
by some means—or he must find himself. A fighting
aristocracy like that of the twelfth century is no longer
possible; but a working aristocracy must take its
place, and the system of villanage be restored. Indeed,
American slavery seems essentially the system
recommended by this practical preacher.

The sum and substance of our own view of the
whole matter is, that while we sympathize to some extent
with Mr. Carlyle in his dissatisfaction with the
present state of things, the remedies he proposes in
his deep-mouthed and most oracular tone, are absolutely
naught—the mere dreams of a mind well-intentioned
enough, but half-crazed with overweening self-estimation.

He insists much on the necessity of a “French
revolution” in England. “There will be two, if
needed; there will be twenty, if needed... —The
laws of nature will have themselves fulfilled,” and
much more to the same purpose. Yet this inevitable
fulfilment of the laws of nature which is to work all
good, seems, according to the seer's estimate, as yet
to have wrought nothing but ill. His final hope is a
hero-king: “Yes, friends: hero-kings and a whole
world not unheroic—there lies the port and happy
haven,” &c. In fine, if Carlyle's words mean anything
(which, the more we read the more we doubt),
the whole people are to be roused to violent revolt,
and plunged into all sorts of horrors, as a preparation
for a better state of things!

Carlyle speaks of the last two centuries as godless
centuries—and that in contrast with the long ages
that went before them. What is this but to shock
the common sense of history? And his remedy is
HERO-HOOD. What is this but inane twaddle? Monstrous,
unblushing egotism, is one of Carlyle's striking
characteristics. Great and learned men, astronomers,
philosophers, and others, are “poor scientific
babblers;” he alone, it would seem, discerns the reality
of things, and has the key to the mysteries of
nature. “Insight” has been granted to no other.

One of the wonders of the age to us is, that such a
monstrosity as Carlyle should have attained so high a
place in its estimation. His merits are so overloaded
by the most shocking and unbounded affectation and
egotism, that we rise from the perusal of much that
he has written with no other sensations than those of
weariness and disgust.

The poems of the Kentucky Sappho, Amelia, have
been published in a very elegant gift-book volume, by
Tompkins, of Boston. We have expressed our almost
unqualified admiration of this lady's poems, as they
separately appeared. She has a mind fed equally
from a full heart and a prodigal imagination.

It was once remarked to us, by a critic as candid as
he is discerning, that there is a great development of
the poetic sentiment in this country; that many of our
collections, which, in their brief existence, resemble
the flowers that seem to be born only to die, like those
delicate, odorous, and lovely objects in nature, have
often a character of sweetness, purity, and freshness,
grateful to refined taste and a feeling heart. The
pieces contained in this volume are worthy of such
praise. A loving heart, and a soul in harmony with
the beauty of the world and the divine spirit which
informs it, dictated these poems.

We might make many beautiful selections from this
handsome volume; but we must content ourselves,
for the present, with naming one, “The Little Stepson,”
which, in its earnest simplicity, and its ringing
music, reminds us of that favorite translation, “My
ear-rings! my ear-rings! they've dropped into the
well!” Not merely that the measure is the same, but
that the whole tone seems the echo of far off and
primitive manners—the voice of untutored affection.

Miff between John Bull and Brother Jonathan.—The
offensive club exclusion by which English
aristocrats have undertaken to make Americans
pay their debts, does, unquestionably, put the
screw upon a national weakness. We are not sorry
for it—but there could have been nothing in worse
taste or showing a more ignorant lack of discrimination—setting
aside the fact of its being done by a class
of men, who are themselves, notoriously bad paymasters.
We do not believe, however, all that is in the
papers on the subject. The “Reform-Club,” in
which it originated, is a new combination of ill-ballasted
politicians, and the movement will be disclaimed
in some authoritative shape, before a month is over.
Trifling as the matter abstractly is, it would act very
pungently on any question of war-making which should
arise among us within a year.

Perhaps some of our readers would like to know
how far an exclusion from the clubs affects Americans
in England. The fact of not having the honorary
privilege of admission to the two principal clubs, was
(before this national exclusion) sufficient evidence
that a gentleman had not come well introduced. One
of the first and most natural questions addressed to a
stranger in London is, “What club are you in?”—
the intention being to ask you to a tête-à-tête club
dinner, if you turn out agreeable. This is almost the
only courtesy that a literary man in England has it in
his power to show you. He can give you a dinner
for a few shillings at his club (if you are a member of
it and not otherwise), which in point of style and comfort
is equal to a nobleman's entertainment. Or
(which is more common) he can say, “I dine at the
Athenæum to-day at six. If you have no better engagement,
we'll put our chairs together”—each man
in this case paying his own bill. An invitation to
club privilege is only got up by high interest, however.
It requires some person of consequence to play the
applicant, and the number of strangers in each club,
at one time, is seldom more than twenty or thirty.
The following are the formulas of invitation to the
two principal clubs:—

It is rather important to a man making his way in
London society, that he should be seen at the clubs.
The formidable “Who is he?” is always satisfactorily
answered by, “Don't know, but I saw him at the club.”
It influences all manner of introductions, breaking
down scores of invisible walls between the new-comer
and desirable things and people. A call at the clubs
is an invariable part of the routine of a fashionable
man's morning. He goes there to meet friends, to
hear the news, to bet, to smoke, to make engagements
—to prepare for the out-door part of the day, in short.
All notes, requiring a very private delivery, are addressed
to a man at his club. Men who have no libraries
of their own, do the most of their reading
there. It is the place to see great men, fashionable
men, famous men; and to see them without their
masks—for the security, as to the proper introduction
of all present, throws an atmosphere of marked laisser-aller
around sensitive greatness.

We sat down, however, to comment upon the ignorance
as to our country, shown by the late narrow-viewed
movement of club-exclusion—the evident ignorance
of any distinction between state responsibility
and national responsibility. To mention it is enough,
however; and we turn to that which will show the
out-lying proof of English ignorance of us.

One of the dullest, most arrogant, and unscrupulous
of travellers is commended in the last foreign quarterly,
by one of the most unfair and ignorant of critics.
If all travellers and critics were like this well-matched
pair, the subject of British tourists and reviewers, and
their opinions and statements concerning us would not
be worth a thought. Of the capacity and information
of the reviewer, take one or two specimens. “The
unanimity of whigs, tories, and radicals, upon the one
topic of American society (i. e., in condemnation) is a
thing to wonder at and reflect upon.” Two of the
most readable works of this class within the last ten
years are decidedly favorable—those of Miss Martineau,
and the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray. A more
striking instance still of the reviewer's utter ignorance
or most shameful falsification is his representing the
internal traffic in slaves as publicly repudiated, and
founding on that a charge of duplicity, since “men—
are ready to swear there is no such thing from one end
of America to the other as a trade in slaves.” A very
suitable person this to write comments on American
travels! With such endorsements Mr. Featherstonhaugh's
statements can not but pass current! We
did not suppose there was, in the obscurest corner of
Europe, one dabbler in ink so profoundly and inexcusably
ignorant as not to know that slaves were
openly bought and sold in the slave states of this
country. That such Cimmerian darkness (to make
the most charitable supposition) should envelope the
brain of a British reviewer is a marvel indeed!

It was not, however, to expose such ignorance that
we took up the pen, nor to draw the very natural conclusion
of the amount of information, which Mr. F.'s
book conveyed to his countrymen at large, since, notwithstanding
the title “slave states,” his reviewer concluded
there was no acknowledged slavery—for without
purchase and sale the system is of course knocked
on the head.

But such are not all British tourists, nor such all
British reviewers; and it is worth while to inquire why
it is, that, placing out of the account writers of this
class, there is still so large a proportion of our well-informed
and sensible visitants, who get an unfavorable
impression of our institutions and of our state of
society.

We ought to give up the idea of a prevalent ill-feeling
toward us in the fatherland of our ancestors,
or a wish to put us down, because we are on the wrong
side of the water. Few Englishmen like us the less
because we are Americans, and not French or German
or Russians. Thousands of us when abroad have experienced
the contrary.

Nor ought we to suppose that envy, jealousy, or
ancient grudges, are at the bottom of the hard measure
meted out to us by tourists. True, we have met in
war as enemies, and in peace as commercial rivals,
and have in both held our own; but meanness and spite
form no part of the character of John Bull. He has
tremendous faults, but he keeps tolerably clear of
pettinesses.

One fault shows itself with the English abroad,
wherever they are. Though the greatest travellers,
they are the least cosmopolitan. The island mania
attends them everywhere, except at home. Like
some mistresses to some lovers, old England seems
the dearer the farther they get away from her. Goldsmith's
Traveller's lengthening chain is no fiction.
Across the ocean it is often insupportable. Sometimes,
also, this distance has, at the outset of the
voyage, “lent enchantment to the view,” which, when
dispelled, leads to a bitter, though unreasonable disappointment.

The very resemblance which we bear to the English—and
must bear, from our origin, our language,
our literature, and our continued intercourse ever
since the ocean rolled between us—is unfavorable to a
just, and still more to a partial judgment of us, on
the part of those honestly disposed to do us justice.
To other people the British traveller can apply, in
some measure, the true standard—i. e., to each its
own; but for us, be can have only the home standard.
Weighed by this, we are, of course, found wanting.
He find us nine tenths English, and scolds that the
other tenth is not English too.

It is needless to discuss the point, whether that
tenth is better or worse—the English blood renforcés
(as some Frenchman has pronounced, justly we—
hope) or not—it is enough that it is not English for
the genuine John Bull to pronounce it ridiculous or
insufferable; to laugh or rail at it according to his
humor. The general resemblance he can not deny,
but he unreasonably demands an exact likeness. In
the points where this is not perceptible, he of course
considers us shockingly degenerate, altered altogether
for the worse. Now there are various points which
we should not expect him to appreciate justly, for we
know he is a creature full of prejudices and contradictions,
and he must see with his own eyes or not see
at all.

Another real difficulty is, that no mere passing
traveller can realize the crowning glory of our country
and of our institutions—the general diffusion of comfort
and intelligence. A traveller is looking out for
the salient points—something striking or marvellous
—something that will tell in his book and his memory.
A thousand comfortable or even elegant private dwellings
that he might pass, would not make upon him
so vivid an impression as one splendid palace—while
the former would indicate a thousand families living
in comfort and abundance, and the latter that there
was one family of over-grown wealth with a presumption
against its possessing the average worth of the
former, or even enjoying their average happiness.

We contribute to the severity of the judgments
against us by our own fault. Our sensitiveness lays
us peculiarly open to attack, and none reply to such
attacks with more violence. The foreigner who

knows this and who can not perhaps conscientiously
grant us all we ask, sharpens his weapons beforehand
for the encounter, and deals harder blows in anticipation
of those which he knows he is about to bring
down upon himself.

To this must be added our national vanity—a
characteristic which the candid among us own. From
demanding too indiscriminate praise, we do not get
that which we really deserve, as the trader, who praises
his wares extravagantly, is sure to have them undervalued.
If our claims were more moderate, they
would be oftener acknowledged. If we exacted less,
more would be voluntarily given. If we did not rise
up against deserved reproof, we should be oftener
spared that which we did not deserve.

When we claim the eloquence of a Chatham for
every stump orator, and then apply the same phrases
to our really great and eloquent men, the latter are
sufferers. If we claim for our every-day life or even
for our soirées recherchées the grace and polish of a
court, where they have nothing to do but to kill time
agreeably, the assertion is simply ridiculous. Some
traveller (Dickens we believe) says of the factory-girls
of Lowell, that they have the port and bearing (or
something to that effect) of well-bred ladies. Pretty
complimentary we should think! But an annotator
somewhere (but where we know not), is not satisfied.
He adds, that if Mr. Dickens should meet these persons
in private circles, he would find they had the
corresponding elegance and manners. As if any good
factory-girl at Lowell would pass muster at Queen
Victoria's drawing-room!

The new Prima Donna.—The haste with which
it is the fashion to write about prima-donnas, giving
them a cornucopial criticism, on their debut, and dropping
directly after into very brief notices, reminds us
of a lady's reproach to her lover, in the old play of the
Spanish friar: “You men are like watches, wound
up for striking twelve immediately; but after you are
satisfied, the very next that follows is the solitary
sound of single one.” We should like very much to
defer expressing an opinion of Madame Pico, till she
had a little recovered from the embarrassment of a
first performance, and (more important still in criticising)
till we had steeped our tympanum a little longer
in the honey the bees of Italy have shed upon her
lips; but—

The audience at Palmo's, last night, was, probably,
the best ever assembled since Malibran's time, as to
the capability of judging of a cantatrice by taste and
comparison. Madame Pico, even in Italy, would
scarce have dropped her golden cadences into more
judicious ears. Fortunately, too, the unripeness of
an entirely new opera was corrected by the predominance
of natural melody in the composer's style—making
it all come to the ear with the impromptu welcome
sometimes refused to the best music. By the
way—without knowing whether this opera will grow
upon us, and allowing, at once, that it has none of
Beethoven's under-song, nor any of the supernatural
combinations of Mozart—we must express our almost
passionate delight in its main burthen and character.
We write, it is true, by a past-time-to-go-to-bed candle,
and with the graciles-que sensus still reeling under the
intoxication of the cup of bewitched sound; but if
this gets to press (and we shall look it over before
breakfast, to-morrow morning), we congratulate the
every-day-ear of the city we live in, upon a opera that
is natural as a bird's song, and that can be enjoyed
with as simple a taste for music—at the same time,
no more to be disparaged, for its simplicity, than the
bird's throat for not having the harp-stop of a piano.
But let us go on, story-fashion.

The curtain drew up, and after the appearance of
the usual precedent foil of chorus-singers, Sanquirico,
the ben amato of the company, came on as a postillion
After making a bow, with the good-will of a waterfall,
in acknowledgment of the applause with which he
was met, he went on playing his part, and (to dismiss
him with this brief notice) most admirably to the
last. The make-way motions of the guard and the
aspettando impatience of the music, now prepared us
for the prima-donna. She was to represent a young
girl, under the protection of the prince and princess,
whose escape from ruin by a villain is the story of the
opera. “Chiara!” trilled the “cue” and in glided
Chiara!

Madame Pico has a look in her face as if “Sorrow
had passed that way.” She has had a narrow escape
of being superbly handsome, and, as it is, she could
personate, with small call upon the imagination, the
part of “Mrs. Helpless Ingulfus,” on the stage or off
it. Tho' not near so beautiful, she is a strong likeness
of Mrs. Norton—the same low, concentrative forehead,
the same something-or-other in the sweep of the dark
hair, the same caressing inwardness in the white round
of the shoulder. There is rather too much of a cadenza
in her bust, and her under lip does not always come
up with the alacrity we like in a woman, but we may
change our opinion. She was very much frightened,
and these matters are

The welcome of applause ceased, and the expected
voice trembled on the silence. It was listened to with
pricked ears, nodded to by the cognoscenti at the first
pause—approved, applauded. It was a rich, clouded
contralto, its depths hidden by a soprano part, like a
dark well impoverished by a slant beam of sunshine.
As she went on, gathering a little more control, her voice
sank to the inner sound-chamber where the heart sits
to listen, and the audience, instead of louder applauding,
began to murmur their admiration. Evident as
it was that the delicious home of her voice was never
reached, or borrowed from, by the notes of that soprano
part, there was a kind of full forth-shadowing of reserved
power which made, even what she did sing, satisfy
the ear. And then, occasionally, where the lower
notes approached her treasury of un-used power, she
flung out a contralto cadence upon the air with an effect
the audience waited impatiently to hear repeated.
We feel bespoken to be enchanted with a fair development
of that full throat's capabilities. Artistic comparison
apart, we have a passion for a contralto—nothing
that can pass the portal of an ear touching with
half the delicacy our levia affectuum vestigia. Those
who take our criticisms will, if they like, make allowance
for this weakness.

Borghese was in one of the avant-scene boxes, lending
her captive town to her rival with the best grace
imaginable. She well may—for a smiling rivalry between
her and Pico will give each new attraction,
particularly since their voices are of totally opposite
quality. The little soprano comme-il-faut has her
advantages, and Madame Pico has hers. Neither of
them is quite the “horn of Astolpho, at the sound
of which the hearer went mad,” but while hearing
either, as Esdras says, “a man remembereth neither
sorrow nor debt.” May they pull together “like
Juno's swans, coupled and inseparable!”

The FOOTRACE we have seen this afternoon “carried
the town” more completely than any excitement
we have yet been abroad in—politics not excepted.
We were late, but a thousand people were on the
road with us, and when we arrived, the first race was

just over, Jackson the winner. The weather was
Indian summer, in its most bracing smile—good
omen, a punster would say, for the red-skinned competitor!
The roads had been dried pretty well
by the sharp wind of yesterday, the grass looked
glossy, and King Pluribus was in unusual good humor—as
he generally is on the first bright day after
bad weather.

The stands looked like stacks of noses and hats,
and after a vain attempt to find room in the principal
ones, we descended to the course to take our chance
with the great company of the jostled. As it was an
object to get a near view of the runners at the end of
the first quarter of a mile, we crossed the area of the
field to the less thronged side of the course, and
awaited their coming. Several loads of undisguised
sinners were near us, one of whom, a professed matron,
apparently, coolly sat with a pair of pistols, waiting
some expected attack from a crowd of ruffians
who had surrounded them. She looked quite capable
of a tragedy; but the striking of the bell at the
stand drew off the rowdies to the ring-fence, and the
pistols in the gloved hands gave place to a bouquet.
We had been thinking that there should be a competitrix
in the race to inherit the honors of Atalanta,
and a female, by a pull of the forefinger, might easily
have taken the day's notoriety from the competitors
in the race.

A stroke of the bell—a shout from twenty thousand
throats—a sudden radiation, to one point, of all
the loose vagrants in the field—and around came the
horse-fence, that in single file kept pace with the runners,
hemming them in from the crowd. The grotesque-looking
pedestrians hugged the wooden railing
very closely as they came along, Barlow ahead, the
Indian close on his heels, and Gildersleeve, the victor
of the last race, quietly consenting to be number
three. The foremost man was simply “diapered,” as
the nurses say, exhibiting his white Saxon skin in
strong contrast to the smoked hams of the Indian behind
him, and if the race had depended on muscle
merely, a good anatomist might have picked out the
winner, by points fairly displayed, as easily as a horse's
capabilities are seen by the jockey.

They ran very differently. A plumbline, dropped
from the forehead of each, would have fallen a foot in
advance of Barlow's body, and eighteen inches in advance
of the Indian's, while it would have lain close
to the breast of the erect little Gildersleeve. Barlow
never took his eyes from the ground, and kept his
lower jaw relaxed in a kind of shame-faced smile.
We observed that his make was in exceeding good
distribution, and though he was slightly knock-kneed,
he made play as straight ahead as a pendulum, losing
nothing by sideling. Gildersleeve's natural ballast,
on the contrary, rounded him to, slightly, at every
step, and his shoulders were partly employed in counteracting
the swing. McCabe, who was compact all
over, trotted along like a stiff little pig, giving nowhere,
and the Indian, a long, stringy six-footer,
seemed to follow his head like a kite's bobs—the nearest
way for a wave. Gildersleeve, it struck us, was
lividly pale, the Indian ready to cry with anxiety,
McCabe spunky, and Barlow slyly confident of success.

We crossed over to the stands, where, we presume,
upon four acres of ground, there were twenty-five
thousand men. It was a peculiar-looking crowd—
sprinklings excepted, very game-y. We presume no
pick of New York city could have brought out of it,
so completely, the stuff it holds for an army. The
betting was going on vigorously—Barlow and Steeprock
the favorites, but every man talking up his countryman.
The Irish swore up McCabe as he came
along, the English applauded Barlow, the New-Yorkers
encouraged Gildersleeve and the Indian. Mean
time, the horse-fence-men rode open the crowd with
striking and shouting; betting-books were whipped
out at every completed mile; boys cried cigars; rowdies
broke down barriers and climbed into the stands;
the men on the roofs pointed after the runners, and
hallooed the gainings and losings; and every third
minute the naked white shoulders came round ahead,
and it was manifest that Barlow gained constantly,
and, unless the little Yankee or the Indian could overhaul
him by a miraculous push, he was sure to win.

They came along for the tenth mile, and the crowd
were almost still with anxiety. The overtaking rush,
by which Gildersleeve won in the last race, was now
expected of him by his backers. Barlow passed, a
hundred feet ahead; Steeprock strained after, with a
sponge at his lips, and his knees tottering; Gildersleeve
came third, a spectacle of pallor and exhaustion;
Greenhalgh, another Englishman, was evidently
making more speed—and that was the last we saw of
them in motion.

With the thousands rushing in from all sides we
were swept toward the judges' stand. The horsemen
came on, in the midst of a sea of heads keeping pace
with them, whips going, shouts pealing, boys and bullies
screaming, swearing, and crowding. “Barlow!”
“Barlow!” “Barlow!” arose from hundreds of wild
voices, and the tumult of inquiry as to the others
grew deafening. We backed out a little to hear the
victor called off by the judges. A moment's stillness
was procured, and the competitors were named from
the stand in the order in which they had come in:
Barlow, Steeprock, Greenhalgh, Gildersleeve. The
time made by the winner was ten miles in fifty-four
minutes twenty-one seconds.

As we turned away, Gildersleeve was brought along
by two men, with his eyes half closed and his tongue
loose in his lips; and he seemed just able to place his
feet, one after the other, mechanically, as he was
lifted over the ground. A sicker-looking man we
never saw. A minute after, Barlow appeared above
the crowd, on a man's shoulders, waving his hand and
smiling quite composedly, and the shouts, apparently
from every voice, hailed him victor.

P. S. We had nearly forgotten a good conundrum
the race gave birth to:—

Question.—Why did Barlow run so like a locomotive
yesterday?

Answer.—Because he had behind him an Indian-near.

New Trial of Culprit Poets.—Mrs. Gilman
has invented a new kind of book (“Oracles from the
Poets,” of which we gave a notice a few days ago),
and the opening preface, very charmingly written,
tries the poets by new standards altogether. She had
occasion to ransack all the popular authors for answers
to the fate-questions of her Fortune-Teller, and
of course she discovered where lay the most thought
and feeling of a peculiar character. She begins by
finding out that poets are benevolent. She had great
difficulty in finding sixty answers to the question,
“To what have you a distaste or aversion?” while
“What gratifies your taste or affections?” was stuff as
common as clover. She says that in Shakspere there
is a singular lack of mention of places of residence, and
there seems not to be even a fair proportion of passages
descriptive of musical sounds, hours, seasons,
and (except in the Winter's Tale) of flowers. In
Wordsworth, scarcely a flower or musical sound is described.
They are alluded to, but not painted out.
The poetry of Crabbe, though abounding in numerous
characters, could furnish almost nothing for her
purpose, on account of their being woven into the
general strain of his narrations. Shelley, Landon,
and Howitt, are eminently the poets of flowers, while

Darwin, with a whole “Botanic Garden” before him,
and Mason, in his “English Garden,” gave none
fairly entitled to selection. Few passages of any sort,
except those hackneyed into adages, could be gained
from Milton, on account of the abstract, lofty, and
continuous flow of his diction. Coleridge has corresponding
peculiarities. Keats and Shelley are the
poets of the heavens. Byron, with faint exceptions,
does not describe a flower, or musical sound, or place
of residence. The American poets, in contradistinction
to their elder and superior brethren of the
fatherland, display a more marked devotion to nature,
with which a continued glow of religious sentiment
aptly harmonizes.

Apropos—as the living American poets are in process
of 'broidery, would it not be well to know where
their worsteds are deficient, that they may shop up
their lacking threads in the Broadway of contemplation?
Will not some of our several sleeping female
geniuses (intellectual dolce-far-nientes, of whom we
know at least a capable dozen) take up the American
poets and go through them with a discriminating bodkin,
showing what colors lack replenishing? It would
serve the poetry of Bryant-dom—the present passing
age in which this faultless poet is the flower in most
palpable relief. Come, ladies! tell us what Lowell
(whose fame is being worked just now) had better
thread his inspired needle with! Tell us what Longfellow
is out of. Tell us whether Halleck has done
enough to cover the pattern, and whether some others
hadn't better unravel and work it all over again!
At any rate, turn up their frames of immortality and
show us the wrong side! Let them mend, if they
like,

The Upper Ten Thousand of New York City.—
The first three of the following paragraphs are from
the True Sun of November 22, and the last is from
the same paper of a day or two previous:—

“Politically, we are all republicans—socially, we
are divided into classes on the `European plan.'
There is a certain class, for instance, that takes exercise
only on one side of Broadway—the west side.
The `canaille,' to-be-sure, may walk there too, because,
fortunately, our aristocracy, with all its pride
and vanity, has no power; but what perfumed and
ringleted exquisite would ever think of sporting his
white kids, mustaches, and goatee, on the east side
of our great thoroughfare? That would be literally
wasting his sweetness on the desert air. We understand,
by-the-by, that Stewart is severely censured
for choosing the site of Washington Hall as the location
of his new temple of taste and fashion, merely
because it is situated on the east side of Broadway.
However, if the pavement in front is sprinkled thrice
a day with eau de Cologne, and Mr. Stewart doubles
the price of his goods, in order to give ton to the location,
it may do away with the fashionable prejudice
against the promenade of the nobodies, and thereby
equalize the value of the property on the two sides
of the street. At present there is a very material
difference in the price of the brick and mortar which
borders the two pavements.”

“The Opera.—That this is a refined and elegant
amusement, no one can doubt; but to exaggerate its
consequence, to make it a grand controlling feature
in our society, is, in our judgment, giving it undue
importance. With regard to its being a very `aristocratic'
affair in New York, we can only say, that a
complete refutation of such an idea may be easily had
at any time by a glance at the dress-circle habitues.”

“The Aristocracy.—We must confess we do not
think that wealth is the only essential necessary to
place one in `good society.' We can imagine many
refined, intellectual, and charming people, who do
not drive equipages lined with silk, and who have neither
coachman nor footman bedizened with lace.
What would be thought of the elegance of a leader
of the ton, who could take a peculiarly-dressed partridge
from a dinner-table, and place it in his hat, in
order to carry it home with him? We do not imagine
that such an attempt (for it was unsuccessful) marks
any very superior degree of refinement!”

“There are some, again, who study a profound reserve,
or rather adopt an appearance of hauteur.
They are stiff, quiet, and unapproachable. These
are the dandies of the cities, who adopt the Horatian
sentiment of

You must not come `between the wind and their nobility.'
They wear the last productions of Watson,
or Jennings, or Carpenter, and display a clean pair of
kid gloves, with the last fashion of wrist-buttons.
You might, if uninitiated, suppose them some distinguished
foreigners on their travels. In nine cases
out of ten they belong to the parvenu order of the
aristocracy. Whiskey or codfish has taken a rise,
and their honored father has made a fortune. The
family-mansion in a back lane has been abandoned for
some fashionable quarter, and visits—on one side—
have been paid throughout the neighborhood. If
they choose, they could astonish, but they would not
condescend. The railroad-car does not shake down
their consequence. They regret this progress of one
art, which makes so many other arts useless. They
are delighted when they escape from the crowd and
seek the hotel, where the extravagant charges prevent
the danger of further collision.”

We received yesterday an anonymous letter, reproving
us, in sober bad English, for ministering to
the vanity of the rich, by an article in the Mirror on
the selection of “a promenade drive.” This, the reproof
also given us a day or two since by a political
paper for an article on the prima-donna, and the foregoing
paragraphs from a neutral paper, aimed principally
at popularity with the working classes, are sufficient
indications, we think, that some bitter weed,
passing for an aristocracy-nettle, is rolled up in the
present cud of the reposing people.

We commence taking exceptions to the tone of
these articles, by stating what seems to us a fact of
general notoriety—that the ten thousand people uppermost
in this city—(aristocrats, if wealth and position
make them so)—are the most moral and scrupulous
ten thousand in the four hundred thousand of
the population. There is probably about this number—ten
thousand—who are rich enough, if they
choose, to keep a carriage. Two thirds of them, we
presume, were poor men a few years ago, and the
children of three fourths of them will be obliged to
work for a living (a flying-fish aristocracy, who are
hardly long enough out of the water, one would
think, to give offence by their brief airs to those left in
the element below them). There is a smaller class—
perhaps two thousand families—who have been respectable
and well off for two or more generations. There is
a third class, still—perhaps one or two hundred—whose
display is offensive, from no one's knowing where
their money comes from, or from their being supposed
to live dishonestly above their means, or from
being notoriously vicious.

Of these three classes—an “aristocracy” of ten
thousand—one half, at least, are religious, and the
remainder seek refined pleasures, and attend theatres
and operas; but, with the exception of the third
and smallest class last named, we venture to repeat,
that the upper ten thousand are by much the most

exacting of moral character in their friends, the most
rigid in the support of moral opinions and charities,
and the most exemplary in their individual private
life. This is true of the upper ten thousand of no other
country in the world. It would sound Utopian in England
to assert this to be true of the upper classes of
any city on the face of the earth. Look at the difference
of the standards in ordinary matters. To
make a good match, here, it is necessary that a young
man should be moral; and if he be of high character
in this respect (and the lady willing), public opinion
will not suffer his pretensions to be slighted by the
richest man! In every other country the lover's morality
is altogether a secondary consideration—family
and fortune far before it. Morality is a young man's
best card in New York; whether his object be influence,
matrimony, good business-connexion, appointments
from societies, or general position in the best
circles. This truth needed only to be put in print to
make people wonder it had not been said before!

It is a wretched trick caught from English papers
and English plays, to talk of the rich as certainly
vicious, and of the poor as necessarily virtuous. We
live in a country where the sovereignty (that part of
society which vice commonly noses and follows close
after) resides at the opposite end from the sovereignty
of England. The more virtuous class, here as there, is
comparatively powerless at the polls. The rowdy
drunkard and the gambler do as much toward president-making
and the selection of lawgivers, as the
thrifty merchant, and the rich father of a family of
virtuous daughters; and, as there are a hundred husbands,
of either of the first-named classes, to one of
either of the others, virtue and order keep company
with sovereignty—in this country as little as in Europe!
Power is at the surface of a country, and the
scum rises to it. We are quite aware, that the pen
and inkstand with which we write these sentiments
will not be, to all readers, “a pot of lambative electuary
with a stick of licorice.”

Rivalry at the Opera.—The musical tilt, to decide
which was the more prime of the prima-donnas,
came off last night, to the very great entertainment
of the town's ornamentals. It reminded us very
strongly of the contention between the lute and the
nightingale, in the old play of the “Lover's Melancholy.”
Borghese drops dead in the last act, very
soon after a glorious and triumphant outbreak by
Pico; and we will quote a passage to show how this
resembles the poetic story—premising, by-the-way,
that a musician, playing in the woods, is overheard by
a bird, who mocks him till the lute-player gets angry
at the excellence of the rivalry:—

But, to tell the other story—“after the manner of
men.”

The opera was “Lucrezia Borgia.” Signorina
Borghese represents (as well as we could understand
the story) a bad mother, who, in poisoning a large
party of youths, half rakes, half conspirators, for having
insulted her sign over the door, poisons one too
many—her son. Madame Pico represents the leader
of the set, and does the noise and the jollification.
She descends upon the stage the first thing after the
rising of the curtain, dressed in a very modest suit of
male attire, and figures about as a Roman Captain
Rynders, bandying dialogue here and there, but with
no chance of display in the three or four first acts.
Borghese, we began to think, was to have the best of
it all the way through. She was exquisitely dressed,
sang with as little of the split-straw in her soprano as
we ever heard her sing with, and acted to her singing
(as she always does) with what the Greeks called onomatopeia—movement
linked with sound indivisibly.
The applause was pretty well, but not overpowering.

The fourth act represented the youths at the fatal
supper, Pico the principal customer. After a little
hobnobbing on the other side of the table, she glides
round, upon her plumptitudinous locomotives, and
dashes into a song, rich, rollicking, and risvegliato!
Down went the bucket for the first time into her well
of contralto, and up came the liquid and golden music,
of a round, true fulness, that made the ear's thirst
a luxury. It was a passage full of involutions, abrupt,
startling, and bacchanal; but her skill in flinging her
voice from point to point, with the capricious surprises
of the music, was wonderfully subtle. The audience
was, for the first time in the evening, fairly
lifted clear of the ground. On the part of the stage-company,
no encore was looked for at this point of the
opera. The closing of Pico's song is the signal for a
death-bell and the disclosing of a hearse a piece for
the jolly junketers. The audience were not ready,
however. The applause kept on till the hearses
backed out, and the song was sung over again. Oh,
how deliciously it was sung! No voice, however
large its compass, was ever sweeter, rounder, mellower
in its quality, than Madame Pico's. The audience
murmured, and leaned forward, and ejaculated, and
with one unhesitating accord, it seemed to us, gave
over the palm to the contralto. The chorus-singers
seemed surprised—she herself forgot her male attire,
and courtesied (the first time we ever saw how it was
done, by-the-by), a tributary bouquet flew over the
footlights, and Lucrezia Borgia rose up once more,
like an apparition amid the hearses in waiting.

The last act, like the first three, was all Borghese's.
It is deep tragedy, and she played it well. The young
man, poisoned by mistake, held his stomach till he
was done for, and his letting go was the signal for
Borghese to give her “C sharp,” and go after him.
The curtain dropped, and the applause rose immediately.
Borghese came out and was cheered till she
courtesied out, but still the applause continued. No
reply. The canes began to rap, and the audience
seemed not beginning to go. “Pico!” shouted somebody.
“Pico!” shouted everybody. Still no answer.
The deafening uproar at last lifted the curtain,
and there was Borghese! led forward by Perozzi,
and courtesying again! And presently, all alone,
with her hair down her back, her mustache gone, and
a loose dressing-gown about her, the real queen by
acclamation took the honors there was no longer any
denying her. The will of the audience, and the will
of the Italian corps, were two entirely different matters.

We really do not see why these fine-throated people
can not consent to do their best, and let the public
like which they please. The two singers are both
admirable, each unrivalled in her way: and, because
we admire the new-comer, it is no reason why we
should not still appreciate our former favorite. But
see how unlike musical people in prose are to musical
people in poetry. We will quote the conclusion of
the pretty story we began our criticism with, for a
lesson of magnanimity, after the bird dropped, broken-hearted,
upon the lute.

Another night we trust to see Borghese submitting
resignedly, like the bird, to be beaten; though if the
conquering Pico undertakes, in consequence, to “pash
herself against a tree,” we trust the manager will
“suddenly step in.”

The Historical Society Dinner.—We went to
the dinner of the Historical Society last evening, with
a mood in our mental pocket, which was as useless to
us as the wrong mask for a night of carnival. We
went to indulge in relaxation and gratify curiosity.
We decided in the midst of confusing avocations, that
it would be delightful to see Mr. Adams and Mr. Gallatin,
pleasant to listen to the voices whose words we
should read in the next morning's papers, and curious
to see the first menu of the opening hotel up-town.
We presumed there would be some dull talking,
which the dinner and the friends around would keep
off with the by-play of conviviality, and that we
should, at any rate, hear wit, get our cares jostled
from astride us, and store up, for illustration to future
thought and reading, two pictures of men who are
soon to pass over to history.

But—(the two great statesmen who were to be
present set aside for the moment)—it is not easy to
come at all into the presence of a large number of
men of superior intellect, without feeling the dormant
thunder of the cloud about us. This is partly a moral
magnetism, we presume, but there is a physiognomy
in crowds; and, to the eye accustomed to see men
“as they come,” the look of an assemblage of master-intellects
is the laying of a spirit-hand upon the beholder.
There were present the leading minds of
this great metropolis—able divines, merchant princes,
formidable politicians, brilliant lawyers, scheming capitalists,
influential citizens, philanthropists, scholars,
poets, and journalists—none of them common men,
and none without the sympathy-read print upon the
forehead—distinction's philactery of pain.[1] Seated at
table, we looked about upon the men we knew, and
followed back into their bosoms the visible thread of
which we knew the knot at the heart-strings. We
have no time here—(our hasty thoughts going from
us, sentence by sentence, into irrevocable print, as we
record them)—no time to separate and describe the
crowding influences that changed our careless preparatory
mood into an overshadowed and attentive
silence. We passed an evening of resistless revery—
much of it homage, much of it quickening to ambition,
and in part a coveting of fellowship and sympathy.
But we can not go on with this misplaced record
of emotions.

There are weighty and wide influences exercised
by an historical society, which, again, we can only
hint at, far too hastily. Historical record is the
paymaster of the immortality toiled for by greatness;
and it is vital to the existence of great motives, that
this treasurer's trust should be faithfully discharged,
and his accounts chronicled in blazon. Affecting
mention was drawn from Mr. Adams of his coming
reward from history—the reward of justificatory triumph—for
having passed through the fire of calumny.
It was over these heated plough-shares that he has
walked to the luminous door by which he is about to
pass from the world; and if he could be sure of no
brother-spirits left behind, to see the truth written in
characters legible to the world, he would have done
his great services to his country, by sufferings, indeed,
mournfully thankless. In a republic, especially in an
age of free-thinking and irreverence for usage, like
ours—the influence of a society which brightens and
keeps manifest the coolly-proved wisdom of the past,
is more especially all-needful. History forgotten, the
present is a ship without chart or compass, trusting to
the stars alone in the clouded storm-nights of politics.
Ambition, with that watchful dragon asleep—no record
to be dreaded beyond the memory of the living—
would be a fiend loosed upon the world. History is
our citadel of safety.

New kind of Hotel up-town.—We have thought
that it would, perhaps, interest our readers to go into
a detail of the differences between the popular hotel
(like the Astor, the American, Howard's, &c.) and
what is understood in Europe as the hotel-garni—of
which the up-town hotel is the new example in this
country.

The hotel-garni is a furnished house, in which the
lodging is the only charge not variable at the option
of the guest. A certain price is charged for the
rooms occupied, and the other expenses are according
to what is ordered. A popular bachelor, for example,
makes a great economy of this. He pays for
his rooms and his breakfast; and, if invited out to
dine five times in the week, saves the corresponding
items in his bill—five dinners and five bottles of wine.
This, in Europe, is considered a fair offset against
patent blacking, white gloves, and hack-hire; and
puts society on a level with health, sunshine, reputation,
and other plain matters-of-course. A common
table and a restaurant are not necessary parts of a hotel-garni,
but they serve to increase its eligibility.
There is a certain price for a dinner at the table d'hote,
charged separately every day; but in Europe few
dine at the common table except strangers in town.
A fashionable man avoids it as an implied confession,
1st, that he has not been invited out that day, and, 2d,
that he can content himself with everybody's dinner
and company. For families, particularly if there are
unmarried daughters, it is irreconcilable with position,
if not with propriety, to live at the public table. The
rooms in these hotels are arranged so as to unite a drawing-room
with each bedroom, and every person, or family,
respectably lodged, has a private parlor for meals and
reception of visits. There is no large common drawing-room,
of course. The meals are furnished by express
order, given each day, to the restaurant below,
and sent up with tablecloth, silver, glass, &c.—all
at the appointed hour, and all removed together when
dinner is over—giving the lodger no trouble, except
to wait on himself while dining, or provide a servant
to do so. As each dish is for one person only, however
(or one family), the expense of such a dinner is
much greater than where the dishes are cooked in
larger quantities for a hundred people. To dine in
private on as many dishes as you may taste for fifty
cents at a public table, would cost, probably, from two
to five dollars.

The ordinary hotel is, of course, described by
specifying the peculiarities of the other. It will
be seen at once that the hotel-garni must prevail
with the increase of exclusiveism in this country. It
is only in new countries that families can do without
household gods; and it is only where the whole male
society of a country is only unharnessed for sleep
from the eternal drag of money-making, that the domestic
virtues can be left safely without private altars

and locked doors, single roof-trees, and four-walled
simplicity. Twenty years hence, we venture to say,
the Astor's splendid drawing-room will be occupied
by some nabob of a lodger—needed no longer as a
common parlor—and its long galleries will be but
suites of apartments, every third bedroom converted
into a cosy saloon, and the occupants seeing as little
of each other as neighbors in a “block.”

There are some very republican advantages in our
present system of hotels, which the country is not
yet ready to forego. Tell a country lady in these
times that when she comes to New York she must
eat and pass the evening in a room by herself, and she
would rather stay at home. The going to the Astor,
and dining with two hundred well-dressed people, and
sitting in full dress in a splendid drawing-room with
plenty of company—is the charm of going to the city!
The theatres are nothing to that! Broadway, the
shopping, and the sights, are all subordinate—poor
accessories to the main object of the visit. A large
company as cheap as none at all—a hundred dishes
as cheap as one—a regal drawing-room at her service,
with superb couches, piano, and drapery, and costing
no more than if she stayed in her bedroom—plenty of
eyes to dress for if not to become acquainted with,
and very likely a “hop” and a band of music—bless
my soul, says the country lady, I hope they'll never
think of improving away all that!

And, there lies the pinch! The senator now on his
way to congress, dines with his family at the public
table. The gentleman who does not choose to keep
house, invites his friends to dine with him at the public
table. The man who prefers to dine in a private
parlor is satirically made welcome to his own society
—if he prefers it! The distinguished, the fashionaable,
the dressy, and handsome, may all dine, without
peril of style, at the public table. But—since so moy
the opposites of all these, and anybody else who is
tolerably dressed and well-behaved—the public table
is the tangible republic—the only thing palpable and
agreeable that we have to show, in common life, as
republican. And when the exclusivism of the hotel-garni
draws its dividing line through this promiscuous
community of habits, the cords will be cut which
will let some people UP, out of reach, and drop some
people DOWN, out of all satisfactory supposible contact
with society.

Growth of Western Literature.—We are
happy to notice that seven out of the seventeen articles
with the names of the authors, in the last two
numbers of the Biblical Repository, are from persons
connected with literary institutions west of the mountains.
Among the subjects of the western writers are,
The Writings of Martin Luther; Evidences from
Nature for the Immortality of the Soul; and the
Natural History of Man in his Spiritual Relations.
Another article contains an able defence of presbyterianism.
So far as we can judge from a hasty view,
these subjects, some of which are the greatest that
can employ the pen anywhere, are treated with tact
and ability, and give us a favorable opinion of the condition
of our western seminaries of learning. The
remaining contributions are from New England, with
the exception of one from Virginia. New York does
not appear in the list of contributors' names.

The Opera.—The “stars” of the opera are just
through their night's work and the stars of heaven are
half way through theirs. We have not the pleasure
of a personal acquaintance with a single individual in
either company—knowing neither Venus nor Pico,
Lyra nor Borghese, “off the stage.” We are about
to announce an ASTROLOGICAL CONJUNCTION, however,
and, as “many an inhumane thought hath arisen from
a man's sitting uncomfortably in his chamber,” we
have sent for an emollient to our arm chair, in the
shape of cold duck and champagne—expecting thereby
to achieve our nearest perihelion to the calm clear-sightedness
of Copernicus.

Up-town New York, a week ago, was in the situation
the starry firmament was in, about two hundred
years before the Christian era. Pythagoras recorded
his conviction at that time that there were two stars
wanting to complete the harmony of a certain portion
of the heavens, and, in the very spots named by the
great philosopher, Mars and Jupiter did soon after
make their first appearance. In like manner a Daily
Pythagoras, of this city (we think it was Mr. King of
the American), darkly hinted in a late evening paper,
that there were two stars necessary—contralto and
soprano—to complete harmony of the Palmospheric
constellation; and, in that very troop, Pico and Borghese
did soon after take their places in similarly harmorious
conjunction. We trust history will do us
justice for linking together these two marked foreshadowings
of stars' “doing something for their families.”

[Your health, dear reader, in a glass of Cordon-bleu—m—m—mplck!—delicious!]

And now we have to beg the discreet portion of
the public to step with us behind the curtain—not
that (representing the rosy dawn) which drops before
Mars and Jupiter, but that (representing Jupiter feeling
the pulse of Minerva) which drops before Borghese
and Pico. There has been a terrible rowdydow
in the operatic green-room. Borghese has been
hitherto queen of the zodiac, and her orbit was only
intersected by nebulæ of nameless supernumeraries.
The breaking of Pico upon the gaze of the impartial
star-worshippers, however, and their undeniable preference,
of the star at fifty dollars a night to the star at
double the money, sent Borghese sick to her bed;
and she is said to have vowed (with the spunk of the
Lost Pleiad, who died for jealousy of her six brighter
sisters) that she would never rise again—if papa
would excuse her.

[Our astronomy is used up, dear reader, but the
champagne still holds out. A glass to Borghese's
better resignation, and let us go on, in terrestrial
phraseology.—M-m-mplck!]

Borghese commenced making position, a year or
more ago, and has pursued it very skilfully, and,
therefore, very creditably to herself. For a winter,
or more, before showing herself as an admirable actress,
she revolved in the japonica circles up-town,
as a singer at parties, and made acquaintances and
friendships exclusively among the forced-plant customers
of Hogg and Thorburn. Her manners were
of that well-studied, eager unconsciousness, which
is the modesty of nature in a hot-house school; and
her tact, elegance, and musical science, were leaved
like a rose-bud tied up with a string—showing what
the prima-donna might be, if the young lady were
loosed and expanded. As the parent-stem required
to be relieved of her, she prepared to throw herself
on the public; and when she did, she was, of course,
plucked from neglect, and cherished in the protecting
bosom of the society that had secluded her. She
has been worn in triumph, as the first flower of the
opera, for a couple of seasons—as you know, dear
public!

But nature exacts an equilibrium; and where there
is more public harmony, there will be more private
discord. The children of the “boot on the map,”
kick against authorities, and every tuneful rehearsal
had its offset in a quarrel. Signor Borghese (the
star-father), not being of the sect of the Apotactitæ,
who renounce property, took advantage of a tight

place in the treasury, and bought in, “for a song,”
the theatrical weapons and wardrobe. Of course,
whatever solvent might separate the other parts of the
company, they crystallized, again, around their only
possible nucleus—the prima-donna who had the toggery!
And, at this stage of the Borghese monocracy
—came Pico!

Months passed away. The story of Pico's errand
—her husband a political prisoner at Venice, and her
voice the only probable conjurer of the gold key to
release or relieve him—was told and apparently forgotten.
We heard it, and reserved our republican
sympathy till she should appear. The Mirror suggested
a concert—knowing nothing of her powers—but
her friends thought she had better bide her time with
the opera. She has done so. At half the pay of
Borghese, she played to-night for the second time, in
the opera of Lucrezia Borgia.

We have come home from hearing her—“possessed”
(as this undevoured cold duck is our witness)—
our capacity for delight plummeted—our cistern of
unshed tears strangely and pleasurably troubled—our
pen as gushing with welcome to Pico as the miraculous
oil-spring of old Rome that welcomed home the conquering
Angustus.

[Her health in this last glass of champagne—God
bless her!]

The house was crowded. Borghese sang beautifully,
and played as no other female in America can
play. She was heartily applauded—but—as on the
last opera night—the tumult of the house was reserved
for the drinking song of Pico. It is her first chance
to unchain soul and voice after nearly a whole opera
of subservient by-play. Oh how the first swooping
away into those clear silver caverns of her throat—
dropping through unfathomable love-depths with her
fearless down-cadences, and turning with an easy up
lift again toward the summit-perch of the careless
altissimo—how like an eagle's swoop it careered!
overtaking the dew falling, and the perfume rising
into the sky, and, with all its fierce swiftness, robbing
the cleft air of nothing but fragrance and softness.

[We are getting poetical—but champagne after
Pico, is, as the Venetians say, tanto amorevole! We'll
go to bed and sum up in the morning.]

Thursday Morning.—Our friend of the “Morning
News,” expresses, in his paper of to-day, a regret that
“a feeling of rivalry is encouraged between Borghese
and Pico.” We are surprised at this discouragement,
on his knowing part, of the great secret of good opera
and good everything else. When are they ever so
likely to sing so well, and to draw so well, as when

He adds, that “Pico fairly out-Pico'd Pico,” and we
should say the same of Borghese, if the name would
come as pat.

No! no! let them be rivals! What could be prettier?—more
gracefully done, and more touchingly
enlisting to the feelings—than Borghese's picking up
the wreath again, last night, and giving it generously
to Pico? We broke a new malacca stick in applauding
that action alone. Viva Borghese! Viva Pico!
You are two halves of a scissors, dear ladies, and
rivalry is your rivet. Divide the public—since both
halves are your own, after they are divided!

Pico and Borghese.—These two ladies are certainly
most poculent commodities, and the town drinks
their delicious music with unquestionable intoxication.
The crammed opera-house was as breathless
with absorbed attention last night as if Pico's rosy-lipped
cup ministered to every heart's measure of ful
ness—one palate common to all. For ourself, we confess
immeasurable delight in Pico. Her voice has a
road to the heart upon which criticism takes no toll
—the gate-opening facility of music going home. One
listens to it as Shelley seems to have listened to the
witch of Atlas—

—the very inmost tenant of your bosom, somehow,
seeming to have “expected it, all along.”

Borghese is a treasure to a town—an uncommon
creature—such an actress and artist as we shall not
see again until we deserve a benefit from the gods—
but Pico! oh, Pico is of quite another invoice of goods
from paradise. Borghese is the most ingenious harmony-pump
that, for many a year, has offered patronage
a handle—the other is a natural-well spring of
passionate and careless music, that would flow as
bountifully, for a bird to drink, as for an emperor to
stoop to. Pico's voice would cut up like a polypus
—not a fragment without the making of a woman in
it. She neither sings, nor moves, nor smiles, as if
she remembered ever doing it before; and if she has
not the great “art of concealing art” (of which we
have had our half a suspicion), she is one of those
helpless irresistibles that could as soon become invisible
as not bewitch.

The drinking song (Pico's only good chance in the
whole opera), was stunningly applauded last night,
and, at the close, a wreath was thrown to her from a
very select company in a private box, and thrown with
a pretty good aim—for she caught it upon her bosom.
Out of it—(or the place where she caught it—we
could not tell which)—dropped a sealed note, which
we trust contained a check payable in favor of the imprisoned
husband at Venice.

If we had a moderate thought during the opera of
last night, it was that there could be no question of
a keen taste for music in New York—for here was a
crowded audience, attentive, appreciative, measuring
its applause most judiciously, and leaving the house
delighted. We are sure a large opera-house would do
—with more inducements to foreign subordinates,
more enterprise to procure visits from the Parisian
and London operatics, better regulations for private
boxes, etc., etc. We think, for one, that there is no
greater pleasure, away from a man's hearth, than a
good opera.

Envy of the Rich, or, the Flying-fish Aristocracy,
and the No. 1 Passenger left behind.
—In the hurry of composition, yesterday, we stumbled
upon a similitude (a “flying-fish aristocracy”)
which, we think, expresses that transitory duration of
American “up-in-the-world,” which should make the
greater number of rich people looked upon with indulgent
affection by those left temporarily below. Of
such short-lease wings as most American “first families”
fly with, there need be little envy, one would
think—in the democratic element they drip with till
they drop again. There are families, however—a
small number—who hold their own for three or four
generations; and, in the “measureless content” of
these with their position, the democrats find offence;
but one of the most curious social problems we know
of, is the manner in which the old families of New
York are let alone, and tacitly eclipsed by the more
newly prosperous; and we must offer to our readers
a descriptive similitude for this also. (Our object, it
will be seen, is to take away the offence of aristocracy,
if possible, and induce King Public to let us cater for
them, as for all other classes, with level editorial republicanism!)

A half hour before the starting of the Oxford night
mail, a fat gentleman was discovered fast asleep in the
coach, which was still under the shed. He occupied
the back seat, and his enormous bulk filled it so completely
that there was no room for the usual fourth
inside passenger. But four seats were taken and paid
for, and the last man booked insisted on his right to a
place—fat man, or no fat man! The stout gentleman
was waked, and requested to come out till the other
three were seated.

and having mentioned his name, and inquired whether
it was not first on the book, settled his chin into his
cravat, and speedily snored again! “Is this Oxford?
—bless me, how I have slept!” said the fat man, rubbing
his eyes, when the coach door was opened the
next morning—in the same place where it stood when
he went to sleep! The driver had hitched his team to
another coach, and the three unprivileged customers
last booked were probably breakfasting in Oxford!

It strikes us that the people who are last booked, in
this community, may very well monopolize the envy
—(success in arriving at their destination of conspicuousness
being, of course, the chief matter of envy)—
and the fat sleepers, upon the usurped seats, once left
out of the proscription, the charity for “flying-fish”
easily forgives the remainder.

If the above does not please our friend “Cheap
Jemmy,” we will never do a good-natured thing again
as long as we live. If he knew Latin, we should
send him in a bill for a diaphoretic.