He next appears on Canal street, by and beyond the Clay Monument, with

occasional pauses at clothiers', and buys his shirts at Moody's, as he

has probably often sworn not to do, because of its annoyingly frequent

posters everywhere. He enters jewelers' shops and examines

trinkets--serpents with ruby eyes curled in gold on beds of golden

leaves with emerald dews upon them; pearls, pear-shaped and tearlike,

brought up by swart, glittering divers, seven fathom deep, at Tuticorin

or in the Persian Gulf; rubies and sapphires mined in Burmese Ava, and

diamonds from Borneo and Brazil. Is he choosing a bridal present? It

looks so; but no, he selects a splendid, brilliant solitaire, for which

he pays eight hundred dollars out of a plethoric purse, and also a

finger-ring, diamond too, for two hundred and fifty dollars. The

jewelers are polite, as the bankers were. He must be a large

cotton-planter, one of a class with whom a fondness for jewels serves as

a means of dozing away life in a kind of crystallization. He otherwise

adorns his stately person, till he has a Sublime Porte indeed, the very

vizier of a fairy tale glittering in barbaric gems and gold. His taste,

to speak it mildly, is expressed rather than subdued--not to be compared

with the quiet elegance of your husband or lover, madam or miss, but not

unsuited to his showy style, for all that. As the crimson-purple,

plume-like prince's feather has its own royal charm in Southern gardens

beside the pale and placidlily, so these luxuriant adornments, do not

misbecome his full and not too fleshy person. There is a certain harmony

in the Oriental sumptuousness of his attire, like radiant sunsets,

appropriate to certain styles of man and woman. Let us humble creatures

be content to have our portraits done in crayon, but the colonel calls

for the color-box.

So adorned and radiant, this variety of the American aloe floats into

the charmed circle of New Orleans society--that lively, sparkling

epitome and relic of the old régime. He has good letters and a fair

name, and mingles in the Mystick Krewe, that curious club, possible

nowhere else, that has raised mummery into the sphere of aesthetics.

Perhaps he has worn the gray, perhaps the blue. It is only in the very

arcana of exclusive passion it makes much difference. But gray or blue,

or North or South in birth, he is in every essential a Southerner, as

many, like S.S. Prentiss, curiously independent of nativity, are. He is

well received and courteously entreated. He has his little suppers at

Moreau's, and knows the ways of the place and names of the waiters. He

has his promenades, his drives, his club visits, is seen everywhere--a

brilliant convolvulus now, twining the espaliers of that Saracenic

fabric of society; to speak architecturally, its very summer-house. He

visits the opera and gives it his frank approval, but confesses a

preference for the old plantation-melodies. He crushes through the

meshes of the Creole dandies, not offensively, but as the law of his

volume and momentum dictates, and they yield the _pas_ to his superior

weight and metal. They are civil, and he is civil, but they do not like

one another, for all that. That Zodiac passed, they continue their own

summery orbit of charm and conquest. He tends toward the aureal spheres

and the green and pleasant banks of issue. The colonel is not here for

pleasure, though he takes a little pleasure, as is his way, seasonably;

but he means business, and that several thirsty, eager cotton-houses of

repute know.

Of course they know. It came in his letters and distills in the aroma of

his talk. It may even have slipped into the personals of the _Pic_ and

_Times_ that Colonel Beverage has taken Millefleur and Rottenbottom

plantations on Red River, and is going extensively into the cultivation

of the staple. The colonel is modest over this: "not extensively, no,

but to the extent of his limited means." In the mean while he looks out

for some sound, well-recommended cotton-house.

This means business. In the North the farmer raises his crop on his own

capital, and turns it over unencumbered to the merchant for the public.

The credit system prevails in the agriculture of the South, and brings

another precarious element into the already hazardous occupation of

cotton-growing. A new party appears in the cotton-merchant. He is not

merely the broker, yielding the proceeds, less a commission, to the

planter. Either, by hypothecation on advances made during the year, he

secures a legal pre-emption in the crop, or, by initiatory contract, he

becomes an actual partner of limited liability in the crop itself. He

agrees to furnish so much cash capital at periods for the cultivation

and securing of the crop, which is husbanded by the planter. The money

for these advances he obtains from the banks; and hence it is that in

every cotton-crop raised South there are three or more principals

actually interested--the banker, the merchant and the planter. This

condition of planting is almost invariable. Even the small farmer, whose

crop is a few bags, is ground into it. In his case the country-side

grocer and dealer is banker and merchant, and his advances the bare

necessaries. In this blending of interests the curious partnership

rises, thrives, labors and sometimes falls--the planter, as a rule,

undermost in that accident.

The Millefleur and Rottenbottom plantations are famous, and a hand well

over the crops raised under such shrewd, experienced management as that

of Colonel Beverage is a stroke of policy. Therefore, as the bankers and

jewelers have been polite, so now the cotton-merchants are civil; but

the colonel is shy--an old bird and a game bird.

Shy, but not suspicious. He chooses his own time, and at an early day

walks into the business-house of Negocier & Duthem. They are pleased to

see the colonel in the way of business, as they have been in society,

and the pleasure is mutual. As he expounds his plans they are more and

more convinced that he is a plumy bird of much waste feather.

He has taken Rottenbottom and Millefleur, and is going pretty well

into cotton. He thinks he understands it: he ought to. Then he

has his own capital--an advantage, certainly. Some of his friends,

So-and-so--running over commercial and bankable names easily--have

suggested the usual co-operation with some reputable house, and an

extension, but he believes He will stay within limits. He has five

thousand dollars in cash he wishes to deposit with some good firm for

the year's supplies. He believes that will be sufficient, and he has

called to hear their terms. All this comes not at once, but here and

there in the business-conversation.

The reader will perceive one strong bait carelessly thrown out by the

auriferous or folliferous colonel--the five thousand dollars cash in

hand. The immediate use of that is a strong incentive to the house. They

covet the colonel's business: they think well of the proposed extension.

Cotton is sure to be up, and under practical, experienced cultivation

must yield a handsome fortune. The result is foreseen. The cotton-house

and the colonel enter into the usual agreement of such transactions. The

colonel leaves his five thousand dollars, and draws on that, and for as

much more as may be necessary in securing the crop.

The commercial reader North who has had no dealings South will smile at

the credulous merchant who entrusts his credit to such a full-blown,

thirsty tropical pitcher-plant as the colonel, who carries childish

extravagances in his very dress; but he will judge hastily. We have seen

this gaudy efflorescence pass over the curiously-wrought enameled

gold-work, opals, pearls and rubies, and adorn himself with solid

diamonds. The careful economist North puts his superfluous thousands in

government bonds, or gambles them away in Erie stocks, because he likes

the increase of Jacob's speckled sheep. The Southerner invests his in

diamonds because he likes show, and diamonds have a pretty steady market

value. There is method, too, in the colonel's associations, and all his

acquaintance is gilt-edged and bankable.

His business is now done, and he does not tarry, but wings his way to

Millefleur and Rottenbottom, where he moults all his fine feathers. He

goes into fertilizers, beginning with crushed cotton-seed and barnyard

manure, if possible, before February is over. He follows the

shovel-plough with a slick-jack, and plants, and then the labor begins

to fail him. He talks about importing Chinese, and writes about it in

the local paper. He is sure it will do, as he is positive in all his

opinions. He is true pluck, and tries to make new machinery make up for

deficient labor. He buys "bull-tongues," "cotton-shovels," "fifteen-inch

sweeps," "twenty-inch sweeps," "team-ploughs with seven-inch twisters,"

and a "finishing sweep of twenty-six inches." He hears of other

inventions, and orders them. The South is flooded with a thousand quack

contrivances now, about as applicable to cotton-raising as a pair of

nut-crackers; but the colonel buys them. He is going to dispense with

the hoe. That is the plan; and by that plan of furnishing a large

plantation with new tools before Lent is over the five thousand dollars

are gone. But he writes cheerfully. It is his nature to be sanguine, and

to hope loudly, vaingloriously; and he writes it honestly enough to his

merchant--and draws. The labor gets worse and worse. In the indolent

summer days the negro, careless, thriftless, ignorant, works only at

intervals. Perhaps the June rise catches him, and there is a heavy

expense in ditching and damming to save the Rottenbottom crop. Maybe the

merchant hears of the army-worm and is alarmed, but the colonel writes

back assuring letters that it is only the grasshopper, and the

grasshopper has helped more than hurt--and draws. Then possibly the

army-worm comes sure enough, and cripples him. But he keeps up his

courage--and draws. The five thousand dollars appear to have been

employed in digging or building a sluice through which a constant

current of currency flows from the city to Rottenbottom and Millefleur.

The merchant has gone into bank, and the tide flows on. At last the

planter writes: "The most magnificent crop ever raised on Red River,

just waiting for the necessary hands to gather it in!" Of course the

necessary sums are supplied, and at last the crop gets to market. It

finds the market low, and declining steadily week by week. The banks

begin to press: money is tight, as it is now while I write. The crop is

sacrificed, for the merchant cannot wait, and some fine morning the

house of Negocier & Duthem is closed, and Colonel Beverage is bankrupt.

And both are ruined? No. We will suppose the business-house is old and

reputable: the banks are obliging and creditors prudently liberal, and

by and by the firm resumes its old career. As for the colonel, the

reader sees that to ruin him would be an absolute contradiction of

nature. His friends or relations give him assistance, or he sells his

diamonds, and soon you meet him at the St. Charles, as blooming,

sanguine and splendiferous as ever. No, he cannot be ruined, but his is

not an infrequent episode in the life of a Southern Planter.

WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

* * * * *

BABES IN THE WOOD.

I had two little babes, a boy and girl--

Two little babes that are not with me now:

On one bright brow full golden fell the curl--

The curl fell chestnut-brown on one bright brow.

I like to dream of them that some soft day,

Whilst wandering from home, their fitful feet

Went heedlessly through some still woodland way

Where light and shade harmoniously meet;

And that they wandered deeper and more deep

Into the forest's fragrant heart and fair,

Till just at evenfall they dropped asleep,

And ever since they have been resting there.

After their willful wandering that day

Each is so tired it does not wake at all,

Whilst over them the boughs that sigh and sway

Conspire to make perpetual evenfall.

And I, that must not join them, still am blest,

Passionately, though this poor heart grieves;

For memories, like birds, at my behest,

Have covered them with tender thoughts, like leaves.

EDGAR FAWCETT.

MY CHARGE ON THE LIFE-GUARDS.

Now that our little international troubles about consequential damages

and the like are happily settled, and there is no danger that my

revelations will augment them in any degree, I think I may venture to

give the particulars of an affair of honor which I once had with a

gigantic member of Her Britannic Majesty's household troops.

My guardian had a special veneration for England in general and for

Oxford in particular, and I was brought up and sent to Yale with the

full understanding that St. Bridget's, Oxon., was the place where I was

to be "finished." I left Yale at the end of Junior year and crossed the

ocean in the crack steamer of the then famous Collins line. I do not

believe any young American ever had a more favorable introduction to

England than I had, and the wonder is that, considering the

philo-Anglican atmosphere in which I was educated, I did not become a

thorough-paced renegade. I was, however, blessed with a tolerably

independent spirit, and kept my nationality intact throughout my

university course.

Like Tom Brown, I felt myself drawn to the sporting set, and, as I was

always an adept at athletics, soon won repute as an oarsman, and was

well satisfied to be looked upon as the Yankee champion sundry amateur

rowing-and boxing-matches, as well as in the lecture-room. Of course, I

was the mark for no end of good-natured chaff about my nationality, but

was nearly always able, I believe, to sustain the honor of the American

name, and so at length graduated in the "firsts" as to scholarship, and

enjoyed the distinguished honor of pulling number four in the "'Varsity

eight" in our annual match with Cambridge on the Thames. Moreover, I

stood six feet in my stockings, had the muscle of a gladiator, and was

physically the equal of any man at Oxford.

After the race was over my special cronies hung about London for a few

days, usually making that classical "cave" of Evans's a rendezvous in

the evening. Two or three young officers of the Guards were often with

us, and one night, when the talk had turned, as it often did, on

personal prowess, the superb average physique of their regiment was duly

lauded by our soldier companions. At length one of them remarked, in

that aggravatingly superior tone which some Englishmen assume, that any

man in his troop could handle any two of the then present company. This

provoked a general laugh of incredulity, and two or three of our college

set turned to me with--"What do you say to that, Jonathan?"

"Nonsense!" said I. "I'll put on the gloves with the biggest fellow

among them, any day."

This somewhat democratic readiness to spar with a private soldier led to

remarks which I chose to consider insular, if not insolent, and I

replied, supporting the principle of Yankee equality, until, losing my

temper at something which one of the ensigns said, I delivered myself in

some such fashion as this: "Well, gentlemen, I'm only one Yankee among

many Englishmen, but I will bet a hundred guineas, and put up the money,

that I will tumble one of those mighty warriors out of his saddle in

front of the Horse Guards, and ride off on his horse before the guard

can turn out and stop me."

Of course my bet was instantly taken by the officers, but my friends

were so astounded at my rashness that I found no backers. However, my

blood was up, and, possibly because Evans's bitter beer was buzzing

slightly in my head, I booked several more bets at large odds in my own

favor. As the hour was late, we separated with an agreement to meet and

arrange details on the following day, keeping the whole affair strictly

secret meanwhile.

I confess that my feelings were not of the pleasantest as I sat at my

late London breakfast somewhere about noon the next day, and I was fain

to admit to my special friend that I had put myself in an awkward, if

not an unenviable, position. However, I was in for it, and being

naturally of an elastic temperament, began to cast about for a cheerful

view of my undertaking. In the course of the day preliminaries were

arranged and reduced to writing with all the care which Englishmen

practice in such affairs of "honor." I only stipulated that I should be

allowed to use a stout walking-stick in my encounter; that I should be

kept informed as to the detail for guard; that I should be freely

allowed to see the regiment at drill and in quarters; and that I should

select my time of attack within a fortnight, giving a few hours' notice

to all parties concerned, so as to ensure their presence as witnesses.

Every one who has ever visited London has seen and admired the gigantic

horsemen who sit on mighty black steeds, one on either side of the

archway facing Whitehall, and who are presumed at once to guard the

commander-in-chief's head-quarters and to serve as "specimen bricks" of

the finest cavalry corps in the world. Splendid fellows they are! None

of them are under six feet high, and many of them are considerably above

that mark. They wear polished steel corselets and helmets, white

buck-skin trowsers, high jack-boots, and at the time of which I write

their arms consisted of a brace of heavy, single-barreled pistols in

holsters, a carbine and a sabre. The firearms were, under ordinary

circumstances, not loaded, and the sabre was held at a "carry" in the

right hand. This last was the weapon against which I must guard, and I

accordingly placed a traveling cap and a coat in the hands of a discreet

tailor, who sewed steel bands into the crown of one and into the

shoulders of the other, in such a way as afforded very efficient

protection against a possible downward cut.

Besides attending to these defensive preparations, I at once looked

about for a competent horseman with military experience who could give

me some practical hints as to encounters between infantry and cavalry,

and, singularly enough, was thrown in with that gallant young officer

who rode into immortality in front of the Light Brigade at Balaklava a

few years afterward. I learned that he was a superb horseman, was down

upon the English system of cavalry training, and was using pen and

tongue to bring about a change. A sudden inspiration led me to take him

into my confidence, as the terms of our agreement permitted me to do. He

caught the idea with enthusiasm. What an argument it would be in favor

of his new system if a mere civilian unhorsed a Guardsman trained after

the old fashion! For a week he drilled me more or less every day in

getting him off his horse in various ways, and I speedily became a

proficient in the art, he meanwhile gaining some new ideas on the

subject, which were duly printed in his well-known book.

Well, to make my story short, I gave notice to interested parties on the

tenth day, put on my steel-ribbed cap and my armor-plated coat, and with

stick in hand walked over to a hairdresser's with whom I had previously

communicated, had my complexion darkened to a Spanish olive, put on a

false beard, and was ready for service. I had arranged with this

tonsorial artist, whose shop was in the Strand near Northumberland

House, that he should be prepared to remove these traces of disguise as

speedily as he had put them on, and that I should leave a stylish coat

and hat in his charge, to be donned in haste should occasion require. I

next engaged two boys to stand opposite Northumberland House, and be

ready to hold a horse. These boys I partially paid beforehand, and

promised more liberal largess if they did their duty. Preliminaries

having been thus arranged, I strolled down Whitehall, feeling very much

as I did years afterward when I found myself going into action for the

first time in Dixie.

It was early afternoon on a lovely spring day. The Strand was a roaring

stream of omnibuses and drays, carriages were beginning to roll along

the drives leading to Rotten Row, and all London was in the streets. I

was assured that at this hour I should find a big but father clumsy

giant on post; and there he was, sure enough, sitting like a colossal

statue on his coal-black charger, the crest of his helmet almost

touching the keystone of the arch under which he sat, his accoutrements

shining like jewels, and he looking every inch a British cavalryman. I

walked past on the opposite side of Whitehall, meeting, without being

recognized, all my aiders and abettors in this most heinous attack on

Her Majesty's Guards. I then crossed the street and took a good look at

my man. He and his companion-sentry under the other arch were aware of

officers in "mufti" on the opposite sidewalk, and kept their eyes

immovably to the front. Evidently nothing much short of an earthquake

could cause either to relax a muscle. The little circle of admiring

beholders which is always on hand inspecting these splendid horsemen was

present, of course, with varying elements, and I had to wait a few

minutes until a small number of innocuous spectators coincided with the

aphelion of the periodical policeman.

It was not a pleasant thing to contemplate that tower of polished

leather, brass and steel, with a man inside of it some forty pounds

heavier than I, and think that in a minute or so we two should be

engaged in a close grapple, whose termination involved considerable risk

for me physically as well as pecuniarily. However, there was, in

addition to the feeling of apprehension, a touch of elation at the

thought that I, a lone Yankee, was about to beard the British lion in

his most formidable shape, almost under the walls of Buckingham Palace.

I looked my antagonist carefully over, deciding several minor points in

my mind, and then at a favorable moment stepped quietly within striking

distance, and delivered a sharp blow with my stick on his left instep,

as far forward as I could without hitting the stirrup. The man seemed to

be in a sort of military trance, for he never winced. Quick as thought,

I repeated the blow, and this time the fellow fairly yelled with rage,

astonishment and pain. I have since made up my mind that his nerve-fibre

must have been of that inert sort which transmits waves of sensation but

slowly, so that the perception of the first blow reached the interior of

his helmet just about as the second descended. At all events, he jerked

back his foot, and somehow, between the involuntary contraction of his

flexor muscles from pain and the glancing of my stick, his foot slipped

from the stirrup. This, as I had learned from my instructor, was a great

point gained, and in an instant I had him by the ankle and by the top of

his jack-boot, doubling his leg, at the same time heaving mightily

upward.

As I gave my whole strength to the effort I was dimly aware of screams

and panic among the nursery--maids and children who were but a moment

before my fellow-spectators. At the same time I caught the flash of the

Guardsman's sabre as he cut down at me after the fashion prescribed in

the broadsword exercise. Fortune, however, did not desert me. My

antagonist had not enough elbow-room, and his sword-point was shivered

against the stone arch overhead, the blade descending flatways and

harmlessly upon my well-protected shoulder just as, with a final effort,

I tumbled him out his saddle.

The recollection of the ludicrous figure which that Guardsman cut haunts

me still. His pipeclayed gloves clutched wildly at holster and cantle as

he went over. Down came the gleaming helmet crashing upon the pavement,

and with a calamitous rattle and bang the whole complicated structure of

corselet, scabbard, carbine, cross-belts, spurs and boots went into the

inside corner of the archway, a helpless heap.

That started the horse. The noble animal had stood my assault as

steadily as if he had been cast in bronze, but precisely such an

emergency as this had never been contemplated in his training, as it had

not in that of his master, and he now started forward rather wildly. I

had my hand on the bridle before he had moved a foot, and swung myself

half over his back as he dashed across the sidewalk and up Whitehall.

The Guards' saddles are very easy when once you are in them, and I had

reason, temporarily at least, to approve the English style of riding

with short stirrups, for I readily found my seat, and ascertained that I

could touch bottom with my toes. As I left the scene of my victory

behind me I heard the guards turning out, and caught a glimpse as of all

London running in my direction, but by the time that I had secured the

control of my horse I had distanced the crowd, and as we entered the

Strand we attracted comparatively little notice. In driving, the English

turn out to the left instead of to the right, as is the custom here, and

I was obliged to cross the westward-bound line of vehicles before I

could fall in with that which would bring me to my boys. I decided to

make a "carom" of it, and nearly took the heads off a pair of horses,

and the pole off the omnibus to which they were attached, as I dashed

through. Turning to the right, I soon lost the torrent of invective

hurled after me by the driver and conductor of the discomfited 'bus, and

in less than two minutes--which seemed to me an age, for the pursuit was

drawing near--I reached my boys, dropped them a half sov. apiece, which

I had ready in my hand, and bolted for my hairdresser's, the boys

leading the horse in the opposite direction, as previously ordered.

It was none too soon, for as I ran up stairs I saw three or four

policemen running toward the horse, and there was a gleam of dancing

plumes and shining helmets toward Whitehall. My false beard and

complexion were changed with marvelous rapidity, and, assuming my

promenade costume, I sauntered down stairs and out upon the sidewalk in

time to see the whole street jammed with a crowd of excited Britons,

while the recaptured horse was turned over to the Guardsmen, and the two

boys were marched off to Bow street for examination before a magistrate.

A private room and an elaborate dinner at the United Service Club

closed the day; and I must admit that my military friends swallowed

their evident chagrin with a very good grace. Of course I was told that

I could not do it again, which I readily admitted; and that there was

not another man in the troop whom I could have unhorsed--an assertion

which I as persistently combated. The affair was officially hushed up,

and probably not more than a few thousand people ever heard of it

outside military circles.

How I escaped arrest and punishment to the extent of the law I did not

know for many years, for the duke of Wellington, who was then

commander-in-chief, had only to order the officers concerned under

arrest, and I should have been in honor bound to come forward with a

voluntary confession.

My giant was sent for to the old duke's private room the day after his

overthrow, and questioned sharply by the adjutant, who, with pardonable

incredulity, suspected that bribery alone could have brought about so

direful a catastrophe. The duke was from the first convinced of the

soldier's, honesty and bravery, and presently broke in upon the

adjutant's examination with--"Well, well! speak to me now. What have you

to say for yourself?"

"May it please yer ludship," said the undismayed soldier, "I've never

fought a civilian sence I 'listed, an' yer ludship will bear me witness

that there's nothing in the cavalry drill about resisting a charge of

foot when a mon's on post at the Horse Guards."

This speech was delivered with the most perfect sincerity and sobriety,

and although it reflected upon the efficiency of the army under the hero

of Waterloo, the Iron Duke was so much impressed by the affair that he

sent word to Lieutenant-Colonel Varian, commanding the regiment, not to

order the man any punishment whatever, but to see that his command was

thereafter trained in view of possible attacks, even when posted in

front of army head-quarters.

CHARLES L. NORTON.

PAINTING AND A PAINTER.

Charles V. once said, "Titian should be served by Caesar;" and Michael

Angelo, we read, was treated by Lorenzo de' Medici "as a son;" Raphael,

his contemporary, was great enough to revere him, and thank God he had

lived at the same time. In England, in France, in Germany, in Italy, in

Spain at this day, the poet and the painter stand hedged about by the

divinity of their gifts, and the people are proud to recognize their

kingship.

Has "Reverence, that angel of the world," as Shakespeare beautifully

says, forgot to visit America? Or must we consider ourselves less

capable yet of delicate appreciation, such as older nations possess? Or

are we over-occupied in gaining possession of material comforts and

luxuries, and so forget to revere our poets and painters till it is too

late, and the curtain has fallen upon their unobtrusive and often

struggling earthly career? What a millennium will have arrived when we

learn to be as _faithful_ to our love as we are sincere!

Questions like these have been asked also in times preceding ours.

Alfred de Musset wrote upon this subject in 1833, in Paris: "There are

people who tell you our age is preoccupied, that men no longer read

anything or care for anything. Napoleon was occupied, I think, at

Beresina: he, however, had his _Ossian_ with him. When did Thought lose

the power of being able to leap into the saddle behind Action? When did

man forget to rush like Tyrtaeus to the combat, a sword in one hand, the

lyre in the other? Since the world still has a body, it has a soul."

Monsieur Charles Blanc writes: "In order to have an idea of the

importance of the arts, it is enough to fancy what the great nations of

the world would be if the monuments they have erected to their faiths,

and the works whereon they have left the mark of their genius, were

suppressed from history. It is with people as with men--after death only

the emanations of their mind remain; that is to say, literature and art,

written poems, and poems inscribed on stone, in marble or in color."

The same writer, in his admirable book, _Grammaire des arts du dessin,_

from which we are tempted to quote again and again, says: "The artist

who limits himself simply to the imitation of Nature reaches only

_individuality_: he is a slave. He who interprets Nature sees in her

happy qualities; he evolves _character_ from her; he is master. The

artist who idealizes her discovers in her or imprints upon her the image

of _beauty_: this last is a great master.... Placed between Nature and

the ideal, between what is and what must be, the artist has a vast

career before him in order to pass from the reality he sees to the

beauty he divines. If we follow him in this career, we see his model

transform itself successively before his eyes.... But the artist must

give to these creations of his soul the imprint of life, and he can only

find this imprint in the individuals Nature has created. The two are

inseparable--the type, which is a product of thought, and the

individual, which is a child of life."

With this excellent analysis before us, we will recall one by one some

of the best-known and most interesting works of W.M. Hunt, a painter who

now holds a prominent place among the artists of America. We will try to

discover by careful observation if the high gifts of Verity and

Imagination, the sign and seal of the true artist, really belong to him:

if so, where these qualities are expressed, and what value we should set

upon them.

First, perhaps, for those readers remote from New England who may never

have seen any pictures by this artist, a few words should be said by way

of describing some characteristics of his work and the limitations of

it; which limitations are rather loudly dwelt upon by connoisseurs and

lovers of the popular modern French school. Artists discern these

limitations of course more keenly even than others, but their tribute to

verity and ideal beauty as represented by this painter is too sincere to

allow caviling to find expression. This limitation to which we refer

causes Mr. Hunt to allow _ideal suggestions_, rather than pictures, to

pass from his studio, and makes him cowardly before his own work. It

recalls in a contrary sense that saying of the sculptor Puget: "The

marble trembles before me." Mr. Hunt trembles before his new-born idea.

His swift nature has allowed him in the first hour of work to put into

his picture the tenderness or rapture, the unconscious grace or

tempestuous force, which he despaired at first of ever being able to

express. In the flush of success he stops: he has it, the idea; the

chief interest of the subject is portrayed before him; the delicate

presence (and what can be more delicate than the thoughts he has

delineated?) is there, and may vanish if touched in a less fortunate

moment. But is this lack of fulfillment in the artist entirely without

precedent or parallel? Had not Sir Joshua Reynolds a studio full of

young artists who "finished off" his pictures? Were not the very faces

themselves painted with such rapidity and want of proper method as to

drop off, on occasion, entirely from the canvas, as in case of the boy's

head, in being carried through the street? Hunt is of our own age, and

would scorn the suggestion of having a hand or a foot painted for him,

as if it were a matter of small importance what individual expression a

hand or a foot should wear; but who can tell for what future age he has

painted the wise, abrupt, kind, persistent, simple, strong old Judge in

his Yankee coat; or the genial, resolute, hopeful, self-sacrificing

governor of Massachusetts; and the Master of the boys, with his keen,

loving, uncompromising face? These are pictures that, when children say,

"Tell us about the Governor who helped Massachusetts bring her men first

into the field during our war," we may lead them up before and reply,

"He was this man!" So also with the portraits of the Judge, of the

Master of the boys, of the old man with clear eyes and firm mouth, and

that sweet American girl standing, unconscious of observation, plucking

at the daisy in her hat and guessing at her fate.

Hurry, impatience and a worship of crude thought are characteristics of

our present American life. Hunt is one of us. If these faults mark and

mar his work, they show him also to be a child of the time. His quick

sympathies are caught by the wayside and somewhat frayed out among his

fellows; but nevertheless one essential of a great painter, that of

_Verity_, will be accorded to him after an examination of the pictures

we have mentioned.

But truth, character, skill, the many gifts and great labor which must

unite to lead an artist to the foot of his shadowy, sun-crowned

mountain, can then carry him no step farther unless ideal Beauty join

him, and he comprehend her nature and follow to her height. Again we

quote from Charles Blanc--for why should we rewrite what he says so

ably?--"All the germs of beauty are in Nature, but it belongs to the

spirit of man alone to disengage them. When Nature is beautiful, the

painter _knows_ that she is beautiful, but Nature knows nothing of it.

Thus beauty exists only on the condition of being understood--that is to

say, of receiving a second life in the human thought. Art has something

else to do than to copy Nature exactly: it must penetrate into the

spirit of things, it must evoke the soul of its hero. It can then not

only rival Nature, but surpass her. What is indeed the superiority of

Nature? It is the life which animates all her forms. But man possesses a

treasure which Nature does not possess--thought. Now thought is more

than life, for it is life at its highest power, life in its glory. Man

can then contest with Nature by manifesting thought in the forms of art,

as Nature manifests life in her forms. In this sense the philosopher

Hegel was able to say that the creations of art were truer than the

phenomena of the physical world and the realities of history."

Now, thought in the soul of the true artist for ever labors to evolve

the beautiful. This is what the thought of a picture means to him--how

to express beauty, which he finds underlying even the imperfect

individual of Nature's decaying birth. To the high insight this is

always discernible. None are so fallen that some ray of God's light may

not touch them, and this possibility, the faith in light for ever,

radiates from the spirit of the artist, and renders him a messenger of

joy. No immortal works have bloomed in despondency: they may have taken

root in the slime of the earth, but they have blossomed into lilies.

We call this divine power to discern beauty in every manifestation of

the Deity, imagination. As it expresses itself in painting, it is so

closely allied with what is highest and holiest in our natures that

painting has come to be esteemed a Christian art, as contrasted in its

development subsequent to the Christian era with the less human works of

sculpture. "Christianity came, and instead of physical beauty

substituted moral beauty, infinitely preferring the expression of the

soul to the perfection of the body. Every man was great in its eyes, not

by his perishable members, but by his immortal soul. With this religion

begins the reign of painting, which is a more subtle art, more

immaterial, than the others--more expressive, and also more individual.

We will give some proofs of it. Instead of acting, like architecture and

sculpture, upon the three dimensions of heavy matter, painting acts only

upon one surface, and produces its effects with an imponderable thing,

which is color--that is to say, light. Hegel has said with admirable

wisdom: 'In sculpture and architecture forms are rendered visible by

exterior light. In painting, on the contrary, matter, obscure in itself,

has within itself its internal element, its ideal--light: it draws from

itself both clearness and obscurity. Now, unity, the combination of

light and dark, is color.' The painter, then, proposes to himself to

represent, not bodies with their real thickness, but simply their

appearance, their image; but by this means it is the mind which he

addresses. Visible but impalpable, and in some sense immaterial, his

work does not meet the touch, which is the sight of the body: it only

meets the eye, which is the touch of the soul. Painting is then, from

this point of view, the essential art of Christianity.... If the

painter, like Phidias or Lysippus, had only to portray the types of

humanity, the majesty of Jupiter, the strength of Hercules, he might do

without the riches of color, and paint in one tone, modified only by

light and shade; but the most heroic man among Christians is not a

demigod: he is a being profoundly individual, tormented, combating,

suffering, and who throughout his real life shares with environing

Nature, and receives from every side the reflection of her colors.

Sculpture, generalizing, raises itself to the dignity of

allegory--painting, individualizing, descends to the familiarity of

portraiture."

Let us now return to consider William Hunt's pictures from this second

point of view. The gift of Verity having been already assumed, can we

also discern that higher power of Imagination whose crown and seal is

the Beautiful. To decide this question we have, unhappily, to consider

his work as lyrical, rather than dramatic, and for this reason we must

study his power under disadvantage. That he possesses dramatic power

will hardly be denied by those who know his "Hamlet," "The Drummer-Boy,"

and "The Boy and the Butterfly;" but the exigencies of life appear to

prevent him from occupying himself with compositions such as filled

years in the existence of the old painters.

Portraiture being the highest and most difficult labor to which an

artist can aspire, to this branch of art Hunt has chiefly confined

himself, and from this point of view he must be studied. We do not

forget, in saying this, his angel with the flaming torch, strong and

beautiful and of unearthly presence, nor the shadowy, half-portrayed

figures which dart and flit across his easel; but as we may

_understand_ the power of Titian from his portraits, yet never

revel in it fully until we look upon "The Presentation" or "The

Assumption"--never comprehend the painter's joy or his divine rest in

endeavor until the achievement lies before us--we must speak of Hunt

only from the work to which he has devoted himself, and not do him the

injustice to predict dramas he has never yet composed.

First, pre-eminently appears that worship for moral beauty which suffers

him to fear no ugliness. This power allies him with keen sympathy to

every living thing. He sees kinship and the immortal spark in each

breathing being. The soul of love goes out and paints the dark or the

suffering or the repellant faithfully, bringing it in to the light where

God's sunshine may fall upon it, and men and women, seeing for the first

time, may help to wipe away the stain. This tendency he shares with the

great French painter Millet, whom he loves to call Master, and with

Dore, whose terrible picture of "The Mountebanks" should call men and

women from their homes to penetrate the fastnesses of vice and strive to

heal the sorrows of their kind.

This love of moral beauty, which forces painters to paint such pictures,

was never in any age more evident. Hunt in his beggar-man, in his

forlorn children, and other pictures of the same class, unfolds a beauty

that men should be thankful for.

On the other hand, his love of beauty and his power of expressing it

should be studied in its _direct_ influence. The beauty of flesh and

blood, even the loveliness of children, seems to have slight hold upon

him, compared with the significance of character and the lustre with

which his imagination endows everything. This lustre is a distinguishing

power with him. The depth to which he sees and feels causes him to give

higher lights and deeper shadows than other men. White flowers are not

only white to him--they shine like stars. His pictures give a sense of

splendor.

In his sketch of the poor mother cuddling her child, it is the feeling

of rest, the mother's sleeping joy, the relaxed limbs, the folding

embrace, which he has given us to enjoy. These are the beauty of the

picture--not rounded flesh, nor graceful curves, nor fair complexion;

and so with the singing-girls: they are not beautiful girls, but they

are simple--they love to sing, they are full of tenderness and music. We

might go over all his pictures to weariness in this way. The young girl

plucking at the daisy as she stands in an open field must, however, not

be omitted. The natural elegance of this portrait renders it peculiarly,

we should say, such a one as any woman would be proud to see of herself.

Doubtless this young girl, like others, may have worn ear-rings and

chains and pins and rings, but the artist knew her better than she knew

herself, and has portrayed that exquisite crown of simplicity with

which, it should seem, Nature only endows beggars and her royal

favorites.

In all the ages since Hamlet was created there appears never to have

been an era in which his character has excited such strong and universal

interest as in America at this time. William Hunt has thrown upon the

canvas a figure of Hamlet beautiful and living. There is no suggestion

of any actor in it. Hamlet walks new-born from the painter's brain. His

"cursed spite" bends the youthful shoulders, and the figure marches past

unmindful of terrestrial presences.

One other picture will illustrate more clearly, perhaps, than everything

which has gone before, this gift of imagination. In "The Boy and the

Butterfly," now on the walls of the Century Club-house, the loveliness

of the child, the power of action, the subtle management of color and

light, are all subordinated to the ideas of defeat and endeavor. Energy,

the irrepressible strength of the spirit upheld by a divine light of

indestructible youth, shines out from the canvas. The boy who cannot

catch the butterfly is transmuted as we stand into the Soul of Beauty

reaching out in vain for satisfaction, and ready to follow its

aspiration to another sphere.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

WILHELMINE VON HILLERN.

German literature, despite its extraordinary productiveness and its

possession of a few great masterpieces, is far from being rich in the

department of belles-lettres, especially in works of fiction. It has no

list of novelists like those which include such names as Fielding, Scott

and Thackeray, Balzac, Hugo and Sand. In fact, there is scarcely an

instance of a male writer in Germany who has devoted himself exclusively

to this branch of literature, and has won high distinction in it. It has

been cultivated with success chiefly by a few writers of the other sex,

whose delineations have gained a popularity in America only less than

that which they enjoy at home--in part because the life which they

depict has closer internal analogies to our own than to that of England

or of France, still more perhaps because the pictures themselves,

whatever their intrinsic fidelity, are suffused with a romantic glow

which has long since faded from those of the thoroughly realistic art

now dominant in the two latter countries.

In none of them is this characteristic more apparent than in the works

of Wilhelmine von Hillern, which bear also in a marked degree the stamp

of a mind at once vigorous and sympathetic, and are thus calculated to

awaken the interest of readers in regard to the author's personal

history.

Her father, Doctor Christian Birch, a Dane by birth and originally a

diplomatist by profession, held for many years the post of secretary of

legation at London and Paris. He withdrew from this career on the

occasion of his marriage with a German lady connected with the stage in

the triple capacity of author, manager and actress. Madame

Birch-Pfeiffer, as she is commonly called, was one of the celebrities of

her time, and her dramatic productions still keep possession of the

stage. Soon after the birth of her daughter, which took place at Munich,

she was invited to assume the direction of the theatre of Zurich. Here

Wilhelmine passed several years of her childhood, separated from her

father, whose engagements as a political writer retained him in Germany,

and scarcely less divided from her mother, whose duties at this period

did not permit her to give much attention to domestic cares. Without

companions of her own age, and left almost wholly to the charge of an

invalid aunt, she led a monotonous existence, which left an impression

on her mind all the more deep from its contrast with the life which

opened upon her in her eighth year, when Madame Birch-Pfeiffer was

summoned to Berlin to hold an appointment at the court theatre.

In the Prussian capital the family was again united, and became the

centre of a social circle embracing many persons connected with dramatic

art and literature. Devrient, Dawison and Jenny Lind were among the

visitors whose conversation was greedily listened to by the little girl

while supposed to be immersed in her lessons or her plays. Under such

influences it would have been strange if even a less active brain had

not been fired with aspirations, which took the form of an irresistible

impulse when, at thirteen, Wilhelmine was allowed for the first time to

visit the theatre and witness the acting of Dawison in Hamlet and other

parts. Henceforth all opposition had to give way, and in her seventeenth

year she made her _début_ as Juliet at the ducal theatre of Coburg. Two

qualities, we are told, distinguished her acting: a strong conception

worked out in the minutest details, and an intensity of passion which

knew no restraint, and at its culminating point overpowered even hostile

criticism. Subsequently careful training under Edward Devrient and

Madame Glossbrenner enabled her to bring her emotions under better

control, repressing all tendency to extravagance; and, greeted with the

assurance that she was destined to become the German Rachel, she entered

upon her career with a round of performances at the principal theatres

of Germany, including those of Frankfort, Hamburg and Berlin.

These triumphs were followed by the acceptance of a permanent engagement

at Mannheim, which, however, had hardly been concluded when it gave

place to one of a different kind, followed by her marriage and sudden

relinquishment of the vocation embraced with such ardor and pursued for

a short period with such brilliant promise. Dawison is said to have

remarked that by her retirement the German stage had lost its last

genuine tragic actress.

Since her marriage Madame von Hillern has resided at Freiburg, in the

grand duchy of Baden, where her husband holds a legal position analogous

to that of the judge of a superior court. Her social life is one of

great activity, though much of her time is given to superintending the

education of her two daughters. But the abounding energy of her nature

made it inevitable that her artistic instincts, repressed in one

direction, should seek their full development in another. Literature was

naturally her choice. Her first work, _Doppelleben_, appeared in 1865,

and though defective in construction, owing to a change of plan in the

process of composition, served to give assurance of her powers and to

inspire her with the requisite confidence. Three years later _Ein Arzt

der Seele_, of which a translation under the title of _Only a Girl_ has

been widely circulated in America, established her claim to a high place

among the writers of her class. Her third work, _Aus eigener Kraft (By

his own Might)_, met with equal success, securing for its author a large

circle of readers on both sides of the Atlantic ready to welcome the

future productions of her pen. The qualities which distinguish her

writings are vigor of conception, sharpness of characterization, a moral

earnestness pervading the judgments and reflections, and an ardor,

sometimes too exuberant, which gives intensity to the delineation even

while exciting doubts of its fidelity. Similar qualities had

characterized her acting, and they spring from a nature which a close

observer has described as clear in perception yet swayed by fantasy;

strong of will yet impulsive as quicksilver; finding enjoyment now in

animated discussion, now in impetuous riding, now in absolute repose;

full of maternal tenderness, yet fond of splendor and the excitements of

society; a nature, in short, abounding in contrasts, but substantially

that of a true, noble and lovable woman.

HIS NAME?

(_An incident of the Boston fire_.)

I.

--Oh the billows of fire!

With maëlstrom-like swirl,

Their surges they hurl

Over roof--over spire,

Mad--masterless--higher,--

Till with rumble--crack--crash,

Down boom with a flash,

Whole columns of granite and marble;--see! see!

Sucked in as a weed on the ocean might be,

Or engulfed as a sail

In the hurricane riot and wreak of the gale!

II.

Ha! yonder they rush where the death-dealing stream,

Over-pent, waits their gleam,

To shiver the city with earthquake!--Who, _who_

Will adventure, mid-flame, and unfasten the screw,--

Set the fiend loose, and save us so?--Fireman, you,

_You_ willing?--Would God you might hazard it!--

Nay,

The red tongues are licking the faucets now: Stay!

--Too late,--'tis too late!

If ruin comes, wait

Its coming: To go, is to perish:--Hold! Hold!

You are young,--I am old,--

You've a wife, too--and children?--O God! he is gone

Straight into destruction! The pipes, men! On, on,

Play the water-stream on him,--full--faster--the whole!

And now--Christ save his soul!

III.

--I stifle--I choke;

And _he_,--Heaven grant that he smother in smoke

Ere the fearful explosion comes. Hark! What's the shout?

--_Is he saved_?--_Is he out?_

--Did he compass his purpose,--the Hero?--_(One_ name

To-night we shall write on the records of fame,--

The perilous deed was so noble!) Why here

On my cheek is a tear,

Which not a whole city in ashes could claim!

--His name, now: _Can nobody tell me his name?_

M. J. P.

UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM LORD NELSON TO LADY HAMILTON.

[It has been a matter of congratulation that the destruction by the

Boston fire was confined to buildings and other property representing

simply the wealth of the city, and did not extend to its monuments or

its artistic and literary treasures. The exceptions are, in fact,

comparatively small in amount, yet they are such as must excite a

general regret. The contents of the studios in Summer street, and the

collection of armor, unique in this country, bequeathed by the late

Colonel Bigelow Lawrence to the Boston Athenaeum, and temporarily

deposited at 82 Milk street, could not perish without awaking other

feelings besides that of sympathy with their past or prospective

possessors. A similar loss was that of many of the books and manuscripts

amassed by the historian Prescott, and comprising the collections

pertaining to the Histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru and of

Philip II. The manuscripts were comprised in some thirty or forty folio

volumes, and consisted of copies or abstracts of documents in the public

archives and libraries of Europe, in the family archives of several

Spanish noblemen, and in private collections like that at Middle Hill.

The printed books, of which there were perhaps a thousand, included many

of great value and not a few of extreme rarity. A large mass of private

correspondence was also consumed. We are not yet informed whether the

same fate has befallen a small but very choice collection of autographs,

embracing letters written or signed by Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles

V., Pope Clement VII., Prospero Colonna, the Great Captain, and other

sovereigns and eminent personages of the fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries. Very few modern autographs were included in this collection,

the only examples, we believe, being notes written by Queen Victoria,

Prince Albert and the duke of Wellington, and a longer letter addressed

by Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton. This last, which we are permitted to

print from a copy made some time ago, is not exactly a model of

composition, but it is very characteristic, and shows the strength of

that enthrallment which led him, despite his natural kindness of heart,

to risk the lives of his men in order to communicate with the object of

his passion.]

SUNDAY NIGHT, Feb. 15, 9 o'clock [1801].

MY DEAR AMIABLE FRIEND: Could you have seen the boat leave the ship, I

am sure your heart would have sunk within you. _I would not have given

sixpence for the lives of the men_: a tremendous wave broke and missed

upsetting the boat by a miracle. O God, how my heart thumped to see them

safe! Then they got safe on shore, and I had given a two-pound note to

cheer up the poor fellows when they landed; _but I was so anxious to

send a letter for you._ I knew it was impossible for any boat to come

off to us since Friday noon, when the boat carried your letters enclosed

for Napean, and she still remains on shore. Only rest assured I always

write, and never doubt your old and dear friend, who never yet deserved

it. The gale abates very little, if anything, and it is truly fortunate

that our fleet is not in port, or some accident would most probably

happen; but both St. George and this ship have new cables, which is all

we have to trust to; but if my friend is true I have no fear. I can take

all the care which human foresight can, and then we must trust to

Providence, who keeps a lookout for poor Jack. I cannot, my dear friend,

afford to buy the three pictures of the "Battle of the Nile," or I

should like very much to have them, and Mr. Boyden cannot afford to

trust me one year. If he could, perhaps I could manage it. I have

desired my brother to examine the four numbers of the tickets I bought

with Gibbs. I hope he has told you. I dare say in the office here is the

numbers of the tickets my agents have bought for the ensuing lottery. I

hope we shall be successful. I hope you always kiss my godchild for me:

pray do, and _I will repay you ten times when we meet_, which I hope

will be very soon. Monday morning. It is a little more moderate, and we

are going to send a boat, but at present none can get to us, and,

therefore, I send this letter No. (1) to say we are in being. I hope in

the afternoon to be able to get letters, and, if possible, to answer

them. Kiss my godchild for me, bless it, and Believe me ever yours,

NELSON AND BRONTE.

"WHITE-HAT" DAY.

On one of the last days in September we were the astonished recipients

of a singular and mysterious invitation from a member of the New York

Board of Brokers. The note contained words like these: "Come to the

Exchange on Monday, September 30th: white hats are declared confiscated

on that day."

It would have puzzled Oedipus or a Philadelphia lawyer to trace the

connection between white hats and stocks, to tell what Hecuba was to

them or they to Hecuba, and why they should be more interfered with by

the New York Stock Exchange on the 30th of September than upon any other

day. It is true that during the last summer some slight political bias

was supposed to be hidden beneath that popular headpiece irreverently

styled "a Greeley plug," but then stocks are not politics, nor would any

but a punster trace an intimate connection between hats and polls. A

story has gone through the papers, to be sure, about an unfortunate

deacon who found it impossible to collect the coppers of the

congregation in a Greeley hat, but then slight excuses have been made

available on charitable occasions before the present election, and we

decline to accept the sentiment of that congregation as unmixed devotion

to the Republican candidates. They did not wish to Grant their money,

that was all.

And then, again, unlike the miller of the old conundrum, men generally

wear _white_ hats to keep their heads cool; with which laudable endeavor

why should the Stock Exchange wish to interfere? One never hears of a

"corner" in hats. And then, too, was it the bulls or the bears who

objected to them? Bulls, we all know, have an aversion to scarlet

drapery, but Darwin, in his studies of the feeling for color among

animals, has omitted any references to a horror of white hats even among

the most accomplished of the anthropoid apes.

Pondering all these problems, and many more, our puzzled trio went to

the Stock Exchange on the last day of September. We were conducted into

the safe seclusion of the Visitors' Gallery, from which coign of vantage

we could look down unharmed upon the frantic multitude below. The room

is large and very lofty, its prevailing tint a warm brown, relieved by

bright decorations of the Byzantine order. Across one end runs a small

gallery for visitors, without seats, and some twenty feet above the

floor, and opposite the gallery is a raised platform, with a long table

and majestic arm-chairs for the president and other officers of the

Board. High on the wall above these elevated dignitaries glitters in

large gold letters the mystic legend, "New York Stock Exchange." On the

left of the platform stands a large blackboard, whereon the fluctuations

in stocks are recorded, and around the sides of the room are displayed

various signs bearing the names of different stocks (like the banners of

the knights in royal chapels), beneath which eager groups collect. At

the lower end of the room, under the Visitors' Gallery, are seats

whereon weary brokers may repose after the brunt of battle. In the

centre of the upper end of the vast apartment is a long oval

cock-pit--if it may be so called--of two or three degrees, with a table

in the lowest circle. It is so arranged as to give the brokers, standing

upon the graded steps, full opportunity to see and to be seen. On the

table, in singular contrast with the spirit of the place, was a large

and beautiful basket of flowers. Anything more painfully incongruous it

would be difficult to imagine. The poor flowers seemed to wear an air of

patient suffering as they wasted their sweetness on that (literally)

howling wilderness.

It was just after ten, and the doors had been open but a few moments

when we entered the gallery, already quite full of ladies and

gentlemen--generally very young gentlemen, anxious to learn from the

glorious example of their elders. The floor below us was fast being

strewn with torn bits of paper, which have to be swept up several times

a day. Eager groups were gathered under the various signs upon the walls

and pillars, apparently playing the Italian game of _morra_, to judge by

the quick gestures of their restless fingers. Some were scribbling

cabalistic signs on little bits of paper, and almost all were howling

like maniacs or wild beasts half starved. The only place I was ever in

at all to be compared with it in volume and variety of noise is the

parrot-room in the London Zoological Gardens. Bedlam and Pandemonium I

have not visited--as yet--and consequently cannot speak from personal

experience. But the parrots in that awful house in Regent's Park are

capable of making more hideous noises in a given moment than any other

wild beasts in the world, except brokers. Here the human animal comes

out triumphantly supreme.

To add to the refreshing variety of the din, long, lanky youths in gray

sauntered about like the keepers of the carnivora, and bawled

incessantly till they were red in the face. These, we were told, were

the pages, who reported the state of the market and delivered orders and

commissions. To the uninitiated they were a fraud and a delusion, but so

was the whole thing. A crowd of men, walking about or standing in

groups, note-book in hand, talking eagerly or yelling unintelligible

nonsense at the top of their voices, and gesticulating with the fury of

madmen, while in and around the crowd strolled those extraordinary

pages, calmly shouting full in the brokers' faces,--this, we were told,

was "business!" This is the mysterious occupation to which our friends,

countrymen and lovers devote so large a portion of their time and

thoughts. At this strange diversion millions of dollars change hands in

a few hours, and bulls and bears in this little nest agree to make

things generally uncomfortable and uncertain for the outside world.

But where were the white hats, and what of their daring wearers? As the

crowd thickened, they began to shine out upon the general blackness in

obvious distinction. At first, the howling multitude, eager for filthy

lucre, took no particular notice of them beyond an occasional hurried

poke or pat, but this delusive mildness did not long continue. After the

first fifteen or twenty minutes, during which the favorite stocks had

been danced up and down a few times, like so many crying babies, the

appetite of the hundred-headed hydra abated a little, and the general

attention to business relaxed. Suddenly--no one knew whence or

wherefore--up rose a white hat in the air, high above the heads of the

people, and a bareheaded individual was seen struggling wildly in the

arms of the mob, who set up ironical cheers at his unavailing efforts to

regain his flying headpiece. It rose and fell faster and farther than

any fancy stock of them all, now soaring to the vaulted roof, now being

kicked along the dusty floor.

Press where ye see my white hat shine amidst the ranks of war,

seemed to be the sentiment of the occasion, as the unruly mob swayed and

struggled about the dilapidated victim of their sport. In one corner

stood a quiet, dignified gentleman, talking sedately to a little knot of

friends. He wore a tall white "stove-pipe" of the most obnoxious kind.

In a twinkling it was seized and sent flying toward the roof with its

softer predecessor. Its owner gave one glance over his shoulder, and

"smiled a sickly smile," while it was very evident that

The subsequent proceedings interested him no more.

The fun grew fast and furious, the air was literally darkened with

flying hats of every shape and size, but all white. The stout tall

beavers were converted into footballs till their crowns were kicked out

and their brims torn off, when they were seized upon as instruments for

further torture. Some innocent member of the large fraternity, now, to

use a nautical phrase, scudding under bare _polls_, was pounced upon,

and over his unfortunate head the crownless hat was drawn till the

ragged remnant of its brim rested upon his shoulders. One poor creature

was thus bonneted with at least three tiers of hats, and was last seen

on the edge of the cockpit struggling with imminent suffocation.

At the height of the howling, scuffling, kicking and fighting a short

diversion was effected. A tall and portly broker appeared upon the scene

in an entire suit of new broadcloth. It was unmistakably new, its

brilliancy quite undimmed. Instantly a rush was made for him by the

fickle crowd. They swept him, as by some mighty wave, into the centre of

the room: they turned him round and round like a pivoted statue, and

examined him and patted him approvingly on every side. Then they made a

large ring round him and gave him three cheers. Not content with this,

with one sudden impulse they rushed at him again, and tried to lift him

upon the table, that they might see him better. But this the portly

broker resisted: he fought like a good fellow, and the crowd, tired of

struggling with a man of so much weight, gave one final cheer and went

back to the chase of the white hats.

We stayed about half an hour to watch these elegant and refined

diversions: at the end of that time our patience and the white hats were

giving out together. The din was deafening and the dust was rapidly

rising. The floor was strewn with scraps of papers and the mangled

remains of felt and beaver. Brimless hats and hatless brims, linings,

bands, rent and tattered crowns, and ragged fragments of the fray, were

all over the place. A writhing victim in gray, masked by a crownless

hat, was struggling upon the table to the evident danger of those

unhappy flowers; the president was calling across the tumult in

stentorian tones; but the tumult refused to fall, and the imperturbable

pages were bawling upon the skirts of the crowd with stolid pertinacity.

The noise was terrific, the confusion indescribable.

We are often told that women are unfitted for business pursuits. If this

was business, I should say decidedly they were. My acquaintance with

women has been large and varied, but I have yet to see the woman whom I

consider qualified to be a member of the New York Board of Brokers. I

have been present at many gatherings composed entirely of women, from

the "Woman's Parliament" to country sewing-societies, but never, even in

that much-abused body, the New York Sorosis, have I seen a crowd of

women, however excited, however frolicsome, however full of fun, capable

of playing football with each other's bonnets even upon April Fools'

Day. I am convinced that not even Miss Anthony or Mrs. Stanton would

have hesitated to admit, had she been present on the auspicious occasion

above recorded, that there are limits even to woman's sphere. Let her

preach and practice, and sail ships, and make horse-shoes, and command

armies, if she will, let her vote for all sorts of disreputable

characters to be set over her, if she choose, but let her recognize the

fact that between her and the gentle amenities of the New York Stock

Exchange there is a great gulf fixed, which only the superior being man,

with his lordly intellect, his keen morality and his exquisite and

unvarying courtesy, can bridge over.

K.H.

MR. SOTHERN AS GARRICK.

One hundred and thirty-five years ago two young men came up to London to

try their fortune: half riding, half walking, the young fellows made

their journey. One was thick-set, heavy and uncouth, and years afterward

became known to men and fame as Samuel Johnson: the other was bright,

slender, active, and was called David Garrick. Some ten years later,

just before the battle of Culloden, a Dutch vessel, having crossed the

Channel, landed at Harwich. There was on board an apparent page, in

reality a young Viennese girl disguised in male attire, who journeyed up

to London too, where she soon made her appearance as a dancer at the

Hay-market Theatre: there she achieved great success, and became talked

about as "La Violette." She was under the patronage of the earl and

countess of Burlington, and finally became Mrs. Garrick. It is said

that she was the daughter of a respectable citizen of Vienna--that she

had been engaged to dance at the palace with the children of the empress

Maria Teresa, but that, her charms proving too attractive to the

emperor, the empress had packed her off to London with letters of

recommendation to persons of quality there. It seems more probable,

however, that she was am actress at Vienna, and simply crossed the sea

to try her fortune in England. Becoming fascinated with Garrick's

acting, she married him after refusing several more brilliant offers,

and in spite of the opposition of her kind patroness, Lady Burlington,

who wished her to marry so as to secure higher social position. This

match gave rise to much romantic gossip. It was said that a wealthy

young lady had fallen in love with the great actor one night in

_Romeo_--that he had been induced by her father to come to the house and

break the charm by feigning intoxication: some versions had it that he

came disguised as a physician. A popular German comedy was written upon

it, and still later Mr. Robertson dramatized it for the English stage,

and produced a play in which we have lately had an opportunity of

witnessing the fine acting of Mr. Sothern. Garrick was certainly

fortunate among actors: he not only achieved high professional fame, but

he accumulated a large private fortune and lived a happy domestic life

in a splendid home filled with choice works of art. The traveler abroad

who is favored with an invitation to the Garrick Club, may there see the

picture of the great actor "in his habit as he lived," looking down

nightly on a collection of the most renowned wits and authors of the

metropolis; and to crown all, when Mr. Sothern acts--were it not for his

moustache--we might suppose we saw the man himself alive before us.

Concerning Mr. Sothern's acting, it affords a fine example of that

quality--so very difficult of attainment, it would seem--perfect

_repose_; and by repose we do not mean torpidity or sluggishness or

inattention, as opposed to clamorous ranting, but we mean the complete

subordination of subordinate parts; so that, if we may use the

illustration, the gaudiness of the frame is not allowed to over-power

and destroy the effect of the picture. Everything is clear, distinct and

well marked: the forcible passages come with double effect in contrast

with preceding serenity. The actor's manner is not confined behind the

footlights: it diffuses itself, as it were, among his audience until it

seems as if they too were acting with him. This arises from the

perfection of the picture he presents, and that perfection is the result

of careful avoidance of everything that is unnatural. There is no

_unnecessary_ exertion put forth, no palpable straining after effect: he

strives to hold the mirror up to Nature, not Art, and in Nature there is

much repose between the tempests. Old players say that the most

difficult thing to teach a tyro is to stand still, and some actors never

learn it.

Careful attention to costume is another trait exhibited by Mr. Sothern.

He might easily make his first appearance as David Garrick in the

wealthy merchant's house in ordinary walking-dress, which could be

readily retained when he returns to the dinner-party to which he causes

himself to be invited. Instead of that, he appears in the full

riding-dress of the period--boots, spurs, whip, overcoat and all. This

is rapidly changed in time for the dinner-scene for a full-dress suit,

complete in every point--powdered hair, white silk stockings, and a

little _brette_, or walking rapier, peeping out from under the coat

skirt, not slung in a belt as heavier swords, but supported by light

steel chains fastened to a _chatelaine_, which slips behind the

waistband and can be taken off in a moment. In the last scene, where he

goes out to fight the duel, his dress is changed again, and dark silk

stockings are donned as more appropriate.

The last point we shall mention here about Mr. Sothern is his scrupulous

attention to the minor business of the stage: when he is not speaking

himself, his looks act. It is said of Macready that he began to be

Cardinal Richelieu at three o'clock in the afternoon, and that it was

dangerous to speak to him after that time. When Mr. Sothern plays Lord

Dundreary, if he is addressed on any subject during the progress of the

play, he answers in his Dundreary drawl, so as not to lose his

personality for a minute. The letter from his brother "Tham" he has

written out and reads; not that he does not know every word by heart,

for he must have read it a hundred times, but because he wants to _turn

over_ at the proper place. We all know what he has made of that part. A

play in which there is absolutely nothing of a plot, which would fall

dead from the hands of an inferior actor, becomes with Mr. Sothern as

popular as _Rip van Winkle_ is with Jefferson to play the sleepy hero.

It is to be observed that the three essentials for good acting just

mentioned--repose of manner, strict attention to dress, and strict

attention to minor details of stage-business--may be acquired by any

actor of average intellect who will devote proper time and study to the

task: they are not, like a fine figure, a handsome face or a sonorous

voice, adventitious gifts of Fortune which may be bestowed on one mortal

and denied to another. Mr. Sothern owes his success, evidently, to long

and careful preparation of his parts. In David Garrick he leaves but two

points at which criticism can carp: his pathos somehow lacks sufficient

tenderness, his love-making seems too devoid of passion. When young

Garrick won the heart of La Violette, he put more fire into his speech

and manner than Mr. Sothern exhibits at the close of the last act. He is

represented as always loving Ida Ingot, but at first conceals and

suppresses his love: when the avowal comes at last, it should be like

the bursting forth of a volcano, hot, fiery and irresistible.

M. M.

NOTES.

Sir Richard Wallace evidently aims to make himself, in a small way, the

Peabody of Paris. A cynic might maintain that his gifts were a trifle

sensational, and shaped with a view to procure the greatest amount of

notoriety at the price; but that they are frequent, and that they show

a hearty love for Paris on the Englishman's part, none can deny. It was

Sir Richard who not long ago gave about five thousand dollars to the use

of the Paris poor; it was he who, in the late hunting-season, is said to

have proposed to supply the city hospitals with fresh game--whether of

his own shooting or of that of his compatriots does not appear; it is

he, in fine, who has furnished to Paris eighty street-fountains, costing

in the factory six hundred and seventy-five francs each, or a total of

fifty-four thousand francs (say ten thousand eight hundred dollars), the

expense of setting them up being undertaken by the city. These

drinking-jets are in the main like those so familiar in American cities,

and are provided, of course, with tin cups attached by iron chains--"_à

la mode Anglaise_" add the French papers in an explanatory way. Now, the

extraordinary fact concerning these fountains is, that no sooner had the

first installment of nine been put up than all the tin cups, or

"goblets," as the Parisians call them, were stolen. They were renewed,

and again disappeared in a trice. In short, within fifteen days no less

than forty-seven of these goblets were made way with, despite their

strong fastenings--that is, an average of over five cups to each

fountain. What the sum-total of plunder has been since the first

fortnight, or whether the fountains are still as useless as spiked

cannon or tongueless bells, we have yet to learn.

Now comes a contrast. The countrymen of Sir Richard claim that in London

from time immemorial not a single cup was ever stolen from the public

fountains. So tempting a theme for generalization could not be resisted

by the Paris newspaper philosophers, who have deduced from this theft of

the cups a broad distinction between the British loafer and the French

loafer, declaring that the former "respects any collective property

which he partly shares," while the latter does not even draw this

distinction, but grabs whatever he can lay his hands on. "The luck of

the Wallace fountains," cries one moralizer, "shows how hard it is to

reform the Paris _gamin_ so long as the law contents itself with its

present measures. If the state does not speedily educate children found

straying in the street, it is all up with the present generation."

Thereupon follows a disquisition on the part which Paris children played

in the Commune. "Now, the child," adds our newspaper Wordsworth, "is the

man viewed through the big end of the opera-glass;" and he points his

moral, therefore, with the need of compulsory education. "One of the

first duties incumbent on the Chamber at the next session will be the

solution of this question. Let it take as a perpetual goad the fate of

the Wallace goblets. You begin by stealing a cup of tin--you end by

firing the Tuileries or plundering the Hôtel Thiers." There is a droll

mingling of Isaac Watts and Victor Hugo in this _dénoûment_, and despite

its practical good sense one is amused at the evolution of a grave

discourse from so trivial a text as the Wallace drinking-cups.

* * * * *

To people of a statistical rather than a sentimental turn, the

mathematics of marriage in different countries may prove an attractive

theme of meditation. It is found that young men from fifteen to twenty

years of age marry young women averaging two or three years older than

themselves, but if they delay marriage until they are twenty to

twenty-five years old, their spouses average a year younger than

themselves; and thenceforward this difference steadily increases, till

in extreme old age on the bridegroom's part it is apt to be enormous.

The inclination of octogenarians to wed misses in their teens is an

every-day occurrence, but it is amusing to find in the love-matches of

boys that the statistics bear out the satires of Thackeray and Balzac.

Again, the husbands of young women aged twenty and under average a

little above twenty-five years, and the inequality of age diminishes

thenceforward, till for women who have reached thirty the respective

ages are equal: after thirty-five years, women, like men, marry those

younger than themselves, the disproportion increasing with age, till at

fifty-five it averages nine years.

The greatest number of marriages for men take place between the ages of

twenty and twenty-five in England, between twenty five and thirty in

France, and between twenty-five and thirty-five in Italy and Belgium.

Finally, in Hungary the number of individuals who marry is seventy-two

in a thousand each year; in England it is 64; in Denmark, 59; in France,

57, the city of Paris showing 53; in the Netherlands, 52; in Belgium,

43; in Norway, 36. Widowers indulge in second marriages three or four

times as often as widows. For example, in England (land of Mrs. Bardell)

there are 66 marriages of widowers against 21 of widows; in Belgium

there are 48 to 16; in France, 40 to 12. Old Mr. Weller's paternal

advice, to "beware of the widows," ought surely to be supplemented by a

maxim to beware of widowers.

SHAKESPEARE, in one of his most famous madrigals, draws a vivid contrast

between youth and age, which, he declares, "cannot live together:"

Youth like summer morn,

Age like winter weather,

Youth like summer brave,

Age like winter bare:

Youth is hot and bold,

Age is weak and cold.

Science, which ruthlessly destroys so much poetry by its mattock and

spade, its scales, foot-rules and gauges, must now, we should judge,

take grave exception to the preceding bit of poesy and to the thousand

repetitions of its sentiment by the bards of all ages. By means of a

thermometer lately constructed to register with exactitude the degree of

heat in the human body, it is found, after numerous experiments under

varying circumstances, that the instrument marks 37.08° of heat on an

average for persons between twenty-one and thirty years of age, while it

marks 37.46° for people aged eighty. In face of this fact what becomes

of the "fervors of youth" and the "chills of age"? The highest average

temperatures in the human body, as indicated by this gauge, are those

which exist from birth to puberty--that is to say, 37.55° and 37.63°.

From the latter epoch the heat gradually lowers, to rise again with the

first approach of old age. Thus childhood shows the highest temperature,

old age the next, and middle life the lowest. We may add that the

greatest variations in the temperature of the body between health and

sickness are only a few tenths of a degree, according to this

measurement; for, the normal condition being 37.2° or 37.3°, an increase

to 38° would mark a burning fever, and a decrease to 36° would note the

icy approach of death. Hereafter, though we may graciously excuse to

poetic license the assertion that

Crabbed Age and Youth

Cannot live together,

we must yet sternly protest that the reason assigned--namely, that

"youth is hot and age is cold"--is contradicted by the facts of science.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Life of Charles Dickens. By John Forster. Vol. II. Philadelphia:

J.B. Lippincott & Co.

Beginning with Dickens's return from America in 1842, this volume covers

a period of less than ten years, the most productive, and apparently the

happiest, of his life. It brings out in even stronger relief than the

preceding volume his strong individuality, a trait which, whether it

attracts or repels--and on most persons we think it produces alternately

each of these effects--is full of interest, worthy of study and fruitful

of suggestions. Its superabundant energy seemed to create demands in

order that it might expend itself in satisfying them. Its persistence

was toughened by failure as much as by success. Its vivacity, verging

upon boisterousness, was incapable of being chilled. Its strenuousness

knew no lassitude, and needed no repose. In play as in work, in physical

exercise as in mental labor, in all his projects, purposes and

performances, Dickens seems to have been in a perpetual state of tension

that allowed of no reaction. His was a mind not morbidly self-conscious,

but ever aglow with the consciousness of power and the ardor of its

achievement, in-sensible of waste and undisturbed by critical

introspection.

The excitement into which he was thrown by the composition of his books

exceeds anything of the kind recorded in literary history, and stands in

strong contrast with the self-contained tranquillity with which Scott

performed an equal or greater amount of labor. Yet it does not, like

similar ebullitions in other men, suggest any notion of weakness or of a

talent strained beyond its capacity. It was coupled with an enormous

facility of execution and the ability to pass with undiminished

freshness from one field of action to another. It sprang from the

intensity with which every idea was conceived, and which belonged

equally to his smallest with his greatest undertakings. "The book," he

writes of the _Chimes_, "has made my face white in a foreign land. My

cheeks, which were beginning to fill out, have sunk again; my eyes have

grown immensely large; my hair is very lank, and the head inside the

hair is hot and giddy. Read the scene at the end of the third part

twice. I wouldn't write it twice for something.... Since I conceived, at

the beginning of the second part, what must happen in the third, I have

undergone as much sorrow and agitation as if the thing were real, and

have wakened up with it at night. I was obliged to lock myself in when I

finished it yesterday, for my face was swollen for the time to twice its

proper size, and was hugely ridiculous." The little book was written at

Genoa; and having finished it, he must make a winter journey to London,

"because," as he writes to Forster, "of that unspeakable restless

something which would render it almost as impossible for me to remain

here, and not see the thing complete, as it would be for a full

balloon, left to itself, not to go up." A further reason was to try the

effect of the story upon a circle of listeners, to be assembled for the

purpose: "Carlyle, indispensable, and I should like his wife of all

things; _her_ judgment would be invaluable. You will ask Mac, and why

not his sister? Stanny and Jerrold I should particularly wish. Edwin

Landseer, Blanchard perhaps Harness; and what say you to Fonblanque and

Fox?" After this it is amusing to read that the book "was not one of his

greatest successes, and it raised him up some objectors;" but the

reading was the germ of those which afterward brought him into such

close relations with his public.

Of another Christmas story he writes, "I dreamed _all last week_ that

the _Battle of Life_ was a series of chambers, impossible to be got to

rights or got out of, through which I wandered drearily all night. On

Saturday night I don't think I slept an hour. I was perpetually roaming

through the story, and endeavoring to dovetail the revolution here into

the plot. The mental distress quite horrible." Here we have, perhaps, a

clear case of the effects of overwork. But in general the details of his

plots, the names of the characters, above all, the titles of the

stories, were evolved with an amount of thought and discussion that

might have sufficed for the plan and the preparations for a battle.

"Martin Chuzzlewit" is not a name suggestive of long and serious

deliberation: one might rather suppose that it had turned up

accidentally and been accepted simply as being as good as another. Yet

it was not adopted till after many others had been discussed and

rejected. "Martin was the prefix to all, but the surname varied from its

first form of Sweezleden, Sweezleback and Sweeztewag, to those of

Chuzzletoe, Chuzzleboy, Chubblewig and Chuzzlewig." _David Copperfield_

was preceded by a still longer list of abortions, and _Household Words,_

as a mere title, was the result of a parturition far exceeding in length

and severity any throes of travail known to natural history.

All this was unaccompanied by any of the doubts and misgivings, the fits

of depression and intervals of lassitude, which are the ordinary

tortures of authorship. Nor had it any connection with the weaknesses of

the craft, its small vanities and jealousies. "It was," as Mr. Forster

well remarks, "part of the intense individuality by which he effected

so much to set the high value which in general he did upon what he was

striving to accomplish." Hence, too, no half-formed and then abandoned

projects were among the stepping-stones of his career. A plan or an

idea, once conceived, was certain to be shaped, developed and matured;

and whatever the result, it left up disheartening effect, no feeling of

distrust, to cripple a subsequent undertaking.

Nor was Dickens so absorbed in his work as to leave it reluctantly, or

to find no fullness of satisfaction in occupations or enjoyments of a

different kind. On the contrary, no man ever threw himself so heartily

and entirely into the business of the hour, or more eagerly sought

diversion and change. Dinners, private and public, excursions in chosen

companionship, amateur theatricals, schemes of charity or benevolence,

occupied a large portion of his time, and were entered into with an

ardor which never flagged or needed to be stimulated. His

correspondence--an unfailing barometer to indicate the state of the

mental atmosphere--is always full of life, overflowing, for the most

part, with animal spirits, often vivid in description both of places and

people, turning discomforts and embarrassments into subjects of lively

narrative or indignant protest. The letters from Genoa and Lausanne are

especially copious and entertaining, and form, we think, the most

interesting portion of the book. The later chapters, giving the final

year of his residence in Devonshire Terrace, are less satisfactory. We

would fain have had a picture of that circle of which Dickens was one of

the most prominent figures; but though his own personality is revealed

in the fullest light, the group in the background is left indistinct,

most of its members being barely visible, and none of them adequately

portrayed.

* * * * *

Émaux et Camées. Par Théophile Gautier. Nombre définitif. Paris:

Charpentier; New York: F.W. Christern.

Gautier was polishing and adding to his literary jewelry almost to the

day of his death, and the final edition which he published among the

last of his works about doubles the number of poems first issued. These

verses are like nothing we have in English. Their imagery is strongly

sophisticated, tortured, brought from vast distances, and then chilled

into form. Yet they are the most sincere utterances of a soul fed

perpetually among cabinets and picture-galleries, to whom their compact

method of utterance is, so to speak, secondarily natural. That they are

precious and beauteous no one can deny. How sparkling are the successive

descriptions of women--blonde, brune, Spanish, contralto-voiced,

coquettish, etc.--whom the poet, like some capricious artist, invites

into his atelier, drapes hastily with old Moorish or Venetian or

diaphanous costumes, and then reflects in a diminishing mirror, changing

the model into a fine statuette of ivory and enamel! More virile and

thoughtful images are intermixed: such are the figures of the old

Invalides seen at the Column Vendôme in a December fog, and for whom he

pleads: "Mock not those men whom the street urchin follows, laughing:

they were the Day of which we are the twilight--maybe the night!" Not

less fresh are the two "Homesick Obelisks"--that in the Place de la

Concorde, wearying its stony heart out for Egypt, and that at Luxor,

equally tired, and longing to be planted at Paris, among a living crowd.

But Gautier is a colorist, an artist with words, and he is at his best

when he works without much outline, celebrating draperies, bouquets and

laces, to all of which he can give a meaning quite other than the

milliner's, as where he asserts that the plaits of a rose-colored dress

are "the lips of my unappeased desires," or describes March as a barber,

powdering the wigs of the blossoming almond trees, and a valet, lacing

up the rosebuds in their corsets of green velvet. Whatever he touches he

leaves artificial, "enameled," yet charming. The verses added in the

present edition are more pensive, even sombre. A life given to art

wholly, without patriotism or religion or philosophy, does not prepare

the greenest old age. There is a long and beautiful poem, "Le Château du

Souvenir," which he fills, not exactly with Charles Lamb's "old familiar

faces," but with portraits of his mistresses and of his old self. There

is the "Last Vow"--to a woman he has pursued "for eighteen years," and

whom he still accosts, though "the white graveyard lilacs have blossomed

about my temples, and I shall soon have them tufting and shading all my

forehead." There is also the accent of his irresponsible courtiership,

the facile and unashamed flattery he paid to such a woman as Princess

Mathilde. This personage was, or is, an artist; and we may not be

mistaken in believing that we have seen, cast aside in the vast

storerooms of Haseltine's galleries in this city--an example and gnomon

of disenchanted glory--her water-color sketch called the "Fellah Woman,"

and the very one of which Gautier sang: "Caprice of a fantastic brush

and of an imperial leisure!... Those eyes, a whole poem of languor and

pleasure, resolve the riddle and say, 'Be thou Love--I am Beauty.'"

The late poems, however, as well as the old, are filled with felicities.

They contain many a lesson of the word-master, who, though he did not

attain the Academy, left the French language gold, which he found

marble. The ornaments, exquisite licenses, foreign graces and wide

researches which Gautier conferred upon his mother-tongue have enriched

it for future time, and they are best seen in this volume.

* * * * *

Concord Days. By A. Bronson Alcott. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

In these loose leaves we have the St. Martin's summer of a life. Mr.

Alcott, from his quiet home in Concord, and from the edifice of his

seventy-three years, picks out those mental growths and moral treasures

which have kept their color through all the changes of the seasons. They

bear the mark of selection, of choice, from out a vast abundance of

material: to us readers the scissors have probably been a kinder

implement than the pen. Be that as it may, the selections given are all

worth saving, and the fragmentary resurrection is just about as much as

our age has time to attend to of the growths that were formed when New

England thought was young. That was the day when Mrs. Hominy fastened

the cameo to her frontal bone and went to the sermon of Dr. Channing,

when young Hawthorne chopped straw for the odious oxen at Brook Farm,

and when a budding Booddha, called by his neighbors Thoreau, left

mankind and proceeded to introvert himself by the borders of Walden

Pond. Mr. Alcott's little diary gives us some of the best skimmings of

that time of yeast. There is Emerson-worship, Channing-worship, Margaret

Fuller-worship and the pale cast of _The Dial_. There is, besides, in

another stratum that runs through the collection, a vein of very welcome

investigation amongst old authors--Plutarch's charming letter of

consolation to his wife on the death of their child; Crashaw's "Verses

on a Prayer-Book;" Evelyn's letter on the origin of his _Sylva_; and

many a jewel five-words-long filched from the authors whom modern taste

votes slow and insupportable. We mention these to give some idea of the

spirit in which this work of marquetry is executed--a work too

fragmentary and incoherent to be easily describable except by its

specimens. And while culling fragments, we cannot forbear mentioning the

curious records of Mr. Alcott's "Conversations," held now with Frederika

Bremer, now with a band of large-browed Concord children, held forty

years ago, and turning perpetually upon the deeper questions of

metaphysics and religion; we will even indulge ourselves with a short

extract from one of the "Conversations with Children," reported verbatim

by an apparently concealed auditress, and eliciting many a cunning bit

of infantine wisdom, besides the following finer rhapsody, which Mr.

Alcott succeeded in charming out of the lips of a boy six years of age:

"Mr. Alcott! you know Mrs. Barbauld says in her hymns, everything is

prayer; every action is prayer; all nature prays; the bird prays in

singing; the tree prays in growing; men pray--men can pray _more_; we

feel; we have more, more than Nature; we can know, and do right:

_Conscience prays_; all our powers pray; action prays. Once we said,

here, that there was a Christ in the bottom of our spirits, when we try

to be good. Then we pray in Christ; and that is the whole!"

To think that the lips of this ingenuous and golden-mouthed lad may be

now pouring out patriotism in Congress is rather sad; but the author's

own career tells us that there are some of the Chrysostoms of 1830 who

have had the courage to keep quiet, and sweeten their own lives for

family use. Mr. Alcott betrays in every line the kindest, sanest and

humanest spirit; and we wish he could feel how grateful some of us are

for his example of a thinker who can keep quiet, and a writer who can

show the power of reticence.

* * * * *

Thirty Years in the Harem; or, The Autobiography of Melek-Hanum, wife of

H.H. Kibrizli-Mehemet-Pasha. New York: Harper & Brothers.

We have had many revelations from the interior, but nothing quite like

this. Most histories are valuable in proportion to the truthfulness of

the narrator, but Mrs. Melek's story owes a large show of its interest

to her obvious tension of the long-bow. It is, in fact, a

self-revelation--the vain and audacious betrayal by an Oriental woman of

the narrowness, the shallowness, the dishonesty which ages of false

education have fastened upon her race. The lady in question is--and

evidently knows herself to be--an exception among her countrywomen for

ability and acumen: an extreme self-satisfaction and vanity are revealed

in the recital of her most disreputable tricks. She passes for a white

blackbird, a woman of intellect caught in the harem; and it needs but

little ingenuity to guess the torment she must have been to her

protectors--first to the excellent Dr. Millingen, with whom she formed a

love-match, and whom she abuses--and then to her second husband,

Kibrizli, ambassador in 1848 to the court of England, upon whom she

attempted to palm off an heir by the ruse practiced by our own revered

Mrs. Cunningham. Whatever the clever Melek does, or whatever treatment

she receives, it is always she who is in the right, and her eternal

"enemies" who are unjust, barbarous and stingy. The ferocious

blackmailing of natives in the Holy Land which she practiced when her

husband represented the sultan there, is represented as cleverness; but

her divorce after the infamous false accouchement is a piece of

persecution. The marriage and adventures of her daughter form a tangled

romance through which we hear of a great deal more oppression and

cruelty; and the escape into Europe, where the old enchantress appears

to be now prowling in poverty and degradation, concludes the curious

story. The narrative bears marks of having passed through a French

translation and then a British version. To disentangle the thread of

actuality that probably runs through it would be too troublesome and

futile; but the truths that the wily Melek cannot help telling--the

facts of the harem and of Eastern life that involuntarily sprinkle it

all like a flavoring of strange spices--these are what give it the odd

dash of interest which keeps it in our hands long after we had meant to

toss it aside. Here is a "screaming sister" of the East--an odalisque

who was not going to be oppressed and degraded like the other women, but

who meant to be capable and cultivated and smart, just like the

Christian ladies; and this bundle of lies and crimes and hates is what

she arrives at.

* * * * *

Hints on Dress; or, What to Wear, When to Wear it, and How to Buy it. By

Ethel C. Gale, (Putnam's Handy-Book Series.) New York: G.P. Putnam &

Sons.

This little book will certainly elicit commendation from all who

consider the subject of dress within the pale of aesthetic treatment;

and, what is still more fortunate, it will probably serve to elevate, in

some degree, the standard of taste among that large class of persons for

whom handy volumes are chiefly compiled. Its statements and deductions

are accurate, sensible, comprehensive and practical, and the style in

which they are presented is simple and attractive. The color, form and

suitability of dress, as well as the best methods of economy in its

purchase and manufacture, are intelligently treated. We have only to

regret the want of a chapter devoted to the hygiene of dress, which is a

subject deserving the earnest attention of every friend of physical

development. Ten or a dozen pages given to this topic might have done a

service to hundreds who are willing enough to gather knowledge in

passing, but who are repelled from the separate consideration of any

subject which seems to call for the exercise of serious thought.

* * * * *

A Sketch Map of the Nile Sources and Lake Region of Central Africa,

showing Dr. Livingstone's Discoveries and Mr. Stanley's Route. Folio,

folded. Philadelphia: T. Elwood Zell.

A clear, well-executed polychrome map, evidently copied from the one

recently published in England, if not actually printed there. It

exhibits not only the route of Dr. Livingstone during the period

included between the years 1866 and 1872, and that taken by Mr. Stanley

in his recent search, but also the course which the former proposes to

follow in the prosecution of his discoveries. The boundaries of lakes

and the courses of rivers, where definitely known, are indicated by

unbroken lines--where still supposititious, by dotted ones. The map,

which is printed on heavy paper, is thirteen inches wide by eighteen

inches long, and being folded within a stiff duodecimo cover, can be

easily preserved and readily consulted.

_Books Received_.

Papers relating to the Transit of Venus in 1874. Prepared under the

Direction of the Commissioners authorized by Congress. Washington, D.C.:

Government Printing-office.

Reports on Observations of Encke's Comet during its Return in 1871. By

Asaph Hall and Wm. Harkness. Washington, D.C.: Government

Printing-Office.

Harry Delaware; or, An American in Germany. By Mathilde Estvan. New

York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

California for Health, Pleasure and Residence. By Charles Nordhoff. New

York: Harper & Brothers.

The Lives of General U.S. Grant and Henry Wilson. Philadelphia: T.B.

Peterson & Brothers.

The Romance of American History. By M. Schele de Vere. New York: G.P.

Putnam & Sons.

Book of Ballads, Tales and Stories. By Benjamin G. Herre. Lancaster,

Pa.: Wylie & Griest.

The Poet at the Breakfast Table. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston: James

R. Osgood & Co.

The Lawrence Speaker. By Philip Lawrence. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson &

Brothers.

Memoir of a Huguenot Family. By Ann Maury. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

Within the Maze. By Mrs. Henry Wood. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson &

Brothers.

Sermons. By Rev. C.D.N. Campbell, D.D. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

Outlines of History. By Ed. A. Freeman, D.C.L. New York: Holt &

Williams.

The End of the World. By Edward Eggleston. New York: Orange Judd & Co.

Sermons. By Rev. H.R. Haweis, M.A. New York: Holt & Williams.

Kaloolah. By W.S. Mayo, M.D. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

Nast's Illustrated Almanac for 1873. New York: Harper & Brothers.

A Summer Romance. By Mary Healy. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Song Life. By Philip Phillips. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Gavroche. By M.C. Pyle. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.