I passed the next two months between this city and Philadelphia, taking
leave of the audience of the latter city on Saturday, May the 9th,
attended by demonstrations of the kindest and most flattering regard.
The next week I idled between Princeton and New York. The Artists'
Exhibition was at this time open here, and it afforded me genuine
pleasure to see many pictures that were good, and numbers of early
attempts of a highly promising character.
I also visited an exhibition of pictures which had been proffered to
Congress at the sum of forty thousand dollars, in order that this
collection might form the foundation of a great national gallery; a
worthy object, and of which these pictures would have formed a
right-becoming commencement.
Here were specimens, and worthy ones, of many masters; amongst others a
Murillo, indisputably genuine, and, although a little faded in colour,
still worth a wilderness of most other productions. The subject was a
painful one too, being the agony of Christ on the Mount of Olives.
Never, surely, was the utter prostration of flesh and soul so speakingly
made out; bitter indeed must the cup have been so painfully contemplated
by one so meek, so patient of suffering; Omniscience only, being so
entreated, could yet have held it to the sufferer's pallid lips, or
contemplated with a fixed purpose the sorrowing eyes imploringly cast
upwards.
Before the kneeling Christ,--the worn and wasted man,--there floated an
angel worthy of the dying Psalmist's imagining, so unearthly, so
ethereal! What a full heart must the inspired painter have had as in his
mind's eye he purely shadowed forth this most perfect conception of one
of those who hold companionship with God! It was made up of all the
rarest traits of beauty, yet its loveliness was not of the world: the
veriest dullard looking on it would have paused in admiration; the most
brutal have gazed into those pure eyes, untainted by one earthly
feeling, one sinful thought, or impure desire. On my mind the effect was
thrilling: I have pictured to myself angels as poets have described
them, and have often before looked upon them such as they have been
conceived by Angelo, Correggio, and other master-spirits amongst men,
and have seen faces of theirs on which I could have looked unsatiated
again and again, and forms I could have loved with all my heart; but
never beheld an emanation of the Spirit of God, a thing only to be gazed
on holily and worshipped humbly, until I met with this angel of
Murillo's.
Were I Pope, the painter should be canonized as one visibly inspired
from heaven, and on whose visions angels must have waited, since earth
never could have supplied from its fairest a model for such expression
as he has here given to the comforter of that heart-broken Christ. It is
worth living virtuously, to die in the hope of such companionship
hereafter, and for all eternity. After having been for two years
deprived of the pleasure an enthusiast derives from the painter's art,
the mere contemplation of such a picture elevates and refines one's
spirit; the world and worldly feelings are forgot, and for a moment the
soul breathes freely within its earthly prison.
Here were three pictures of Sir Joshua Reynolds; one a group of the
Clive family, including the native Ayah holding a little girl on a
chair. This Indian nurse is painted to the life, graceful, animated, and
devoted; only for the difference of complexion, one might imagine the
delicate girl she looks on with such tender pride her own, and not the
offspring of the cold white woman whose eyes are fixed on you as she
stands _vis-a-vis_ to her stiff lord, who is dressed in a
rappee-coloured habit richly overlaid with gold.
This picture might very well be described as a fancy subject, and
designated Nature and Art. Opposite this fine picture of our English
master hung another group, by Rembrandt; making up in force and colour
what it lacked in delicacy and refinement. The subject was the De Witt
family; and each portrait wore that genuine stamp of truth that left no
question of their resemblance to the Dutch originals.
There were some sea-pieces by Backhuysen, and one by Vanderveldt;
several excellent landscapes; a couple of gallery pictures worthy a
place in the Pitti, together with Danby's Opening of the Sixth Seal. All
together, in fact, this was a collection of no mean pretensions, which
would have been an exceedingly creditable foundation on which to have
raised a national gallery. The sum which it was required Congress should
appropriate to the purchase was forty thousand dollars; and considering
how that assembly is constituted, how little most of its members know or
care about pictures, or of their intrinsic value, and how utterly
unimbued they are with any conception of the moral worth of art to a
young nation, I conceive it very creditable to the body that the motion
was negatived by only two votes.
How could a member from Illinois or Mississippi have justified such an
item in the budget to his constituents? I can fancy a group of good
Jackson men, after reading of an appropriation of forty thousand dollars
for the purchase of twenty pictures, raising their admiring eyes to a
portrait of the General swinging from the signpost, for the painting of
which, with a horse's head into the bargain, the tavern-keeper, Major
Jones, had paid no cent more than fifteen dollars; and then coming back
on the corrupt motives which could induce a vote of a couple of thousand
a-piece for pictures "that could not by any natural means be liker
nature, or more handsomely done, nohow, by any foreigner that ever
fisted a paint-brush."
The attempting Congress was, in truth, a mistake; but I cannot help
thinking that, had a subscription been opened in either of the great
Northern cities, or in New Orleans, for the purpose of founding a State
collection, a much greater sum might have been readily raised; since
there are in each of these cities numbers of wealthy individuals having
the good taste to rightly appreciate the value of such an Institution,
and public spirit enough to have effected the object, had it once
received the impetus. As it is, I could not help regretting that the
opportunity was lost, the pictures being advertised for sale without
reserve, the auction to take place in a few days.
On the 19th we had a grand military ceremony and procession, to receive
and escort to the Battery the remains of General Leavensworth, a brave
and very popular officer, who died in consequence of the fatigue and
privations incurred on the late prairie expedition amongst the tribes of
the Missouri. His remains were brought hither by way of the Lakes on the
route to the place of sepulture.
The volunteer corps were all turned out on this occasion, each
remarkable for the neatness of its dress and completeness of
appointment. The members of these corps also had a trim and dainty air
well becoming men playing at soldiers,--a game, by the way, no
full-grown biped who regards his personal dignity ought ever to play
after arriving at the years of discretion: for youths it is a cheerful
and becoming amusement enough; but for fat, full-blown gentlemen!
Nothing can be conceived more whimsical than the uncomfortable air of
ease it is necessary to assume on the occasion; particularly for such as
are promoted to the ticklish degree of field-officers; each of whom is
most unconscionably expected at one and the same instant to retain
possession of a hard-mouthed horse, a pair or two of reins, a sword, a
plumed _chapeau_, and his seat into the bargain, having only the
ordinary allowance of hands to help himself withal. It is all very
amusing for the bystanders to laugh at the cruel scrape their friends
are in when so be-deviled in a crowded street on a hot day; but let
those who conceive the matter so easy, only get appointed to the
dangerous eminence, and try how they like it.
Good-humour and cool temper are also indispensable requisites in a
commander of volunteer cavalry here; for on this occasion I beheld two
or three impatient carmen and restive jarveys very coolly charge upon
the flank of the advance of cavalry whilst the troop was filing across
the street out of the park, and persist in forcing the line, _malgre_
the civil remonstrance of the combined staff, who nevertheless yielded
with the best possible humour.
Now in England I have invariably noted that your chaw-bacon, when once
he buckles harness on, and has "the blast of war blown in his ears,"
becomes a very Tartar in his bearing, and is much less conciliating
towards his fellow snobs than is your regular soldier, whose trade is
war. With us, your yeomen whenever they have a chance, I have observed,
most uncivilly poke about the lieges with but and bayonet, or thump and
rump them with their chargers, and entice the ill-broken brutes with
insidious prods of the spur to swish their tails, if tails they have,
into the upturned phizes of their awe-stricken fellows.
Here, on the contrary, your volunteers "do their spiriting gently:" all
is good-nature and good manners; and a front is diminished, or a column
of companies in line of march is eased off to the right or left to make
way for carts or coaches, as the case requires, with a promptness which
is the more creditable from the fact that the execution of a change in
movement is no light matter.
The persons who appeared least to enjoy the _eclat_ of this military
_fete_ were the officers of the regular United States' army. They were
readily distinguished by their upright, soldier-like air, together with
a certain cold, half-proud expression, as though they discovered no fun
in the thing, and moreover were insensible to the honour of the
companionship they were admitted to. Added to the above characteristics
which struck me, I perceived that not one of these gentlemen had so much
as unsheathed his sword, or seemed aware of having such an appendage by
his side; whereas, of the gallant volunteers, there was not a man, from
the surgeon to the colonel, but had his iron out brightly flashing back
the sunbeams, although to some of the mounted officers this must have
been a matter of additional inconvenience, not to say considerable
peril.
During the course of the procession a salute was fired from the battery
by the mounted artillery corps; the bands played, and the bells of the
different churches on the line of march tolled for the dead.
On the whole, this little affair was very well conceived, and better
managed, than it would have been by any other citizen troops, excepting,
perhaps, the French, who appear to adopt the air and habit of soldiers
more perfectly than any other _bourgeoisie_ whatever.
On Friday, May 28th, I acted for the last time in the States, and so
ended at the Park, where I began, and as I began, to a crowded audience.
But the merry faces assembled here were no longer unknown to me; I was
on my _debut_, a stranger amongst strangers: I now felt myself
surrounded by personal friends, and by an audience which had frankly
welcomed me; which had continued to cherish my efforts by increasing
kindness and consideration, and which had now thronged here less perhaps
to witness a performance so often repeated, than to take leave of an
individual with whom the persons composing it had cultivated a close
acquaintanceship, and for whose talent they had encouraged a preference.
I am not of those who look upon the bond linking audience and actor as
a mercenary contract, for the hours during which the latter yields his
quantum of strength and spirit to the former for so much coin, and there
is an end. Were I, unhappily, possessed by such a morbid feeling, I
could no longer act, the spell would be broken. It is true, I might
constrain bone and sinew to administer to my necessities, and continue
to barter these with the public for bread; but the inspiring spirit
would be away, sunk past recall. Severed from the sympathies of those it
wrought for, it would cease to lighten upon the scene, which the power
of enlisting those sympathies alone redeems from contempt.
But it is not so, as every well-constituted mind will avouch.
Preference, and a constant expression of favour from his auditory,
necessarily beget a kind feeling in return: the actor is aware also that
he is not always in a condition to fulfil his part of the bond; illness,
low spirits, crosses, losses, or any of "the thousand ills that flesh is
heir to," rob the mind of its elasticity, and the body of its power; yet
rarely does the disappointed auditor turn on the favourite and act the
clamorous creditor.
Even in very extreme cases, what a spirit of forbearance have we seen
exhibited, what positive sympathy have we felt extended in our own time
to cherished players! It is at such moments that, more exposed, as he
is, to immediate censure, and more helpless than any other of the
servants of the public, he also feels himself more especially, more
kindly considered, and, if possessed of a kindly heart, cannot fail to
be touched by the feeling.
After illness or prolonged absence too, it is in the electric burst of
welcome, the enthusiastically prolonged cheer of gratulation, and in the
genuine pleasure sparkling from hundreds of uplifted ardent eyes, that
the man who devotes himself to win the player's meed receives his brief,
his shadowy it may be, but his inspiring triumph, accompanied by the
assurance that he is closely linked with the kindest feelings of those
who for the scene are subject to his thrall.
And when at length the hour of farewell comes, it is in the anxious
pause, the breathless attention, yet more impressive than all other
species of homage, that "the poor player," about to be "heard no more,"
reads the assurance that on the many young fresh hearts now subject to
his art he has indelibly engraven his name, often to be pleasantly
recalled in after hours, perhaps of pain and worldly care.
It is in the hope of gaining this living record he seeks consolation for
the absence of all other less perishable fame: expecting, hoping nothing
from posterity, he has a stronger claim upon the kindness of his
contemporaries, for whom alone he lives, and the feeling is reciprocal:
hence it is that these repay him with a superabundance of present
regard, to soften to him the consciousness of the oblivion to which his
memory is inevitably consigned, however great his genius, and however
ardent its longings "after immortality."