On arriving at Brighton, we found the village thronged with people,

horses, and vehicles. Probably there is no place in New England where

the character of an agricultural population may be so well studied.

Almost all the farmers within a reasonable distance make it a point, I

suppose, to attend Brighton Fair pretty frequently, if not on business,

yet as amateurs. Then there are all the cattle-people and butchers who

supply the Boston market, and dealers from far and near; and every man

who has a cow or a yoke of oxen, whether to sell or buy, goes to

Brighton on Monday. There were a thousand or two of cattle in the

extensive pens belonging to the tavern-keeper, besides many that were

standing about. One could hardly stir a step without running upon the

horns of one dilemma or another, in the shape of ox, cow, bull, or ram.

The yeomen appeared to be more in their element than I have ever seen

them anywhere else, except, indeed, at labor;--more so than at

musterings and such gatherings of amusement. And yet this was a sort of

festal day, as well as a day of business. Most of the people were of a

bulky make, with much bone and muscle, and some good store of fat, as if

they had lived on flesh-diet;--with mottled faces too, hard and red,

like those of persons who adhered to the old fashion of spirit-drinking.

Great, round-paunched country squires were there too, sitting under the

porch of the tavern, or waddling about, whip in hand, discussing the

points of the cattle. There were also gentlemen-farmers, neatly, trimly,

and fashionably dressed, in handsome surtouts and trousers, strapped

under their boots. Yeomen, too, in their black or blue Sunday suits,

cut by country tailors, and awkwardly worn. Others (like myself) had on

the blue, stuff frocks which they wear in the fields, the most

comfortable garments that ever were invented. Country loafers were among

the throng,--men who looked wistfully at the liquors in the bar, and

waited for some friend to invite them to drink,--poor, shabby,

out-at-elbowed devils. Also, dandies from the city, corseted and

buckramed, who had come to see the humors of Brighton Fair. All these,

and other varieties of mankind, either thronged the spacious bar-room of

the hotel, drinking, smoking, talking, bargaining, or walked about among

the cattle-pens, looking with knowing eyes at the horned people. The

owners of the cattle stood near at hand, waiting for offers. There was

something indescribable in their aspect, that showed them to be the

owners, though they mixed among the crowd. The cattle, brought from a

hundred separate farms, or rather from a thousand, seemed to agree very

well together, not quarrelling in the least. They almost all had a

history, no doubt, if they could but have told it. The cows had each

given her milk to support families,--had roamed the pastures, and come

home to the barn-yard,--had been looked upon as a sort of member of the

domestic circle, and was known by a name, as Brindle or Cherry. The

oxen, with their necks bent by the heavy yoke, had toiled in the

plough-field and in haying-time for many years, and knew their master's

stall as well as the master himself knew his own table. Even the young

steers and the little calves had something of domestic sacredness about

them; for children had watched their growth, and petted them, and played

with them. And here they all were, old and young, gathered from their

thousand homes to Brighton Fair; whence the great chance was that they

would go to the slaughter-house, and thence be transmitted, in sirloins,

joints, and such pieces, to the tables of the Boston folk.

William Allen had come to buy four little pigs to take the places of

four who have now grown large at our farm, and are to be fatted and

killed within a few weeks. There were several hundreds, in pens

appropriated to their use, grunting discordantly, and apparently in no

very good humor with their companions or the world at large. Most or

many of these pigs had been imported from the State of New York. The

drovers set out with a large number, and peddle them along the road till

they arrive at Brighton with the remainder. William selected four, and

bought them at five cents per pound. These poor little porkers were

forthwith seized by the tails, their legs tied, and then thrown into our

wagon, where they kept up a continual grunt and squeal till we got home.

Two of them were yellowish, or light gold-color, the other two were

black and white, speckled; and all four of very piggish aspect and

deportment. One of them snapped at William's finger most spitefully, and

bit it to the bone.

All the scene of the Fair was very characteristic and

peculiar,--cheerful and lively, too, in the bright, warm sun. I must see

it again; for it ought to be studied.

* * * * *

_September 28._--A picnic party in the woods, yesterday, in honor of

little Frank Dana's birthday, he being six years old. I strolled out,

after dinner, with Mr. Bradford, and in a lonesome glade we met the

apparition of an Indian chief, dressed in appropriate costume of

blanket, feathers, and paint, and armed with a musket. Almost at the

same time, a young gypsy fortune-teller came from among the trees, and

proposed to tell my fortune. While she was doing this, the goddess Diana

let fly an arrow, and hit me smartly in the hand. The fortune-teller and

goddess were in fine contrast, Diana being a blonde, fair, quiet, with a

moderate composure; and the gypsy (O. G.) a bright, vivacious,

dark-haired, rich-complexioned damsel,--both of them very pretty, at

least pretty enough to make fifteen years enchanting. Accompanied by

these denizens of the wild wood, we went onward, and came to a company

of fantastic figures, arranged in a ring for a dance or a game. There

was a Swiss girl, an Indian squaw, a negro of the Jim Crow order, one or

two foresters, and several people in Christian attire, besides children

of all ages. Then followed childish games, in which the grown people

took part with mirth enough,--while I, whose nature it is to be a mere

spectator both of sport and serious business, lay under the trees and

looked on. Meanwhile, Mr. Emerson and Miss Fuller, who arrived an hour

or two before, came forth into the little glade where we were assembled.

Here followed much talk. The ceremonies of the day concluded with a cold

collation of cakes and fruit. All was pleasant enough,--an excellent

piece of work,--"would 't were done!" It has left a fantastic impression

on my memory, this intermingling of wild and fabulous characters with

real and homely ones, in the secluded nook of the woods. I remember

them, with the sunlight breaking through overshadowing branches, and

they appearing and disappearing confusedly,--perhaps starting out of the

earth; as if the everyday laws of Nature were suspended for this

particular occasion. There were the children, too, laughing and sporting

about, as if they were at home among such strange shapes,--and anon

bursting into loud uproar of lamentation, when the rude gambols of the

merry archers chanced to overturn them. And apart, with a shrewd, Yankee

observation of the scene, stands our friend Orange, a thick-set, sturdy

figure, enjoying the fun well enough, yet rather laughing with a

perception of its nonsensicalness than at all entering into the spirit

of the thing.

This morning I have been helping to gather apples. The principal farm

labors at this time are ploughing for winter rye, and breaking up the

greensward for next year's crop of potatoes, gathering squashes, and not

much else, except such year-round employments as milking. The crop of

rye, to be sure, is in process of being thrashed, at odd intervals.

I ought to have mentioned among the diverse and incongruous growths of

the picnic party our two Spanish boys from Manilla;--Lucas, with his

heavy features and almost mulatto complexion; and José, slighter, with

rather a feminine face,--not a gay, girlish one, but grave, reserved,

eying you sometimes with an earnest but secret expression, and causing

you to question what sort of person he is.

* * * * *

_Friday, October 1._--I have been looking at our four swine,--not of the

last lot, but those in process of fattening. They lie among the clean

rye straw in the sty, nestling close together; for they seem to be

beasts sensitive to the cold, and this is a clear, bright, crystal

morning, with a cool, northwest wind. So there lie these four black

swine, as deep among the straw as they can burrow, the very symbols of

slothful ease and sensuous comfort. They seem to be actually oppressed

and overburdened with comfort. They are quick to notice any one's

approach, and utter a low grunt thereupon,--not drawing a breath for

that particular purpose, but grunting with their ordinary breath,--at

the same time turning an observant, though dull and sluggish, eye upon

the visitor. They seem to be involved and buried in their own corporeal

substance, and to look dimly forth at the outer world. They breathe not

easily, and yet not with difficulty nor discomfort; for the very

unreadiness and oppression with which their breath comes appears to make

them sensible of the deep sensual satisfaction which they feel. Swill,

the remnant of their last meal, remains in the trough, denoting that

their food is more abundant than even a hog can demand. Anon, they fall

asleep, drawing short and heavy breaths, which heave their huge sides up

and down; but at the slightest noise they sluggishly unclose their eyes,

and give another gentle grunt. They also grunt among themselves, without

any external cause; but merely to express their swinish sympathy. I

suppose it is the knowledge that these four grunters are doomed to die

within two or three weeks that gives them a sort of awfulness in my

conception. It makes me contrast their present gross substance of

fleshly life with the nothingness speedily to come. Meantime the four

newly-bought pigs are running about the cow-yard, lean, active, shrewd,

investigating everything, as their nature is. When I throw an apple

among them, they scramble with one another for the prize, and the

successful one scampers away to eat it at leisure. They thrust their

snouts into the mud, and pick a grain of corn out of the rubbish.

Nothing within their sphere do they leave unexamined, grunting all the

time with infinite variety of expression. Their language is the most

copious of that of any quadruped, and, indeed, there is something deeply

and indefinably interesting in the swinish race. They appear the more a

mystery the longer one gazes at them. It seems as if there were an

important meaning to them, if one could but find it out. One interesting

trait in them is their perfect independence of character. They care not

for man, and will not adapt themselves to his notions, as other beasts

do; but are true to themselves, and act out their hoggish nature.

* * * * *

_October 7._--Since Saturday last, (it being now Thursday,) I have been

in Boston and Salem, and there has been a violent storm and rain during

the whole time. This morning shone as bright as if it meant to make up

for all the dismalness of the past days. Our brook, which in the summer

was no longer a running stream, but stood in pools along its pebbly

course, is now full from one grassy verge to the other, and hurries

along with a murmuring rush. It will continue to swell, I suppose, and

in the winter and spring it will flood all the broad meadows through

which it flows.

I have taken a long walk this forenoon along the Needham road, and

across the bridge, thence pursuing a cross-road through the woods,

parallel with the river, which I crossed again at Dedham. Most of the

road lay through a growth of young oaks principally. They still retain

their verdure, though, looking closely in among them, one perceives the

broken sunshine falling on a few sere or bright-hued tufts of shrubbery.

In low, marshy spots, on the verge of the meadows or along the

river-side, there is a much more marked autumnal change. Whole ranges of

bushes are there painted with many variegated hues, not of the brightest

tint, but of a sober cheerfulness. I suppose this is owing more to the

late rains than to the frost; for a heavy rain changes the foliage

somewhat at this season. The first marked frost was seen last Saturday

morning. Soon after sunrise it lay, white as snow, over all the grass,

and on the tops of the fences, and in the yard, on the heap of firewood.

On Sunday, I think, there was a fall of snow, which, however, did not

lie on the ground a moment.

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on,

and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.

The sunshine is peculiarly genial; and in sheltered places, as on the

side of a bank, or of a barn or house, one becomes acquainted and

friendly with the sunshine. It seems to be of a kindly and homely

nature. And the green grass, strewn with a few withered leaves, looks

the more green and beautiful for them. In summer or spring Nature is

farther from one's sympathies.

* * * * *

_October 8._--Another gloomy day, lowering with portents of rain close

at hand. I have walked up into the pastures this morning, and looked

about me a little. The woods present a very diversified appearance just

now, with perhaps more varieties of tint than they are destined to wear

at a somewhat later period. There are some strong yellow hues, and some

deep red; there are innumerable shades of green, some few having the

depth of summer; others, partially changed towards yellow, look freshly

verdant with the delicate tinge of early summer or of May. Then there is

the solemn and dark green of the pines. The effect is, that every tree

in the wood and every bush among the shrubbery has a separate existence,

since, confusedly intermingled, each wears its peculiar color, instead

of being lost in the universal emerald of summer. And yet there is a

oneness of effect likewise, when we choose to look at a whole sweep of

woodland instead of analyzing its component trees. Scattered over the

pasture, which the late rains have kept tolerably green, there are spots

or islands of dusky red,--a deep, substantial hue, very well fit to be

close to the ground,--while the yellow, and light, fantastic shades of

green soar upward to the sky. These red spots are the blueberry and

whortleberry bushes. The sweet-fern is changed mostly to russet, but

still retains its wild and delightful fragrance when pressed in the

hand. Wild China-asters are scattered about, but beginning to wither. A

little while ago, mushrooms or toadstools were very numerous along the

wood-paths and by the roadsides, especially after rain. Some were of

spotless white, some yellow, and some scarlet. They are always mysteries

and objects of interest to me, springing as they do so suddenly from no

root or seed, and growing one wonders why. I think, too, that some

varieties are pretty objects, little fairy tables, centre-tables,

standing on one leg. But their growth appears to be checked now, and

they are of a brown tint and decayed.

The farm business to-day is to dig potatoes. I worked a little at it.

The process is to grasp all the stems of a hill and pull them up. A

great many of the potatoes are thus pulled, clinging to the stems and to

one another in curious shapes,--long red things, and little round ones,

imbedded in the earth which clings to the roots. These being plucked

off, the rest of the potatoes are dug out of the hill with a hoe, the

tops being flung into a heap for the cow-yard. On my way home I paused

to inspect the squash-field. Some of the squashes lay in heaps as they

were gathered, presenting much variety of shape and hue,--as golden

yellow, like great lumps of gold, dark green, striped and variegated;

and some were round, and some lay curling their long necks, nestling, as

it were, and seeming as if they had life.

In my walk yesterday forenoon I passed an old house which seemed to be

quite deserted. It was a two-story, wooden house, dark and

weather-beaten. The front windows, some of them, were shattered and

open, and others were boarded up. Trees and shrubbery were growing

neglected, so as quite to block up the lower part. There was an aged

barn near at hand, so ruinous that it had been necessary to prop it up.

There were two old carts, both of which had lost a wheel. Everything was

in keeping. At first I supposed that there would be no inhabitants in

such a dilapidated place; but, passing on, I looked back, and saw a

decrepit and infirm old man at the angle of the house, its fit occupant.

The grass, however, was very green and beautiful around this dwelling,

and, the sunshine falling brightly on it, the whole effect was cheerful

and pleasant. It seemed as if the world was so glad that this desolate

old place, where there was never to be any more hope and happiness,

could not at all lessen the general effect of joy.

I found a small turtle by the roadside, where he had crept to warm

himself in the genial sunshine. He had a sable back, and underneath his

shell was yellow, and at the edges bright scarlet. His head, tail, and

claws were striped yellow, black, and red. He withdrew himself, as far

as he possibly could, into his shell, and absolutely refused to peep

out, even when I put him into the water. Finally, I threw him into a

deep pool and left him. These mailed gentlemen, from the size of a foot

or more down to an inch, were very numerous in the spring; and now the

smaller kind appear again.

* * * * *

_Saturday, October 9._--Still dismal weather. Our household, being

composed in great measure of children and young people, is generally a

cheerful one enough, even in gloomy weather. For a week past we have

been especially gladdened with a little seamstress from Boston, about

seventeen years old; but of such a _petite_ figure, that, at first view,

one would take her to be hardly in her teens. She is very vivacious and

smart, laughing and singing and talking all the time,--talking sensibly;

but still, taking the view of matters that a city girl naturally would.

If she were larger than she is, and of less pleasing aspect, I think she

might be intolerable; but being so small, and with a fair skin, and as

healthy as a wildflower, she is really very agreeable; and to look at

her face is like being shone upon by a ray of the sun. She never walks,

but bounds and dances along, and this motion, in her diminutive person,

does not give the idea of violence. It is like a bird, hopping from twig

to twig, and chirping merrily all the time. Sometimes she is rather

vulgar, but even that works well enough into her character, and accords

with it. On continued observation, one discovers that she is not a

little girl, but really a little woman, with all the prerogatives and

liabilities of a woman. This gives a new aspect to her, while the

girlish impression still remains, and is strangely combined with the

sense that this frolicsome maiden has the material for the sober bearing

of a wife. She romps with the boys, runs races with them in the yard,

and up and down the stairs, and is heard scolding laughingly at their

rough play. She asks William Allen to place her "on top of that horse,"

whereupon he puts his large brown hands about her waist, and, swinging

her to and fro, lifts her on horseback. William threatens to rivet two

horse-shoes round her neck, for having clambered, with the other girls

and boys, upon a load of hay, whereby the said load lost its balance and

slid off the cart. She strings the seed-berries of roses together,

making a scarlet necklace of them, which she fastens about her throat.

She gathers flowers of everlasting to wear in her bonnet, arranging them

with the skill of a dressmaker. In the evening, she sits singing by the

hour, with the musical part of the establishment, often breaking into

laughter, whereto she is incited by the tricks of the boys. The last

thing one hears of her, she is tripping up stairs to bed, talking

lightsomely or warbling; and one meets her in the morning, the very

image of bright morn itself, smiling briskly at you, so that one takes

her for a promise of cheerfulness through the day. Be it said, with all

the rest, that there is a perfect maiden modesty in her deportment. She

has just gone away, and the last I saw of her was her vivacious face

peeping through the curtain of the cariole, and nodding a gay farewell

to the family, who were shouting their adieux at the door. With her

other merits, she is an excellent daughter, and supports her mother by

the labor of her hands. It would be difficult to conceive beforehand how

much can be added to the enjoyment of a household by mere sunniness of

temper and liveliness of disposition; for her intellect is very

ordinary, and she never says anything worth hearing, or even laughing

at, in itself. But she herself is an expression well worth studying.

THE FENIAN "IDEA."

It was a great truth Shelley uttered when he said that slavery would not

be the enormous wrong and evil which it is, if men who had long suffered

under it could rise at once to freedom and self-government. We see this

fact everywhere proved by races, nations, sexes, long held in bondage,

and, when at last set free, displaying for years, perhaps for

generations, the vices of cowardice, deceit, and cruelty engendered by

slavery. Chains leave ugly scars on the flesh, but deeper scars by far

on the soul. Even where the exercise of oppression has stopped short of

actual serfdom,--where a race has been merely excluded from some natural

rights, and burdened with some unrighteous restrictions,--the same

result, in a mitigated degree, may be traced in moral degradation,

surviving the injustice itself and almost its very memory. Ages pass

away, and "Revenge and Wrong" still "bring forth their kind." The evil

is not dead, though they who wrought it have long mouldered in their

forgotten graves.

In a very remarkable manner this sad law of our nature applies to the

condition of the Irish race. Doubtless the isolated position of Ireland,

the small share it has had in the life and movement of our century, has

allowed the old wrongs to fester in memory, and the old feelings of

rancor to perpetuate themselves, as they could never have done in a

country more in the highway of nations. Vendettas personal and political

are ever to be found in islands, like Corsica, Sicily, Ireland; or in

remote glens and mountains, such as those of Scotland or Greece. Men who

live in New York, London, or Paris must be singularly retentive of

passion to keep up even their own hatreds, not to speak of the hatreds

of their ancestors. But it is alike the bane and blessing of lives spent

in retirement and monotony to retain impressions for years, and live in

the past almost more vividly than in the tame and uninteresting present.

Ireland, at all events, has had nothing to divert her from her old

traditions; and there is probably no man, woman, or child of Celtic race

living in the country in whose mind a certain "historical element,"

compounded strangely of truth and falsehood, does not occupy a place

such as no analogous impression takes in the thought of an ordinary

Englishman or Frenchman. We shall endeavor in this paper to give a

little idea of the nature of these Irish traditions and feelings; and if

we succeed in doing so, we shall at the same time afford to our readers

a clew to some of the supposed mysteries of the recent outbreak of

Fenianism. In sober truth, Fenianism is not, to Anglo-Irish observers, a

startling apparition, an outburst of insane folly, an epidemic of

national hate, but, on the contrary, a most familiar phenomenon, the

mere appearance on the surface of what we always knew lay beneath,--an

endemic as natural to the soil as the ague and fever which haunt the

undrained bogs. Those who understand what Irishmen are always _thinking_

will find no difficulty in understanding also what things they

occasionally _do_.

The real wrongs inflicted by England upon Ireland are probably as bad as

ever disgraced the history of a conquest--in itself without excuse. Not

to speak of confiscations, and executions often taking the form of

murderous raids into suspected districts, there were laws passed one

after another, from the time of Edward I. even to the present century, a

collection of which would be a sad commentary on the boasted justice of

English Parliaments. Irishmen lay under disabilities, political, social,

and ecclesiastical, so severe and numerous that it really seems to have

been a question what they were expected to do _except_ to break some of

these arbitrary laws, and so incur some cruel penalty. Down to our own

century, and for the avowed purpose of injuring the only flourishing

trade of the country (that of linen), the English cotton and woollen

manufacturers procured the passing of acts better called destructive

than protective; and in sober truth, if England now deplores the low

industrial and commercial state of Ireland, she has only to look over

her own statute-book, and see if ingenuity could have further gone in

the way of discouragement and depression. When we add to these wrongs

the bitter drop of the Irish Church Establishment, it is doubtless clear

that an able advocate could make out a very telling case for the

plaintiff, in that great case of Ireland _vs._ England on which Europe

and America sit as jury.

But it is a singularly inexact notion of the real historical wrongs of

his country which an ordinary Irishman treasures in his heart; in fact,

he has no idea of the real wrongs at all, but of other and quite

imaginary ones. He sets out with the great fallacy that Ireland was at

some indefinite epoch (described as "former times") a wealthy,

prosperous, and united country, and that every declension from those

characteristics is to be laid at the door of English tyranny and

jealousy. When Moore wrote,

"Let Erin remember the days of old,

Ere her faithless sons betrayed her,

When Malachi wore the collar of gold

Which he won from her proud invader,

"When her kings, with their standards of green unfurled,

Led the Red Branch knights to danger,

Ere the emerald gem of the Western world

Was set in the crown of a stranger,"--

when, we say, a man of the world, who afterwards wrote a remarkably

moderate and sensible History of Ireland, wrote nonsense like this, he

was doubtless well aware he was only by poetic license describing what

Irishmen commonly believed about "days of old," and their glorified

circumstances. We once saw an Irish schoolmaster, just one of those who

mould the ideas of the humbler classes, shown into a room furnished with

the usual luxury of a handsome English drawing-room,--books, pictures,

flowers, and china, "an earthly paradise of ormolu." The good man looked

round with great admiration, and then innocently remarked, "Why, this

must be like one of the palaces of our ancient kings!" Here was

precisely the popular Irish idea. Her "ancient king"--who actually lived

in the _wattled_ walls of Tara, enjoying barbarian feasts of beer and

hecatombs of lean kine and sheep--is supposed to have been a refined and

splendid prince, dwelling in ideal "halls," (doubtless compounded out of

the Dublin Bank and Rotunda,) and enjoying the finest music on a

double-action harp. As a fact, there is no evidence whatever that the

old Irish Pentarchy was much better than any five chieftainships of the

Sandwich Islands. Even the historians who laud it in most pompous

phrases, like Keatinge, give nothing but details of wars and massacres,

disorders and rebellions without end. Out of one hundred and sixty-eight

kings who by this (of course) half-fabulous story reigned from the

Milesian Conquest to Roderick O'Connor, vanquished by Henry II. in 1172,

no less than seventy-nine are said to have acquired the throne by the

murder of their predecessors. The contests between the five kings for

the supremacy, or for the acquisition of each other's territories, offer

a spectacle which can only be compared to a sanguinary game of

puss-in-the-corner lasting for a thousand years. As to any monuments of

civilization, it would indeed be wonderful if they were found in a

country so circumstanced. Such existing architecture as can be

attributed to a Celtic origin is confined to the simple round towers,

Cormac's Chapel at Cashel, and a few humble little stone-roofed edifices

like the one known as "St. Kevin's Kitchen," and made, with true Irish

magniloquence, to stand wellnigh alone for the "Seven Churches of

Glendalough." For literature, ancient Ireland can show the respectable

"Annals of the Four Masters," and a few minor chronicles in prose and

verse, but not a single work deserving a place in European history.

Literally the fame of a few nomad saints, and a collection of torques

and brooches (of great beauty, but possible Byzantine workmanship) in

the Irish Academy, are the chief grounds on which rest the claims of

Ireland to ancient civilization. Yet not merely civilization, but the

extreme grandeur and magnificence of Ireland in "former times," is the

first postulate of all Irish discontent. It is because England has

dimmed her glory and overthrown her royal state that Irishmen burn with

patriot indignation, and not by any means because she has merely left

barbarism and disunion still barbarous and disunited after seven

centuries, and has checked, instead of encouraging, the industry and

commerce of the land.

Proceeding on this false ground, the Celtic Irishman, with his fervid

imagination, easily builds for himself a whole edifice of local and

personal grievances on the pattern of the supposed national one. Was

Ireland once a rich and splendid country? So was every town and

neighborhood once full of gayety and prosperity, when "the family" lived

at home and did not travel or spend the season in London. Full of

extravagant reverence for birth and rank, it is always, in the

Irishman's mind, not _his_ fault, nor that of his compeers of the

working and middle classes, that trade and agriculture do not flourish

in the land; but the fault of some lord or squire who ought to come and

spend money there, or some king or queen who should hold court in Dublin

and waste as much treasure as possible upon state ceremonials. Nay,

every man for himself, almost, has at the bottom of his heart a belief

that _he_ ought to be, not a laborer or carter, shoemaker or tailor, but

the head of some ancient house,--some O' or Mac,--living not in his own

mud cabin, but in the handsome residence of some English gentleman whose

estate was wrongfully taken in "former times" from his--the laborer's or

shoemaker's--ancestors.

Fenians talk of an Irish Republic, and the brave and honest men who led

the rising of '98 undoubtedly heartily desired to establish one on the

American model. But to any one really acquainted with Irish character,

to dream of such institutions for ages to come seems utterly vain. All

the qualities which go to make a republican, in the true sense of the

term, are wanting in the Irish nature; and, on the other hand, there is

a superabundance of all the opposite qualities which go to make a loyal

subject of a king,--not _too_ despotic, but still a strong-handed,

visible, audible, tangible ruler of men. Devotion to an idea, to a

constitution, to a flag; respect for law _as_ law; sturdy independence

and self-reliance; regard for others' rights and jealousy of a man's

own,--all these true republican characteristics are most rarely to be

found in Irishmen. Nay, the most important of all--the reverence for

law--is almost, we might say, reversed in his nature. The true Irishman

detests law. He loves, indeed, mercy, retribution, many fine things

which law may or may not produce. But the simple fact that a certain

proceeding has been by proper authorities constituted a law or rule of

any kind, in public matters or private, is reason enough, in high or

low, to make it secretly distasteful. As Coleridge used to say, that,

"when anything was presented to him as a duty, he instantly felt himself

seized by a sense of inability to perform it," so, to the Celtic mind,

when anything comes in the guise of a law, there is an accompanying

seizure of moral paralysis. Even if the law or rule be made by the

offender himself, it is all the same. Having given it utterance, it is a

law, and he hates it accordingly. On the other hand, nothing can exceed

the generous, chivalrous personal and family loyalty of the Irish

nature. But it is a person he wants, not a constitution or a flag.

Of course, how far all these characteristics may be altered by

residence in America we are unable to say. We write of the Irishman in

Ireland, from lifelong acquaintance. What dreams the Fenians in America

may indulge, we are also in no position to know. But this we may safely

aver: The Irishmen in Ireland who are caught by such schemes of

rebellion and revolution are not, as might be thought, mere vulgar

agitators, eager for notoriety or perhaps plunder. They are (such of

them as are the dupes, not the dupers) men whose minds from childhood

have been filled with anti-historic visions of Ireland's former

grandeur, and who cherish patriotic indignation for her supposed wrongs,

and patriotic hopes of her future glory. In a word, they live in a world

of unrealities almost inconceivable to a cool Saxon brain,--unreal

splendors of the past and utterly unreal and impossible future hopes.

They neither see where England has actually wronged Ireland heretofore,

nor how her Constitution opens to them now (were they but once united)

the lawful means of obtaining all just redress and beneficial

legislation they can desire. Instead of this, they are still talking of

Tara and Kincora, of Ollamh Fodhla and Brien Boiromhe, and dream in the

year of grace 1866 to set England at naught with a few thousand

undisciplined troops, and then burn down the hundred or two of handsome

houses and banish all the cultivated men and women in the country (even

including the priests!), to inaugurate a grand era of universal

prosperity and civilization.

But however delusive the indignation and the hopes of the Fenians must

be accounted, the sad fact remains that old misgovernment and oppression

have left behind a train of evil feelings, whose existence is only too

real, however fantastic may be the shapes they assume. While three or

four centuries sufficed to obliterate all trace of the Norman Conquest,

and unite in indissoluble bonds of blood and language the two races who

contended for mastery at Hastings, in Ireland, on the contrary, seven

centuries have failed, not merely to efface, but even essentially to

diminish the sharpness of the distinction between the conquerors and the

conquered. Still, to this day, the two nations dwell in the same land,

but not united. Still each member of each race learns as his first

lesson to which of the two he belongs, and recognizes, by some occult,

but well-known tokens, the race and creed of every man with whom he has

dealings. Religious differences, of course, have come in to swell the

tide of mistrust, and to nullify the most strenuous efforts of the

Anglo-Irish to gain the confidence of the Celts. In the books circulated

in the baskets of the strolling pedlers, which constitute almost the

sole literature of the laboring class, we have constantly seen the

favorite tract entitled "A Father's Advice to his Son," in which the

Catholic peasant is warned to put no faith in the desire of his

Protestant neighbor to help him, and advised, _not_, indeed, to refuse

his charity, but to return for it no gratitude, since a Protestant can

have no real feeling for a Catholic. We have heard with our own ears

O'Connell say almost the same thing in Conciliation Hall, and tell his

hearers that English subscriptions at the time of the famine were given

from _fear_, not kindness. But even were all these false teachers

silenced, were the enormous insult of the Irish Establishment retracted

to-morrow, even then the root of national bitterness would not be

killed. It would take generations to kill it.

Between fifty and a hundred years ago the Anglo-Irish gentry, as all the

world knows, were a wild and extravagant race. Duelling and drinking

were the two great duties of a gentleman. A young man was instructed how

to "make his head" early in life, and to acquire the gentle art of

pistolling his friends, when now he would be studying Greek under

Professor Jowett, or "coaching" for a civil-service examination. It was

in bad taste in those halcyon days for a man to leave a pleasant social

party in a state of sobriety, and he was liable to be challenged by his

aggrieved companions if he did it frequently. The custom of locking the

dining-room door and putting the key in the fire, so as to secure a

comfortable night (on the floor), was so common as hardly to deserve

notice; and in many old houses are still preserved the huge glasses

bearing the toast of the Immortal Memory of William III., and calculated

to hold three bottles of claret, all to be drunk at once by one member

of the company, who then won the prize of a seven-guinea piece deposited

at the bottom. Gambling was not a pastime, but a business; and a

business shared by the ladies. On rainy days it was customary to lay the

card-tables at ten o'clock in the morning, and on all days the work

began immediately after the four-o'clock dinner. Of all field-sports

hunting was the favorite; and, of course, horses and hounds helped to

run away with estates as well as cards and claret. Great pomp, however,

of a certain semi-barbaric kind was the crowning extravagance. Everybody

drove four horses,--the loftier grandees invariably six,--with due

accompaniment of outriders and running footmen. Dresses, jewels, and

lace were of course in keeping with the equipage, albeit the furniture

of the finest houses was what we should deem a strange mixture of

magnificence and bareness,--beautiful pictures on the walls, and no

curtains to the windows,--tapestry _fauteuils_, and a small square of

carpet in the midst of a Sahara of plain deal floor. But the kitchen was

the true scene of that Wilful Waste which assuredly brought Woful Want

often enough in its train. Every gentleman's house served as a sort of

free tavern for tenants, servants, laborers, and the relatives, friends,

and acquaintances of tenants, servants, and laborers without end. Up

stairs there was endless dinner-giving and claret-drinking; down stairs

there was breakfasting, dining, and supping,--only substituting beef for

venison and whiskey for claret. One famous countess, coming into an

estate of twenty thousand a year, with a reserve of one hundred thousand

pounds, spent the whole, and left a debt of another hundred thousand,

after Garter-King-at-Arms had been summoned from England to see her in

state to her mausoleum as a descendant of the Plantagenets. An earl in

the North, of no great wealth, was carried to his grave by a procession

of five thousand people, all of whom were entertained, and three

thousand clothed in mourning, for the occasion. But there is no need to

go further into such traditions.

Were _these_, then, the people who earned the hoarded hate of the

Fenian? Was it this coarse and stupid extravagance, contrasted with the

abject penury of the peasantry, (far greater then than now,) which has

left such indelible, bitter memories? Very far indeed is this from being

the case. That age of lavish waste is looked back upon universally in

Ireland as one of those "former times" which are to be forever

contrasted with the present,--an age of gold compared to an age of iron.

True, the old landlords were harder on their tenants than any _dare_ now

to be;--true, they neither improved land, nor built cottages, nor

endowed schools, nor did one earthly thing to help the wretched and

starving people in the face of whose misery they flaunted their

splendor. But there was little or no bitterness of feeling toward them;

for their faults were those with which the people sympathized, and their

free-handed hospitality would have covered more sins even than they

committed. Perhaps one of the very reasons why, in these last years, the

never wholly quieted ground-swell of discontent has risen up in

Fenianism is this, that the whole generation of which we have spoken has

now utterly died out, and, since the Encumbered Estates Courts has done

its work, the families of landholders have undergone great changes, and,

where not changed in race, have wholly changed in habits and mode of

life. "Castle Rackrent" exists no more. Irish landlords have now neither

power nor inclination to hold free quarters for all comers. On the other

hand, (we speak it advisedly,) no class of men in Europe strive more

earnestly and self-denyingly to improve the condition of those dependent

on them, to build good houses for their tenants, open schools for the

children, and drain and fertilize the land. Let us hope that, as years

roll on, and generations pass, the tradition of imaginary wrongs, and

the unseen but too real results of actual ones, will both pass away, and

there may yet come a day in which it will not seem a satire to speak of

the land of the Fenian and the _Agrarian_ murderer as "The Isle of

Saints."

THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.

V.

WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS.

The conversation on dress which I had held with Jennie and her little

covey of Birds of Paradise appeared to have worked in the minds of the

fair council, for it was not long before they invaded my study again in

a body. They were going out to a party, but called for Jennie, and of

course gave me and Mrs. Crowfield the privilege of seeing them equipped

for conquest.

Latterly, I must confess, the mysteries of the toilet rites have

impressed me with a kind of superstitious awe. Only a year ago my

daughter Jennie had smooth dark hair, which she wreathed in various

soft, flowing lines about her face, and confined in a classical knot on

the back of her head. Jennie had rather a talent for _coiffure_, and the

arrangement of her hair was one of my little artistic delights. She

always had something there,--a leaf, a spray, a bud or blossom, that

looked fresh, and had a sort of poetical grace of its own.

But in a gradual way all this has been changing. Jennie's hair first

became slightly wavy, then curly, finally frizzy, presenting a tumbled

and twisted appearance, which gave me great inward concern; but when I

spoke upon the subject I was always laughingly silenced with the

definitive settling remark: "O, it's the fashion, papa! Everybody wears

it so."

I particularly objected to the change on my own small account, because

the smooth, breakfast-table _coiffure_, which I had always so much

enjoyed, was now often exchanged for a peculiarly bristling appearance;

the hair being variously twisted, tortured, woven, and wound, without

the least view to immediate beauty or grace. But all this, I was

informed, was the necessary means towards crimping for some evening

display of a more elaborate nature than usual.

Mrs. Crowfield and myself are not party-goers by profession, but Jennie

insists on our going out at least once or twice in a season, just, as

she says, to keep up with the progress of society; and at these times I

have been struck with frequent surprise by the general untidiness which

appeared to have come over the heads of all my female friends. I know,

of course, that I am only a poor, ignorant, bewildered man-creature; but

to my uninitiated eyes they looked as if they had all, after a very

restless and perturbed sleep, come out of bed without smoothing their

tumbled and disordered locks. Then, every young lady, without exception,

seemed to have one kind of hair, and that the kind which was rather

suggestive of the term _woolly_. Every sort of wild _abandon_ of frowzy

locks seemed to be in vogue; in some cases the hair appearing to my

vision nothing but a confused snarl, in which glittered tinklers,

spangles, and bits of tinsel, and from which waved long pennants and

streamers of different-colored ribbons.

I was in fact very greatly embarrassed by my first meeting with some

very charming girls, whom I thought I knew as familiarly as my own

daughter Jennie, and whose soft, pretty hair had often formed the object

of my admiration. Now, however, they revealed themselves to me in

_coiffures_ which forcibly reminded me of the electrical experiments

which used to entertain us in college, when the subject stood on the

insulated stool, and each particular hair of his head bristled and rose,

and set up, as it were, on its own account. This high-flying condition

of the tresses, and the singularity of the ornaments which appeared to

be thrown at hap-hazard into them, suggested so oddly the idea of a

bewitched person, that I could scarcely converse with any presence of

mind, or realize that these really were the nice, well-informed,

sensible little girls of my own neighborhood,--the good daughters, good

sisters, Sunday-school teachers, and other familiar members of our best

educated circles; and I came away from the party in a sort of blue maze,

and hardly in a state to conduct myself with credit in the examination

through which I knew Jennie would put me as to the appearance of her

different friends.

I know not how it is, but the glamour of fashion in the eyes of girlhood

is so complete, that the oddest, wildest, most uncouth devices find

grace and favor in the eyes of even well-bred girls, when once that

invisible, ineffable _aura_ has breathed over them which declares them

to be fashionable. They may defy them for a time,--they may pronounce

them horrid; but it is with a secretly melting heart, and with a mental

reservation to look as nearly like the abhorred spectacle as they

possibly can on the first favorable opportunity.

On the occasion of the visit referred to, Jennie ushered her three

friends in triumph into my study; and, in truth, the little room seemed

to be perfectly transformed by their brightness. My honest, nice,

lovable little Yankee-fireside girls were, to be sure, got up in a style

that would have done credit to Madame Pompadour, or any of the most

questionable characters of the time of Louis XIV. or XV. They were

frizzled and powdered, and built up in elaborate devices; they wore on

their hair flowers, gems, streamers, tinklers, humming-birds,

butterflies, South American beetles, beads, bugles, and all imaginable

rattle-traps, which jingled and clinked with every motion; and yet, as

they were three or four fresh, handsome, intelligent, bright-eyed girls,

there was no denying the fact that they _did look extremely pretty_; and

as they sailed hither and thither before me, and gazed down upon me in

the saucy might of their rosy girlhood, there was a gay defiance in

Jennie's demand, "Now, papa, how do you like us?"

"Very charming," answered I, surrendering at discretion.

"I told you, girls, that you could convert him to the fashions, if he

should once see you in party trim."

"I beg pardon, my dear; I am not converted to the fashion, but to you,

and that is a point on which I didn't need conversion; but the present

fashions, even so fairly represented as I see them, I humbly confess I

dislike."

"O Mr. Crowfield!"

"Yes, my dears, I do. But then, I protest, I'm not fairly treated. I

think, for a young American girl, who looks as most of my fair friends

do look, to come down with her bright eyes and all her little panoply of

graces upon an old fellow like me, and expect him to like a fashion

merely because _she_ looks well in it, is all sheer nonsense. Why,

girls, if you wore rings in your noses, and bangles on your arms up to

your elbows, if you tied your hair in a war-knot on the top of your

heads like the Sioux Indians, you would look pretty still. The question

isn't, as I view it, whether you look pretty,--for that you do and that

you will, do what you please and dress how you will. The question is

whether you might not look prettier, whether another style of dress, and

another mode of getting up, would not be far more becoming. I am one who

thinks that it would."

"Now, Mr. Crowfield, you positively are too bad," said

Humming-Bird,--whose delicate head was encircled by a sort of crapy

cloud of bright hair, sparkling with gold-dust and spangles, in the

midst of which, just over her forehead, a gorgeous blue butterfly was

perched, while a confused mixture of hairs, gold-powder, spangles,

stars, and tinkling ornaments fell in a sort of cataract down her pretty

neck. "You see, we girls think everything of you; and now we don't like

it that you don't like our fashions."

"Why, my little princess, so long as I like _you_ better than your

fashions, and merely think they are not worthy of you, what's the harm?"

"O yes, to be sure. You sweeten the dose to us babies with that

sugar-plum. But really, Mr. Crowfield, why don't you like the fashions?"

"Because, to my view, they are in great part in false taste, and injure

the beauty of the girls," said I. "They are inappropriate to their

characters, and make them look like a kind and class of women whom they

do not, and I trust never will, resemble internally, and whose mark

therefore they ought not to bear externally. But there you are,

beguiling me into a sermon which you will only hate me in your hearts

for preaching. Go along, children! You certainly look as well as anybody

can in that style of getting up; so go to your party, and to-morrow

night, when you are tired and sleepy, if you'll come with your crochet,

and sit in my study, I will read you Christopher Crowfield's

dissertation on dress."

"That will be amusing, to say the least," said Humming-Bird; "and, be

sure, we will all be here. And mind, you have to show good reasons for

disliking the present fashion."

So the next evening there was a worsted party in my study, sitting in

the midst of which I read as follows.

"WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS.

"The first one is _appropriateness_. Colors and forms and modes, in

themselves graceful or beautiful, can become ungraceful and ridiculous

simply through inappropriateness. The most lovely bonnet that the most

approved _modiste_ can invent, if worn on the head of a coarse-faced

Irishwoman bearing a market-basket on her arm, excites no emotion but

that of the ludicrous. The most elegant and brilliant evening dress, if

worn in the daytime in a railroad car, strikes every one with a sense of

absurdity; whereas both these objects in appropriate associations would

excite only the idea of beauty. So, a mode of dress obviously intended

for driving strikes us as _outré_ in a parlor; and a parlor dress would

no less shock our eyes on horseback. In short, the course of this

principle through all varieties of form can easily be perceived. Besides

appropriateness to time, place, and circumstances, there is

appropriateness to age, position, and character. This is the foundation

of all our ideas of professional propriety in costume. One would not

like to see a clergyman in his external air and appointments resembling

a gentleman of the turf; one would not wish a refined and modest scholar

to wear the outward air of a fast fellow, or an aged and venerable

statesman to appear with all the peculiarities of a young dandy. The

flowers, feathers, and furbelows which a light-hearted young girl of

seventeen embellishes by the airy grace with which she wears them, are

simply ridiculous when transferred to the toilet of her serious,

well-meaning mamma, who bears them about with an anxious face, merely

because a loquacious milliner has assured her, with many protestations,

that it is the fashion, and the only thing remaining for her to do.

"There are, again, modes of dress in themselves very beautiful and very

striking, which are peculiarly adapted to theatrical representation and

to pictures, but the adoption of which as a part of unprofessional

toilet produces a sense of incongruity. A mode of dress may be in

perfect taste on the stage, that would be absurd in an evening party,

absurd in the street, absurd, in short, everywhere else.

"Now you come to my first objection to our present American toilet,--its

being to a very great extent _inappropriate_ to our climate, to our

habits of life and thought, and to the whole structure of ideas on which

our life is built. What we want, apparently, is some court of inquiry

and adaptation that shall pass judgment on the fashions of other

countries, and modify them to make them a graceful expression of our own

national character, and modes of thinking and living. A certain class of

women in Paris at this present hour makes the fashions that rule the

feminine world. They are women who live only for the senses, with as

utter and obvious disregard of any moral or intellectual purpose to be

answered in living as a paroquet or a macaw. They have no family ties;

love, in its pure domestic sense, is an impossibility in their lot;

religion in any sense is another impossibility; and their whole

intensity of existence, therefore, is concentrated on the question of

sensuous enjoyment, and that personal adornment which is necessary to

secure it. When the great, ruling country in the world of taste and

fashion has fallen into such a state that the virtual leaders of fashion

are women of this character, it is not to be supposed that the fashions

emanating from them will be of a kind well adapted to express the ideas,

the thoughts, the state of society, of a great Christian democracy such

as ours ought to be.

"What is called, for example, the Pompadour style of dress, so much in

vogue of late, we can see to be perfectly adapted to the kind of

existence led by dissipated women, whose life is one revel of

excitement; and who, never proposing to themselves any intellectual

employment or any domestic duty, can afford to spend three or four hours

every day under the hands of a waiting-maid, in alternately tangling and

untangling their hair. Powder, paint, gold-dust and silver-dust,

pomatums, cosmetics, are all perfectly appropriate where the ideal of

life is to keep up a false show of beauty after the true bloom is wasted

by dissipation. The woman who never goes to bed till morning, who never

even dresses herself, who never takes a needle in her hand, who never

goes to church, and never entertains one serious idea of duty of any

kind, when got up in Pompadour style, has, to say the truth, the good

taste and merit of appropriateness. Her dress expresses just what she

is,--all false, all artificial, all meretricious and unnatural; no part

or portion of her from which it might be inferred what her Creator

originally designed her to be.

"But when a nice little American girl, who has been brought up to

cultivate her mind, to refine her taste, to care for her health, to be a

helpful daughter and a good sister, to visit the poor and teach in

Sunday schools; when a good, sweet, modest little puss of this kind

combs all her pretty hair backward till it is one mass of frowzy

confusion; when she powders, and paints under her eyes; when she adopts,

with eager enthusiasm, every _outré_, unnatural fashion that comes from

the most dissipated foreign circles,--she is in bad taste, because she

does not represent either her character, her education, or her good

points. She looks like a second-rate actress, when she is, in fact, a

most thoroughly respectable, estimable, lovable little girl, and on the

way, as we poor fellows fondly hope, to bless some one of us with her

tenderness and care in some nice home in the future.

"It is not the fashion in America for young girls to have

waiting-maids,--in foreign countries it is the fashion. All this

meretricious toilet--so elaborate, so complicated, and so contrary to

nature--must be accomplished, and is accomplished, by the busy little

fingers of each girl for herself; and so it seems to be very evident

that a style of hair-dressing which it will require hours to

disentangle, which must injure and in time ruin the natural beauty of

the hair, ought to be one thing which a well-regulated court of inquiry

would reject in our American fashions.

"Again, the genius of American life is for simplicity and absence of

ostentation. We have no parade of office; our public men wear no robes,

no stars, garters, collars, &c.; and it would, therefore, be in good

taste in our women to cultivate simple styles of dress. Now I object to

the present fashions, as adopted from France, that they are flashy and

theatrical. Having their origin with a community whose senses are

blunted, drugged, and deadened with dissipation and ostentation, they

reject the simpler forms of beauty, and seek for startling effects, for

odd and unexpected results. The contemplation of one of our fashionable

churches, at the hour when its fair occupants pour forth, gives one a

great deal of surprise. The toilet there displayed might have been in

good keeping among showy Parisian women in an opera-house; but even

their original inventors would have been shocked at the idea of carrying

them into a church. The rawness of our American mind as to the subject

of propriety in dress is nowhere more shown than in the fact that no

apparent distinction is made between church and opera-house in the

adaptation of attire. Very estimable, and, we trust, very religious

young women sometimes enter the house of God in a costume which makes

their utterance of the words of the litany and the acts of prostrate

devotion in the service seem almost burlesque. When a brisk little

creature comes into a pew with hair frizzed till it stands on end in a

most startling manner, rattling strings of beads and bits of tinsel,

mounting over all some pert little hat with a red or green feather

standing saucily upright in front, she may look exceedingly pretty and

_piquante_; and, if she came there for a game of croquet or a

tableau-party, would be all in very good taste; but as she comes to

confess that she is a miserable sinner, that she has done the things she

ought not to have done and left undone the things she ought to have

done,--as she takes upon her lips most solemn and tremendous words,

whose meaning runs far beyond life into a sublime eternity,--there is a

discrepancy which would be ludicrous if it were not melancholy.

"One is apt to think, at first view, that St. Jerome was right in

saying,

'She who comes in glittering veil

To mourn her frailty, still is frail.'

But St. Jerome was in the wrong, after all; for a flashy, unsuitable

attire in church is not always a mark of an undevout or entirely worldly

mind; it is simply a mark of a raw, uncultivated taste. In Italy, the

ecclesiastical law prescribing a uniform black dress for the churches

gives a sort of education to European ideas of propriety in toilet,

which prevents churches from being made theatres for the same kind of

display which is held to be in good taste at places of public amusement.

It is but justice to the inventors of Parisian fashions to say, that,

had they ever had the smallest idea of going to church and Sunday

school, as our good girls do, they would immediately have devised

toilets appropriate to such exigencies. If it were any part of their

plan of life to appear statedly in public to confess themselves

'miserable sinners,' we should doubtless have sent over here the design

of some graceful penitential habit, which would give our places of

worship a much more appropriate air than they now have. As it is, it

would form a subject for such a court of inquiry and adaptation as we

have supposed, to draw a line between the costume of the theatre and the

church.

"In the same manner, there is a want of appropriateness in the costume

of our American women, who display in the street promenade a style of

dress and adornment originally intended for showy carriage drives in

such great exhibition grounds as the Bois de Boulogne. The makers of

Parisian fashions are not generally walkers. They do not, with all

their extravagance, have the bad taste to trail yards of silk and velvet

over the mud and dirt of a pavement, or promenade the street in a

costume so pronounced and striking as to draw the involuntary glance of

every eye; and the showy toilets displayed on the _pavé_ by American

young women have more than once exposed them to misconstruction in the

eyes of foreign observers.

"Next to appropriateness, the second requisite to beauty in dress I take

to be unity of effect. In speaking of the arrangement of rooms in the

'House and Home Papers,' I criticised some apartments wherein were many

showy articles of furniture, and much expense had been incurred,

because, with all this, there was no _unity of result_. The carpet was

costly, and in itself handsome; the paper was also in itself handsome

and costly; the tables and chairs also in themselves very elegant; and

yet, owing to a want of any unity of idea, any grand harmonizing tint of

color, or method of arrangement, the rooms had a jumbled, confused air,

and nothing about them seemed particularly pretty or effective. I

instanced rooms where thousands of dollars had been spent, which,

because of this defect, never excited admiration; and others in which

the furniture was of the cheapest description, but which always gave

immediate and universal pleasure. The same rule holds good in dress. As

in every apartment, so in every toilet, there should be one ground tone

or dominant color, which should rule all the others, and there should be

a general style of idea to which everything should be subjected.

"We may illustrate the effect of this principle in a very familiar case.

It is generally conceded that the majority of women look better in

mourning than they do in their ordinary apparel; a comparatively plain

person looks almost handsome in simple black. Now why is this? Simply

because mourning requires a severe uniformity of color and idea, and

forbids the display of that variety of colors and objects which go to

make up the ordinary female costume, and which very few women have such

skill in using as to produce really beautiful effects.

"Very similar results have been attained by the Quaker costume, which,

in spite of the quaint severity of the forms to which it adhered, has

always had a remarkable degree of becomingness, because of its

restriction to a few simple colors and to the absence of distracting

ornament.

"But the same effect which is produced in mourning or the Quaker costume

may be preserved in a style of dress admitting color and ornamentation.

A dress may have the richest fulness of color, and still the tints may

be so chastened and subdued as to produce the impression of a severe

simplicity. Suppose, for example, a golden-haired blonde chooses for the

ground-tone of her toilet a deep shade of purple, such as affords a good

background for the hair and complexion. The larger draperies of the

costume being of this color, the bonnet may be of a lighter shade of the

same, ornamented with lilac hyacinths, shading insensibly towards

rose-color. The effect of such a costume is simple, even though there be

much ornament, because it is ornament artistically disposed towards a

general result.

"A dark shade of green being chosen as the ground-tone of a dress, the

whole costume may, in like manner, be worked up through lighter and

brighter shades of green, in which rose-colored flowers may appear with

the same impression of simple appropriateness that is made by the pink

blossom over the green leaves of a rose. There have been times in France

when the study of color produced artistic effects in costume worthy of

attention, and resulted in styles of dress of real beauty. But the

present corrupted state of morals there has introduced a corrupt taste

in dress; and it is worthy of thought that the decline of moral purity

in society is often marked by the deterioration of the sense of artistic

beauty. Corrupt and dissipated social epochs produce corrupt styles of

architecture and corrupt styles of drawing and painting, as might easily

be illustrated by the history of art. When the leaders of society have

blunted their finer perceptions by dissipation and immorality, they are

incapable of feeling the beauties which come from delicate concords and

truly artistic combinations. They verge towards barbarism, and require

things that are strange, odd, dazzling, and peculiar to captivate their

jaded senses. Such we take to be the condition of Parisian society now.

The tone of it is given by women who are essentially impudent and

vulgar, who override and overrule, by the mere brute force of opulence

and luxury, women of finer natures and moral tone. The court of France

is a court of adventurers, of _parvenus_; and the palaces, the toilets,

the equipage, the entertainments, of the mistresses outshine those of

the lawful wives. Hence comes a style of dress which is in itself

vulgar, ostentatious, pretentious, without simplicity, without unity,

seeking to dazzle by strange combinations and daring contrasts.

"Now, when the fashions emanating from such a state of society come to

our country, where it has been too much the habit to put on and wear,

without dispute and without inquiry, any or everything that France

sends, the results produced are often things to make one wonder. A

respectable man, sitting quietly in church or other public assembly, may

be pardoned sometimes for indulging a silent sense of the ridiculous in

the contemplation of the forest of bonnets which surround him, as he

humbly asks himself the question, Were these meant to cover the head, to

defend it, or to ornament it? and if they are intended for any of these

purposes, how?

"I confess, to me nothing is so surprising as the sort of things which

well-bred women serenely wear on their heads with the idea that they are

ornaments. On my right hand sits a good-looking girl with a thing on her

head which seems to consist mostly of bunches of grass, straws, with a

confusion of lace, in which sits a draggled bird, looking as if the cat

had had him before the lady. In front of her sits another, who has a

glittering confusion of beads swinging hither and thither from a jaunty

little structure of black and red velvet. An anxious-looking matron

appears under the high eaves of a bonnet with a gigantic crimson rose

crushed down into a mass of tangled hair. She is _ornamented_! she has

no doubt about it.

"The fact is, that a style of dress which allows the use of everything

in heaven above or earth beneath requires more taste and skill in

disposition than falls to the lot of most of the female sex to make it

even tolerable. In consequence, the flowers, fruits, grass, hay, straw,

oats, butterflies, beads, birds, tinsel, streamers, jinglers, lace,

bugles, crape, which seem to be appointed to form a covering for the

female head, very often appear in combinations so singular, and the

results, taken in connection with all the rest of the costume, are such,

that we really think the people who usually assemble in a Quaker

meeting-house are, with their entire absence of ornament, more

becomingly attired than the majority of our public audiences. For if one

considers his own impression after having seen an assemblage of women

dressed in Quaker costume, he will find it to be, not of a confusion of

twinkling finery, but of many fair, sweet _faces_, of charming,

nice-looking _women_, and not of articles of dress. Now this shows that

the severe dress, after all, has better answered the true purpose of

dress, in setting forth the _woman_, than our modern costume, where the

woman is but one item in a flying mass of colors and forms, all of which

distract attention from the faces they are supposed to adorn. The dress

of the Philadelphian ladies has always been celebrated for its elegance

of effect, from the fact, probably, that the early Quaker parentage of

the city formed the eye and the taste of its women for uniform and

simple styles of color, and for purity and chastity of lines. The most

perfect toilets that have ever been achieved in America have probably

been those of the class familiarly called the gay Quakers,--children of

Quaker families, who, while abandoning the strict rules of the sect, yet

retain their modest and severe reticence, relying on richness of

material, and soft, harmonious coloring, rather than striking and

dazzling ornament.

"The next source of beauty in dress is the impression of truthfulness

and reality. It is a well-known principle of the fine arts, in all their

branches, that all shams and mere pretences are to be rejected,--a truth

which Ruskin has shown with the full lustre of his many-colored

prose-poetry. As stucco pretending to be marble, and graining pretending

to be wood, are in false taste in building, so false jewelry and cheap

fineries of every kind are in bad taste; so also is powder instead of

natural complexion, false hair instead of real, and flesh-painting of

every description. I have even the hardihood to think and assert, in the

presence of a generation whereof not one woman in twenty wears her own

hair, that the simple, short-cropped locks of Rosa Bonheur are in a more

beautiful style of hair-dressing than the most elaborate edifice of

curls, rats, and waterfalls that is erected on any fair head

now-a-days."

"O Mr. Crowfield! you hit us all now," cried several voices.

"I know it, girls,--I know it. I admit that you are all looking very

pretty; but I do maintain that you are none of you doing yourselves

justice, and that Nature, if you would only follow her, would do better

for you than all these elaborations. A short crop of your own hair, that

you could brush out in ten minutes every morning, would have a more

real, healthy beauty than the elaborate structures which cost you hours

of time, and give you the headache besides. I speak of the short

crop,--to put the case at the very lowest figure,--for many of you have

lovely hair of different lengths, and susceptible of a variety of

arrangements, if you did not suppose yourself obliged to build after a

foreign pattern, instead of following out the intentions of the great

Artist who made you.

"Is it necessary absolutely that every woman and girl should look

exactly like every other one? There are women whom Nature makes with

wavy or curly hair: let them follow her. There are those whom she makes

with soft and smooth locks, and with whom crinkling and craping is only

a sham. They look very pretty with it, to be sure; but, after all, is

there but one style of beauty? and might they not look prettier in

cultivating the style which Nature seemed to have intended for them?

"As to the floods of false jewelry, glass beads, and tinsel finery which

seem to be sweeping over the toilet of our women, I must protest that

they are vulgarizing the taste, and having a seriously bad effect on the

delicacy of artistic perception. It is almost impossible to manage such

material and give any kind of idea of neatness or purity; for the least

wear takes away their newness. And of all disreputable things, tumbled,

rumpled, and tousled finery is the most disreputable. A simple white

muslin, that can come fresh from the laundry every week, is, in point of

real taste, worth any amount of spangled tissues. A plain straw bonnet,

with only a ribbon across it, is in reality in better taste than

rubbishy birds or butterflies, or tinsel ornaments.

"Finally, girls, don't dress at hap-hazard; for dress, so far from being

a matter of small consequence, is in reality one of the fine arts,--so

far from trivial, that each country ought to have a style of its own,

and each individual such a liberty of modification of the general

fashion as suits and befits her person, her age, her position in life,

and the kind of character she wishes to maintain.

"The only motive in toilet which seems to have obtained much as yet

among young girls is the very vague impulse to look 'stylish,'--a desire

which must answer for more vulgar dressing than one would wish to see.

If girls would rise above this, and desire to express by their dress

the attributes of true ladyhood, nicety of eye, fastidious neatness,

purity of taste, truthfulness, and sincerity of nature, they might form,

each one for herself, a style having its own individual beauty,

incapable of ever becoming common and vulgar.

"A truly trained taste and eye would enable a lady to select from the

permitted forms of fashion such as might be modified to her purposes,

always remembering that simplicity is safe, that to attempt little, and

succeed, is better than to attempt a great deal, and fail.

"And now, girls, I will finish by reciting to you the lines old Ben

Jonson addressed to the pretty girls of his time, which form an

appropriate ending to my remarks.

'Still to be neat, still to be dressed

As you were going to a feast;

Still to be powdered, still perfumed;

Lady, it is to be presumed,

Though art's hid causes are not found,

All is not sweet, all is not sound.

'Give me a look, give me a face,

That makes simplicity a grace,--

Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:

Such sweet neglect more taketh me

Than all the adulteries of art,

That strike my eyes, but not my heart.'"

EDWIN BOOTH.

When we mark the struggles of a brave spirit against the restrictions of

an ignoble body, we pay admiring honors to every success that it

achieves. It is the contest between human will and untoward fate. Each

triumph is a victory of man's dearest heritage, spiritual power. Some

have made themselves great captains despite physical weakness and

natural fear; scholars and writers have become renowned, though slow to

learn, or, haply, "with wisdom at one entrance quite shut out"; nor have

stammering lips and shambling figure prevented the rise of orators and

actors, determined to give utterance to the power within. But, in our

approval of the energy that can so vanquish the injuries of fortune, we

are apt to overrate its quality, and to forget how much more exquisite

the endowment would be if allied with those outward resources which

complete the full largess of Heaven's favoritism. In the latter case we

yield our unqualified affection to beings who afford us an unqualified

delight. We are reverencing the gifts of the gods; and in their display

see clearly that no human will can secure that nobility of appearance

and expression which a few maintain without intention, and by right of

birth.

Bodily fitness is no small portion of a genius for any given pursuit;

and, in the conduct of life, the advantages of external beauty can

hardly be overrated. All thinkers have felt this. Emerson says "of that

beauty which reaches its perfection in the human form," that "all men

are its lovers; wherever it goes, it creates joy and hilarity, and

everything is permitted to it." Now there is a beauty of parts, which is

external; and another of the expression of the soul, which is the

superior. But in its higher grades the former implies the latter.

Socrates said that his ugliness accused just as much in his soul, had he

not corrected it by education. And Montaigne writes: "The same word in

Greek signifies both fair and good, and Holy Word often calls those good

which it would call fair"; and, moreover, "Not only in the men that

serve me, but also in the beasts, I consider this point within two

finger-breadths of goodness."

Can we claim too much for physical adaptation in our measure of the rank

to be accorded an actor? For he of all others, not excepting the

orator, makes the most direct personal appeal to our tastes. In his own

figure he holds the mirror up to Nature, while his voice must be the

echo of her various tones. By the law of aristocracy in art, he must be

held so much the greater, as he is able to depict the nobler

manifestations of her forms and passions. Of course the first excellence

is that of truth. A spirited enactment of Malvolio, of Falstaff, or of

Richard Crookback has the high merit of faithfully setting forth

humanity, though in certain whimsical or distorted phases; but we are

more profoundly enriched by the portrayal of higher types. And thus, in

making an actor's chosen and successful studies a means of measuring his

genius, we find in the self-poise which wins without effort, and must

throughout sustain the princely Hamlet, or Othello tender and strong,

that grand manner which, in painting, places the art of Raphael and

Angelo above that of Hogarth or Teniers. Each may be perfect in its

kind, but one kind exceeds another in glory.

We have two pictures before us. One, on paper yellow with the moth of

years, is the portrait of an actor in the costume of Richard III. What a

classic face! English features are rarely cast in that antique mould.

The head sits lightly on its columnar neck, and is topped with

dark-brown curls, that cluster like the acanthus; the gray eyes are

those which were justly described as being "at times full of fire,

intelligence, and splendor, and again of most fascinating softness"; and

the nose is of "that peculiar Oriental construction, which gives an air

of so much distinction and command." Such was the countenance of Junius

Brutus Booth,--that wonderful actor, who, to powers of scorn, fury, and

pathos rivalling those which illumined the uneven performances of Edmund

Kean, added scholastic attainments which should have equalized his

efforts, and made every conception harmonious with the graces of a

philosophical and cultured soul. In structure the genius of the elder

Booth was indeed closely akin to that of Kean, if not the rarer of the

two, notwithstanding the triumphant assertion of Doran, who says that

Booth was driven by Kean's superiority to become a hero to "transpontine

audiences." Each relied upon his intuitive, off-hand conception of a

given part, and fell back to nature in his methods, throwing aside

conventionalisms which had long ruled the English stage. But the former

was capable of more fervid brightness in those flashes which

characterized the acting of them both. Still, there was something awry

within him, which in his body found a visible counterpart. The shapely

trunk, crowned with the classic head, was set upon limbs of an ungainly

order, short, of coarse vigor, and "gnarled like clumps of oak." Above,

all was spiritual; below, of the earth, earthy, and dragging him down.

Strong souls, thus inharmoniously embodied, have often developed some

irregularity of heart or brain: a disproportion, which only strength of

purpose or the most favorable conditions of life could balance and

overcome. With the elder Booth, subjected to the varying fortunes and

excitements of the early American stage, the evil influence gained sad

ascendency, and his finest renditions grew "out of tune and harsh." In

depicting the pathetic frenzy of Lear, such actors as he and Kean, when

at their best, can surpass all rivals; and the grotesque,

darkly-powerful ideals of Richard and Shylock are precisely those in

which they will startle us to the last, gathering new, though fitful,

expressions of hate and scorn, as their own natures sink from ethereal

to grosser atmospheres. The mouth catches most surely the growing

tendency of a soul; and on the lips of the elder Booth there sat a

natural half-sneer of pride, which defined the direction in which his

genius would reach its farthest scope.

The second picture is a likeness of this great actor's son,--of a face

and form now wonted to all who sustain the standard drama of to-day.

Here is something of the classic outline and much of the Greek

sensuousness of the father's countenance, but each softened and

strengthened by the repose of logical thought, and interfused with that

serene spirit which lifts the man of feeling so far above the child of

passions unrestrained. The forehead is higher, rising toward the region

of the moral sentiments; the face is long and oval, such as Ary Scheffer

loved to draw; the chin short in height, but, from the ear downwards,

lengthening its distinct and graceful curve. The head is of the most

refined and thorough-bred Etruscan type, with dark hair thrown backwards

and flowing student-wise; the complexion, pale and striking. The eyes

are black and luminous, the pupils contrasting sharply with the balls in

which they are set. If the profile and forehead evince taste and a

balanced mind, it is the hair and complexion, and, above all, those

remarkable eyes,--deep-searching, seen and seeing from afar,--that

reveal the passions of the father in their heights and depths of power.

The form is taller than either that of the elder Booth or Kean, lithe,

and disposed in symmetry; with broad shoulders, slender hips, and comely

tapering limbs, all supple, and knit together with harmonious grace. We

have mentioned personal fitness as a chief badge of the actor's peerage,

and it is of one of the born nobility that we have to speak. Amongst

those who have few bodily disadvantages to overcome, and who, it would

seem, should glide into an assured position more easily than others

climb, we may include our foremost American tragedian,--EDWIN THOMAS

BOOTH.[D]

But men are often endowed with plenteous gifts for which they never find

employment, and thus go to the bad without discovering their natural

bent to others or even to themselves. In the years preceding our late

war how many were rated as vagabonds, who had that within them which has

since won renown! They were "born soldiers," and, in the piping time of

peace, out of unison with the bustling crowd around them. Life seemed a

muddle, and of course they went astray. But when the great guns sounded,

and the bugles rang, they came at once to their birthright, and many a

ne'er-do-well made himself a patriot and hero forever.

Edwin Booth, having the capabilities of a great actor, found himself

about the stage in his childhood, and, by an unwonted kindness of

fortune, went through with perhaps the exact training his genius

required. If the atmosphere of the theatre had not almost enwrapt his

cradle, and thus become a necessity of his after years, his reflective,

brooding temperament and æsthetic sensitiveness might have impelled him

to one of the silent professions, or kept him an irresolute dreamer

through an unsuccessful life. But while his youth was passed in the

green-room, a stern discipline early made him self-reliant, matured his

powers, taught him executive action, and gave him insight of the

passions and manners of our kind. As for black-letter knowledge, such a

nature as his was sure to gain that,--to acquire in any event, and

almost unknowingly, what mere talent only obtains by severe, methodical

application. We know how genius makes unconscious studies, while in the

daily routine of life. The soul works on, unassisted, and at length

bursts out into sudden blaze. How did Booth study? Just as young

Franklin weighed the minister's sermons, while mentally intent upon the

architecture of the church roof. Night after night the lonely face

brightened the shadows of the stage-wings, and the delicate ear drank

in the folly, the feeling, the wit and wisdom of the play. To such a

boyhood the personal contact of his father's nature was all in all. It

was quaffing from the fountain-head, not from streams of the imitation

of imitation. As the genius of the father refined the intellect and

judgment of the son, so the weaknesses coupled with that genius taught

him strength of character and purpose. We have heard of nothing more

dramatic than the wandering companionship of this gifted pair,--whether

the younger is awaiting, weary and patient, the end of the heard but

unseen play, or watching over his father at a distance, when the clouds

settled thickly upon that errant mind, through long nights and along the

desolate streets of a strange city. With other years came the time for

young Booth to fight his own battle, and wander on his own account

through an apprenticeship preceding his mature successes,--to gain those

professional acquirements which were needed to complete his education,

and to make that tasteful research to which he naturally inclined. He is

now in the sunshine of his noonday fame; and we may estimate his measure

of excellence by a review of those chosen and successful renderings,

that seem most clearly to define his genius, and to mark the limits of

height and versatility which he can attain.

Take, then, the part of Hamlet, which, in these days, the very mention

of his name suggests. Little remains to be said of that undying play,

whose pith and meaning escaped the sturdy English critics, until

Coleridge discovered it by looking into his own soul, and those

all-searching Germans pierced to the centre of a disposition quite in

keeping with their national character. A score of lights have since

brought out every thought and phrase, and we now have Hamlet so clearly

in our mind's eye as to wonder how our predecessors failed to comprehend

his image. But what does this tragedy demand of an actor? Proverbially,

that he himself shall fill it, and hold the stage from its commencement

to its end. The play of "Hamlet" is the part of Hamlet. The slowness of

its action, and the import of its dialogue and soliloquies, make all

depend upon the central figure. Next, he is to depict the most

accomplished gentleman ever drawn; not gallant, gay Mercutio, nor

courtly Benedict, but the prince and darling of a realm; one who cannot

"lack preferment," being of birth above mean ambition and self-conscious

unrest; a gentleman by heart, no less,--full of kindly good-fellowship,

brooking no titles with his friends, loving goodness and truth,

impatient of fools, scorning affectation; moreover, the glass of fashion

and the mould of form, the modern ideal of manly beauty,--which joins

with the classic face and figure that charm of expression revealing a

delicate mind within. For our Hamlet is both gentleman and scholar.

History and philosophy have taught him the vice of kings, the brevity of

power and forms, the immortality of principles, the art of

generalization; while contact with society has made him master of those

"shafts of gentle satire," for which all around him are his unconscious

targets. His self-respect and self-doubt balance each other, until the

latter outweighs the former, under the awful pressure of an unheard-of

woe. Finally, he comes before us in that poetical, speculative period of

life following the years of study and pleasure, and preceding those of

executive leadership. Prince, gentleman, scholar, poet,--he is each, and

all together, and attracts us from every point of view.

Upon this noblest youth--so far in advance of his rude and turbulent

time--throw a horror that no philosophy, birth, nor training can

resist--one of those weights beneath which all humanity bows shuddering;

cast over him a stifling dream, where only the soul can act, and the

limbs refuse their offices; have him pushed along by Fate to the

lowering, ruinous catastrophe; and you see the dramatic chainwork of a

part which he who would enact Hamlet must fulfil.

It has been said, distinguishing between the effects of comedy and

tragedy, that to render the latter ennobles actors, so that successful

tragedians have acquired graces of personal behavior. But one who does

not possess native fineness before his portrayal of Hamlet will never be

made a gentleman by the part. In its more excited phases, a man not born

to the character may succeed. As in Lear, the excess of the passion

displayed serves as a mask to the actor's disposition. In its repose,

the ideal Hamlet is hard to counterfeit. In the reflective portions and

exquisite minor play which largely occupy its progress, and in the

princely superiority of its chief figure, there can be little _acting_

in the conventional sense. There is a quality which no false ware can

imitate. The player must be himself.

This necessity, we think, goes far toward Booth's special fitness for

the part. He is in full sympathy with it, whether on or off the stage.

We know it from our earliest glance at that lithe and sinuous figure,

elegant in the solemn garb of sables,--at the pallor of his face and

hands, the darkness of his hair, those eyes that can be so

melancholy-sweet, yet ever look beyond and deeper than the things about

him. Where a burlier tragedian must elaborately pose himself for the

youth he would assume, this actor so easily and constantly falls into

beautiful attitudes and movements, that he seems to go about, as we

heard a humorist say, "making statues all over the stage." No picture

can equal the scene where Horatio and Marcellus swear by his sword, he

holding the crossed hilt upright between the two, his head thrown back

and lit with high resolve. In the fencing-bout with Laertes he is the

apotheosis of grace; and since, though his height and shoulder-breadth

are perfect, he is somewhat spare in form, you call to mind--in

accounting for this charm of motion, not studied, "like old Hayward's,

between two looking-glasses"--the law that beauty is frame-deep; that

grace results from the conscious, harmonious adjustment of joints and

bones, and not from accidental increase and decrease of their covering.

There is more hidden art in his sitting attitudes upon the quaint

lounges of the period; whether rebuking his own remissness, or listening

to "the rugged Pyrrhus," or playing upon old Polonius,--setting his

breast, as it were, against the thorn of his own disgust.

A sense of the fitness of things makes Booth hold himself in close

restraint when not engaged upon the sharper crises of the play. This we

conceive to be the true art-spirit. There is no attempt to rouse the

house by elocutionary climaxes or quick-stopping strides. Like

Betterton, he courts rapturous silence rather than clamorous applause.

So finished is all this as a study, that the changes into the more

dramatic passages at first grate harshly upon the eye and ear. For,

after all, it is a tragedy, full of spectral terrors. Lord Hamlet feels

it in his soul. Why should this delicate life be so rudely freighted?

Booth, faithful to the action, accepts the passion and the pang. We

hardly relish his gasping utterance and utter fall, when the Ghost

rehearses his story on those solemn battlements of Elsinore. But think

what he is seeing: not the stage-vision for which we care so little, but

the spectre of his father,--a midnight visitant from the grave! It has

been asserted that no man ever _believed_ he saw a spirit and survived

the shock. And it is strongly urged, as a defence of Booth's conception

of this scene, that, in the closet interview with the Queen, after the

slaying of Polonius, and on the Ghost's reappearance, we, now wrought up

to the high poetic pitch by the dialogue and catastrophe, and by the

whole progress of the piece, ourselves catch the key, expect, and fully

sympathize with his horror and prostration, and accept the fall to earth

as the proper sequel to that dreadful blazon from the other world.

Notwithstanding this, it seems to us that Booth should tone down his

manner in the first Act. The audience has hardly left the outer life,

and cannot identify itself with the player; and an artist must

acknowledge this fact, and not too far exceed the elevation of his

hearers.

Five years ago there was a weakness in Booth's voice, making the

listener apprehensive of the higher and louder tones. This insufficiency

has passed away with practice and growth, and his utterance now has

precisely the volume required in Hamlet,--being musical and distinct in

the quiet parts, and fully sustaining each emotional outburst.

In effective compositions there is a return to the theme or refrain of

the piece, when the end is close upon us. One of the finest points in

this play is, that after the successive episodes of the killing of

Polonius, the madness and death of Ophelia, and the wild bout with

Laertes at her burial, Hamlet reassumes his every-day nature, and is

never more thoroughly himself than when Osric summons him to the

fencing-match, and his heart grows ill with the shadow of coming death.

The Fates are just severing his thread; events that shall sweep a whole

dynasty, like the house of Atreus, into one common ruin, are close at

hand; but Philosophy hovers around her gallant child, and the sweet,

wise voice utters her teachings for the last time: "If it be now, 't is

not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet

it will come; the readiness is all. Let be." Then follow the courtesy,

the grace, the fraud, the justice, of the swift, last scene; the curtain

falls; and now the yearning sympathies of the hearers break out into

sound, and the actor comes before the footlights to receive his meed of

praise. How commonplace it is to read that such a one was called before

the curtain and bowed his thanks! But sit there; listen to the

applauding clamor of two thousand voices, be yourself lifted on the

waves of that exultation, and for a moment you forget how soon all this

will be hushed forever, and, in the triumph of the actor, the grander,

more enduring genius of the writer whose imagination first evoked the

spell.

The performance of Richelieu, from one point of view, is a complete

antithesis to that of the melancholy Dane. In the latter we see and

think of Booth; in the former, his household friends, watching My Lord

Cardinal from first to last, have nothing to recall him to their minds.

The man is transformed, is _acting_ throughout the play. Voice, form,

and countenance are changed; only the eyes remain, and they are volcanic

with strange lustre,--mindful of the past, suspicious of the present,

fixed still upon the future with piercing intent. The soul of the

Cardinal, nearing its leave of the tenement that has served it so long,

glares out of the windows, with supernatural regard, over the luxury,

the intrigue, the danger, the politics, the empire it must soon behold

no more. As the piece is now produced, with fidelity to details of use

and decoration,--with armor, costumery, furniture, and music of the

period of Louis XIII.,--with all this boast of heraldry and pomp of

power, the illusion is most entire. The countenance is that of the old

portrait; white flowing locks, cap, robes, raised moustache, and pointed

beard,--all are there. The voice is an old man's husky treble, and we

have the old man's step, the tremor, and recurring spasmodic power; nor

is there any moment when the actor forgets the part he has assumed. Yes,

it is age itself; but the sunset of a life whose noonday was gallantry,

valor, strength,--and intellectual strength never so much as now. How we

lend our own impulses to the effort with which the veteran grasps the

sword wherewith he shore "the stalwart Englisher," strive with him in

that strong yearning to whirl it aloft, sink with him in the instant,

nerveless reaction, and sorrow that "a child could slay Richelieu now!"

He is not the intriguer of dark tradition, wily and cruel for low

ambitious ends, but entirely great, in his protection of innocence and

longing for affection, and most of all in that supreme love of France to

which his other motives are subservient. Booth seizes upon this as the

key-note of the play, and is never so grand as when he rises at full

height with the averment,

"I found France rent asunder;

The rich men despots, and the poor banditti;

Sloth in the mart, and schism within the temple;

Brawls festering to rebellion, and weak laws

Rotting away with rust in antique sheaths,--

_I have re-created France!_"

Bulwer's "Richelieu," though written in that author's pedantic,

artificial manner, and catching the groundlings with cheap sentiment and

rhetorical platitudes, is yet full of telling dramatic effects, which,

through the inspiration of a fine actor, lift the most critical audience

to sudden heights. One of this sort is justly famous. We moderns, who so

feebly catch the spell which made the Church of Rome sovereign of

sovereigns for a thousand years, have it cast full upon us in the scene

where the Cardinal, deprived of temporal power, and defending his

beautiful ward from royalty itself, draws around her that Church's

"awful circle," and cries to Baradas,

"Set but a foot within that holy ground,

And on thy head--yea, though it wore a crown--

_I launch the curse of Rome!_"

Booth's expression of this climax is wonderful. There is perhaps

nothing, of its own kind, to equal it upon the present stage. Well may

the king's haughty parasites cower, and shrink aghast from the ominous

voice, the finger of doom, the arrows of those lurid, unbearable eyes!

But it is in certain intellectual elements and pathetic undertones that

the part of Richelieu, as conceived by Bulwer, assimilates to that of

Hamlet, and comes within the realm where our actor's genius holds

assured sway. The argument of the piece is spiritual power. The body of

Richelieu is wasted, but the soul remains unscathed, with all its

reason, passion, and indomitable will. He is still prelate, statesman,

and poet, and equal to a world in arms.

The requisite subtilty of analysis, and sympathy with mental finesse,

must also specially adapt this actor to the correct assumption of the

character of Iago. Those who have never seen him in it may know by

analogy that his merits are not exaggerated. We take it that Iago is a

sharply intellectual personage, though his logic, warped by grovelling

purpose, becomes sophistry, while lustful and envious intrigues occupy

his skilful brain. We have described the beauty of Booth's countenance

in repose. But it is equally remarkable for mobility, and his most

expressive results are produced by liftings of the high-arched brows and

the play of passions about the flexible mouth. The natural line of his

lip, not scornful in itself, is on that straight border-ground where a

hair's breadth can raise it into sardonic curves, transforming all its

good to sneering evil. In his rendering, Iago must become a shining,

central incarnation of tempting deceit, with Othello's generous nature a

mere puppet in his hands. As Richard III., we should look to find him

most effective in schemeful soliloquy and the phases of assumed virtue

and affection, while perhaps less eminent than his father or Edmund Kean

in that headlong, strident unrest, which hurried on their

representations to the fury or the retributive end.

To give the distant reader our own impression of a great actor is a slow

and delicate task, and perhaps the most we can accomplish is to set him

before others somewhat as he has appeared to us, and to let each decide

for himself the question of histrionic rank. But have we not

unconsciously defined our view of the excellence of Booth's genius, and

hinted at its limitations? The latter are by no means narrow, for his

elastic, adaptable nature insures him versatility; and, despite the

world's scepticism as to the gift of an artist to do more than one thing

well, he is acknowledged to surpass our other actors in a score of

elegant parts. Amongst these are Pescara, Petruchio, and Sir Edward

Mortimer; while in a few pieces of the French romance-school, such as

"Ruy Blas," and that terrible "The King's Jester," he has introduced to

us studies of a novel and intensely dramatic kind. As for the lighter

order, the greater including the less, our best Hamlet should be the

best "walking gentleman," if he elect to assume that versatile

personage's offices. We know also that Booth's Shylock should be a

masterly performance, since his voice, complexion, eyes, and inherited

powers of scorn, all lend their aid to his mental appreciation of the

part. But it is not our purpose to consider any of these _rôles_. We

only allude to them to say that in most directions his equal has not

appeared on the American stage; and in qualifying an opinion of his

powers, we make no exception in favor of his contemporaries, but,

rather, of those who have been and shall be again, when Jove shall

"let down from his golden chain

An age of better metal."

As Hamlet, Mr. Booth will hardly improve his present execution, since he

is now at the age of thirty-two, and can never fill more easily the

youthful beauty of the part, without artifice, and, we may say, by the

first intention. We should like to see him, ere many winters have passed

over his head, in some new classic play, whose arrangement should not be

confined to the bald, antique model, nor drawn out in sounding speeches

like Talfourd's "Ion," nor yet too much infused with the mingled Gothic

elements of our own drama; but warm with sunlight, magical with the

grace of the young Athenian feeling, and full of a healthful action

which would display the fairest endowments of his mind and person. As

Lear or Shylock, he will certainly grow in power as he grows in years,

and may even gain upon his masterly performance of Richelieu. But in one

department, and that of an important order, he will perhaps never reach

the special eminence at which we place a few historic names.

Our exception includes those simply powerful characters, the ideal of

which his voice and magnetism cannot in themselves sustain. At certain

lofty passages he relies upon nervous, electrical effort, the natural

weight of his temperament being unequal to the desired end. Those

flashing impulses, so compatible with the years of Richelieu and the

galled purpose of Shylock, would fail to reveal satisfactorily the

massive types, which rise by a head, like Agamemnon, above the noblest

host. Dramatic representations may be classed under the analogous

divisions of poetry: for instance, the satirical, the bucolic, the

romantic, the reflective, the epic. The latter has to do with those

towering creatures of action--Othello, Coriolanus, Virginius,

Macbeth--somewhat deficient, whether good or evil, in the casuistry of

more subtile dispositions, but giants in emotion, and kingly in repose.

They are essentially _masculine_, and we connect their ideals with the

stately figure, the deep chest-utterance, the slow, enduring majesty of

mien. The genius of Mr. Booth has that feminine quality which, though

allowing him a wider range, and enabling him to render even these

excepted parts after a tuneful, elaborate, and never ignoble method of

his own, might debar him from giving them their highest

interpretation,--or, at least, from sustaining it, without sharp

falsetto effort, throughout the entire passage of a play. In a few

impersonations, where Kemble, with all his mannerisms and defective

elocution, and Macready, notwithstanding his uninspired, didactic

nature, were most at their ease and successful, this actor would be

somewhat put to his mettle,--a fact of which he is probably himself no

less aware.

After all, what are we saying, except that his genius is rather

Corinthian than Doric, and therefore more cultured, mobile, and of wider

range? If Kemble was the ideal Coriolanus and Henry V., he was too

kingly as Hamlet, and Booth is the _princeliest_ Hamlet that ever trod

the stage. If Kean and the elder Booth were more supernal in their

lightnings of passion and scorn,--and there are points in "Richelieu"

which leave this a debatable question,--Edwin Booth is more equal

throughout, has every resource of taste and study at his command; his

action is finished to the last, his stage-business perfect, his reading

distinct and musical as a bell. He is thus the ripened product of our

eclectic later age, and has this advantage about him, being an

American, that he is many-sided, and draws from all foreign schools

their distinctive elements to fuse into one new, harmonious whole.

It is our fashion to speak of the decline of the Drama, to lament not

only a decay of morals, manners, and elocution, but the desertion of

standard excellence for the frippery which only appeals to the lightest

popular taste. But this outcry proceeds mostly from old fogies, and

those who only reverence the past, while the halo which gilds the

memories of youth is the cause of its ceaseless repetition. For it has

been heard through every period. It was in the era when our greatest

dramas were created that Ben Jonson, during a fit of the spleen,

occasioned by the failure of "The New Inn," begat these verses "to

himself":--

"Come, leave the loathed stage,

And this more loathsome age,

Where pride and impudence, in faction knit,

Usurp the chair of wit!

Inditing and arranging every day

Something they call a play."

At the commencement of our own century, and in what we are wont to

consider the Roscian Period of the British stage, its condition seemed

so deplorable to Leigh Hunt, then the dramatic critic of "The News," as

to require "An Essay on the Appearance, Causes, and Consequences of the

Decline of British Comedy." "Of Tragedy," he wrote, "we have nothing;

and it is the observation of all Europe that the British Drama is

rapidly declining." Yet the golden reign of the Kembles was then in its

prime; and such names as Bannister, Fawcett, Matthews, Elliston, and

Cooke occur in Hunt's graceful and authoritative sketches of the actors

of the day.[E] As to the newer plays, Gifford said, "All the fools in

the kingdom seem to have exclaimed with one voice, Let us write for the

theatre!" Latter-day croakers would have us believe that the Tragic

Muse, indignant at the desecration of her English altars, took flight

across the ocean, alighting in solemn majesty at the Old Park Theatre of

New York, but that she disappeared utterly in the final conflagration of

that histrionic shrine. Well, there are smouldering remnants of the Old

Park still left to us; veteran retainers of the conventional stride, the

disdainful gesture, the Kemble elocution, and that accent which was

justly characterized as

"Ojus, insijjus, hijjus, and perfijjus!"

But the Muse is immortal, though so changing the fashion of her garb, it

would appear, as often to fail of recognition from ancient friends. We

think that modern acting is quite as true to nature as that of the

school which has passed away, while its accessories are infinitely

richer and more appropriate; and as to the popular judgment, how should

that be on the decline? In America,--where common wealth makes common

entrance, and the lines are not so clearly drawn between the unskilful

many and the judicious few,--managers will always make concessions to

the whim and folly of the hour. But we see no cause for discouragement,

so long as dramas are set forth with the conscientious accuracy that has

marked the latest productions of "Hamlet" and "Richelieu," and while

hushed and delighted audiences, drawn from every condition of society,

leave all meaner performances to hang upon the looks and accents of

Nature's sweet interpreter,--Edwin Booth.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] _Not_ Edwin _Forrest_ Booth, as often and erroneously written. Our

actor, born in November, 1833, derived his middle name from Thomas Flyn,

the English comedian, his father's contemporary and friend. Edwin was

the chosen companion of his father in the latter's tours throughout the

United States, and was regarded by the old actor with a strange mixture

of repulsion and sympathy,--the one evinced in lack of outward affection

and encouragement, the other in a silent but undoubted appreciation of

the son's promise. The boy, in turn, so fully understood the father's

temperament, that a bond existed between the two. Whether to keep Edwin

from the stage, or in caprice, the elder Booth at first rarely permitted

the younger to see him act; but the son, attending the father to the

theatre, would sit in the wings for hours, listening to the play, and

having all its parts so indelibly impressed on him memory as to astonish

his brother-actors in later years.

[E] "Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres, including

General Observations on the Practice and Genius of the Stage. London,

1807." Some publisher would do well to give us a reprint of this noted

collection.

AMONG THE LAURELS.

"The sunset's gorgeous dyes

Paled slowly from the skies,

And the clear heaven was waiting for the stars,

As side by side we strayed

Adown a sylvan glade,

And found our pathway crossed by rustic bars.

Beyond the barrier lay

A green and tempting way,

Arched with fair laurel-trees, a-bloom and tall,--

Their cups of tender snow

Touched with a rosy glow,

And warm sweet shadows trembling over all.

The chestnuts sung and sighed,

The solemn oaks replied,

And distant pine-trees crooned in slumberous tones;

While music low and clear

Gushed from the darkness near,

Where a shy brook went tinkling over stones.

Soft mosses, damp and sweet,

Allured our waiting feet,

And brambles veiled their thorns with treacherous bloom;

While tiny flecks of flowers,

Which own no name of ours,

Added their mite of beauty and perfume.

And hark! a hidden bird--

To sudden utterance stirred,

As by a gushing love too great to bear

With voiceless silence long--

Burst into passionate song,

Filling with his sweet trouble all the air.

Then one, whose eager soul

Could brook no slight control,

Said, "Let us thread this pleasant path, dear friend,--

If thus the _way_ can be

So beautiful to see,

How much more beautiful must be the _end_!

"Follow! this solitude

May shrine the haunted wood,

Storied so sweetly in romance and rhyme,--

Secure from human ill,

And rarely peopled still

By Fauns and Dryads of the olden time.

"A spot of hallowed ground

By mortal yet unfound,

Sacred to nymph and sylvan deity,--

Where foiled Apollo glides,

And bashful Daphne hides

Safe in the shelter of her laurel-tree!"

"Forbear!" the other cried,--

"O, leave the way untried!

Those joys are sweetest which we only guess,

And the impatient soul,

That seeks to grasp the whole,

Defeats itself by its own eagerness.

"Let us not rudely shake

The dew-drop from the brake

Fringing the borders of this haunted dell;

All the delights which are--

The present and the far--

Lose half their charm by being known too well!

"And he mistakes who tries

To search all mysteries,--

Who leaves no cup undrained, no path untracked;

Who seeks to know too much

Brushes with eager touch

The bloom of Fancy from the brier of Fact.

"Keep one fair myth aloof

From hard and actual proof;

Preserve some dear delusions as they seem,

Since the reality,

How bright soe'er it be,

Shows dull and cold beside our marvellous dream.

"Leave this white page unscored,

This rare realm unexplored,

And let dear Fancy roam there as she will;

Whatever page we turn,

However much we learn,

Let there be something left to dream of still!"

Wherefore, for aught we know,

The golden apples grow

In the green vale to which that pathway leads;

The spirits of the wood

Still haunt its solitude,

And Pan sits piping there among the reeds!

GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.