For most of the places from ten to fourteen candidates were named, and

when these were reduced to two, nearly equally balanced in popular

favor, the voting became very spirited. The apparitor, who was chosen on

account of his strength of voice (the candidates for that office must be

tested in this respect), had hard work that day. The same formula must

be repeated before every vote, in this wise: "Herr Landamman,

gentlemen, faithful and beloved fellow-citizens and brethren of the

Union, if it seems good to you to choose so-and-so as your treasurer for

the coming year, so lift up your hands!" Then, all over the dark mass,

thousands of hands flew into the sunshine, rested a moment, and

gradually sank with a fluttering motion, which made me think of leaves

flying from a hillside forest in the autumn winds. As each election was

decided, and the choice was announced, swords were lifted to show the

location of the new official in the crowd, and he was then brought upon

the platform with fife and drum. Nearly two hours elapsed before the

gaps were filled, and the government was again complete.

Then followed the election of judges for the judicial districts, which,

in most cases, were almost unanimous re-elections. These are repeated

from year to year, so long as the people are satisfied. Nearly all the

citizens of Outer-Rhoden were before me; I could distinctly see three

fourths of their faces, and I detected no expression except that of a

grave, conscientious interest in the proceedings. Their patience was

remarkable. Closely packed, man against man, in the hot, still sunshine,

they stood quietly for nearly three hours, and voted upwards of two

hundred and seven times before the business of the day was completed. A

few old men on the edges of the crowd slipped away for a quarter of an

hour, in order, as one of them told me, "to keep their stomachs from

giving way entirely," and some of the younger fellows took a schoppin of

_Most_ for the same purpose; but they generally returned and resumed

their places as soon as refreshed.

The close of the _Landsgemeinde_ was one of the most impressive

spectacles I ever witnessed. When the elections were over, and no

further duty remained, the Parson Etter of Hundwyl ascended the

platform. The governing Landamman assumed his black mantle of office,

and, after a brief prayer, took the oath of inauguration from the

clergyman. He swore to further the prosperity and honor of the land, to

ward off misfortune from it, to uphold the Constitution and laws, to

protect the widows and orphans, and to secure the equal rights of all,

nor through favor, hostility, gifts, or promises to be turned aside from

doing the same. The clergyman repeated the oath sentence by sentence,

both holding up the oath-fingers of the right hand, the people looking

on silent and uncovered.

The governing Landamman now turned to the assembly, and read them their

oath, that they likewise should further the honor and prosperity of the

land, preserve its freedom and its equal rights, obey the laws, protect

the Council and the judges, take no gift or favor from any prince or

potentate, and that each one should accept and perform, to the best of

his ability, any service to which he might be chosen. After this had

been read, the Landamman lifted his right hand, with the oath-fingers

extended; his colleagues on the platform, and every man of the ten or

eleven thousand present, did the same. The silence was so profound that

the chirp of a bird on the hillside took entire possession of the air.

Then the Landamman slowly and solemnly spoke these words: "I have well

understood that--which has been read to me;--I will always and exactly

observe it,--faithfully and without reservation,--so truly as I wish and

pray--that God help me!" At each pause, the same words were repeated by

every man, in a low, subdued tone. The hush was else so complete, the

words were spoken with such measured firmness, that I caught each as it

came, not as from the lips of men, but from a vast, supernatural murmur

in the air. The effect was indescribable. Far off on the horizon was the

white vision of an Alp, but all the hidden majesty of those supreme

mountains was nothing to the scene before me. When the last words had

been spoken, the hands sank slowly, and the crowd stood a moment locked

together, with grave faces and gleaming eyes, until the spirit that had

descended upon them passed. Then they dissolved; the _Landsgemeinde_ was

over.

In my inn, I should think more than the expected six hundred had found

place. From garret to cellar, every corner was occupied; bread, wine,

and steamy dishes passed in a steady whirl from kitchen and tap-room

into all the roaring chambers. In the other inns it was the same, and

many took their drink and provender in the open air. I met my

philosopher of the previous evening, who said, "Now, what do you think

of our _Landsgemeinde_?" and followed my answer with his three _Ja's_,

the last a more desponding sigh than ever. Since the business was over,

I judged that the people would be less reserved,--which, indeed, was the

case. Nearly all with whom I spoke expressed their satisfaction with the

day's work. I walked through the crowds in all directions, vainly

seeking for personal beauty. There were few women present, but a

handsome man is only less beautiful than a beautiful woman, and I like

to look at the former when the latter is absent. I was surprised at the

great proportion of under-sized men; only weaving, in close rooms, for

several generations, could have produced so many squat bodies and short

legs. The Appenzellers are neither a handsome nor a picturesque race,

and their language harmonizes with their features; but I learned, during

that day at Hundwyl, to like and to respect them.

Pastor Etter insisted on my dining with him; two younger clergymen were

also guests, and my friend the Chancellor Engwiller came to make further

kind offers of service. The people of each parish, I learned, elect

their own pastor, and pay him his salary. In municipal matters the same

democratic system prevails as in the cantonal government. Education is

well provided for, and the morals of the community are watched and

guarded by a committee consisting of the pastor and two officials

elected by the people. Outer-Rhoden is almost exclusively Protestant,

while Inner-Rhoden--the mountain region around the Sentis--is Catholic.

Although thus geographically and politically connected, there was

formerly little intercourse between the inhabitants of the two parts of

the Canton, owing to their religious differences; but now they come

together in a friendly way, and are beginning to intermarry.

After dinner, the officials departed in carriages, to the sound of

trumpets, and thousands of the people followed. Again the roads and

paths leading away over the green hills were dark with lines of

pedestrians; but a number of those whose homes lay nearest to Hundwyl

lingered to drink and gossip out the day. A group of herdsmen, over

whose brown faces the high stove-pipe hat looked doubly absurd, gathered

in a ring, and while one of them _yodelled_ the _Ranz des Vaches_ of

Appenzell, the others made an accompaniment with their voices, imitating

the sound of cow-bells. They were lusty, jolly fellows, and their songs

hardly came to an end. I saw one man who might be considered as

positively drunk, but no other who was more than affectionately and

socially excited. Towards sunset they all dropped off, and when the

twilight settled down heavy, and threatening rain, there was no stranger

but myself in the little village. "I have done tolerably well," said the

landlord, "but I can't count my gains until day after to-morrow, when

the scores run up to-day must be paid off." Considering that in my own

bill lodging was set down at six, and breakfast at twelve cents, even

the fifteen hundred guests whom he entertained during the day could not

have given him a very splendid profit.

Taking a weaver of the place as guide, I set off early the next morning

for the village of Appenzell, the capital of Inner-Rhoden. The way led

me back into the valley of the Sitter, thence up towards the Sentis Alp,

winding around and over a multitude of hills. The same smooth, even,

velvety carpet of grass was spread upon the landscape, covering every

undulation of the surface, except where the rocks had frayed themselves

through. There is no greener land upon the earth. The grass, from

centuries of cultivation, has become so rich and nutritious, that the

inhabitants can no longer spare even a little patch of ground for a

vegetable garden, for the reason that the same space produces more

profit in hay. The green comes up to their very doors, and they grudge

even the foot-paths which connect them with their neighbors. Their

vegetables are brought up from the lower valleys of Thurgau. The first

mowing had commenced at the time of my visit, and the farmers were

employing irrigation and manure to bring on the second crop. By this

means they are enabled to mow the same fields every five or six weeks.

The process gives the whole region a smoothness, a mellow splendor of

color, such as I never saw elsewhere, not even in England.

A walk of two hours through such scenery brought me out of the Sitter

Tobel, and in sight of the little Alpine basin in which lies Appenzell.

It was raining slowly and dismally, and the broken, snow-crowned peaks

of the Kamor and the Hohe Kasten stood like livid spectres of mountains

against the stormy sky. I made haste to reach the compact, picturesque

little town, and shelter myself in an inn, where a landlady with rippled

golden hair and features like one of Dante Rossetti's women, offered me

trout for dinner. Out of the back window I looked for the shattered

summits of the Sentis, which rise five thousand feet above the valley,

but they were invisible. The vertical walls of the Ebenalp, in which are

the grotto and chapel of Wildkirchli, towered over the nearer hills, and

I saw with regret that they were still above the snow line. It was

impossible to penetrate much farther without better weather; but I

decided, while enjoying my trout, to make another trial,--to take the

road to Urnäsch, and thence pass westward into the renowned valley of

the Toggenburg.

The people of Inner-Rhoden are the most picturesque of the Appenzellers.

The men wear a round skull-cap of leather, sometimes brilliantly

embroidered, a jacket of coarse drilling, drawn on over the head, and

occasionally knee-breeches. Early in May the herdsmen leave their winter

homes in the valleys and go with their cattle to the _Matten_, or lofty

mountain pastures. The most intelligent cows, selected as leaders for

the herd, march in advance, with enormous bells, sometimes a foot in

diameter, suspended to their necks by bands of embroidered leather; then

follow the others, and the bull, who, singularly enough, carries the

milking-pail, garlanded with flowers, between his horns, brings up the

rear. The Alpadores are in their finest Sunday costume, and the sound of

yodel-songs--the very voice of Alpine landscapes--echoes from every

hill. Such a picture as this, under the cloudless blue of a fortunate

May day, makes the heart of the Appenzeller light. He goes joyously up

to his summer labor, and makes his herb-cheese on the heights, while his

wife weaves and embroiders muslin in the valley until his return.

In the afternoon I set out for Urnäsch, with a bright boy as guide. Hot

gleams of sunshine now and then struck like fire across the green

mountains, and the Sentis partly unveiled his stubborn forehead of rock.

Behind him, however, lowered inky thunder-clouds, and long before the

afternoon's journey was made it was raining below and snowing aloft. The

scenery grew more broken and abrupt the farther I penetrated into the

country, but it was everywhere as thickly peopled and as wonderfully

cultivated. At Gonten, there is a large building for the whey-cure of

overfed people of the world. A great many such, I was told, come to

Appenzell for the summer. Many of the persons we met not only said, "God

greet you!" but immediately added, "Adieu!"--like the _Salve et vale_!

of classical times.

Beyond Gonten the road dropped into a wild ravine, the continual

windings of which rendered it very attractive. I found enough to admire

in every farm-house by the wayside, with its warm wood-color, its quaint

projecting balconies, and coat of shingle mail. When the ravine opened,

and the deep valley of Urnäsch, before me, appeared between cloven

heights of snow, disclosing six or eight square miles of perfect

emerald, over which the village is scattered, I was fully repaid for

having pressed farther into the heart of the land. There were still two

hours until night, and I might have gone on to the Rossfall,--a cascade

three or four miles higher up the valley,--but the clouds were

threatening, and the distant mountain-sides already dim under the rain.

At the village inn I found several herdsmen and mechanics, each with a

bottle of Rheinthaler wine before him. They were ready and willing to

give me all the information I needed. In order to reach the Toggenburg,

they said, I must go over the Krätzernwald. It was sometimes a dangerous

journey; the snow was many cubits deep, and at this time of the year it

was frequently so soft that a man would sink to his hips. To-day,

however, there had been thunder, and after thunder the snow is always

hard-packed, so that you can walk on it; but to cross the Krätzernwald

without a guide,--never! For two hours you were in a wild forest, not a

house, nor even a '_Sennhütt_' (herdsman's cabin) to be seen, and no

proper path, but a clambering hither and thither, in snow and mud; with

this weather,--yes, one _could_ get into Toggenburg that way, they said,

but not alone, and only because there had been thunder on the

mountains.

But all night the rain beat against my chamber window, and in the

morning the lower slopes of the mountains were gray with new snow, which

no thunder had packed. Indigo-colored clouds lay heavily on all the

Alpine peaks; the air was raw and chilly, and the roads slippery. In

such weather the scenery is not only shrouded, but the people are shut

up in their homes,--wherefore further travel would not have been repaid.

I had already seen the greater part of the little land, and so gave up

my thwarted plans the more cheerfully. When the post-omnibus for Herisau

came to the inn door, I took my seat therein, saying, like Schiller's

_Sennbub', "Ihr Matten, lebtwohl, Ihr sonnigen Weiden_!"

The country became softer and lovelier as the road gradually fell

towards Herisau, which is the richest and stateliest town of the Canton.

I saw little of it except the hospitable home of my friend the

Chancellor, for we had brought the Alpine weather with us. The

architecture of the place, nevertheless, is charming, the town being

composed of country-houses, balconied and shingled, and set down

together in the most irregular way, every street shooting off at a

different angle. A mile beyond, I reached the edge of the mountain

region, and again looked down upon the prosperous valley of St. Gall.

Below me was the railway, and as I sped towards Zurich that afternoon,

the top of the Sentis, piercing through a mass of dark rain-clouds, was

my last glimpse of the Little Land of Appenzell.

THE LOST GENIUS.

A giant came to me, when I was young,

My instant will to ask,--

My earthly Servant, from the earth he sprung

Eager for any task!

"What wilt thou, O my Master?" he began;

"Whatever can be," I.

"Say but thy wish,--whate'er thou wilt I can,"

The strong Slave made reply.

"Enter the earth and bring its riches forth,

For pearls explore the sea.'

He brought from East and West, and South and North,

All treasures back to me!

"Build me a palace wherein I may dwell."

"Awake, and see it done,"

Spake his great voice at dawn. O miracle,

That glittered in the sun!

"Find me the princess fit for my embrace,

The vision of my breast,--

For her search every clime and every race."

My yearning arms were blessed!

"Get me all knowledge." Sages with their lore,

And poets with their songs,

Crowded my palace halls at every door,

In mute obedient throngs!

"Now bring me wisdom." Long ago he went;

(The cold task harder seems;)

He did not hasten with the last content,--

The rest, meanwhile, were dreams!

Houseless and poor, on many a trackless road,

Without a guide, I found

A white-haired phantom with the world his load

Bending him to the ground!

"I bring thee wisdom, Master." Is it he,

I marvelled then, in sooth?

"Thy palace-builder, beauty-seeker see!"

I saw the Ghost of Youth!

CINCINNATI.

The French possessors of the Western country used to call the Ohio the

Beautiful River; and they might well think it beautiful who came into it

from the flat-shored, mountainous Mississippi, and found themselves

winding about among lofty, steep, and picturesque hills, covered with

foliage, and fringed at the bottom with a strip of brilliant grass. But

travellers from the Atlantic States, accustomed as they are to the

clear, sparkling waters and to the brimming fulness of such rivers as

the James, the Delaware, and the Hudson, do not at once perceive the

fitness of the old French name, _La Belle Rivière_. The water of the

Ohio is yellow, and there is usually a wide slope of yellow earth on

each side of the stream, from which the water has receded, and over

which it will flow again at the next "rise." It is always rising or

falling. As at the South the item of most interest in the newspapers is

the price of cotton, and in New York the price of gold, so in the West

the special duty of the news-gatherer is to keep the public advised of

the depth of the rivers. The Ohio, during the rainy seasons, is forty

feet deeper than it is during the dry. Between the notch which marks the

lowest point to which the river has ever fallen at Cincinnati and that

which records the point of its highest rise, the distance is sixty-four

feet. If our Eastern rivers were capable of such vacillation as this,

our large cities would go under once or twice a year.

In truth, those great and famous Western rivers are ditches dug by

Nature as part of the drainage system of the continent,--mere means of

carrying off the surplus water when it rains. At the East, the water

plays a part in the life, in the pleasures, in the imagination and

memories of the people. We go down to Coney Island of a hot afternoon;

we take a trip to Cape May; we sail in Boston Harbor; we go upon

moonlight excursions, attended by a cotillon band; we spend a day at the

fishing banks; we go up the Erie Railroad for a week's trout-fishing; we

own a share in a small schooner; we have yacht clubs and boat races; we

build villas which command a water view. There is little of this in the

Western country; for the rivers are not very inviting, and the great

lakes are dangerous. They tried yachting at Chicago a few years ago, but

on the experimental trip a squall capsized the vessel, and the crew had

the ignominy of spending several hours upon the keel, from which a

passing craft rescued them. Then, as to excursions, there is upon the

lakes the deadly peril of sea-sickness; upon the rivers there is no

great relief from the heat; and upon neither are there convenient places

to visit. All you can do is, to go a certain distance, turn round, and

come back; which is a flat, uncheering, pointless sort of thing. Upon

the whole, therefore, the Western waters contribute little to the relief

and enjoyment of the people who live near them. We noticed at the large

town of Erie, some years ago, that not one house had been placed so as

to afford its inmates a view of the lake, though the shores offered most

convenient sites; nor did the people ever come down to see the lake,

apparently, as there was no path worn upon the grassy bluff overlooking

it.

The Ohio River has another inconvenience. The bottom-land, as it is

called, between the water's edge and the hills, is generally low and

narrow. Nowhere is there room for a large city; nor can the hills be dug

away except by paring down a great part of Ohio and Kentucky. When the

traveller has climbed to the top of those winding mountains, he has only

reached the average summit of the country; for it is not the banks of

the river that are high, but the river itself which is low. It is an

error to say that the Ohio is a river with lofty banks. Those continuous

hills, around which this river winds and curls and bends and loops, are

simply the hills of the country through which the river had to find its

way. We were astonished, in getting to the top of Cincinnati, after a

panting walk up a zigzag road, to discover that we had only mounted to

the summit of one billow in an ocean of hills.

There is always a reason why a city is just where it is. Nothing is more

controlled by law than the planting, the growth, and the decline of

cities. Even the particular site is not a thing of chance, as we can see

in the sites of Paris, London, Constantinople, and every other great

city of the world. A town exists by supplying to the country about it

the commodities which the country cannot procure for itself. In the

infancy of the Ohio settlements, when it was still to be determined

which of them would take the lead, the commodity most in request and

hardest to be obtained was _safety_; and it was Cincinnati that was

soonest able to supply this most universal object of desire. In

December, 1788, fifteen or twenty men floated down the Ohio among the

masses of moving ice, and, landing upon the site of Cincinnati, built

cabins, and marked out a town. Matthias Denman of New Jersey had bought

eight hundred acres of land there, at fifteen-pence an acre, and this

party of adventurers planted themselves upon it with his assistance and

in his interest. Jerseymen and Pennsylvanians were finding their way

down the Ohio, and founding settlements here and there, whenever a

sufficient number of pioneers could be gathered to defend themselves

against the Indians. President Washington sent a few companies of troops

for their protection, and the great question was where those troops

should be posted. The major in command was at first disposed to

establish them at North Bend; but while he was selecting a place there

for his fort, he fell in with a pair of brilliant black eyes,--the

property of one of the settler's wives. He paid such assiduous court to

the lady, that her husband deemed it best to remove his family to

another settlement, and pitched upon Cincinnati. The major then began to

doubt whether, after all, North Bend _was_ the proper place for a

military work, and deemed it best to examine Cincinnati first. He was

delighted with Cincinnati. He removed the troops thither, built a fort,

and thus rendered the neighborhood the safest spot below Pittsburg. This

event was decisive: Cincinnati took the lead of the Ohio towns, and kept

it.

In all the history of Cincinnati, this is the only incident we have

found that savors of the romantic.

Those black eyes lured Major Doughty to the only site on the Ohio upon

which one hundred thousand people could conveniently live without

climbing a very steep and high hill. It is also about midway between the

source of the river and its mouth; the Ohio being nine hundred and

fifty-nine miles long, and Cincinnati five hundred and one miles from

the Mississippi. The city is nearly the centre of the great valley of

the Ohio; it is, indeed, exactly where it should be, and exactly where

the metropolis of the valley might have been even if Major Doughty had

not been susceptible to the charms of lovely woman. It is superfluous to

say that Cincinnati is situated on a "bend" of the Ohio, since the Ohio

is nothing but bends, and anything that is situated upon it must be upon

a bend. This river employs itself continually in writing the letter S

upon the surface of the earth. At Cincinnati, the hills recede from the

shore on each side of the river about a mile and a half, leaving space

enough for a large town, but not for the great city of two hundred and

fifty thousand inhabitants to which it has grown.

Cincinnati is an odd name for a town, whether we regard it as a genitive

singular, or as a nominative plural. The story goes, that the first

settlers appointed a committee of one to name the place. The gentleman

selected for this duty had been a schoolmaster, and he brought to bear

upon the task all the learning appertaining to his former vocation. He

desired to express in the name of the future city the fact that it was

situated opposite the mouth of the Licking River. He was aware that

_ville_ was French for "city," that _os_ was Latin for "mouth"; that

_anti_ in composition could mean "opposite to"; and that the first

letter of Licking was L. By combining these various fragments of

knowledge, he produced at length the word LOSANTIVILLE, which his

comrades accepted as the name of their little cluster of log huts, and

by this name it appears on some of the earliest maps of the Ohio. But

the glory of the schoolmaster was short-lived. When the village had

attained the respectable age of fifteen months, General St. Clair

visited it on a tour of inspection, and laughed the name to scorn.

Having laid out a county of which this village was the only inhabited

spot, he named the county Hamilton, and insisted upon calling the

village Cincinnati, after the society of which both himself and Colonel

Hamilton were members. In that summer of 1790 Cincinnati consisted of

forty log cabins, two small frame houses, and a fort garrisoned by a

company or two of troops.

We sometimes speak of "the Western cities," as though the word "Western"

was sufficiently descriptive, and as though the cities west of the

Alleghany Mountains were all alike. This is far from being the case.

Every city in the Western country, as well as every State, county, and

neighborhood, has a character of its own, derived chiefly from the

people who settled it. Berlin is not more different from Vienna, Lyons

is not more different from Marseilles, Birmingham is not more different

from Liverpool, than Cincinnati is from Chicago or St. Louis; and all

these differences date back to the origin of those cities. The Ohio,

formed by the junction of two Pennsylvania rivers, is the natural

western outlet for the redundant population of Pennsylvania and New

Jersey, and consequently the first twenty thousand inhabitants of

Cincinnati were chiefly from those States,--honest, plodding, saving

Protestants, with less knowledge and less public spirit than the people

of New England. The Swedes, the Danes, the Germans, the Protestant

Irish, who poured into Pennsylvania and New Jersey in Franklin's time,

attracted by the perfect toleration established by William Penn, were

excellent people; but they had not the activity of mind nor the

spiritual life of the English Puritans. Shrewd calculators and of

indomitable industry, they were more able to accumulate property than

disposed to risk it in bold, far-reaching enterprises, and took more

pride in possessing than in displaying wealth,--in having a large barn

than an attractive residence. They were more certain to build a church

than a school-house, and few of them wanted anything of the book-pedler

except an almanac. The descendants of such men founded Cincinnati, and

made it a thriving, bustling, dull, unintellectual place. Then came in a

spice of Yankees to enliven the mass, to introduce some quickening

heresies, to promote schools, to found libraries, to establish new

manufactures and stimulate public improvements. That wondrous tide of

Germans followed that has made in each of the cities of the West a

populous German quarter,--a town within a town. Meanwhile, young men

from the Southern States, in considerable numbers, settled in

Cincinnati, between whom and the daughters of the rich "Hunkers" of the

town marriages were frequent, and the families thus created were, from

1830 to 1861, the reigning power in the city.

Perhaps there was no town of its size and wealth in Christendom which

had less of the higher intellectual life and less of an enlightened

public spirit than Cincinnati before the war. It had become exceedingly

rich. Early in its career the great difficulty and expense of

transporting goods across the mountains and down the winding Ohio had

forced the people into manufacturing, and Cincinnati became the great

workshop, as well as the exchange, of the vast and populous valley of

the Ohio. Its wealth was legitimately earned. It was Cincinnati which

originated and perfected the system which packs fifteen bushels of corn

into a pig, and packs that pig into a barrel, and sends him over the

mountains and over the ocean to feed mankind. Cincinnati imported or

made nearly all that the people of three or four States could afford to

buy, and received from them nearly all that they could spare in return,

and made a profit on both transactions. This business, upon the whole,

was done honestly and well. Immense fortunes were made. Nicholas

Longworth died worth twelve millions, and there are now in that young

city sixty-four persons whose estate is rated at a million dollars or

more. But, with all this wealth and this talent for business, the people

of Cincinnati displayed little of that spirit of improvement which has

converted Chicago, in thirty years, from a quagmire into a beautiful

city, and made it accessible to all the people of the prairies. There

was too much ballast, as it were, for so little sail. People were intent

on their own affairs, and were satisfied if their own business

prospered. Such a thing even as a popular lecture was rare, and a

well-sustained course of lectures was felt to be out of the question.

Books of the higher kind were in little demand (that is, little,

considering the size and great wealth of the place); there was little

taste for art; few concerts were given, and there was no drama fit to

entertain intellectual persons. Cincinnati was the Old Hunkers'

paradise. Separated from a Slave State only by a river one third of a

mile wide, with her leading families connected by marriage with those of

Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland, and her business men having important

relations with the South, there was no city--not even Baltimore--that

was more saturated with the spirit of Hunkerism,--that horrid blending

of vanity and avarice which made the Northern people equal sharers in

the guilt of slavery, while taking the lion's share of the profit. It

was at Cincinnati, in 1836, that a mob of most respectable citizens,

having first "resolved" in public meeting that "Abolition papers" should

neither be "published nor distributed" in the town, broke into the

office of James G. Birney's "Philanthropist," and scattered the types,

and threw the press into the river. It was at Cincinnati, in 1841, that

the authorities were compelled to fill the prisons with negroes to

protect them from massacre. Similar scenes have occurred in other

cities, but violence of this kind meant more at Cincinnati than in most

places, for the people here have always been noted for their orderly

habits and their regard for law.

The war regenerated Cincinnati. We do not say _began_ to regenerate it,

because the word "regeneration" means but the beginning of a new life.

There were few of the leading families which did not furnish to the

Rebellion one adherent, and all men, of whatever class, were compelled

to choose between their country and its foes. The great mass of the

people knew not a moment of hesitation, and a tide of patriotic feeling

set in which silenced, expelled, or converted the adherents of the

Rebellion. The old business relations with the South, so profitable and

so corrupting, were broken up, and Cincinnati found better occupation in

supplying the government with gunboats and military stores. The prestige

of the old "aristocracy" was lost; its power was broken; it no longer

controlled elections, nor monopolized offices, nor lowered the tone of

public feeling. Cincinnati was born again,--_began_ a new life. There is

now prevalent among the rulers of the city that noblest trait of

freemen, that supreme virtue of the citizen,--PUBLIC SPIRIT; the blessed

fruits of which are already apparent, and which is about to render the

city a true metropolis to the valley of the Ohio, the fostering mother

of all that aids and adorns civilization.

Cincinnati, like New York, is a cluster of towns and cities, bearing

various names, and situated in different States. Persons ambitious of

municipal offices would do well to remove to this place; since, within

the limits of what is really Cincinnati, there are seven mayors, seven

boards of aldermen, seven distinct and completely organized cities. A

citizen of New York might well stand aghast at the announcement of such

a fact as this, and only recover his consciousness to try mentally an

impossible sum in the double rule of three: If one mayor and

corporation, in a city of a million and a half of inhabitants, steal ten

millions of dollars per annum, how much will seven mayors and seven

corporations "appropriate" in a city of three hundred thousand

inhabitants? The reader is excused from "doing" this hard sum, and we

hasten to assure him that Cincinnati is governed by and for her own

citizens, who take the same care of the public money as of their own

private store. We looked into the Council Chamber of Cincinnati one

morning, and we can testify that the entire furniture of that apartment,

though it is substantial and sufficient, cost about as much as some

single articles in the councilmen's room of the New York City Hall,--say

the clock, the chandelier, or the chairman's throne. The people of

Cincinnati are so primitive in their ideas, that they would regard the

man who should steal the public money as a baser thief than he who

should merely pick a private pocket. They have actually carried "this

sort of thing" so far as to elect and re-elect as Mayor of the city

proper that honest, able, generous Republican, CHARLES F. WILSTACH, a

member of the great publishing house of Moore, Wilstach, and Baldwin,--a

gentleman who, though justly proud of the confidence of his

fellow-citizens, and enjoying the honor they have conferred upon him,

uses the entire power, influence, and income of his office in promoting

the higher welfare of the city. He is the great patron of the

Mechanics' Institute, which gave instruction last winter to two hundred

and fifty evening pupils in drawing, mathematics, and engineering, at

three dollars each for four months, besides affording them access to a

library and pleasant rooms. Charles Wilstach, in short, is what Mr.

Joseph Hoxie would call "a Peter Cooper sort of man." Imagine New York

electing Peter Cooper mayor! It was like going back to the primitive

ages,--to that remote period when Benjamin Franklin was printer and

public servant, and when Samuel Adams served the State,--to see the

Mayor of Cincinnati performing his full share of the labor of conducting

a business that employs a hundred and fifty persons, and yet punctual at

his office in the City Hall, and strictly attentive to its duties during

five of the best hours of the day.

There are seven mayors about Cincinnati for the reasons following. On

the southern bank of the Ohio, opposite the city, many large

manufactories have found convenient sites, and thus the city of

Covington has grown up, divided into two towns by the river Licking.

Then there are five clusters of villas in the suburbs of Cincinnati,

over the hill, each of which has deemed it best to organize itself into

a city, in order to keep itself select and exclusive, and to make its

own little laws and regulations. The mayors and aldermen of these minute

rural villages are business men of Cincinnati, who drive in to their

stores every morning, and home again in the evening. Thus you may meet

aldermen at every corner, and buy something in a store from a mayor, and

get his autograph at the end of a bill, without being aware of the honor

done you. No autographs are more valued in Cincinnati than the

signatures of these municipal magnates.

But let us look at the city. The river presents a novel and animated

scene. On the Kentucky shore lies Covington, dark and low, a mass of

brick factories and tall chimneys, from which the blackest smoke is

always ascending, and spreading over the valley, and filling it with

smoke. Over Cincinnati, too, a dense cloud of smoke usually hangs, every

chimney contributing its quota to the mass. The universal use of the

cheap bituminous coal (seventeen cents a bushel,--twenty-five bushels to

a ton) is making these Western cities almost as dingy as London. Smoke

pervades every house in Cincinnati, begrimes the carpets, blackens the

curtains, soils the paint, and worries the ladies. Housekeepers assured

us that the all-pervading smoke nearly doubles the labor of keeping a

house tolerably clean, and absolutely prevents the spotless cleanliness

of a Boston or Philadelphia house. A lady who wears light-colored

garments, ribbons, or gloves in Cincinnati must be either very young,

very rich, or very extravagant: ladies of good sense or experience never

think of wearing them. Clean hearts abound in Cincinnati, but not clean

hands. The smoke deposits upon all surfaces a fine soot, especially upon

men's woollen clothes, so that a man cannot touch his own coat without

blackening his fingers. The stranger, for a day or two, keeps up a

continual washing of his hands, but he soon sees the folly of it, and

abandons them to their fate. A letter written at Cincinnati on a damp

day, when the Stygian pall lies low upon the town, carries with it the

odor of bituminous smoke to cheer the homesick son of Ohio at Calcutta

or Canton. This universal smoke is a tax upon every inhabitant, which

can be estimated in money, and the sum total of which is millions per

annum. Is there no remedy? Did not Dr. Franklin invent a smoke-consuming

stove? Are there no Yankees in the West?

Before the traveller loitering along the levee has done wondering at the

smoke, his eye is caught by the new wire suspension bridge, which

springs out from the summit of the broad, steep levee to a lofty tower

(two hundred feet high) near the water's edge, and then, at one leap,

clears the whole river, and lands upon another tower upon the Covington

side. From tower to tower the distance is one thousand and fifty-seven

feet; the entire length of the bridge is two thousand two hundred and

fifty-two feet; and it is hung one hundred feet above low-water mark by

two cables of wire. Seen from below and at a little distance, it looks

like gossamer work, and as though the wind could blow it away, and waft

its filmy fragments out of sight. But the tread of a drove of elephants

would not bend nor jar it. The Rock of Gibraltar does not feel firmer

under foot than this spider's web of a bridge, over which trains of cars

pass one another, as well as ceaseless tides of vehicles and

pedestrians. It is estimated that, besides its own weight of six hundred

tons, it will sustain a burden of sixteen thousand tons. In other words,

the whole population of Cincinnati might get upon it without danger of

being let down into the river. This remarkable work, constructed at a

cost of one million and three quarters, was begun nine years ago, and

has tasked the patience and the faith of the two cities severely; but

now that it is finished, Cincinnati looks forward with confidence to the

time when it will be a connecting link between Lake Erie and the Gulf of

Mexico, and when Cincinnati will be only thirty hours from Mobile.

The levee, which now extends five or six miles around the large "bend"

upon which the city stands, exhibits all the varieties of Western

steamboats. It exhilarated the childish mind of the stranger to discover

that the makers of school-books were practising no imposition upon the

infant mind when they put down in the geography such names as the "Big

Sandy." It was cheering, also, to know that one could actually go to

Maysville, and see how General Jackson's veto had affected it. A

traveller must indeed be difficult to please who cannot find upon the

Cincinnati levee a steamboat bound to a place he would like to visit.

From far back in the coal mines of the Youghiogheny (pronounced

Yok-a-_gau_-ny) to high up the Red River,--from St. Paul to New

Orleans, and all intermediate ports,--we have but to pay our money and

take our choice of the towns upon sixteen thousand miles of navigable

water. Among the rest we observed a steamboat about as large as an

omnibus, fitted up like a pedler's wagon, and full of the miscellaneous

wares which pedlers sell. Such little boats, it appears, steam from

village to village along the shores of those interminable rivers, and,

by renewing their supplies at the large towns, make their way for

thousands of miles, returning home only at the end of the season. They

can ascend higher up the streams than the large boats, and scarcely any

"stage" of water is too low for them. Often as we had admired the

four-horse pedlers' wagons of New England, with their plated harness and

gorgeous paint, we resolved that, when we turned pedler, it should be in

such a snug little steamboat upon the rivers of the West. Other

steamboats, as probably the reader is aware, are fitted up as theatres,

museums, circuses, and moral menageries, and go from town to town,

announcing their arrival by that terrific combination of steam-whistles

which is called in the West a Cally-_ope_. What an advance upon the old

system of strolling players and the barn! "Then came each actor on his

ass." On the Ohio he comes in a comfortable stateroom, to which when the

performance is over he retires, waking the next morning at the scene of

new triumphs.

Along the summit of the steep levee, close to the line of stores, there

is a row of massive posts--three feet thick and twenty high--which

puzzle the stranger. The swelling of the river brings the steamboats up

to the very doors of the houses facing the river, and to these huge

posts they are fastened to keep them from being swept away by the

rushing flood. From the summit of the levee we advance into the town,

always going up hill, unless we turn to the right or left.

Here is Philadelphia again, with its numbered streets parallel to the

river, and the cross-streets named after the trees which William Penn

found growing upon the banks of the Delaware,--"Walnut," "Locust,"

"Sycamore." Here are long blocks of wholesale stores in the streets near

the river, of Philadelphian plainness and solidity; and as we ascend, we

reach the showier retail streets, all in the modern style of subdued

Philadelphian elegance. It is a solid, handsome town,--the newer

buildings of light-colored stone, very lofty, and well built; the

streets paved with the small pebbles ground smooth by the rushing Ohio,

and as clean as Boston. In Fourth Street there is a dry-goods store

nearly as large, and five times as handsome, as Stewart's in New York,

and several other establishments on the greatest scale, equal in every

respect to those of the Atlantic cities. The only difference is, that in

New York we have more of them. By the time we have passed Fifth Street,

which is about half a mile from the river, we have reached the end of

the elegant and splendid part of the city; all beyond and around is

shabby Philadelphia, begrimed with soot, and "blended in a common

element" of smoke. The extensive and swarming German quarter is

precisely like the German quarter of Philadelphia, (though the

Cincinnati lager-bier is better,) and the wide, square, spacious old

mansions are exactly such as the older houses of Philadelphia would be

if Philadelphia burned bituminous coal.

Every New-Yorker supposes, of course, that there must be in a large and

wealthy city one pre-eminent and illustrious street like his own Fifth

Avenue, where he is wont either to survey mankind from a club window,

or, _as_ mankind, be surveyed. There is no such street in Cincinnati,

and for a reason which becomes apparent during the first long walk. When

the stranger has panted up the slope on which the city is built, to a

point one mile from the river, he sees looming up before him an almost

precipitous hill, four hundred and sixty-two feet high, which has been

dug into, and pared down, until it has about as much beauty as an

immense heap of gravel. Around the base of this unsightly mountain are

slaughter-houses and breweries, incensing it with black smoke, and

extensive pens filled with the living material of barrelled pork. The

traveller, who has already, as he thinks, done a fair share of climbing

for one day, naturally regards this hill as the end of all things in

Cincinnati; but upon coming up to it he discovers the zigzag road to

which allusion has before been made, and which leads by an easy ascent

to the summit.

Behold the Fifth Avenue of Cincinnati! It is not merely the pleasant

street of villas and gardens along the brow of the hill, though that is

part of it. Mount to the cupola of the Mount Auburn Young Ladies'

School, which stands near the highest point, and look out over a sea of

beautifully formed, umbrageous hills, steep enough to be picturesque,

but not too steep to be convenient, and observe that upon each summit,

as far as the eye can reach, is an elegant cottage or mansion, or

cluster of tasteful villas, surrounded by groves, gardens, and lawns.

_This_ is Cincinnati's Fifth Avenue. Here reside the families enriched

by the industry of the low, smoky town. Here, upon these enchanting

hills, and in these inviting valleys, will finally gather the greater

part of the population, leaving the city to its smoke and heat when the

labors of the day are done. As far as we have seen or read, no inland

city in the world surpasses Cincinnati in the beauty of its environs.

They present as perfect a combination of the picturesque and the

accessible as can anywhere be found; and there are still the primeval

forests, and the virgin soil, to favor the plans of the artist in

"capabilities." The Duke of Newcastle's party, one of whom was the

Prince of Wales, were not flattering their entertainers when they

pronounced the suburbs of Cincinnati the finest they had anywhere seen.

The groups of villas, each upon its little hill, are the _cities_

before mentioned, five of which are within sight of the young ladies who

attend the liberally conducted seminary of Mount Auburn. The stranger is

continually astonished at the magnitude and costliness of these

residences. Our impression was, that they are not inferior, either in

number or in elegance, to those of Staten Island or Jamaica Plain; while

a few of them, we presume, are unequalled in America. The residence of

Mr. Probasco is the most famous of these. Externally, it is a rather

plain-looking stone house, something between a cottage and a mansion;

but the interior is highly interesting, as showing how much money to the

square inch can be spent in the decoration of a house, provided the

proprietor has unlimited resources and gives himself up to the work. For

seven long years, we were informed, the owner of this house toiled at

his experiment. Every room was a separate study. All the walls are

wainscoted with oak, most exquisitely carved and polished, and the

ceilings were painted by artists brought from Italy. It is impossible to

conceive an interior more inviting, elegant, and harmonious than this.

Thirty years ago the proprietor of this beautiful abode was an

errand-boy in the establishment of which he was afterwards the head; and

when we had the impudence to look into his house, he was absent in

Europe in quest of health! The moral is obvious even here at the end of

this poor paragraph, but it was staggering upon the spot. How absurd to

be sick, owning such a house! How ridiculous the idea of dying in it!

In this enchanting region is Lane Theological Seminary, of which Dr.

Lyman Beecher was once President, and in which Henry Ward Beecher spent

three years in acquiring the knowledge it cost him so much trouble to

forget. Coming to this seat of theology from the beautiful city of

Clifton, of which Mr. Probasco's house is an ornament, and which

consists of a few other mansions of similar elegance, the Seminary

buildings looked rather dismal, though they are better than the old

barracks in which the students of Yale and Harvard reside. Thirty

cheerful and athletic young gentlemen, and half a dozen polite and

learned professors, constitute at present the theological family. The

room in which Mr. Beecher lived is still about fifteen feet by ten, but

it does not present the bare and forlorn appearance it did when he

inhabited it. It is carpeted now, and has more furniture than the pine

table and arm-chair which, tradition informs us, contented him, and

which were the only articles he could contribute towards the furnishing

of his first establishment.

Cincinnati justly boasts of its Spring Grove Cemetery, which now

encloses five hundred acres of this beautiful, undulating land. The

present superintendent has introduced a very simple improvement, which

enhances the beauty of the ground tenfold, and might well be universally

imitated. He has caused the fences around the lots to be removed, and

the boundaries to be marked by sunken stone posts, one at each corner,

which just suffice for the purpose, but do not disfigure the scene. This

change has given to the ground the harmony and pleasantness of a park.

The monuments, too, are remarkable for their variety, moderation, and

good taste. There is very little, if any, of that hideous ostentation,

that _mere_ expenditure of money, which renders Greenwood so melancholy

a place, exciting far more compassion for the folly of the living, than

sorrow for the dead who have escaped their society. We would earnestly

recommend the managers of other cemeteries not to pass within a hundred

miles of Cincinnati without stepping aside to see for themselves how

much the beauty of a burial-ground is increased by the mere removal of

the fences round the lots. It took the superintendent of Spring Grove

several years to induce the proprietors to consent to the removal of

costly fences; but one after another they yielded, and each removal

exhibited more clearly the propriety of the change, and made converts to

the new system. In the same taste he recommends the levelling of the

mounds over the graves, and his advice has been generally followed.

It is very pleasant for the rich people of Cincinnati to live in the

lovely country over the hill, away from the heat and smoke of the town;

but it has its inconveniences also. It is partly because the rich people

are so far away that the public entertainments of the city are so low in

quality and so unfrequent. We made the tour of the theatres and shows

one evening,--glad to escape the gloom and dinginess of the hotel, once

the pride of the city, but now its reproach. Surely there is no other

city of two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants that is so miserably

provided with the means of public amusement as Cincinnati. At the first

theatre we stumbled into, where Mr. Owens was performing in the

Bourcicault version of "The Cricket on the Hearth," there was a large

audience, composed chiefly of men. It was the very dirtiest theatre we

ever saw. The hands of the ticket-taker were not grimy,--they were

black. The matting on the floor, the paint, and all the interior, were

thoroughly unclean; and not a person in the audience seemed to have

thought it necessary to show respect to the place, or to the presence of

a thousand of his fellow-citizens, by making any change in his dress.

The ventilation was bad, of course. No fresh air could be admitted

without exposing some of the audience to draughts. The band consisted of

seven musicians. The play, which is very pleasing and simple, was

disfigured in every scene by the interpolation of what the actors call

"gags,"--that is, vulgar and stupid additions to the text by the actors

themselves,--in which we were sorry to hear the "star" of the occasion

setting a bad example. Actors ought to know that when Charles Dickens

and Dion Bourcicault unite their admirable talents in the production of

a play, no one else can add a line without marring the work. They might

at least be aware that Western colloquialisms, amusing as they are, do

not harmonize with the conversation of an English cottage. Yet this

Cincinnati audience was delighted with the play, in spite of all these

drawbacks, so exquisitely adapted is the drama to move and entertain

human beings.

At the West, along with much reckless and defiant unbelief in everything

high and good, there is also a great deal of that terror-stricken

pietism which refuses to attend the theatre unless it is very bad

indeed, and is called "Museum." This limits the business of the theatre;

and, as a good theatre is necessarily a very expensive institution, it

improves very slowly, although the Western people are in precisely that

stage of development and culture to which the drama is best adapted and

is most beneficial. We should naturally expect to find the human mind,

in the broad, magnificent West, rising superior to the prejudices

originating in the little sects of little lands. So it will rise in due

time. So it has risen, in some degree. But mere grandeur of nature has

no educating effect upon the soul of man; else, Switzerland would not

have supplied Paris with footmen, and the hackmen of Niagara would spare

the tourist. It is only a human mind that can instruct a human mind.

There is a man in Cincinnati, of small stature, and living in a small

house of a street not easy to find, who is doing more to raise, inform,

and ennoble Cincinnati than all her lovely hills and dales. It is the

truly Reverend A. D. MAYO, minister of the Unitarian Church of the

Redeemer. His walls are not wainscoted, and there is about his house no

umbrageous park nor verdant lawn. It has only pleased Heaven, so far, to

endow him with a fine understanding, a noble heart, and an eloquent

tongue. It is he, and half a dozen such as he, who constitute in great

degree the civilizing force of Cincinnati.

Upon leaving the theatre, we were attracted by a loud beating of drums

to a building calling itself the "Sacred Museum." Such establishments

are usually content with the word "moral"; but this one was "sacred."

From a balcony in front, two bass-drums and one bugle were filling all

that part of the town with horrid noise, and in the entrance, behind the

ticket-office, a huge negro was grinding out discord from an organ as

big as an upright piano. We defy creation to produce another exhibition

so entirely and profoundly atrocious as this. It consisted chiefly of

wax figures of most appalling ugliness. There were Webster, Clay,

General Scott, and another, sitting bolt upright at a card-table,

staring hideously; the birth of Christ; the trial of Christ; Abraham

Lincoln, dead and ghastly, upon a bier; and other groups, all revolting

beyond description. The only decently executed thing in this Sacred

Museum was highly indecent; it was a young lady in wax, who, before

lying down, had forgotten to put on her night-gown. There was a most

miserable Happy Family; one or two monkeys, still and dejected; a

dismal, tired rooster, who wanted to go to roost, but could not in that

glare of gas, and stood motionless on the bottom of the cage; three or

four common white rabbits; and a mangy cat. Such was the Sacred Museum.

Such are the exhibitions to which well-intentioned parents will take

their children, while shrinking in affright from the theatre! It is

strange that this lucrative business of providing amusement for children

and country visitors should have been so long abandoned to the most

ignorant of the community. Every large town needs a place of amusement

to which children can be occasionally taken, and it would not be

difficult to arrange an establishment that would afford them great

delight and do them no harm. How monstrous to lure boys to such a place

as this "Sacred Museum,"--or to the "Museum" in New York, where a great

creature, in the form of a woman, performs, in flesh-colored tights, the

part of Mazeppa!

In all the large Western cities there is a place of evening

entertainment called the "Varieties Theatre," which ladies never attend,

and in which three pleasures may be enjoyed at once,--smoking, drinking

lager-bier, and witnessing a performance upon the stage. The chief

patrons of these establishments are gentlemen connected with navigation,

and very young men who, for the price of a ticket, a cigar, and a glass

of beer, purchase the flattering delusion that they are "seeing life,"

and "going it with a perfect looseness." The performances consist of

Ethiopian minstrelsy, comic songs, farces, and the dancing of "beauteous

Terpsichorean nymphs"; and these succeed one another with not a minute's

intermission for three or four hours. At St. Louis, where gentlemen

connected with navigation are numerous, the Varieties Theatre is large,

highly decorated, conducted at great expense, and yields a very large

revenue. To witness the performance, and to observe the rapture

expressed upon the shaggy and good-humored countenances of the boatmen,

was interesting, as showing what kind of banquet will delight a human

soul starved from its birth. It likes a comic song very much, if the

song refers to fashionable articles of ladies' costume, or holds up to

ridicule members of Congress, policemen, or dandies. It is not averse to

a sentimental song, in which "Mother, dear," is frequently

apostrophized. It delights in a farce from which most of the dialogue

has been cut away, while all the action is retained,--in which people

are continually knocked down, or run against one another with great

violence. It takes much pleasure in seeing Horace Greeley play a part in

a negro farce, and become the victim of designing colored brethren. But

what joy, when the beauteous Terpsichorean nymph bounds upon the scene,

rosy with paint, glistening with spangles, robust with cotton and cork,

and bewildering with a cloud of gauzy skirts! What a vision of beauty to

a man who has seen nothing for days and nights but the hold of a

steamboat and the dull shores of the Mississippi!

The Varieties Theatre of St. Louis, therefore, is a highly flourishing

establishment, and the proprietor knows his business well enough to be

aware that indecency never pays expenses in the United States,--as all

will finally discover who try it. At Cincinnati there is also a

Varieties Theatre, but such a theatre! A vast and dirty barn, with

whitewashed walls and no ceiling, in which a minstrel band of five men

and two beauteous nymphs exerted themselves slightly to entertain an

audience of thirty men and boys. As the performers entered the building

in view of the spectators, we are able to state that beauteous

Terpsichorean nymphs go about the world disguised in dingy calico, and

only appear in their true colors upon the stage.

Cincinnati, then, affords very slight and inferior facilities for

holiday-keeping. We chanced to be in the city on the last Thanksgiving

day, and were surprised to see seven tenths of all the stores open as

usual. In the German quarter there were no signs whatever of a public

holiday: every place of business was open, and no parties of pleasure

were going out. The wholesale stores and most of the American part of

the city exhibited the Sunday appearance which an Eastern city presents

on this day; but even there the cessation of industry was not universal.

And, after all, how should it be otherwise? Where were the people to go?

What could they do? There is no Park. There are no suburbs accessible

without a severe struggle with the attraction of gravitation. There are

no theatres fit to attend. There is no "Museum," no menagerie, no

gallery of art, no public gardens, no Fifth Avenue to stroll in, no

steamboat excursion, no Hoboken. There ought to be in Cincinnati a most

exceptionally good and high social life to atone for this singular

absence of the usual means of public enjoyment; but of that a stranger

can have little knowledge.

When we turn to survey the industry of Cincinnati, we find a much more

advanced and promising state of things. Almost everything is made in

Cincinnati that is made by man. There are prodigious manufactories of

furniture, machinery, clothing, iron ware, and whatever else is

required by the six or eight millions of people who live within easy

reach of the city. The book-trade--especially the manufacturing of

school-books and other books of utility--has attained remarkable

development. Sargent, Wilson, and Hinkle employ about two hundred men,

chiefly in the making of school-books; of one series of "Readers," they

produce a million dollars' worth per annum,--the most profitable

literary property, perhaps, in the world. The house of Moore, Wilstach,

and Baldwin employ all their great resources in the manufacture of their

own publications, many of which are works of high character and great

cost. Recently they have invested one hundred thousand dollars in the

production of one work,--the history of Ohio's part in the late war.

Robert Clarke & Co. publish law books on a scale only equalled by two or

three of the largest law publishers of the Eastern cities. Cincinnati

ranks third among the manufacturing cities of the Union, and fourth in

the manufacture of books. Here, as everywhere in the United States, the

daily press supplies the people with the greater part of their daily

mental food, and nowhere else, except in New York, are the newspapers

conducted with so much expense. The "Cincinnati Commercial" telegraphed

from Washington fourteen columns of General Grant's Report, at an

expense of eleven hundred dollars, and thus gave it to its readers one

day before the New York papers had a word of it. A number of this paper

now before us contains original letters from Washington, New York,

Venice, London, and Frankfort, Ky., five columns of telegrams, and the

usual despatch by the Atlantic cable. The "Gazette" is not less spirited

and enterprising, and both are sound, patriotic, Republican journals.

The "Enquirer," of Democratic politics, very liberally conducted, is as

unreasonable as heart could wish, and supplies the Republican papers

with many a text. The "Times" is an evening paper, Republican, and

otherwise commendable. Gentlemen who have long resided in Cincinnati

assure us that the improvement in the tone and spirit of its daily press

since the late regenerating war is most striking. It is looked to now by

the men of public spirit to take the lead in the career of improvement

upon which the city is entering. The conductors of the press here are

astonishingly rich. Think of an _editor_ having the impudence to return

the value of his estate at five millions of dollars!

Visitors to Cincinnati feel it, of course, to be a patriotic duty to

make inquiries respecting the native wine; and to facilitate the

performance of this duty, the landlord of the Burnet House publishes in

his daily bill of fare twelve varieties of American wine, from three

States, Ohio, Missouri, and California. The cheapest is the Ohio

Catawba, one dollar a bottle; the dearest is Missouri champagne, at

three dollars and a half. The wine culture, it appears, is somewhat out

of favor at present among the farmers of Ohio. A German family,

many-handed, patient, and economical, occupying a small vineyard and

paying no wages, finds the business profitable; but an American, who

lives freely, and depends upon hired assistance, is likely to fail. A

vineyard requires incessant and skilful labor. The costly preparation of

the soil, the endless prunings and hoeings, the great and watchful care

required in picking, sorting, and pressing the grapes, in making and

preserving the wine, the many perils to which the crop is exposed at

every moment of its growth and ripening, and the three years of waiting

before the vines begin to bear, all conspire to discourage and defeat

the ordinary cultivator. The "rot" is a very severe trial to human

patience. The vines look thrifty, the grapes are large and abundant, and

all goes well, until the time when the grapes, being fully grown, are

about to change color. Then a sudden blight occurs, and two thirds of

the whole crop of grapes, the result of the year's labor, wither and

spoil. The cause, probably, is the exhaustion of some elements in the

soil needful to the supreme effort of Nature to perfect her work.

Nevertheless, the patient Germans succeed in the business, and sell

their wine to good advantage to the large dealers and bottlers.

The Longworth wine-cellar, one of the established lions of the city,

cheers the thirsty soul of man. There we had the pleasure of seeing, by

a candle's flickering light, two hundred thousand bottles of wine, and

of walking along subterranean streets lined with huge tuns, each of them

large enough to house a married Diogenes, or to drown a dozen Dukes of

Clarence, and some of them containing five thousand gallons of the still

unvexed Catawba. It was there that we made acquaintance with the "Golden

Wedding" champagne, the boast of the late proprietor,--an acquaintance

which we trust will ripen into an enduring friendship. If there is any

better wine than this attainable in the present state of existence, it

ought, in consideration of human weakness, to be all poured into the

briny deep. It is a very honest cellar, this. Except a little rock candy

to aid fermentation, no foreign ingredient is employed, and the whole

process of making and bottling the wine is conducted with the utmost

care. Nicholas Longworth was neither an enlightened nor a

public-spirited man; but, like most of his race, he was scrupulously

honest. Indeed, we may truly say, that there is in Cincinnati a general

spirit of fidelity. Work is generally done well there, promises are

kept, and representations accord with the facts.

Every one thinks of pork in connection with Cincinnati. We had the

curiosity to visit one of the celebrated pork-making establishments,

"The Banner Slaughter and Pork-packing House," which, being the newest,

contains all the improved apparatus. In this establishment, hogs

weighing five or six hundred pounds are killed, scraped, dressed, cut

up, salted, and packed in a barrel, in _twenty seconds_, on an average;

and at this rate, the work is done, ten hours a day, during the season

of four months. The great secret of such rapidity is, that one man does

one thing only, and thus learns to do that one thing with perfect

dexterity. We saw a man there who, all day and every day, knocks pigs

down with a hammer; another who does nothing but "stick" them; another

who, with one clean, easy stroke of a broad, long-handled cleaver,

decapitates the hugest hog of Ohio. But let us begin at the beginning,

for, really, this Banner Pork-house is one of the most curious things in

the world, and claims the attention of the polite reader.

It is a large, clean, new brick building, with extensive yards adjoining

it, filled with hogs from the forests and farms of Ohio, Indiana, and

Kentucky. From these yards to the third story of the house there is an

inclined plane, up which a procession of the animals march slowly to

their doom from morning until evening. Here is the first economy. The

thing to be done is, to transfer the pigs from those yards to the

basement of the building, and, on the way, convert them into salt pork.

They walk to the scene of massacre at the top of the building, and the

descent to the cellar accomplishes itself by the natural law which

causes everything to seek the centre of the earth. Arrived at the

summit, the fifteen foremost find themselves in "a tight

place,"--squeezed into a pen, in which they must remain standing from

lack of room to lie down. There are two of these pens, and two "pen

men"; so that the moment one pen is empty, there is another ready

filled, and the work thus goes on without interruption. The fifteen

animals which stand compressed, with their heads thrust upward, awaiting

the stroke of fate, express their emotions in the language natural to

them, and the noise is great. The executioner, armed with a

long-handled, slender hammer, and sitting astride of the fence, gives to

each of these yelling creatures his quietus by a blow upon the head. The

pig does not fall when he is struck; he cannot; he only stares and

becomes silent. The stranger who is unable to witness the execution has

an awful sense of the progress of the fell work by the gradual cessation

of the noise. We mention here, for the benefit of political economists,

that this knocker-down, who does the most disagreeable and laborious

part of the work, has the lowest wages paid to any man in the house. He

does not rank as an artist at all, but only as a laborer. Readers of

Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill know why. When silence within the pen

announces the surrender of its occupants, a door is opened, and the

senseless hogs are laid in a row up an inclined plane, at the bottom of

which is a long trough of hot water. One of the artists, called "the

Sticker," now appears, provided with a long, thin, pointed knife, and

approaches the pig nearest the steaming trough, gently lifts its fore

leg, and gives it one easy, delicate, and graceful thrust in the throat.

Along the trough, on each side of it, is a row of men, each with an

instrument in his hand, waiting to begin; and apart from them stands the

Head-Scalder, who ranks second in the corps, having a task of all but

the greatest difficulty to perform. Scald a pig ten seconds too long, or

in water twenty degrees too hot, and he comes out as red as a lobster;

let the water be too cool, or keep the animal in it too short a time,

and the labor of scraping is trebled. Into the hot water the hogs are

soused at intervals of twenty seconds, and the Scalder stands, watching

the clock, and occasionally trying the temperature of the water with his

finger, or the adherence of the hair on the creature first to be

handled. "Number One," he says, at length. By a machine for the purpose,

Number One is turned over upon a long, declining table, where he lies

smoking. At the same instant two men pull out his valuable bristles and

put them in a barrel, and two other men scrape one side of him with

scrapers. In a few seconds, these turn him over and pass him on to two

other scrapers, who scrape the other side, and then slide him along to

four other men, who trim and finish him, leaving not a hair upon his

soft and quivering body. Then he falls into the hands of two

"gamble-men," who insert a stick to keep the hind legs apart, and, by

the aid of a machine, hang him up with his head downward. Next, the

animal is consigned to the great artist of all, who performs upon him

the operation so much in favor among the nobility of Japan. This artist,

we regret to say, but will not conceal from a too fastidious public, is

called "the Gutter." One long, swift cut down the whole length of the

body,--two or three rapid, in-and-out cuts in the inside,--and the

entire respiratory and digestive apparatus lies smoking upon a table,

under the hands of men who are removing from it the material for lard.

This operation, here performed in twenty seconds, and which is

frequently done by the same man fifteen hundred times a day, takes an

ordinary butcher ten minutes. This man earns six dollars and a half a

day, while no one else receives more than four; and if he is absent from

his post, his substitute, who has _seen_ the thing done for years, can

only perform it one fifth as fast, and the day's work of the house is

reduced to one fifth of its ordinary production.

The long room in which the creatures are put to death, scalded, and

japanned presents, as may be imagined, a most horrid scene of massacre

and blood,--of steaming water and flabby, naked, quivering hogs,--of men

in oil-skin suits all shining with wet and grease. The rest of the

establishment is perfectly clean and agreeable. The moment the body of

the animal is emptied, a boy inundates it from a hose, and then another

boy pushes it along the wire from which it hangs on a wheel, and takes

it to its place in the cooling-room, where it hangs all night. This

cooling-room is a curious spectacle. It contains two regiments of

suspended hogs, arranged in long, regular rows: one regiment, the result

of to-day's operations; the other, of yesterday's. The cutting up of

these huge carcasses is accomplished with the same easy and wonderful

rapidity. The first that we chanced to see cut to pieces was an enormous

fellow of six hundred pounds, and it was done in just one third of a

minute. Two men tumbled him over upon a wagon, wheeled him to the

scales, where his weight was instantly ascertained and recorded. Near by

was the cutting-table, upon which he was immediately flopped. Two

simultaneous blows with a cleaver severed his head and his hind quarters

from the trunk, and the subdivision of these was accomplished by three

or four masterly cuts with the same instrument. Near the table are the

open mouths of as many large wooden pipes as there are kinds of pieces

in a hog, and these lead to the various apartments below, where the

several pieces are to be further dealt with. Gently down their

well-greased pipe slip the hams to the smoking-department; away glide

the salting-pieces to the cellar; the lard-leaves slide softly down to

the trying-room; the trimmings of the hams vanish silently down their

pipe to the sausage-room; the tongue, the feet, and every atom of the

flesh, start on their journey to the places where they are wanted; and

thus, in the twenty seconds, the six-hundred-pounder has been cut to

pieces and distributed all over an extensive building.

The delivery of three finished hogs a minute requires the following

force of men: two pen-men; one knocker-down; one sticker; two

bristle-snatchers; four scrapers; six shavers (who remove the hair from

parts not reached by the scrapers); two gamble-men; one gutter; one

hose-boy; one slide-boy; one splitter (who fastens the animal open to

facilitate cooling); two attendants upon the cutters; one weigher; two

cleaver-men; four knife-men; one ham-trimmer; one shoulder-trimmer; one

packer; six ham-salters; one weigher and brander; one lard-man; one

book-keeper; seven porters and laborers,--in all, fifty men. The system

therefore, enables one man to convert into pork thirty hogs a day. The

proprietors of these packing-houses pay the owners of the animals sixty

cents each for the privilege of killing them, and derive their profit

from the refuse. The bristles of a hog are worth seventeen cents; his

tongue, five cents; the hair and the fat of the intestines pay the

entire cost of killing, dressing, and packing.

There is a moral in all this. In such establishments, a business which

in itself is disgusting, and perhaps barbarizing, almost ceases to be

so, and the part of it which cannot be deprived of its disgusting

circumstances is performed by a very few individuals. Twenty men, in

four months, do all that is disagreeable in the slaying of one hundred

and eighty thousand hogs, and those twenty men, by the operation of

well-known laws, are sure to be the persons to whom the work is least

offensive and least injurious.

There are many other industrial establishments in Cincinnati that are

highly interesting, but we cannot dwell upon them. One thing surprises

the visitor from the Atlantic cities; and that is, the great

responsibilities assumed in the Western country by very young men. We

met a gentleman at Cincinnati, aged thirty-two, who is chief proprietor

and active manager of five extensive iron works in five different

cities, one of which--the one at Cincinnati--employs a hundred and

twenty men. He began life at fourteen, a poor boy,--was helped to two

thousand dollars at twenty-one,--started in iron,--prospered,--founded

similar works in other cities,--went to the war and contracted to supply

an army with biscuit,--took the camp fever,--lost twenty thousand

dollars,--came back to his iron,--throve as before,--gave away

twenty-five thousand dollars last year to benevolent operations,--and is

now as serene and smiling as though he had played all his life, and had

not a care in the world. And this reminds us to repeat that the man

wanted in the West is the man who knows how to _make_ and _do_, not the

man who can only buy and sell. This fine young fellow of whom we speak

makes nuts, bolts, and screws, and succeeds, in spite of Pittsburg, by

inventing quicker and better methods.

Churches flourish in Cincinnati, and every shade of belief and unbelief

has its organization, or at least its expression. Credulity is daily

notified in the newspapers, that "Madame Draskouski, the Russian

_wizard_, foretells events by the aid of a Magic Pebble, a present from

the Emperor of China," and that "Madame Ross has a profound knowledge of

the rules of the Science of the Stars, and can beat the world in telling

the past, the present, and the future." To the opposite extreme of human

intelligence Mr. Mayo ministers in the Church of the Redeemer, and many

of his wise and timely discourses reach all the thinking public through

the daily press. The Protestant churches, here as everywhere, are

elegant and well filled. The clergy are men-of-all-work. A too busy and

somewhat unreasonable public looks to them to serve as school trustees,

school examiners, managers of public institutions, and, in short, to do

most of the work which, being "everybody's business," nobody is inclined

to do. Few of the Western clergy are indigenous; it is from the East

that the supply chiefly comes, and the clergy do not appear to feel

themselves at home in the West. In all Cincinnati there are but three

Protestant clergymen who have been there more than five years. The

Catholic churches are densely filled three or four times every Sunday,

and the institutions of that Church are conducted with the vigor which

we see everywhere in the United States. Fortunate, indeed, are the

Catholics of Cincinnati in having at their head that gentle, benignant,

and patriotic man, Archbishop Purcell. It was pleasant to hear this

excellent prelate, when he spoke of the forces of the United States in

the late war, use the expression, "_our_ army." Every bishop does not do

so. It was pleasant, too, to hear him say, in speaking of other sects,

"There are some things in which we all agree, thank goodness." The

Young Men's Christian Association is in great vigor at Cincinnati. It

provides a reading-room, billiards, a gymnasium, bowling-alleys, and

many other nice things for young men, at the charge of one dollar per

annum. The Association here is said to be free from that provincial

bigotry which, at Chicago, refused to invite to the annual banquet

Robert Collyer and the young men of his church, because they were

Unitarians.

And this leads naturally to the topic which interested us most at

Cincinnati,--the happy way in which the Jews are mingling there with

their fellow-citizens, and the good influence they are exerting. There

are twelve thousand Jews in the city. Some of the large manufactories

and mercantile houses have Jewish proprietors, who enjoy the social

consideration naturally belonging to their position. The Jews are

worthily represented in the government of the city, in the boards

controlling public institutions, and in those which administer private

charity. Several of the leading members of this respectable body belong

to the class of men whose aid is never solicited in vain for a suitable

object, and whose benefactions are limited only by their means or by

their duty,--never by unwillingness to bestow,--and who value wealth

only as a means of safety and education to their families, and of

opportunity to bestow those advantages upon others. Christians in

considerable numbers attend the beautiful synagogues, and Jews respond

by going to Christian churches. And, O most wonderful of all! Jewish

rabbis and Christian clergymen--Orthodox clergymen too, as they are

ridiculously called--"exchange pulpits"! Here we have before us the

report of a sermon delivered last March before a Congregational church

of Cincinnati by Dr. Max Lilienthal, one of the most eminent and learned

rabbis in the country. His sermon was an argument for perfect toleration

of beliefs,--even the most eccentric,--provided the conduct and the

disposition are what they should be. "Religion is right," said he;

"theology, in a great measure, wrong." Mr. Mayo and others preach

occasionally in the synagogues, and find that a good Christian sermon is

a good Jewish one also. We have, too, a lecture delivered by another

rabbi, Dr. Isidor Kalisch, before the Young Men's Literary and Social

Union of Indianapolis, which is bold even to audacity. He told the young

gentlemen that the prevalence of Christianity in the Roman Empire was

not an escape _from_ barbarism, but a lapse _into_ it. "As soon," said

he, "as Christianity began spreading over the Roman Empire, all

knowledge, arts, and sciences died away, and the development of

civilization was retarded and checked." Of course any attempt to express

the history of five centuries in twenty words must be unsuccessful. This

attempt is: but the boldness of the opinion does not appear to have

given offence. The learned Doctor further gave his hearers to

understand, that knowledge is "the source of all civilization," and

theology the chief obstacle in its way.

The eyes of every stranger who walks about Cincinnati are caught by an

edifice ornamented with domes and minarets like a Turkish mosque. This

is the "Reformed Synagogue," of which Dr. Isaac M. Wise is pastor,--a

highly enlightened and gifted man. It is a truly beautiful building,

erected at a cost of three hundred thousand dollars by one of the best

architects in the West, Mr. James Keys Wilson, who also built the

Court-House and Post-Office of Cincinnati. The interior, for elegance

and convenience combined, is only equalled by the newest interiors of

Chicago, and even by them it is not surpassed. Except some slight

peculiarities about the altar, it is arranged precisely like one of our

Protestant churches, and the service approaches very nearly that of the

Unitarians who use a liturgy. It is the mission of Dr. Wise to assist in

delivering his people from the tyranny of ancient superstitions by

calling their attention to the weightier matters of the law. Upon some

of the cherished traditions of the Jews he makes open war, and prepares

the way for their not distant emancipation from all that is narrowing

and needlessly peculiar in their creed and customs. For the use of his

congregation he has prepared a little book entitled "The Essence of

Judaism," from which the following are a few sentences, gathered here

and there:--

"It is not the belief of this or that dogma, but generous actions from

noble motives, which the sacred Scripture calls the path of salvation."

"The noblest of all human motives is to do good for goodness' sake."

"The history of mankind teaches, that man was not as wicked as he was

foolish; his motives were better than his judgment." "Reward or

punishment is the _natural_ consequence of obedience or disobedience to

God's laws." "Great revolutions in history always resulted in the

progress of humanity." "The first duty a man owes himself is the

preservation of his life, health, and limbs." "The special laws of the

Sabbath are: 1. To rest from all labor; 2. To recruit our physical

energies by rest and innocent enjoyments; 3. To sanctify our moral

nature; 4. _To improve our intellect._" "The best maxim of conduct to

our parents is, treat them as you would wish to be treated by your

children." "No offensive words or actions afford a shadow of

justification for killing a human being, or injuring him in his limbs or

health." "Only self-defence with equal arms, defence of others, or the

defence of our country against invasion or rebellion, are exceptions to

the above law of the Lord." "Domestic happiness depends exclusively upon

the unadulterated affections and the inviolable chastity of parents and

children." _"Palestine is now defiled by barbarism and iniquity; it is

the holy land no more. The habitable earth must become one holy land."_

"The sons and daughters of the covenant have the solemn duty to be

INTELLIGENT." "Punishment must be intended only to correct the criminal

and to protect society against crimes."

In the same spirit he conducts "The Israelite," a weekly paper. "Liberty

of Conscience--Humanity the object of Religion," is the title of one

article in the number before us, and it expresses the whole aim and

tendency of the movement which the editor leads. Nothing is more

probable than that soon the observance of Saturday will be abolished,

and that of Sunday substituted. It is impossible that the enlightened

Jews of Cincinnati can continue to attach importance to a distinction

which is at once so trivial and so inconvenient. Indeed, we hear that

some of the Jews of Baltimore have begun the change by holding their

Sabbath schools on Sunday. Who knows but that some rabbi, bold and wise,

shall appear, who will lead his people to withdraw the bar from

intermarriage with Christians, and that at last this patient and

long-suffering race shall cease to be "peculiar," and merge themselves

in mankind?

The golden rule seems to run in the very blood of the best Jews. One of

the publications of Dr. Lilienthal is a History of the Israelites from

the days of Alexander to the present time. He recounts the sufferings of

his ancestors from blind and merciless bigotry; and then states in a few

words the revenge which his people propose to take for fifteen hundred

years of infamy, isolation, and outrage.

"We have accompanied," he says, "the poor exile through centuries of

agony and misery; we have heard his groaning and his lamentations. The

dark clouds of misery and persecution have passed away; the bloody axe

of the executioner, the rack and stake of a fanatic inquisition and

clergy, were compelled to give way to reason and humanity; the roar of

prejudice and blind hatred had to cease before the sweet voice of

justice and kindness. Israel stands, while his enemies have vanished

away from the arena of history; their endeavors to make Israel faithless

to his God and his creed have proved futile and abortive. Israel has

conquered politically and religiously. Day after day witnesses the

crumbling to pieces of the barriers that have secluded them from

intercourse with their fellow-citizens; the old code of laws has become

obsolete, and on the new pages is inscribed the name of the Jew, not

only enjoying all rights and privileges with his Christian brethren, but

fully deserving them, and excelling in every department of life in which

he now is allowed and willing to engage. And his religion--the holy

doctrine of an indivisible Unity of God, of man's creation in the image

of God, of our destination, to become by virtue, justice, and charity

contented in this, and happy in after life--is daily gaining more ground

as the only religion complying with the demands of reason and our

destination on earth. And Israel does not falter in the accomplishment

of its holy mission,--to be the redeeming Messiah to all mankind, to

become a nation of priests, teaching and preaching the truth."

The noble rabbis of Cincinnati are an enlightening and civilizing power

in the city, and their fellow-citizens know it and are grateful for it.

A place like Cincinnati needs the active aid of every man in her midst

who is capable of public spirit. There is a great sum of physical life

there, but much less than the proper proportion of cultivated

intelligence. The wealthy men of Cincinnati must beware of secluding

themselves in their beautiful villas on the other side of the hill, and

leaving the city to its smoke and ignorance. The question for

Cincinnati, and indeed for the United States, to consider, was well

stated by Mr. Mayo in his celebrated lecture upon "Health and Holiness

in Cincinnati," one of the most weighty, pathetic, eloquent, and wise

discourses we ever read:--

"Shall our Western city children be saved to lead the

civilization of America by their superior manhood and

womanhood? or shall they be buried out of sight, or mustered

into the 'invalid corps' before they are thirty years of age,

and hard-headed Patrick, slow and sturdy Hermann, and

irrepressible Sambo, walk in and administer the affairs of the

country over their graves?"

A LILIPUT PROVINCE.

Towards the close of summer, all well-feathered Londoners migrate, and

may at that season be observed flying from their native streets or

squares in large flocks, like wild geese, with outstretched necks, and

round, protruding eyes. Some settle on the Scotch moors, where they

industriously waddle themselves thin. Others take short flights to

neighboring bathing-places, where they splash in the water with their

goslings, strut proudly on the sands, display a tendency to pair, and

are often preyed upon by the foxes which also resort to those

localities. Many more cross the Channel, and may be heard during two

months cackling more or less loudly in every large hotel upon the

Continent. And in addition to all these there are the _stragglers_,--a

small and select race, which defy the great gregarious laws, and delight

in taking solitary, and, if possible, unprecedented flight.

I must own that it is my weakness to pry into the untrodden nooks and

corners of life. I have wasted many precious hours in toiling through

black-letter folios and tracts which had no other merit than their

rarity. And I have put myself to the greatest pains and inconvenience to

arrive at a desert island out at sea, or some obscure village hid away

among mountains, simply for the pleasure of feeling that I had been

where few other civilized travellers had been. I have seldom received

any better reward than that, but once or twice I have fallen upon a

store of facts, which, however insignificant, had at least the charm of

being new, and which have answered the purpose of stimulating me to

fresh absurdities.

A few months ago I was standing on the deck of a steamer bound from

London to Hamburg. It was midnight, and we were approaching the mouth of

the Elbe. Right ahead was a light of great brilliancy and power; this,

the captain informed me, shone from Heligoland, and was seen so clearly

because the island was about a hundred and fifty feet above the level of

the sea,--a great boon to navigators, the neighboring coasts being very

low. But my informant had been in the habit of regarding Heligoland as a

lighthouse and nothing more; he could tell me nothing about its

constitution, its manners, or its customs, and I determined to visit it

forthwith.

By the late wars upon the Continent, the political geography of the Elbe

has been completely changed. Between the mouth of the river and Hamburg,

the right bank formerly belonged to Holstein, and the left to Hanover.

Now both are Prussian. Hamburg itself is under the wing of the Prussian

eagle, and may soon be under its claw. The feeling in that city is

anti-Prussian; but the citizens were wise enough to side with their

powerful neighbor, and to contribute troops. This has certainly saved

them from the fete of Frankfort, but it is not probable that Hamburg

will be allowed to remain a thoroughly independent state. Prussia will

probably abolish her diplomatic, and perhaps her consular service, and

permit her to retain certain important rights and privileges. It is, at

the present moment, an anxious crisis for the great merchants. In

Hamburg, fortunes are made with a rapidity, and to an extent, unequalled

in any Continental town; this is owing to the freedom of the port; but,

were the Prussian custom-house system to be introduced, Stettin and

Königsberg would spring into dangerous rivalry, and her commercial

interests would decline.

Hamburg is the only city in Europe which bears much resemblance to New

York. It has no antiquities, for the old town was entirely burnt down

about twenty years ago. It has no treasure-house of art, it has not many

"historical associations." It is a city of business, and four thousand

persons meet together every day in its Exchange. Its river is crowded

with shipping; American cars rattle along its streets; and ferry-boats

built on the American principle steam to and fro across the Alster-Dam.

Its hospitals, sailors' home, libraries, and ornamental gardens are not

inferior to those of New York itself: in these two cities, if the dollar

does jingle too often in conversation, it is sometimes made to shine in

a worthy cause. After dusk, Hamburg becomes dissolute and gay. It is

difficult to pass through a single street without hearing a violin.

Lager-bier saloons, oyster-cellars, cafés, dancing-rooms, and

restaurants of every kind are lighted up, and quickly filled. Debauchery

runs riot, and yet, strange to say, there is very little crime. The

respectable classes are less well provided for as regards amusement. I

went to the opera, and heard William Tell. The performance was mediocre,

though far superior to anything that could be done upon the English

operatic stage. But I was chiefly amused in watching the habits of the

gentlemen who patronized the stalls.

The custom of visiting and receiving at the opera was invented by the

Italians, to avoid the trouble and expense of receiving in their own

homes; from Italy it spread through Europe; and although the

opera-houses of London and Paris do not so closely resemble a public

drawing-room as those of Florence and Milan, yet the Italian opera could

scarcely exist in those cities unless it were supported as much by

people of fashion as by people of taste. But I was hardly prepared to

find in Hamburg a parody of polite life in this respect. During the

whole performance there was a continual interchange of social greetings

between corpulent ship-chandlers, their heads violently greased for the

occasion, and certain frowsy women sprinkled scantily through the house.

There was an old gentleman sitting next to me who turned the performance

to a nobler use; he had apparently brought his son there for the

purpose of tuition; holding the libretto between them, he translated

with great rapidity and in a clear voice the Italian words, at the

moment that they were sung, into one of the most guttural of German

dialects, thus playing the part of Dutch chorus to the entertainment,

and producing a conflict of sounds which it would be difficult to

describe.

* * * * *

I discovered, to my astonishment, that Heligoland, in summer at all

events, was by no means an isolated rock; that since 1840 it has been

blessed with a Season; that, celebrated for its waves, it has become the

Scarborough of Northern Germany, and is visited by thousands of

sea-bathers every year.

I took my passage in the little steamer which runs from Hamburg, and

arrived at my destination at 10 P. M.. In the dim light of the moon and

stars the island bore a fantastic resemblance to the Monitor, a little

magnified; the lights of the village answering to those of the hull, and

the lighthouse to the lantern at the mast-head. The island presents this

appearance only at a distance and in a doubtful light. When I walked

over it the next morning I found that it was composed of a sand-bank

lying under a red cliff. The sand-bank was covered with houses, which

were divided by three or four streets; these were paved with wooden

boards. Every house was a shop, an inn, or a lodging-house. The cliff is

accessible on one side only, and is ascended by means of sinuous wooden

staircases. When the summit is reached, one stands upon the real island,

for the sand-bank below is an accident and an intruder. Heligoland

proper may be described as a precipice-plateau, containing a small

cluster of houses, a lighthouse, various pole-nets, springes, and other

contrivances for catching woodcocks in their migratory flights, and a

few miniature potato and corn fields. The extent of this plateau is not

quite equal to that of Hyde Park. As soon as I had made this discovery I

felt an intense compassion for all persons of the Teutonic race to whom

sea-bathing once a year happens to be indispensable. However, if dull,

it must at least be economical, I thought; but this illusion was

dispelled when I found that there was a roulette-table in the dingy

little Conversations-Haus, and when my landlord handed me in a bill

which would not have disgraced any hotel in Bond Street or the Fifth

Avenue.

How on earth, thought I, can these poor deluded creatures pass their

time? They get up at some absurd hour in the morning; they sail to a

neighboring sand-bank where they bathe and then take coffee in a

whitewashed pavilion; they return to breakfast, and then--what can they

do? There is nowhere to walk; there is nothing to read; and in the

height of the season there must be a scarcity of elbow-room. Although

every house offers accommodation to visitors, it has not unfrequently

happened that persons have been obliged to sleep on board the steamers

which brought them, and to return to the main-land. Imagine an island

being full, like an omnibus!

Then a thought came upon me which wrung my heart. _The Governor!_ How

could this unfortunate man exist? With a precipice on one side of his

house and a potato-field on the other, what could save him from despair

and self-destruction? This question was answered for me when I heard

that he was married.

My eccentric wanderings have at least served to convince me of

this,--that a man's sole refuge from the evils of solitude is to be

found in the domestic sentiments. There is, it is true, a solitude of

genius; there are minds which must climb out of the common air and

breathe alone. There is also the solitude of enthusiasm, which is more

common, and which is found among a lower order of men, who become so

possessed with a single idea that it leaves them neither by day nor

night, but is their bride, their bosom friend, and their constant

occupier. But what becomes of the ordinary man, if he is excluded from

the busy regions of the world, and if his heart remains as solitary as

his life? Everything dries up in him; he becomes uncouth, bigoted,

selfish, egotistical, and usually ends by falling into a semi-torpid

state, and by hibernating into death.

I remember that once I had contrived to creep into the centre of one of

the most remote of the Cape Verde Islands. My mule suddenly turned into

a by-path and broke into a cheerful amble. Experience has proved to me

that, when a mule has thoroughly made up its mind, resistance is out of

the question. I contented myself with asking my youthful companion what

the animal's probable intentions were. The boy said that the mule was

going to see the Judge, and pointed to a lovely little cottage which

came in view at that moment. Then I recollected that I had heard this

gentleman spoken of, and that I had a letter of introduction to him. The

mule carried me into the stable from which I was conducted into a

drawing-room. There, for the first time during many months, for I had

been travelling in strange lands, I saw a number of the _Revue de Deux

Mondes_. I plunged into it, and made an ineffectual effort to read every

article at once. The Judge came in, and I at once perceived that I was

in the presence of a remarkable man. After an hour's conversation we

began to interchange confidences. He told me about his student dreams at

Coimbra,--of the nights which he had passed in book-toil,--of his

aspirations, his poverty, and his exile. Perhaps he saw a little

compassion in my eyes when he had finished, for he added, "Those young

hopes have all been crushed, and yet I am happier in this desolate spot

than I have ever been in my life before." The door opened at that

moment, and a beautiful woman came in, leading two little children by

the hands.

"This is my happiness, sir," he said, as he introduced me to his wife.

Then he looked at his children, and his eyes filled with unutterable

love. "And these," he said, "are my ambition."

But before my visit to the island was concluded, I found that a

governorship of Heligoland was very far from being a tranquil retreat.

The present Governor, it seems, had founded a new constitution, and was

charged with having assumed despotic powers, and with having perpetrated

various acts of inhumanity. Governor Wall himself appeared in the light

of a philanthropist as compared with this military ogre, who, having

acquired a taste for blood in the Crimean War, had been sent to

Heligoland to gratify his ruthless propensities. He was as bad as Eyre,

for he had suspended a native politician from the Council. He was worse

than Sir Charles Darling, who had defied a constitution; for he had

destroyed one.

My curiosity having been excited by these complaints, I went to the

proper sources of information, and in a few hours had mastered the

political history of Heligoland.

In 1807 it was captured by Vice-Admiral Russell from the Danes. From

that time until 1864 the government of the colony consisted of a

Governor, six magistrates, and a closed popular body called the

_Vorsteherschaft_, containing, besides the magistrates aforesaid, eight

quartermasters and sixteen elders. The elders were the tribunes of the

people; the quartermasters acted as pilot officers, and superintended

all questions of pilotage and wreck; while the magistrates had the power

of nominating persons to fill vacancies in the _Vorsteherschaft_, and

appointed to them their own particular adherents, or else dangerous

political antagonists. The Governor was a Doge.

A colony governed by pilots, lodging-house-keepers, and small tradesmen

could scarcely be expected to prove a success. In 1820 there was a debt

of £1,800; in 1864, of £7,200. Owing to the rapacity of the

quartermasters, the pilot-trade fell into the hands of the people of

Cuxhaven. And in the island itself the wildest anarchy prevailed. The

six magistrates were unable to execute their own decrees; there was no

prison in the island, and it seems to have been the custom for the

authorities to kidnap convicted criminals and deposit them on the

main-land. Petitions were being constantly presented to the Home

Government from the magistrates, asking for more power; and from the

people, demanding the right to elect their own representatives.

So, in 1864, a new constitution was inaugurated, by an order of her

Majesty in Council. Its plan is similar to that extant in many other

British colonies, consisting of an executive council to advise the

Governor; of a legislative body, twelve members of whom are nominated by

the crown, and twelve others annually elected by the people, and forming

the so-called Combined Court, by whom all money ordinances have to be

passed. The right of franchise is exercised by all persons of sound mind

who have arrived at the age of twenty-one, and who have not been

convicted of felony,--the last proviso, by the by, might be introduced

with propriety in New York. The candidates for representation must be,

to a certain extent, men of property; that is, they must own land to the

value of £1 per annum; or the half of a boat; or the fourth part of a

fishing-vessel; or the tenth part of a decked vessel; or must have a

yearly income of £4; or must pay a house-rent of not less than thirty

shillings a year.

The new constitution was at first popular enough. The Heligolanders were

willing to accept the benefits, but they soon began to complain of the

burdens, of civilization. The new Governor determined to strike at the

two great abuses of Heligoland,--the roulette-table, and the public

debt,--which were entangled together in a very embarrassing way. Were

the gaming-table at once abolished, the number of visitors would

decrease, and those who, on the security of the gaming-table, had

invested their money in the colonial funds, would suffer pecuniary loss.

It was therefore enacted that the table should be abolished at the

expiration of the lease (1871), and that in the interim every measure

should be taken to increase the revenue with a view to the reduction of

the debt.

Heligoland, indeed, after a period of bungling and robbery, was placed

in the same financial position as the United States after a period of

war. In one case, as in the other, taxation was the only remedy. But the

Heligolanders did not like their medicine, and, like children, protested

that they were quite well. They refused to entertain a new and startling

idea,--still less, to pay for it. They had never heard of such a thing

before; their fathers and grandfathers had never paid taxes, and why

should they? It was no use telling them that other people paid taxes.

They were not other people. They were Heligolanders. This, it seems,

when spoken in their own patois, means a great deal; for they consider

themselves intellectually and morally superior to all the other nations

of the earth, whom they call, individually and collectively, _skit_,--a

word in their language signifying dirt. As soon as it was known that "an

ordinance enacting taxation on real and personal property" had been

"enacted by the Governor of Heligoland, with the advice and consent of

the Legislative Council, and the concurrence of the Combined Court,"

there was a grand disturbance. A reactionary party immediately arose,

with the cry of _The old state of things, and no taxation!_ When the

tax-collectors went round, the men laughed in their faces, and the women

called them names. It was in vain that the Governor summoned a meeting

of the inhabitants, and addressed them in very excellent German, and

gave them six months to turn the matter over in their minds. At the end

of that time they were still obstinate, the tax-collectors resigned, and

this victory was celebrated with festivities. But suddenly a British

man-of-war appeared; a file of marines marched on shore; the ringleaders

of the reactionists were put into durance vile--for an afternoon; and

the taxes were paid up with marvellous rapidity.

The next move of the opposition was a petition, which was signed by

three hundred and fifty out of the two thousand islanders, and was sent

into the Colonial Office, protesting against the new constitution, and

requesting the abolition of all the ordinances which it had passed.

Since a certain occurrence which took place in the reign of George III.,

the British government has been in the habit of paying most careful

attention to all popular petitions from the colonies, but this one, as

may well be imagined, was refused. The constitution being popular, and

the taxes being light, (there is but one person on the island who pays

as much as £3 a year,) and the population extracting considerable wealth

from their season visitors, they have no real grievance to complain of,

and when last I heard from the island I was informed that the public

debt was rapidly melting away, and that peace and good feeling had been

quite restored.

This Liliput Province, in which the Governor is the only Englishman, and

his cow almost the only quadruped, deserves to be more frequently

visited by tourists, as it is perfectly unique in its way. It also

merits the study of English politicians. This island rock is the

Gibraltar of the North Sea. With a few companies of infantry and

casemated batteries, it might be held against any force, and it commands

the mouths of the Weser and the Elbe. The Heligolanders are not

Germans,--ethnology perhaps would rather class them with the Danes,--and

they have no German sympathies. There can be no excuse, therefore, for

giving up the island to Prussia, as has been seriously recommended in an

English journal; though the objection to this--that by so doing England

might lose _prestige_ upon the Continent--is a groundless fear: at the

present moment she has none to lose.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Early and Late Papers, hitherto uncollected._ By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE

THACKERAY. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

It appears to us that the graceful art of Thackeray was never more

happily employed than in the first paper of this series. The "Memorials

of Gormandizing" is a record of thrilling interest, and every good

dinner described has the effect upon the reader of a felicitous drama.

He goes from course to course, as from act to act of the play; he is

agonized with suspense concerning the fate of the dishes, as if they

were so many heroes and heroines; if the steak is not justly cooked, it

shall give him almost as great heart-break as a disappointment of

lovers; when all is fortunately ended, he takes a long breath, as when

the curtain falls upon the picture of the united young people, the

relenting uncle, and the baffled villain. As good as a novel? There are

mighty few novels that have so much of life and human nature in them as

that simple and affecting history, given in this book, of a dinner at

the Café de Foy, in Paris. But they make one hungry with an inappeasable

appetite, these "Memorials of Gormandizing," bringing to mind all the

beautiful dinners eaten in Latin countries, and filling the heart with

longing for the hotels that look out on the Louvre at Paris, the Villa

Reale at Naples, the Venetian sunsets, the Arno at Florence, and even

for the railway restaurants which so enchantingly diversify the flat,

monotonous, and desolate Flemish landscape.

We travel with Mr. Titmarsh to Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp, through the

latter region, and we enjoy every one of those "Roadside Sketches," so

delicate, so unerring, and so suggestive. Thackeray is a delightful

traveller; for he, who can talk more wisely of old clothes than most

preachers of eternity, gets out of the nothings that tourists see the

very life and spirit of a country. Here is something also about modern

art and pictures in England and France, which comes as near not at all

boring as anything of that nature can; but we find the account of

"Dickens in France" so much more attractive, that we shall always read

it by preference hereafter.

For this is a book to be read many times by those loving to feel the

conscious felicity of a writer who knows that every sentence shall

happily express his mind, and succeed in winning the reader to the next.

The security is tacit in the earlier papers here reprinted; in the later

ones it is more declared, and becomes somewhat careless, though it can

never beget slovenliness. It appears to this great master that what he

does so easily can scarcely be worth doing, and he mocks his own

facility.

The spirit of the book is the same throughout. It is not different from

that of Thackeray's other books, and it is that of a man too sensible of

his own love of the advantages he enjoys from the existing state of

things ever to assail, with any great earnestness of purpose, the errors

and absurdities of the world,--who trusted, for example, in one of his

essays, never to be guilty of speaking harshly either of the South or

North of America, since friends in both sections had offered him equally

good claret. He is forever first in his art; and if we do not expect too

much from him, he gives us so much that we must rejoice over every line

of his preserved for our perusal.

_A Vindication of the Claim of Alexander M. W. Ball, of Elizabeth, N.

J., to the Authorship of the Poem, "Rock me to Sleep, Mother."_ By A. O.

MORSE, of Cherry Valley, N. Y. New York: M. W. Dodd.

It is no great while since Miss Peck proved to her own satisfaction her

claim to what Mr. Morse would style the "maternity" of "Nothing to

Wear," and now hardly has Judge Holmes of Missouri determined that the

paternity of Shakespeare is due to Bacon, when the friends of Mr. Ball

of New Jersey spring another trouble upon mankind by declaring him the

author of Mrs. Akers's very graceful and touching poem, "Rock me to

Sleep, Mother," which we all know by heart. In the present pamphlet they

give what evidence they can in Mr. Ball's behalf, and, to tell the

truth, it is not much. It appears from this and other sources that Mr.

Ball is a person of independent property, and a member of the New

Jersey Legislature, who has written a great quantity of verses first and

last, but has become all but "proverbial" in his native State for his

carelessness of his own poetry; so that we suppose people say there of a

negligent parent, "His children are as unkempt as the Hon. Alexander M.

W. Ball's poems"; or of a heartless husband, "His wife is about as well

provided for as Mr. Ball's Muse." Still Mr. Ball is not altogether lost

to natural feeling, and he has not thrown away all his poetry, but has

even so far shown himself alive to its claims upon him as to read it now

and then to friends, who have keenly reproached him with his

indifference to fame. To such accidents we owe the preservation in this

pamphlet of several Christmas Carols and other lyrics, tending to prove

that Mr. Ball could have written "Rock me to Sleep" if he had wished,

and the much more important letters declaring that he did write it, and

that the subscribers of the letters heard him read it nearly three years

before its publication by Mrs. Akers. These letters are six in number,

including a postscript, and it is not Mr. Ball's fault if they all read

a good deal like the certificates of other days establishing the

identity of the Old Original Doctor Jacob Townsend. Two only of the six

are signed with the writers' names; but these two have a special

validity, from the fact that the writer of one is a very old friend, who

has more than once expressed his wish to be Mr. Ball's literary

executor, while the writer of the other is evidently a legal gent, for

he begins with "Relative to the controversy _in re_ the authorship,"

etc., _like_ a legal gent, and he concludes with the statement that he

is able to fix the date when he heard Mr. Ball read "Rock me to Sleep"

by the date of a paper which he _thinks_ he called to draw up at Mr.

Ball's residence some time in the autumn of 1859. This is Mr. J. Burrows

Hyde. Mr. Lewis C. Grover, who would like to be Mr. Ball's literary

executor, is more definite, and says that he heard Mr. Ball read the

contested poem with others in 1857, during a call made to learn where

Mr. Ball bought his damask curtains. H. D. E. is sorry that he or she

cannot remember where he or she first heard Mr. Ball read it, but he or

she distinctly remembers that it was in 1857 or 1858. L. P. and I. E. S.

witness that they heard Mr. Ball read it in his study in 1856 or 1857,

and state that the date may be fixed by reference to the time "when Mrs.

Ball took Maria to Dr. Cox's, and placed her in the school in Leroy,"

and the pamphleteer, turning to a bill rendered by the principal of the

Leroy school, "fixes the date called for by the writers in February,

1857," at which time, according to the pamphleteer himself, _Mr. Ball

was on his way to California in an ocean steamer_! The postscript

mentioned among the letters is said to be dated at Brooklyn in 1858, and

merely asks Mr. Ball to "send by the doctor"--not a dozen more bottles

of his invaluable Sarsaparilla, but--the poem entitled "Rock me to

Sleep," and this postscript has no signature, and is therefore

worthless.

It appears, then, that these letters do not establish a great deal; the

legal gent fixes the time when he heard the poem by the date of a paper

which he thinks was drawn up at a certain period; H. D. E. is sorry that

he or she cannot remember, and then distinctly remembers; the postscript

is without signature; two other friends declare that they heard Mr.

Ball, in his own study, read "Rock me to Sleep, Mother;" at the moment

when the poet was probably very sea-sick on a California steamer. Mr.

Grover alone remains to persuade us, and we respectfully suggest to that

enthusiast whether it was not "Rock-a-by Baby" that he heard Mr. Ball

read? We do not think that he or the other writers of these letters

intend deceit; but we know the rapture with which people listen to poets

who read their own verses aloud, and we suspect that these listeners to

Mr. Ball were carried too far away by their feelings ever to get back to

their facts. They are good folks, but not critical, we judge, and might

easily mistake Mr. Ball's persistent assertion for an actual

recollection of their own. We think them one and all in error, and we do

not believe that any living soul heard Mr. Ball read the disputed poem

before 1860, for two reasons: Mrs. Akers did not write it before that

time, and Mr. Ball could never have written it after any number of

trials.

Let us take one of Mr. Ball's "Christmas Carols,"--probably the poem

which his friends now recall as "Rock me to Sleep, Mother,"--for all

proof and comment upon this last fact:--

"CHRISTMAS, 1856.

"And as time rolls us backward, we feel inclined to weep,

As the spirit of our mother comes, to rock our souls to sleep.

It raised my thoughts to heaven, and in converse with them there

I felt a joy unearthly, and lighter sat world's care;

For it opened up the vista of an echoless dim shore,

Where my mother kindly greets me, as in good days of yore."

Here, then, is that quality of peculiarly hopeless poetasting which

strikes cold upon the stomach, and makes man turn sadly from his

drivelling brother. Do we not know this sort of thing? Out of the

rejected contributions in our waste-basket we could daily furnish the

inside and outside of a dozen Balls. It _is_ saddening, it _is_

pathetic; it has gone on so long now, and must still continue for so

many ages; but we can just bear it as a negative quality. It is only

when such rubbish is put forward as proof that its author has a claim to

the name and fame of a poet, that we lose patience. The verses given in

this pamphlet would invalidate Mr. Ball's claim to the authorship of

Mrs. Akers's poem, even though the Seven Sleepers swore that he rocked

them asleep with it in the time of the Decian persecution. But beside

the irrefragable internal evidence afforded by the specimens given of

Mr. Ball's poetry, and by his "first draft" of the disputed poem, and by

his "completed copy" of the poem, there is the well-known fact that Mr.

Ball is a self-confessed plagiarist in one case, and a convicted

plagiarist in several others. He has lately allowed in a published

letter that he used a poem by Mrs. Whitman in "concocting" one of his

own. It was some years since proven that he had plagiarized other

poems,--even one from Mrs. Hemans.

Mr. Ball has some claims to forbearance and interest as a curious

psychological study. Kleptomania is a well-known disorder. The unhappy

persons affected steal whatever they can, wherever they can, and come

home from evening parties with their pockets full of silver spoons,

which are usually sent home with the apologies of mortified friends. We

believe, however, this is the first instance of kleptomania of which the

victim not only steals, but turns upon the person plundered and makes

accusation that the stolen goods had been first filched from him. Mr.

Ball is phenomenal, but is a legislative assembly the place for this

sort of curiosity? If he is of sound mind, he is guilty of a very cruel

and shameless wrong, meriting expulsion from any body that makes laws

against larceny. If sane, let him go be elected to the New York Common

Council.

Of this pamphlet, aside from Mr. Ball, we have merely to say that it

appears to be written by the most impudent and the most absurd man in

America.

_Literature and its Professors_. By THOMAS PURNELL. London: Bell and

Daldy.

A cultivated intellect, a fair degree of shrewd perception, an

inviolable conscientiousness, a common sense frankly self-satisfied, are

some of the qualifications which Mr. Purnell brings to the discussion of

literature as seen in modern journalism, and in the lives of Giraldus

Cambrensis and Montaigne,--of Roger Williams, the literary

statesman,--of Steele, Sterne, and Swift, essayists,--of Mazzini, the

literary patriot.

Many of the conditions of literary journalism alluded to in these essays

are unknown in our country, where literature has not yet become merely a

trade, and where we cannot see that literary men are sinking in popular

esteem, and deservedly sinking, as being no better informed, or better

qualified to control opinion, than their non-writing neighbors. We can

better understand Mr. Purnell when he speaks of the imperfections and

discrepancies of criticism, but are not better able to sympathize with

all his ideas. The trouble is not, we think, that "critics who conceive

themselves to be men of taste give their opinions fearlessly, having no

misgivings that they are right," and "if a book is bad, feel it is bad,"

without being able to refer to a critical principle in proof, but that

many who write reviews have not formed opinions and have not _felt_ at

all, and have rather proceeded upon a prejudice, a supposed law of

æsthetics applicable to every exigency of literary development. A sense

of the inadequacy of criticism must trouble every honest man who sits

down to examine a new book; and it might almost be said, that no books

can be justly estimated by the critic except those which are unworthy of

criticism. Upon certain points and aspects of an author's work the

critic can justly give his convictions, and need have no misgivings

about them; but how to present a complete idea of it, and always to make

that appear characteristic which is characteristic, and that exceptional

which is exceptional, is the difficulty. Still, criticism must continue:

the perfect equipoise may never be attained, and yet we must employ the

balance, or nothing can be appraised, and traffic ceases.

It appears to us that criticism would be even more inadequate than it

is, however, if, as Mr. Purnell desires, it should have "to do solely

with the disposal of the materials, and but incidentally with the

quality of the materials themselves." If the German critics whom we are

asked to imitate have taught us anything, it is to look through form at

the substance within, and to judge that. When criticism was supposed a

science, it declared with a mathematical absoluteness that no drama was

good or great which did not preserve the unities. Yet Shakespeare has

written since, and no critic in the world thinks his plays bad or

weak,--thanks, chiefly, to the German criticism, which is an art, and

not a science, as Mr. Purnell desires us to think it. In fact, criticism

is almost purely a matter of taste and experience, and there is hardly

any law established for criticism which has not been overthrown as often

as the French government. Upon one point--namely, that a critic should

judge an author solely by his work, and never by anything known of him

personally--we think no one will disagree with our essayist.

We hardly know how much or how little to value the clever workmanship of

these essays, which is characteristic of a whole class of literature in

England, though we suspect it has not much greater claim to praise than

the art possessed by most Parisians of writing dramatic sketches of

Parisian society. It seems to come of a condition of things, rather than

from an individual faculty. Still, it is remarkable, and even admirable,

though in Mr. Purnell's case it is not inconsistent with dealing

somewhat prolixly with rather dry subjects, and being immensely

inconclusive upon all important matters, and very painfully conclusive

on trivial ones. Our essayist says little that is new of Montaigne, and

does not add to our knowledge of Steele, Swift, and Sterne, though he

speaks freshly and interestingly of Roger Williams as the first promoter

of religious toleration. He requires seventeen pages ("Literary

Hero-Worship") to declare that a great poet ought not to be thought

great because he is not a great soldier, and _vice versa_; he is neat

and cold, and generally doubtful of things accepted, and assured of

things doubted,--and, without being commonplace himself, he seems to

believe that he was born into the world to vindicate mediocrity of

feeling.

_The College, the Market, and the Court; or, Woman's Relation to

Education, Labor, and Law._ By CAROLINE H. DALL. Boston: Lee and

Shepard.

Here is a woman's showing of women's wrongs, a woman's appeal to men for

simple justice. All the facts of the matter are grouped and presented

anew with emphasis and feeling; and a demand is finally made for the

right of suffrage as the protection for women from all kinds of

oppression.

We do not care to discuss the wisdom of this conclusion; but from the

premises no man can dissent. It is unquestionably true that thousands of

women in America suffer an oppression little less cruel than slavery;

that they toil incessantly in shops and garrets for a pittance that half

sustains life, and at last drives them to guilt as the alternative of

starvation; it is true that women are shut out from the practice of the

liberal professions; it is true that in the trades to which they are

educated they often receive less pay than men for the same amount and

quality of work; it is true that the laws still bear unfairly upon them.

If the right of suffrage will open to them any means of earning bread

now forbidden them, if it will help in any way to give them an equal

chance with men in the world, they ought to have it. We are all alike

guilty of their wrongs, as long as they continue; it is not the wretch

who enslaves the needlewoman,--it is not the savage in whose "store" or

"emporium" the poorly paid shop-girl is forbidden to sit down for a

moment, and swoons away under the ordeal,--it is not the rogue who gives

a woman less wages than a man for a man's service,--it is not these and

their kind who are alone guilty, but society itself is guilty. The

reform of very great evils will be cheaply accomplished if women by

voting can right themselves. It must be confessed, to our shame, that we

have failed to right them; though it may at the same time be doubted

whether the elective franchise, which is claimed as the means of

justice, would not now belong to women, if it had been even generally

demanded. So far the responsibility is partly with woman herself, who

must also help to bear the blame for failure to ameliorate the condition

of her sex in the existing political state. Mrs. Dall is by no means

blind to this fact, and she speaks candidly to women, as she speaks

fearlessly to men. We think her arguments would have been more forcible

if they had been less complex. It is not worth while to argue the

intellectual capacity of women for the franchise in a country where it

is given to ignorant immigrants and freedmen. It was by no means

necessary to show woman's qualification for all the affairs of life, in

order to prove that she should not be hindered or limited in her

attempts to help herself. Indeed, Mrs. Dall's strength is mainly in her

facts concerning woman's general condition, and not in her researches to

prove the exceptional success of women in the arts and sciences.

_The Land of Thor._ By J. ROSS BROWNE. New York: Harper and Brothers.

Mr. Browne's stories of what he saw in Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark,

and Iceland have that variety ascribed by Mr. Tennyson to the imitations

of his poetry,--

"And some are pretty enough,

And some are poor indeed."

It is this traveller's aim to keep his reader constantly amused, and to

produce broad grins and other broad effects at any cost. Naturally the

peoples whom he visits, his readers, and the author himself, all suffer

a good deal together, and do not so often combine in hearty, unforced

laughter as could be wished. This is the more a pity because Mr. Browne

is a genuine humorist, and must be very sorry to fatigue anybody. In his

less boisterous moments he is really charming, and, in spite of all his

liveliness, he does give some clear ideas of the lands he sees. It

appears to us that the travels through Iceland are the best in his book,

as the account of Russia is decidedly the dullest,--the Scandinavian

countries of the main-land lying midway between these extremes, as they

do on the map. Of solid information, such as the old-fashioned

travellers used to give us in honest figures and statistics, there is

very little in this book, which is the less to be regretted because we

already know everything now-a-days. The work is said to be "illustrated

by the author"; but as most of the illustrations bear the initials of

Mr. Stephens, we suppose this statement is also a joke. We confess that

we like such of Mr. Browne's sketches as are given the best: there at

least all animate life is not rendered with such a sentiment that cats

and dogs, and men and women, might well turn with mutual displeasure

from the idea of a common origin of their species.

_Half-Tints. Table d'Hôte and Drawing-Room._ New York; D. Appleton & Co.

Here is the side which our polygonous human nature presents to the

observer in a great New York hotel. Throngs of coming and going

strangers, snubbingly accommodated by the master of the caravansary, who

seeks to make it rather the home of the undomestic rich than the

sojourning-place of travel; the hard faces of the ladies in the

drawing-room; the business talk of the men of the gentlemen's parlor;

the twaddle of the jejune youngsters of either sex in the dining-room;

and individual characters among all these,--are the features of

hotel-life from which the author turns to sketch the exchange, the

street, the fashionable physician, and the modish divine, or to moralize

desultorily upon themes suggested by his walks between his hotel and his

office. The manner of the book is colloquial; and the author, addressing

an old friend, seeks a relief and contrast for the town atmosphere of

his work in recurring reminiscences of a youth and childhood passed in

the purer air of the country. Some of his sketches are caricatured, some

of his pictures rather crudely colored; but at other times he is very

skilful, and generally his tone is pleasant, and in the chapters, "Not a

Sermon," "And so forth," and "Out of the Window," there is shrewd

observation and sound thought.