LETTER XIII.

TO THE LADY SUBSCRIBER IN THE COUNTRY.

DEAR MADAM,—It is slender picking at the feast of news, after the Daily Papers have had their fill, and, if I make the most of a trifle that I find here or there, you will read with reference to my emergency. Put yourself in my situation, and imagine how all the best gossip of the village you live in, would be used up before you had any chance at it, if you were at liberty to speak but once in seven days!

The belated Equinox is upon us. Jenny Lind, having occasion for fair weather when she was here, the Sun dismissed his storm train, and stepped over the Equator on tiptoe, leaving the thunder and lightning to sweep this part of the sky when she had done with it. She left for Boston and the deferred storm followed close upon her departure, doing up its semi-annual “chore” with unusual energy. The cobwebs of September were brushed away by the most vivid lightning, and the floor of heaven was well washed for Jenny’s return. October and the New York Hotel are now ready for her.

Pray what do the respectable trees, that have no enthusiasms, think of our mania for Jenny Lind? The maniacs here, in their lucid intervals, moralize on themselves. Ready as they are to receive her with a fresh paroxysm next week, the most busy question of this week is, “what has ailed us?” I trust the leisurely observer of “The Lorgnette” is watching this analysis of a crazy metropolis by itself, and will give it us, in a separate number; for it will describe a curious stage of the formation of musical taste in our emulous and fast-growing civilization. I think I can discern an advanced step in the taste of my own acquaintances, showing that people learn fast by the effort to define what they admire. But, of course, there is great difference of opinion. The fashionables and foreigners go “for curiosity” to the Lind Concerts, but form a steady faction against her in conversation. The two French Editors of New York, and the English Editor of the _Albion_—(unwilling, perhaps, to let young and fast America promote to a _full_ angel, one who had only been _brevetted_ an angel in their older and slower countries)—furnish regular supplies of ammunition to the opposition. You may hear, at present, in any up-town circle, precisely what Jenny Lind is _not_—as convincingly as the enemies of the flute could show you that it was neither a clarionet nor a bass viol, neither a trombone nor a drum, neither a fife, a fiddle, nor a bassoon. The only embarrassment her dissecters find, is in reconciling the round, full, substantial body of her voice, with their declarations that she soars out of the reach of ordinary sympathy, and is aerially incapable of expressing the passion of the every day human heart. “She sings with mere organic skill, and without soul,” says one, while another proves that she sings only to the soul and not at all to the body. Between these two opposing battledoors, the shuttlecock, of course, stays where Barnum likes to see it.

The private life of the great Jenny is matter of almost universal inquisitiveness, and the anecdotes afloat, of her evasions of intrusion, her frank receptions, her independence and her good nature, would fill a volume. She is so hunted that it is a wonder how she finds time to remember herself—yet that she invariably does. Nothing one hears of her is at all out of character. She is fearlessly direct and simple in every thing. Though “The People” are not impertinent, the bores who push their annoyances under cover of representing this her constituency, are grossly impertinent; and she is a sagacious judge of the difference between them. A charming instance of this occurred just before she left Boston. Let me give it you, with a mended pen and a new paragraph.

Jenny was at home one morning, but, having indispensable business to attend to, gave directions to the servants to admit no visiters whatever. Waiters and maids may be walked past, however, and a fat lady availed herself of this mechanical possibility, and entered Jenny’s chamber, declaring that she must see the dear creature who had given away so much money. Her reception was civilly cold, of course, but she went into such a flood of tears, after throwing her arms round Jenny’s neck, that the nightingale’s heart was softened. She pleaded positive occupation for the moment, but said that she should be at leisure in the evening, and would send her carriage for her weeping admirer if she could come at a certain hour. The carriage was duly sent, but it brought, not only the fat lady, but _three more_ female admirers, of most unpromising and vulgar exterior. They were shewn into the drawing-room, and, in a few minutes, Jenny entered from an adjoining room, followed by half-a-dozen professional persons, with whom she had been making some business arrangements.

“How is this?” said the simple Swede, looking around as she got into the room; “here are four ladies, and I sent for but one!”

They commenced an apology in some confusion.

“No, ladies! no!” said Jenny; “your uninvited presence here is an intrusion. I cannot send you away, because you have no escort; but your coming is an impertinence, and I am very much troubled with this kind of thing.”

The three intruders chose to remain, however, and taking seats, they stayed out their fat friend’s visit—Jenny taking no further notice of them till their departure. As they got up to go, the singer’s kind heart was moved again, and she partly apologised for her reception of them, stating how her privacy was invaded at all hours, and how injurious it was to her profession as well as her comfort. And, with this consolation, she sent them all home again in her carriage.

To any genuine and reasonable approach, Jenny is the soul of graciousness and kindness. An old lady of eighty sent to her the other day, pleading that she was about to leave town, and that her age and infirmities prevented her from seeing Miss Lind in public, but that she wished the privilege of expressing her admiration of her character, and of resting her eyes upon one so good and gifted. Jenny immediately sent for her, and, asking if she would like to hear her sing, sang to her for an hour and a half, with the simplicity of a child delighted to give pleasure. It is the mixture of this undiminished freshness and ingenuousness, with her unbending independence and tact at business, which show this remarkable creature’s gifts in such strong relief. Nature, who usually departs as Art and Honours come in, has stayed with Jenny.

Of course, the city is full of discontented stars that have been forced to “pale their intellectual fires” before this brighter glory, and lecturers, concert-singers, primas-donnas and dancers are waiting the setting of the orb of Jenny Lind. We are promised all sorts of novelties, at her disappearance, and of those, and of other events in this busy capital, I will duly write you.

THE REQUESTED LETTER

(TO THE LADY-READER IN THE COUNTRY.) New York, Nov. —, 1850.

DEAR MADAM,—Your note, of some weeks since requesting “a more particular account of Jenny Lind as a woman,” I threw aside, at first, as one I was not likely to have the means of answering. Overrun as she is, in her few leisure moments, by numberless visits of ceremony, as well as of intrusion and impertinent curiosity, I felt unwilling to be one of the unremembered particulars of a general complimentary persecution, and had given up all idea of seeing Jenny Lind except over the heads of an audience. Fortunate chance has enabled me to see a little more of her than a ticket entitles one to, however, and, as this “little more” rather confirms and explains to me the superiority of her gifts, I may be excused for putting it into print as a debt due from herself to her celebrity.

Jenny Lind’s reception, of the two or three intellectual men into the wake of whose visit I had been accidentally invited to fall, was not with such manners as would be learned in society. It was like a just descended spirit, practising politeness for the first time, but with perfect intelligence of what it was meant to express. The freshness and sincerity of thoughts taken as they rise—the trustful deference due a stranger, and yet the natural cordiality which self-respect could well afford—the ease of one who had nothing to learn of courtesy, and yet the impulsive eagerness to shape word and manner to the want of the moment—these, which would seem to be the elements of a simple politeness, were all there, but in Jenny Lind, notwithstanding, they composed a manner that was altogether her own. A strict Lady of the Court might have objected to the frank eagerness with which she seated her company—like a school girl preparing her playfellows for a game of forfeits—but it was charming to those who were made at home by it. In the seating of herself, in the posture of attention and disposal of her hands and dress—(small lore sometimes deeply studied, as the ladies know!)—she evidently left all to nature—the thought of her own personal appearance, apparently never once entering her mind. So self-omitting a manner, indeed, for one in which none of the uses of politeness were forgotten, I had not before seen.

In the conversation of this visit of an hour, and in the times that I have subsequently observed Jenny Lind’s intercourse with other minds, I was powerfully impressed with a quality that is perhaps the key to her character and her success in life—a _singularly prompt and absolute power of concentration_. No matter what the subject, the “burning-glass” of her mind was instantly brought to a focus upon it, and her question or comment, the moment after, sent the light through the matter, with a clearness that a lawyer would admire. Although conversing in a foreign language, she comprehended everything by the time it was half expressed, and her occasional anticipation of the speaker’s meaning, though it had a momentary look of abruptness, were invariably the mile-stones ahead at which he was bound to arrive. In one or two instances, where the topics were rather more abstract than is common in a morning call, and probably altogether new to her, she summed up the scope and bearing of them with a graphic suddenness that could receive its impulse from nothing but genius. I have been startled, indeed, with this true swift-thoughtedness whenever I have seen her, and have analyzed it afterwards, and I have no hesitation in saying that the same faculty, exercised through a pen, would be the inspiration of genius. Jenny Lind, I venture to believe, is only not a brilliant writer, because circumstances have chained her to the wheel of a lesser excellence. Perhaps a vague consciousness that the perfection of this smaller gift was not the destiny of which she was most worthy, prompted the devotion of its gains to the mission which compensates to her self-respect. Her charities are given out, instead of thoughts “the world would not willingly let die.” Blessings are returned, instead of a fame to her. She moves those within reach of her voice, instead of covering all distance with the magnetic net-work which will electrify while the world lasts. The lesser service to mankind is paid in gold, the higher in immortality—but, fated to choose the lesser, she so uses the gold that the after-death profit will be made up to her in heaven. Jenny Lind choosing between gold by her voice or fame by her pen, has been a _tableau_ the angels have watched with interest—I fancy the “knockers” would rap twice to affirm!

But I doubt, after all, whether Sweden has yet lost the poetess or essayist that Song has thus misled or hindered. She says very frankly that she shall not sing much longer—only till this mission of benevolence is completed—and what then is to be the sphere of her spirit of undying activity? There is no shelf for such a mind. There is no exhaustion for the youth of such faculties. I am told she has a wonderful memory, and—for one work alone—fancy what reminiscences she might write of her unprecedented career! Having seen everything truthfully—estimated persons of all ranks profoundly—been intimate with every station in life, from the Queen’s to the cottager’s—studied human allotment behind its closest curtains, and received more homage than any living being of her time—what a book of Memories Jenny Lind might give us! If she were to throw away such material, it seems to me, she would rob the eye of more than she has given to the ear.

The more one sees of Jenny Lind, the more one is puzzled as to her countenance. One’s sight, in her presence, does not seem to act with its usual reliable discretion. Like the sinner who “went to scoff and remained to pray,” the eye goes to find her plain, and comes back with a report of her exceeding beauty. The expression, as she animates, positively alters the lines; and there is an expansion of her irregular features to a noble breadth of harmony, at times, which, had Michael Angelo painted her, would have given to Art one of its richest types of female loveliness. Having once seen this, the enchantment of her face has thrown its chain over you, and you watch for its capricious illuminations with an eagerness not excited by perpetual beauty. Of course, she never sees this herself, and hence her evident conviction that she is plain, and the careless willingness with which she lets painters and Daguerreotypists make what they please of her. I noticed, by the way, that the engraved likenesses, which stick in every shop-window, had not made the public acquainted with her physiognomy, for, in a walk of two or three miles in which I had the happiness of bearing her company, on a Sunday, and when the streets were crowded with the comers from church, there was no sign of a single recognition of her. It seemed the more strange, as many passed who, I knew, were among her worshippers, and any one of whom would confidently give a description of her features. So do not be sure that you know how Jenny Lind looks, even when you have seen her Daguerreotypes and heard her sing.

In reading over what I have hastily written, I find it expresses what has grown upon me with seeing and hearing the great Songstress—a conviction that her present wonderful influence is but the forecast shadow of a different and more inspired exercise of power hereafter. Her magnetism is not all from a voice and a benevolent heart. The soul, while it feels her pass, recognizes the step of a spirit of tall stature, complete and unhalting in its proportions. We shall yet be called upon to admire rarer gifts in her than her voice. Deference and honor to her, meantime!

And with this invocation, I will close!

NATURE CRITICISED BY ART.

JENNY LIND’S PROPITIATORY ACCEPTANCE OF ONE INVITATION FROM NEW YORK FASHIONABLE SOCIETY—THE HISTORY OF THE DAY OF WHICH IT WAS THE EVENING—HER MARTYRDOM BY CHARITY-SEEKERS AND OTHER WANTERS OF MONEY AND GRATIFIERS OF THEIR OWN IMPERTINENT CURIOSITY—THE CRITICISM OF HER MANNERS AT THE PARTY, AS GIVEN IN THE ‘COURIER DES ETATS UNIS’—A COUNTER-PICTURE OF HER CONVERSATION AND APPEARANCE—SINGULAR ACCIDENTAL ‘TABLEAU VIVANT,’ &C. &C.

The stars shine by the light their elevation still enables them to receive from the day that has gone past; and—though there would be a severity in limiting ordinary belles to shine in the evening only according to the lofty position given them by their course through the morning—it is but just that those whose mornings so lift them above us that they would shine in heaven itself, should at least be looked up to with that appreciating deference, which we give more to stars than to lights we can trim and brighten. We have expressed, in this similitude, why a late severe criticism of Jenny Lind’s manners and appearance at an evening party in New York society, seems to us as inappreciative and irreverent as it is inaccordant with our own observation of what it describes. Our friend M. de Trobriand, who wrote it, has, in many previous articles, expressed the same national pique and national want of sympathy with the Northern Songstress and Benefactress. She has refused to sing in Paris, it is true. She has openly avowed her distaste for French customs and standards. She knew, doubtless, when our friend was presented to her, that he was a Frenchman, and the editor of a French paper which had invariably disparaged and ridiculed her; and, when he spoke to her in three languages, (as he did,) and she answered only in monosyllables, (as was the case,) he could (reasonably, we think) have attributed it to something beside dullness. A fashionable belle might have put aside a national prejudice, to be agreeable to an elegant nobleman brought up at a Court—but it would have been very unlike honest and simple Jenny Lind. For the monosyllables to our friend it is easy to account, thus, without blame to her. For those she gave to others, there is still a better apology, if one were needed—but, let us precede what we wish to say of this, by translating the passage to which we are replying:—

“Jenny Lind danced very little—but once, if I remember rightly, and without evincing any of that ardor of movement which people had pleased themselves by gratuitously according to her. She talked as little, and, take it altogether, her celebrity would not have been so great, if her singing had been as disappointing as her personal appearance. We must be excused if we follow her, with pen in hand, even into the drawing-rooms, where she found herself in contact with a less numerous but more select, and if we put upon their guard for the future, those who believe, upon hearsay, in the brilliant sayings, the enchanting graces, the affable reception of courtesies, etc. etc. of Miss Lind, as seen by the naked eye, and without the illusion of an opera-glass. When she ceases to sing, and begins to converse, the celebrated Swede becomes extremely national again. She has, in her voice, but two favorite notes, which she never varies, they say, but for the privileged, and to which she adheres, with a persistence which ordinary martyrs cannot break through—and these two notes are _Yes_ and _No_.”

In all the countries where she has been, Miss Lind has invariably avoided gay and fashionable society, dividing what leisure she could command, between a few friends chosen with reference to nothing but their qualities of heart, and the visits of charity to institutions or individuals she could benefit. Pleasure, as pursued in “the first society,” seems wholly distasteful to her. In New York, however, great dissatisfaction had been expressed at her refusals of invitations, her non-delivery of letters of introduction which were known to have been given to her in England, and her inaccessibility by “the first people.” This troubled her, for she feels grateful to our country for the love poured forth to her, and is unwilling to offend any class of its citizens, high or low. From a lady, therefore, with whom she had formed a very intimate and confiding friendship, she accepted an invitation to an evening party, to be given the day after her last concert in this city. It was at this party that M. de Trobriand describes her, in the article from which we have quoted above. The country villa at which it was given is the most tasteful and sumptuous residence in the neighborhood of New York, and a select company from the most refined circles of society was there to meet her. Before giving our own impression of how she appeared at this party, it may be, not only just but instructive, to tell how she had passed the day of which this was the evening.

It was the morning after her closing Concert, and among the business to be attended to, (in the winding up of a visit to a city where she had given away $30,000 in charity,) was the result certified to in the following report:

“The undersigned, a Committee named by Miss Lind to divide the appropriation of the sum of five thousand and seventy-three dollars and twenty cents, [$5,073 20] the proceeds of the Morning Concert recently given by that lady for charitable purposes, have distributed the said fund as follows:

New York. Nov. 26, 1850.

C. S. WOODHULL, R. BAIRD, R. B. MINTURN, WM. H. ASPINWALL, JOHN JAY.”

To the society for improving the condition of the poor, $1,000 00 To the society for relief of widows with poor children, 300 00 To the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, 300 00 To the Female Assistance Society, 300 00 To the Eastern Dispensary, 250 00 To the Northern Dispensary, 250 00 To the Eye and Ear Infirmary, 250 00 To the Hebrew Benevolent Society, 200 00 To the Home Branch of the Prison Association, 200 00 To the Home for destitute children of Seamen 200 00 To the Institution for education and care of homeless and destitute boys, 100 00 To the relief of poor Swedes and Norwegians in the city of New York, per the Rev. Mr. Hedstrom, 273 20 To the distribution of Swedish Bibles and Testaments in New York 200 00 To the Brooklyn Orphan Asylum, 250 00 To the relief of the poor of Williamsburgh, 100 00 To the relief of the poor of Newark, 100 00 To the relief of the poor of Jersey City, 100 00 To the National Temperance Society, $200; to the relief of the poor at the Five Points, by the Temperance Association, Rev. Mr. Pease, President, $200; to the American Temperance Union 500 00 To the St. George’s Society 500 00 ———— Total, $5,073 20

There was also another matter which formed an item in the “squaring up” of the New York accounts on that day. A paragraph had reached her, making mention of a Swedish sailor who had perished in endeavoring to save the lives of passengers, on the wreck of a vessel. Jenny Lind had sent to the Swedish Consul to make inquiries whether he had left a family. His widow and children were found by Mr. Habicht, and Jenny had sent him five hundred dollars for their use. This was mentioned by the Consul to a lady, who mentioned it to us, and by this chance alone it becomes public.

But, while all these sufferers were receiving her bounty, and she was settling with Banks and Managers for the payments—what else was her life made up of, on that day?

It was half-past nine in the morning, and three servants of the hotel, and two of her own servants, had been ordered to guard her rooms till she could eat her breakfast. Well-dressed ladies cannot be stopped by men servants, in this country, however, and her drawing-room was already half full of visiters “on particular business,” who had crowded past, insisting on entrance. Most of them were applicants for charities, some for autographs, some to offer acquaintance, but none, of course, with the least claim whatever on her pocket or her time. A lady-friend, who was admitted by her servant, saw the onslaught of these intruders, as she rose from her breakfast,—(fatigued and dispirited as she always is after the effort and nervous excitement of a concert)—and this friend was not a little astonished at her humble and submissive endurance.

First came a person who had sent a musical box for her to look at, and, as “she had kept it,” he wanted the money immediately. Jenny knew nothing of it, but the maid was called, who pointed to one which had been left mysteriously in the room, and the man was at liberty to take it away, but would not do it, of course, without remonstrance and argument. Then advanced the lady-beggars, who, in so many instances, have “put the screw to her” in the same way, that, without particularizing, we must describe them as a class. To such unexamined and unexpected applications, Miss Lind has usually offered twenty or thirty dollars, as the shortest way to be left to herself. In almost every instance, she has had this sum returned to her, with some reproachful and disparaging remark, such as—“We did not expect this pittance from _you_!” “We have been mistaken in your character, Madam, for we had heard you were generous!” “This from Miss Lind, is too little to accept, and not worthy of you!” “Excuse us, we came for a donation, not for alms!”—these and similar speeches, of which, we are assured, Jenny Lind has had one or more specimens, every day of her visit to New York! With one or two such visiters on the morning we speak of, were mingled applicants for musical employment; passionate female admirers who had come to express their raptures to her; a dozen ladies with albums; one or two with things they had worked for her, for which, by unmistakable tokens, they expected diamond rings in return; one who had come indignantly to know why a note containing a poem had not been answered; and constant messages, meantime, from those who had professional and other authorized errands requiring answers. Letters and notes came in at the rate of one every other minute.

This sort of “audience” lasted, at Miss Lind’s rooms, _all day_. To use her own expression, she was “torn in pieces”—and it was by those whom nothing would keep out. A police force would have protected her, but, while she habitually declined the calls and attentions of fashionable society, she was in constant dread of driving more humble claimants from her door. She submitted, _every day_, to the visits of strangers, as far as strength, and her professional duties, would any way endure—but, as her stay in a place drew to a close, the pressure became so pertinacious and overwhelming as to exceed what may be borne by human powers of attention, human spirits and human nerves. Her imperfect acquaintance with our language, of course, very materially increased the fatigue—few people speaking simply and distinctly enough for a foreigner, and the annoyance of answering half-understood remarks from strangers, or of requesting from them a repetition of a question, being a nervous exercise, for six or eight hours together, which the reader will easily allow to be “trying.”

But—though we have thus explained how there were excuse enough for ever so monosyllabic a reception of introductions, by Jenny Lind, that evening—our own impression of her address and manners was very different from that of the gay Baron. Let us tell, in turn, what _we_ saw, though our discourse is getting long, and though our rule is never to put private society into print except as hominy comes to market—the kernel of the matter, with no clue to the stalk that bore it, or the _field_ in which it grew.

The party was at a most lovely villa, ten miles from town on the bank of the Hudson, and the invitations were to an “At Home, at five P. M.” We were somewhat late, and were told, on reaching the drawing-room, that Jenny Lind had just danced in a quadrille, and was receiving introductions in a deep alcove of one of the many apartments opening from the hall. The band was playing delightfully in a central passage from which the principal rooms radiated; and, while the dance was still going on beyond, and the guests were rambling about in the labyrinths of apartments crowded with statuary, pictures, and exotic trees laden with fruits and flowers, there was a smaller crowd continually renewed at the entrance of the alcove which caged the beloved Nightingale.

Succeeding, after a while, in getting near her, we found her seated in lively conversation with a circle of young ladies, and, (to balance M. de Trobriand’s account of her monosyllabic incommunicativeness,) we may venture to add, that she received us with a merry inquiry as to which world we came from. This was _apropos_ of the “spirit-knockings” which we had accompanied her to visit a few days before; and a remark of her own, a moment or two after, was characteristic enough to be also worth recording. We had made a call on the same “Spirit” since, and proceeded to tell her of the interview, and of a question we asked them concerning herself—her love of fun and ready wit commenting with droll interruptions as the narrative went on. We named the question at last:—“Has Jenny Lind any special talent which she would have developed but for the chance possession of a remarkable voice; and if so what is it?”

“And the spirit said it was making frocks for poor little children, I suppose,” was her immediate anticipation of the reply—uttered with an expression of arch earnestness, which confirmed us in the opinion we have gradually formed, that the love of the comic and joyous is the leading quality in her temperament.

Miss Lind complained repeatedly of great exhaustion and fatigue, during the evening, and, (as a lady remarked who had seen her frequently in private,) looked “as if she could hardly sustain herself upon her feet.” During the time that we remained near her, there were constant introductions, and she was constantly conversing freely—though, of course, when three or four were listening at a time, there must have been some who received only “monosyllables” of reply. We noticed one thing, however, which we had noticed before, and which we safely record as a peculiarity of Miss Lind’s—perhaps the one which has jarred upon the Parisian perceptions of our courtly friend. She is a resolute non-conformist to the flattering deceptions of polite society. She bandies no compliments. If a remark is made which has no rebound to it, she drops it with a “monosyllable,” and without gracing its downfall with an insincere smile. She affects no interest which she does not feel—puts an abrupt end to a conversation which could only be sustained by mutual pretence of something to say—differs suddenly and uncompromisingly when her sense of truth prompts her so to do—repels, (instead of even listening silently to,) complimentary speeches—in fact is, at all times, so courageously and pertinaciously honest and simple, that “society,” as carried on in “the first circles,” is no atmosphere for her. If she were an angel in disguise on a mission to this world, (which we are by no means sure she is not,) we should expect the elegant M. de Trobriand—_l’homme comme il faut_, belonging to a Court of Exiled Royalty—to describe her precisely as he does.

But our friend has written one more sentence, against which he must put a _tableau en vis-à-vis_. He says:—“Her celebrity would not have been what it is, very certainly, if her singing had ever produced as much disappointment as her personal appearance.” Let us conclude this very long discourse, (which we hope our friends have Niblo-fied with a “half hour for refreshment” at some convenient betweenity,) with a picture of Jenny Lind, as we saw her, a few minutes before she took leave, on the evening of the party:—

The dancing and drawing-rooms were deserted, and the company were at supper. Miss Lind, too tired to stand up with the crowd, had been waited on by one of the gentlemen of the family, and now sat, in one of the deep alcoves of the saloon farthest removed from the gay scene, with one of the trellised windows, which look out upon the park, forming a background to her figure. We sought her to make our adieux, presuming we should not see her again before her departure for the South, and chance presented her to our eye with a combination of effect that we shall remember, certainly, till the dawn of another light throws a twilight over this. An intimate friend, with kind attentiveness, was rather preserving her from interruption than talking with her, and she sat in a posture of careless and graceful repose, with her head wearily bent on one side, her eyes drooped, and her hands crossed before her in the characteristic habit which has been seized by the painters who have drawn her. There was an expression of dismissed care replaced by a kind of child-like and innocent sadness, that struck us as inexpressibly sweet—which we mentally treasured away, at the time, as another of the phases of excessive beauty of which that strong face is capable—and, as we looked at her, there suddenly appeared, through the window behind, half concealed by her shoulder, the golden edge of the just risen moon. It crept to her cheek, before she had changed the attitude in which she indolently listened to her friend, and, for a moment, the tableau was complete, (to our own eye as we stood motionless)—of a drooping head pillowed on the bosom of the Queen of Night. It was so startling, and at the same time so apt and so consistent, that, for an instant, it confused our thoughts, as the wonders of fairy transitions confuse realities in the perceptions of a child—but the taking of a step forward disturbed the tableau, and we could, then, only call her own attention and that of one or two gentlemen who had come up, to the bright orb lifting behind her. The moment after, she had said good-night, and was gone—little dreaming, in her weary brain, that she had been made part, by Nature, at one of the fatigued instants just past in a picture—than which an angel, thoughtfully reposing in heaven, could scarce have been more beautiful.

Parts of the foregoing, of course, we should never have unlocked from our casket of memories, but as a counter-balance to different impressions of the same admired object, recorded by a pen we are fond of. There is another purpose that portions of the article may serve, however—the making the Public aware how pretended charity-seekers, and intrusive visitors, persecute and weary the noble creature who is now sojourning in the country, and the showing through how much difficulty and hinderance she accomplishes her work. We would aid, if we could, in having her rightly understood while she is among us.

JENNY LIND.

An engraving ordered upon the inside of a wedding ring—_Otto Goldschmidt to Jenny Lind_—gave the news of a certain event to “Ball, Tompkins & Black,” a week before it was telegraphed to the papers. Jewellers keep secrets. The ring went to its destiny, unwhispered of. Its spring—for it is fastened with a spring—has closed over the blue vein that has so oft carried to that third finger the news of the heart’s refusal to surrender. _Jenny Lind loves._ She who filled more place in the world’s knowledge and attention than Sweden itself—the Swede greater than Sweden—has acknowledged “the small, sweet need of woman to be loved.” Her star-name, which she had spent half a life, with energy unequalled, in placing bright and alone in the heaven of renown, is merged after all in the Via Lactea of common humanity. “=Jenny Lind=” is a _wife_.

A year or more ago, Jenny Lind stood by the cradle of a sleeping and beautiful infant. She looked at it, long and thoughtfully, stooped and kissed its heel and the back of its neck, (the Swedish geography, we believe, for a kiss with a blessing to a child) and, turning to its mother, said, with a deep sigh, “_You_ have something to live for!” She was, at this time, in the busiest tumult of a welcome by half a world. Her ambition—so athirst from the first dawn of her mind that it seemed to have absorbed her entire being—had a full cup at its lips. She was, with unblemished repute, the most renowned of living women, and with the fortune and moral power of a queen. Yet, up from the heart under it all—a heart so deep down under pyramids of golden laurels—the outermost approach to which was apparently hidden in clouds of incense—comes a sigh over the cradle of a child!

At one of the concerts of Jenny Lind, at Tripler Hall—we forget just how long ago—a newly arrived pianist made his first appearance. There was little curiosity about him. The songstress, whom the thousands present had gone only to hear, sang—lifting all hearts into the air she stirred, to drop back with an eternal memory of her, when she ceased. And then came—according to programme—“_Herr_ Otto Goldschmidt.” He played, and the best-educated musical critic in New-York said to a lady sitting beside him, “The audience don’t know what playing that is!” But the audience had another object for their attention. The side door of the stage had opened, and Jenny Lind, breaking through her accustomed rule of reserving her personal presence for her own performances, stood in full view as a listener. The eyes of the audience were on her, but hers were on the player. She listened with absorbed attention, nodding approbation at the points of artistic achievement, and, when he closed, (four thousand people will remember it,) she took a step forward upon the stage, and beat her gloved hands together with enthusiasm unbounded. The audience put it down to her generous sympathy for a modest young stranger; and so, perhaps did the recording angel—with a prophetic smile!

We are sorry we can give our far-away readers no assistance in their efforts to form an idea of the Nightingale’s mate. Ladies are good observers, and one who remembers to have looked to see the effect of Jenny Lind’s compliment, on the new-comer, tells us he was “a pale, thin, dreamy, poetical-looking youth.” He will soon be seen and described, however, if newspapers live; but, meantime, if we were to give a guess at the sort of man he is, we should begin with one probability—that he is the most unworldly, unaffected, and truth-loving, of all the mates that have ever offered to fold wing beside her. With what she has seen of the world and of the stuff for husbands, Jenny Lind has probably come round to whence she started—choosing, like a child, by the instinct of the heart. Her _Otto_-biography will show how wisely.

The interest in Jenny Lind’s marriage is as varied as it is tender and respectful. There is scarce a woman in the land, probably, who, if she felt at liberty to do so, would not send her a bridal token. But there is more than a sisterly well-wishing, in the general excitement among her own sex on the subject. The power, in one person, of trying, purely and to such completeness, the two experiments for happiness—love and fame—were interesting enough; but it is strange and exciting to see the usual order reversed—_fame first, and love afterwards_. To turn unsatisfied from love to fame, has been a common transit in the history of gifted women. To turn unsatisfied from fame to love—and that, too, with no volatile caprice of disappointment, but with fame’s most brimming cup fairly won and fully tasted—is a novelty indeed. Simple every day love, with such experience on the heart’s record before it, has never been pictured, even in poetry.

Jenny Lind has genius, and the impulses and sensibilities of genius are an eternal Spring. She is more right and wise than would seem probable at a first glance, in marrying one younger than herself. The Summer and Autumn of a heart that observes the common Seasons of life, will pass and leave her the younger. Her prospect for happiness seems to us, indeed, all brightness. The “world without” well tried, and found wanting—public esteem wherever she may be, and fortune ample and of her own winning—the tastes of both bride and bridegroom cultured for delightful appreciation, and the lessons of the school of adversity in the memory of both—it seems as if “circumstances,” that responsible committee of happiness, could scarce do more. Frau Goldschmidt will be happier than Jenny Lind, we venture to predict. God bless her!

THE KOSSUTH DAY.

THE MAGYAR AND THE AZTEC, OR THE TWO EXTREMES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.

The great Magyar’s first impression of Broadway—if he was cool enough to lay it away with tolerable distinctness—will be as peculiar material for future dream and remembrance as any spectacle in which he could have taken part. The excessive brilliancy of the weather made a novel portion of it, to him. They do not see such sunshine nor breathe such elastic air where the world is older. It was an American day, juicy and fruity—a slice, full of flavor, from the newly-cut side of a planet half eaten. But there were features in the pageant, beside, which were probably new to the Magyar. A town all dressed with flags and transparencies, and streets crowded with people, he may have been welcomed by, before. Poles and bunting are easily made enthusiastic, and so are the crowds afloat in a large city. We went out, for one, expecting these demonstrations only. What was new—what gave the Magyar a welcome unforeseen and peculiar—was the two miles of French bonnets and waving cambric pocket-handkerchiefs through which he passed—two miles of from three to six-story houses, and every window crowded with fair faces, and alive with gloved hands waving the perfumed white flags of individual admiration.

The _ladies_ of America have received Kossuth as their hero—and this is not a trifle. It might readily have been foreseen, however. The dominant intellect and purpose that can control the mind of a nation, and the perseverance that can follow its cause to imprisonment and exile, make a statesman and patriot worth seeing—even if that were all. But Kossuth is, _besides_, “potent with sword and pen”—he is, _besides_, eloquent beyond all living men—he is, _besides_, heroic-looking, courteous and high-bred—and he is, _besides all this_, a faultless husband and parent. That he dresses picturesquely in furs and velvet, wears “light kid gloves” and a moustache, and has a carefully set feather in his hat, may be disparagements among the men—but not among the ladies. He is, to them, all that he could be or should be—nothing that he should not be. And when we remember what the ladies are, in our country—free to read, and expand in intellect, while their husbands and brothers drudge and harrow—we can safely repeat what we say above, that the _lady-constituency_ which welcomed Kossuth to America, and will sustain him here, is by no means a trifle.

It was really curious, (to leave speculation and confine ourself to description, that is more amusing,) to be one in the crowd on the reception day, and observe the character of the enthusiasm. We followed the carriage of Kossuth, ourself, from the Astor House to Leonard street—half-a-mile—and can speak of Broadway for that much of his progress. In this country (where there is no window tax, and every house is as full of windows as a sieve is full of holes,) the houses look like flat-sided beehives, to a foreigner’s eye; and the sudden outbreak, apparently, of every brick with a pocket-handkerchief, as he rode along, must have seemed to Kossuth very extraordinary. The houses looked hidden in snowflakes of immense size. It was an aisle between walls of waving cambric—and, either from the oddity of this phenomenon, or from the attractive glimpses of the smiles behind them, all eyes were on the windows and handkerchiefs, none on the sidewalks and soldiers. As far as we saw, it was a show of elegantly-dressed ladies, throughout; and, of the beauty and taste of the city, the discriminating Magyar can have received no indifferent idea. We did not know, (or had “forgotten, in the press of business,”) that so much loveliness was around us, and we are very sure that Kossuth will never see so much assembled in any city of Europe.

The rest of the show—the troops, flags, arches and civic ceremonies—are over-described in the other papers; and, of Kossuth himself we omit any special mention till we have seen him closer and heard him speak. In our next number, perhaps, we shall be able to portray him for our distant readers, with some material for accuracy.

At the same time that the “_greatest_ specimen of humanity” was thus passing in triumph on one side of the Park, the _smallest_ specimen of humanity was comfortably lodged upon the other. We crossed over—partly to astonish the same ten minutes with a sight of the two extremes of human nature, (contrasts so help one to realize things,) and partly in the way of humble servant to our readers, for whom we are bound to take every means to be astonished—and called upon the =Aztec Children=, at the Clinton. We will precede our account of the visit, by a sketch of the facts concerning them, which we find in the _Evening Post_:

“The two children of the South American race, commonly called the Aztec Children, have recently been brought to this city. They are altogether the most remarkable specimens of the human species we have seen—decidedly human, yet so variant from the common type of our race, so peculiar in conformation of features, in size, attitude and gesture, that they impress one at first with a feeling for which surprise is hardly the true name. One can hardly help at first looking upon them as belonging to the race of gnomes with which the superstition of former times once peopled the chambers of the earth—a tradition which some have referred to the existence of an ancient race, of diminutive stature, dwelling in caverns, and structures of unhewn stones, which have long since disappeared.

“The race to which they appear to belong—with precisely the remarkable conformation of skull—has hitherto been thought to be extinct. That it did once exist, and was a numerous and populous race, is proved, not so much by the sculptures of Yucatan—though these furnish corroborative proof—as by the skulls found in the ancient burial places of Peru and Brazil. These skulls have much occupied the attention of ethnologists, to whom they have furnished arguments and difficulties in the controversy concerning the unity of the human race. Until now, however, it has been agreed that no living sample of this extraordinary variety was remaining on the surface of the globe.

“The manner in which these specimens of a race supposed no longer to exist have been procured, is related in a pamphlet just printed, entitled ‘A Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America,’ partly compiled and partly translated from the Spanish of Pedro Velasquez, of San Salvador. Our readers will remember the account given in Stevens’s Travels in Central America, of a large city among the mountains of Central America, inhabited by a race which had never been subdued by the white man, and the inhabitants of which slew every white man who penetrated into their country.

“Two young men, Mr. Huertis, of Baltimore, and Mr. Hammond, a civil engineer, of Upper Canada, determined to visit this city. They landed at Balize, in the autumn of 1848, and proceeded to Copan, where they were joined by Velasquez, the author of the narrative. He accompanied them to Santa Cruz del Quiche, where the curate lived who gave Mr. Stevens the account of the mysterious and inaccessible city, the white limits of which he had seen from the mountains, glittering in the sun.

“They obtained a guide, climbed the mountains, and were rewarded with a view of the city—the city of Ivimaya. It was of vast dimensions, with lofty walls and domes of temples. They were not permitted to enter, however, without fighting for it, and an engagement took place between the inhabitants and the visiters, in which the former, who were without the use of fire-arms, were worsted, and consented to admit the strangers into the city.

“It was not expected, however, that the guests would ever leave the city, and accordingly they were carefully watched. Hammond died at Iximaya, but Huertis and Velasquez made their escape, carrying with them two orphan children—the children who are now in this city—of the ancient priestly race, who are described in the following paragraph—

“The place of residence assigned to our travellers, was the vacant wing of a spacious and sumptuous structure at the western extremity of the city, which had been appropriated, from time immemorial, to the surviving remnant of an ancient and singular order of priesthood, called Kaanas, which it was distinctly asserted, in their annals and traditions, had accompanied the first migration of this people from the Assyrian plains. Their peculiar and strongly distinctive lineaments, it is now perfectly well ascertained are to be traced in many of the sculptured monuments of the central American ruins, and were found still more abundantly on those of Iximaya. Forbidden, by inviolably sacred laws, from intermarrying with any persons but those of their own caste, they had dwindled down in the course of many centuries, to a few insignificant individuals, diminutive in stature, and imbecile in intellect. They were, nevertheless, held in high veneration and affection by the whole Iximayan community, probably as living specimens of an antique race so nearly extinct. Their position, as an order of priesthood, it is now known, had not been higher, for many ages, if ever, than that of religious mimes and bacchanals in a certain class of pagan ceremonies, highly popular with the multitude.”

Shown, unannounced, into a private room where these Aztec children were playing, we came upon them rather suddenly. The surprise was mostly on our own part, however. Two strange-looking little creatures jumped up from the floor and ran to shake hands with us, then darted quickly to a washstand and seized comb and hair-brush to give to the attendant, that they might be made presentable to strangers—and, with the entire novelty of the impression, we were completely taken aback. If we had been suddenly dropped upon another planet and had rang at the first door we came to, we should not have expected to see things more peculiar. There was nothing monstrous in their appearance. They were not even miraculously small. But they were of an entirely new type—a kind of human being which we had never before seen—with physiognomies formed by descent through ages of thought and association of which we had no knowledge—moving, observing and gesticulating differently from all other children—and somehow, with an unexplainable look of authenticity and conscious priority, as if _they_ were of the “old family” of human nature, and _we_ were the mushrooms of to-day. Their size and form—but we will save labor by copying a literal description of their appearance from the _Journal of Commerce_:—

“The race of priests to which they belong is supposed to have become Lilliputian by the degeneracy which results from limiting intermarriage to those of their own caste. The specimens brought here are perfect in form, though slight. Maximo, the boy, is only thirty-three inches in height, and Bartola, the girl, three or four inches shorter. Their ages can only be conjectured, but there are indications of maturity about the boy, that are seldom, if ever, witnessed at so early an age as twelve. The girl is supposed to be about nine. Their skin is of the Indian hue, hair and eyes jet black, the latter, large, brilliant and expressive. The hair is wavy and very beautiful. Their neat little figures were exhibited to great advantage, in black stockinet dresses, fitting closely to their bodies and limbs, and short fanciful tunics. They received us with easy gayety. Indeed, they seem to have perfect confidence in all who approach them. Nothing restrains their lively, juvenile propensities. They seemed to derive infinite amusement from their tin cups, presenting them, as in giving water, to all who were present, and finally to the cane on which they seemed to think it fun alive to ride horseback fashion. They are exceedingly docile and affectionate, and the little girl seemed quite emulous of receiving as much notice as her companion. Their heads are singularly formed—the forehead forming nearly a straight line with the nose, and receding to an apex which it forms with the back of the head—strikingly similar to the sculptured figures on Central American monuments. Nor are they less peculiar in their manners and carriage. In general, their attitudes exhibit perfect grace; but we noticed that whenever the boy sat upon the floor, as he frequently did, he invariably sat upon the inside of his legs and thighs, bending his knees outwards, and forming with his legs on the floor the letter W inverted. This attitude we have frequently seen exhibited in drawings from Egyptian sculptures.”

You do not charge to the original race, as you look at these little creatures, either their diminutive size, or their deficiency of room for brain. The type of a noble breed is in the aquiline nose and soft lustrous eye, and in the symmetrical frame and peculiar and indescribable _presence_; and, while you remember the intermarriage by which they have been kept sacred, and become thus homœopathic in size, you cannot but feel that the essence is still there, and the quality still recognizable and potent. With little intelligence, and skulls of such shape that no hope can be entertained of their being ever self-relying or responsible, they still inspire an indefinable feeling of interest, and a deference for the something they vaguely after-shadow.

We sat a half hour, studying these little wonders. The little girl, Bartola, held our hand, and looked us full in the eye with affectionate confidingness, while the boy backed in between the open knees of our partner, Gen. Morris, and signified his wish, with the careless authority of a little Emperor, to be taken into the lap. With no words of their own, they understood what the attendant said to them, and seemed to be relieved of their loneliness by our company. A band of music approaching while we were there, the little Aztecs showed the greatest excitement. We held the boy up to the window while the military company went by, and his little kitten frame trembled and jumped nervously to the measure of the march—music happily being of no language, and stirring brains of all stages of progress, from Kossuth’s, at the noon of a race’s developement, to the Iximayan’s, in its fading twilight.

Our readers will not expect, in our columns, the details of Kossuth’s Progress, nor a literal report of his speeches. They overwhelm even the double sheets of the daily papers. But we shall chronicle a distinct outline of his movements, and see that the readers of the _Home Journal_ lose none of the _ideas_, either of his producing or suggesting. He has begun with magnificent frankness and boldness, and is unquestionably a magnanimous and admirable man, equal to, and embarked upon, a great errand. We wish him success—not with the legislators, but with the _dollars_ of our country. _Money enough will set Hungary free._ We trust the enlistment of these gold and silver recruits will be organized and in progress while his eloquence is thundering an accompaniment. Many ways will be devised for raising contributions. Let us close our present remarks by _proposing one_—as a natural sequent to the peculiarity of which we have spoken in his reception. The Magyar’s _lady constituency_ in America—each one giving but the price of a pair of gloves—a dollar from each of the fair admirers of Kossuth and his cause—might, almost of itself, secure the independence of Hungary. The dollars are willing and waiting—who can doubt? Will not some ruling spirit devise a way to reach and enrol them?

NEAR VIEW OF KOSSUTH.

The eye has opinions of its own. Pour into the mind, by all its other avenues, the most minute and authentic knowledge of a man, and, when you _see him_, your opinion is more or less changed or modified. This is our apology for adding another to the numberless descriptions of Kossuth. Having been favored with an opportunity to stand near him during the delivery of one of his most stirring speeches, we found that our previous impression of him was altered, or, rather, perhaps, somewhat added to. Trifling as the difference of our view from that of others may be, Kossuth is a star about whom the astronomy can scarce be too minute; and our distant readers, who are in the habit of hearing of new planets from us, may be willing to see how also the Magyar looks, through the small telescope of our quill.

With our distant readers mainly in view, we shall be excused for describing Kossuth’s surroundings, as well as himself, with a particularity unnecessary for the city reader.

It has been difficult, without some official errand, to approach near enough to the Magyar to distinguish the finer lines of his face, and we were beginning to despair of this privilege when the Delegation arrived from Baltimore, and, from friends among them, we received an invitation to go in at the presentation of the _silver book_. This, we may anticipatorily explain, was the “freedom of the city” in a written address, of folio size, and bound between two leaves of massive silver; the whole enclosed in a case of red velvet. It was suitably and creditably magnificent; and its history would not all be told without mentioning that it received a kiss from Madame Kossuth—Mr. Brantz Mayer having mindfully and courteously presented it to that lady—the Governor’s Secretary insisting on taking charge of it—and she refusing to release it before pressing it to her lips. Baltimore’s blood will warm with the compliment.

On reaching the Irving House at the hour when the silver book was to be presented, we found the hotel in a state of siege, inside and out. Broadway was packed with people, and the staircases of the hotel were hardly passable. One Hungarian officer, in brilliant uniform, stood sentry at the drawing-room door, and here and there a Magyar hat, with its go-against-the-wind-looking black feather, wound through the crowd; but by the numerous “highly respectables” in body coats and important expressions of countenance, there were evidently uncounted Committees waiting to get audience _within_, while flags and bands of music indicated the more popular deputations whose hopes were on the balcony _without_.

There seemed little chance of any special reception by the Magyar, when Howard sent word that he could give the Baltimore Delegation his own private parlor, where Kossuth would presently come to them. We took advantage of the “presently” to get a look into the street, from one of the front windows. It was a sea of upturned faces, with hats all falling one way, like shadows—Kossuth the light. He stood on the balcony. The many colored flags of the “European Democracy” throbbed over the crowd—Italians, Germans, Frenchmen, Poles—the refugees of all nations standing gazing on the prophet of Liberty. It was a scene, and had a meaning, for history. Yet it was but the _one hour’s event, in a day all occupied with such_. A band of one hundred of the clergy had linked an imperishable testimonial to _the hour before_. The reply to the Baltimore Delegation contained truths that will radiate through all time _from the hour after_. Truly, a man’s life may be so high and so deep, that, to measure it by its length, is meaningless.

The Baltimoreans made their way to the room appointed, which was immediately crowded by privileged spectators, and reporters for the press, with a small party of ladies in the corner. We were kindly urged to take our place directly behind Judge Le Grand, who was the central figure of the Delegation group, and, as Kossuth stood but four or five feet distant, during his reply to the addresses, and with his eye upon the Judge almost unvaryingly, we were so fortunate as to see him with every advantage of the closest observation.

Madam Kossuth was presently introduced with Madam Pulzky, her companion, and seated a little in advance of the lady spectators. She is an invalid, pale and slightly bent—her figure fragile, and her expression of face a mingled imprint of bodily suffering and conscious belonging to greatness. Her countenance, we observed, though earnestly attentive, was profoundly tranquil, alike through the more even flow of her husband’s eloquence and its overwhelming and impassioned outbreaks.

The crowd near the door parted at last, and Kossuth entered. The gentleman on whose arm he leaned led him to the centre of the room, and presented him to the Delegation.

The reader must remember the tumultuous scene, of which Kossuth had been the centre a moment before, when we say that he entered and was presented to the Committee, with a face as calm as if he had just risen from his morning prayer. He bowed, with grave and deliberate deference, at each introduction. It had been communicated to the gentlemen in the room, that, from the injury of movement to his chest after the hemorrhage of the morning, he must be excused from shaking hands, and he bowed only—assuming the attitude of a listener, with an immediate earnestness which showed that he felt little strength for more than the main purpose of the interview. He stood in the centre of the room, motionless, and the reading of the Addresses proceeded.

The surprise of a man who had placed himself at a window to watch for the coming of a stranger, but discovers, after a while, that the stranger has been for some time enjoying the welcome of the household within, may vaguely express the feeling to which we awoke, after looking for five minutes at Kossuth. He had been, from the first instant, in full possession of our heart, and yet the eyes that we had set to scrutinize him had not noted a single feature. It was the strongest instance we had ever experienced, of what we knew to be true, by lesser examples, that the soul, _with neighborhood only_, makes recognitions of what could neither be painted nor sculptured, neither uttered nor written. His mere _presence_ opened to him the door, told who he was, and set the heart, like Mary, to the washing of his feet. We loved and revered the man—why, or with what beginning or progress, we could not have explained. But—let us describe what we afterwards called upon the eye to take note of.

Kossuth is of medium height, with hollow chest and the forward-brought shoulders of a sedentary life. His head is set firmly, not proudly or aristocratically erect, upon his neck. He stood so long and so tranquilly immovable in single postures, that it raised a question in our mind whether he could be of the nervous construction which men of great intellect oftenest are; and, on looking at the hand, that tablet of nervous action, we saw that he was not. The broad smooth back of it was unwritten with needless suffering, and the thumb joint projected, like that of a man used to manual labor. It was a hand, had we seen its like elsewhere, from whose owner we should have expected nothing more poetical or heroic than a well-considered vote. We found a subsequent confirmation of this, we may mention, in the singular immovableness of the sockets, and lids of his eyes, during the eloquent outpourings of his heart which followed. When his lips were compressed, and a quivering movement in his chin showed that emotion was restrained with difficulty, his eye was immovably serene, and its largely spread lids were as tranquil as the sky around a moon unclouded. We were strongly impressed with these outer signs of the two natures of Kossuth. He has a heart like other men—his exquisitely moulded chin and lips of exceeding physical beauty and expression sufficiently show. But, from all that can reach these, his intellect is islanded away. The upper part of his face is calmly separate, not only from the movement, but from the look, of emotion. It is a mind unreachable by nerves—a brain that thinks on, as the sun pursues its way across the heavens, unhindered by the clouds that may gather beneath. A face, in the lower part of which, sensuous beauty is so remarkably complete—and, around the temples, and beneath the brow of which, is so stamped the divine impress of an intellect high above weakness and human by limit only—we had never before seen.

It was quite evident that Kossuth had entered the room, simply to fulfil a duty—feeling unequal to it, from his illness of the morning and the fatigues he had already undergone—and with no idea of making more than the briefest acknowledgment of courtesy for what he should hear from the Committee. Even his dress showed that he was not prepared for “an occasion.” He wore a brown cut-away coat, (which must have been selected for him by a waiter, sent to a ready made clothes shop with a verbal description of the gentleman to be fitted,) a black waistcoat buttoned to the throat, no shirt visible, and trousers of uninfluenceable salt-and-pepper. That the mien and bearing of an Oriental gentleman, as well as the dignity of a prophet, were as fully and impressively recognizable through these Edward-P.-Fox-ables, as through the braided cloak and under the black plume of the Magyar, is a standard, though a homely one, by which some may be helped to an estimate of the man.

We have seen repeated mention of the “perpetual smile” of Kossuth. This conveys a wrong impression. He may smile often and easily when receiving introductions or bowing to the cheers of a crowd; but it is a demonstration which, habitually, he keeps very much in reserve, and which, of all the visible weapons of his eloquence, is the most rarely and aptly introduced, the most captivating and effective. We are inclined to think his heavy mustache accidentally favors this, by aiding the unexpectedness of the smile, and by leaving its fading glow to the imagination—but, at moments when the lips of another orator would be cloud-wrapt in the darkest expression of solemnity, a gleam, like the breaking away for a transfiguration, comes suddenly over the lips of Kossuth—as beautiful and inspired a smile certainly as was ever seen on the face of a human being—and the effect is in the peculiar triumph that he achieves. Love irresistibly follows conviction.

As we said before, Kossuth had evidently no idea of making the speech which was drawn from him by the Baltimore Delegation—drawn from him, we think, by the superior cast of the gentlemen who formed it, and by the fitness, both of the manner and accompaniments of the honors they paid him. He spoke altogether extemporaneously, and with difficulty and hesitation, at first; but, with one or two brilliant and successful illustrations, his words grew more fluent, and, in the following passage, he became fully and gloriously aroused. It was the first mention he had yet made to the world of his intention to return to Hungary _a soldier_!

“As for the future, I shall devote my life to the resurrection of my native land. I will endeavor to wrest Hungary from the power of tyrants and despots, to procure for her her sovereign rights, and the fundamental rights which belong to every nation. Should Providence assign me a place in the accomplishment of these great designs, I will take care that they shall receive no injury from me. I will here remark that I have always been extremely anxious not to assume or take upon my humble shoulders any duty which I had not a positive conviction would not answer me, or which I could not perform. Though I was never in actual military service, I was ready to help my country in every way I could. I was not able to be in every place at the same time, and I had not the boldness to take the practical direction of the military operations because I feared I was not sufficiently familiar with military tactics to do so. I thought that if it so happened that any thing should go amiss, and my people be defeated, that I should not only be condemned by my countrymen, but that my conscience would torture me with the feeling, that if I had not undertook to do a thing which I did not understand, the fall of my country would not have taken place. This was my conviction. _I was not master of the practice and strategy of war, and I gave the cause of my country thus far into other hands._ I have seen that cause destroyed, and become a failure, and I weep for my country, not for my own misfortunes. _Since I have been in exile I have endeavored to improve my intellect from the movements of the past, and to prepare myself for the future_, and I rely on my people, whose confidence in me is not shaken by my misfortunes, nor broken by my calumniators, who have misrepresented me. _I have had all in my own hands once, and if I get in the same position again, I will act._ I will not become a Napoleon nor an Alexander, and labor for the sake of my own ambition, but I will labor for freedom.”

These are not his words, though they embody the sentiments expressed. His own language was as much finer, and as different from this, as a poem is from its story told in prose. The reporters are not to blame, taking their notes standing amid a crowd as they do—but, (let us say here,) the public should give Kossuth credit for incomparably more eloquent speeches than they read. An admirable passage, left out in what we have quoted, for instance, followed the allusion he made to his disappointment in Gœrgey, the traitor, the shock it gave to his belief in the power of one man to read the soul of another, and the lonely _trust in himself only_, to which it had driven him. To the words and the manner with which he repeated the declaration that he _believed in himself_, we do not think we shall ever hear the parallel for impressive eloquence. Those who heard it would believe in Kossuth—against the testimony of angels.

Kossuth is too heroic a man to be over-cautious; and, from the kind of freshly impulsive and chivalric energy with which he spoke of holding the army in his own hand on his return, we were impressed with the idea that this evidently unpremeditated giving of shape to his thought for the future had another element in its momentum. _It was the reading aloud of a newly turned over leaf of his nature._ In prison, he says, he prepared himself for the next struggle of Hungary by making “the science and strategy of war” a study. Profound and careful, of course, must be the _theory_ of war—but its _practice_ is with trumpet and banner; and ever so abstruse though the _tactics_ are, they are tried even for the holiest cause, with those accompaniments, of personal daring and danger, which have, to all lofty minds, a charm irresistible. Of the statesman and hero united in Kossuth, the _statesman_ has been more wanted, hitherto—but there is a call, now, for the _hero_—and, if he betrays joy and eagerness long suppressed, (as we mean to say he did,) in answering that he is ready, what American will “wish he had been more careful?”

In farther illustration of what we are saying, the reader will permit us to change the scene of our sketch, and speak of Kossuth as we saw him more recently—addressing the five thousand of our soldiery in the amphitheatre of Castle Garden. It was not, _there_, the pale, carelessly dressed, and slightly bent invalid of the few days before. Oh no! Neither in mien nor in dress would he have been recognized by the picture we have drawn of him, above. The scene was enough to inspire him it is true. Five thousand brilliantly equipped men—with but one thought under every plume and belt, and that thought the cause whose highest altar was in his own bosom—were marshalled beneath his glance, waiting breathlessly to hear him. His look, that night, will never be forgot, by those who saw it. He wore a black velvet frock with standing collar, and buttons of jet—the single ornament being the slender belt of gold about his waist, holding a sword gracefully to his side. The marked simplicity of this elegant dress made his figure distinguished among the brilliant uniforms of the officers upon the stage; but his countenance, as he became animated, and walked to and fro before that magnificently arrayed audience, was the idealization of a look to inspire armies. When Captain French (to whom we make our admiring compliments) rose in the far gallery, and insisted on being heard, while he offered a thousand dollars from the Fusileers to the cause, would any one have doubted that the life’s blood of those fine fellows _would have come as easy_, with opportunity?

We stop with this mere description. The Kossuth questions are discussed sufficiently elsewhere. Our object has been to aid the distant reader in imagining the personal appearance of the man whose thoughts of lightning reach them, gleaming gloriously even through the clouds of impoverished language on which they travel. We close with a prayer—_God keep Kossuth to take the field for Hungary!_

DEATH OF LADY BLESSINGTON.

The Parisian correspondent of the _London Morning Post_ thus makes the first mention of this unexpected event:—

“We have all been much shocked this afternoon by the sudden death of Lady Blessington. Her ladyship dined yesterday with the Duchess de Grammont, and returned home late in her usual health and spirits. In the course of this morning she felt unwell, and her homœopathic medical adviser, Dr. Simon, was sent for. After a short consultation, the doctor announced that his patient was dying of apoplexy, and his sad prediction was unhappily verified but too rapidly, as her ladyship expired in his arms about an hour and a half ago.”

We doubt whether a death could have taken place, in private life, in Europe, that would have made a more vivid sensation than this, or have been more sincerely regretted. Indeed, a possessor of more power, in its most attractive shape, could hardly have been named, in life public or private—for the extent of Lady Blessington’s friendships with distinguished men of every nation, quality, character, rank and creed, was without a parallel. Her friends were carefully chosen—but, once admitted to her intimacy, they never were neglected and never lessened in their attachment to her. She has a circle of mourners, at this moment, in which there is more genius, more distinction, and more sincere sorrowing, than has embalmed a name within the lapse of a century. Noblemen, statesmen, soldiers, church-dignitaries, poets and authors, artists, actors, musicians, bankers,—a galaxy of the best of their different stations and pursuits—have received, with tears at the door of the heart, the first intelligence of her death.

The deceased will have a biographer—no doubt an able and renowned one. Bulwer, who enjoyed her friendship as intimately, perhaps, for the last ten years of her life, as any other man, might describe her best, and is not likely to leave, undone, a task so obviously his own. Without hoping to anticipate, at all, the portraiture, by an abler hand, of this remarkable woman, we may venture to send to our readers this first announcement of her death, accompanied with such a sketch of her qualities of mind and heart as our own memory, of the acquaintance we had the privilege of enjoying, enables us easily to draw.

Lady Blessington, as her writings show, was not a woman of genius in the creative sense of the term. She has originated nothing that would, of itself, have made a mark upon the age she lived in. Her peculiarity lay in the curiously felicitous combination of the best qualities of the two sexes, in her single character as it came from nature. She had the cool common sense and intrepid unsubserviency which together give a man the best social superiority, and she had the tact, the delicacy and the impassioned devotedness which are essentials in the finest compounds of woman. She did not know what fear was,—either of persons or of opinions,—and it was as like herself when she shook her gloved fist in defiance at the mob in Whitehall, on their threatening to break her carriage windows if she drove through, as it was to return to London after her long residence on the continent, and establish herself as the centre of a society from which her own sex were excluded. Under more guarded and fortunate circumstances of early life, and had she attained “the age of discretion” before taking any decided step, she would probably have been one of those guiding stars of _individualism_, in common life, alike peculiar, admirable and irreproachable.

Lady Blessington’s generous estimate of _what services were due in friendship_—her habitual conduct in such relations amounting to a romantic chivalry of devotedness—bound to her with a naturalness of affection not very common in that class of life, those who formed the circle of her intimacy. She did not wait to be solicited. Her tact and knowledge of the world enabled her to understand, with a truth that sometimes seemed like divination, the position of a friend at the moment—his hopes and difficulties, his wants and capabilities. She had a much larger influence than was generally supposed, with persons in power, who were not of her known acquaintance, many an important spring of political and social movement was unsuspectedly within her control. She could aid ambition, promote literary distinction, remove difficulties in society which she did not herself frequent, serve artists, harmonize and prevent misunderstandings, and give valuable counsel on almost any subject that could come up in the career of a man, with a skill and a control of resources of which few had any idea. Many a one of her brilliant and unsurpassed dinners had a kindly object which its titled guests little dreamed of, but which was not forgotten for a moment, amid the wit and eloquence that seemed so purposeless and impulsive. On some errand of good will to others, her superb equipage, the most faultless thing of its kind in the world, was almost invariably bound, when gazed after in the streets of London. Princes and noblemen, (who, as well as poets and artists, have aims which need the devotion of friendship,) were the objects of her watchful aid and ministration; and we doubt, indeed, whether any woman lived, who was so valuable a friend to so many, setting aside the high careers that were influenced among them, and the high station and rank that were befriended with no more assiduity than lesser ambitions and distinctions.

The conversation, at the table in Gore House, was allowed to be the most brilliant in Europe, but Lady Blessington herself seldom took the lead in it. Her manners were such as to put every one at his ease, and her absolute tact at suggestion and change of topics, made any one shine who had it in him, when she chose to call it forth. She had the display of her guests as completely under her hand as the pianist his keys; and, forgetful of herself—giving the most earnest and appreciative attention to others—she seemed to desire no share in the happiness of the hour except that of making each, in his way, show to advantage. If there was any impulse of her mind to which she gave way with a feeling of carelessness, it was to the love of humor in her Irish nature, and her mirthfulness at such moments, was most joyously unrestrained and natural.

In 1835, when we first saw Lady Blessington, she confessed to forty, and was then exceedingly handsome. Her beauty, it is true, was more in pose and demeanor than in the features of her face, but she produced the full impression of great beauty. Her mouth was the very type of freshness and frankness. The irregularity of her nose gave a vivacity to her expression, and her thin and pliant nostrils added a look of spirit which was unmistakable, but there was a steady penetration in the character of her eye which threw a singular earnestness and sincerity over all. Like Victoria, Tom Moore, the Duke of Wellington and Grisi, she sat tall—her body being longer in proportion than her limbs—and, probably from some little sensitiveness on this point, she was seldom seen walking. Her grace of posture in her carriage struck the commonest observer, and, seated at her table, or in the gold and satin arm-chair in her drawing room, she was majestically elegant and dignified. Of the singular beauty of her hands and arms, celebrated as they were in poetry and sculpture, she seemed at least unconscious, and used them carelessly, gracefully and expressively, in the gestures of conversation. At the time we speak of, she was in perfect maturity portion and figure, but beginning, even then, to conceal, by a peculiar cap, the increasing fullness under her chin. Her natural tendency to plethora was not counteracted by exercise, and when we saw her last, two years ago, she was exceedingly altered from her former self, and had evidently given up to an indolence of personal habits which has since ended in apoplexy and death.

There is an ignorance with regard to the early history of this distinguished woman, and a degree of misrepresentation in the popular report of her life in later years, which a simple statement of the outline of her career will properly correct. Her death takes away from her friends the freedom of speaking carelessly of her faults, but it binds them, also, to guard her memory as far as Truth can do it, from injustice and perversion.

Lady Blessington’s maiden name was Margaret Power. She was born in Ireland, the daughter of the printer and editor of the _Clonmel Herald_, and up to the age of twelve or fourteen, (as we once heard her say) had hardly worn a shoe or been in a house where there was a carpet. At this age of her girlhood, however, she and her sister (who was afterwards Lady Canterbury) were fancied by a family of wealthy old maids, to whom they were distantly related, and taken to a home where they proved apt scholars in the knowledge of luxury and manners. On their return to Clonmel, two young girls of singular beauty, they became at once the attraction of a dashing English regiment newly stationed there, and Margaret was soon married to an officer by the name of Farmer. From this hasty connection, into which she was crowded by busy and ambitious friends, sprang all the subsequent canker of her life. Her husband proved to be liable to temporary insanity, and, at best, was cruel and capricious. Others were kinder and more attentive. She was but sixteen. Flying from her husband who was pursuing her with a pistol in his hand to take her life, she left her home, and, in the retreat where she took refuge, was found by a wealthy and accomplished officer, who had long been her admirer, and whose “protection” she now fatally accepted.

With this gentleman, Captain Jenkinson, she lived four years in complete seclusion. His return to dissipated habits, at the end of that time, destroyed his fortune and brought about a separation; and, her husband, meantime, having died, she received an offer of marriage from Lord Blessington, who was then a widower with one daughter. She refused the offer, at first, from delicate motives, easily understood: but it was at last pressed on her acceptance, and she married and went abroad.

Received into the best society of the continent at once, and with her remarkable beauty and her husband’s enormous wealth, entering upon a most brilliant career, she became easily an accomplished woman of the world, and readily supplied for herself, any deficiencies in her early education. It was during this first residence in Paris that Lord Blessington became exceedingly attached to Count Alfred D’Orsay, the handsomest and most talented young nobleman of France. Determined not to be separated from one he declared he could not live without, he affianced his daughter to him, persuaded his father to let him give up his commission in the army, and fairly adopted him into his family to share his fortune with him as a son. They soon left Paris for Italy, and at Genoa fell in with Lord Byron, who was a friend of Lord Blessington’s, and with whom they made a party, for residence in that beautiful climate, the delightful socialities of which are well described in her Ladyship’s “Conversations.”

A year or two afterwards, Lord Blessington’s daughter came to him from school, and was married to Count D’Orsay at Naples. The union proved inharmonious, and they separated, after living but a year together. Lord Blessington died soon after, and, on Lady Blessington’s return to England, the Count rejoined her, and they formed but one household till her death.

It was this residence of Lord Blessington’s widow and her son-in-law under the same roof—he, meantime, separated from his wife, Lady Harriet D’Orsay—which, by the English code of appearances in morals, compromised the position of Lady Blessington. She chose to disregard public opinion, where it interfered with what she deliberately made up her mind was best, and, disdaining to explain or submit, guarded against slight or injury, by excluding from her house all who would condemn her, viz:—her own sex. Yet all who knew her and her son-in-law, were satisfied that it was a useful and, indeed, absolutely necessary arrangement for _him_—her strict business habits, practical good sense, and the protection of her roof, being an indispensable safeguard to his personal liberty and fortunes—and that this need of serving him and the strongest and most disinterested friendship were _her_ only motives, every one was completely sure who knew them at all. By those intimate at her house, including the best and greatest men of England, Lady Blessington was held in unqualified respect, and no shadow even of suspicion, thrown over her life of widowhood. She had many entreaties from her own sex to depart from her resolve and interchange visits, and we chanced to be at her house, one morning, when a note was handed to her from one of the most distinguished noble ladies of England, making such a proposal. We saw the reply. It expressed, with her felicitous tact, a full appreciation of the confidence and kindness of the note she had received, but declined its request, from an unwillingness to place herself in any position where she might, by the remotest possibility, suffer from doubt or injustice. She persevered in this to the end of her life, a few relatives and one or two intimates of her continental acquaintance being the only ladies seen at her house. When seized with her last illness, she had been dining with Count D’Orsay’s sister, the beautiful Duchess de Grammont.

Faulty as a portion of Lady Blessington’s life may have been, we doubt whether a woman has lived, in her time, who did so many actions of truest kindness, and whose life altogether was so benevolently and largely instrumental for the happiness of others. With the circumstances that bore upon her destiny, with her beauty, her fascination and her boundless influence over all men who approached her, she might easily, almost excusably, have left a less worthy memory to fame. Few in their graves, now, deserve a more honoring remembrance.

MOORE AND BARRY CORNWALL.

Well—how does Moore write a song?

In the twilight of a September evening he strolls through the park to dine with the marquis. As he draws on his white gloves, he sees the evening star looking at him steadily through the long vista of the avenue, and he construes its punctual dispensation of light into a reproach for having, himself a star, passed a day of poetic idleness. “Damme,” soliloquizes the little fat planet, “this will never do! Here have I hammered the whole morning at a worthless idea, that, with the mere prospect of a dinner, shows as trumpery as a ‘penny fairing.’ Labor wasted! And at my time of life, too! Faith!—it’s dining at home these two days with nobody to drink with me! It’s eyewater I want! Don’t trouble yourself to sit up for me, brother Hesper! I shall see clearer when I come back!

‘Bad are the rhymes That scorn old wine.’

as my friend Barry sings. Poetry? hum! Claret? Prithee, call it claret!”

And Moore is mistaken! He draws his inspiration, it is true, with the stem of a glass between his thumb and finger, but the wine is the least stimulus to his brain. _He talks and is listened to admiringly_, and that is his Castaly. He sits next to Lady Fanny at dinner, who thinks him an “adorable little love,” and he employs the first two courses in making her in love with herself, i. e., blowing everything she says up to the red heat of poetry. Moore can do this, for the most stupid things on earth are, after all, the beginnings of ideas, and every fool is susceptible of the flattery of seeing the words go straight from his lips to the “highest heaven of invention.” And Lady Fanny is not a fool, but a quick and appreciative woman, and to almost everything she says, the poet’s _trump_ is a germ of poetry. “Ah!” says Lady Fanny with a sigh, “this will be a memorable dinner—not to you, but to me; for you see pretty women every day, but I seldom see Tom Moore!” The poet looks into Lady Fanny’s eyes and makes no immediate answer. Presently she asks, with a delicious look of simplicity, “Are you as agreeable to everybody, Mr. Moore?”—“There is but one Lady Fanny,” replies the poet; “or, _to use your own_ beautiful simile, ‘The moon sees many brooks, but the brook sees but one moon!’” (Mem. jot that down.) And so is treasured up _one_ idea for the morrow, and when the marchioness rises, and the ladies follow her to the drawing-room, Moore finds himself sandwiched between a couple of whig lords, and opposite a past or future premier—an audience of cultivation, talent, scholarship, and appreciation; and as the fresh pitcher of claret is passed round, all regards radiate to the Anacreon of the world, and with that sanction of expectation, let alone Tom Moore. Even our “Secretary of the Navy and National Songster” would “turn out his lining”—such as it is. And Moore is delightful, and with his “As you say, my lord!” he gives birth to a constellation of bright things, no one of which is dismissed with the claret. Every one at the table, except Moore, is subject to the hour—to its enthusiasm, its enjoyment—but the hour is to Moore a precious slave. So is the wine. It works for him! It brings him money from Longman! It plays his trumpet in the reviews! It is his filter among the ladies! Well may he sing its praises! Of all the poets, Moore is probably the only one who is thus _master of his wine_. The glorious _abandon_ with which we fancy him, a brimming glass in his hand, singing “Fly not yet!” exists only in the fancy. He keeps a cool head and coins his conviviality; and to revert to my former figure, they who wish to know what Moore’s electricity amounts to _without_ the convivial friction, may read his history of Ireland. Not a sparkle in it, from the landing of the Phœnicians to the battle of Vinegar Hill! He wrote _that_ as other people write—with nothing left from the day before but the habit of labor—and the travel of a collapsed balloon on a man’s back, is not more unlike the same thing, inflated and soaring, than Tom Moore, historian, and Tom Moore, bard!

Somewhere in the small hours the poet walks home, and sitting down soberly in his little library, he puts on paper the half-score scintillations that collision, in one shape or another, has struck into the tinder of his fancy. If read from this paper, the world would probably think little of their prospect of ever becoming poetry. But the mysterious part is done—the life is breathed into the chrysalis—and the clothing of these naked fancies with winged words, Mr. Moore knows very well can be done in very uninspired moods by patient industry. Most people have very little idea what that industry is—how deeply language is ransacked, how often turned over, how untiringly rejected and recalled with some new combination, how resolutely sacrificed when only tolerable enough to pass, how left untouched day after day in the hope of a fresh impulse after repose. The vexation of a Chinese puzzle is slight, probably, to that which Moore has expended on some of his most natural and flowing single verses. The exquisite nicety of his ear, though it eventually gives his poetry its honied fluidity, gives him no quicker choice of words, nor does more, in any way, than pass inexorable judgment on what his industry brings forward. Those who think a song dashed off like an invitation to dinner, would be edified by the progressive phases of a “Moore’s Melody.” Taken with all its rewritings, emendations, &c., I doubt whether, in his most industrious seclusion, Moore averages a couplet a day. Yet this persevering, resolute, unconquerable patience of labor is the secret of his fame. Take the best thing he ever wrote, and translate its sentiments and similitudes into plain prose, and do the thing by a song of any second-rate imitator of Moore, one abstract would read as well as the other. Yet Moore’s song is immortal, and the other ephemeral as a paragraph in a newspaper, and the difference consists in a patient elaboration of language and harmony, and in that only. And even thus short, _seems_ the space between the _ephemeron_ and the immortal. But it is wider than they think, oh, glorious Tom Moore!

And how does Barry Cornwall write?

I answer, from the efflux of his soul! Poetry is not labor to him. He _works_ at _law_—he plays, relaxes, luxuriates in _poetry_. Mr. Proctor has at no moment of his life, probably, after finishing a poetic effusion, designed ever to write another line. No more than the sedate man, who, walking on the edge of a playground, sees a ball coming directly towards him, and seized suddenly with a boyish impulse, jumps aside and sends it whizzing back, as he had not done for twenty years, with his cane—no more than that unconscious school-boy of fourscore (thank God there _are_ many such live coals under the ashes) thinks he shall play again at ball. Proctor is a prosperous barrister, drawing a large income from his profession. He married the daughter of Basil Montague (well known as the accomplished scholar, and the friend of Coleridge, Lamb, and that bright constellation of spirits,) and with a family of children of whom, the world knows, he is passionately fond, he leads a more domestic life, or, rather, a life more within himself and his own, than any author, present or past, with whose habits I am conversant. He has drawn his own portrait; however, in outline, and as far as it goes, nothing could be truer. In an epistle to his friend Charles Lamb, he says:—

“Seated beside this Sherris wine, And near to books and shapes divine, Which poets and the painters past Have wrought in line that aye shall last,— E’en I, with Shakspere’s self beside me, And one whose tender talk can guide me Through fears and pains and troublous themes, Whose smile doth fall upon my dreams Like sunshine on a stormy sea,******”

Proctor slights the world’s love for his wife and books, and, as might be expected, the world only plies him the more with its caresses. He is now and then seen in the choicest circles of London, where, though love and attention mark most flatteringly the rare pleasure of his presence, he plays a retired and silent part, and steals early away. His library is his Paradise. His enjoyment of literature should be mentioned as often in his biography as the “feeding among the lilies” in the Songs of Solomon. He forgets himself, he forgets the world in his favorite authors, and that, I fancy, was the golden link in his friendship with Lamb. Surrounded by exquisite specimens of art, (he has a fine taste, and is much beloved by artists,) a choice book in his hand, his wife beside him, and the world shut out, Barry is in the meridian of his true orbit. Oh, then, a more loving and refined spirit is not breathing beneath the stars! He reads and muses; and as something in the pages stirs some distant association, suggests some brighter image than its own, he half leans over to the table, and scrawls it in unstudied but inspired verse. He thinks no more of it. You might have it to light your cigar. But there sits by his side one who knows its value, and it is treasured. Here, for instance, in the volume I have spoken of before, are some forty pages of “fragments”—thrown in to eke out the volume of his songs. I am sure, that when he was making up his book, perhaps expressing a fear that there would not be pages enough for the publisher’s design, these fragments were produced from their secret hiding-place to his great surprise. The quotations I have made were all from this portion of his volume, and, as I said before, they are worthy of Shakspere. There is no mark of labor in them. I do not believe there was an erasure in the entire manuscript. They bear all the marks of a sudden, unstudied impulse, immediately and unhesitatingly expressed. Here are several fragments. How evident it is that they were suggested directly by his reading:—

“She was a princess—but she fell; and now Her shame goes blushing through a line of kings.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Sometimes a deep thought crossed My fancy, like the sullen bat that flies Athwart the melancholy moon at eve.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Let not thy tale tell but of stormy sorrows! She—who was late a maid, but now doth lie In Hymen’s bosom, like a rose grown pale, A sad, sweet wedded wife—why is _she_ left Out of the story? Are good deeds—great griefs, That live but ne’er complain—naught? What are tears?— Remorse?—deceit? at best weak water drops Which wash out the bloom of sorrow.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Is she dead? Why so shall I be—ere these autumn blasts Have blown on the beard of winter. Is she dead? Aye, she is dead—quite dead! The wild sea kissed her With its cold, white lips, and then—put her to sleep: She has a sand pillow, and a water sheet, And never turns her head, or knows ’tis morning!

* * * * * * * * * * *

Mark, when he died, his tombs, his epitaphs! Men did not pluck the ostrich for his sake, Nor dyed’t in sable. No black steeds were there, Caparisoned in wo; no hired crowds; No hearse, wherein the crumbling clay (imprisoned Like ammunition in a tumbril) rolled Rattling along the street, and silenced grief; No arch whereon the bloody laurel hung; No stone; no gilded verse;—poor common shows! But tears and tearful words, and sighs as deep As sorrow is—these were _his_ epitaphs! Thus—(fitly graced)—he lieth now, inurned In hearts that loved him, on whose tender sides Are graved his many virtues. When they perish, He’s lost!—and so’t should be. The poet’s name. And hero’s—on the brazen book of Time, Are writ in sunbeams, by Fame’s loving hand; But none record the household virtues there. These better sleep (when all dear friends are fled) In endless and serene oblivion.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

JANE PORTER,

AUTHORESS OF “SCOTTISH CHIEFS,” “THADDEUS OF WARSAW,” ETC., ETC.

This distinguished woman died recently at Bristol, England, at the age of seventy-four. We shall, doubtless, soon have an authentic biography of her, from some one to whom her papers and other materials will have been entrusted by the brother who survives her; but, meantime, let us yield to the tide of remembrance which her death has awakened, and arrest, ere they float by and are lost, the scattered leaf-memories that may recall the summers when we knew her. For the sixteen years that we enjoyed the privilege of her friendship, her correspondence with us was interrupted only by illness, and we hope yet to find the leisure to put some of those high-thoughted and invaluable letters into print—true reflex as they are of the lofty and true mind which made her fame. Our present memoranda will be brief, with a view to that better justice to the theme.

We first saw Miss Porter at the house of Lady S——, the sister of Lady Franklin, a few weeks after our first arrival in London, in 1834. It was at a large party, thronged with the scientific and literary persons who form the society of a man like Sir John Franklin. The great navigator, whose fate now excites so deep an interest, was present, and he was almost the only celebrity in the room whom we did not then see for the first time—Sir John having been in command of the English fleet in the Mediterranean, and Lady Franklin at Athens when we chanced to be there. The noble head and majestic frame of the fine old sailor showed in strong relief, even among the great men who surrounded him, and we well remember the confirmed impression, of his native dignity and superiority of presence, which we received at that time.

A very tall lady, apparently about fifty years of age, had arrested our attention early in the evening, and, whenever unoccupied, we found ourself turning to observe her, with a magnetism which we could not resist. She was dressed completely in black, with black lace upon the neck, and black feathers drooping over the knot of her slightly grey hair. Her person was very erect, and, though her conversation was evidently playful with all who spoke with her, there was an exceeding loftiness, and an air of unconscious and easy nobility, in her mien and countenance, which was truly remarkable. She was like the ideal which one forms of a Lady Abbess of noble blood, or of Queen Katharine. The deference with which she was addressed was mingled invariably with an affectionate cordiality, however, which puzzled our conjectures a little, for it is not common to see the two feelings inspired with equal certainty by the same presence. It chanced to be late in the evening before we had an opportunity of enquiring the name of this lady, and, when we heard who she was, we recognized at once that very unusual phenomenon—a complete fitness of the outer temple to the fame whose deathless lamp is enshrined within it. It was Jane Porter, and she looked as one would have expected her to look, who had conjured up her image by aid of magic, after being carried away by her enchantments of story.

We were presented to Miss Porter by Sir John Franklin, just before the breaking up of the party that evening, and, soon after, we were so fortunate as to be a guest, with her, at one of those English country-houses which are the perfection of luxury and refinement, and where there was the opportunity to see her with her proper surroundings. Of the impression received at that time, we have already made a slight record, which some of our readers may remember:—

“One of the most elegant and agreeable persons I ever saw was Miss Porter, and I think her conversation more delightful to remember than any person’s I ever knew. A distinguished artist told me that he remembered her when she was his beau ideal of female beauty; but in those days she was more “fancy-rapt,” and gave in less to the current and spirit of society. Age has made her, if it may be so expressed, less selfish in her use of thought, and she pours it forth like Pactolus—that gold which is sand from others. She is still what I should call a handsome woman, or, if that be not allowed, she is the wreck of more than a common allotment of beauty, and looks it. Her person is remarkably erect, her eyes and eyelids (in this latter resembling Scott) very heavily moulded, and her smile is beautiful. It strikes me that it always is so—where it ever was. The smile seems to be the work of the soul.

“I have passed months under the same roof with Miss Porter, and nothing gave me more pleasure than to find the company in that hospitable house dwindled to a “fit audience though few,” and gathered around the figure in deep mourning which occupied the warmest corner of the sofa. In any vein, and _apropos_ to the gravest and the gayest subject, her well-stored mind and memory flowed forth in the same rich current of mingled story and reflection, and I never saw an impatient listener beside her. I recollect one evening a lady’s singing “Auld Robin Gray,” and some one remarking (rather unsentimentally,) at the close, “By-the-by what is Lady —— (the authoress of the ballad) doing with so many carpenters? Berkeley square is quite deafened with their hammering!” “_Apropos_ of carpenters and Lady ——,” said Miss Porter, “this charming ballad-writer owes something to the craft. She was better-born than provided with the gifts of fortune, and in her younger days was once on a visit to a noble house, when, to her dismay, a large and fashionable company arrived who brought with them a mania for private theatricals. Her wardrobe was very slender, barely sufficient for the ordinary events of a week-day, and her purse contained one solitary shilling. To leave the house was out of the question, to feign illness as much so, and to decline taking a part was impossible, for her talent and sprightliness were the hope of the theatre. A part was cast for her, and, in despair, she excused herself from the gay party bound to the country town to make purchases of silk and satin, and shut herself up, a prey to mortified low spirits. The character required a smart village dress, and it certainly did not seem that it could come out of a shilling. She sat at her window, biting her lips, and turning over in her mind whether she could borrow of some one, when her attention was attracted to a carpenter, who was employed in the construction of a stage in the large hall, and who, in the court below, was turning off from his plane broad and long shavings of a peculiarly striped wood. It struck her that it was like riband. The next moment she was below, and begged of the man to give her half-a-dozen lengths as smooth as he could shave them. He performed his task well, and depositing them in her apartment, she set off alone on horseback to the village, and with her single shilling succeeded in purchasing a chip hat of the coarsest fabric. She carried it home, exultingly, trimmed it with her pine shavings, and on the evening of the performance appeared with a white dress, and hat and belt ribands which were the envy of the audience. The success of her invention gave her spirits and assurance, and she played to admiration. The sequel will justify my first remark. She made a conquest on that night of one of her titled auditors, whom she afterward married. You will allow that Lady —— may afford to be tolerant of carpenters.”

It was two years after this first meeting of Miss Porter at —— Park, that we accepted an invitation to meet her at the house of a Baronet in Warwickshire, and of that visit the following mention is made in Sketches of Travel already published:—

“I remembered a promise I had nearly forgotten, that I would reserve my visit to Stratford till I could be accompanied by Miss J. Porter, whom I was to have the honor of meeting at my place of destination; and promising an early acceptance of the landlady’s invitation, I hurried on to my appointment over the fertile hills of Warwickshire.

“I was established in one of those old Elizabethan country-houses which with their vast parks, their self-sufficing resources of subsistence and company, and the absolute deference shown on all sides to the lord of the manor, give one the impression rather of a little kingdom with a castle in its heart, than of an abode for a gentleman subject. The house itself (called, like most houses of this size and consequence in Warwickshire, a ‘Court,’) was a Gothic half-castellated square, with four round towers, and innumerable embrasures and windows; two wings in front, probably more modern than the body of the house, and again two long wings extending to the rear, at right angles, and enclosing a flowery and formal parterre. There had been a trench about it, now filled up, and at a short distance from the house stood a polyangular and massive structure, well calculated for defence, and intended as a stronghold for the retreat of the family and tenants in more troubled times. One of these rear wings enclosed a catholic chapel, for the worship of the baronet and those of his tenants who professed the same faith; while on the northern side, between the house and the garden, stood a large, protestant stone church, with a turret and spire, both chapel and church, with their clergyman and priest, dependant on the estate, and equally favored by the liberal and high-minded baronet. The tenantry formed two considerable congregations, and lived and worshipped side by side, with the most perfect harmony—an instance of _real_ Christianity, in my opinion, which the angels of heaven might come down to see. A lovely rural grave-yard for the lord and tenants, and a secluded lake below the garden, in which hundreds of wild ducks swam and screamed unmolested, completed the outward features of C—— Court.

“There are noble houses in England with a door communicating from the dining room to the stables, that the master and his friends may see their favorites, after dinner, without exposure to the weather. In the place of this rather _bizarre_ luxury, the oak-panelled and spacious dining-hall of C—— is on a level with the organ loft of the chapel, and when the cloth is removed, the large door between is thrown open, and the noble instrument pours the rich and thrilling music of vespers through the rooms. When the service is concluded, and the lights on the altar extinguished, the blind organist (an accomplished musician, and a tenant on the estate,) continues his voluntaries in the dark until the hall-door informs him of the retreat of the company to the drawing-room. There is not only refinement and luxury in this beautiful, arrangement, but food for the soul and heart.

“I chose my room from among the endless vacant but equally luxurious chambers of the rambling old house; my preference solely directed by the portrait of a nun, one of the family in ages gone by—a picture full of melancholy beauty, which hung opposite the window. The face was distinguished by all that in England marks the gentlewoman of ancient and pure descent; and while it was a woman with the more tender qualities of her sex breathing through her features, it was still a lofty and sainted sister, true to her cross, and sincere in her vows and seclusion. It was the work of a master, probably Vandyke, and a picture in which the most solitary man would find company and communion. On the other walls, and in most of the other rooms and corridors, were distributed portraits of the gentlemen and soldiers of the family, most of them bearing some resemblance to the nun, but differing, as brothers in those wild times may be supposed to have differed, from the gentle creatures of the same blood, nursed in the privacy of peace.”

Warwick Castle, Stratford-on-Avon, and Kenilworth, were all within the reach of what might be called neighborhood, and our hospitable host (in his eightieth year, and unable to accompany us,) had made the arrangements for our visit to these places. We were to be gone three days, but were to remain his guests in all respects. The carriage was packed with the books which might be needed for reference, the butler of the old Baronet was to go with us and provide post-horses and everything we could want at inns upon the road, and, under this kind and luxurious provision, we took seat beside Miss Porter, and visited Kenilworth, Warwick, and Stratford, with no thought or care which need divide our pleasure in her society. From the description of this journey (given without mention of the above circumstances,) let us copy one more passage:—

“I had wandered away from my companion, Miss Jane Porter, to climb up a secret staircase in the wall, rather too difficult of ascent for a female foot, and from my elevated position I caught an accidental view of that distinguished lady through the arch of a Gothic window, with a background of broken architecture and foliage—presenting, by chance, perhaps, the most fitting and admirable picture of the authoress of the “Scottish Chiefs,” that a painter in his brightest hour could have fancied. Miss Porter, with her tall and striking figure, her noble face (said by Mr. Martin Shee to have approached nearer in its youth to his _beau idéal_ of the female features than any other, and still possessing the remains of uncommon beauty,) is at all times a person whom it would be difficult to see without a feeling of involuntary admiration. But standing, as I saw her at that moment, motionless and erect, in the morning-dress, with dark feathers, which she has worn since the death of her beloved and gifted sister, her wrists folded across, her large and still beautiful eyes fixed on a distant object in the view, and her nobly-cast lineaments reposing in their usual calm and benevolent tranquility, while, around and above her, lay the material and breathed the spirit over which she had held the first great mastery—it was a _tableau vivant_ which I was sorry to be alone to see.

“Was she thinking of the great mind that had evoked the spirits of the ruins she stood among—a mind in which (by Sir Walter’s own confession) she had first bared the vein of romance which breathed so freely for the world’s delight? where the visions which sweep with such supernatural distinctness and rapidity through the imagination of genius—vision of which the millionth portion is probably scarcely communicated to the world in a literary lifetime—were Elizabeth’s courtiers, Elizabeth’s passions, secret hours, interviews with Leicester—were the imprisoned king’s nights of loneliness and dread, his hopes, his indignant, but unheeded thoughts—were all the possible circumstances, real or imaginary, of which that proud castle might have been the scene, thronging in those few moments of revery through her fancy? or was her heart busy with its kindly affections, and had the beauty and interest of the scene but awakened a thought of one who was most wont to number with her the sands of those brighter hours.

“Who shall say? The very question would perhaps startle the thoughts beyond recall—so illusive are even the most angelic of the mind’s unseen visitants?”

In another place we made the following memoranda of what we knew of her biography, etc.:—

“Miss Porter was the daughter of a gallant English officer, who died, leaving a widow and four children, then very young, but three of them destined to remarkable fame, Sir Robert Ker Porter, Jane Porter, and Anna Maria Porter. Sir Robert, as is well known, was the celebrated historical painter, traveller in Persia, soldier, diplomatist, and author, lately deceased. He went to Russia with one of his great pictures when very young, married a wealthy Russian princess, and passed his subsequent years between the camp and diplomacy, honored and admired in every station and relation of his life. The two girls were playmates and neighbors of Walter Scott. Jane published her “Scottish Chiefs,” at the age of eighteen, and became immediately the great literary wonder of her time. Her widowed mother, however, withdrew her immediately from society to the seclusion of a country town, and she was little seen in the gay world of London before several of her works had become classics. Anna Maria, the second sister, commenced her admirable series of novels soon after the first celebrity of Jane’s works, and they wrote and passed the brightest years of their life together in a cottage retreat. The two sisters were singularly beautiful. Sir Thomas Lawrence was an unsuccessful suitor to Anna Maria, and Jane was engaged to a young soldier who was killed in the Peninsula. She is a woman to have but one love in a lifetime. Her betrothed was killed when she was twenty years of age, and she has ever since worn mourning, and remained true to his memory. Jane is now the only survivor of the three; her admirable mother and her sister having died some twelve or fourteen years ago, and Sir Robert having died lately, while revisiting England after many years’ diplomatic residence in Venezuela.

“Miss Porter is now near seventy. She has suffered within the last two or three years from ill health, but she is still erect, graceful, and majestic in person and still possessed of admirable beauty of countenance. Her large dark eyes have a striking lambency of lustre, her smile inspires love in all who see her, and her habit of mind, up to the time we last saw her, (three or four years ago,) was that of _reflecting the mood of others in conversation_, thinking never of herself, and endeavoring only to _make others shine_, and all this with a tact, a playfulness and simplicity, an occasional unconscious brilliancy and penetration, which have made her, up to seventy years of age, a most interesting, engaging, and lovely woman. Considering the extent of her charm, over old and young, titled and humble, masters and servants, we sincerely think we never have seen a woman so beloved and so fascinating. She is the idol of many different circles of very high rank, and passes her time in yielding, month after month, to pressing invitations from the friends who love her. The dowager queen Adelaide is one of her warmest friends, the highest families of nobility contend for her as a resident guest, distinguished and noble foreigners pay court to her invariably on arriving in England, she has been ennobled by a decree of the king of Prussia, and with all this weight of honor on her head, you might pass weeks with her (ignorant of her history) without suspecting her to be more than the loveliest of women past their prime, and born but to grace a contented mediocrity of station.”

We know nothing more to the honor of the English nobility of this day, than that Jane Porter—such as she was—should have chosen and cherished the greater number of her friendships from among them. Utterly incapable of a servility or an obsequiousness as her gifted and lofty nature was always admitted to be, she still moved in the highest sphere of rank, with sympathies all expanded, and the imprint of congeniality, with all around her, stamped upon countenance and mien. Yet she had mingled, more or less, with all classes, and knew the world well. Had she found it necessary to sacrifice the slightest shadow of purity or independence to retain her position, or had she believed, or conjectured, that purer or simpler natures were to be found in the ranks below, she was not one to hesitate or compromise for an instant. But, with the intuitive perceptions of genius, and a disposition as open as the day, she chose this for her sphere, and lived in it as one who had no thought or need of managements, either to belong to, or to grace it. The class of society, in a country, with which simple and proud genius finds itself most at home, is its superior and true nobility; and, that England’s circles of high rank are so preferred, and so honored and brightened, by spirits like Jane Porter, is, we think, the evidence that proves most for England’s present civilization and glory.

OLE BULL’S NIAGARA.

(AN HOUR BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE.)

Saddle, as, of course, we are, under any very striking event, we find ourselves bestridden, now and then, with a much wider occupancy than the plumb-line of a newspaper column. Ole Bull possesses us over our tea-table; he will possess us over our supper-table—his performance of Niagara equi-distant between the two. We must think of him and his violin for this coming hour. Let us take pen and ink into our confidence.

The “origin of the harp” has been satisfactorily recorded. We shall not pretend to put forward a credible story of the _origin of the violin_; but we wish to name a circumstance in natural history. The house-cricket that chirps upon our hearth, is well known as belonging to the genus Pneumora. Its insect size consists almost entirely of a pellucid abdomen, crossed with a number of transverse ridges. This, when inflated, resembles a bladder, and upon its tightened ridges the insect plays like a fiddler, by drawing its thin legs over them. The cricket is, in fact, a _living violin_; and as a fiddler is “scarce himself” without his violin, we may call the cricket a stray portion of a fiddler.

Ole Bull “is himself” with his violin before him—but without it, the commonest eye must remark that he is of the invariable build of the restless searchers after something lost—the build of enthusiasts—that is to say, chest enormous, and _stomach, if anything, rather wanting_! The great musician of Scripture, it will be remembered, expressed his mere mental affliction by calling out “My bowels! my bowels!” and, after various experiments on twisted silk, smeared with the white of eggs, and on single threads of the silk-worm, passed through heated oil, the animal fibre of _cat-gut_ has proved to be the only string that answers to the want of the musician. Without trying to reduce these natural phenomena to a theory (except by suggesting that Ole Bull may very properly take the cricket as an emblem of his instinctive pursuit), we must yield to an ominous foreboding for this evening. The objection to cat-gut as a musical string is its _sensibility to moisture_: and in a damp atmosphere it is next to impossible to keep it in tune. The string comes honestly enough by its sensitiveness (as any one will allow who has seen a cat cross a street after a shower)—but, if _the_ cat of Ole Bull’s violin had the least particle of imagination _in_ her, can what is left of her be expected to discourse lovingly of her natural antipathy—a _water_-fall?

But—before we draw on our gloves to go over to Palmo’s—a serious word as what is to be attempted to-night.

Ole Bull is a great creature. He is fitted, if ever mortal man was, to represent the attendant spirit in Milton, who

“Well knew to still the wild woods when they roared And hush the moaning winds;”

but it seems to us that, without a printed programme, showing what he intends to express _besides_ the mere sound of waters he is trusting far too rashly to the comprehension of his audience and their power of musical interpretation. He is to tell a story by music! Will it be understood?

We remember being very much astonished, a year or two ago, at finding ourself able to read the thoughts of a lady of this city, as she expressed them in an admirable improvisation upon the piano. The delight we experienced in this surprise induced us to look into the extent to which musical _meaning_ had been perfected in Europe. We found it recorded that a Mons. Sudre, a violinist of Paris, had once brought the expression of his instrument to so nice a point that he “could convey information to a stranger in another room,” and it is added that, upon the evidence thus given of the capability of music, it was proposed to the French government to educate military bands _in the expression of orders and heroic encouragements in battle_! Hayden is criticised by a writer on music as having failed in attempting (in his great composition “The Seasons”) to express “the dawn of day,” “the husbandman’s satisfaction,” “the rustling of leaves,” “the running of a brook,” “the coming on of winter,” “thick fogs,” etc., etc. The same writer laughs at a commentator on Mozart, who, by a “second violin quartette in D minor,” imagines himself informed how a loving female felt on being abandoned, and thought the music fully expressed that it was Dido! Beethoven undertook to convey distinct pictures in his famous Pastoral Symphony, but it was thought at the time that no one would have distinguished between his musical sensations on visiting the country and his musical sensations while sitting beside a river—unless previously told what was coming!

Still, Ole Bull is of a primary order of genius, and he is not to wait upon precedent. He has come to our country, an inspired wanderer from a far away shore, and our greatest scenic feature has called on him for an expression of its wonders in music. He may be inspired, however, and we, who listen, still be disappointed. He may not have felt Niagara as we did. He may have been subdued where a meaner spirit would be aroused—as

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

(Seven o’clock, and time to go.) * * * * * * * (after the performance.)

We believe that we have heard a transfusion into music—not of “Niagara,” which the audience seemed bona-fide to expect, but—of the _pulses of the human heart AT Niagara_. We had a prophetic boding of the result of calling the piece vaguely “Niagara”—the listener furnished with no “argument,” as a guide through the wilderness of “treatment” to which the subject was open. This mistake allowed, however, it must be said that Ole Bull has, genius-like, refused to misinterpret the voice within him—refused to play the charlatan, and “bring the house down”—as he _might well have done by any kind of “uttermost” from the drums and trumpets of the orchestra._

The emotion at Niagara is all but mute. It is a “small, still voice” that replies within us to the thunder of waters. The musical mission of the Norwegian was to represent the insensate element _as it was to him_—to a human soul, stirred in its seldom-reached depths by the call of power. It was the _answer_ to Niagara that he endeavored to render in music—not the _call_! We defer attempting to _read_ further, or rightly, this musical composition till we have heard it again. It was received by a crowded audience, in breathless silence, but with no applause.

DR. LARDNER’S LECTURE.

We did not chance to hear Dr. Lardner’s excellent and amusing lecture on the “London _literati_,” etc., but the report of it in the “Republic” has scraped the moss from one corner of our memory, and we may, perhaps, aid in the true portraiture of one or two distinguished men by showing a shade or two in which our observation of them differed from that of the Doctor. We may remark here, that Dr. Lardner has been conversant with all the wits and scholars of England for the last two or three lustrums, and we would suggest to him that, with the freedom given him by withdrawal from their sphere, he might give us a book of anecdotical biography that would have a prosperous sale and be both instructive and amusing. We shall not poach upon the doctor’s manor, by the way, if we give our impression of _one_ of these literati—himself—as he appeared to us, once in very distinguished company, in England. We were in a ball in the height of the season, at Brighton. Somewhere about the later hours, we chanced to be in attendance upon a noble lady, in company with two celebrated men, Mr. Ricardo and Horace Smith (the author of Brambletye House, and Rejected Addresses), Lady Stepney, authoress of the “New Road to Ruin,” approached our charming centre of attraction with a proposition to present to her the celebrated Dr. Lardner. “Yes, my dear! I should like to know him of all things!” was the reply, and the doctor was conjured forthwith into a magic circle. He bowed “with spectacles on nose,” but no other extraneous mark of philosopher or scholar. We shall not offend the doctor by stating that, on this evening, he was a very different looking person from his present practical exterior. With showy waistcoat, black tights, fancy stockings and small patent-leather shoes, he appeared to us an elegant of very bright water, smacking not at all, in manner no more than in dress, of the smutch and toil of the laboratory. We looked at and listened to him, we remember, with great interest and curiosity. He left us to dance a quadrille, and finding ourself accidentally in the same set, we looked at his ornamental and lover-like acquittal of himself with a kind of wonder at what Minerva would say! This was just before the doctor left England. We may add our expression of pleasure that the Protean facility of our accomplished and learned friend has served him in this country—making of him the best lecturer on all subjects, and the carver out of prosperity under a wholly new meridian.

But, to revert to the report of the Lecture:—

“The doctor gave some very amusing descriptions of the personal peculiarities of Bulwer and D’Israeli, the author of ‘Coningsby,’ observing that those who have read the works of the former, would naturally conclude him to be very fascinating in private society. Such, however, was not the case. He had not a particle of conversational facility, and could not utter twelve sentences free from hesitation and embarrassment. In fact, Bulwer was only Bulwer when his pen was in his hand and his meerschaum in his mouth. He is intimate with Count D’Orsay, one of the handsomest men of the day, and in his excessive admiration of that gentleman has adopted his style of dress, which is adapted admirably to the figure of the second Beau Brummell, but sits strangely on the feeble, rickety and skeleton form, of the man of genius.”

Now it struck us, on the contrary, that there was no more playful, animated, _facile_ creature in London society than Bulwer. He seemed to have a horror of stilted topics, it is true, and never mingled in general conversation unless merrily. But at Lady Blessington’s, where there was but one woman present (herself), and where, consequently, there could be no _têtes-à-têtes_, Bulwer’s entrance was the certain precursor of fun. He _was a brilliant rattle_, and as to any “hesitation and embarrassment,” we never saw a symptom of it. At evening parties in other houses, Bulwer’s powers of conversation could scarce be fairly judged, for his system of attention is very concentrative, and he was generally deep in conversation with some one beautiful woman whom he could engross. We differ from the doctor, too, as to his style of dandyism. Spready upper works, trousers closely fitting to the leg, a broad-brimmed hat, and cornucopial whiskers, distinguished D’Orsay, while Bulwer wore always the loose French pantaloon, a measurable hat-brim, and whiskers carefully limited to the cheek. We pronounced the doctor’s astrology (as to _the_ stars) based upon an error in “observation.”

The reporter adds:—

“D’Israeli he described as an affected coxcomb, with a restless desire to appear witty; yet he never remembered him to have said a good thing in his life except one, and that was generally repeated with the preface, ‘D’Israeli has said a good thing at last.’”

That D’Israeli is not a “bon-mot” man, is doubtless true. It never struck us that he manifested a “desire to appear witty.” He is very silent in the general _melee_ of conversation, but we have never yet seen him leave a room before he had made an impression by some burst in the way of _monologue_—either an eloquent description or a dashing new absurdity, an anecdote or a criticism. He sits indolently with his head on his breast, taking sight through his eyebrows till he finds his cue to break in, and as far as our observation goes, nobody was ever willing to interrupt him. The doctor calls him an “affected coxcomb,” but it is only of his dress that this is any way true. No school-boy is more frank in his manners. When we were first in London, he was the immortal tenant of one room and a recess, and with manners indolently pensive. Three years after, returning to England, we found him master of a lordly establishment on Hyde Park, and, except that he looked of a less lively melancholy, his manners were as untroubled with affectation as before.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Numerous misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where more than one spelling was used, the most frequent spelling was adopted throughout the book. French diacritics were corrected.

Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.

A cover was created for this eBook by the Transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

[The end of _Famous Persons and Places_, by N.(Nathaniel) Parker Willis.]