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V.

As we drew near, he led his side, I mine,
Each gazing forward with keen inquest,
To see if the intent were hostile,

To discern the nature, each of each, the spirit and the purpose.

VI.

He bore his war weapons-spear, and bow and arrows;

From his head rose feathers;

Battle-scarred were his face and breast (seen through our glass). We to him were strange, bearded and white.

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Editor's Easy Chair.

A back as day only as the young look for

"while it would be unbecoming" (such the

simplicity of the trade half a century ago was.

"for

S the holiday season returns, the old look ward, and how many of our more ancient read- the publishers to remark upon the contributions ers will recall, as they turn over the magnificent which they have received, yet they may be algift books of this year, the modest little "Annu-lowed to mention that every article is the producals" and "Tokens" and "Souvenirs" of the days tion of our own citizens, several of them already when they went gypsying! There is something highly distinguished in this and foreign countries very delicate and innocent in the name "Annu- by their writings, and embracing among others als," which was given to those little books, for it the names of Paulding, Bryant, Barker, Sedgsuggests an evanescence which they illustrated, wick, and Waln." Nor does the preface omit the life of a day or of a season. How brief their a good word for the "embellishments," saying, bloom was! How feebly dainty they were! with modest complacency, "It is believed that And yet some of the perennial flowers of our lit- some of the designs will not injure the reputaerature first opened in that fleeting guise. There tion which an American painter has attained in lately fell into the hands of the Easy Chair one the academies of Europe." This is an allusion of these firstlings of holiday literary gifts. How to Leslie, from whose works the Souvenir conmany of them are lying at this moment in secret tains two or three most lamentable engravings. drawers, sacred relics of youth and love and hope and all the gay promise of spring! To how many venerable grandmothers do they not recall

"The songs of maids beneath the moon, With fairy laughter blent,"

when they were the youngest and merriest of

all!

The little book has three hundred and fiftythree pages, and twenty-four contributions in prose and verse. The first of them is a tale with a title of romantic promise, "The Eve of St. It John; or, the Oracle of the Secret Water." is a story of Greece and Turkey, as became the interest of the time. Then comes "The Dream. Inscribed to Miss ***." The name of what At-famous belle and fairest fair is lost forever in that triple asterisk! Yet what reader, and especially what editor, does not recognize the strain that follows? What a vast and ever-swelling stream of this molasses and water has been flowing, is flowing, and, unless pens give out, will continue to flow! What comfort it gives to the world of Tupper!

"Still was the night, and not a sound

It is not possible that any copy of The lantic Souvenir for 1826 can be more carefully preserved or have retained more of its original freshness than that which serves as the text of this little discourse, and which was given by a young husband to his young wife fifty years ago. It is contained in a pale straw-colored case, upon which is pasted a copy of the engraved outer title-page, and upon this, in a firm, handsome hand, is written the affectionate inscription to the wife. The precious little book is drawn from the case by a loop of green silk, and when it appears it is a dainty-looking volume, and upon the side of the cover, which is of a delicate green color, is the engraved title, with floating lines, "Atlantic Souvenir for 1826. Philadelphia: The published by H. C. Carey and I. Lea," and a de-ous sign of four of the Muses addressing a sitting Minerva; while the other outer side of the cover shows an imperial Juno. It is evidently a book intended to be, as a certain author said of his little story, "pleasing to God and entertaining to the ladies." But the pretty and elegant green cover opens unfortunately upon a paper which is poor and thin, and a print which is too suggestive of the newspaper. The binding, too, is defective, but we hasten to the preface.

"The publishers of the present volume," it says, "present to the public a work which, although on a plan by no means novel in other countries, has never yet been introduced among us. Nothing would seem more naturally to suggest itself as one of those marks of remembrance and affection which old custom has associated with the gayety of Christmas than a little volume of lighter literature, adorned with beautiful specimens of art." The preface proceeds to inform us that such a volume has been long known upon the continent of Europe, and that the shops of Germany and France abound with them every winter. In London "the same design has been adopted" with no less approbation. It remains to be seen if it will be approved in America; and

Save murmurs from the pattering rain Broke the sweet calm that breathed around, And hush'd the humming haunts of men. "Twas midnight-sacred to the soul,

To soothing thoughts, to dreams of loveWhen endless visions brightly roll,

And fancy decks the joys she wove." dream is of a Queen of Beauty whom varilovers woo. The first sings:

"Know, sweet maiden, that for thee

India pours its ceaseless treasure;
Riches have no bounds for me:

Take the gift, and live in pleasure."

The second sings:

"Bless'd with the noble blood of gallant sires, And stamp'd with honor by patrician birth, He, of long line of ancestry, aspires

To woo thy virtues to his noble hearth." The third sings:

"Then say not the offering of soul can not move thee, That nature shall bend to the triumph of art; Sincerity soars on its pinions to love thee,

And hallows the riches that flow from the heart." It would be mere cruelty not to reveal the decision of this dream-seen Portia. As this last lover's song ended, no sound was heard in the crowd,

"But every ear, enraptured, caught The eloquence of honest thought." A warmer smile than the dimples of the maid had ever known, a sweeter glance, a rosier bloom, and much else, spoke to number three more raptures than

"ever did fond lover sip From dearest woman's coral lip."

"With downcast eye and throbbing breast, She bade the rich in love be blest."

Then a lily hand was outstretched, which he morning by the young females who daily visited sprang to grasp, and so, the spot. But intense grief" had made an impression never to be eradicated. His noble mind was prostrated, and he became a wanderer of the valley, with a heart as simple and innocent as a babe's. Colonel Lamethe, in passing from one island to another in a small boat, was wrecked, and every soul perished."

Such were the literary delights of our parents at the holiday season. And the embellishments" are equally stimulating. There is a view of Paris from Père la Chaise which is as faithful to nature as the exclamations of Charles's father, and a picture of the Falls of Montmorenci

There are many tales in prose, two of which are American-"A Revolutionary Story," and a "Tale of Mystery." This last is designed to open with brisk humor, and begins, so to speak, with a meaning wink. "One fine day in the merry month of June-the May of our lagging Northern climate the gallant steamboat Chancellor Kent was gayly wafting a cargo of live stock up the stream of the majestic Hudson......The boat was full of people, who, except that they belong-which would have satisfied Cecilia in the "Tale ed all to the sovereign genus, man, consisted of of Mystery." There is Rebecca in the prison at almost as great a variety in physiognomy and Templestowe, of which the accompanying text appearance as the freight of Noah's ark. Some says, "This beautiful illustration of one of the of these were deeply engaged in poring over, finest incidents of modern romance is now for amidst the gathering shades of twilight, those the first time presented to the public.' No wondeep newspaper speculations which would doubt- der that the Templar immured her in pure reless make people much wiser than they are if venge for having thought her lovely. And there they did not all differ from each other, and not is also "Bertha." This is the heroine of the unfrequently from themselves; some were as "Waldstetten: a Swiss Tale," and these are the deeply engaged in discussing the Presidential words which the artist has chosen to "embellish:" question, for that awful crisis had not then hap-"Many a time, when the air was more than usupily passed; some smoking at the bows, some ally mild, might she be seen pensively seated at tippling a little, and some buried in the senti- the open lattice, as the moon, with lovely and mental luxuries and high-seasoned antics of Don majestic step, stole along the heavens, and tipped Juan. These last were principally romantic with ethereal silver the summits of the groves, young ladies, enthusiastically fond of the beau- and poured her soft flood of light on hill and ties of nature, which they always study in nov- dale around." The Souvenir was plainly meant, els. There was likewise a store of fashionable as we said, not only to be pleasing to the highyoung gentlemen, whom it is quite impossible to er powers, but entertaining to the ladies. And class under any head but that of the people who were they entertained, the young lovers and parwere doing nothing. They yawned frequently, ents of fifty years ago? and did they gaze upon which is all that can be said of the matter." this dreadful Bertha with rapture, and agree that The "mystery" is that of a young man at Sara- the design would not injure the reputation which toga, who seems to a sentimental young woman the American painter had acquired in the acad to be so unhappy and romantic that he must cer- emies of Europe? Above all, did they suspect, tainly be Lord Byron, and after much moonlight as they turned these modest pages, and hung and fluting upon the lake, he turns out to be over the fortunes of "The Spanish Girl of the Mr. Jacob Stump, of Dog's Misery. The author Cordilleras," or "A Legend of the Forest," that had evidently read Irving's Stout Gentleman, the little poem called "June" would be known and had heard, perhaps, of Lamb's Mr. H- fifty years later as one of the sweetest strains in and remembered them. The humor throughout American literature? is as sprightly as that of the opening.

"A Revolutionary Story" is of this kind: "Kind Heaven,' he exclaimed, has interposed to save us from impending death;' and he pressed the senseless girl to his breast, while he addressed a thanksgiving to the Distributor of all good." Here, also, is an unusual study of old Continental times and manners, with a nice derangement of epitaphs and a choiceness of language that would have charmed Mrs. Malaprop: "Some fleeting months took their winged course to the goal of time, when Charles, on his return from a visit to his old friend, was suddenly called into the library of his father. 'Faithless, unworthy boy,' he exclaimed, has not thy father's cup been bitter enough but that thou must add more nauseous drugs to it? Hast thou ever entertained a hope that Sophia Lamethe shall be thy bride? If so, that hope must instantly be resigned. While thy father lives it can never be. Renounce such an idea from this moment, or leave my presence forever." Sophia at last dies in Funchal. Charles, far from renouncing the idea, pursues her thither. He finds but her grave. He throws himself upon the ground, "overcome by his feelings," and was found "next

For among all the tales and verses and embellishments that make us feel, as we look at them and smile, as if our forerunners of that time were boys and girls at a romantic boardingschool, we turn the sixty-fourth page and find Bryant's beautiful poem, then, we presume, for the first time printed. It is without a signature, yet its tone is so simple and pure and manly, its pathos so restrained and true, that if the young wife to whom this copy of the Atlantic Souvenir was given had music in her soul, it must instantly have responded to this strain:

"I know, I know, I should not see
The season's glorious show,
Nor would its brightness shine for me,
Nor its wild music flow;
But if around my place of sleep
The friends I love should come to weep,
They might not haste to go:
Soft airs and song and light and bloom
Should keep them lingering by my tomb.

"These to their softened hearts should bear
The thought of what has been,
And speak of one who can not share
The gladness of the scene;
Whose part in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the summer hills
Is that his grave is green."

Bryant was then thirty years old, but his Muse | mon honesty, and that if we elect to office men was already mature. He contributed to the who will not forge, or steal, or commit burglary, Souvenir, besides the "June," the two familiar or set fire to houses, we ought to rejoice and poems, "Oh, fairest of the rural maids," and "I celebrate the great victory, what have we invited broke the spell that held me long, The dear, all mankind to come and look at? dear witchery of song," so that when we have done smiling at the amusing want of humor in the humorous sketches, and our hearts have thrilled to the utmost with the woes of Charles Boyd and Sophia Lamethe, we must be truly grateful to the modest and pretty little Atlantic Souvenir for 1826 for admitting us to the first appearance of these delightful verses. And as we go through the splendid shops of to-day and examine the treasures of every kind which are piled up to tempt holiday generosity, we may bravely challenge gilded book and opulent magazine to show anonymous poems superior to those which, after all the patronizing affability of modern times toward the "Annuals," the Atlantic Souvenir for 1826 contains.

If we show them great buildings, is there no fear that they may discover them to be monuments of great rascality and jobbery? If we heap up inventions and machines of every kind, if we display the exquisite fineness and elaboration of our manufactures, magnify the results of our industry, carry them down into the mines, whirl them from sea to sea upon a cloud of vapor, unroll our dazzling statistics, and challenge the universe to show so much done in so little time, is there no danger-if the issue be what we are told-that the world may admire and applaud, and agree that such mowers and reapers and tedders and sowers, such cloths and silver and copper and coal, such notions and knickknacks and comforts and conveniences and luxuries, such school-houses and sleeping cars and THE other day a friend, anxious lest the Easy North River steamboats, were never known, and Chair in its busy contemplation of the minor are evidently the best of their kind, and then ask, morals should forget some of the major, said, since the things are so excellent, how about the with great earnestness, that no man should now people? and are they as intelligent and, above all, omit to attend to his political duties, because the honest as with such advantages they naturally issues were now simply between honest and dis- ought to be? Wouldn't it be awkward to have honest men. And he read with animation an to reply that, simultaneously with the magnificent article in a newspaper which declared the great results of machinery and enterprise and inventive question to be whether we should have honest genius which we had the pleasure to present to the men or thieves in office. The Easy Chair was universe, we were engaged in a tremendous strugat the moment engaged in studying a plan of the gle to fill our public offices with men who would great Centennial buildings for the Exhibition not steal? If that be the fact, there seems to be of next year, and meditating upon the glories of a good opportunity for humility as well as conour national achievements as it smiled at the gratulation. If our politics have become maineffete despotisms which would gaze in dumbly an effort to secure honesty in office, it is despair upon the accumulated evidences of our something of which we ought to be thoroughly greatness and goodness which we have invited ashamed. the whole world to admire and emulate. But this abrupt announcement that the great political question of the Centennial year was whether we should be governed by honest folks or thieves was a little startling and humiliating. "Is that the result of a hundred years of popular selfgovernment?" it asked its friend.

Yet there is no doubt that it is largely true. In his eulogy upon Mr. Seward before the Legislature of New York, Mr. Charles Francis Adams said: "Our forefathers would marvel could they imagine it possible for me to claim credit for Mr. Seward on the score of his honesty as a public man. Yet the time has come when we must If a man should recommend a clerk to a mer- honor one who never bought nor sold a vote or chant by telling him that the chief excellence a place, and who never permitted his public acof the friend whom he commended was that he tion to be contaminated in the atmosphere of would not forge the merchant's name, or an en- corporation influence." No one can deny it, and gineer should offer as his credentials trustwor- the one chief contribution that we can bring to thy evidence that he would not steal, or a car- the Centennial Exhibition is the resolution that penter should be pressed upon a man about to it shall be true no longer. At the end of our build a house because he was not a pickpocket- century we must begin again at the beginning, all these suggestions would be thought excellent and take care to secure what ought to be taken fooling. But an employer would fall into very for granted. It is thirty years since a wise and grave thinking if, when he said that he wanted serene observer of American life said, in words men competent to do his work, he should be whose melancholy music appeals to every noble told that that was a secondary consideration to heart: "Who that sees the meanness of our polthe question whether they would steal. He itics but inly congratulates Washington that he would probably come out of his thinking to re-is long already wrapped in his shroud, and formark that if he had come into a community of sharpers, he would go elsewhere and find people who were at least and of course honest. A man | may well be aghast if he is told that the important point in voting for a judge is to be sure to find one who will not be bribed, and that in calling a physician the essential question is not if he can cure, but whether he will poison. If a hundred years have brought us, in casting about for officers and magistrates of every kind, to assume that only very great care can secure com

ever safe; that he was laid sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity not yet subjugated in him?” And if now, after a hundred years, we address ourselves to revive that hope by a contest not for lofty ability in affairs, not to show that in a free government the best are of necessity the most honored and most trusted as public leaders, but to prove that by a mighty determination and general co-operation it is possible not to choose thieves for our rulers, we do what is plainly necessary to save our national life and honor, but

·

also something to which it is not wise loudly to | Semiramide, it is not because she does not sing call public attention.

THERE is an annual wail for the Italian opera in New York, as if it were some celestial boon denied by a cruel destiny. Yet the Italian opera is always a lamentable failure, and by the necessity of the case its presentation has all the disadvantages and crudities of an occasional enterprise instead of the satisfactory ease of an established institution. Indeed, it has every where something of the frail air of an exotic. It requires so great an outlay of money and the harmonizing of such infinite discords that it exists only as a luxury and by the subsidies of aristocratic governments. The enthusiasm for a favorite singer is so overpowering, and her audiences so sure, that every manager fears to lose his chance by the high offer of his rivals, so that the singers demand the most extravagant sums, and they are allowed. This may be endured when the state pays the bills, but when the manager depends upon his receipts from the public, his conduct must be regulated by the size of theatres and halls and the prices that people are willing to pay. In this country, moreover, a certain Puritan cast of civilization must be considered. The hostility to the play-house which was brought over by the most powerful element in the original settlement has long survived, and is still strong.

"In verdure clad" incomparably. Some of the papers, however, said, "What a pity!" They suggested that here was a power that could draw a ship, merely paring an apple. Here is a prima donna, a cantatrice, a tragedienne, a lyrical artiste, who can do what no living singer can rival, and we have her, they exclaimed, with anguish, only in concerts, only warbling pleasant melodies! Is, then, the Italian opera gone forever? Is there no hope? O Italian opera, vi ravviso, return, return!

Thereupon Mr. Max Strakosch, so to speak, took the platform and made an exceedingly energetic speech, and directly to the point. "The general desire in New York of the establishment of opera on a permanent basis'-to use the sanctified and technical phrase-I believe to be all gammon and moonshine, so much so as to partake of the nature of an unmeaning expression. Having studied the history of opera in New York for the past twenty-five years, and having in addition sadly reflected upon my own experience in the same line, I venture the opinion that the people of New York do not consider opera a necessity, and have never shown a true desire for that oral luxury." He does not rest on general assertions, but marshals his evidence solidly. Mr. Max Maretzek has constantly lost in New York, it appears, the fortunes that he made in Mexico and Havana, and is now reduced to the necessity of giving singing lessons. Mr. Maurice Strakosch, the elder brother, after a gallant struggle to establish the much-desired opera in New York, fled, almost ruined, to Europe, "and succeeded very differently there by his ability." Mr. Ullman, another of the early martyrs, was forced "to quit America in destitute circumstances," and has made an independent for tune in Europe "by merely jobbing in operatic matters." And Mr. Strakosch himself, as he adds, has made a fortune in concerts which he has lost in opera.

It

Every manager sees also that the most triumphant musical career in the history of the country, that of Jenny Lind, was wholly of the concert hall, and not of the opera-house. There was the least trouble and risk, with the most profit. It is very much more agreeable to a manager to have charge of the voice of one person only than to have an opera-house with choruses, orchestras, and the army of necessary assistants, and the complex cares and alarms which belong to them. And whatever the theory may be, the fact is conclusive. The Italian opera of recent times really began in the old theatre in There could be nothing more conclusive. Chambers Street, that was afterward Burton's, should seem improbable that, with such a record and was lately the United States Marshal's office. of experience before him, any musical manager From Chambers Street it went up town to Astor would undertake Italian opera in New York unPlace and the belli giorni of Truffi and Bene-til he saw its success assured by actual subscripdetti. Thence to Fourteenth Street and the old house which was burned, and followed by the present Academy. But in these spacious and splendid quarters it has never been what it was in its modester days of Chambers Street and Astor Place. Company after company, singer after singer, have passed across the stage, and all have left the feeling that the Italian opera was a mere fugitive, dwelling in the tent of a night.

And this impression is now amply confirmed by testimony from behind the scenes and from the box-office. Mr. Max Strakosch, one of those gentlemen whom Heaven raises up from time to time to bring famous singers to this country, has this year introduced to America one of the most justly celebrated of the great living singers, Madame Titiens. She is not in the early bloom of life, as Jenny Lind was, but her voice is still admirable and her art is superb. Her chief renown is undoubtedly that of a dramatic or, as the phrase is, lyrical artist. But her great vocal power and accomplishment make her equal to any occasion; and if the hearer thinks how fine she would be in

tions paid in. But the charm of theatrical management, like that of founding a newspaper, is resistless to some minds. There is always a certain number of persons who will risk their fortunes in those enterprises, and a certain number more when these have lost. It is the burned child who fears the fire, not the child whom the fire fascinates, and who has not learned that it will burn. The operatic Maretzeks, Ullmans, and Strakosches whom we have known may hold up blistered fingers of warning, but the king never dies. Mr. Max Strakosch may be virtuous, but there will still be lyrical cakes and ale. The opera seems to many philosophers an illogical absurdity, and it invites delightful satire. But the human mind is very complex. If it reasons with Newton and Kepler, and creates with Shakespeare and Homer, it listens with delight to the ut de poitrine, and melts with pensive sympathy when Mario sobs bel alma as he dies.

THE loiterer along the North Shore of Staten Island, in the Bay of New York, winding around

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