New York Orphan Asylum. . . . . . . . . . . .500
Protestant Half-Orphan Asylum . . . . . . . .500
Roman Catholic Half-Orphan Asylum . . . . . .500
Old Ladies' Asylum. . . . . . . . . . . . . .500
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . .$10,000
"In case the money coming to her shall exceed this sum, she will hereafter designate the charity to which it is to be appropriated. Mr. Barnum was then about retiring, when there was a universal call for Jenny Lind. The songstress, however, had already taken her departure, and the excited crowd, after giving a few more cheers, followed her example, and slowly surged out of the castle door, and down the canopied bridge, in a glow of good-humor and admiration. A few disorderly vagrants collected on the bridges leading to the Bath Houses, hooted at the throng as it passed out, but everybody went home quietly, with a new joy at his heart, and a new thought in his brain.
"Jenny Lind's second concert was in every respect as complete a triumph as the first. The audience numbered upward of SEVEN THOUSAND, filling the vast amphitheatre to the topmost circles of the gallery. The sight of that dense sea of heads, from either extremity of the balcony, reminded us of one of Martin's grand, gloomy pictures, and the resemblance was further increased by the semi-oriental appearance of the hall, with its long, light pillars dropping from the centre, as well as by the dimness of its illumination, the lamps, many and bright as they were, being lost in the immense area of the building.
"The concert was a repetition of the first, with the only difference that the orchestra volunteered the "Wedding March," from Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream," whose short, crackling blaze of harmony received full justice from the sure and well-tempered brass instruments. Weber's overture to "Oberon" was finely rendered, and the composition is as fine a specimen of musical fairy-land as could be found before young Mendelssohn dreamed Shakspere's dream over in his own way.
"In Jenny Lind we still feel that it is not easy to separate the singer from the person. She sings herself. She does not, like many skilful vocalists, merely recite her musical studies, and dazzle you with splendid feats unnaturally acquired; her singing, through all her versatile range of parts and styles, is her own proper and spontaneous activity—integral, and whole. Her magnificent voice, always true and firm, and as far beyond any instrument as humanity is beyond nature, seems like the audible beauty of her nature and her character. That she is an artist in the highest sense is a question long since settled, and any little incidental variation from the bold and perfect outline of success in any special effort, as the faltering of her voice from natural embarrassment in the commencing of Casta Diva that first night, could not to a true listener at all impede the recognition of the wonderful art which could afford a little to humanity on so trying an occasion. For she was as it were beginning her career anew; literally to her was this a new world; and she felt for a moment as if in her first blushing maidenhood of song. This second time the hesitation of the voice in that commencement was not felt. The note began soft and timid and scarce audible, as the prayer of Norma might have done; but how it gradually swelled with the influx of divine strength into the soul! The grand difficulty in the opening andante movement of Casta Diva lies in its broad, sustained phrasing, in the long, generous undulation of its rhythm, which with most singers drags or gets broken out of symmetry. Jenny Lind conceived and did it truly. The impassioned energy of the loud-pleading syncopated cries in which the passage attains its climax; the celestial purity and penetrating sweetness of that highest note afterward; the exquisite cadenza to the andante; and the inspiring eloquence of the allegro: Ah! bello a me ritorna, were far beyond anything WE have had the fortune hitherto to hear.
"They that sat, or even stood, in Castle Garden, may mark down a white day in their calendar. In point of audience, programme, execution and inspiration, it was the greatest concert, so far. If anything more had been needed to confirm the impression which Jenny Lind had previously made on an American public, and to place her continued success beyond the possibility of doubt, last night's experience certainly supplied it.