“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