Somebody writing from Naples, about Music, to a fashionable contemporary, says:—
"I know, too, more than half-a-dozen Americans who have left their gold cupidity behind them, and are now in Italy, living in small dirty back rooms with a piano-forte, practising solfeggios, with the intention of becoming singers of Italian opera."
The development and cultivation of music in the soul of America may, perhaps, tend to arrest the progress of Filibusterism, and other stratagems and spoils; including the spoliation of black liberty: and to render the airs which Jonathan sometimes gives himself—on the fishery question for instance—tolerable. But it will in all probability produce results yet more extraordinary. A go-ahead people will not be content to stop short at operas and concerts. Music will be utilized; applied to political and social purposes; employed to enhance the charms of eloquence, and adorn the wisdom of statesmanship. Patriots will sing bravuras at caucus or in Congress on behalf of freedom: and Presidents will express themselves in notes arranged to form symphonies; whilst the foreign policy of the States will take the form of overtures. The unseemly contests which sometimes occur in the Legislature will be replaced by grand scenas; and the stump-orator that now is will become a stump-warbler: whilst the mob will respond in chorus. American song will be famous all the world over, and command immense engagements, being paid for—as no doubt it will be delivered—through the nose.
A BISHOP IN DISTRESS.
It is seldom that signals of distress are hoisted from the episcopal bench; but the signals in question have actually been hung out recently on behalf of the Bishop of Durham. One of the "friends of the Church" has made the melancholy calculation that the good Bishop is in such an impoverished state that, after making sundry deductions, the poverty-stricken prelate has scarcely more than seven thousand a year to live upon. Considering how bishoprics go in the present day, we are astonished how the prelacy of Durham can pay at the price, and how, in fact, the bishop can manage to do it for the money.
We shall probably be told next that it is a losing concern, and that the occupant of the wretchedly seedy see is about to give it up in consequence of his being "out of pocket." We recommend the Bench of Bishops to fraternise with the cabmen in making one common stand against the system of reduced fares to which both have been doomed in obedience to the modern principles of economy. The Bench may object to the association, but it is clear there is some affinity between the episcopal and the other class, for the cabman can drive his horse, while both cabman and bishop can drive a bargain.
A Mysterious Visitor.
Among the recent visitors to London we find notified an extraordinarily dense fog. This visitor, though somewhat obscure, created considerable sensation, and a sort of general illumination was got up by the London shopkeepers on the occasion. The fog arrived by the Thames, and made so much of the short time of remaining that the visitor was nearly all over London in a very brief period.