And the funereal soul of song
Upon the air is given,
Oh! let my faint and parting breath
Be mingled with that song of death,
And flee with it to heaven!
‘Who hath redness of eyes?’ This interrogative ‘portion of divine scripture’ is forcibly illustrated by an anecdote, related with most effective dryness by a friend of ours. An elderly gentleman, accustomed to ‘indulge,’ entered the bar-room of an inn in the pleasant city of H——, on the Hudson, where sat a grave Friend toasting his toes by the fire. Lifting a pair of green spectacles upon his forehead, rubbing his inflamed eyes, and calling for a hot brandy-toddy, he seated himself by the grate; and as he did so, he remarked to Uncle Broadbrim that ‘his eyes were getting weaker and weaker, and that even spectacles didn’t seem to do ‘em any good.’ ‘I’ll tell thee friend,’ rejoined the Quaker, ‘what I think. I think if thee was to wear thy spectacles over thy mouth for a few months, thy eyes would get sound again!’ The ‘complainant’ did not even return thanks for this medical counsel, but sipped his toddy in silence, and soon after left the room, ‘uttering never a word.’ ••• There have been various surmises, and sundry contradictory statements, in relation to the work superscribed ‘Count D’Orsay on Etiquette,’ which we noticed at some length in our December issue. Mr. Willis, of the ‘New Mirror’ weekly journal, seems to question its having been written by the Count, but expresses his belief that he may have loaned his name to the publishers ‘for a consideration;’ and this may possibly have been the fact with the latest London edition. The author of the work in question, however, is Mr. Charles William Day, an English gentleman, whose acquaintance with the usages of the best European society is personal and authentic; who has observed and travelled much; and who is moreover an artist of a high order; painting in miniature, and sketching with admirable skill. An esteemed friend and correspondent of this Magazine writes us from Boston, that the manner of the fraud is somewhat as follows: ‘Mr. Day is the author of a Journal of Travels, which Messrs. Longman and Company of London proposed to publish. As they treated him, however, in a dishonorable manner, he withdrew his MSS. from them and came to America. In retaliation, they sent orders to this country to have a spurious edition published of his work on ‘Etiquette,’ which they had formerly brought out, and which they truly supposed he designed to reprint in New-York or Boston. It has passed through more than twenty editions in London; a fact which I know, from having seen the Messrs. Longmans’ letters and accounts with the author. His own edition is now in press in Boston; and I learn that he has added some ‘Hints’ with an especial eye to Yankee manners.’ We have also received a letter from Mr. Day himself, in which, while he ‘forbears at present to make any comments on the conduct of the Messrs. Longman,’ he proves beyond a doubt that ‘the Count D’Orsay is not the writer of the ‘Hints on Etiquette,’ but that he himself is ‘the real, true author,’ past all peradventure. ••• A friend lately returned from the west, relates among other matters the following anecdote: ‘On board of one of the steam-boats on the Mississippi, I encountered a deck-hand, who went by the name of Barney. Like many of his class, he was a drinking, reckless fellow, but warm-hearted, good-natured, and generous to a fault. In early life he was in easy circumstances; was a husband, and the father of several children. But one night during a violent storm the house in which he resided was struck by lightning, and the whole family, save himself, were instantly killed. His own escape was considered a miracle at the time, not even a hair of his head having been singed. From that time, however, he took to drinking, and so sank lower and lower until he became what I found him. When I had heard his story, I felt somewhat interested in the man, and one day managed to draw him into conversation. He told me his early history with much natural pathos; and finding him in the ‘melting mood’ I endeavored to lead him to some serious thoughts upon the subject of his misfortunes, and especially of that one which had bereft him in so awful a manner of his wife and children. ‘Barney,’ said I, ‘don’t you think it was a signal mercy that you alone should have escaped unharmed from the bolt which destroyed all else you loved upon earth? Was there not at least something singular in the fact?’ ‘That’s what I said myself,’ replied Barney, in a tremulous voice; ‘I always thought it was very sing’lar. But the fact I suppose was this, Mr. Whitehat. The lightning, you see, was afraid of a man, and so like a d——d sneak, it went twisting about to scorch women and little children!’ ••• Blackwood has proclaimed in a late number, the ‘Characteristics of English Society,’ in language of truth and soberness, which goes explicitly to confirm the reports of nearly all American and other ‘foreigners’ who have visited England. We subjoin an extract contrasting English with French society:
‘We should indeed be sorry if our demeanor in those vast crowds, where English people flock together, rather, as it would seem, to assert a right, than to gratify an inclination, were to be taken as an index of our national character: the want of all ease and simplicity, those essential ingredients of agreeable society, which distinguish these dreary meetings have long been unfortunately notorious. Too busy to watch the feelings of others, and too earnest to moderate our own, that true politeness which pays respect to age; which tries to put the most insignificant person in company on a level with the most considerable—virtues which our neighbors possess in an eminent degree—are, except in a few favored instances, unknown among us; while affectation, in other countries the badge of ignorance and vulgarity, is ours, even in its worst shape, when it borrows the mien of rudeness, impertinence, and effrontery, the appendage of those whose station is most conspicuous, and whose dignity is best ascertained. There is more good breeding in the cottage of a French peasant than in all the boudoirs of Grosvenor square. ••• ‘Frivolity and insipidity are the prevailing characteristics of conversation; and nowhere in Europe, perhaps, does difference of fortune or of station produce more unsocial or illiberal separation. Very few of those whom fortune has released from the necessity of following some laborious profession are capable of passing their time agreeably without the assistance of company; not from the spirit of gaity which calls upon society for indulgence; not from any pleasure they take in conversation, where they are frequently languid and taciturn; but to rival each other in the luxury of the table, or by a great variety of indescribable airs, to make others feel the pain of mortification. They meet as if to fight the boundaries of their rank and fashion, and the less definite and perceptible is the line which divides them, the more punctilious is their pride. It is a great mistake to suppose that this low-minded folly is peculiar to people of rank; it is an English disease.’
No doubt of it; and the question naturally arises, ‘Are not these the proper people to talk about men and manners and society in America?’ ••• ‘Never mind, my dear,’ says Baron Pompolino, while endeavoring to fit the fairy slipper of the lovely Cinderella upon the long splay foot of one of his ungainly daughters, ‘never mind, my dear, she is not at all like you!’ The doting father, it will be remembered, gives this verdict as a flattering compliment. We have sometimes been amused, where the quo animo was apparent, with similar compliments at the hands of reciprocal critics of literature. Pleasant examples in this kind have been furnished lately. A very voluminous critic, very far ‘down east,’ spoke recently in a metropolitan journal of Goldsmith’s ‘Deserted Village’ as ‘a very common-place poem, at the best, and only saved from utter and most contemptuous forgetfulness by two or three pleasantries about ‘broken tea-cups,’ etc., and by one single passage that smacks of sublimity!’ Of the poetry however of the author of ‘Man in his Various Aspects under the American Republic,’ he expresses in the same columns quite a different opinion. ‘There has been,’ he writes, ‘no English poetry better than his, within the memory of man!’ A writer in the last number of the ‘Southern Literary Messenger,’ likewise voluminous in prose and verse, if we rightly surmise, exhibits contrasts of judgment somewhat kindred with the foregoing, although certainly less violent. The author of ‘Man in his various Aspects,’ he tells us, ‘has a boldness that attracts;’ his are the ‘strong and struggling conceptions which seek utterance in new and original forms.’ He dares ‘to shun the beaten paths,’ and is not afraid to be obscure. His is not the poetry ‘which takes the popular ear without tasking the popular thought,’ like ‘the simple common-places of Longfellow.’ Such ‘criticism’ as this we have cited must needs ‘make the judicious’ laugh merely, being too impotent to make them ‘grieve.’ It is not perhaps assuming too much to suppose, that Goldsmith’s ‘Deserted Village’ and Longfellow’s ‘Psalms of Life,’ simple though they be, will live and be cherished in generations of human hearts, when the volumes of our critics and their client that yet survive the recollection of any save their publishers, shall be ‘forgotten and clean out of mind.’ •••It is related of the celebrated clergyman, John Mason, that sitting at a steam-boat table on one occasion, just as the passengers were ‘falling to’ in the customary manner, he suddenly rapped vehemently upon the board with the end of his knife, and exclaimed: ‘Captain! is this boat out of the jurisdiction of God Almighty? If not, let us at least thank Him for his continued goodness;’ and he proceeded to pronounce ‘grace’ amidst the most reverent stillness. It is to be hoped, however, that his ‘grace’ was not like the few set words handed down from father to son, mumbled without emotion, and despatched with indecent haste, which one sometimes hears repeated over country repasts. ‘Bless this portion of food now in readiness for us; give it to us in thy love; let us eat and drink in thy fear—for Christ’s sake——Lorenzo, take your fingers out of that plate!’ was a grace once said in our hearing, but evidently not in that of the spoilt boy, ‘growing and always hungry,’ who could not wait to be served. We should prefer to such insensible flippancy the practice of an old divine in New-England, who in asking a blessing upon his meals, was wont to name each separate dish. Sitting down one day to a dinner, which consisted partly of clams, bear-steak, etc., he was forced in a measure to forego his usual custom of furnishing a ‘bill of particulars.’ ‘Bless to our use,’ said he, ‘these treasures hid in the sand; bless this——’ But the bear’s-meat puzzled him, and he concluded with: ‘Oh! Lord, thou only knowest what it is!’ ••• A favorite correspondent of this Magazine, who appears in the pages of the present number for the first time in several months, accompanies his excellent paper with a letter, from which we take these sentences: ‘Since you last heard from me, I have experienced a severe domestic affliction in the loss of my father, who died during the last summer. Day after day and night after night for two months I sat by his bed-side, hoping in vain for his recovery, until life’s star was extinguished in the darkness of the grave.’ Our cordial sympathies are with our correspondent; but sympathy for affliction such as his can carry with it little of consolation to the bereaved:
——‘A friend is gone!
A father, whose authority, in show