No light heart, though his breeches are thin!
Is not the following illustration of ‘The Affections,’ by Rev. Geo. B. Cheever, ‘beautiful exceedingly?’ ‘On a bright day in summer, while the west wind breathes gently, you stand before a forest of maples, or you are attracted by a beautiful tree in the open field, that seems a dense clump of foliage. You cannot but notice how easily the wind moves it, how quietly, how gracefully, how lovingly, the whole body of it. It is simply because it is covered with foliage. The same wind rustling through its dry branches in winter, would scarce bend a bough, or only to break it. But now, softly whispering through ten thousand leaves, how gently the whole tree yields to the impression! So it is with the affections, the feelings. They are the foliage of our being, moved by the spirit of God.’ ••• The annual Festival of Saint Nicholas, beloved of all good Knickerbockers, was celebrated on the sixth ultimo at the City Hotel, by a crowded assemblage of the members of the Society, and their invited guests. The new President was invested with the orange-badge and venerable cocked-hat of his ‘illustrious predecessor,’ and new subordinate officers were installed into their several stations; after which ceremony a sumptuous repast, served in the well-known style of Messrs. Jennings and Willard, was discussed with universal goût. For the toasts regular and volunteer, and speeches voluntary and involuntary, we must refer the reader to the daily journals ‘of that period;’ while we simply add, that from soup to Paäs eggs, schnaaps, and pipes, every thing passed off with unwonted hilarity and spirit. May we live to see fifty kindred gatherings of the votaries of our patron saint! ••• ‘You don’t like smokin’, ’taint likely?’ asked a lank free-and-easy Yankee, as he entered a room where four or five young ladies were sewing, puffing a dank ‘long-nine.’ ‘Well, we do not,’ was the immediate reply. ‘Umph!’ replied the smoker, removing his cigar long enough to spit, ‘a good many people don’t!’—and he kept on smoking. We know of one reader of the Knickerbocker, a thousand miles from the hand that jots down this anecdote, who will enjoy it hugely; and indeed it is mainly for him that we record it. ••• This is Thanksgiving Evening in the Empire State; and as there is a fair-haired, hazle-eyed little boy pulling at our ‘sword-arm,’ (too fatigued with writing to offer any resistance) suppose we read to you, while he sits ‘throned on his father’s knee,’ this timely and admirable passage from the pen of Charles Hoover, Esq., of New-Jersey, a fine scholar, and a writer of as pure Saxon English as the best among us:
‘There is much in the aspect of Divine Providence at the present time, both toward our own country and the world, to awaken gratitude and thoughtful joy. An unexampled spectacle is presented in the current history of the world. It is moving on almost without a ripple. The changes of time are taking place as noiselessly as the ordinary changes of nature. The decay of old and injurious social and political systems is going on like the crumbling of ruins in a desert, by the force of inherent tendency rather than by external violence; and milder and more benignant systems are appearing, not like those islands sprung by volcanic shocks above the bosom of the deep, but like the beauty of spring, or the glory of summer, by a natural and imperceptible growth. Within the memory of many yet living there was a very different state of things. Scarcely a month then passed without a shock, a press and medley in human affairs that amazed and bewildered men, and kept anxiety on the stretch. Such was the history of Europe. Every change was a concussion; every fear a storm; every revolution a convulsion. Not less in motion is society now, but it is like the motion of the spheres, grand and silent; and that silence is the emblem and the evidence of greatness and power in the present movement of Providence in human affairs. The once apparently random and divergent lines of that Providence now seem to be flowing to a common point, and terminating in one great result—the improvement and happiness of our race. Abating much of what has been extravagantly vaunted about the march of mind and the perfectibility of human society, it is still visibly true that the general condition of the world is improved and improving. Vast accessions have been made to science; knowledge has been diffused over a wider surface, than was ever before known; ignorance is felt to be a calamity if not a crime; truths that were formerly contemplated only in the closet of the sage, have become familiarized in the cottage and the common mind; the rights of men are better defined and understood; the power of rulers is swayed within juster limits, and is every where abandoning its old apparatus of racks and halters and dungeons as the means of governing immortal mind, and is silently conceding to it its alienable prerogative of free thought.’
We have little to chronicle of The Drama proper this month. Music, vocal and instrumental, has kept this branch of the fine arts somewhat in the back-ground. We have had the pleasure to see Mr. Macready once only at the Park, on which occasion he personated the character of Melantius in ‘The Bridal’ with transcendent power. We have seen this fine actor in no part, if we except perhaps that of Werner, in which his genius shone so conspicuous. He was admirably supported by the scarcely subordinate characters represented by Wheatly, Rider, Miss Cushman, and Mrs. H. Hunt. Mr. Wheatly has evidently much of ‘the heavy business’ at the Park upon his broad shoulders, for he appears in two or three pieces almost every night. On the occasion alluded to, no sooner had the curtain risen after ‘The Bridal,’ than we found him making Stentorian love (‘in a horn’) to the ‘Dumb Belle’ of the evening, in which he excited shouts of uproarious laughter. At the Bowery Theatre, as well as at the Chatham, ‘The Mysteries of Paris’ has run a most successful career. The Olympic has been crowded nightly by the mingled attractions of opera and travestie; while the Bowery Amphitheatre and Rockwell’s Circus at Niblo’s, have shared abundantly in the favor bestowed now-a-days upon popular entertainments. ••• ‘Dress always and act to please your partner for life, as you were fain to do before the nuptial-knot was tied.’ This is an old maxim, and here is ‘a commentator upon it.’ A newly-married lady is suddenly surprised by a visit from a newly-married man, when she straightway begins to apologize: ‘She is horribly chagrined, and out of countenance, to be caught in such a dishabille; she did not mind how her clothes were huddled on, not expecting any company, there being nobody at home but her husband!’ The husband meanwhile shakes the visitor’s hand, and says: ‘I am heartily glad to see you, Jack: I don’t know how it was, I was almost asleep; for as there was nobody at home but my wife, I did not know what to do with myself!’ ••• The beautiful lines by Mrs. M. T. W. Chandler, elsewhere in the present number, illustrate, or are illustrated by the following passage from Warren Hasting’s eloquent reflections upon the changes to which the SOUL is destined hereafter: ‘When the hour is at hand which is to dissolve the mortal tie, the soul parts without regret with those delights which it received from its sensual gratifications, and dwells only, dwells with a fond affection, on the partner or pledges of its love; or on friends from whom it seems to be cut off for ever; and if it looks, as it must look, to futurity, these are the first objects of its wishes connected with it, and the first ingredients in its conceptions of celestial felicity. For my own part (and on a subject like this, where can we so properly appeal as to ourselves?) although my reason dictates to me the hope of a future happiness, whatever may be the mode of it, yet my heart feels no interest in the prospect when viewed as a scene of solitary, selfish enjoyment. It recoils with horror at the thought of losing the remembrance of every past connexion, and even of those whom it loved most dearly, and of being forgotten by them utterly and for ever. Is this too, it asks, one of the delusions of life? No; for all its other passions expire before it; but this remains, like hope, ‘nor leaves us when we die.’’ ••• The ‘Anglo-American’ literary journal has just issued to its subscribers one of the finest counterfeit presentments of Washington that we have ever seen. It is a print almost the size of a full-length cabinet portrait in oil, engraved in a masterly manner by Halpin after Gilbert Stuart’s celebrated picture. If this superior engraving is a sample of what the patrons of the ‘Anglo-American’ are hereafter to expect from its publishers, it is easy to foresee that that spirited journal has entered upon a long career of popularity. ••• ‘T.’s ‘Stanzas’ await his order at the publication-office. They are far from lacking merit, but are in parts artificial and labored. Lines eked out with accented letters, in which
——‘all the syllables that end in éd,
Like old dragoons, have cuts across the head,’
always seem to us to come rather from the head than the heart. We shall expect, nevertheless, to hear from our friend again, according to promise. ••• We ‘stop the press’ to announce that Mr. Punch has just dropped in from England, bringing the latest intelligence from ‘the other side.’ He has lately visited several places on the continent, not so much to see them as to be enabled to say, like other English travellers, that he had been there. ‘Mr. Punch, having arrived at Rouen late at night, left it very early the next morning, much impressed with the institutions of the city, both civil and architectural, as well as its manners, customs, and social life, which he is about to embody in a work called ‘Six hours and a half at Rouen,’ to be brought out by a fashionable publisher.’ From the reports of one of the learned societies, we derive the following important scientific information: ‘Mr. Sappy read a paper, proving the impossibility of being able to see into the middle of next week, from known facts with regard to the equation of time. He stated that, supposing it possible for a person to ascend in a balloon sufficiently high for his vision to embrace a distance of seven hundred miles from east to west, he would then only see forty minutes ahead of him; that is, he would see places where the day was forty minutes in advance of the day in which he lived. Thus he might be said to see forty minutes into futurity. It has also been proved that, in sailing round the world in one direction, a day’s reckoning is gained; so that the sailor on his return finds himself to be ‘a man in advance of his age’ by one day. This one day, however, is the farthest attainable limit; and it is therefore impossible to see into the middle of next Week!’ ‘Mr. Tite, proprietor of the ‘Metropolitan Bakedtatery’ brought forward his new ‘Low Pressure Potatoe-Can,’ upon an improved principle. It was constructed of tin, and warranted to sustain a pressure of twenty potatoes upon the square bottom. Mr. Tite explained that the steam had nothing to do with the warmth of the fruit, but was quite independent of it.’ ‘Mr. Flit brought forward his new and improved Street Telescope for looking at the moon. It was most ingeniously constructed, being to the eye a fine instrument of six feet long. Mr. Flit explained, however, that the telescope itself was only an eighteen-inch one, the case being manufactured to increase its importance, in which the real glass was enclosed. The chief merit of this invention was, that the moon could be seen equally well on cloudy nights, or when there was none at all, the case enclosing an ingenious transparency of that body, behind which a small lamp was hung. Mr. Flit could always command a view of any of the celestial bodies by the same means.’ Here are a few items of law from ‘The Comic Blackstone:’ ‘The statute of Edward the Fourth, prohibiting any but lords from wearing pikes on their shoes of more than two inches long, was considered to savor of oppression; but those who were in the habit of receiving from a lord more kicks than coppers, would consider that the law savored of benevolence.’ ‘Unlawfully detaining a man in any way is imprisonment; so that if you take your neighbor by the button, and cause him to listen to a long story, you are guilty of imprisonment.’ Punch’s idea of ‘Woman’s Mission’ differs somewhat from other reformers of the times: ‘To replace the shirt-button of the father, the brother, the husband, which has come off in putting on the vestment; to bid the variegated texture of the morning slipper or the waistcoat grow upon the Berlin wool; to repair the breach that incautious haste in dressing has created in the coat or the trowsers, which there is no time to send out to be mended; are the special offices of woman; offices for which her digital mechanism has singularly fitted her.’ Apropos of ‘Missions:’ we perceive that Dickens understands this vague verbal apology for eccentricity or humbugeousness, if we interpret aright his frail and tearful Moddle; ‘who talked much about people’s ‘missions,’ upon which he seemed to have some private information not generally attainable,’ and who, ‘being aware that a shepherd’s mission was to pipe to his flock, and that a boatswain’s mission was to pipe all hands, and that one man’s mission was to be a paid piper, and another man’s mission was to pay the piper, had got it into his head that his own peculiar mission was to pipe his eye, which he did perpetually.’ ••• A curious volume has recently appeared in Paris, entitled ‘Poésies Populaires Latines antérieures au Douzième Siècle;’ and as sequels to the work, are certain satires upon the avarice and corruption of the papal government in the twelfth century, among which is the following curious parody:
‘Here beginneth the Gospel according to Marks of silver.—In that time the pope said to the Romans: When the son of man cometh to the seat of our majesty, say ye first, Friend, what seekest thou? But if he continue knocking, and give you nothing, cast him out into utter darkness. And it came to pass that a certain poor clerk came to the court of our lord the pope, and cried out, saying, Have pity on me at least you, O gate-keepers of the pope, for the hand of poverty hath touched me. Verily I am needy and poor; therefore, I pray ye, relieve my calamity and my wretchedness. But they, when they heard him, were very wroth, and said, Friend, thy poverty be with thee to perdition! get behind me, Sathanas, for thou art not wise in the wisdom of money. Verily, verily I say unto thee, thou shalt not enter into the joy of thy lord until thou hast given thy last farthing. And the poor man departed, and sold his cloak and his coat and all that he had, and gave it to the cardinals and to the gate-keepers; and they said, What is this among so many? And they cast him out before the doors; and he went out, and wept bitterly, and might not be comforted. Then there came to the court a certain rich clerk, great and fat and swollen, who in a riot had slain a man. He gave first to the gate-keeper, secondly to the chamberlain, thirdly to the cardinals; but they thought among themselves that they should have received more. And when our lord the pope heard that the cardinals and ministers had received many gifts of the clerk, he became sick unto death. But the rich man sent him a medicine of gold and silver, and immediately he was cured. Then our lord the pope called to him the cardinals and ministers, and said to them, Brethren, see that no one seduce you with empty words; for I give you an example, that as I myself receive, so receive ye.’
The corruptions of this era are equally well illustrated by a very amusing anecdote of ‘a handsome Italian friar, teres atque rotundus, about thirty, and extremely bold and eloquent;’ doubtless one of that class so felicitously limned by Thomson:
‘A little round, fat, oily man of God