In the subjoined, which we take from the 'Letter' of the Editor, already alluded to, may be seen one beneficial result of the 'hard times,' which, driving men out of cities and trade, forced them to take off their coats and go to work on the land, which has rewarded them not only with wheat, but with habits of labor:
'Speculation is no succedaneum for life. What we would know, we must do. As if any taste or imagination could take the place of fidelity! The old Duty is the old God. And we may come to this by the rudest teaching. A friend of ours went five years ago to Illinois to buy a farm for his son. Though there were crowds of emigrants in the roads, the country was open on both sides, and long intervals between hamlets and houses. Now after five years he has just been to visit the young farmer and see how he prospered, and reports that a miracle has been wrought. From Massachusetts to Illinois, the land is fenced in and builded over, almost like New-England itself, and the proofs of thrifty cultivation every where abound.'
There is much less of the new style of verbal affectations in the present than in preceding numbers of 'The Dial,' and it is just in this proportion the more readable and attractive. We see something indeed of 'externality.' 'reäction inward,' 'unitive ideas;' and certain compound terms, which are meant to be forcible, but are only foolish; such as 'flesh-meat' for meat, 'foot-tread' for tread, and other the like words; but they are scarcely worth mentioning; the infrequency of their occurrence being a sufficient proof of the decadence into which they are already falling.
'Memoirs of the Court of England.'—We have in three handsome volumes, from the press of Messrs. Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia, an accurate memoir of the Court of England, from the Revolution in 1668 to the death of George the Second. The work proceeds from the pen of John Henease Jesse, author of 'Memoirs of the Court of England during the Reign of the Stuarts.' There are numerous and fruitful themes of instruction and warning in these volumes; lessons which have not been lost upon the world, and which are of especial interest to the citizens of a republic; aside from which, the details of the private history of some score of eminent persons, who left their impress on the eras in which they flourished, must needs have attraction for the general reader, who may only peruse them with an eye to lively entertainment. We observe, by the journals of the day, that the work is heartily welcomed and duly appreciated by the public.
THE DRAMA.
Park Theatre.—We congratulate the friends of the drama upon the bright auspices under which this establishment has commenced the present season. Those who have long predicted the downfall of things theatrical, and the utter extinction of the legitimate drama, find but little in the present aspect of affairs at this house to flatter their spirit of prophecy. So long as we continue upon the civilized side of barbarism, so long will a true taste for the drama remain with us. It is the natural food of an intellectual society, and as such will be cherished wherever that society exists; the vagaries of fashion on the one hand, and the railings of fanaticism on the other, to the contrary notwithstanding.
Mr. Wallack.—The engagement fulfilled by this gentleman, after an absence of some years, proved to his admirers that the vigor and vivacity of his acting have lost none of their former charms. In those personations which he has long since made his own, he displayed the same excellence which ever characterized his performance. To say that Mr. Wallack stands at the head of melo-dramatic actors, is not awarding him full praise. He is immeasurably beyond all rivalry in this branch of the art. Melo-dramatic performances by other artists bear about the same relation to the chaste acting of tragedy that the art of scene-painting in water-colors does to that other art which embraces alike the power of tracing upon canvass the most delicate as well as the most magnificent works of nature, in the bold and imperishable figures of a Michael Angelo or a Claude Lorraine. The outlines, the sketchy prominences, of the landscape are what the best of the melo-dramatic actors have delineated; but Wallack has gone a distance beyond them, and added a grace and a finish to the picture, of which his subjects were before thought incapable of receiving. And yet Mr. Wallack is no tragedian. With the high regard which we entertain for his talents, we have never seen them exerted in tragedy, without lamenting their sad misdirection. In the enviable station which he occupies as the first melo-dramatic actor of the age, fearless of rivalry, he should be satisfied, and consider the dignity of third-rate tragedian as entirely beneath his ambition.
Mr. Macready.—Sixteen years ago the American public were first gratified by the performance of this great tragedian—great even then; and those who remember the peculiar character of his style at that time, have recognized it again with all its beauties improved by long study and practice, and not entirely devoid of blemishes. Mr. Macready's acting presents the effect of great study; it shows the result of sound judgment, and bears witness to the absence of all feeling. Great as was Edmund Kean, and great as is the subject of this notice, in the same department of the drama, never were two artists, on or off the stage, more completely the antipodes of each other. Kean, all soul; reckless of art, and apparently despising even the most common and long-received rules and usages of the stage; rushed before his audience, embodying as he advanced the very soul of the character which he had put on with his dress; warming with it, feeling the sensations which he expressed; with