The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844

‘What sweet tears dim the eyes unshed,    What wild vows falter on the tongue,When ‘Scots wha ha’ wi’ Wallace bled,’    Or ‘Auld Lang Syne’ is sung!’

The association however is touching, not alone because it awakens old recollections, but because the music is natural; it is the language of the heart. Affectation has not interpopolated tortuous windings and trills and shakes, to mar its beauty, and to clip the full melodious notes of their fair proportions. It is pleasant to think that fashion, though never so potent, can neither divert nor lessen the popular attachment to the simpler melodies. We have the authority of the Woods, Wilson, Sinclair, Power, and other eminent artists for stating that ‘Black-eyed Susan,’ ‘John Anderson my Jo,’ ‘The Last Rose of Summer,’ and kindred airs, could always ‘bring down the house,’ no matter what the antagonistical musical attraction might be. We could wish that the Venerable Taurus, or ‘Old Bull,’ as many persons call him, would take a hint from this. Let him try it once; and we venture to say that no one, however uninitiated, will again retire from his splendid performances as a country friend of ours did lately, assigning as a reason: ‘I waited till about ha’-past nine; and then he hadn’t got done tunin’ his fiddle!’ A touch of ‘music for the general heart’ would have enchained him till morning. Christopher North, we perceive, in the last Blackwood, fully enters into the spirit of our predilection. He has just returned from a concert of fashionable music, where he ‘tried to faint, that he might be carried out, but didn’t know how to do it,’ and was compelled to sit with compressed lips, and listen to ‘sounds from flat shrill signorinas, quavering to distraction,’ for two long hours. When he gets home, however, he ‘feeds fat his grudge’ against modern musical affectations. Let us condense a few of his objurgations:

‘It is a perfect puzzle to us by what process the standard of music has become so lowered, as to make what is ordinarily served up under that name be received as the legitimate descendant of harmony. There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and this entrancing art, it seems, has taken it; sorely dislocating its graceful limbs, and injuring its goodly proportions in the unseemly escapade. We hate your crashing, clumsy chords, and utterly spit at and defy chromatic passages, from one end of the instrument to the other, and back again; flats, sharps, and most appropriate ‘naturals,’ spattered all over the page. The essential spirit of discord seems to be let loose on our modern music. Music to soothe! the idea is obsolete. There is music to excite, much to irritate one, and much more to drive a really musical soul stark mad; but none to soothe, save that which is drawn from the hiding-places of the past. There is no repose, no refreshment to the mind, in our popular compositions. There is to us more of touching pathos, heart-thrilling expression, in some of the old psalm-tunes, feelingly played, than in a whole batch of modernisms. The strains go home, and the ‘fountains of the great deep are broken up;’ the great deep of unfathomable feeling, that lies far, far below the surface of the world-hardened heart; and as the unwonted yet unchecked tear starts to the eye, the softened spirit yields to their influence, and shakes off the moil of earthly care; rising, purified and spiritualized, into a clearer atmosphere.’

We often hear of odd things happening in consequence of mistakes in orthography, but seldom of any benefit accruing therefrom to the orthoöpist. But a friend mentioned to us a little circumstance the other day, which would seem to prove that it does a man good sometimes to spell somewhat at variance with old Johnson. In a village not far hence lived a man known by the name of Broken Jones. He had dissipated a large fortune in various law-suits; had become poor and crazy; and at last, like another Peebles, his sole occupation consisted in haunting the courts, lawyers’ offices, and other scenes of his misfortunes. To judge and attorneys he was a most incorrigible bore; to the latter especially, from whom he was continually soliciting opinions on cases which had long been ‘settled,’ and carried to the law-ledgers, where they were only occasionally hunted up as precedents in the suit of perhaps some other destined victims. As Jones hadn’t a cent of money left, it was of course impossible for him to obtain any more ‘opinions;’ but this didn’t cure him of his law-mania. One morning he entered the office of lawyer D–, in a more excited state than he had exhibited for a long time, and seating himself vis-a-vis with his victim, requested his ‘opinion’ on one of the ‘foregone conclusions’ already mentioned. D– happening at the moment to be very busy, endeavored to get rid of his visiter, and contrived various expedients for that purpose. But Jones was not in a mood to be trifled with. ‘I came, ‘Squire,’ said he, ‘to get your opinion in writing on this case, and I will have it before I leave the room, if I sit here till the day of judgment!’ The lawyer looked upon his visiter, while a thought of forcible ejectment passed through his brain; but the glaring eye and stout athletic frame which met his gaze, told him that such a course would be extremely hazardous. At length the dinner-bell rang. A bright thought struck him; and putting on his coat and hat, he took Jones gently by the arm: ‘Come,’ said he, ‘go and dine with me.’ ‘No!’ said the latter, fiercely; ‘I’ll never dine again until I get what I came for.’ The lawyer was in a quandary, and at length, in very despair, he consented to forego his dinner and give his annoyer the desired opinion. ‘Well, well, Jones,’ said he, soothingly, ‘you shall have it;’ and gathering pens, ink and paper, he was soon seated at the table, while Jones, creeping on tiptoe across the room, stood peeping over his shoulder. The lawyer commenced: ‘My oppinion in the case–’ ‘Humph!’ said the lunatic, suddenly seizing his hat, and turning on his heel, ‘I wouldn’t give a d—n for your opinion with two p’s!’ ••• Many of our public as well as private correspondents seem to have been not a little interested in the articles on Mind and Instinct, in late numbers of this Magazine. A valued friend writing from Maryland, observes: ‘The collection of facts by your contributor is very industrious, their array quite skilful, and the argument very strong. I think, however, that if I had time I could pick several flaws in the reasoning, or rather erect a very good counter-argument, founded principally upon the fact that the intelligence of animals is generally as great in early youth as it is in the prime of their beasthood. The author might have added to his list of facts, an account which I read when a boy, of the practice of the baboons in Caffraria, near the orange-orchards. They arrange themselves in a row from their dens to the orange-trees. One then ascends the tree, plucks the oranges, and throws them to the next baboon, and he to the next, and so on throughout the whole file; they standing some fifty yards apart. In this manner they quickly strip a tree, and at the same time are safe from being all surprised at once. The early French missionaries in Canada, also asserted that the squirrels of that region, having denuded the country on one side of the big lake, of nuts, used to take pieces of birch bark, and hoisting their tails for canvass, float to the other side for their supply.’ We have been struck with a passage in a powerful article upon ‘The Hope that is within Us,’ in a late foreign periodical, wherein the fruitful theme of our correspondent is touched upon. ‘If matter,’ says the writer, ‘be incapable of consciousness, as Johnson so powerfully argues in Rasselas, then the animus of brutes must be an anima, and immaterial; for the dog and the elephant not merely exhibit ‘consciousness,’ but a ‘half-reasoning’ power. And if it be true, as Johnson maintains, that immateriality of necessity produces immortality, then the poor Indian’s conclusion is the most logical,

‘Who thinks, admitted to that equal sky,His faithful dog shall bear him company.’

The truth is, that we must depend upon revelation for an assurance of immortality; which promises, however, the resurrection of the body, as philosophy is unequal to its demonstration, and modern researches into animal life have rendered the proof more difficult than heretofore.’ By the by, ‘speaking of animals:’ there is a letter from Lemuel Gulliver in the last number of Blackwood, describing a meeting of ‘delegates from the different classes of consumers of oats, held at the Nag’s-Head inn at Horsham.’ The business of the meeting was opened by a young Racer, who expressed his desire to promote the interests of the horse-community, and to promote any measure which might contribute to the increase of the consumption of oats, and improve the condition of his fellow quadrupeds. He considered the horse-interest greatly promoted by the practice of sowing wild oats, which he warmly commended. A Hackney-coach Horse declared himself in favor of the sliding-scale, which he understood to mean the wooden pavement. Things went much more smoothly wherever it was established. He contended for the abolition of nose-bags, which he designated as an intolerable nuisance; urged the prohibition of chaff with oats, as unfit for the use of able-bodied horses; and indeed evinced the truth of his professions, that he ‘yielded to no horse in an anxious desire to promote the true interests of the horse-community.’ An Old English Hunter impressed upon the young delegates the good old adage of ‘Look before you leap,’ and urged them to go for ‘measures, not men.’ A Stage Horse ‘congratulated the community upon the abolition of bearing-reins, those grievous burdens upon the necks of all free-going horses; and he trusted the time would soon arrive when the blinkers would also be taken off, every corn-bin thrown open, and every horse his own leader.’ Several other steeds, in the various ranks of horse-society, addressed the meeting. ‘Resolutions, drawn by two Dray-Horses, embodying the supposed grievances of the community, were finally agreed upon, and a petition, under the hoof of the president, founded upon them, having been prepared and ordered to be presented to the House of Commons by the members for Horsham, the meeting separated, and the delegates returned to their respective stables.’ ••• What habitual theatre or opera-goer has not been tempted a thousand times to laugh outright, and quite in the wrong place, at the incongruities, the inconsistencies, the mental and physical catachreses of the stage, which defy illusion and destroy all vraisemblance? A London sufferer in this kind has hit off some of the salient points of these absurdities in a few ‘Recollections of the Opera:’

‘I’ve known a god on clouds of gauze    With patience hear a people’s prayer,And bending to the pit’s applause,    Wait while the priest repeats the air.I’ve seen a black-wig’d Jove hurl down    A thunder-bolt along a wire,To burn some distant canvass town,    Which—how vexatious!—won’t catch fire.I’ve known a tyrant doom a maid    (With trills and roulades many a score)To instant death! She, sore afraid,    Sings: and the audience cries ‘Encore!’I’ve seen two warriors in a rage    Draw glist’ning swords and, awful sight!Meet face to face upon the stage    To sing a song, but not to fight!I’ve heard a king exclaim ‘To arms!’    Some twenty times, yet still remain;I’ve known his army ‘midst alarms,    Help by a bass their monarch’s strain.I’ve known a hero wounded sore,    With well-tuned voice his foes defy;And warbling stoutly on the floor,    With the last flourish fall and die.I’ve seen a mermaid dress’d in blue;    I’ve seen a cupid burn a wing;I’ve known a Neptune lose a shoe;    I’ve heard a guilty spectre sing.I’ve seen, spectators of a dance,    Two Brahmins, Mahomet, the Cid,Four Pagan kings, four knights of France,    Jove and the Muses—scene Madrid!’

The leading paper in the present number will not escape the attention nor fail to win the admiration of the reader. The description of the Ascent of Mount Ætna by our eminent artist, is forcible and graphic in the extreme. It will derive additional interest at this moment from the recent eruption of this renowned volcano, which still continued at the last advices, and by which already seventy persons had lost their lives. If our metropolitan readers would desire a due impression of the magnificent scene which our correspondent has described, let them drop in at the rooms of the National Academy of Design, where they will find the Burning Mountain, as seen from Taormina, depicted in all its vastness and grandeur; and not only this, but the noble series of allegorical pictures, heretofore noticed at large in this Magazine, called ‘The Voyage of Life,’ representing Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age; ‘Angels ministering to Christ in the Wilderness,’ a picture that has an horizon, and an aërial gradation toward the zenith, which alone, to say nothing of the figures, and the composition itself as a study, would richly repay a visit; ‘The Past and the Present,’ two most effective scenes, especially the second, which is overflowing with the mingled graces of poetry and art; a glorious composition, ‘An Italian Scene,’ of which we shall speak hereafter; as well as of the view of ‘Ruined Aqueducts in the Campagna di Roma,’ fading into dimness toward the imperial city, and of ‘The Notch in the White Mountains’ of New-Hampshire. Apropos: we perceive by a letter from an American at Rome, in one of the public journals, that Thorwaldsen, the great sculptor, was an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Cole’s pictures, particularly of his ‘Voyage of Life,’ which he pronounced ‘original, and new in art.’ ‘He could talk of nothing else,’ says the writer, ‘for a long time; and every time he speaks of him, he adds: ‘Ma che artista, che grand’ artista, quel vostro compatriota! Che fantasia! quanto studio della natura!’ ‘But what an artist, what a great artist, is this countryman of yours! What fancy, what study of nature!’ ••• We are aware of a pair of ‘bonny blue een’ swimming in light, that will ‘come the married woman’s eye’ over a kind but most antiquarian husband, when the following is read, some two weeks from now, in their ‘little parlor’ in a town of the far west. It reaches us in the MS. of a Boston friend: ‘Old Colonel W–, formerly a well-known character in one of our eastern cities, was remarkable for but one passion out of the ordinary range of humanity, and that was for buying at auction any little lot of trumpery which came under the head of ‘miscellaneous,’ for the reason that it couldn’t be classified. Though close-fisted in general, he was continually throwing away his money by fives and tens upon such trash. In this way he had filled all the odd corners in his dwelling and out-houses with a collection of nondescript articles, that would have puzzled a philosopher to tell what they were made for, or to what use they could ever be put. This however, was but a secondary consideration with the Colonel; for he seldom troubled his head about such articles after they were once fairly housed. Not so with his wife however, who was continually remonstrating against these purchases, which served only to clutter up the house, and as food for the mirth of the domestics. But the Colonel, though he often submitted to these remonstrances of his better-half, couldn’t resist his passion; and so he went on adding from week to week to his heap of miscellanies. One day while sauntering down the street, he heard the full, rich tones of his friend C–, the well-known auctioneer, and as a matter of course stepped in to see what was being sold. On the floor he observed a collection that looked as if it might have been purloined from the garret of some museum, and around which a motley group was assembled; while on the counter stood the portly auctioneer, in the very height of a mock-indignant remonstrance with his audience. ‘Nine dollars and ninety cents!’ cried the auctioneer. ‘Gentlemen, it is a shame, it is barbarous, to stand by and permit such a sacrifice of property! Nine dol-lars and ninety– Good morning, Colonel! A magnificent lot of—of—antiques—and all going for nine dollars and ninety cents. Gentlemen, you’ll never see another such lot; and all going—going—for nine dollars and ninety cents. Colonel W–, can you permit such a sacrifice?’ The Colonel glanced his eye over the lot, and then with a nod and a wink assured him he could not. The next instant the hammer came down, and the purchase was the Colonel’s, at ten dollars. As the articles were to be paid for and removed immediately, the Colonel lost no time in getting a cart, and having seen every thing packed up and on their way to his house, he proceeded to his own store, chuckling within himself that now at least he had made a bargain at which even his wife couldn’t grumble. In due time he was seated at the dinner-table, when lifting his eyes, he observed a cloud upon his wife’s brow. ‘Well, my dear?’ said he, inquiringly. ‘Well?’ repeated his wife; ‘it is not well, Mr. W.; I am vexed beyond endurance. You know C–, the auctioneer?’ ‘Certainly,’ replied the Colonel; ‘and a very gentlemanly person he is too.’ ‘You may think so,’ rejoined the wife, ‘but I don’t, and I’ll tell you why. A few days ago I gathered together all the trumpery with which you have been cluttering up the house for the last twelve-month, and sent it to Mr. C–, with orders to sell the lot immediately to the highest bidder for cash. He assured me he would do so in all this week, at farthest, and pay over the proceeds to my order. And here I’ve been congratulating myself on two things: first, on having got rid of a most intolerable nuisance; and secondly, on receiving money enough therefor to purchase that new velvet hat you promised me so long ago. And now what do you think? This morning, about an hour ago, the whole load came back again, without a word of explanation!’ The Colonel looked blank for a moment, and then proceeded to clear up the mystery. But the good vrouw was pacified only by the promise of a ten-dollar note beside that in the hands of the auctioneer; on condition, however, that she should never mention it.’ Of course she kept her word! ••• How seldom it is that one encounters a good sonnet! Most sonnetteers of our day are like feeble-framed men walking in heavy armor; ‘the massy weight on’t galls their laden limbs.’ We remember two or three charming sonnets of Longfellow’s; Park Benjamin has been unwontedly felicitous in some of his examples; and H. T. Tuckerman has excelled in the same poetical rôle. Here is a late specimen of his, from the ‘Democratic Review,’ which we regard as very beautiful:

DESOLATION

Think ye the desolate must live apart,    By solemn vows to convent walls confined?Ah! no; with men may dwell the cloistered heart,    And in a crowd the isolated mind:Tearless behind the prison-bars of fate    The world sees not how sorrowful they stand,Gazing so fondly through the iron grate    Upon the promised, yet forbidden land;Patience, the shrine to which their bleeding feet,    Day after day, in voiceless penance turn;Silence the holy cell and calm retreat    In which unseen their meek devotions burn;Life is to them a vigil that none share,Their hopes a sacrifice, their love a prayer.

‘Our Ancient,’ the editor of the handsome ‘Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine’ hight ‘The Columbian,’ (which is to run a brisk competition, as we learn, with the other ‘pictorials,’ Godey’s, Graham’s, and Snowden’s,) should have enabled us to speak of it from an examination of our own copy, instead of being obliged to filch an idea of its merits from the counter of those most obliging gentlemen, Messrs. Burgess and Stringer. The work is a gay one externally, and spirited internally; having several good articles from good writers, male and female. One of the best things in it, however, is the paper on ‘Magazine Literature,’ by the Editor. How many writers, now well known both at home and abroad, who began and continue their literary career in the Knickerbocker, can bear testimony to the truth of the following remarks:

‘We have said that this is the age of magazines; adverting not merely to their number, but even more especially to their excellence. They are the field, chiefly, in which literary reputation is won. Who ever thinks of John Wilson as the learned professor, or as the author of bound volumes? Who does not, when Wilson’s name is mentioned, instantly call to mind the splendid article-writer, the Christopher North of Blackwood? Charles Lamb was long known only as the Elia of the New Monthly. Most of the modern French celebrities; Sue, Janin, and half a hundred others, have made their fame in the feuilletons of the Parisian journals; a more decided graft, by the way, than is elsewhere seen, of the magazine upon the newspaper. In our own country, how many there are whose names are known from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, that are as yet innocent of books, but have nevertheless contributed largely and well to the growing stock of American literature. How many more who are bringing themselves into notice by their monthly efforts in the pages of some popular magazine. In fact, the magazine is the true channel into which talent should direct itself for the acquisition of literary fame. The newspaper is too ephemeral; the book is not of sufficiently rapid and frequent production. The monthly magazine just hits the happy medium, enabling the writer to present himself twelve times a year before a host of readers, in whose memories he is thus kept fresh, yet allowing him space enough to develope his thought, and time enough to do his talent justice in each article. Then, too, on the score of emolument, justly recognised now as a very essential matter, and legitimately entitled to grave consideration, the magazine offers advantages not within the reach of either book or newspaper. ••• But after all, the great point is, that magazines are more read than any other kind of publications. They just adapt themselves to the leisure of the business man, and the taste of the idler; to the spare half hours of the notable housewife and the languid inertia of the fashionable lady. They can be dropped into a valise or a carpet-bag as a welcome provision for the wants of a journey by steam-boat or rail-road, when the country through which the traveller passes offers nothing attractive to be seen, or the eyes are weary of seeing; they while away delightfully the tedious hours of a rainy day in summer, and afford the most pleasant occupation through the long evenings of winter.’

Touching the matter of payment for magazine articles: Mr. Willis informs us that many of the American magazines pay to their more eminent contributors nearly three times the amount for a printed page that is paid by English magazines to the best writers in Great-Britain; and he instances Godey and Graham as paying often twelve dollars a page to their principal contributors. This refers to a few ‘principal’ writers only, as we have good reason to know, having been instrumental in sending several acceptable correspondents to those publications, who have received scarcely one-fourth of the sum mentioned. Mr. Willis adds, however, that many good writers write for nothing, and that ‘the number of clever writers has increased so much that there are thousands who can get no article accepted.’ All this is quite true. There is no magazine in America that has paid so large sums to distinguished native writers as the Knickerbocker. Indeed, our most distinguished American writer was never a contributor to any other of our Monthlys than this. The books of this Magazine show, that independent of the Editor’s division of its profits as joint proprietor, or his salary as editor, (a matter which its publishers have always kept distinct from, and in all respects unconnected with, the payments to contributors,) annual sums have heretofore been paid for literary matériel greater than the most liberal estimate we have seen of any annual literary payment by our widely-circulated contemporaries. To the first poet in America, (not to say in the world, at this moment,) we have repeatedly paid fifty dollars for a single poem, not exceeding, in any instance, two pages in length; and the cost of prose papers from sources of kindred eminence has in many numbers exceeded fifteen dollars a page. Again: we have in several instances paid twice as much for the MS. of a continuous novel in these pages as the writer could obtain of any metropolitan book-publisher; and after appearing in volumes, it has been found that the wide publicity given to the work by the Knickerbocker has been of greatest service to its popularity, in more than one subsequent edition. We should add, however, that we have had no lack, at any period, of excellent articles for our work at moderate prices; while many of our more popular papers have been entirely gratuitous, unless indeed the writers consider the honorable reputation which they have established in these pages as some reward for intellectual exertion. But ‘something too much of this.’ We close with a word touching the pictorial features of the ‘Columbian.’ It has four ‘plates’ proper, with an engraving of the fashions; is neatly executed by Messrs. Hopkins and Jennings, and published by Israel Post, Number Three, Astor-House. ••• Saint Valentine’s Day is just at hand; and a pleasant correspondent, in enclosing us the following lines, begs us to mention the fact, and to refer to the festivities of the day. We know of one ‘festivity’ that will be a very recherché and brilliant affair, on the evening of that day; namely, ‘The Bachelors’ Ball,’ to be given with unwonted splendor at the Astor-House, under the supervision of accomplished managers, whose taste and liberality have already been abundantly tested. ‘Take it as a matter granted,’ says our friend, ‘that very many of your lady-readers will commit matrimony before the year is done; and tell them so plainly; for it will gratify their palpitating hearts; and even should it not be true in every individual case, the disappointed ones will never complain of you for the pleasing delusion; for it was their own fault, of course, not yours. It behooves you, moreover, as a conservator of the general weal, to give the young wives that are to be some goodly counsel; and to aid you in the laudable office of advice-giver, I send you some appropriate verses, which some fifteen years ago went the rounds of the press, and met with ‘acceptance bounteous.’ The moral of the stanzas, I take it, is unexceptionable, whatever may be said of their execution:’