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

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 showWhen most severe, and must’ring all its force,Was but the graver countenance of love;Whose favor, like the clouds of spring, might lower,And utter now and then an awful voice,But had a blessing in his darkest frown,Threat’ning at once, and nourishing the plant.’

Perchance our friend may now think with Cowper, that ‘although he loved, yet not enough, the gentle hand that reared him.’ ‘The chief thing that I have to reproach myself with,’ writes one who laments a kindred dispensation of the Supreme, ‘is a sort of inattention to my father’s feelings, occasionally, arising merely from the disparity of years between us, which I am sensible must at times have interfered with his enjoyments. I would gladly recall now, if I could, many opportunities I suffered to pass, of being more in his company, and more in the way of his advice and instruction.’ But he adds: ‘When I reflect on these things, it appears to me one of the strongest natural arguments for the immortality of the soul, and the renewal of our earthly relations in a world to come, that even where the greatest possible attachment subsists between parents and their children, the mere disparity of years inevitably prevents that complete association of feelings, and intimate fellowship of heart and soul, which is the cement and prerogative of all other friendships: in a world to come, but no where else, such attachments must receive their full completion.’ ••• Professor Gouraud, well known among us for his devotion to the interests of art and science, has perfected a System of Remembrance, which he designates by the term ‘Mnemotechny,’ and which we venture to predict will prove of the greatest service to nearly every class of society. No system of modern mnemonics bears any resemblance to, or comparison with it. Such is the astonishing effect of the plan, that young masters and misses, after a brief study of it, can with ease answer any question from score after score of close-printed pages, involving every variety of events, and all kinds of information. We ‘speak but the things which we do know,’ in this matter, for seeing is believing. As the scene of Prof. Gouraud’s operations is for the present the city, and as the daily journals have made his merits widely known to the community, we forbear farther comment at this time upon the useful art which he has brought to such wonderful perfection. New classes organize, we understand, at the Professor’s residence, No. 46, Second-street, on the fourth instant. They will be filled at once, and speedily followed by others. ••• There is an article in the last number of the Edinburgh Review upon ‘Theatres and the Drama,’ which is replete with wisdom, and evinces a thorough mastery of the theme. In alluding to the appeals which are now made to the eye by elaborate scenery, machinery, etc., less than to the mind and imagination by superior intellectual personation, the reviewer in effect remarks, that the first attempt at positive reality is fatal to pleasurable illusion. Every person in the pit is aware that the stage is a stage, ‘and all the men and women merely players.’ In ‘As you Like It,’ at Drury-Lane, an attempt was made to imitate the notes of birds. ‘Suppose the imitation had been so close as to deceive the audience into the belief that there were birds there singing; would not the contrast with trees of painted canvass have been revolting? These were not the conceptions of Shakspeare, when he made his chorus say:

                ‘Can this cockpit holdThe vasty fields of France? or may we cramWithin this wooden O the very casquesThat did affright the air at Agincourt?O pardon! since a crooked figure mayAttest, in little place, a million;And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,On your imaginary forces work:Suppose within the girdle of these wallsAre now confined two mighty monarchies:Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;Into a thousand parts divide one man,And make imaginary puisance.Think, when we talk of horses, that you see themPrinting their proud hoofs in the receiving earth;For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings—Carry them here and there.’

Advice as necessary at the present day as then; for we may enlarge our stages, increase our supernumeraries, and engage ‘real horses;’ but we can never make any one believe the stage is other than the stage. The audience can realize for themselves. This trust in the all-sufficiency of imagination is precisely that acted on by children in their daily sports, where from the boundless wealth of the imagination, the rudest materials supply the place of the costliest. Whoever watches boys ‘playing horse,’ making a pocket-handkerchief dangling behind to represent the tail, and sees them stamping, snorting, prancing, and champing the imaginary bit, witnesses the alchymy of the imagination, an alchymy out-stripping all the wonders and out-weighing all the treasures of the prosaic positive chemistry, so longed for by the present generation. The child ‘supposes’ the handkerchief a tail, and it becomes a tail. He has but to say to his companion: ‘This shall be a whip and this shall be the harness,’ and the things are there; not as matters of literal fact, but of imaginative truth. He plays for the enjoyment of the game and the exercise of his imagination; and therefore the handkerchief serves every purpose. This is the procedure of nature. But the modern parent, anxious to realize for the child, and to instil a love of accuracy into his mind, gives him a superb horse-hair tail, bidding him at the same time be careful not to spoil it. What is the result? The child’s attention is called from the game, to the consideration of or delight in the tail, which, originally meant as a collateral aid, now takes the first place. The boy no doubt is delighted with his horse-hair tail; but (if it be not altogether superfluous,) it will soon destroy his game, so that the exercise, both of frame and imagination, is lost; the end becomes subordinate to the means. This is precisely what takes place with the drama. Observe also one important point: The tail is real; accuracy is attempted: but though the tail be real, the horse is not; the horse is played by a boy, and only by a boy; it is in this mimicry that the enjoyment consists. But how absurd to put a real tail on an unreal horse! How revolting this mixture of imagination and fact! It is equalled only by that ludicrous practice of placing the face of a real watch in the place of a church-clock in a landscape; where one may not only see the time of day, but may also hear it struck, and that amidst painted trees and houses! This effect, except to the most literal and prosaic minds, is revolting and discordant. But this the modern drama is strenuously endeavoring to produce. ‘In opera, ballet, and spectacle, scenery and illustrations must be effective, because they form elements of the piece. In the drama, where the source of entertainment is intellectual, they are merely accessories, and should be used in such wise as to keep up the harmony of effect, but never so as to distract attention from the drama to themselves.’ Here is a passage which is not less applicable in America than in England: ‘A few years ago it was not uncommon to see several performers of rival excellence supported by others of ability, all playing in the same piece. It is now a rare thing for rivals to play together. A single good actor, among a dozen bad, is deemed sufficient. Are we then to wonder that the regular drama does not pay?’ ••• Our readers will remember the order given by the Chinese Emperor to a corps of Mandarins, who were to exterminate the ‘barbarian Englishers’ in the harbor of Canton, by going down to the bank of the river in the night, and then and there ‘dive straight on board those foreign ships, and put every soul of them to death!’ Subsequently however the red-bristling foreigners managed to land, when, as it since turns out, it became necessary to adopt more sanguinary measures. The Emperor called up one of his ‘great generals,’ and gave him his dreadful orders: ‘You must dress your soldiers,’ said he, ‘in a very frightful manner, painting their faces with the most horrid figures, and depicting dragons and monsters on your banners: you must then rush upon the barbarians with fearful outcries, and terrify them so that they will fall down flat on their faces; and when they are once down,’ said the Imperial potentate, ‘their breeches are so tight that they can never get up again!’ ••• ‘I give you five minutes every day to look at the stars, but don’t particularize; for some in those far-off places send down their light long after they have been knocked out of existence, and you may be looking at a blank.’ So wrote ‘Julian’ in this department of our last number. Prof. Olmstead, of Yale-College, in a recent lecture before the ‘Mercantile Library Association,’ described the difficulty of ascertaining the distance of the stars from each other and from our earth; yet, he remarked, it had been done. The nearest star’s distance from us had been measured, and by the aid of light, by which it could alone be accomplished. That distance, he said, was immense, requiring ten years for light to traverse it! The planets, he had no doubt, were inhabited. Of what use was the reflection of the sun’s rays upon them, if there were no eyes there to behold it? What was the use of moons, which the planets certainly have? He spoke also of the fixed stars, which seem by the aid of a telescope to be innumerable. What was their purpose?—for a guide to mariners? No; for a very small portion of them could be seen by the unassisted eye. They were suns like our suns, to worlds like our worlds! To the inhabitants of those fixed stars our sun appears as a star, and the planetary system revolving around it, of which the earth is one, are unseen by them, as are those of theirs by us! Great God! ‘When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that thou visitest him!’ ••• Our correspondent who writes of ‘The Country,’ in preceding pages wields a facile pen. His allusion to the choice of names for a country-seat reminds us of the pleasant satire of ‘Thinks-I-to-myself’ upon this theme: ‘We lived, you must know,’ he writes, ‘in a Hall; not when I was born, however, nor till long afterward. My sister happened to have a correspondent at school near London, who finding it essentially necessary to the support of her dignity among her school-fellows, always directed her letters so; for the parents of one she found, lived at something House; and of another at What’s-its-name Place; and of another at Thingummy Lodge; of another at the Grange; of another at the Castle; of another at the Park; Miss Blaze, the daughter of a retired tallow-chandler, whose father lived at Candlewick-Castle, was continually throwing out hints that not to live at a ‘Castle,’ or a ‘Park,’ or a ‘Place,’ or a ‘House,’ or a ‘Lodge,’ unequivocally bespoke a low origin!’ Is this folly altogether indigenous to England? Let the high-sounding names of scores of painted pine palaces not a thousand miles from this metropolis make answer. ••• ‘It don’t weigh as much as I expected, and I always thought it wouldn’t!’ We were reminded of this remark of a person who desired a certain result, but was at the same time unwilling to relinquish his pride of opinion, by the note of our Mississippi correspondent, to whose long communication we alluded in our last number. We have ‘taken its measure,’ as we promised, and find it quite beyond our compass. ••• Our friend the Poetical Englishman is somewhat severe upon the godly inhabitants of ‘Botolph’s Town;’ yet we see nothing in his epistle that is not justified by recent occurrences in the ‘Literary Emporium.’ It is lamentable that Boston should be robbed of a decent theatre by an epidemic of pseudo-sanctity. Macready was compelled to play a recent engagement at a second-rate house, down in the ‘Wapping’ end of the town, whither all the beauty and fashion crowded nightly through the mud to see him. It strikes us that the ‘Purification Hymn,’ alluded to by our correspondent, must have been a choice production of some Mawworm of the day. Its reasoning is highly pellucid, and its dignity is past all question. ‘Mimic scenes, and mirth and joy,’ it would seem, ‘allure souls’ to endless perdition! Now against the licentiousness and drunkenness of the theatre too much cannot be said; but for ‘mimic scenes’ dragging men to –. But cui bono? ‘Your dull ass will never mend his pace with beating.’ By the by, we are well pleased to see our English friend’s preference for mind over matter, in the way of dramatic personations. Yet England has little reason to boast. What says ‘the Viscount’ to the Chevalier (d’industrie) Pip? ‘What’s the good of Shakspeare, Pip? I never read him. What the devil is it all about? There’s a lot of feet in Shakspeare’s verse, but there ain’t any legs worth mentioning in Shakspeare’s plays, are there, Pip? Juliet, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, and all the rest of ’em, whatever their names are, might as well have no legs at all, for any thing the audience know about it. I’ll tell you what it is; what the people call dramatic poetry is a collection of sermons. Do I go to the theatre to be lectured? No; if I wanted that, I’d go to church. What’s the legitimate drama, Pip? Human nature. What are legs? Human nature. Then let us have plenty of leg-pieces, Pip, and I’ll stand by you, my buck!’ This is ‘the ticket’ in London, as well as in ‘Botolph his town.’ The ‘legs have it’ there as well as here. Meanwhile the sometime gallant Thespian is in a sad plight, from having little to do and little pay for it. Admirers fall off, one after another, under such circumstances; and even the gentle sex forget their old enthusiasm:

‘Oh! once again we met, but no bandit-chief was there;His rouge was off, and gone that head of once luxuriant hair:He lodges in a two-pair back, and at the tavern nearHe cannot liquidate his ‘chalk’ nor wipe away his beer.I saw him sad and seedy, yet methinks I see him now,In the tableau of the last act, with the blood upon his brow.’

And thus he goes on, following his ‘occupation’ in one sense, and gradually sinking lower and lower; until at length:

        ‘Alas! poor rat!        He has no cravat;A seedy coat, and a hole in that!No sole to his shoe, no brim to his hat;Not a change of linen, except his skin:        No gloves, no vest,        Either second or best;And what is worse than all the rest,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