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‘Some of my contemporaries have supposed that the estate of a Benedict forbiddeth the resident therein to disport himself as aforetime, in the flowery fields of fancy, and to ambulate at random through the remembered groves of the academy, or the rich gardens of imaginative delight. Verily this is not so. To the right-minded man, all these enjoyments are increased; the ties that bind him to earth are strengthened and multiplied: he anticipates new affections and pleasures, which your cold individual, careering solus through a vale of tears, with no one to share with him his gouts of optical salt water, wots not of. As a beloved friend once said unto me: ‘When a good man weds, as when he dies, angels lead his spirit into a quiet land, full of holiness and peace; full of all pleasant sights, and ‘beautiful exceedingly.’ One’s dreams may not all be realized, for dreams never are; but the reality will differ from, and be a thousand fold sweeter, than any dreams; those shadowy and impalpable though gorgeous entities, that flit over the twilight of the soul, after the sun of judgment has set. I never hear of a friend having accomplished hymenization, without sending after him a world of good wishes and honest prayers. Amid the ambition, the selfishness, the heartless jostlinq with the world, which every son of Adam is obliged more or less to encounter, it is no common blessing to retire therefrom into the calm recesses of domestic existence, and to feel around your temples the airs that are wafted from fragrant wings of the Spirit of Peace, soft as the breath which curled the crystal light
——‘of Zion’s fountains,
When love, and hope, and joy were hers,
And beautiful upon her mountains,
The feet of angel messengers.’
No common boon is it—we speak in the rich sentence of a German writer—to enjoy ‘a look into a pure loving eye; a word without falseness, from a bride without guile; and close beside you in the still watches of the night, a soft-breathing breast, in which there is nothing but paradise, a sermon, and a midnight prayer!’
Here is a specimen of ‘the show-man’s trick,’ which, as old Matthews used to say, ‘made a great laugh at the time:’
‘It is diverting in the extreme to observe the pompous grandiloquence in the advertisements of the amusement-furnishing public, about Christmas and New-Year. Sublimity glares from the theatrical hand-bill, and the menagerie affiche. Curiosities, then, have a ‘most magnanimous value.’ I remember, not long ago, that I desired a lovely lady, a French countess, to accompany me to a Zoological Institute, to behold an American Eagle. I was pleased at the expressed wish which led me to make the invitation, and proud of the prospect of showing a living emblem of our country’s insignia to one who felt an interest in the subject. The bills of the institute set forth, that ‘the grand Columbia’s Eagle was the monarch of its tribe, measuring an unprecedented length from the tip of one wing to the other, in full plumage and vigor.’ The countess had never seen but one eagle, in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, and that was a small one, and ungrown; so that her anticipations of novelty were as great as mine. We went, and with interesting expectancy, asked of the president of the institute, who was engaged in the noble pursuit of feeding a sick baboon with little slips of cold pork, to discover to us ‘Columbia’s eagle.’ He marshalled us to the other end of the institute, past the cages of lions, bears, libbards, and other animals—among which was a singular quadruped, with six legs—to the cage of the eagle. ‘There,’ he exclaimed, with professional monotony, ‘there is the proud bird of our country, that was caught in the West, and has been thought to have killed many animals in his life-time. He was five hours and twenty-three minutes in being put into the cage, so strong was his wings. Look at him clus. He’ll bear inspection. Jist obsarve the keen irish of his eye.’
‘An involuntary and hearty laugh from us both, followed the sight, and the announcement. It was a dismal looking bird, about the size of a goodly owl, with a crest-fallen aspect, the feathers of the tail and wings dwindled to a few ragged quills; and the shivering fowl, standing on one leg, looked with a vacant, spectral eye at his visitors. Nothing could be so perfectly burlesque, and we enjoyed it deeply and long. I shall never be deceived by show-bills again.’
The following must close our quotations. We venture to say that it describes a scene which many a reader has more than once witnessed:
‘Talking of a man’s making a hero of himself, reminds me of an old friend of mine, who is fond of telling long stories about fights and quarrels that he has had in his day, and who always makes his hearer his opponent for the time, so as to give effect to what he is saying. Not long ago I met him on ‘Change, at a business hour, when all the commercing multitudes of the city were together, and you could scarcely turn, for the people. The old fellow fixed his eye on me; there was a fatal fascination in it. Getting off without recognition, would have been unpardonable disrespect. In a moment, his finger was in my button-hole, and his rheumy optics glittering with the satisfaction of your true bore, when he has met with an unresisting subject. I listened to his common-places with the utmost apparent satisfaction. Directly, he began to speak of an altercation which he once had with an officer in the navy. He was relating the particulars. ‘Some words,’ said he, ‘occurred between him and me. Now you know that he is a much younger man than I am; in fact, about your age. Well, he ‘made use of an expression’ which I did not exactly like. Says I to him, says I, ‘What do you mean by that?’ ‘Why,’ says he to me, says he, ‘I mean just what I say.’ Then I began to burn. There was an impromptu elevation of my personal dandriff, which was unaccountable. I didn’t waste words on him; I just took him in this way,’ (here the old spooney suited the action to the word, by seizing the collar of my coat, before the assemblage,) ‘and says I to him, says I, ‘You infernal scoundrel, I will punish you for your insolence on the spot!’ and the manner in which I shook him (just in this way) was really a warning to a person similarly situated.’
‘I felt myself at this moment in a beautiful predicament; in the midst of a large congregation of business people; an old gray-headed man hanging, with an indignant look, at my coat-collar; and a host of persons looking on. The old fellow’s face grew redder every minute; but perceiving that he was observed, he lowered his voice in the detail, while he lifted it in the worst places of his colloquy. ‘You infernal scoundrel, and caitiff, and villain,’ says I, ‘what do you mean, to insult an elderly person like myself, in a public place like this?’ and then, said he, lowering his malapropos voice, ‘then I shook him, so.’
‘Here he pushed me to and fro, with his septuagenarian gripe on my collar, as if instead of a patient much bored friend, I was his deadly enemy. When he let go, I found myself in a ring of spectators. ‘Shame, shame! to insult an old man like him!’ was the general cry. ‘Young puppy!’ said an elderly merchant, whose good opinion was my heart’s desire, ‘what excuse have you for your conduct?’
‘Thus was I made a martyr to my good feelings. I have never recovered from the stigma of that interview. I have been pointed at in the street by persons who have said as I passed them, ‘That’s the young chap that insulted old General –, at the Exchange!’
We should not omit to state that the publishers have done ample justice to the work. It is beautifully stereotyped and printed upon new type and fine white paper, and the numbers are enclosed in very neat and tasteful covers. The work we are glad to say meets with a liberal and constant sale.
Italy and the Italians. In a Series of Letters. By J. T. Headley. In one volume, pp. 64. New-York: I. S. Platt.
Mr. Platt has commenced a series of publications, at a moderate price, which should secure a liberal share of the public favor. These ‘Letters,’ which form the initial number, are replete with interest. Many of them appeared in the original foreign correspondence of the ‘Tribune’ daily journal, where they excited the admiration of the press, and ‘the people’ whom the press represents; but a large portion now see the light for the first time. Mr. Headley has not given us, in tiresome detail, minute descriptions of galleries of art and public edifices; although his description of St. Peter’s at Rome, (a ‘nice building, with a dome handsomely scooped out,’) is the most vivid picture of that world-renowned structure that we ever perused. He has wisely chosen rather to illustrate the people and country by things perhaps trifling in themselves, but which give to the reader a constant succession of ‘sketches from Nature,’ which are not only very pleasant to read, but which it is quite evident are exceedingly faithful. ‘The condition of the people,’ in short, ‘occupies more space than the condition of art, simply because the latter is well known, while the former is almost wholly neglected.’ Briefly, for ‘brief must we be,’ the book affords what Mrs. Ramsbottom would call ‘a supreme cow-dyle’ (coup d’œil) of ‘Italy and the Italians,’ and is presented in a dress worthy of its internal merits.
EDITOR’S TABLE
Our old friend and correspondent ‘Harry Franco’ cometh late, but he can never arrive too late to be welcome. Let us hope only that he will not object to being placed as it were ‘below the salt,’ instead of being seated with his peers at the more conspicuous board of the ‘regulars.’ He has deftly touched a fruitful theme, at which we have more than once hinted in this department of the Knickerbocker.
THE IMPUDENCE OF THE FRENCH
Keep your tempers, Messieurs; we shall not quarrel. There is a difference between Impudence and Impertinence. The two words are often used synonymously by the vulgar, but they are no more alike than any other two words that begin with an I. ‘When we behold an angel, not to fear is to be IMPUDENT,’ says Dryden: ‘We should avoid the IMPERTINENCE of pedants,’ says Swift. These two great masters of the English tongue have well defined the difference between the two words. There is always an air of confident greatness about impudence that wins respect, and not infrequently success. Alexander was assuredly the most impudent man of his time; so was Cæsar; so was Luther. Even now, when half the human race has grown impudent, we cannot but wonder at the impudence of that obscure monk. Galileo, too, was a very impudent fellow until the well-bred ‘Rev. and dear Sirs’ of his time taught him modesty. And Cromwell! what an Arch-Impudence was he! And Napoleon! he put Impudence itself to the blush. And have there been no Impudences among us? It cannot be denied that our Fourth-of-July-men made a very impudent declaration, to say the least of it. But these were all individual instances. The French are impudent as a nation. They have no sense of modesty. They insist that all the world shall eat French, drink French, talk French, dance French, and dress French. Did ever any traveller visit a city or town in any quarter of the globe in which a Frenchman had not set up a restaurant? Fanny Ellsler was astonished when she landed at the American Hotel, to find that her dinner had been prepared by a Parisian cook; and yet she had come over here to show us her French steps. Simple Fanny! How did she think we could live without French cookery, if we could not live without French dancing? What traveller has ever visited a remote village that a French modiste had not visited before him? Is it possible to dine any where, without having a French bill of fare thrust into your hand, and some dish with an à la under your nose? Is there a living being in any part of the world willing to make oath to having visited a ball-room or a church without encountering a French dress or a French bonnet? The Quakers cannot; they would as soon wear scarlet ribbons as any other than French gloves and French muslins.
Untravelled New-Yorkers as they walk through Broadway, and see the names of Madame Grand-this and Mons. Grand-that ‘from Paris,’ over every other shop-door, and see the French shoes, the French gloves, the French chocolate, the French clocks, the liqueurs, the bon-bons, the bijouterie, the meringues, the pâtes-de-foi-gras, in the windows, may think that the Gauls have marked us for their ‘own peculiar;’ but it is so in St. Petersburgh, ’tis so in Constantinople, ’tis so in Lima, in the Banda Orientale, in Rio, in Mexico, in Montreal, in London, in Vienna, in Boston, in Philadelphia, in Grand Cairo—’tis so all over the earth. The Sorbonne and the Louvre rule the world. Can any body be tired, or weary, or dumpish? No. We must be ennuyeèd, or blazè, or fatiguè, or something else ending in è. Does any lady ever give an evening party? No. Nothing but a soirée. Are there any more gatherings of friends? No; only reünions. Is it possible to dance a cotillion in English? Is there any body in New-York with sufficient moral courage to sleep upon any thing short of a French bed-stead? Is there a chamber-maid who will lie upon any thing less than a paliastre? Are there any more fat, or plump, or round, or full people? No. Even Falstaff would be inclined to embonpoint if he were alive, in these days of Gallic supremacy. Well might Victor Cousin and the rest of them declare that the French were not defeated at Waterloo. The allied armies entered Paris it is true, but they made their Exodus in slavery. The English, Germans and Russians went home from France manacled with French fashions, and not a soul of them has dared to assert his independence since.
We are by no means sure that French cookery has not done more to preserve the peace of Europe, during the last twenty years, than all other causes put together. It is impossible to think of a war with France. The mind staggers under the supposititious case of the nations of the earth deprived of French bon-bons. Imagine the commerce with France suspended! Who would perfume us? who feast us? who dress us? Where would our gloves come from? what should we do for slippers? how should we be off for soap? Would there be any more ribbons? any more brandy fruits? any more meringues? any more chocolate? Where should we look for another Blancard, another Fauvel-Gouraud? Would there be any more dancing? any more fashions? any more any thing? The true Mystéres de Paris nobody knows any thing about but the Parisians themselves, and they are too cunning to pronounce their open sesame loud enough to be heard by the rest of the world. How like gudgeons we all snapped at the bait of Eugene Sue! But the Mysteries of Paris are written in a kind of Parisian Coptic, which none but the Parisian can read.
The English eat, or at least a portion of them do, and they cook, but who ever heard of an English eating-house, or of an English cook? We have heard of Dolly’s chop-house, but its reputation was gained by the quality of its guests rather than the merit of its cooks. For aught the world knows to the contrary, there is not an eating-house in any of the European capitals beside Paris. But every body knows the names, the situation, and even the carte du jour of at least a dozen restaurants in the French capital without ever having been there. The ‘Rocher’ is as well known as the Rock of Gibraltar, and Very and Châtelain have reputations as extended as those of Guizot and Theirs. Vatel is more famous than Vattel, and the cook will doubtless be remembered when the philosopher is forgotten: he will never die, at least, while the memory of Sevignè lives.
Not long since we saw on a sign-board, stuck up at the entrance of a cellar on the corner of Reade-street and Broadway, ‘Au Rocher de Cancale,’ painted in very soup-maigreish looking letters, with an attempt at the representation of an oyster-shell. Now look at the impudence of the thing; at the Frenchiness of it! Here we are with our Prince’s Bays, our York-rivers, our Mill-ponders, our Shrewsburys, and Blue pointers, a shilling’s worth of either worth all the shell-fish that ever grew on the French coast; and this Parisian sets up his sign in the midst of these marine riches, with a ‘Rocher de Cancale!’ No other nation could have been guilty of such arrogance. No Englishman has ever had the temerity to insult us with an allusion to his dirty ‘natives.’
What would be thought of an American who should have the presumption to open a House of Refreshment in the Rue St. Jacques or the Palais Royale, and announce to the Parisians that he would serve up for them Prince’s Bay oysters, fried, stewed, roasted or in the shell; clam soup, pumpkin-pies, waffles, hoe-cakes and slap-jacks, or mush-and-milk and buck-wheats? Would the most inquisitive or most vulgar man in France venture within the doors of a house where such barbarisms were perpetrated? But why not, Monsieur? Why not, as well as for us to crowd the salons of the Messieurs who tempt us with their equally outlandish carte à manger, or who exclaim to us when we enter:
‘Mon salon est toujours gami,
Et mon buffet bien assorti,
Ou vante mon chablis,
Mes huitres, mes radis,
Ainsi que raes salmis
De perdrix:
Mes godiveaux au ris;
Mes tourtes, mes hachis;
Fameux pâlis, gros et petits;
Bœuf au naturel, au coulis;
Papillotes,
Gibelotes,
Matelotes,
Fines compotes,’ etc., etc.
Why should not we send over some of our Jenningses and Stetsons, our Bergalews and Downings, to repay our French friends for their many favors, and instruct them in the art of making pumpkin-pies and eating canvass-back ducks? The French at present know little more about us than that Doctor Franklin made lightning-rods, and that Cooper writes Indian novels. They eat nothing that we raise, they wear nothing that we make, they adopt none of our fashions, they use none of our phrases. You would look in vain in the carte of any restaurateur in Paris for such delicacies as apple-dumplings or corn-bread, and you might call in a Parisian café until you were hoarse, for a ‘cobbler’ or a julep, without getting either. Yet our uppish people will eat nothing, drink nothing, wear nothing that is not French. We have been told of certain brokers in Wall-street who import even their desserts from Paris; not their deserts, my friend, for the guillotine is the only French thing which we don’t imitate or import. No wine is fit for our tables without the prefix of a chateau something; every thing that is composed of wool is something de laine, and all our clothes are made of drap de this or drap de that.
But let us not paint our Gallic friends a shade darker than they deserve. They have taught us the use of napkins and silver forks; they give us the best perfumery in the world, and make the best gravies for our meats. What is the privilege of writing the songs of a nation, compared with the privilege of setting its fashions? The supremacy of the French in all matters of taste is not the effect of accident. Why do they rule the world by their elegancies? There is a philosophy in these things, as well as in every thing else, which is worthy of grave consideration.
The secret of French authority lies in the simple truth that they count every thing worthy of being well done which is worth doing at all. We have grades of usefulness. Not so with them. Whether they make a pâté or build a palace, it is a grave matter; and the consequence is, that their pâtés as well as their palaces excel those of the other kingdoms of Europe. The Louvre is as much superior to Buckingham Palace as a Charlotte-Russe is to a Yorkshire pudding. Cookery and Architecture are the first arts practised by mankind, and the last in which they arrive at perfection. The French excel all other nations in both. The condition of one art might be ascertained with precision by examining the state of the other in any part of the world, or in any age. When cooks served up pastry with peacocks’ tails sticking out of the top crust, architects built gothic churches and campanile towers. Penault and Vatel ornamented the same age. One built a palace and the other cooked a dinner, and they are both immortal. It would be no difficult matter to guess at the extravagance and unhealthiness of our kitchens, from a glance at our Exchange and Custom House. The ponderous marble and granite boulders in these senseless structures have their correspondents in many a lump of indigestible food; and the bizarreterie of the new Trinity Church have their correspondents in many a temple composed of macaronis and cocoanut candies.
We have grades of usefulness, but it is no easy matter to discover the principles upon which our scale of respect is graduated: money is not always the test of merit; it matters how you get it. If you earn it yourself, it will not entitle you to half the respect it would if your father or grandfather earned it for you. Any occupation which soils the hands or the clothes, is looked upon with disfavor by the upper classes. A broker who never does any thing that is either useful or ornamental, grows nothing, invents nothing, imagines nothing; who instructs nobody, amuses nobody, enriches nobody; who leaves the world in the same condition that he found it, may be called a gentleman, visit in the first circles, have those mysterious letters, E.S.Q., written after his name, and if he is rich, will be elected a member of more societies than will be agreeable to him. But a wig-maker who has invented a new spring for a toupée, or a new dye for the hair, and thereby really done mankind a service, could no more get into the first circles with us than he could go to heaven, like Mahomet, on the back of an ass. Shoemakers’ wives and bakers’ daughters are people of whose acquaintance nobody ever speaks boastingly. I once knew the nephew of a barber who always blushed when his uncle was named in his hearing. But an attorney’s lady, or a banker’s daughter, are often paraded in an ostentatious manner before one by their friends, and I have never known the nephew of a soldier-officer, whose business is to take people’s lives, blush at the profession of his relative. It cannot be expected that men will labor in callings that gain them only the contempt of their neighbors; and therefore while it is accounted disgraceful among us to do any thing that is useful, we must be content to remain dependent upon any people who have more sense in regard to this matter than ourselves.
We are very well aware that shoemakers and pastry-cooks are not the kind of people who compose the French court; but there can be no denial of the fact that certain kinds of artisans are treated by the French people with a greater degree of respect than they are with us. Very different from the dogged surliness of an Englishman, or the who-cares-for-you manner of our own countrymen, is the air of conscious self-respect of certain classes of French tradesmen. In the present condition of our society, we hold it to be among the impossible things to make a decent pastry-cook out of an American citizen, or a decent citizen out of a pastry-cook. But is there any good reason why we should not? Do not pastry-cooks contribute as much toward human happiness as sugar-refiners or importers of molasses? Should you not feel as well disposed toward the individual who had made a meringue to your liking, as toward him who had imported the materials of which it was composed? The King of the French seats artists at his dinner-table, bestows the ‘legion of honor’ upon them; pays them liberally for their works, and settles pensions upon them. Artists with us, as artists, do not often find their way into our upper circles; if they are respectable in their habits and associates, they are rather countenanced for their respectability than noticed for their genius. We know a whiskey-distiller who refused his daughter to a portrait-painter, unless he would abandon his profession; simply because it was a low calling.
It is very common with us to call the French triflers; but it is one of the many bad habits which we have inherited from the English, and the sooner we free ourselves from it, the better will it be for us. We shall never be ambitious to excel a people whom we pretend to despise. If doing small things well be trifling, then the French are triflers. But what must we call them for their great works? There is no art, no science, no department of learning in which the English excel them. They are the best architects in Europe; the best physicians; the best chemists, the best astronomers. They have cut off the head of one king and banished another; what more have the English done? But they can afford to be called any thing: they set the fashions of the whole world. Queen Victoria is as much a subject of Louis Phillipe in her dress as any lady in France. With all her immense territory, her great authority, she cannot change the fashion of a bonnet.
The difference between French and English art is as great as the difference between the Louvre and the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square; and about the same relative difference prevails with regard to us. At the last exhibition of the Louvre there were four thousand paintings offered; at the last exhibition of the National Academy there were about four hundred. This is not a very correct method of judging of the artistic excellence of a nation, but it is not far from correct in this case.
H. F.
A Picture by Murillo.—The time has yet to arrive when the march of empire westward will bring in its train our portion of those chef d’œuvres of painting and sculpture which adorn the princely palaces of Europe, and confer distinction upon the possessors of wealth and taste in humbler abodes. To us, who have never visited those miracles of art, the sight of one of them is too gratifying to be passed over without imparting a share of the pleasure to our less fortunate readers. For the first time in our lives, we have enjoyed the delight of seeing at the house of a friend one of the grand pictures of Murillo, which was obtained by a distinguished connoisseur at Lima, in 1828, from the cloister of an old convent, where it had hung for countless years in ignoble seclusion. It had probably been brought from Spain during the life-time of the painter, as it is not described by any of his biographers, who have carefully enumerated the works of his pencil. This idea is strengthened by the fact of his having inscribed his name upon the picture, which is not to be found upon any of his master-pieces at Madrid and Seville. Although it has not escaped the injuries of time and ignorance, it appears to have had the rare good fortune never to have passed through the hands of a restorer or scourer: the whole effect of its magical colouring remains unobscured, except a few touches of the brush of some dauber, who has tried the experiment of adding freshness to the rose.
The subject of it is the Holy Family, of life-size. Saint Joseph is seen in the background, with the infant Saviour in his arms, presenting him to his mother, who is kneeling with extended hands to receive the precious burden of love. Like most of his great scriptural pictures, the composition is simple and natural, exhibiting a familiar scene in domestic life, elevated by expression, and ennobled by beauty. The Saint’s face, which is of the true Andalusian type, is fraught with benignity, as he graciously inclines toward the mother, with the infant resting tenderly in his hands as if supported by a bed of down. Nothing can surpass the graceful figure and attitude of the mother, whose features are literally overflowing with maternal affection, while she caressingly holds out her hands to receive her son. But the charm of the picture is the infant Deity himself, upon whom the painter has lavished his art, and poured forth the inspiration of his genius. His position forms the centre of the group, and instantly arrests the attention and commands the admiration of the spectator. He looks as if just awakened from a deep slumber; his eye-lids are tinged with red, and the motion of his limbs betokens the sudden consciousness of suspended existence; his playful smiling features are radiant with joy at recognizing his mother, toward whom his hands are invitingly opened. His figure is foreshortened, and to such a degree that his legs are out of the canvass, instinct with life and motion. His flesh has the plumpness and transparency of perfect health, flushed with roseate tints; his appearance denotes a child of nine or ten months old, but without that expression of premature intelligence by which the infant Saviour is distinguished in the pictures of Raphael. He is, in short, just one of those angelic creatures fresh from the hands of the Creator, oftener found in the cradles of peasants than of princes. The hands and feet of all the figures are painted with warmth, and with such sun-light transparency, that the ruddy current seems actually coursing beneath the skin. Indeed the whole tone of the picture is so life-like, that for the moment we cease believing it to be an illusion of lights and shadows reflected upon canvass. All the draperies are large and flowing, and broadly touched: that of the infant is a luminous white; the saint’s is sombre; the mother’s is of that violet tint, said to be peculiar to Murillo, styled by the French, lie de vin.
In the grand compositions of Raphael, we often see the actors grouped into a pyramidal form. In this of Murillo, they present a diagonal line; extending from the head of the Saint to that of the mother, and down to a pannier in the corner of the picture, which contains her needle-work attached to a cushion in the Spanish fashion. At her feet a small dog is seated, of the Mexican race, which appears alive. Saint Joseph is painted in shadow, and forms the second plan of the picture. Behind him are suspended some of the implements of his humble trade.
