have been overlaid and in a measure lost sight of in the torrent of new literature-but all three now to be had together in fair type, price one shilling! The man who could read these poems without feeling the chamber of his brain filled with incense-without feeling his heart warm, his blood moved, and his inmost craving of novelty and melody deliciously ministered to, does not love poetry enough to "possess a rose-tint for his russet cares." I declare I think it is worth the outlay of a fever to get (by seclusion and depletion) the delicacy of nerve and perception to devour and relish with intellectual nicety, these three subtly compounded feasts of the imagination. We are indebted for many beautiful things not so much to accident, as to the quickness of genius to appreciate and appropriate accident. I was pleased with an instance that came to my knowledge last night. Wallace (the omni-dexterous) was playing the piano in my room, and, among others of his own inimitable waltzes, he played one called the Midnight Waltz, in which twelve strokes of the clock recur constantly with the aria. In answer to an inquiry of mine, he told me he was playing, one night, to some ladies in Lima, when a loud silvery-toned clock in the room struck twelve. He insensibly stopped, and beat the twelve strokes on an accordant note on the piano, and in repeating the passage, stopped at the same place and beat twelve again. The effect was particularly impressive and sweet, and he afterwards composed a waltz expressly to introduce it-one of the most charming compositions I ever heard. Wallace is the most prodigal of geniuses and most prodigally endowed. He has lived a life of adventure in the East Indies, South America, New South Wales, and Europe, that would fill satisfactorily the life-cups of a dozen men, and how he has found time to be what he probably is, as great a violinist and as great a pianist as the greatest masters on those instruments, is certainly a wonder. But this is not all. He was rehearsing for a concert not long since in New York, when the clarionet-player, in reply to some correction, said that "if Mr. Wallace wished it played better, he might play it himself." Wallace took the clarionet from the hand of the refractory musician, and played the passage so exquisitely as quite to electrify the orchestra. He is the most modest of men, and how many more instruments he is master of (besides the human voice, which he plays on in conversation very attractively,) it would be wild to guess. By the way, it would be worth the while of a music-publisher to send for the music he has literally sewn the world with—for he has written over three hundred waltzes, of most of which he has no copy, though they have been published and left in the cities he has visited. He composes many hours of every day. I think Wallace one of the most remarkable men I ever knew. want of beauty, is graceful, vivid, a capital actress, and sings with a bird-like abandon, that enchants you even with her defects. Nature has given her quite her share of attractive ness and she uses it all. The opera was “I Puritani”—BELLINI's last, and the one that was playing, for only the third time, the night he died-(at the age of twenty-seven.) It was well selected for the opening opera-being full of intelligible and expressive melody, and not compelling the musically uninitiated to get on tiptoe to comprehend it. These same uninitiateds, || however, are the class to cater for, in any country, and especially in ours. It is a great mistake to fancy that, in the appreciation of an opera, criticism goes before. On the contrary, feeling goes before and criticism follows very slowly. The commonest lover of music feels for instance, that Bellini's operas are marked by simplicity and sameness but, after having felt that, the critic comes in and follows up the idea like an ink-fish, expressing that plain fact in cloudy technicalities this-wise :-" Bellini rather multiplies the repetitions of the chord than gives distinct business to the several components of the score!" Who cares to know, when in tears at Rossini's exquisite harmony that it is produced by a "profuse use of the diminished seventh," or that one of his most electric effects is done by "a harmonic atrocity of consecutive fifths." To have one's tear shed on a piece of paper and thus analyzed, may be curious, once, but not very necessary always, and I wish with all my heart, that the humbug of technicalities in this, as in many other things, might be exposed. It would be a capital subject for a popular lecture. I lend the suggestion to Mr. Emerson-the man best capable of using it. 66 Supper is a natural sequence to music, and I must mention a pair of canvass-back that were sent me by a Baltimore friend, and feasted on last night after "I Puritani,”for the sake of giving you and " your public" some valuable and toothsome directions for the cooking of these birds, contained in a passage of my friend's letter. I have some anxiety," he says, " about the cooking of these ducks. Pray don't put them in the power of a Frenchman! Get hold of a good English or American cook, knowing in roasts. Let this cook erect a strong, blazing fire, before which he (or she) must tend the birds for about twenty-five or thirty minutes. To determine if they are done, have them held up by the feet, and if the gravy runs out of the necks, of a proper colour, they don't require another turn. Serve them up with their own gravy. 'Tis safer than a chafing-dish and made gravy. Eat them with hominy patties, between which and the ducks there is a delicate affinity. Beware, I conjure you once more, of a Frenchman-except in the shape of a glass of Chablis. May they prove luscious as those we ate together at Guy's." I have often thought, and once or twice, said, that a corFebruary 7. On Saturday night I was at the opening of the new Opera notions of that town of jerky enthusiasms, would be a respondence from Boston, cleverly done, hitting off the -the beginning, as I think, of a regular supply of a great capital feature of a paper in New-York. Some clever obluxury. The bright, festal look of Palmo's exquisite little server is doing the same thing, in rather a different way, theatre struck every one with surprise, on entering, and the through a publication in monthly numbers called "LIFE IN cozy, sympathy-sized construction and the pleasant arrange- TOWN, or THE BOSTON SPY, being a series of sketches illus. ment of seats, etc., seemed to leave nothing to be wishedtrative of whims and women in the Athens of America." It for. With a kindly fostering for a while, on the part of the is done with great sketchiness, and, with more condensing, press and the public, Palmo's theatre may become the most would transform into a valuable correspondence. enjoyable and refined resort of the city. The new prima donna made a brilliant hit. New-York is, at this moment, in love with Signorina Borghese. She dresses a-merveille, has a very intellectual and attractive * A friend has since told me that Wallace plays every instrument of the orchestra, and most of them like a master. IE Here is an epigram on the turning of Greenough's Washington out of the Capitol: Ye sages who work for eight dollars a day YOUNG POETS. Does not the calm, the solemn hush around thee, May not the thoughts, our kindred bosoms swelling, Our earthly love be lasting and sublime? Nor earth can chain thy vision from the sky; This is beautiful and musical, but it might be much mend. It is a wonderful production, considering the author's advantages, and we hope great things of him. ed. AN old man with no friend but his money-a fair child holding the hand of a Magdalen-a delicate bride given over to a coarse-minded bridegroom-were sights to be troubled at seeing. We should bleed at heart to see either of them. But there is something even more touching to us than these something, too, which is the subject of heartless and habitual mockery by critics-the first timid offerings to fame of the youthful and sanguine poet. We declare that we never open a letter from one of this class, never read a preface to the first book of one of them, never arrest our critical eye upon a blemish in the immature page, without having the sensation of a tear coined in our heart-never without a passionate though inarticulate "God help you!" We know so well the rasping world in which they are to jostle, with their "fibre of sarcenct!" We know so well the injustices, the rebuffs, the sneers, the insensibilities, from without, the impatiences, the resentments, the choked impulses and smothered heart-boundings within. And yet it is not these outward penances, and inward scorpions that cause us the most regret in the fate of the poet. Out of these is born the inspired expression of his anguish-like the plaint of the singing bird from the heated needle which A young lady in Brooklyn who signs herself "Short and blinds him. We mourn more over his fatuous impervious- Sweet," writes to us to say that she is very tired of her ness to counsel-over his haste to print, his slowness to corname, and seeing no prospect of getting another (with an rect-over his belief that the airy bridges he builds over the owner to it) wishes to know whether she may lawfully chasms in his logic and rhythm are passable, by avoirdupois abandon the unsentimental prenomen inflicted on her at on foot, as well as by Poesy on Pegasus. That the world is baptism, and adopt one of her own more tasteful selection. not as much enchanted-(that we ourselves are not as much By an understanding with all the people likely to put her touched and delighted)-with the halting flights of new name in their wills, we should think she might. Names are poets as with the broken and short venturings in air of new a modern luxury, and if she chose to be rococo, she might fledged birds-proves over again that the world we live in do without one, or be known as the ancients were by some were a good enough Eden if human nature were as loveable word descriptive of her personal peculiarities. (So came as the rest. We wish it were not so. We wish it were natu- into use the names of Brown, Long, Broadhead, etc.) ral to admire anything human-made, that has not cost pain" Short and Sweet" would not be a bad name. Or-if the and trial. But, since we do not, and cannot, it is a pity, we say again, that beginners in poetry are offended with kind counsel. Of the great many books and manuscript poems we receive, there is never one from a young poet, which we do not long, in all kindness, to send back to him to be re-studied, re-written, and made, in finish, more worthy of the conception. To praise it in print only puts his industry to sleep, and makes him dream he has achieved what is yet far beyond him. We ask the young poets who read this, where would be the true kindness in such a case. And now we will give a piece of poety which is the least criticisable of what we have lately received-written by BAYARD TAYLOR, the "apprentice-boy in a printing office," of whom we spoke a week or two since. Through the young leaves the moon-rays softly glimmer, Where mellow light, by twining boughs made dimmer, Sleeps calmly in the streamlet's gentle flow; I am alone-in dreamy silence musing, But Thought to Poesy's realms doth soar in vain ; The classic haunts of loftier song refusing, To thee it flies, nor wanders forth again ;- Oh! dost thou ne'er, from this soft moonlight stealing As if thou didst some mystic influence own? lady chooses to follow the Arabian custom, she (supposing her father's name to be a well-sounding one-say Tiskins) would be called "Tiskins's Short and Sweet daughter"— people in Arabia being only designated as brown or fair, short or tall, children of such and such parents. There was a Roman fashion, too, that might help her out-that of adding to the name any quality or exploit for which the bearer was remarkable-Miss Short and Sweet Heartbreaker, for example, or Miss "Noli-me-Tangere," or (after the favourite flower of the Irish) Miss Jump-up-and-kiss. me." (The Irish designate Tom Moore by this pretty prenomen.) Our compliments to the lady and we are sorry she should want a name-sorry she has a want we cannot sup. ply. It happens to be the one thing we are out of.* The amusing contribution in our last called a case of res titution was written by J. WILMOT NEAT, Esq. an English gentleman of very high education and (as the article in ques tion shows) a charming talent for sketchy and graphic writ ing. We mention it in reply to a query whether the article was taken from an English paper. Mr. Neat is residing in New-York, and it was written for the New Mirror. * By the way, we (I) get now and then an epistle freighted with the weighty query of what may be represented by that mysterious "P." among my initials. The General and I have a brace of these P.'s between us. He may promulge his own at his brigadier time and pleasure. (Shakspeare probably foreshadowed him under the character of "P's blossom.") The "P." in "N. P. W." stands for Parker, the owner's family cognomen on the maternal side. It will be something in pocket, to stop paying postage on curiosity in refe rence to this little "P." |