whenever asked, as well as ever she had done in public. She seemed to me never to have been intoxicated with her brilliant successes, and to have had no besoin of applause left like a thirst in her ears-as is the case with popular favourites too often. Her husband, M. VALABREQUE, was a courteous man and a fond husband, and their children were on an equal footing of social position with the young nobility of Florence. Most strangers who see anything of the so-cretion, according to the suitabilities of the employer. ciety of that delightful city come away with charming remembrances of Madame CATALANI. considered a received sign of deep mourning or poverty. Few people can trust their taste to go into such an immense warehouse as Meeks's and select (in one style, and that style suitable to their house, condition, and manner of living) the furniture for an establishment. It would be a good vocation for a reduced gentleman to keep taste to let, holding himself ready to take orders, and execute them at dis Tiffany's is a fashionable pleasure-lounge already, his broad glass doors and tempting windows being at one of the WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY is growing into a temperance most thronged corners of Broadway. It is better than a anniversary, probably much to the pleasure, and a little museum, in being quite as well stocked with surprises, and to the surprise, of the distinguished ghost. There was a these all ministering to present and fashionable wants. grand temperance celebration at the Tabernacle last even- Where resides the prodigious ingenuity expended on these ing, at which the eloquent author of the Airs of Palestine, superb elegancies and costly trifles, it would be hard to disRev. JOHN PIERPONT, delivered an address. By the way, cover. And the seductive part of it is, that there are it is an overlooked feather in the cap of temperance, that articles for all prices, and you may spend a dollar or five we owe to it the pleasant invention of KISSING. In the hundred in the same dainty line of commodity! course of my reading I have fallen in with the historical The times are 66 easy," if we can judge by the articles fact, that, when wine was prohibited by law to the women that find plenty of buyers. I heard yesterday that a shopof ancient Rome, male relatives had the right of ascertain-keeper in Broadway had imported several ladies' dresses, ing, by tasting the lips of their sisters and cousins, whether the forbidden liquor had passed in. The investigations of this lip police, it is said, were pushed with a rigor and vigilance highly creditable to the zeal of the republic, and for a time intemperance was fairly kissed away. Subsequently, female intoxication became fashionable again, (temperance kisses notwithstanding!) and Seneca (in his Epistolæ) is thus severe upon the Roman ladies: "Their manners have altogether changed, though their faces are as captivating as ever. They make a boast of their exploits in drinking.* They will sit through the night with the glass in their hands,|| challenging the men, and often outdoing them." Now, by restoring the much-abused and perverted KISS to its original mission, and making of it the sacred apostle of inquiry that it was originallly designed for, it strikes me that the temperance committees would have many more "active members," and the cause would assuredly grow on public favour. I submit the hint to that admirable enthusiast, Mrs. CHILD. There are two establishments in the city of New-York which should be visited by those who require stretchers to their comprehension of luxury-Meeks's Furniture Ware. house, behind the Astor, and Tiffany's Bijou-shop, at the corner of Warren-street and Broadway. In a search I have lately made for a bookcase of a particular fancy, I have made the round of furniture warehouses, and, as a grand epitome of all of them-a seven story building, crammed with furniture on every floor-I should recommend the mere idle sight-seer to spend a morning at Meeks's for his amusement. Upon the simple act of sitting down has been expended as much thought (in quantity) as would produce another Paradise Lost. Some of the chairs, indeed, are poems-the beautiful conception and finish of them, taken into the mind with the same sensation, at least, and the same glow of luxury. The fancies of every age and country are represented those of the Elizabethan era and the ornate fashion of Louis XIV. predominant, though tables and sofas on Egyptian models are more sumptuous. At so much cost, they ought to put the mind at ease as well as the body. And, by the way, the combining of couch and chair in one (now so fashionable) would have pleased the Roman dames, whose husbands kept chairs for women and mourners-a man's sitting upon a chair (in preference to a couch) being They also became the cause of tippling in others, for it grew into a common practice at Roman suppers to drink a glass to every letter of a beauty's name-the longer the more toasted. "Nævia sex cyathis, septem Justina bibatur." priced at one thousand dollars each, and had no difficulty in selling them. Mr. Meeks informed me that, of a certain kind of very costly chair, he could not keep one unsold! It was certainly a superb article, made of carved rosewood and purple velvet; price (for a single chair) one hundred and fifty dollars! We have not yet adopted, in this country, the French custom of ornamenting dinner-tables very expensively with silver vases and artificial flowers, nor has the old Roman custom ever been resumed, I think, of placing the "household gods" upon the table. The aspect of a suppertable in Cicero's time, indeed, must have been beyond the show even of Bourbon sybarites; the guests in white and scarlet robes, with chaplets of roses, myrtle, or ivy on their heads, lying by threes on couches covered with purple or embroidered with gold and silver-a crowd of slaves, chosen for their beauty, waiting within the square formed by the tables, and dressed in tunics of the brightest colours-over all a canopy of purple cloth, giving the room the appearance of a superb tent-the courses brought in with a regular procession marching to music-last, (not least heightening to the effect,) the custom, borrowed of the Egyptians, of bringing in a skeleton, in the midst of the feast, to furnish a foil to the enjoyment. All these were common features of Roman luxury at the time when Rome had the treasures of the earth at her disposal, and probably will never be reproduced in the same splendour, unless we rebarbarize and make war upon Europe under a military chieftain. Mitchell's theatre carries the town with Cinderella. The opera goes on well, too. The only very great wonder is the talking machine," which I have not yet seen. I will see it and describe it for you. 66 The February rehearsal of spring is over-the popular play of April having been well represented by the reigning stars and that pleasant company of players the Breezes. The drop-curtain has fallen, representing a winter-scene, principally clouds and snow, and the beauties of the dress-circle have retired (from Broadway) discontented only with the beauty of the piece. By the way, the acting was so true to nature that several trees in Broadway were affected tobudding! "Ah, friends, methinks it were a pleasant sphere, THE LAND OF INTERMEZZO. If spring be cognate to one poetical subject more than all others, it is to the single dreamy fable upon which are founded three immortal poems-one by Thomas Moore, one by Lord Byron, and the third, (quite as beautiful as either,) by the Rev. George Croly, The last-" THE ANGEL OF THE WORLD," by Croly,* and the first, "THE LOVES OF THE AN 66 is where happiness dwells. We say so timidly, for we live It must be Heaven in a country famous for extremes. No. 1," to tempt the Yankee! Paradise, which lies between earth and heaven, would be poor stock in Wallstreet! The best-only the best and most exciting, in the way of pleasure, for this market-Rags, or the best broad cloth, the only wear-Sullen privation or sudden luxury, the only living :-Stars, or no actors:-Millions, or hand-toGELS," by Moore, are just issued in Extras of the Mirror. The other, Byron's "HEAVEN AND EARTH," (so universal mouth :-Perfectly obscure, or highly fashionable! Medium -intermezzo-there is (quasi) none in America! are the works of the noble bard,) we took for granted was In this sweet land of Intermezzo we find ourself, of latter already within reach of every reader. Apart from the excessive beauty of these poems, it is curious to peruse them years, laying up treasure. Quiet lives there. Reverie is with a view to comparison-to read first the short and sim-native there. Content dwells nowhere else. Modesty reple story of "Haruth and Maruth," and then study the different shapes into which it is cast by the kaleidoscope ima. ginations of three of the master-minstrels of the time. [Stay-do you live in the country, dear reader? Have you a nook near by-(natural)—or can you go to one in imagination, or will you come to ours-where our spirit is likely to be—that is to say, while scribbling this page, this glorious morning? For Spring makes a mad-house of a city's brick walls, and we must think in the country to-day-live, bodily, where we will.] Here we are, then, in a deep down dell-the apparent horizon scarce forty feet from us-nothing visible that has been altered since God made it-and a column of clear space upward, topped by the zenith, like a cover to a well -this dell the bottom of it. (The zenith off, we should see heaven, of course!) In my pocket are the three poems abovementioned and a few editorial memoranda-but we will bind ourselves to nothing-not even to talk about these poems unless we like, nor to remember the memoranda. Idleness was part of Paradise, and with the weather of Paradise it comes over us, irresistibly. To bring heaven and earth together-to make heaven half earth, and earth half heaven-is the doomed labour and thirst of poetry; and of these three poems the desire for this pleasant intermezzo is the exclusive under-tow, the unexpressed yet predominating stimulus. To Byron, (with his earthly mind unmodified,) complete heaven would doubt. less have been as unpalatable as were evidently the mere realities of earth. He, and Moore, and Croly, have seized upon the eastern fable, of angels made half human and mortals half divine, to give voice to the dumb ache of their imaginations-an ache as native to the bosoms of the "Mirror parish," as to these three immortal subjects of mortal Victoria. (She ought, by the way, to wear a separate crown for her loyal immortals—the undying men of genius who are her subjects exclusively, and whose fame is, at least, usque-millenial and a thousand years over.) Each of these has pulled down angels to the love of flesh and blood,—(the happiness each would least like to lose, probably, in becoming an angel)—but there are differences in the other particulars of their half and half Paradise, most characteristic of the qualities of the different poets, and pleasant stuff for your idle hour's unravelling, oh reader, rich in leisure! But this land of Intermezzo-this kingdom of Middlings -this beatific, and poet-loved half and half! Let us talk of it some more! We are inclined to think that HALF WAY, in most things, *This is the poem spoken of on the last page of the last number of the Mirror-as having affected us more powerfully in the reading than almost any other work of imagination we remember. It is published in the same shilling Extra with Leigh Hunt's beautiful STORY OF THE RIMINI, and accompanied with Notes and Criticisms on both Poems-forming, together, EXTRA No. 12. tires there when she would escape Envy, for there Envy never sets foot. St. Paul saw that land when he said"Give me neither poverty nor riches." " "Something I must like and love," says old Feltham, "but nothing so violently as to undo myself with wanting it.” Travel where you will, up to middle age, (says a certain Truth-angel, who sometimes stoops to our ear,) but abide, ever after, in the land of Intermezzo! But, in the land of Intermezzo does not live FAME! It is a land with an atmosphere of sober gray, and fame is the shadow of one living in the sun. If we may preach to the poets among our flock of parishioners, we should say, fore. go this shadow! Think of it as it is-only a shadow. Value it as you do the shadow of your friend-nothing, but for the substance that goes before. Live in the land of Intermezzo, and let Fame find you-taking for it no more care than for your shadow when you walk abroad. Writefor the voice the soul wants,-the utterance without which the heart seems over-full-but be not eager for the world's listening! Fame is sweet when it comes unbeckon'd. The world gives, more willingly than it pays on demand. In the quiet fields of Intermezzo, pluck flowers, to dry unseen in your bosom, and if, by chance, years after, they are unloaded in the sun, they will be thrice fragrant for their shaded keeping. Amen! A personal application has been suspected of one of the ar ticles in a late Mirror. We did not dream of its possibility till the rumour reached us, and the article having come to us anonymously we have no means of knowing its intention except by what it bears on its face. The hit, if any was intended, seems to us not all "palpable," but, by the by, nothing is easier than for an ill-natured person to make us a stalking-horse in this way. A sketch of character that seems, to us, only clever in its truth to nature, and which is therefore innocently published, may contain a malicious combination of circumstances fastening it on one person, and its malice, of course, is intelligible only to those who know that person. We can only promise that the Mirror shall never wound a feeling if we can possibly avoid it, and in case of any accident of this kind, we trust to the public to suspend opinion till we have had our "say." There were, in Shakspeare's day, as well as now, As ravenous fishes, do a vessel follow and what he says of success in life still holds true :- By sick interpreters, or weak ones, is For our best act. But if we shall stand still We should take root here where we sit." -So, the Mirror goes on! |