Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Bosio, and Parodi, with Salvi, Lorini, Vietti, Badiali and Marini, are yet fresh in the memory of opera-goers; in fact, most of them are still in this country. Thus, in the short period of twentyfive years, the opera has been fairly lodged in the affections of almost all classes of our people.

It may not be amiss to notice that the unfortunate managers of opera in America, from Simpson to Maretzek, have, most of them, retired from the operatic field bankrupts. Let it be understood, therefore, by the projectors of the new "ACADEMY OF MUSIC," (a misnomer, by the way,) that all efforts for the permanent establishment of the opera among us, which do not thoroughly re cognize an equalized and republican condition of the people on the one hand, or which are not fortified, on the other hand, by the possession of an impresario who is at once an irreproachable financier, and a lawgiver and a law-enforcer to his troupe, will ultimately prove abortive. We know of but one man who approaches the standard of these requisitions, and that man is WILLIAM NIBLO. Twenty-five years ago, his keen eye perceived the curious union of religious conscience and love of humor and song in the American character, and with due deliberation he commenced catering for its wants. The common voice of the public, and, more particularly, the prompt fulfilment of his pecuniary engagements with artists, amply testify to his success. Then he is a reformer, in his way. He has banished those old abominations, the groggery and third tier, and has kept, and still keeps, a watchful eye upon the morale of his exhibitions. The age demands this; for in this country of the "largest liberty," your singer or your actor, filled with excess of freedom, knows not, at all times, what is due to modesty and strict propriety. Honest and religious men of families, therefore, will not be slow in appreciating that sort of merit in a manager which obliges his troupe to conform to his wishes, and so, very naturally, to those of the people, in these respects. And thus, as we dwell upon the prestige of success which attends our friend Niblo in the management of his beautiful Art-Temple, may we not expect to witness triumphs in the future, which shall equal, if not excel those of the past; in particular, that the honest, legitimate, musical (operatic) wants of all classes of people will receive his candid, careful attention? Already we have the promise from him of an excellent French operatic company from New Orleans, soon to appear. This op. portune for the summer months, and the enterprise has every prospect of success.

BOOKS.

through untravelled wildernesses. These innovations are attempted alike in material and spiritual things. But, amid the Babel of creeds and beliefs that has been evolved, is there one that in any measure does or can compensate for those so perseveringly sought to be overturned? Can the new fill and take the place of the old in the human mind?

Isa is the embodiment of these questions. Her talent, her beauty and genius, are swallowed up in the great problem: Can the New compensate for the Old?

Her intellectuality is of that order which sacrifices love, affection, happiness-nay, every thing but will, to the one idea of, not reform, but progress; and this progress is in a path not toward light, but toward a deceptive darkness, which she mistakes for light. In her self-deception, for such it is, she concludes there is no God but human will, and, as that is God, it must be infinite. She invests her own soul with some of the attributes of divinity, and, in her health and strength, fails to see the falsity of such investiture; but when, in weakness of body, and a rapid approach to dissolution, she still fails to perceive it, and persists in her infatuation, we are utterly lost in surprise. Human weakness, which seldom fails to abase the proud and humble the lofty, fails utterly to affect her. Even death, that stern foe to human pride and self-will, does not possess the power to awaken in her spirit that humility which every human being must feel.

Isa was a woman. We see this in her love for Wearre Duganne, imperfectly developed as it was, and in her affection for his mother; in the power of her affections at her first two partings from Wearre, when the woman triumphed over the will. She loved as a woman loves; but she strove against that love as woman never strives when the object is worthy. She deemed it beneath her to love; and yet, when Alanthus Stuart could woo her to what the world calls dishonor, her will was merged in bis will, and she fell. But to the last she was unconscious of her fall; to the last, she maintained the superiority of will; to the last, her soul clung to the soul of him who had ruined her, both in the estimation of the world and of Heaven, with an intensity of devotion, not love, not affection, which centred the more strongly on him, because she willed that she would love no other. We here see the necessity of love, the inevitable necessity of loving, to every human being, the strongest in mental power, as well as those who

are weaker.

With the character of Gansevoort Norton we can have little to do. His is by far the most truthfully drawn of the prominent ones in the book, except, perhaps, that of Wearre Duganne. Norton, talented

Isa: A Pilgrimage. By CAROLINE CHESEBRO'. as he was, gifted as he was, and with all those pow

[blocks in formation]

ers of fascination so unsparingly exercised, is but a type of the unlawfulness in passion that exista more or less every where, and far more generally than is suspected. We would not make humanity worse than it is; but this illicit passion, although it may, as it ever should, be voiceless and unexpressed, is far more general in the world than is often thought, or even cared. An antidote to the poison in this character of Norton, may be found in Mary Irving's cool and virtuous repulse of his

had loved, then spurned, whose cup of life she had poisoned with her bitterness, he stood beside her; and then pressing his cheek to hers, now cold in death, departed from her presence-for evermore.

advances. Although her marriage, and the revelation of her feelings to Isa, would deny it, she was the stronger woman. She failed at the first, but overcame at the last; while Isa overcame at first, but to fall more surely and for ever. The authoress, no doubt, intended to contrast Isa with Miss Chesebro' appears to entertain the fashionMary Irving, and Wearre Duganné with Ganse-able idea-one very prevalent since the days of voort Norton. In some particulars she has suc- Lord Byron and Mrs. Hemans-that persons of ceeded; in others, how she has failed may appear intellect and genius must of necessity be unhappy to every reader. Isa's death, horrible as it was, in their domestic life. That they are sometimes as it should have been, after such a life, and such so, none will or can deny; but that they are so principles put into such practice, was not yet hor-oftener or more intensely than others of like caparible to her. Mary's death was calm and peace-cities, cannot be sustained. Evidences of the most ful; Isa's was also calm: but whither ward did the conclusive character lead us to assert, that artists portal of death unclose the way? To one it led to her reward; to the other, did it not likewise } Amid all the trumpery about " Woman's Rights" and the reorganization of society on a superior marital basis, we can hardly discern what the authoress would teach us. Whether it were better for us to "dissolve the marriage contract," to repudiate all connections but those founded on desire, (there is no other word,) or whether it were better that we should continue to "marry, and be given in marriage," is left almost wholly in the dark. Almost, but not quite; yet it is only by a circuitous route we arrive at the conclusion that she would have the marriage relation sacred, modified, perhaps, by superior facilities for divorce.

It is well, perhaps, to rise as much as possible above the mortal and sensual, to be as far as in us lies freed from the bonds of the body, and as unmindful as we can be of earthly influences; but if it is well to do as did Isa, to leave the pure love of a noble, an intelligent, upright man, for the teachings of impurity, for sophistry, and the unlawful intercourse of sociality, judge ye. This was Isa's choice: a life of abandonment, yet only as to one, rather than lawful love for another. But we are getting on too fast.

She says of music:

"I love to hear the human heart breasting the waves of feeling, and leaping upon the beach of sound, saved, because it can find expression. I think that in this world of misery, none are so perfectly miserable as the voiceless; and such are the more to be pitied, if they are not conscious of their deprivation."

Such beautiful passages as this are not uncommon in this remarkable book. Isa is a genius; her soul is a struggling, eagle-like soul; yet it is not the clear sun of truth that it seeks, but a bright and dazzling meteor, flashing and brilliant, which she takes, wills to be the goal of her aspiration, and she follows, overtakes, and upon it rests her eternity.

of every kind, that intellectual and commanding persons, are as happy in domestic life as are others. Unhappiness does not follow greatness or brilliancy, but is caused by its own peculiar causes, which causes exist wholly separate and apart from the degree or quality of talent. Talent has nothing to do with congeniality; nothing with evenness or acerbity of temper; nothing with those thousand trifling things and incidents which go so far toward making up our every-day life. There is as much unhappiness among those who are not talented as among those who are so; although the contrary is often-always asserted.

But in view of this, she tells us that the union of Isa with Stuart, founded as it was on other considerations than that love which should ever be the base of the marriage relation, that union which was acknowledged by none save themselves, was happy and enduring. It is singular, while love, the influence to which we look for permanence and strength in this thing, fails to prove sufficient, that something else, something wholly foreign, although it was mental sympathy, should have been so successful. Would it not have been better, had the issue of this union been of that kind which we imitators and followers of example would not care to have brought home to ourselves? Would not their "experiment" have exerted a more healthful influence on public mind, on the public, and, as of course, on individual morality, and consequently, security, if the result had shown in its true, its life-light, the consequences of this, as every other violation of that domestic law which cannot be violated with impunity?

The fault of the book, in short, lies in these two things: Isa makes of her self-will, her intellectual progress, and her ambition, a threefold deity; and she unites herself to a man as his wife, yet while she is not so, and is happy in the union! We, every-day mortals as we are, must sorrow to see the bulwarks of our purity and faith levelled without so much as acknowledgment of wrong. What we prize is dear to us. What has protected us during our whole lives, what we have learned to love with every lesson we have ever

What displeases most our ideas of propriety is, that evil doing does not meet with its reward. We look upon one in the arms of death-one who is just now to exchange the present for the future-taken, must not be discarded without at least some as about to receive their reward; but Isa, although she had sinned-and the authoress hesitates not to call it sin-dies peacefully, calmly, with the awful word "God" on her lips; she is launched smoothly, and with love, such as she had rejected and such as she had accepted, into the future. And Wearre Duganne, he whom she had deterred from his duty as a minister of the gospel, whom she

shadow of reason. Perhaps Miss Chesebro' intended to show that the course of Isa, that her choice in life, was wrong; but it is only by very roundabout and unsatisfactory reasoning that we arrive at this conclusion. That the book is beautifully and energetically written, all will allow; but of the influence which such a character and the contemplation thereof is calculated to exert, we

cannot in conscience think or speak favorably. Such influence had better remain for ever unexerted; such character for ever undeveloped.

Supernal Theology, and Life in the Spheres; de-
duced from alleged Spiritual Manifestations.
By OWEN G. WARREN. New-York: Fowlers &
Wells. 1852.

It is the custom to make fun of all such books as this; and where one is disposed to ridicule, it must be confessed they afford an excellent opportunity. Most people hold it to be an unanswerable argument against the reality of supernal manifestations that they never participated in them, which is certainly very unreasonable; for there might be such a thing as fire, even if you had never seen a spark; or ice, even if you had never seen frozen water; or rockets and pin-wheels, even if you had never smelt gunpowder: for, to speak logically, your ignorance of any thing is no proof against its existence.

For ourselves, we say candidly, we know very little about spiritual manifestations. The rappings, as far as our own observation goes, are very mysterious; and if they are nothing but a trick, they certainly have the merit of being both clever and successful.

It is, however, no relief to our skeptical impressions that the "spiritual communications" are generally of too vague a nature to be readily comprehended; and it operates as a damper upon our critical research that they are usually quite uninteresting. The present volume is less liable to objection on these points, and we will quote a passage or two, almost up to the style of Swedenborg:

ACCOUNT GIVEN BY A SPIRIT OF HIS SENSATIONS AFTER
DEATH; WRITTEN OUT THROUGH THE HAND OF THE
ELDER MEDIUM, AT A FLW SITTINGS, AS FOLLOWS:

"After I became conscious, I felt like a person
waking from a sleep-from some unpleasant dream
to a reality too beautiful and exquisite to describe.
I saw below me my friends, who all seemed mourn- |·
ing for some one; and upon noticing particularly,
I found that it was I for whom they were weep-
ing; and I thought how strange it was that they
could feel so badly about one who was so beauti-
fully situated. I then saw around me many friends
that I had lost, and was at a loss to account for
my seeing them. Not till then was I conscious
that I was dead-that is, what you call 'dead,'
but, in reality, an opening into life, and life eternal.
"The next thing I realized was, that one spirit
in particular seemed to hover around me; and
when I looked at her particularly, I found that it
was my sister Caroline. She was so transcend-
ently beautiful, that at first I did not recognize
her; but she soon made me conscious that it was

she.

"And then there came to meet me another beautiful spirit, who was my sister Maria. She seemed to descend from some place above me, which looked as we see the sky-as you usually call it looks to us. She seemed so happy to see me, and told me that she was in the Third Sphere.

"The space into which I was ushered was per

fectly empty; and I was told that I could have in it what I most desired.

"First, however. I must tell you that it seemed to be a large garden, surrounded by a wall of flowers. I forgot to mention that the size of the space depends upon the length of time that the person is to stay in it. Mine was not large, as I did not stay in it only when I wished to meditate and pray; for I went to other homes to be taught. "My teachers were persons who were appointed to teach each spirit as it enters. The first ones are called preparatory teachers. Their names are alike, but they are not brothers. They teach the same things. First, they endeavor to eradicate all alse doctrines which had been inculcated during their sojourn in the world.

"You ask if they teach all persons. No, only their division-I mean that part of the Second Sphere which is given to their care. Their division is called the seventh. There are seven divisions to the sphere. Into this one persons go who are not to remain long in the Second Sphere.

"I should now like to tell you about our meetings. Every week a party of us ineet together. It is a party of friends who are congenial, and who enjoy themselves as they most desire. These parties are called 'Affinity Meetings.' The numbers are generally from fifty to sixty, many times much less. If any one thinks the slightest wrong, he is not permitted to attend. That occurs very seldom. We devote our time in these parties to music, and the friendly discussion of interesting subjects from which we could be mutually instructed, and which would give food for thought. We do not meet for any specific purpose-only for our amusement.

"You ask concerning my studies. They are so numerous, it would be impossible to tell you. I will, however, give you some few of the most prominent.

[ocr errors]

History occupies a good part of our study time. "Geology, botany, physiology, and other sciences, from many books upon each one of them, by differ ent authors; and then we discuss their respective merits and truths at our society meetings.

"The books upon these subjects are by authors unknown to us; but we are informed that they are transmitted to us, some from the First Celestial Sphere, and others from the sixth and seventh of our spheres.

[ocr errors]

There are fixed laws, requiring us to study a portion of each day-say six hours; and two hours also each day to teach those in other divisions. After this, we can occupy our time as we choose, provided it be not against the laws.

"The penalty for disobedience depends, of course, upon the offense. There is a certain amount to be learned in each division, and one is obliged to remain there until he has learned it. If he neglects his studies one day without permission, he must remain just one day longer than was at first ordained."

The Elements of Geology; adapted to the Use of Schools and Colleges. By JUSTIN R. LOOMIS, Professor of Chemistry and Geology in Waterville College. With numerous illustrations. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1852.

[graphic]

Egby AF

Mpentry

« AnteriorContinuar »