bled bel alma innamorata, asked his neighbor | her pictures—a slight but not spirituelle wowhether it was not ridiculous to represent a man roulading as he died, was as astray as the other man who, when his friend asked him whether he was to dine en ville, answered no, that he preferred to dine ou mutton. It is now proposed to build another great opera-house. The opera, which started from Burton's Theatre, opposite the Park, in Chambers Street, and went then to Astor Place, and at last to Fourteenth Street, is thought to be housed too far down town. Plans are already accepted for another building, and if no treaty between the proprietors can be made, there will be two fine houses. Colonel Mapleson has a lease for five years of the familiar Academy, and he has shown admirable qualities as a manager. The characteristic excellence of "Her Majesty's Opera," as we have lately seen it in New York, is not the superiority of the voices nor of the acting, but it is the symmetry of the whole. No part is slighted. Because Gerster is the best of Lindas, and Campanini of lovers, we are not put off with an inferior | father and wicked uncle. On the contrary, we have the very best of wicked uncles, and a father properly and perfectly decrepit except in vocal expression. It was the praise of the builders of the Parthenon that they finished carefully the parts that were out of sight. What is done out of sight at Her Majesty's Opera we do not know. But all that is seen and heard is in keeping. Even the Lady Hortensia | admits it. But she is nevertheless of opinion that everything operatic is "slag and refuse" except Fidelio. At the moment of writing, the town-talk is Sara Bernhardt, who made her first appearance amid great anticipation and excitement, described in many glowing columns of the daily papers. Her name was first generally known in this country two years ago, when she went with her associates of the French Comedy in Paris to London, where she was a fixed star of the season, not only upon the stage, but in private society. The London "world" is queer. At one time it is improper to visit a certain distinguished woman, and her receptions are thronged only with the cleverest men in England. Then, without reason, but by the majesty of whim, the ban is lifted, and all fashionable London of both sexes crowds her drawingrooms. Mistress Bernhardt is unmarried, and whether her children appeared with her in London we do not know, but the most distinguished persons in England bowed at her levées, and at a great fair the Prince of Wales, the titular head of society after his august mother, was conspicuous in his devotion to her. It was the vivid reports of these scenes, and of the exhibitions of her works in painting and sculpture, and of the effects produced by her at the theatre, and of her costumes and manner, which first apprised this country generally of the existence of the lady. Then came man; and it was remarked as singular that so little had been known here of a person evidently so famous on the other side. But it presently appeared that she was known. The travelling American and the American resident in Paris knew of her, and had written home of her, representing her as a Parisienne of the hour, a figure of the moment, mistress of all the French arts, fascinating, brilliant, an admirable player of a certain range, not great nor supreme, not one of the immortals. This general judgment was not discordant with the impression of her acting reflected from London. Amid all the descriptive superlatives concerning her personal impression it was not easy to discover that a great actress had appeared. Even Mr. Gladstone was depicted in charmed conversation with her, but that Rachel had a successor was not said. At most, it was felt that "the Bernhardt" was undoubtedly a fascinating woman, and that whatever a fascinating woman does is sure to dazzle the beholder. That appears to be the impression produced by her appearance here. The morning after her début the critics "rose at her" for her lovely, winning, melting ways. They plainly felt the spell. They were full of generous praises; but 'twas a pity, they said, that she began with Adrienne. It is a play which was written for Rachel long after she had made her renown as a truly great tragic actress-she and Mrs. Siddons alone doubtless in the century, if not in all the centuries. In Adrienne and Angelomelodramas suited to a peculiar modern taste, which delights in costume and circumstance and detail, a taste for the vaudeville, for Scribe and Hugo rather than for Shakespeare or the classical drama of Corneille and Racine-Rachel had parts which captivated the town. They were exquisitely done, and they were very fascinating; but, after all, it was genius condescending, as in the Moineau de Lesbie. This, however, is probably the natural sphere of Bernhardt. To charming gifts of nature she adds the most skillful training in the best of schools, and amid the most inspiring and chastening of traditions. That firm grasp of genius which distinguished Rachel she has not, and yet comparison is inevitable, not only because she is the most noted member of the French Comedy since Rachel, but because she appears in Rachel's parts. There could be no greater contrast, however, than the first evenings of the two women in America. Adrienne Lecouvreur is all" color," and the heroine moves through it in an ever-shifting splendor of costume. It is especially adapted to a miscellaneous popular andience. It was in Corneille's Les Horaces that Rachel first appeared-a drama bald in its antique severity, and absolutely without relief of circumstance or "color." Her costume was a simple fine woollen drapery. Her movement as she entered upon the bare and desolate scene was not incedit regina, uor did she "walk in beauty like the night"; it was a still, statuesque presence, the mournful motion of a woman who forecasts her doom. In other words, it was action informed with genius, and the mind was at once caught up into the play of passion, unmindful of costume or accident. The town will be familiar with "the Bernhardt" when this Magazine is issued, but it is already evident that however much she may be admired, it will not be as a “phenomenal" | person, as a great actress, as the successor of Rachel, but as an exceedingly clever woman of remarkable personal fascination. THERE is an old saying that everything is fair in love, politics, and the custom-house. These departments cover a great deal of human interest and activity, and if a man practices in these relations the principle of the saying, he will probably observe it in all others. There is, however, another saying which traverses the one that we cite, and which declares that once a gentleman, always a gentleman. If this be true-and who doubts it? how is it that gentlemen are sometimes found in such queer positions in politics? Is the explanation to be sought in the reason of a question which was addressed to a lady about her husband? "I can't imagine," said the questioner to the wife, “how a gentleman like your husband can dabble in politics; but I suppose that he wants something." There was no apparent consciousness of insult upon the part of the inquirer. On the contrary, he assumed that the lady knew as well as he that if a man "wanted something" in politics, he must consent to pay the dirty price. A young village statesman sneered at a man who attended a political convention at a country tavern and brought his own cigars instead of opening a box at the bar for "the boys." An orator, speaking of taxation and expenditure, declaims against the waste of "the people's money." It is a piece of "gag" unworthy a gentleman; but he who asks for "the most sweet voices" thinks that he must do and say what he is a little ashamed of. Among gentlemen a frank disavowal of an alleged remark is conclusive. If a gentleman asserts that he never said what is imputed to him, there is an end of the matter-except in politics. In the fervor of a political campaign it is taken for granted, and even by gentlemen, that the denial of a gentleman is not to be believed. In other words, it is assumed that he is a liar and a perjurer. This is surely degrading and alarming. If gentlemen and honorable men can not engage in politics without the utmost meanness and dishonor, it is as significant as if they could not transact business at the custom-house without false swearing. Knaves, of course, will perjure themselves at the custom-house or anywhere else. Thieves will lie and cheat, and believe that everybody else lies and cheats in politics. But | how is it when a gentleman does the same? There are allegations which it is not easy to disprove, and which may seem to have a certain plausibility, but which ought not to stand in any fair mind for a moment against the simple denial of an honorable man. But we have recently seen the word of a gentleman who was thought by a great party worthy of the highest political trust, and who was called to it by the country, treated as of no weight whatever. That liars and forgers and black-mailers and rascals of every degree should have thought him a liar was not surprising. But this is the question: when he denied unqualifiedly and indignantly that he had written what was imputed to him, and asserted that the letter was a forgery, why did not gentlemen who had been deceived by it, and had publicly said that they believed it to be genuine, as publicly and frankly acknowledge the deception when the letter was disclaimed ? It is answered that it would have been "bad politics," and have given aid and comfort to the political enemy by discrediting political friends. But will any gentleman admit either that lying and forgery are good politics, or that gentlemen ought not to take part in politics? Nothing certainly is gained by excluding decency and common honesty from political controversy. Then whatever helps to include them is a public gain, and the obvious way of doing it, the very first step, is for gentlemen not to avoid politics, but to carry into them the instincts and conduct of gentlemen. They may be beaten in the particular controversy, but that is not a reason that they should cease to be gentlemen. If practical interest in politics, which is a privilege in a monarchy, be a duty in a republic, aud if it be impossible for gentlemen, by which we mean honorable and patriotic citizens, to engage in them, so much the worse for the republic. THE fair-spoken and quiet Mr. Parnell, of whose first speech in America at the Madison Square Garden the Easy Chair gave some account last winter, has become since then an important figure. He was in no sense an eloquent or magnetic orator. His words were studiedly careful, and the Celtic enthusiasm of his audience took fire at any allusion, however slight, and blazed out into extravagant expression. The impression he made was that of a cold, hard man-almost a Robespierrian impression, except, of course, that there was no suggestion of cruelty. On that evening he was very careful to say nothing which even implied insurrection or resort to force; nothing, indeed, comparable in what might be called justification or extenuation of violence to some speeches reported to have been uttered by him in Ireland. But the situation of that country, forever unhappy, was one of the anxious and doubtful questions of the early winter, sure to come up sooner or later in the graver talk of the club and the table. And, indeed, whoever is familiar with the melancholy and tragic story of a hundred years ago in Ireland, and with the long and incredible oppression and suffering of the earlier time, will feel that no trouble or hostility or outbreak in that country should be surprising. The sorrow and amazement, however, are that intelligent Irishmen-those who are leaders more than any men are leaders in other countries-should not see that the kind of agitation which they promote is a crime against their native land, unless they hope and intend to lead a revolution to sever the connection of the islands. The Irish situation is simple. England will not consent to separation. The instinct of self-defense prevents. Separation would not cure the Celtic hatred of the Saxon, and England would always fear that Ireland would be made an ambush for a foreign foe. While thus separation is impossible, Mr. Gladstone, the head of the British government, is a statesman of proved power in England, and of proved friendliness to Ireland. Mr. Forster, the Irish Secretary, is a Dissenter, and not only free from any of the old Tory bitterness against the island, but anxious to correct evils and abuses. There was no reason whatever to doubt that while the government could not heal the woes of Ireland with a touch or in a year, yet that great and beneficent progress was possible under its amicable sway. But while Mr. Gladstone is confronted with the Afghan and Zulu and Eastern questions with which his predecessor had embroiled the country, he is also menaced by an Irish question forced upon him by Mr. Parnell. | more. A wise and generous administration like that of Mr. Gladstone would have mediated between Irish suffering and English prejudice. But when Mr. Parnell says, as at Galway, "I feel convinced that if you ever call upon Americans in another field and in another way for help, and if you can show them that there is a fair and good chance for success, you will have their assistance, their trained and organized assistance, for the purpose of breaking the yoke which encircles you," he not only tells the most ludicrous untruth, but he tells it for the purpose of luring his countrymen to take steps which can lead only to their destruction. He does not allow Mr. Gladstone to mediate between suffering and prejudice: he forces him to say that order must be preserved, | and life and property protected. THE busy man who would gladly read if he had only the necessary time, and who knows what store of good books await that happy hour, can not help looking ruefully upon the readers who have all the time they desire, and who employ it in emptying literary slops into their so-called minds. "If you must read novels all the time," said Ernestus to Fragilla, "why don't you take a turn at Miss Austen? There is a noble library of great and charming works of fiction, and story-telling, from Homer down, is one of the delights of the world. But since, dear madame, Homer is at your service, why should you put up with Tupper and Haynes Bayley? So, when there are such scores of good novels, why should you waste time over Laura Matilda, when you can have Miss Austen, for instance, to tell you stories?" Indeed, the latest of the Irish leaders seems It was an amusingly fruitless question. Dr. to feel that the exclamation of the Irish emi- Holmes used to say, when any auditor slipped grant, "If there's a government, I'm agin it," away from a lecture, "Well, some people can is true Irish patriotism and statesmanship. hold only a gill; others can take a pint, or The true policy for Ireland, so far as we can quart, or even gallon; but when the gill meaperceive it here, was an alliance with the sure is full, you can't pour in any more." So Gladstone government, not defiance of it. If it is with novel-readers. If they take natuthe aristocratic element in it was feared, cer- rally to the tenth-rate work, it is useless to tainly a Tory administration would be a hun- ply them with the first-rate. You can't pour dredfold more unfriendly, and the attitude of a gallon into a gill measure. The mind which the peers on the Compensation Bill showed is satisfied with the Dime novel will not care for the full force of Tory hostility. Mr. Parnell George Eliot, or for Miss Austen, or for Walter must know that against Irish violence Eng- Scott, still less for Balzac or Thackeray. It is land of all parties would solidly sustain the hard to see why Fragilla, who reads a novel for government, and that remedial legislation the sake of reading a novel, should not like would be made more difficult. He may be Miss Austen's stories. The only thing perfectlegally acquitted upon his trial, but he is mor- ly clear is that she does not. No writer of ally condemned for throwing his country into novels, however, has been more liked or more a hazardous position. highly praised by those whose praise is fame. Macaulay delighted in her novels, and just now a critic says of them, "As long as novels are read at all, Miss Austen's stories will be resorted to for amusement by the more intelligent, and probably they were never at any time to the taste of the unintelligent." But so the curse of old injustice returns to plague England. The children's teeth are on edge with the sour grapes of the fathers' eating. "How oft has the banshee cried!" And the fateful voice of the banshee seems to wail in every wind that blows over Ireland. It can not be said truthfully that nothing would have been done if the present movement had not occurred. The land laws had been modified. They would have been modified still Yet, again, why not? They are perfectly simple and intelligible. The course of the tale is not clogged with description or moralizing. They deal with the great theme of the novel ist, match-making, and no writer ever attended more strictly than Miss Austen to the business in hand. Her novels are marvels of clearness, and they have a delightfully shrewd humor. The Austen stories have all the misunderstandings and embarrassments and doubts and delays which become the course of true love. There are no extravagances in them, no sublimated raptures and dark despairs. It is good, honest, every-day match-making among every-day people, and the unintelligent reader does not find himself in the least degree bewildered by the style or the characters. The very finish, the cabinet and microscopic completeness, facilitate the comprehension and the enjoyment of them by unintelligence, while the shrewd humor, and the neat touches of characterization, and the portraiture of certain aspects of English country life and society, commend them to the most intelligent. A distinguished English scholar said to a lecturer who had extolled the tales of Charlotte Brontë, "I am afraid you do not know that Miss Austen is the better novelist." If the scholar had explained, doubtless he would have said, in comparing Miss Brontë or George Eliot with Miss Austen-and the three are the chief of their sex in this form of English literature--that her distinction and superiority lie in her more absolute artistic instinct. She writes wholly as an artist, while George Eliot advocates views, and Miss Brontë's fiery page is often a personal protest. In Miss Austen, on the other hand, there is in kind, but infinitely less in degree, the same clear atmosphere of pure art which we perceive in Shakespeare and Goethe. It is a thread of exceeding fineness with which she draws us, but it is spun of pure gold. There are no great characters, no sweep of passion, no quickening of soul and exaltation of purpose and sympathy, upon her page, but there is the pure pleasure of a Watteau. When Ernestus asked Fragilla if she could explain her indifference to Miss Austen's novels, the novel-reading damsel answered that there was no excitement in them; that they were humdrum old-fashioned stories of a stupid society-in a word, that they were not sensational. It is true, and it is true of Scott. But that very fact is the secret of their tenacious hold upon admiration. It is the singular beauty of form which preserves them; and the essential value of literary art can be studied nowhere better than in Miss Austen's works. We do not mean that the whole charm lies in treatment. This was the Wordsworthian error which gave us "Goody Blake," and the "Idiot Boy," and Coleridge's sonnet upon the "Foal of an Ass: its mother being tethered near it." A loud and natural outcry greeted such works, that however artificial the old school of poetry may have been, and however desirable a return to nature might be, yet that it was as absurd to insist that everything was equally poetic as to assert that everything was | equally beautiful and fragrant. It is not the treatment only, it is the discriminating perception, that makes the poet. The anti-Wordsworthians held that it might be foolish to suppose that romance belongs only to pirates and ruffians, but that it was no less foolish to suppose that therefore idiots were poetic. The protest against this misconception was never more pointedly expressed than by Burns in his letter to Archibald Alison thanking him for his Essay on Taste. It was a famous book in polite society, and maintained that objects are beautiful to us, not in themselves, but only because of pleasant associations. But Burns, with sly and demure humor, and with a vigorous sense which shattered the theory like a blow upon a Rupert's-drop, thanked the reverend gentleman for his work, and said: "I own, sir, at first glance several of your propositions startle me as paradoxical: that the martial clangor of a trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime than the twingle-twangle of a jew's-harp; that the delicate flexure of a rose-twig when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the dawn was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stub of a burdock, and that from something innate and independent of all association of ideasthese I had set down as irrefragable orthodox truths, until perusing your book shook my faith." The Pre-Raphaelites, as they were called thirty years ago, seemed inclined to apply the Betty Foy theory to painting. They were a group of young English artists, whose chief canon was an exact imitation and reproduction of the natural object, utterly discarding what was called ideal and imaginative treatment. Poetry, they said, is in the natural object, and the more perfectly the object is reproduced, therefore, the more truly poetic the picture. Perhaps, then, colored wax-work, as more closely imitating the human form and complexion, would be the finer sculpture, and Madame Tussaud would outstrip Phidias. But the substance of Wordsworth's principle remains unassailable. The poet and artist must be loyal to nature, however they may discriminate as to the relative interest and poetic value of objects. The Easy Chair was lately turning over some etchings with a thoroughly trained critic, and admired the effect of some trees. "No," said the critic, "they are bad.” "But why so?" "Because no tree could grow in that way," was the decisive answer. was not a sketch from nature, and the eye trained by careful observation instantly detected and rejected the imposture, whose prettiness of form could not save it. It Miss Austen's art is not less in the choice than in the treatment. She does not, indeed, carve the Moses with Michael Angelo, but she moulds the delicate cup, she cuts the gem. When Ernestus parted with Fragilla, he took down Pride and Prejudice, and verified all that he had said and thought of Miss Austen. It who exerted a potential influence upon religious thought and doctrine. The glimpses which Dr. Hodge gives us, as the fruit of his two years' residence in Germany while pre But, ship with Tholuck, Neander, Hengstenberg, T was a right instinct that prompted some friends of the family of the late Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton Theological Seminary, to suggest that a memoir of his life should be prepared; and a memoir' having been deter-paring for his professorate, of his companionmined upon, it was a wise choice that intrusted its preparation to his son, the Rev. A. A. Hodge. For although the life of Dr. Hodge was a quiet one, and was agitated by few external events of striking interest, as his son correctly observes it had been one of very remarkable literary activity, and of protracted and extended influence, involving an intimate association with many of the most interesting characters and events of the century. And, again, the relationship which the biographer bore to his subject supplied him with a strong motive to diligence in making use of his special opportunities for information, and in collecting and arranging the materials through which his father and his work might speak for themselves, and the opinions of the most celebrated of his friends might be impartially presented. In addition to these advantages, the special literary and intellectual qualifica-son and biographer. tions of the biographer peculiarly fitted him for the task. An able scholar in the same line as that in which his father won wide distinction, a graceful and elegant writer, a disciplined thinker, and a man of well-balanced judgment, Mr. Hodge has been able to paint a life-like portrait of his venerated father in warm but subdued colors, and free from the florid exaggeration and panegyric that often mar the effect of biographical composition. As far as possible Dr. Hodge is allowed, through his journals, letters, and a precious autobio- | graphical fragment, to tell the story of his own life; and whenever a break or hiatus occurs, the biographer has judiciously filled the gap with his own mature recollections, or the rec-solid graces, acquirements, and virtues; precoollections of other members of the family, and of his father's old and intimate friends. The biography is the record of the life of a student eagerly and methodically searching for knowledge, who is converted by the search into a recondite scholar and a profound thinker on abstruse subjects, and thus fitted to become, as he, in fact, did become, an influential teacher of mature men on deep questions of religion, morals, philosophy, and theology. At the same time it is a mirror of the transitions in religious thought-practical, speculative, metaphysical, and dogmatic-in this country and in Germany during the last half a century, and it is also, for the earlier years of that period, a familiar introduction of the reader to many of the most eminent scholars, philosophers, and otherwise interesting characters in Germany The Life of Charles Hodge, D.D., LL.D., Professor in the Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey. By his Son, A. A. HODGE. SVO, pp. 620. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. THE subject of Mr. Trevelyan's new volume, The Early History of Charles James Fox,2 is one of imposing interest. No Englishman has lived since the reign of William and Mary more liberally endowed than Fox with every quality of popular leadership, none who was more munificently gifted than he with natural abilities or more amply furnished with acquired attainments, none who exerted upon his generation an influence so magnetic and powerful, and none who made a deeper and more abiding impression upon the political history of his country. A man in intellect when he was a child in years; precocious in cious in knowledge and understanding; and, under the training of his indulgent and unprincipled father, sadly precocious also in all those evil associations and experiences which rub off the bloom of innocence from youth, and irremediably sully its purity; an idol of society when society was abnormally enervating and impure, and while he was yet at an age when most children are under maternal restraints; a prodigal, a spendthrift, a rake, and a gambler at fourteen; a member of Parliament at nineteen; a member of the cabinet at twenty-one; from twenty-one to twenty-four a leader of the House of Commons, one of its most effective orators and debaters, and often the victorious antagonist of England's greatest statesmen and orators-of such as Burke, George The Early History of Charles James Fox. By GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN, Author of Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. 8vo, pp. 470. New York: Harper and Brothers. The same. Franklin Square Library." 4to, pp. 84. New York: Harper and Brothers. |