Havill was silent.

"You are one of the profession, perhaps?" asked the latter, after a while.

way I saw the workmen pulling down a chancel wall, in which they found imbedded a unique specimen of Perpendicular

"You mean that I am an architect?" work-a capital from some old arcadesaid Somerset. "Yes."

"Ah! one of my own honored vocation." Havill's face had been not unpleasant until this moment, when he smiled, whereupon there instantly gleamed over him a phase of meanness, remaining until the smile died away. It might have been a physical accident; it might have been otherwise.

the carving wonderfully under-cut. They were smashing it up as filling in for the new wall."

"It must have been unique," said Somerset, in the too readily controversial tone of the educated young man who has yet to learn diplomacy. "I have never seen much under-cutting in Perpendicular stone-work; nor anybody else, I think."

Havill continued, with slow watchfulness: "What enormous sacrileges are "Oh yes, lots of it," said Mr. Havill, committed by the builders every day, I nettled. His glance at Somerset as he observe. I was driving yesterday to Hel- answered had a peculiar shade in it, sugterton, where I am putting up a town-gesting that he might be readily converthall; and passing through a village on my | ed into an enemy.

Editor's Easy Chair.

N Lord Beaconsfield's new novel, Endymi- | white stick with a black cord and tassel, and

Iol's introduction as a boy, in black velvet a quantity of chains about his neck and pock

After describing the other guests, who seem to have struck our American Adonis as peculiarly ill-dressed, he returns to the author of Vivian Grey, who sat opposite to him at table, where by "the blaze of lamps" he could study his face. "Disraeli has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his action and the strength of his lungs would seem a victim to consumption. His eye is black as Erebus, and has the most mocking and lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient nervousness, and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of a Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick, heavy mass of jet-black ringlets falls over his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, while on the right temple it is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a girl's, and shines most unctuously

jacket, with large Spanish buttons of silver fil-ets, served to make him, even in the dim light, igree, a shirt of lace, and a waistcoat of white rather a conspicuous object." satin," recalls Willis's description of the author of Endymion fifty years ago, when he was himself little more than a boy. Willis saw him at Lady Blessington's-a lady of whom there are evident traces in Endymion's Lady Montfortand he describes him with the sympathetic touch that marks his treatment of all such scenes and figures in the amusingly audacious Pencillings by the Way. "Far off his coming shone." It is nearly fifty years since the young American wrote that at his first call upon Lady Blessington her ladyship said to him: "Disraeli the elder came here with his son the other night. It would have delighted you to see the old man's pride in him. He is very fond of him, and as he was going away he patted him on the head, and said to me: "Take care of him, Lady Blessington, for my sake. He is a clever lad, but he wants ballast. I am glad he has the honor to know you, for you will check him sometimes when I am away."...... Disraeli the younger is quite his own character of Vivian Grey, crowded with talent, but very soigné of his curls, and a bit of a coxcomb. There is no reserve about him, however, and he is the only joyous dandy I ever saw."

A little later Willis dined at Lady Blessington's with Bulwer, Disraeli, Barry Cornwall, Fonblanque, Henry Bulwer, Lord Durham, and Count d'Orsay, and he says, in a passage which might have been taken from Endymion or Lothair: "Disraeli had arrived before me, and sat in the deep window looking out on Hyde Park, with the last rays of daylight reflected from the gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly embroidered waistcoat. Patent-leather pumps, a

|

"With thy incomparable oil, Macassar."" And a little later-to complete the sympathetic portrait-when the conversation fell upon "Vathek❞ Beckford, Disraeli gave a sketch of his habits and manners, and Willis says: "I might as well attempt to gather up the foam of the sea as to convey an idea of the extraordinary language in which he clothed his description. There were at least five words in every sentence that must have been very much astonished at the use they were put to, and

yet no others apparently could so well have | If Sir Robert Walpole or Lord Chatham had conveyed his idea. He talked like a race-horse written stories, they would be read because of approaching the winning-post, every muscle in action, and the utmost energy of expression flung out in every burst. It is a great pity he is not in Parliament."

This is the author of Vivian Grey as he appeared when he was about twenty-five to a most sympathetic observer, and this is the gentleman who, at the age of seventy-five, when, according to high authority, he is uglier than Gladstone's most injurious dream of him, has written Endymion. It is thoroughly and | amusingly characteristic of his whole career. He has been Prime Minister of England, and for a time one of the most conspicuous contemporary figures in the world. He has suddenly encountered an unexpected and tremendous political defeat, and, well past threescore and ten, he retires to private life. An old and renowned statesman in retirement is one of the gravest and most respectable of characters to the imagination, if he be not chafing, and angry, and plotting impotently to regain pow

er.

But the gartered hero of the Berlin Treaty and its queer "peace with honor," without moping or vanishing into silent and dignified privacy, turns off a later Vivian Grey, Young Duke, Coningsby, Tancred, and Lothair, all truffles and Tokay, and coronets and prime ministers, and cloth of gold and banquets and beakers. Instead of commending us to Sir William Temple in contemplative retirement amid his cabbages at Sheen, or musing upon the ruins of empires and the vanity of human wishes, the old necromancer, with the air of Brummel redivivus, or Major Pendennis with fresh padding, introduces the amused reader into the modern world of Sardanapalus and Hop-o'-my-Thumb, and the whole fairy realm, where the trees bear pearls, and the rivers run emeralds, and every bantam is a peacock.

their authors. George Eliot's tales have an enormous sale because of their excellence, Lord Beaconsfield's because he wrote them. Endymion as the work of an unknown writer would have been thought a dull imitation of the old politico-fashionable novel; as Lord Beaconsfield's, the copyright is sold for sixty thousand dollars. The London Times pays five thousand for a copy two or three days in advance, and fifty thousand copies are sold in the United States within two or three days after publication.

The ordinary novel-reader must read it, of course, but he or she can not be really pleased with it. The student of human nature can find to study in it only the Earl of Beaconsfield, K.G. Prince Florestan, Lord and Lady Roehampton, Lord and Lady Montfort, Mr. Neuchatel, Zenobia, Agrippina, and the rest are not men and women. They are names used by an ex-Prime Minister of England in the composition of a treatise to show how sweet a thing it is to have piles of precious stones and political place, the precious stones being acquired by other people's labor, and the place not by ability, but by intrigue. Endymion is the kind of book that a clever Bubb Doddington with a taste for politics might have written, and might greatly delight to read. But to the general novel-reader without familiar knowledge of English politics, the only interest of the book must be its descriptions of fine society. There is properly no plot and no development of character.

In brief, the story is that of twin childrena handsome and bright boy and a beautiful girl-who are early left penniless orphans. The boy, by the power of patronage, becomes Prime Minister of England, and the girl, by force of her beauty and resolution, becomes The most comical part of the performance Empress of France. The persons of the drama is that there are readers who take Endymion are the nobility and gentry. But as a picture and its author au grand sérieux. They speak of society it is a caricature, and the characters of him and his books gravely. They read the are no more than the puppets of a pantomime. Young Duke and Sibyl as if they were pictures There is no intelligible political story. But of life and character, when they are only sto- what a curious illustration it affords of the genries of the Fair One with Golden Locks and eral estimation in which its author is held, that the little tailor of Cashgar. They are novels he does not suffer by its publication! If any as Phantasmion is a novel. They are enter- other man in England of similar age and standtaining and brilliant, indeed; they are the ing had written and published such a tale, it recreations of a golden youth grown old, who would have been accepted sadly as conclusive has seen fine society in his day, and eaten soup evidence of a painful mental decay. But in with a golden spoon, and who has a natural the case of Lord Beaconsfield there seems to be passion for filigree buttons and gorgeous up- the flash of a cap, the tinkle of a bell, the faholstery. But novels are pictures of life and miliar salutation, "Here we are again!" and a portrayals of human character and emotion. good-natured smile breaks over the face of the Amelia is a novel, and the Heart of Mid-Lothian, audience. We began with quoting what Wiland the Newcomes, and Adam Bede. Endymion lis said of him fifty years ago; we end with is as much like a novel as St. Barbe is like what McCarthy, in his History of Our Own Times, Thackeray. As a novel, one cabinet picture says of him now. He is speaking of Disraeli's by Miss Austen is worth all the Disraeli col- extraordinary speech at Edinburgh, in which lection. Yet his works are very illustrative he "astonished and amused the public" by anof himself. They must always have the at-nouncing that he had been for years a thortraction which his personality gives them.ough reformer. Some people were offended.

Some Tories were indignant. "But the general | the curtain which is to rise upon the prologue public, as usual, persisted in refusing to take of Mefistofele. Mr. Disraeli seriously, or to fasten on him any moral responsibility for anything he might say or do......If he were anything but that, he would not be Mr. Disraeli; he would not be leader of the House of Commons; he would not be Prime Minister of England."

The opera has been announced as "forthcoming," and "in preparation," and "immediately," and placarded with other appetizing phrases for a long time. The newspapers have teemed with accounts of the composer, and the incidents of its first hearings in Italy. Two cities differed. One approved, and the other THE Old New-Yorker who is akin to the class scorned. Both agreed that it was a bold deof "the thoughtful patriot," and "a well-in-parture from the Italian traditions, and on one formed gentleman," and during the war, an side it was darkly hinted that the maladetti intelligent contraband," was secretly proud as Tedeschi had at last invaded even the last ditch he took his seat recently in the Academy of (so to speak) of the native opera. There was Music to assist at the first night of a new a groan and a shrug that it was becoming Geropera. This is peculiarly an event of the old- | manized, and that Boito in Mefistoféle—Boito, er cities. In Milan, Naples, Vienna, Paris, Dres- the successor of Rossini and Bellini and Doniden, such an occasion is memorable, and it was zetti and Verdi—was (awful thought!) a Wagso especially during the reaction that followed nerian! But on the other side it was contendthe Napoleonic overthrow, when it was the ed that the new opera showed an emancipation aim of the Holy Alliance to keep their "peo- of Italian genius from the crushing traditions; ples" amused and uninquisitive. The opera that it proved that genius to be full of the world, indeed, is extremely important to itself, modern spirit; that it would not sit with its and the contentions and politics of the coulisses face to the past, humming exhausted tunes, are as urgent and absorbing as any other. It but that it was rising and moving forward to is delightful to perceive from the conversa- meet the sun of the future in his coming. In tion of a prima donna or primo tenore that London, also, a highly respectable city, which the real events of life are first appearances, has had the advantage of hearing much good and the compliments of princes and grand music, Campanini, the first of living tenors, duchesses. Italian to the core, proud of his patria, and always ready to suonare the tromba of his delicious voice in its praise and defense, had produced the opera with energy and success. "And now," says the old New-Yorker softly to himself, as he takes his seat and proceeds to survey the house-“now he brings his case for final adjudication to the highest court of appeal."

The spectator in the boxes or the parquette vaguely wonders, perhaps, that men and women can consent to dress themselves as old beggars, or emperors, or gypsies, and rant and sing through an evening. In other words, play-acting sometimes seems very ludicrous to those who have not the instinct or the faculty of the actor, or who forget that in every country and age play-acting has had a resistless fascination. But the old New-Yorker does not harbor these æsthetic metaphysics. He recalls with gratitude that Malibran sang in New York before she was famous, and that he can still see a few favored survivors of the golden age who heard the concerts at the City | Hotel. Yet as he glances at the young men standing and sitting about the Academy, who think to-day the golden age, and who prove their ton by wearing black satin cravats at the opera in place of the regulation white, and who carry a folding hat under their arms, and have at twenty-three the same delightful air of superiority and indifference and courteous cynicism which used to illuminate his own countenance at the same age, he reflects that few of them probably ever heard of the City Hotel, or could tell where it stood. But he is fain to own that operas which had not been generally approved in Europe were never in the golden age brought out in America; still less that the American success of such operas would be mentioned as worthy the attention of Europe. The consciousness that the voice of New York is invoked as an authority is exceedingly pleasing to our venerable friend, who seats himself with a lofty air of appreciative impartiality before

Perhaps the sweet and touching melodies of Gounod's Garden Scene in Faust murmur through his mind as he gazes. Perhaps the vision of the Marguerites that have enchanted him float across his lorgnette. Perhaps, even, he recalls the music of Sphor's Faust, heard long ago, in his German student days. Perhaps the performance of Goethe's own great drama, adapted to the stage, recurs to set the stage of his mind for the opera which is to come. But while his memory is thus filled with the legend and the music, and while his wandering eyes behold the gathering toilets, the incomparable Arditi takes his place, raises his baton, evokes a few solemn chords, and the first performance of Mefistofele in America has begun.

It is a scene outside the world. There are treble angel voices heard in the clouds, and the sudden apparition of Mefistofele is seen responding. The music is somewhat vague, but it is impressive, and the prologue-a dangerous experiment-passes satisfactorily. Then follows the familiar drama, told in three scenes, with another scene from the Second Part of "Faust," a Grecian interlude, with Helen in place of Margaret, and the epilogue, the death of Faust. As the work proceeds, the old New

Yorker nods his head approvingly. The house is very full, and listens intently, and there is occasional applause "of esteem." At the close of the first act there is a quartette of Faust, Mephistopheles, Marguerite, and Martha, which touches the audience into enthusiasm, and they demand persistently a repetition. No other "number" is so warmly applauded. But Signora Valleria and Miss Cary, Signori Campanini and Novara, sing and play throughout with a spirit, a harmony, a comprehensive intelligence, which are inspiring. Miss Cary's little part is perfectly done, Signora Valleria's Marguerite is surprisingly forcible and admirable, and the two gentlemen are thoroughly good. There is no hitch in the progress of the play. Nothing shows the crudity and creak of a first performance. The singers are called out. The incomparable Arditi is called out. The excellent chorus-master is called out. There are huge baskets and pyramids and tablets of flowers handed up, and there is general satisfaction. The old New-Yorker whispers to himself, gravely, that it will do, and that, | New York having approved, Europe may now enjoy and commend.

| prefix de before proper names-a use for which he good-naturedly reproves the Easy Chair, and, among others, Professor Francis Bowen, of Cambridge-has been challenged in many quarters, and brings us the following letter from Professor Bowen:

"HARVARD COLLEGE, December 6, 1880. "In a letter to the Easy Chair Mr. Wendell Phillips, who is nothing if not critical, blames me for repeatedly writing 'De Tocqueville.' He asserts that the honorary prefix can be rightfully applied only to proper names which are monosyllabic, as 'De Thou,' or which begin with a vowel, as 'D'Alembert'; but that in all other cases we should write the name either M. de Tocqueville,' or simply Tocqueville.'

"The works of 'De Maistre'-so lettered on the back-happened to be lying on my table when I first read this statement of the law by Mr. Phillips; and remembering a pleasant chapter about this author by the great French critic of the present century, I took down from my shelves the third volume of SainteBeuve's Port Royal. Opening it at random, I found the name written De Maistre,' in the nominative case, no less than six times on the first two pages which I happened to see. As Sainte-Beuve was a member of the French Academy, he will probably be admitted to be good authority.

dolle disait-il,' etc. As Caro also is one of the forty Academicians, I presume even Mr. Phillips will not sneer at him as a 'learned professor.'

"If English authority is wanting, consult the learned and painfully accurate Hallam, who, in his Literature of Europe, writes 'De Sacy.'

The next day Campanini telegraphs to his friend Boito in Milan the success of his opera, and Boito returns an expression of his pride and pleasure, and especially of his gratitude to Campanini. It is just, for the excellent tenor has secured the favorable judgment. Except "I then took down E. Caro's L'Idée de Dieu, for Campanini's commanding position as a sing-and there found him writing, Aussi de Caner and actor, and his loyalty to Italy, this latest voice of her modern musical genius would not now, at least, have been heard in London and in New York. "Yes, the judgment of this city would still have been wanting," muses the old New-Yorker; "but this evening, if I may say so, has blazed the path, and venerable Europe may safely follow. It is not like Linda, nor Sonnambula, nor Trovatore," he adds, as he rises "In truth, the frequent use of this honorary and begins to move out; "the tum-ti-tum tunes prefix has caused it, in many instances, to coare clearly lacking. It is undoubtedly a growth alesce with the proper name to which it beof the modern impulse, like the music of Wag-longs; and we frequently write 'Delaunay' ner. It proceeds not by melodies, but by melodious declamation. It is not music for the hand-organs, but it is suggestive, and even rich. Good? Yes, dear madame, very good. It will bear hearing more than once. It will certainly bear hearing several times. I remember, madame, one evening when Malibran— Ah! she is out of hearing. But I am glad that New York has given its approbation, and patted Signor Boito upon the head. I observed Colonel Mapleson in his lofty box, and I imagined him wondering whether the people who are perpetually calling upon him to produce new operas really care to hear new operas. I think that I may say they do if the operas are good, and he will have observed, as the civilized world will observe, that New York has said that this opera is good."

MR. WENDELL PHILLIPS's letter to the Easy Chair correcting a common use of the French

and 'Decandolle,' but never 'Degerando' or Demaistre.'

"Mr. Phillips is not too old to learn, and if he will prosecute his studies, I doubt not that he will become a good French critic. "Very truly yours,

"FRANCIS BOWEN."

Mr. John Hay, also, Assistant Secretary of State, and an accomplished linguist, who has had unusual opportunities during his official diplomatic residence abroad of knowing the best French custom, writes to the Easy Chair from Washington: "I am surprised. Such use is universal in French. I would not waste time in multiplying examples, but I happened to see this morning, in Adams's Life of Gallatin, a singular and striking use of the particle, which I inclose. One could hardly read a more awkward sentence in French than the last one, but it shows how conscientiously

Gal

they stick to the particle in such cases.
latin writes: 'Une Suissesse qui avait epousé
un Génevois nommé de Lesdernier.' And again
insists on this peculiarly awkward retention
of the de: Parmi eux était un des fils de de
Lesdernier.""

On the other hand, the Easy Chair may cite the omission of the prefix in the name of Lafayette, who was Marquis de Lafayette, but is always known to us without the honorary prefix; and in support of the assertion of Mr. Phillips, there is Murray's edition of the France before the Revolution, lettered on the back simply "Tocqueville," and the general custom in speaking of Goethe and Humboldt, from both which names the corresponding German prefix von is dropped. It will probably appear that there is no fixed rule upon the subject, and that good usage permits both forms.

THE conversation upon Hawthorne which took place at Concord last summer, and upon which the Easy Chair commented with favor as supplying many vivid and interesting glimpses of his life and character, has been criticised severely by Mr. Julian Hawthorne, so far as Mr. Alcott's contribution is concerned. Miss Peabody, also, seems to have been somewhat in error in describing certain details of the older Hawthorne homestead. As the Easy Chair gave a wide audience to the conversation, it is its duty to make one or two corrections, that the future estimate of our great author, so far as early domestic influences are involved, may not be inaccurate.

was a widow, and lived quietly with her family upon a moderate income, and her son Nathaniel was always shy and solitary. It is very possible that in later days Hawthorne used to tell stories of his early life with the sly, humorous, and fanciful exaggeration which was characteristic, and that such "tales of the grotesque and arabesque” were received by the hearers as sober narrations. The Easy Chair itself has heard him speak of old Salem and his life there, but all his allusions to his own habits pointed only to the child as father of the man, and there was no implication or insinuation that the family household was in any way so extraordinary as the figure of his mother as the Woman in White would suggest. If the impression were derived from him, it was a misapprehended play of characteristic humor.

So captivating and shadowy a personality as Hawthorne's is sure to provoke a curiosity which seizes upon the marvellous as probable. He was singularly reticent with his tongue, and communicative only with his pen. Indeed, the careful reader of his works, as he follows, fascinated, the enchanted line, will be surprised to see how much Hawthorne has told of himself. Everything that can be known of such men is not, indeed, too much, and the desire to know every detail is insuperable. But it is precisely of such veiled figures, also, that the most fanciful tales are told, and restless curiosity envelops them in romance. Witchhaunted Salem teems with strange legends of its most famous son, but they are not to be received as history or biography; they are tributes of loyalty to genius, and signs of the undying interest in great men. Mr. Parton has shown how a reverent mythology has accumulated about Washington, from the hatchet and the cherry-tree to the prayer in the snowy wood. Washington's head is girt with an aureole of fable. The terrible tests of modern criticism and investigation rob us of the Roman wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, and reduce William Tell to a myth. Even the white-headed warrior suddenly appearing to repel the Indian attack upon Hadley-one of the most heroic and inspiring traditions of our early

The conversation represented the mother of Hawthorne as withdrawing to her chamber after her husband's death, and mainly passing the rest of her life there in morbid retirement, and clothed always in white. The picture of the elder Mrs. Hawthorne, indeed, was a singular reproduction of Dickens's grotesque portrait of Miss Havisham. Whoever saw it, and reflected upon the influence of such morbid oddity upon a young and sensitively imaginative child, might easily find in this fact alone a key to much of the singular shyness and running to cover of Hawthorne himself. But there has been some misunderstanding or mis-history-vanishes at the Ithuriel touch of Mr. reporting. The elder Mrs. Hawthorne was not especially addicted to seclusion or to dressing in white-indeed, it is not clear that she ever did so and her house was a free and joyous resort for the younger people. Mrs. Hawthorne

Sheldon. Of all our renowned authors there is none around whom strange stories would so certainly gather as around the remote and silent Hawthorne, and no such stories should be so carefully scrutinized as those told of him.

Editor's Literary Record.

MPRESSED by the powerful influence that | aration of a number of volumes which most

I example exerts upon conduct and character, emphatically merit the title of the pich Host

and acting in a line with the truth condensed Series." Written with such vigorous plainby Coleridge into the maxim, "We insensibly ness and simplicity as to be easily comprehendimitate what we habitually admire," Mr. Sam-ed by youthful or unpracticed readers, and uel Smiles has devoted a large portion of an with such earnestness and dignity as to conunusually useful and practical life to the prep- ciliate their sympathy and respect, these books