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the exponent of some mere peculiarity of nervous organization, that seems trifling in itself, but is tremendous in its consequences. Thus, in a recent letter, Tennyson confesses that he is subject to nervous paroxysms assimilated to trance, the inception of which is marked by a monotonous repetition of his own name, succeeded by a psychical exaltation in which the consciousness of self is for the moment lost in the consciousness of abstract being; and, in the light of this confession, the acute psychologist is able to unravel his peculiar imaginings and trace them to their causes in actual experience, and to indicate the source of certain mannerisms that professional critics have deemed inexplicable.

Did you ever have a beautiful faney just draw the curtains back and peep out from its cranny in the brain, then vanish never to return? If you have, you are capable of appreciating many an obscure and dreamy passage of Tennyson, and of understanding how it is that all that is highest and most beau

paroxysms, and often stays not long enough to be caught and lucidly expressed. In one aspect of Mr. Tennyson's literature man is a fly:

came the mother of twin boys. About three months ago, my husband waked up near midnight one night and said he had had his dream, with an attendant circumstance that impressed him with the premonition of a fatal case; for, after seeing the prostrate body once, as was usual with him, it had reappeared, floating slowly before him, horribly mangled, a portion of the spinal column being torn away. He had scarcely finished this reeital, when he was summoned to attend a patient living nine miles from the city. She became the mother of a boy, and he left her at four P. M., apparently in a condition favorable to recovery, although the impression of impending peril and fatality was still, to his own consciousness, as vivid as ever. At midnight that night he was again hastily summoned to visit the patient. But she was already moribund, and death resulted a few minutes after his arrival, from the stranding of a blood-clot in the heart. He has often bad dreams that seemed to foreshadow coming events, but these are only sporadic phe-tiful in our natures comes in glimpses and nomena, while the special dream I have mentioned has been as constant in its sequence as the succession of day to night. He is also habitually clairvoyant-hyperæsthesia of the optic nerve, he calls it; and frequently, when I wake up in the night and ask what time it is, he will tell me to the instant, and say that he can see the dial of his Waltham, which he always leaves in his vest-pocket, and which is inclosed in double cases, as distinctly as though it were daylight and he was holding the open instrument in his hand. This, however, only occurs in paroxysms. My husband's temperament is markedly cerebral. My own temperament is less mental, but, from my earliest recollection, I have been periodically subject in the dark to a peculiar optic phenomenon-forms, faces, and beautiful landscapes suffused with light floating before my eyes and the darkness seeming to be illuminated. I can still recall the phenomenon by an effort of the will. I am, also, frequently awakened from sleep by far-away voices calling me, or by the pressure of a hand, and, on starting up, see forms and faces, moving away from the foot of the bed, and repeating my own name over and over in low tones, but with striking distinctness. When I am in good health these dream and trance experiences seldom occur; but the moment I am enfeebled and nervous they return, with all their primitive force."

Dr. Maudsley, in one of his later volumes, adduces biographical memoranda to show that this peculiar capability of reflex action in the optic nerve is by no means uncommon with artists and poets. Shelley's power of realizing the phantoms of his imagination as actual visions has been adverted to by several who knew him intimately. It is an established fact that many artists and poetsand particularly those noted for vividness and weird ma guificence of imagination-have been specially endowed with the faculty of realizing their imaginings optically, and have thas been indebted for their picturesqueness of execution to morbid affection of the optic nerve; and, in tracing the genesis of imaginative production, it is not infrequent to find peculiar fecundity of invention existing as

66

To-day I saw the dragon-fly

Come from the wells where he did lie.
An inner impulse rent the veil

Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;
Through crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew."

From one point of view this is his philosophy of human life. Men are but insects with a spinal column

"Each worm of them beneath the moon Draws different threads, and late and soon Spins, toiling out his own cocoon.'

י.

That is all-the story of every man's life, so far as science has any thing to say about it. The paroxysms of the poet have furnished him with a solution of the problem. He believes, with the mystics, with the illuminati, with the spiritualists, that, at the very core of life, within, within, and still within, is found the interpretation of its dream. His way of expressing it is—

"Heaven opens inward, fissures yawn, Vast images in glimmering dawn, Half-shown, are broken and withdrawn." In some of its aspects life is a revelation of the superhuman and of the preternatural, and it is upon these aspects principally that Mr. Tennyson's imagination dwells lovingly, constantly contrasting them with the other and more material.

Dur

A very strange story is told by a Staten Island physician. In his younger days this gentleman was one of the medical staff at a Swiss hospital situated on Lake Constance. One of the patients, subject to epileptic paroxysms, was his special study. ing these attacks this patient would often foretell what would occur while the next paroxysm was on her, and the exact instant when it would supervene. On one occasion she foretold that the next night she should leave her bed and walk on the waters of the lake. By way of verifying the prediction, she was left to herself, her physician, among others, taking care to observe her movements. He states

that, in the midst of this paroxysm, the patient left her bed, went down to the shore, and walked out on the water thirty feet or farther, and back again, as though the element had been a solid platform. It should be added that this patient was not aware of the nature of her predictions after recovering from her attacks.

I have another strange story in my portfolio, which is worth telling as an addition to the literature of nervous perversion. It runs thus: In 1837, the late Colonel William L. Stone, of this city, sent a letter to his brother-in-law, President Wayland, of Brown University, with a view of testing the clairvoyance of a young girl who was just then the subject of considerable gossip in the city of Providence, Rhode Island. The letter was first wrapped in several sheets of heavy, opaque paper, then placed in a thick envelope, carefully sealed, and stamped with the arms of Colonel Stone. On the reception of this letter, according to instructions, and without knowing the contents, Dr. Wayland, in company with Professor Goddard, of the university, called on the girl. While in the trance-state the letter was placed at the back of her head, and she was requested to read it, which she did, Professor Goddard taking down her version, word for word, as it fell from her lips. The version and the letter, still unopened, were then placed in an envelope, and returned by mail to Colonel Stone in this city, who, on examination, found that it had been accurately interpreted word for word. The girl was uncultured and ignorant, and the contents of the letter were such as to have baffled her completely had she not been guided by an absolutely accurate perception. It commenced with this sentence: "The following is the title, equally quaint and curious, of a little volume published in the days of Oliver Cromwell." Then followed the title. Neither Dr. Wayland nor Professor Goddard was aware what Colonel Stone had written.

The case of the late T. B. Read, equally well known as poet and as artist, furnishes an instance of premonition worth a memorandum. Mr. Read-one of the most delicate physical organizations I have ever met -had a presentiment that he should not live to finish his fiftieth year, if even to complete his forty-ninth; and this presentiment was very constant with him during the last three or four years of life. He was not gloomy in view of it: temperament so sunny and spirituel as his could not give way to the sullen and purple glooms that are so frequent with men who have tasted life and fame and proved them to be dreams-one dream within another. But the conviction grew and rooted in his inner life, until it assumed the force of a revelation. He died before his fiftieth birthday came. Is it possible that, by some subtile intelligence, the processes of which are hidden from the every-day consciousness of men, the physical organization may calculate its own endurance with mathematical exactness, and foretell the day of its dissolution? There are many verified data that point to this conclusion. That the ordinary spiritualistic solution of these experiences has been seriously cogitated by Mr. Tennyson, his

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poems furnish abundant evidence. A single appurtenances that make up a perfect identipassage from "In Memoriam must answer as an example:

"If any vision should reveal

Thy likeness, I might count it vain,
As but the canker of the brain.
Yea, though it spoke and made appeal
"To places where our lots were cast
Together in the days behind,
I might but say, I hear a wind
Of memory murmuring the past.
"Yea, though it spoke and bared to view
A fact within the coming year,

And though the months, revolving near,
Should prove the phantom-warning true,
"They might not seem thy prophecies,
But spiritual presentiments,
And such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise."

In considering these strange and occasional incidents of life, the question is whether they shall be regarded as psychologi cal phenomena and as data for scientific analysis, or whether the ordinary construction of spiritualism shall be put upon them. My own observation, as well as my more general studies of the biographies of poets and artists, leads me to the conclusion that most highly-sensitive organizations are subject to experiences of the class that I have described, and they are facts that cannot be neglected in any system of psychology intended to take its place as the last word that science has to say on the deeper questions of life and consciousness. The theory of coincidence breaks down in view of the regularity and minuteness with which presentiments are often verified and presentimental dreams fulfilled. Let me give an instance. When I was a boy of seven or eight years old, an elder brother resided at a village called Hydeville, a few miles from the home farm, and was acquainted and somewhat intimate with a man named Durfy. He came home one Saturday and remained until Monday morning. On Sunday evening, among various topics, he discussed Durfy and their mutual projects. That night I dreamed that my brother and I were standing by the door in front of the old house, when a gentleman passed by in a sleigh. The gentleman nodded to my brother, who told me it was Durfy. I turned and went into the house. By the tall old clock in the east-room it was just eight o'clock to a minute. It must be premised that I did not know Mr. Durfy by sight, and had never been at Hydeville. I did not even think of the dream; but the next morning, after breakfast, it happened that my brother and myself were standing in the yard by the front door, when a gentleman passed in a sleighthe very man, muffled to the eyes, wearing a fur cap; the very sleigh and horse that had passed in my dream the night before. And, on looking at the clock an instant after, it was exactly eight o'clock. The man was Mr. Durfy. I have had many such experiences, but quote this one because nothing hinged upon it, and because, saving the element of presentiment, it was of no importance whatever. But in what manner was it impressed upon me that a gentleman whom I did not know would pass at a given hour and minute, dressed in such and such a manner, in a sleigh of given color and contour, with all the

ty? The coincidence of the hour and minute constitutes, again, a very singular and inexplicable element of the verification.

A physician, practising in the city of Providence, Rhode Island, sends me his memoranda of a visit to the Eddy brothers, whose séances have excited such general attention:

"Last September," writes he, “I was in Rutland, Vermont, in company with a Vermont farmer, an intelligent man and a thorough skeptic. He proposed a visit to the Eddy house. It was an evening séance. In the course of the manifestations, a phantom, never before seen by the spectators present, appeared in full view on the platform. The audience were individually requested to ask, 'Is it for me?' When my companion's turn came, his question was answered by three loud knocks on the wall hard by the phantom, which answered to the name of Dr. C, a brother-in-law. This man had never seen either of the Eddy brothers until he saw them that evening. Can it be that there was not present the essence of Dr. C's spirit, around which this visible and tangible presentation of him, that the farmer declared to be his brother-inlaw to the life, clothed itself? At a séance that occurred here (in Providence) some years since, the medium, an ignorant boy, wrote a message which no person present save a sea-captain could read. The message reported the death of the harbor-master in Havana. The truth of the statement was afterward verified. I am not a believer in spiritualism, but I am unsatisfied with my own experiences and investigations, which have fallen far short of yours. I only wish you would dwell more at length on certain points, remembering that, while they are less important from your point of view than those which you discuss exhaustively, they are the very points that make most popular impression."

A gentleman, now doing business in Wall Street as a broker, but formerly of the staff of General Sterling Price, gives me the details of an encounter with Foster, a wellknown medium, who is supposed to be the original of Margrave in the "Strange Story," by Bulwer. He attended the séance as a stranger in a strange city, taking a seat some thirty feet from the platform. The medium presently singled him out, and told him that, a spirit wished to communicate with him, describing his former general to the life, and giving the name as Sterling Price. The gentleman declined to have any further transactions with his general. "There is another spirit," said Foster, "a little girl, standing just behind you, and she says her name is Minnie." "I never knew a girl of that name," replied the colonel, but, a moment after, he recollected that his little daughter, whose real name was Mary, had always called herself Minnie, although she was never mentioned in the family under that designation.

A medical man, now practising in this city, sends me a very dramatic instance of what is usually styled clairvoyance, which I will add to that related by Colonel Stone. In company with a medical associate he

called on a woman, who was just then exciting considerable interest in a Western city. After sitting a few minutes in ominous silence, a spasm shook the attenuated frame of the medium and she apparently slept. An instant after the supervention of the paroxysm, she commenced to laugh and giggle like a little girl. "My companion," says the narrator, "asked her rather savagely what she was laughing at. 'Have you forgotten, doctor,' giggled the woman, that morning when you dissected me up-garret, and how, when you cut into me, the blood spurted, and then you were frightened and ran away?' The man was astounded, and, on the way home, he confessed that the incident actually occurred when he was a young practitioner; that he had procured the cadaver of a little girl eight or ten years of age, and hidden it in the garret, and that, when he came to dissect it, the blood spurted at the first incision, and frightened him so, there alone in the night, that he ran down-stairs. Afterward, however, he went back and finished the dissection. But,' said he, 'I never told a living soul of that adventure, and how that cursed woman found it out passes my comprehension.""

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Another gentleman-a man of science, and one thoroughly versed in physical and electrical investigation-contributes to my portfolio the details of a visit of inquiry to Dr. Slade, a well-known medium of this city. He went as a stranger, and left without revealing his name. After a thorough examination of the table, which was of the ordinary type, and was provided with no appurtenances except a folding slate and a pencil tied to it with a cotton string, the investigator announced that he was satisfied. The doctor then bit off a piece of the pencil, placed it between the two slates, and they sat down, the inquirer holding the medium's hands under his own, on the table, from four to six feet from the point where the slate lay. They had sat in this manner perfectly silent for a few seconds, when a kind of paroxysm -a slight secousse of the arms and limbspassed over the doctor. It was a mere

shiver: something rather less than a shudder and rather more than a tremor. An instant later the pencil between the slates commenced to move, with a grating, rhythmical motion, apparently across and across. Then, with a flourish, it stopped, and the room was again silent. On examination, my informant found a message in the handwriting of his dead father; and the strangest part of it all was that the signature was exact even to a peculiar formation of the initial R. The message was of no consequence-a mere conventional thing, not worth transcribing.

I have thus hastily selected from a mass of correspondence, called out by the publication of a volume on the subject, a series of cases that serve to illustrate the whole range of so-called spiritual phenomena. With one or two exceptions they rest upon the veracity of scientific men, and, without exception, they are from the diaries of men who dissent from the theories of spiritualism as totally and un

*Ten Years with Spiritual Mediums. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

reservedly as I dissent from them, but who are satisfied, as I am, of the genuineness of the phenomena and of the urgent necessity to come to some scientific conclusion as to their etiology. They interest me from two aspects, namely, as respects the sources of the strange and apparently superhuman intelligence associated with them, and as psychological studies. With the accumulated testimony of such observers as Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, scarcely second to Darwin as a naturalist, and Professor Crookes, it is impossible, consistently with scientific candor, to dissent dogmatically from the genuineness of these phenomena. Careful observation is equally decisive as to the fact of their constant association with nervous paroxysms of the epileptic type, and experiments with the magnetic current on mediums in the trancestate have convinced me that they are indubitably morbid nervous phenomena, indebted for their sources of intelligence to a nervous atmosphere acting at considerable distances during the interval of the paroxysm. They call for a deeper science of psychology than that which has descended to English literature from Locke and the two Mills. The day has come to stop babbling about nervous centres, and, as Tennyson expresses it in one of his poems, to seek through all

"The springs of life, the depths of awe,
And find the law within the law,"

that is operative in these singular facts of psychical experience the strangest things

in life.

FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD.

AMERICA SEEN WITH

FOREIGN EYES.

MR.

VIII.

NEW YORK IN EMBARGO-TIME.

~R. JOHN LAMBERT was a gentleman who visited this country in 1807. After a few months spent in Canada, he made his way to Albany by the usual Champlain route. It had been his intention to take passage for New York on the "steamboat, which, [he] was told, traveled at the rate of five miles an hour against wind and tide." He describes this boat, built about four years prior to his visit, as one hundred and sixty feet long, and propelled by a twenty-horse-power machine. When the wind was fair, light, square sails were used to increase her speed. Her accommodations included fifty-two berths, besides sofas, and were said to be equal, if not superior, to any vessel that sailed on the river. Her trips were made regularly twice a week, sometimes in the short period of thirty-two hours; fare, seven dollars. Ice, however, obstructed the upper channel, so he staged it to Hudson, and thence took passage on the Experiment, of one hundred and thirty tons, the finest on the river, with a saloon sixty feet by twenty, and fitted up regardless of expense. The fare by this mode of conveyance was five dollars, which gave the passenger three meals a day, including spirits.

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He reached New York the next night

about ten o'clock. The wharves were crowded with shipping, whose tall masts mingled with the buildings, and, together with the spires and cupolas of the churches, gave the city an appearance of magnificence, which the gloomy obscurity of night served to increase. On the 25th of November (Evacua- | tion-Day) he beheld a parade of the militia, who had assembled from different parts of the city, on "the grand battery by the waterside, . . . a lawn for the recreation of the inhabitants, and for the purpose of military parade." The troops did not amount to six hundred, and were gaudily dressed in a variety of uniforms, every ward in the city having a different one; some of them in helmets "appeared better suited to the theatre than the field. The general and his staff were in blue and buff, with large gold epaulets and feathers. One of the corps consisted wholly of Irishmen dressed in light-green jackets, white pantaloons, and helmets."

New York had by this time grown to be beyond doubt the first city in the United States for wealth, commerce, and population; the changes in twenty years had been marvelous. Land, which then sold for fifty dollars, was now worth fifteen hundred dollars; Broadway was upward of two miles in length, but only paved for a mile and a quarter; the remainder of the road consisted of strag. gling houses, the commencement of new streets already planned out. Much of the space between Broadway and the Bowery Road, and thence to the Hudson and East Rivers, was as yet unbuilt upon, and consisted only of unfinished streets and detached buildings. In the vicinity of the Battery, and for some distance up Broadway, the buildings were nearly all private houses, and occupied by the principal merchants and gentry of New York; after which the street was lined with large, commodious shops of every description, well-stocked with European and East-Indian goods, and "exhibiting as splendid and varied a show in their windows as can be met with in London."

The streets were well paved, the footways chiefly of brick. In Robinson Street, Lambert notes with surprise and admiration that the pavement and stoop before one of the houses were composed entirely of marble. Speaking of the park, he says that a court-house (the present City Hall) "is there building in a style of magnificence unequaled in many of the larger cities of Europe." Neither the park nor the Battery was then much resorted to by the fashionable citizens of New York, as they had become too com

mon.

The genteel lounge was in Broadway from eleven till three o'clock, during which time it was "as much crowded as the Bond Street of London; and the carriages, though not so numerous, were driven to and fro with as much velocity." The sidewalks were planted with poplars, which afforded an agreeable shade from the sun. The outside of the Park Theatre was in an unfinished state, but the interior was handsomely decorated and fitted up in as good style as the London theatres. It contained a large coffee-room with good-sized lobbies, and was reckoned to hold about twelve hundred per

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merous ; the machinery, dresses, and decorations, elegant and appropriate. The great fault with it was that all the pieces were curtailed, so that the performances might be over by half-past ten. The drama was a favorite in New York before the Revolution. During the time the city was in British possession, during the war, theatrical entertainments were very fashionable; the characters were mostly supported by officers of the army.

New York then had its Vauxhall and Ranelagh, but, although pleasant places of recreation, our traveler found them " poor imitations of those near London." Vauxhall Garden was situated in the Bowery, about two miles from the City Hall (a little south of what is now Astor Place). It was a neat plantation with gravel-walks, adorned with shrubs, trees, busts, and statues. In the centre stood a large equestrian statue of General Washington. Light musical pieces, interludes, etc., were performed in a small theatre situated in one corner of the garden; the audience sat, in what was called the pit and boxes, in the open air; the orchestra was built among the trees and a large apparatus constructed for the display of fireworks. The theatrical corps of New York was chiefly engaged at Vauxhall during the

summer.

The Ranelagh was a large hotel and garden, generally known by the name of Mount Pitt, situated by the water-side (near the old New York Hospital), and commanding some extensive and beautiful views of the city and its environs.

On his first visit to New York its business activity particularly astonished him. "All was noise and bustle; carters driving in every direction; merchants and their clerks busily engaged in their counting-houses or upon the piers. The Tontine Coffee-House was filled with underwriters, brokers, merchants, traders, and politicians; its steps and balcony crowded with people bidding or listening to the several auctioneers, who had elevated themselves upon a hogshead of sugar, or a puncheon of rum, or a bale of cotton, and with stentorian voices were exclaiming: Once, twice!' 'another cent!' 'thank ye, gentlemen!' or were knocking down the goods, which took up one side of the street, to the best purchasers. Coffee-House Slip, and the corners of Wall and Pearl Streets, were jammed up with carts, drays, and wheelbarrows; the welkin rang with the busy hum," and Lambert came to the conclusion that New York was the Tyre of the New World. Six months later, on his return from a visit to Charleston, he found that all was changed. The port was full of shipping, but the vessels were dismantled and laid up. Not a box, bale, or cask, was to be seen upon the wharves. Many of the counting-houses were shut up, or advertised to be let; and the few solitary merchants, clerks, and porters, that were to be seen, were walking about with their hands in their pockets. The coffee-house was almost empty, save that a few, whose time hung heavy on their hands, called there to inquire after news from Europe or Washington. The streets near the water-side were almost deserted, and grass had begun to grow upon the wharves. Such were the effects of

the embargo, which, in the short space of five months, had "deprived the first commercial city in the United States of all its life, bustle, and activity; caused above one hundred and fifty bankruptcies, and completely annihilated its foreign commerce."

Lambert says that nervous disorders and debility were very prevalent among the inhabitants of the United States. He attributes this (for every one of these travelers has a theory ready to account for every thing he sees) to the constant use of cigars by the young men, even at an early age, which impaired their constitutions, and created a stimulus beyond what Nature required. The dread of yellow fever had promoted this consumption of tobacco. New York was regu. larly subjected to this terrible scourge. As soon as it made its appearance, the inhabitants shut up their shops and fled into the country. Those who could not go far on account of business, removed to Greenwich, a "small village on the Hudson, about two or three miles from town." Here the merchants and others had their offices, and carried on their business with little danger from the fever. The banks and other public offices also removed their business to this place; and markets were regularly established for the supply of the inhabitants. Upward of twentysix thousand persons removed from the city and the streets near the water-side in 1805.

New York society, at the time of his visit,❘ was divided into three distinct classes. The first was composed of the constituted authorities and government officers: divines, lawyers, and physicians of eminence; the principal merchants and people of independent property. The second comprised the small merchants, retail traders, clerks, etc.; the third consisted of the inferior orders of the people. The first set associated together "in a style of splendor little inferior to Europeans. Their houses were fitted with every thing that was useful, agreeable, or ornamental. The dress of the gentlemen was plain, elegant, and fashionable." The ladies were partial to the "light, various, and dashing drapery" of the French, though there were many who preferred the more subdued English costume. In promenading Broadway, Lambert was frequently tempted to believe that there existed a sort of rivalry among the New York beauties, as there did a century before among the ladies of England; and that, instead of a patch on the right or left cheek to denote a Whig or a Tory, he could distinguish a "pretty democrat à la mode Française from a sweet little Federalist à la mode Anglaise." Whether his surmise was correct or not, it was certain that Mrs. Toole and Madame Bouchard, the two rival leaders of fashion in bonnets, dresses, and lace, had each her partisans and admirers; the one because she was an Englishwoman; the other because she was French; and, if the ladies were not really divided as to politics, they were most unequivocally at issue with regard to dress.

Lambert found the young ladies of New York generally handsome, though partaking more of the lily than the rose. He saw but very few who used rouge, and vigorously champions them against the charge handed

down from traveler to traveler of their having bad teeth. Of dancing they were passionately fond, and in that accomplishment they were said to excel the ladies of every other city in the Union. He visited the City Assembly, which was held at the City Hotel, in Broadway, and considered as the best in New York. As it was the first night of the season, there were but one hundred and fifty persons present. The subscription was two dollars and fifty cents for each night, which included tea, coffee, and cold collation. None but those of the first-class society could become subscribers to this assembly. Another, however, had been recently established, by those leaders of the second class who had been excluded from the first. The subscription to this was made three dollars; its balls, too, | were held at the City Hotel, and were so well conducted that many of the subscribers to the old assembly joined the new one, or subscribed to both.

Many of the young ladies were accomplished in music and drawing, as well as in dancing; but among the young men these accomplishments were but little cultivated. Billiards and smoking were their favorite amusements. A cigar was in their mouth from morning to night when in the house, and not unfrequently when walking in the street. A cigar-case was always carried in the coat-pocket, and handed occasionally to a friend, “as familiarly," says Lambert, our dashing youths take out their gold box and offer a pinch of snuff."

"as

Sleighing was a favorite amusement with the New-Yorkers. Parties to dinners and dances were frequently made up in the winter-time, when the snow was on the ground. They proceeded in light carioles (cutters) a few miles out of town to some hotel or tavern, where the entertainment was kept up till a late hour, and the company returned home by torch-light. Marriages were conducted in splendid style, and formed an important part of the winter's entertainments. The young couple, attended by their nearest connections and friends, were married at home in magnificent style, and, if they were Episcopalians, the Bishop of New York was always procured, if possible. For three days after the ceremony the newly-married couple saw company in great state, and every genteel person who could procure an introduction paid his respects to the bride and groom; the visitors after their introduction partook of a cup of coffee, and then walked away.

Even then New-Yorkers were not remarkable for early rising; little business was done before ten o'clock. Most of the merchants and persons in business dined at two o'clock; others, who were less engaged, about three; but four o'clock was usually the fashionable hour for dining. The gentlemen were partial to the bottle, but not to excess; and at private dinners they seldom sat more than two hours drinking wine.

While making a trip to Boston, Lambert made the acquaintance of a Virginian gentleman, one General Bradley, who was nicknamed "President-making Bradley," because he had summoned a caucus of members of Congress which nominated Madison as JefferThis "proceeding was con

son's successor.

sidered to be so unconstitutional that even several of his own party condemned it, and refused to attend. They said it was an endeavor to bias the sentiments of the people in their choice of a ruler, a measure highly subversive to the freedom of election." The general instructed our traveler in the nomenclature of Virginian drinks:

A gum-tickler was a gill of spirits, generally taken fasting.

A phlegm-cutter was a double dose just before breakfast.

An antifogmatic was the same when taken before dinner.

A gall-breaker was a pint of ardent spirits taken at discretion.

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"When a man takes to drinking gallbreakers," says Lambert, even the Virginians regard him as a lost sheep "-perhaps not unreasonably.

With regard to the common charge of familiarity and rudeness so frequently brought against the American people at this time, our author emphatically declares that he experienced the utmost civility and politeness from the inhabitants in every part of the country through which he traveled. Coachmen and tavern-keepers were alike civil and attentive; he hardly ever passed a man on the road who did not give him a nod, which "perhaps to some might seem curt, but was evidently meant in kindness." In fact, he found it as difficult to discover rudeness in the men as it was to detect an ugly face or bad teeth among the women. The people of England are, he thinks, too apt to hold the character of the Americans in trifling estimation." While he, of course, prefers his own countrymen, he finds much to commend among the new people; and, if his book "succeeds in dispelling some of the prejudices and misconceptions which prevail with regard to them," he will consider his work well done. E. H. L.

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TWILIGHT AND SEA.

EMEMBER how the twilight flung

Rcurtain over thee and me,

As, wandering hand in hand, we sung Beside the summer sea.

What if some glittering mermaid laid Down on the sand a listening ear, And, like a treacherous woman, staid Our tender talk to hear!

What if, in caves of ocean deep,

She treasured up each precious word,
Thinking that earthly lovers keep
The vows that she has heard!
Perhaps the sorrowing mermaid's tears
With pearls those vows incrusted o'er,
And Ocean, when his wrath uprears,
May cast them on the shore!

There memory and I will roam
Where fickle waters kiss the land,
Watching the bright and dancing foam
That dashes o'er the sand;

And I will seek and bind the pearls,
A fancied necklace, rich and rare
(While thought in every cluster curls),
About my neck to wear.

What though those days were short and few
And ne'er again shall come to me?
Each summer shall betroth anew
The twilight and the sea!

M. E. W. S.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

AMONG the events of a hundred years

flinching, unvarying courage-courage of that
serene and majestic character which no storm
could disturb, no misfortune shake, no succes-
sion of harassing difficulties weaken, no suc-
cesses inflame, and no disasters chill. A grand
steadfastness of this nature was one well cal-
culated to enforce itself upon others, to estab-
lish confidence, to command reverence, to har-
monize passions, to overthrow cabals. Being
united with a calm and weighty judgment, it
became a grand personal force that held all the
conflicting elements below it in a firm and con-
trolling grasp. Men with brilliant parts and
affluent ideas would never have done for the
occasion. Men with elements of caprice, or
with imaginations easily captivated with this
or that project, or with a metaphysical ten-
dency to weigh matters too nicely, would
never have been able to keep the army to-

ago which are entitled to signal commemoration in our centennial celebrations is one which occurred just one hundred years from the date of this week's JOURNAL. The stranger who visits Boston is apt to include within the circle of his sight-seeing the subarban city of Cambridge, with its old college buildings, its homes of poets and men of science and letters, and its venerable tree encircled with an iron railing, and furnished with an epitaph while yet it lives. Upon the granite slab at the base of this tree the stranger reads the statement that here on July 3, 1775, George Washington assumed the command of the Revolutionary army. It is well now, in our historic and retrospec-gether under all the conditions that surtive frame of mind, to pause and consider a little the full significance of this event. We are of those who believe that ordinarily the infuence of single minds upon any age is slight; that marked changes and great events are adequate products of innumerable causes lying deep in the constitution of society, which great leaders represent rather than form or create; but, when we consider all the facts of the American Revolution, it would really seem as if the success of that great ef fort were due to the peculiar fitness of George Washington for his tremendous task. How vast and formidable the task was, very few of us have ever fully realized. The more we study the history of the war the more marrelous the issue seems, and the more amazing the courage and confidence of those who essayed what must have seemed to many ordinary observers to be a wholly hopeless undertaking. The American rebels ought to have been defeated by all the laws of war, by the laws of force, and by all the conditions that usually determine results. And yet they won under the command of one who was neither a man of genius nor a man of ideas; they won after being defeated in the great majority of their direct encounters in the battle-field; they won under a succession of retreats, and with all the great cities excepting one in possession of the enemy; they won with an empty exchequer, and almost without food, raiment, or ammunition; they won in the face of growing discontent, with depleting numbers, and under nearly every conceivable harassment; and their winning was immensely due to the steadfast and unconquerable will of one man.

We may well believe that the success of the American army was rendered possible only by the cooperation of the French, but this cooperation could be secured only by Ermly holding the army together, and steadfastly maintaining its position before the English. The condition of things was such that the one supreme quality needed in the commander-in-chief was calm, immovable, un

rounded it. Washington's calm, uplifted,
heroic courage was one great force; his cool
and sagacious judgment another. If he did
no brilliant things, he made no mistakes.
His judgment may be almost said never to
have been at fault. We know full well the
noble courage, the sagacious statesmanship,
and the heroic devotion, of many others;
but there is no name we can mention whose
place could not have been filled by some oth-
er patriot equally zealous, sagacious, and
capable, save that of Washington; he alone
was absolutely indispensable. Not one of the
generals could have been substituted for him,
whereas, had we lost Adams, there still would
have been Franklin, Hancock, and Jeffer-
son; or, had all these been lost to the cause,
there were still many others of great patriot-
ism and marked capability. All the courage
and sagacity and devotion of the rest would
have come to naught had it not been pos-
sible to keep the army in the field, and to
do this thing required all the great quali-
ties exhibited by the other leaders supple-
mented by something greater still-which
we may call judgment, courage, and steadfast-
ness, but which consisted of all these in some
way fused in a grand individuality that men
believed in and followed. Washington's
character was one that seems lofty and as-
piring at a distance, and loses nothing of its
dignity upon the closest survey. Of all the
men in history he is conspicuously the one
best fitted for the leadership of so hazardous
and heroic an undertaking. The Americans
have been accused of idolizing Washington,
but we doubt if ever they have accurately
understood all the peculiarly admirable quali
fications that went to make up the character
of this remarkable man. The lack of salient
and brilliant qualities has chilled the enthu-
siasm of some people; these persons need to
be reminded that a supreme personal force in
such an emergency is better than genius, and
that a leader of whom it can be said that he
never made a mistake in judgment occupies a
place higher than that of those who, while they

have dazzled, have only misled the world. We may concede numerous deficiencies in Washington's genius, but we can find none in his character-none in his transcendent fitness for the place he occupied. Hence it is that his assumption of the command of the half-clothed and wholly undisciplined army gathered around Boston one hundred years ago was an event of such measureless importance to the cause that we signally fail in our comprehension of the struggle if we do not give it a worthy place in our centennial rejoicings.

.

A WRITER in an English journal, speaking of the British people in their relation to art, declares that " they seldom know a good picture when they see it, and they seldom like a good picture when it is pointed out to them." Accusations of this sort are very common among writers upon art, and the truth of the charge would seem to have become a received axiom in all art circles. Now, we bluntly assert it to be wholly fallacious. It is an error composed of two parts, one of which mistakes the character of the average intelligence, while the other mistakes the functions and requisites of a truly good picture. That every good picture contains very much that can only be fully appreciated by those who have cultivated art-perceptions is undeniably true. But there are certain essentials of a good picture which every person of average intelligence and culture is quite capable of understandingthese are, the story it has to tell, the facts it attempts to reproduce, and the sentiment it designs to express. If these things cannot be seen in a picture even when pointed out, then we may be sure that the art is in some way radically wrong in its methods. An art that can be understood in its leading manifestations only after a special training for it -which is limited by its nature to a few select, highly-cultivated persons-is rather too exclusive to be of much importance to the world. But the history of art shows us that paintings have affected very powerfully the imagination of the great mass of people, and that, notwithstanding popular ignorance, great paintings have never failed to secure their appreciation. It is not to be denied that public taste has sanctioned a great many worthless works of art, but has it ever rejected the productions of the great minds? The main difficulty with the public is, that its natural passion for pictures is such that it greedily falls to liking nearly all that is offered to it; but education in this matter is very rapid. There is nothing recondite in art. It deals with sensibilities and emotions common to the whole of mankind. The love of the beautiful and fondness for color are active principles with all classes; sentiment and the passions are possessed by all grades alike; and people who like flowers and natural scenery, who are affected by moods in Nature, who are

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