SCHOOL OF DISCORD. SECOND NOCTURN. “WHAT Could it avail the author of The Earthly Paradise' to write a dozen plays such as Tables Turned,' if distinction, without the aid even of 'Burke's Peerage,' or Boulanger-bought honors, were determined to protect its devotees. And then to have Mr. Oscar Wilde, that Watteauidealist, constantly suggesting a reform in apparel as a fit obstruction to an approach of the mediocre classes or appetizers,' as Leigh Hunt has called them. Surely, the male sex are not trolling for separability with bait of silk hose and buckle-lustre, Puritan breeches and lace fronts. Our defense lies not in our exterior but in our interior habits." The speaker, Mr. Cheriot, was rewarded with a patter of kid and Lubin in partibus. Following a criticism on the editorship of The Woman's World, Mr. Saltissimus launched into a few of his social reminisences hatched, as he confessed, in the greenery period. His first expulsion from society happened in a baronial dininghall where, contrary to epicurean economy, he insisted on using the sharp edge of his knife on the Gruyére. His latest offense occurred at a reception of the Boston BrainClub at which he was observed squinting through his chartreuse at an old woman afflicted with color-blindness, and was heard remarking on her wonderful appearance as a green-eyed monster, and on the perfection of his idea of an animated mummy. There is an estuary of pitiability that courses through the anecdotes of Saltissimus like the hot tears of a child. La Bruyère represents his type among the characters of the Court. Maelstrom will order the musical world to right-about-face if he but cast away his cheese-cloth modesty and make it possible, by a less hurried rendition of his pieces, for the shivering balconiers from Pond's to copy his compositions on their dewy notebooks. Last night he played miraculously. The inspiration was called by him "A Suicide in the Japan Sea." Marvellous to relate, my imagination was heated to the degree of looking aghast at Madame Vertue's lower maxillary hardly to be convinced indeed that it was not the upturned gills of a salmon in death. Miss Normal said, that Delsarte when a boy drew tears from Malibran with his voice, and it comes suddenly to the mind that this drawing-principle is the tincture of success the world over. Maelstrom is a genius. He says that music is a dialecticial infinity. I hope that he will not become too intimate with Dr. Dee who returns from Asia Minor every autumn with vernacular corruptions. The old musician departed for his carriage amid a volley of motto-rosettes and of invitations to dinner given with inferred "Not at homes." A pearl from Collis. The theatre should be the artistic medium of morality. I admire the critic that looks upon himself as an auditor and not as one from whose garden of rhetoric the reading public are awaiting vehicles of egoistic esculents. Meantime we must answer the moralist in this wise: It would have been impossible to lead Scarpia by the hand to a recognition of what is good.' To the sentamentalist: You already know your lesson, but there are characters in our time to whom a just defense of purity might appear somewhat proper.' To the critic Discriminate.'" Brillyat, whom I am ever dragging from Makart's senses, interrupted the speaker with "Victorien Sardou is a grand cook, but persons who know even beans have not the tastes of gourmets." It will cost him an original ménu to regain the courtesy of the Bostonian element. I hope that the day will come when meagre morality and meaningless show of sympathy will be refused admittance by every mayor in the land! That cad Cordova, with an interesting compulsion, has escorted me to the Farragut statue, and informs me, after his numerous descriptions of the members and their debates that this is the club of which he has so long a time begged me to become a fellow. He taps the old bronze field-glasses with his stick, and now he listens and now he sadly tells me that the old Commodore has black-balled After all, a club of One is the best. me. George F. Hill. ART CHAT. THE collection of paintings of the late Christian H. Wolf, Esq., of Philadelphia which, the American Art Association will dispose of, at auction, on Monday and Tuesday evenings, the 2d and 3d proximo, is an exceedingly interesting one. Were it as strong in the figure prices as it is in the landscapes, it would be a celebrated collection. It is rich in the latter, both with American and foreign examples. There are two Daubinguys, which, though small in size, one "Brittany Harvest Scene," (No. 52), 6 x 12 inches, the other "Landscape on the Seine," (No. 107), 10x20, are equal in breadth and interest of subject, to the larger canvases which were in the scenery collection years ago, and those lately in the Spencer collection. some The two examples in the Spencer sale, brought $8,650, and $5,000 respectively. A work which may not fetch a high price, but none the less, of rare quality, is a "View at Etretat," (No. 91), by Charles Hoguet. The painter was born in Berlin in 1813, and died in 1870. He studied in Paris under Bertin and Paul Delaroche, painted in England. Germany, The Amateurs. Luis Alvarez. Hass is well represented by Landscape and Cattle," (No. 159.) * *** Multum in parvo could well be the motto for the small "Autumn," (No. 133), by a Munich artist, M. Oli. It is a most beautiful twilight effect. A drawing in crayon, by Louis Crepen, of Paris, is entitled Marcus and Corsett," (No. 150); it is full of meaning and strong in composition, the method drawing suggests that the artist was a pupil of Couture. NOTES. ORTGIES & Co. sold, at Chickering Hall, on March 27th and 28th, the collections of Mr. Jorden L. Mott and Mr. Edward Kearney. Sixtyseven paintings were sold the first evening for $41,470. Charles S. Reinhart's "Une Épave," " Washed Ashore "-which won an honorable mention at last year's Salon, and was seen in this city at the American Art Galleries last fall-has won the first prize, the Temple gold medal, at the Philadelphia Academy Exhibition. spent most of his artistic energies in complimenting nature by celebrating her beauties and fascinations to the world, both by pen and pencil, she has treated him very shabbily during the exhibition and sale of his works at the American Art Galleries. His collection was put on exhibition about a fortnight ago, and the sale put down for March 19th, 20th and 21st, but Dame Nature very boisterously asserted herself in the form of a blizzard about the time the works were first exhibited, and hardly a soul visited the galleries the week before the sale, so it was postponed to the 26th, 27th and 28th, but at the hours of the sales on the first two days the gentle rains of spring (repentent tears, perhaps, of Dame Nature, for what she had done), fell in torrents, and the buyers were few and far between, at the galleries. Many of the drawings were sold for ten, twelve and fifteen dollars; one or two went for five dollars. The highest price paid the day was $80 for "A Relic of the Departed South." The total of the one day's sale, 411 works, was $4,846. This, it will be seen, was an average of only a little over eleven dollars each, but, on the other hand, they were not all original drawings, many of them being only proof of wood-cuts from Mr. Gibson's works. Then it is also to be remembered that Mr. Gibson has been well paid by Harper Brothers for nearly all the drawings, as they were made as illustrations for works published by them. On the second day Nos. 412 to 645 of the catalogue were sold for $1,149. Ernest Knaufft. |