846

This was the undertone of all the speeches that The Easy Chair confesses pleasant afternoon. that it kindled with them in the warm sun. Dear to every American heart is the doctrine of the original right of the people. In a law-fearing land like ours there is little danger in preaching its eternal truth and justice. The danger is in corrupting the moral sense of the people by declaring that when every peaceable, legal, patient, and persistent effort has been made to procure the repeal of an oppressive law in vain, then it is wicked to resist it forcibly. To assert that is to tear our Declaration, and to spit in the face of Human Liberty and Civilization.

The Easy Chair begs to stand on its own four legs, and to commit nobody. But in the spectacle of the people of that rural county, calmly asserting, in the bright autumn afternoon, the grand, cardinal principles upon which all our institutions are planted-of course asserting them at their own risk there was an inspiration and satisfaction which no other mass meeting ever afforded to this stumpy old stick.

were Monk?

Would the children's children of Benedict Arnold care to perpetuate that name? No; the private, and mystic, and inexplicable The mere fact of ancestry is nobond which unites us to our kindred holds us in thrall forever. thing. Every body came from the first man. But after the stream rises it branches, and some branches stretch away and are lost, but others swell into rivers and roll seaward, stately with extent and majesty of flow, decorated with the cities and the busy fields and work-shops which it has encouraged and occasioned.

So, friend who sends the extract, might it not be with ancestry?

Yes; and if in some retired shire of England, wandering at the will of your fancy through the summer beauty of that lovely land, you too should come upon some deserted mansion, lordly in decay, rich with traces of departed grandeur, and hung with fading, dropping portraits of heroes and queenly ladies, and know that you gazed upon your own blood, would you be all unmoved, all uninspired? or might a more earnest strain in your life-not for the sake of nobleness only, but out of remembrance

SOME friend sends to the Easy Chair the fol- of those old, half-forgotten parents-betray that lowing:

"FAMILY PRIDE.-The English family Vere, Earls of Oxford, pretended to deduce its pedigree from the Roman emperor Lucius Verus. Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, placed among the portraits of his ancestors two old heads inscribed, Adam de Stanhope and Eve de Stanhope. The French family of the Duke de Levis have a picture in their chateau in which Noah is represented going into the ark, and carrying under his arm a small trunk on which is written, 'Papers belonging to the Levis family!'"

the child had gazed upon their portraits, and felt his experience multiplied and enriched.

OUR FOREIGN GOSSIP.

How the Emperor and Empress have made conquest of the Bretons, and won over all that superstitious peasantry, which talks like the Welsh, and has so long worshiped the memory of the Bourbons, for a week past has been staple of the Paris chat.

But is the transfer of allegiance wonderful? Is not the pomp of a living Emperor, and the beauty and tenderness of a living Empress, grander and more wonder-compelling, in the eye of dependent ignorance, than a golden fleur de lis or the tomb of a dead king? And the loyalty which is fed by superstition, does it not grow and change with new wonderment?

It is certainly amusing to observe how far our cousin John Bull carries his respect for ancestry. To have an ancestor-good, bad, or indifferentseems to be the great point. To be named among the Norman barbarians-to be enrolled, by name, upon the list of Battle Abbey-confers upon our cousin a satisfaction which seems incredible to people who care more for the character of an ancestor In truth, it than for the fact of having had one. might strike a thoughtful man that he may assume the existence of his ancestors as far back as any body's. He may not know about them, but there they are. And it is a great deal better not to know about them unless you can know something to their advantage. That your ancestor in the tenth century was a king of pirates, who murdered your So much easier this than to be sulky and rebel! neighbor Jones's ancestor of the same period, who was a high private of pirates, is neither a very il-Life is so short; fètes are so rare; an Imperial lustrious nor consoling scrap of information.

"But would you not, O Easy Chair! gladly have the wood of Plato's garden, of the Stratford mulberry, to your ancestor? Could you watch, incurious, the same growing glance in your child's soft face which so long and tenderly you have worshiped in some portrait of a dear and sainted lady, dead centuries ago?"

Who shall dare deny it? It is not a matter of
reasoning. A man is no better merely because the
names and deeds of his ancestors are known for
long ages, if he chances to be an idiot himself.
But may he not be-if he has intelligence and
imagination?

Is there no such thing as consciously bearing the
Is there no spur in the
honor of a noble name?
memorial of good deeds? Could a man be quite so
mean if his name were Hampden as he might if it

Besides which, the Emperor, with that rare shrewdness in measurement of influences which distinguishes him, had not forgotten to win over the priesthood of the most priest-ridden district of France. The Bretons all love churches, and surplice, and ecclesiastic tradition; so, when the priests welcomed the monarch, and burned flattering incense before him, what should the welltaught, innocent Bretons do but clap their hands and admire and rejoice?

pageant is so grand!

Therefore, if the Moniteur may be trusted, the Bretons have all become Imperialists. At least there is life and energy in this, and not the dead bonds only which have tied them thus far to Bourbon traditions.

Meantime we recall, with a half-sigh for the Imperial hopes, how the Due de Nemours, in the days that went closely before the Revolution of February, made a tour through Brittany, and how the people shouted welcome every where, and the priests made flattering discourses, which in a month were forgotten, in the trimming of the ecclesias tic ship to catch the breath of Revolution. This French Church may be founded upon a rock, bat it has a great many fronts; and they who keep the keys, like the first key-keeper, are prone to deny a fallen master.

The fact is, a good bite from the State crib makes warm discussion took place. The Councilors of strong Imperialists here, as it does strong Adminis- State, MM. Marchand, Blondel, and Boulatignier trationists at home. What right have we to declaim characterized the conduct of the Prefect with great against the zealous priests and peasants of Brittany? severity, as having committed a grave attack on So, through that green and pleasant country- the rights of private property. M. Baroche enwhich is not all plain-land, with stiff lines of pop-deavored to support the Prefect; but, after some lars-the Imperial family has come back to pass a very stormy discussions, the majority pronounced first Sunday of rest at St. Cloud. In their ab- a decision annulling the act of the Prefect, and orsence the Napoleon Fête has come and gone, with dering the restitution of the confiscated property its thousands of lampions, its red and green arches into the hands of the liquidators of the dissolved of waving light stretching from the Tuileries gar- society. den to the Arch of Triumph, its free theatres, its mountebanks, its beer, and froth of all kinds.

actors, ejusdem nasi; the engagement at the PréCatalan, since Tuesday last, of a troop of English comic actors; and the plan adopted by the director of the Ambigu to attract-feminine spectators. At the bottom of the bill of this latter house you may read the following notice: "All the ladies supplied with a ticket at the first bureau will receive, on entering, a fan." But this is not all; the bill adds: representing one of the principal scenes in the drama Les Fugitifs." Another theatre is about to present a nosegay to every lady who will please to honor the house with her-money. The successes of the Boulevards are still the same. The Maréchal de Villars, who continues to lose the battle of Malplaquet à la cantonnade, and Jean Bart, metamorphosed into a Sgagnarelle, and frothing up the waves of the sea (of the Porte St. Martin) in his pursuit of the putative lover of his wife, while all the time performing his service to the king; but at the fifth act appears a ship of the line, which requires from the patience of the audience an entreacte of half an hour to set it afloat, and to get up a tempest-of applause. Here is a good opportunity for M. Raphael Felix, the brother of the celebrated tragedian who died lately, to renew in the prov

M. de Lamartine has also been charged with squandering considerable sums of money; and to this he replies, first, that at present he lives very economically; and, secondly, that he has only been guilty of a "folly of the heart," and given way to a "madness that may be called holy." This is merely saying that his extravagance has not been of a purely selfish kind. We may form a higher impression of the character of a man who has not spent money solely on his own pleasures; but still extravagance of any sort is an injustice, and M. de Lamartine has been unjust both to himself and to the many persons who have a sincere respect for him and his writings. It may be an injustice that is easily pardonable; but a public man who asks for pecuniary assistance is always in some degree in wrong position when his embarrassment has been of his own creating. All that can be fairly said is that M. de Lamartine has never done any thing dishonorable, which could debar him from taking advantage of the French custom of accept-inces the exploitation which he has already accoming this sort of support; and it is impossible not to sympathize with his warmth of language and tone when he declares that he will have no alternative but to quit France if his appeal shall have been made in vain.

plished, of the ship in the Fils des la Nuit; but without doubt he is too busy at the present moment, for he is getting ready for the quart d'heure, and is preparing, with the assistance of M. Jules Janin, for the publication of a book, to be called Jademoiselle Rachel et la Tragedie. This is a pious labor, on which we can not but congratulate him. Besides this, he is organizing another, which deserves some attention, namely, the foundation of a theatrical and artistical bank, for the purpose of advancing to directors of theatres the funds necessary for the advances required for their artists, and for their traveling expenses. We only hope that love of the arts may be the sole motive which has led to this idea.

The Comédie Française will perhaps have a drama from Madame George Sand. They say that the subject of it is selected from the Roman history. The theatrical works of this extraordinary woman excite particular interest, because it is known that the author of Consuelo, Lelia, Indiana, and so many other remarkable romances, pursues a theory of dramatic reform which has hitherto been

Or operatic matters, and the theatres, let us make this mention: Tamberlik is engaged at the Italian Opera, at the pretty large salary of forty thousand francs for sixteen representations; there is an ut dieze which does not fail to be productive to its fortunate possessor. There are no longer any children. The collegians of our time permit themselves to get medals struck and to dispense glory. The students of the Collège Louis-le-Grand have just sent M. Sivori a medal, in acknowledgment of the concert which that violoncellist gave them on the 8th of July last, in the hall of their college. The Opera must not be joked with. The singers sing; but they fight also. M. Belval, an artist of that house, has sent his seconds to M. Felicien David, because that eminent composer had given a part to M. Obin which he had promised to Belval, in the Dernier Jour d'Herculaneum. It is, how-received with more or less benevolence by the pubever, not supposed that the affair will have serious consequences. This new work, promised under the title which we have indicated, by the author of the Perle du Bresil, is no other than the opera promised originally under the title of the Dernier Jugement; the decorators not being able to agree among themselves as to the proper mode of representing the Last Judgment (at which, be it understood, none of them have yet been present). M. Méry, the author of the words, was forced to modify his poem, and to descend to a level more within the reach of the imagination of the painters. The Bouffes, under the direction of Offenbach, having left Berlin, are now drinking the waters at Ems, and will resume their position in the theatre of the Rue Choiseuil on the 1st of September.

With respect to the other theatres there is nothing new, with the exception of the first representation of a faerie mirobolante at the Palais Royal, called Le Fils de la Belle au Bois Dormant, written by three fortunate authors, L. Thiborst, Siraudin, and Choller, and played by Hyacynthe and comic

lic and the critics, and been crowned with more or less success. In any case, a drama from Madame Sand can not fail to have the merit of being a literary and well-written work-which, for a long time past, has very rarely been the case at any theatre, not even excepting the Théâtre Français.

Literature having abandoned the boards the dramatic art naturally degenerates. The actors are no longer what they were in former times. On this account they are not going to appoint a new sociétaire in place of Anseln Bert, whose death was announced a short time since, and who was the type of noble fathers. The foyer of the Thetre Français is shortly to be ornamented with his bust in marble. This bust, which has been executed by the sculptor Maindron, after a photograph by Richebourg, is to be presented to the Théitre Français by the members of a society of which Anselm Bert and the two artists in question were also members, and which is called "La Société de Jeudi." This society is simply a club formed of four-teen men of talent, who meet once a week to smoke,

drink, and discourse de omnibus rebus et quibusdam | the bullets strike their heads, but they only gruntaliis.

ed, sank down and rose again, again to receive anThe Théâtre Français has just concluded an en- other leaden salute with the like indifference. I gagement with Madame Emilie Guyon, who had measured the foot-prints of these animals on the so much success last winter at the Porte St. Mar- stiff clayey bank of the river, and found them fiftin, as the mother of Jack Sheppard in the Cheva- teen to sixteen inches and twelve inches. Dr. Livliers du Brouillard. She is the widow of Guyon, ingstone declares their flesh to be delicious, and who was, in the first instance, an actor at the Am- very similar in flavor and delicacy to suckingbigu, and afterward at the Théâtre Français. He pig. I have made arrangements for a hippopotamus was an actor of considerable talent, who in his ham. Having got all ready for forward work, time divided public favor with Bocage, Frederick such as trying the launch, testing the compasses, Lemaitre, and Melingue. The Gaîté has, on its etc., we left our first anchorage on the 20th of May, side, engaged Madame Doche, the famous Dame with the launch ahead to lead the way. We soon aux Camelias. She is to play the principal part got aground about seven miles up the river, but in a drama entitled La Bigame, a continuation of did not remain long there, and by 6 P.M. had adthe contagion which exists just now in the the-vanced a good many miles from the sea, where we atres. In the stage world, just now, marriage is the order of the day. Thus you have seen that at the Gaîté they are preparing to perform a double marriage. The Vaudeville is rehearsing a piece of which the author is the son of a vaudevilliste of renown, M. Jaine, fils. His play is simply to be called Le Mariage. And the Odéon is to reopen on the 1st of September with Le Mariage de Vade, by M. Amédée Roland, the ex-editor of a paper called Diogene.

THOSE interested in the African explorations of Dr. Livingstone (and who is not ?) will read with interest this first report of the arrival of his little squadron off the Zambesi:

"The weather has been delightful; no sign of fever; in fact, nothing can be more delusive than the belief that this is the region of death. We found ourselves off the Great Zambesi, in the Pearl, on May 14; but the river being rough and the wind fresh, we did not attempt to land until the next day, when the Hermes hove in sight; and as it had been decided by the expeditionists that the great river would be more easily reached by the West Luabo, and less risk run, than by entering the Zambesi at once, where the bar is shallow and the surf heavy, we decided for West Luabo, accompanied by the Hermes. It was low water when we reached the mouth of the river, with the sea in a state of fury right across its mouth; so we waited till 3 P.M., when, the water having risen six feet, we made a run for it in the Pearl (her captain showing much pluck), and got over the bar (which just broke), two and a quarter fathoms being the least water we found. Upon entering the points of the river a fine sheet of water opened out, the shores of which are densely clad with mangrove and other tropical trees; but the river's banks were quite level, and elevated only two or three feet above the spring tide level. This feature is universal throughout the delta. We anchored for the night, and at day-dawn on Sunday, the 16th, the operation of hoisting out the steam-launch was commenced. I started off with two Kroomen and three of the members of the expedition to survey the estuary, and get astronomical observations, Captain Bedingfield and myself acting as leads men. We did our work by 5 P.M., and returned to the Pearl just as the centre and heaviest part of the launch, weighing five or six tons, was going All went well; and at sunset we gave three cheers, and joined the fore part of the launch to the middle, and so ended the first day. We found a group of eight hippopotami living in a creek just at our observation spot, and they by no means approved of our intrusion. We fired at them, heard

out.

anchored in six fathoms for the night. We found
the river more than anticipation had pictured it to
be-broad, deep, and flowing with riverly strength,
which raised our hopes far beyond what they had
formerly been for success with ease and rapidity.
Vain hopes, too soon to be confronted with reality,
in the shape of reeds and bullrushes right across
the river! The mosquitoes began to be very
troublesome. I saw and closely examined six
different species, all venomous and brutally fero-
cious;
but we found that by keeping in the mid-
dle of the river our sufferings were somewhat alle-
viated."

SIR WILLIAM NAPIER has just now edited, in London, a posthumous work of General Sir Charles Napier, being a historical romance, entitled "William the Conqueror." In a preface the editor insinuates that Sir Bulwer Lytton was indebted to a sight of this manuscript for the hint and the materiel of his story of Harold. A trenchant notice in the Saturday Review says: "The development of the butterfly out of the grub is very wonderful; but such a transformation would be a trifle to the development of the truth, the vigor, the magnificence of Harold out of the utter rubbish of 'William the Conqueror.'

"The whole tale, from beginning to end, is wild, extravagant, and what is called 'melodramatic.' It is ushered in by an absurd preface, under the name of 'Peter Grievous,' which the editor informs us-we should not have found it out for ourselves-has some reference to the real or supposed injustice endured by Sir Charles Napier at the hands of Sir Frederick Adam, when the former was Resident of Cephalonia, and the latter Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. The threadbare device of having found an ancient MS. is repeated for the thousand-and-first time, and the story is supposed to be dictated by William Mallet in his hundredth year to Wace in his boyhood. As the editor tells us, 'sarcastic political irony runs through the romance of "William the Conqueror;" it was excited at the time of writing by the Reform agitation.' That is to say, ever and anon the tale stops for the author-sometimes in his own person, and sometimes in that of William Mallet-to quiz sometimes the eleventh century and sometimes the nineteenth. Now all this is just as it should not be. In such a tale as this we do not want any thing about Sir Charles Napier or Sir Frederick Adam; we do not want any thing about the Reform Bill or the New Poor Law; but we want a true and vivid portraiture of two of the mightiest men that ever walked God's earth-William the Bastard and Harold the son of Godwine. This we

850

and again become lawful.

10. To prove that what get from the hands of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton | precise hour at which secular things become sinful, -we do not get it from the hands of Sir Charles Napier. In the latter, the real exploits of the two they call Sabbath-keeping is a cause of the pros11. To account, upon Sabheroes are altogether overlaid by a mass of violent- perity of nations, or that Sabbath-breaking is the ly improbable adventures on the part of the sub- cause of their decline. ordinate characters. Every man is constantly on batarian principles, for the prosperity of England, the point of being murdered, and every woman of when, according to the census on the Sunday inbeing ravished, only William or Harold, or some- vestigated, 4,105,797 persons were absent from the times William and Harold together, are sure to morning services in churches and chapels ** without Now we cause of inability," 5,569,114 were so absent from appear miraculously to rescue them. have no doubt that life in the eleventh century the afternoon services, and 5,688,830 so absent from was considerably more exciting than life in the the evening services; when the Archbishop of Dubnineteenth; but we do not believe that people, lin sanctions the Sunday opening of the Zoological even then, lived the sort of life of perpetual prod- Gardens in that city; when railways and steamWe have boats are crowded with Sunday excursionists durigy which Sir Charles Napier depicts. no doubt that there were a good many days on ing the fine weather; when the Queen employs a which Duke William had nothing to do but ride military band to play secular tunes on Sundays at after his hawks, and the Duchess Matilda nothing Windsor, and the people employ similar bands to to do but sit still at her tapestry. But Sir Charles play similar tunes on Sundays in the London parks. Napier's tale is at least a commentary on the doc- 12. To explain, upon Sabbatarian principles, how trine that neither the greatest of kings nor the best it is that Holland merits the description of M'Culof men are more exempt from violence than from loch -" perhaps no country has so little crime "— natural death.' The more exalted his personages when Dutch newspapers teem with advertisements 13. To explain, if SabbathOne ruffian of Sunday concerts. the greater the scrapes they get into. has actually the good luck to carry off at one swoop breaking leads to national ruin, how it is that Switzthe wife of William and the mistress of Harold. erland, though surrounded by powerful enemies, The mass of errors in names, incidents, and the has preserved her liberties and grown in prosperity, like, and the amazing extent to which Sir Charles although Sunday is the favorite day for rifle-shootNapier has drawn upon his own imagination, forming, meeting in pleasure-gardens, and other soa striking contrast to the wonderful accuracy of Sir E. B. Lytton."

14. To excalled Sabbath-breaking amusements. plain how it is that Scotland, where Sabbatarianism is most in regard, is renowned for drunkenness and A VERY spirited and somewhat embittered dis- illegitimacy. In Sabbath-breaking France the ilcussion is occupying the London journals anent the legitimate births amount to 7·1-10, and in Sabbathopening of the Sydenham Gardens upon Sunday. breaking Belgium to 6-7-10, while in the rural disA vote of the stockholders has declared in the affirm-tricts of Sabbath-keeping Scotland, the Registrarative; but, on the other side, it is alleged that not General reports them 11·1-10 in Peebles to 17-5-10 one half of the stockholders voted at all, and stren- in Nairn! uous efforts are being made to defeat the plan.

A Sunday National League has been formed, abetted by the Examiner, Leader, and other liberal papers, to defeat Sabbatarian restrictions. This National Sunday League challenge the Sabbatarian or Hebrew-Christian party to prove-1. That the contemplation of beautiful objects of nature and of art has upon Sundays a worse effect than upon other days. 2. To explain by what means the people may infallibly discriminate between a tune good for Sunday and one good for Monday or other week days. 3. To explain why it is good on Sunday to read in the Bible about Nineveh and Egypt, and bad to go to the Crystal Palace or the British Museum in order to see the objects referred to in the sacred book. 4. Why it is good on Sunday to read in the Bible about the lilies of Jerusalem, and wicked to look upon the buttercups of England. 5. To define accurately what may and what may not be done on Sunday. 6. To explain how it is that cooking the hot dinners and making the clergyman's bed, and driving the Bishop's coach on Sunday are pious or permissible actions, while conducting an excursion train or driving the poor man's 7. To show Divine auvans are deadly sins. thority for establishing the sort of Sabbath which the Hebrew Christians contend for, on any day or at any period. 8. To show Divine authority for transferring the obligation of any Old Testament Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week. 9. To show Divine authority for altering the old Eastern mode of reckoning the commencement of days, and exactly what change was permitted, so that we may be able to ascertain the

Two curious pamphlets have appeared in France, under, be it remarked, the régime of a strict censorship. This fact alone causes them to be noticed. One is called "Aurons nous la Guerre avec l'AngleThe individual terre?" It is not, like other incendiary pamphlets of a similar kind, anonymous. who stands forth as the author prints his name thus S. Medoros. According to the statements in the journals, this pamphlet opens by saying, that while diplomacy imagines the attention of Europe concentrated upon the Paris Conferences and the question of the Principalities, "it would appear that grave events, of a nature to remodel the map of Europe, are ripening under a mysterious vail." In the next sentence it is stated, in more absolute terms, that "a grand historical event is in prepa ration." Further on we are informed that “Are we to go to war with England ?" is the "simple question" which every body is asking in France, and that the idea of such a war is so deeply rooted in the minds of all purveyors of news, that the splendid fetes of Cherbourg seem to them rather a parade of force than a friendly demonstration. A little lower down our author says that all the peoples of Europe firmly believe that "Napoleon III. is meditating one of those great deeds with which he has before this astonished the world;" and that "this belief of the people is encouraged by the Imperial silence."

The writer discusses the chances of landing men on English coasts, admits the difficulty of the enterprise, but regards it as feasible to land 300,000 men.