greater service, than to lead our andiences, you will find the most agreeable dumb step by step, into continually higher at people in the world at these rooms, and mospheres of appreciation. She has in her that you will find there nobody dse. the making of a really great actress, and If you take the trouble to go there, that a really great actress, we doubt not, that fact is & sufficient proof that you care she will become. enough for art to talk with us a little Let the enthusiasm of the public for Miss about those sweet and steadfast creatures Heron, founded, as it really is, in the vera of the chisel, and about their gifted cious and vigorous quality of her acting, maker. stimulate our managers and our actors You find in them all, do you not, a singenerally. They may count upon the pub- gular graciousness and delicacy of conceplic of New York with perfect confidence, tion; not much force, to be sure, at least, if they will but do their best to deserve not so much as should make you feel that the public interest. It is idle to charge the strength of life was balanced with its our people at large with indifference to the grace in them, and a fine smoothness of exOpera and the Theatre, when you see that terpal manipulation, which makes you every genuine and vivid appeal to their first remember Powers, and then forget attention is answered so warmly and so him? When you ask this Indian Girl what rapidly. she thinks about the cross she has found in “ Organize ! organize ! organize !'' should road, she has not much to say, that indi. be the cry of the critics to the caterers for cates inward illumination, and you have the public amusement and instruction to infer that she would not have looked Let those, who bave such matters in very differently, nor spoken otherwise, had charge, devote themselves to developing she found a silver crescent instead of a oor resources of the kind, in the most wooden crucifix; but, after all, what could thorough and fearless way, and they will you expect of an ignorant Indian girl, but find their reward. Indian ignorance and girlish satisfaction Not less earnestly is the same advice to in a new mystery? Nothing, of course ; be pressed upon those who feel a real con- and if Mr. Palmer expected to find anycern for the welfare of the “arts," so com- thing else in her, he was a misled man, and monly called, in America. you cannot be surprised at his disappointWe have on more than one occasion ment. Still, if he could not find a soul in lamented the disregard of the interests of that forest face, he cannot be blamed for painting, which was indicated by the con- dwelling with a patient artist's elaboration dition of the Academy Exhibition, and, upon the graceful form, and wearying his now that the season of that annual display band out, until he had subdued the marof the nakedness of the land is approach. ble into such a scmblance of firm, and soft, ing, we might easily renew our Jeremiads. and living flesh, as few sculptors have But we bave no tears to spare for the ever won from it. So, too, you think of painter, after wasting our sympathies on this Sleeping Peri. What a peri may be, the sculptor, or, rather, on the only sculp- you never very distinctly knew, and this tor who is at present inviting the public Peri gives you no more insight into the neglect, by announcing that he has spent Dature and ways of Peris, tban Mr. Thomas the best years of his early manhood in Moore's excepting, that while you look on contriving beauty for the comfort and in- her, you cannot help thinking it odd she struction of his fellow-men, instead of pil- shouldn't have been able to reach Para ing ap dollars for his own delectation. Mr. dise with these wings, if Paradise be, ioPalmer's exhibition of sculpture, at No. deed, located somewhere in the blue empy647 Broadway, is well worth visiting, in rean—for a stouter, more substantial, more the first place, for the sake of the sculp- ornithological pair of wings, no angel could tor's works which you will see there, and require for the most distant mission and in the second, for the sake of the instruct the swiftest flight wbich an angel could ive solitude which the rooms offer to the be commissioned to take. Observe with meditative mind, overwearied with the what minute and felicitous touch the converse of men. If you bave found the feathery substance of these very available Bociety of your human friends unsatisfac- pinions is reproduced ! You would say tory, or vexatious, we can assure you that they were soft enough for the repose of a child's cheek. And here is a child whose formation, in short, of a fine gallery of cheek is soft enough to need such a downy painting and of sculpture ? couch! What wonderful truth of percep- If we cannot bare the thing in its purition and force of touch there are, in the ty, as in France, or Germany, or Italy, bandling of this little creature's shoulders and even in London they have it let us and head! Moreover, you find in this take the most feasible opportunity which child sometbing more than you have offers itself to us. found in the others, of intellectual life. There is the Crystal Palace still standing, The "purple shadow” of “baby bood's sad, and shivery, and desolate, but not cast royal dignities" lies about that small eu- down or utterly destroyed. To make, of preme brow, those firm, fearless eyes, the this building, anything like the glorious undaunted innocence of that chiseled and lovely wonder which the Sydenham mouth. Company bave made of its English protoOn the whole, you like the child's com- type, is, perhaps, impossible ; but who can pany best, though you may tarn from him have seen the bappy and humanizing place now and then, to wonder at the rich, wavy which the new palace has already become effect which the sculptor has given, by his to the London population, without a sense peculiar bandling, to the tresses of these of shame and vexation that e, in New spiritual young ladies near by. We fear York, should be suffering our pleasant they are allegorical as well as spiritual, temple of good weather and beauty to be but they are certainly lovely. going so fast to decay in usclessness ! Would it not be a relief to you, now, if It is a melancholy sight now. Cheered some human being would come in, to whom a little while ago by a prosperous fair, it you might say what you have gathered from has sunk again into silence and desertion. the dumb eloquence of the beautiful crea- Machines are there, pleading vainly, for tures around you ? And should you not ray their inventors, to the empty air; beautito bim something like this: “How plain ful marbles, the splendid product of our it is that our sculptor here, endowed with so own hills, are there, reproving us for our fine a sentiment of beauty, and so exquisite extravagant recklessness of our own rich da facility of hand, would never have mis resources; and, saddest voice of all, there taken fancies for imaginations, and notions are the slowly-crambling stairways and for ideas, had be been surrounded with scaffoldings, that might be made forever great works really great works-that gay with flowers, and bright with paintwould have educated bis inward intellect ings, and noble with statues, and cheery dal life, as the beautiful realities which he with sweet musio-a lounge more genial has scen have educated his external per- than Broadway in the winter's days, and, ceptions ?" perhaps, not less profitable-a place of And yould you not farther go on to say, warmth and pleasant meditation, and the that the works, which this self-taugbt serv most meritorious and beneficial society. ant of art bas executed, are too lovely and When you have established the opera, too genuine, for us not to lament most sin- dear reader, will you have the goodness to cerely that they are destined to be taken buy up the Palmer Marbles, and all the picaway from us, unseen by the multitude of tures of the coming exhibition, to organize our people, and unbeeded by all save a few & Crystal Palace Company, and so make critics, who haven't faith or courage to say yourself the most beneficent benefactor of one-half of what they think about these the people whom these latter years have things, or about anything else, because produced, and introduce a happier era into they bave no assurance of the public con- our public and our private life? If you cern or sympathy? manifest a good disposition in this respect, If these are your impressions, rich and we will enter, hereafter, into fuller details fortunate reader, why will you not do of that which is, and that which ought to your share towards stimulating the capa-. be, done, in regard to both the Crystal ble in our community into the establish- Palace and the opera, the theatres and the ment of some really efficient institution for concerts, and all the means, employed and the reception of all new works of art, the unemployed, of artistic culture, and of repurchase of such as are excellent, and the ined recreation, which are lying at our exhibition of them to the people-to the hands in this World of New York. PUTNAM'S MONTHLY. 2 Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art. VOL. IX.—APRIL, 1857.-NO. LII. THE CHINAMAN, ECIDEDLY it is that suffices to fill There is something ation of his os coccygis were a super essentially ridiculous fluous contribution to the great absurdity in all the pertainings of of his getting up. For myself, I think I the outlandish creature. could with less embarrassment, with a His tail is the sample and more successful air of indifference to the style of him; it stands for grins of the crowd, stand shaking hands, him in all things. Inside on Broadway, with a veritably tailed, and out, he is altogether gentleman from the interior of Africa just so droll as that; and asking after the health of his family and * The Life of Tai-Ping-Wang, Chief of the Chinese Insurrection. By J. MILTON Mackie. New York: Dix, Edwards & Co. 1857. VOL. IX.-22 what he thought of Miss Heron, than I backs of their heads in the place whero could do the very same, by any impulso the tails ought to grow, but when, graof cosmopolitan affability, with Chu-Jin- ciously, to help along my researches, Seng of the “ Forest-of-Pencils Socie- they untwisted the coronal that encirty;” whose respectable, portly and : cled their dingy brows, and showed me pompous uncle, the Mandarin of the yel that the appendage, in all its genuinelow button and several peacock feathers, ness, was there. I saw in the fact merely had sent him hither to induct us outside. an individual peculiarity of coiffure, even barbarian Fifth-Avenuenians in the re- more remarkable and personal than finements and intricacies of celestial eti- the link of gristle which united them quette. His square frout-face presented, like a pair of human sausages. At once gravity might be possible ; but the least their nationality ceased to perplex me. wag of his tail, ever so slight a glimpse of I overcame that doubt as easily as a fly his eccentric occiput, just the faintest crossed the hair line which divided Siam hint of the arc described by the national from China on my Malte-Brun map. hairy pendulum, at the small of his back, And therefore, deduced I, all Chinamen upon the perpendicular of his spinal col. are born double; all Chinamen are umn—and a guffaw were irrepressible. Chang-Eng. [The reader will recollect And I defy you wholly to lose sight and that the twins were called Chang and thought of it, even in your most philo- Eng, but by a pretty amalgamation of sophic contemplations of his mind. their names, for the sentiment of it, they Though he display the profundity and joined the two with a sort of gristlesententiousness of a Bacon and a John.. hyphen, and called themselves Chang. son, equally in his axioms and his anti-' Eng.) When Chang is hungry, thought theses will you detect a trace of tail. I. Eng eats; when the nose of Eng is It is somewhere related by Leigh titillated, Chang sneezes; when Chang Hunt, I think, that once, in London, a lifts up his voice in wiry song. Eng chimney-sweeper came unawares upon makes diabolical faces; if you cut off a Chinaman. Both presently rolled on Eng's tail, the tail of Chang will bleed ; the ground in twisting convulsions of should Chang have the colic, a mustard laughter, to the great alarm of by-stand. poultice to the pit of Eng's stomach crs; each saw, in tbe other, seven won- would relieve him ; the tea that Chang ders of the funny. innbibes, cheers Eng; the rice which My own earliest idea of a Chinaman disappears down Eng, fattens Chang; was derived from the Siamese Twins. Chang thinks Eng, and Eng think i While yet an urchin, I had the rare Chang—therefore no occasion to spoak honor to be admitted to personal inti- to each other; Eng is Chang, and Chang macy with that famous lusus naturæ, is Eng—therefore neither is in the which erst inspired Lytton Bulwer with other's way. When Chang said to Eng bad poetry, and foreshadowed the best once, “My brother, go up to our room, successes of Barnum's Museum, in the if you please, and bring down the fan I Joyce Heth, Feejee mermaid, and 'Tom painted for Johnny," I thought it an Thumb line. Wonder-eyed and thought- uncommon good joke, as though one ful, sitting on my stool, suppressed in a should say, - Sit there, myself, while I * corner by the fire, I have watched them go for me." In three years that I knew hy the hour, as they ate, or smoked, or Chang-Eng, I never, saving that once, laughed, or talked, or even — heaven heard either speak to the other-I never save the key !-sang. From all they once heard either of them say “We,” said, or did, or were, I derived notions, meaning themselves. droll or shocking, as the occasion was, From the case of the Siamese Twins of three hundred millions of pig-eyed the inferences I drew, in regard to people, whose souls are none the less those three hundred millions of my felimmortal, because their God's name, as low-creatures, were prodigious inferI understood it, was Josh-notions that ences for such a small boy to draw; I had have not altogether left me to this day. my foregone conclusions as to the duI was not yet so nice in my geographical plicity of the race, which a closer ac. and ethnological distinctions as to appre- quaintance with them, even on their ciate their points of difference from the native soil, has not proved to be utterly Peter Parley type of Chinaman. True, at fault_at least in one sly sense. Had I was at first puzzled by the apparent the succession of events been moro discovery that they had no tails on the rapid, during the period of my inti a man macy with Chang-Eng, my ideas of red, teapoys, rattan furniture, and chowChinamen would, no doubt, have pre- chow sweetmeats in blue jars ; he buys a sented some refreshing points of resem- great many Manilla cheroots at auction, blance to the views of American man- has his horse-race every Saturday afterners and habits afforded by those vera- noon, and snubs Kanakas continually: cious, clear sighted, fair and philosophic Away I went, with this my latest ethobservers Mons. Léon Beauvallet of the nological fact, to Hong-Kong, where I Rachel Corps Dramatique, and the was soon prepared to assert that the pure London Times in the Arrowsmith case Chinaman was either comprador--that -and I should have made a note on't, is, a ship's agent-pawnbroker, opiumthat all Chinamen, being double, make smuggler, beggar, retired pirate, or their fortunes in Museums by twenty- active assassin ; he sold cash by the five cents admittance, retire to farms in string, like onions, in front of smoky North Carolina, marry eccentric sisters, dens at the end of the Victoria Road; and have nine children between them. or he played Simon-says-wiggle-waggle My next encounter with John China- for samshu at midnight, in the loft of a was at San Francisco, where I cut-throat den, brazenly published with derived new views from the contem- paper lanterns; or he waylaid sentiment. plation of purer types, marked by all al ensigns returning late at night, ia a the enforced characteristies of the Man- state of beer, from a visit to a “Kumpchu dynasty. In these exotics from the ny's widow" who received a select Flowery Kingdom each specimen was party to loo and gin-and-water, every single. Now my tails hung down as evening, on the heights above the Bishstraight as a cow's, and my eyes wern op's Palace. less on a plane than ever. *All China- Away again, to Singapore and Penang, men," I noted, Timeswise and Beauval- where I found the Chinaman making letishly, " are either carpenters, cooks, shoes, coining bad dollars, waiting on washerwomen or gamblers; their names table at “British” hotels, nursing halfinvariably begin with Ay, or Kin, or Fu, caste babies, cheating Malays, and and end in Cow, or Fung, or Tien; with getting himself devoured by an occaevery Chinaman, in the matter of shoot- sional enterprising and unceremonious ing.crackers, it is Fourth of July all the tigress with a large family in a famishyear round; any Chinese woman can ing condition. procuro plenary indulgence for her in- Next to Calcutta ; and there I found discretions by offering the cheap incense the old familiar tail wagging, with added of joss-stick at the shrine of some cow- vivacity and wide-awakeness, among tailed Diana; and any Chinaman may the turbans and breech cloths of the perjure his soul without fear of fiends Black Town bazaars. At the periodical by burning some yellow paper before opium sales, my pig-eyed friend was the Recorder; every Chinaman belongs smartest in the bidding, and in the everto a secret society whose peculiar object lasting processions, from Doorga Pooja is to squeeze out of him extortionately to a turn-out of Triads, bis gong banged much casb, and to strangle him outright loudest. if he tells ; every bankrupt Chinainan Home again, at last-and there sat disembowels himself for the satisfaction the scamp on the lowest step of the of his creditors, and every Chinese lady Astor House, in all the picturesqueness who cannot pay her dress-maker poisons of woeful desolation and home-sickness, herself with opium for a receipt in full; cunningly playing on that harp of a then the defunct is interred in some thousand strings, the sympathies of a Yerba Buena Ceinetry to a salute of Broadway crowd, with a trick of instru. shooting-crackers, and they feed the mentation which was, to me, a familiar grave for a whole moon with roast pig. And amusing reminiscence of San Fran Then I sailed away to Honolulu, in cisco-"Please buy something from this the Sandwich Islands; and after a stay poor Chinaman!"—he buried all the of three months in that amphibious while in jacket sleeves and profound Paradise, if one had asked me, What are inconsolability: Begging considered as the habits and customs of the Chinese ? one of the Fine Arts. I should have answered: The China- One day, certain celestials of the bet. man lives on Kamehameha street, or the ter class, concerned for the national King's road, where he keeps a shop for character, exposed this dodge in a mornthe sale of Madras handkerchiefs, Turkey ing paper. For several inonths after a |