to take no thought about the conventionalities of this day and generation. And when she is dressed like a man, she walkes like a man. No ambling, pacing prettiness; but a good manly stride, at which men smile, and women wonder and despair; for they ask, how can limbs which have lived and moved and had their being under the shadowing embrace of petticoats, swing so clear and free? To all this boldness of manner upon the stage in manly costume, Signorina Vestvali unites a bearing equally womanly in the drawing-room. She came here well introduced, and was made much of in the society of our most estimable and cultivated people for some time before she obtained an opportunity of appearing in public. Her first triumphs were those of her intelligence, pleasing manners, and womanly beauty in the social circle. When to all this we add that she has a fine, richtoned voice, and sings with great spirit and feeling, it would seem as if Signorina Vestvali must needs have turned the town topsy-turvy. Not a bit of it. The brains of some very young gentlemen, who have pheezed and fretted around her, like little steam-tugs round a splendid clipper ship, which they want to seize and carry off, may have softened under her influence; but the public, although they always welcome her heartily, and take delight in listening to and looking at her, yet keep their senses and their dollars, and will not throng the theatre, even when she and Steffanone and Brignoli sing together. Who is Brignoli? A very nice little tenor, who sings in a very nice little way, and tries to imitate Mario, and succeeds wonderfully, except as regards voice, and vocal skill, and good looks. The three, with Badiali, form an excellent company; and, as we said before, either one of them, ten years ago, would have filled a theatre. But now, we demand one artist, at least, of the very first class; and that artist must be supported by others as good as either of these three, and by a full and well-conducted chorus and orchestra; and we want all this for one dollar. Like a lady of whom we heard, who could not find a nurse to satisfy her; and it proved that she wanted intelligence, good looks, ability to read and write, good judgment, neatness in dress, and propriety of manner-in short, a good person, a good mind, and all the cardinal virtues, for seven dollars a month. The music which these people have given us has been all old, and of that sort which gets old very quickly-Donizetti's. We have had one new opera, Rigoletto, by Verdi, but, with the exception of a pretty romance and a carefully-written trio, it is poor stuff, and fell dead upon the public ear. A German Opera Company has possession of Niblo's Theatre. The enterprise has been very successful as to money. The house has been full almost nightly, and the audiences have been more fashionable than those at the Academy of Music. The management has been "aristocratic," too, on that very important point-subscribers, and subscribers' seats. There have been three hundred of these; twice as many as there were at Astor Place, and fifty more than there are in Irving Place; yet the public are not disgusted, and a certain press has refrained from personal attacks upon the manager and the audience. Why is this? "For particulars, see small bills." This German Opera Company has not been intensely German in its performances -the frequent occurrence of words ending in icht being the strongest Teutonic trait to be found in them. True, Flotow's Martha was pretty well, and Weber's Freyschutz was pretty badly done; but the staple has been the French Brewer of Preston, and the Italian Romeo et Giulietta, done into German. Excepting Miss Caroline Lehman, a very conscientious and well-instructed vocalist, the artists have all been of an inferior grade. THE DRAMA. THOSE who look up as they pass St. Paul's Chapel-and who does not?-see upon the front of Barnum's Museum, about the time we write, amid huge transparencies of the American Giantess, who looks as if she need only caper a little to shake the house down, and the Mammoth Girl, whose accumulation of feminine fat evidently protects the roof tree from any danger consequent upon her capering, another huge transparency upon which appears a ship, bearing at her mizen peak a black flag with a death's head and crossbones, while a goodly part of the canvas is occupied by a very fierce-looking gentlemen, much larger than the ship, who wears a peaked hat and wide breeches, and carries another black flag with another death's head and cross-bones. The ship is the Flying Dutchman's Ship, the man is the Flying Dutchman, and the transparency means that Mr. Barnum has been getting up a Great Flying Dutchman-ic Revival in the Theatre-we beg his pardon, the Lecture Room of his Museum. We do not propose to criticise the Flying Dutchman,—either the picture or the play: we merely refer to the Great Revival as entitled to notice among the other Great Revivals of the day,--Mr. Wallack being the reviver in the others. We seriously believe that the Flying Dutchman is as good a play, as worthy of the careful attention of good actors, and generous stage appointments and costumes, as the majority of the comedies which Mr. Wallack revives. It seems incredible that a gentleman of experience and ability should devote his theatre and a good company to the performance of the smart, feeble, unnatural inanities produced by Congreve and Colley Cibber, and the tribe which followed them. Devoid of humor, devoid of character, without one touch of nature, dependent for the success which they once had upon repartee, grossness and intrigue in a half-century given up to repartee, grossness and intrigue, these comedies have been consigned to the grave, where they should be allowed to lie and rot in peace. Why will Mr. Wallack dig them up and bring their unmannerly corses before the world! He does his best with them, we are happy to admit. He dresses them unexceptionably, and dazzles us with lace, and velvet, and brocade, perukes and lappets; but it is beyond his skill to put real men and women in all those fine clothes: the author has prevented that, by filling them with conventional puppets. Mr. Wallack tries to purge these plays of their grossness and indecency, and he succeeds pretty well; but such is the nature of the material with which he has to deal, that in eliminating its grossness, he takes away all its little character, and in purifying its indecency he extinguishes all its feeble wit, giving us, perforce, decent dullness instead of prurient smartness. Pray let us have done with this, Mr. Wallack. Give us plays that have kept the stage; do not waste your strength in attempting to lug back those that have been kicked off it. Or if you must "revive," let us have the Flying Dutchman. MR. FORREST has been playing at the Broadway Theatre one of his periodical engagements. His popularity appears to be undiminished. Evening after evening, the capacious house has been filled with people who applauded and cheered Mr. Forrest to the echo. If strenuous endeavors merit success, he certainly deserves all he has attained. His playing is more like hard muscular working; and he earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, as much as any gintleman of the Anti-Know-Nothing party who condescends to come over here and get a living by filling a dirt cart. But the time has passed for criticism upon Mr. Forrest's acting. He has long since made his position and his fortune; and in the former he is firmly fixed. His style is well known, and can exercise no influence upon public taste; for he plays to those who will have such playing from some one, and others cannot be induced to go and see him on any terms. Upon each character in which he has appeared, the Tribute has given its readers an elaborate criticism, generally very condemnatory and very just, but in the articles upon Shakespeare's plays, displaying, with a fine appreciation of the poet's thought, a lamentable ignorance of the materials out of which he built his dramas, and of the purpose with which he produced them. In its judgment of Mr. Forrest, the Tribune has but reiterated decisions passed by men of taste, before that journal had an exist ence. MR. BURTON has brought out a play by MR. BOURCICAULT, Janet Pride, in a manner which ought to give complete satisfaction to the author. Janet Pride is a mild melodrama, the action of which is so much broken that the author calls its first two Acts, the Prologue. Janet Pride. although she gives the play its name, is but a secondary character in it: the principal being Richard Pride, her father. This play is entirely one of incident and situation. It has but one character, Pride remarkably well played by Mr. Burtonor at most two; the second being Bernard, the old French watchmaker, which was a very happy effort on the part of Mr. Moore. Janet Pride will add nothing to Mr. Bourcicault's reputation as a man of letters, although it may bring him some jobs as a playwright. PUTNAM'S MONTHLY. A Magazine of Literature, Science, VOL. V.-JUNE, 1855.-NO. XXX. AMERICAN TRAVELERS.* THE Englishman is at once the most rational and the most cosmopolitan of men. Wherever he goes, he takes his prejudices and his tea-pot with him; but he sees more, and tells his story of sight-seeing better, than the traveler of other nations. The same spirit and training that sent the six hundred, the Earl of Cardigan at their head, "Into the jaws of death, Into the mouth of hell," at Balaklava, is the spirit which has sent the solitary Englishman to penetrate the loneliest deserts, and to climb the loftiest mountains. In Switzerland, if your guide stimulates your ambition to cross an unfrequented and dangerous pass, he assures you that it can be done, for Mr. Bull, in the year of grace 1810, or in some other traditional year, went that very way, and Mrs. Bull could hardly be dissuaded from accompanying him. In the East, it is always an Englishman who lived for two or three years at Damascus, for the whim of the thing-and certainly it was an Englishwoman who made herself the greatest queen of the East since Cleopatra. The traveler of twenty years since, who recalls the Guide Book of Mrs. Starke, or the curious reader, who to day turns its pages, can easily estimate the advantage to the world of English travel. It is John Bull who has made traveling easy. It is John Bull who has taught the kitchen of Italy to reek with the fumes of biftecca, and the mouldy rooms of the Locanda to own the perfume of Bohea. It is John Bull who has set up Felix and rosbif in the very shadow of the Madeleine, and within scent of the Café de Paris. It is John Bull who has put Frenchmen upon high-trotting horses, and crowded the Bois de Boulogne with agonized equestrians, rising in the stirrups, and coming down hard at the wrong time. It is John Bull who awakens the venerable Roman echoes of the Campagna with the tally-ho of the huntsman, and the distant, flickering bay of hounds; and John Bull who rides steeple-chases over the old granary of the world. He has put clean sheets upon continental beds, and caused continental doors to shut, and windows to open. He has introduced carpets, and cold water. Wherever Mr. Bull has been, he has left a track of comfort, high prices, liberal swearing, intelligent observation, sullen endurance, and triumphant achievement. Twenty years ago, Mrs. Starke was the traveler's Vade Месит. The pilgrim of poetry and Journey to Central Africa. By BAYARD TAYLOR. G. P. Putnam & Co.: New York. The Lands of the Saracen By BAYARD TAYLOR. G. P. Putnam & Co.: New York.- -Travels in Europe and the East. 2 vols. By SAMUEL IRENEUS PRIME. Harper & Brothers: New York. Another Budget; or, Things which I Saw in the East. By JANE ANTHONY EAMES. Ticknor & Fields: Boston.-Cosas de España; or, Going to Madrid via Barcelona. Redfield: New York-Art, Scenery, and Philosophy in Europe, being fragments from the Portfolio of the late HORACE BINNEY WALLACE, ESQ., of Philadelphia. Herman Hooker: Philadelphia.-Notes of a Theological Student. By JAMES MASON HOPPIN. D. Appleton & Co.: New York.-Gan Eden; or, Pictures of Cuba. J. P. Jewett & Co.: Boston and Cincinnati. VOL. V.-36 beauty, going to Rome, to Naples, to Sicily, said Mrs. Starke, must bring with him all his furniture, all his linen, all his comestibles, all his pots, pans, and appurtenances; and several columns of that valuable book were devoted to an inventory of the simple necessities for a continental tour. The book was an exhortation to take up your house and travel, if you expected to be comfortable. Those were the days of couriers, and hiring huge traveling carriages in Paris; of chasseurs and brigands, and the delightful romance of Terracina. Irving's "Tales of a Traveler," so far as they treat of the incidents of traveling, belong to the Starke epoch of the grand tour. But John Bull soon found it easier to make the continent supply him with clean sheets, than to take such a clumsy bundle of bed clothes with him; and all succeeding travelers are his debtors. He has warmed the bed for the rest of the world. On the other hand, he has carried extravagance everywhere, and the bad effects of a taciturn, if not surly nature. He has spoiled the carnival in Rome, and put steamers upon the Nile. He has reversed Napoleon's plan, and, instead of bringing all the world to Paris, he has carried England into all the world. His sobriquet upon the continent has been, for years, Milor-the affluent, haughty, domineering lord. The word, itself, is the best history of the net English impression upon the popular mind of Europe. He learns languages with difficulty, and sneers, with that profound stupidity of prejudice which is only possible in a nation that produces Squire Westerns, at a people "Who call their mothers mères. And all their daughters fillies." Have we not all seen that Milor, in St. Peter's, upon Easter; in Pompeii; on the Prater; in the Cascine; on the Pyramids; on the desert; at the remotest Egyptian temples; on the plain of Marathon; in the Norway fiords, with his double-soled walking shoes, and his gaiters, and his checked trowsers and waistcoat, and sporting jacket with large buttons, his mutton-chop whiskers, and rosy, moony face? Yet that very tenacity of checked breeches is the secret of half the comfort we enjoyed in going to those places, where we met this familiar figure. It is ludicrous when you encounter it in Brown, Jones, and Robin son, for in them it is degenerate and unmeaning, but the thoughtful traveler contemplates a nobleman's breeches with curious interest. For the philosophy of this marked English influence upon continenta llife is undoubtedly this, that the upper classes of England, who are more educated, and of a really finer quality than the upper classes of any other country, have united in themselves the natural desire of educated men to travel, the indefeasible national characteristic, strengthened by the pride of class, and unlimited means of gratifying every whim, and of securing foot-stoves at any cost and risk. A Frenchman has none of the Bedouin spirit. It was a French instinct in Napoleon to bring the characteristic spoils of every country to Paris, for the Frenchman has a secret scepticism of everything out of Paris, and cares for the "barbarian world" only when he can see specimens of it at home. Johnny Crapeau considers it only a proper homage to the capital of the earth, that all lands should send their products thither. Paris is France to him, but it is also the world. The bourgeois believes Leipsic is in Germany, and knows that the Pope lives at Rome; the greater pity for him! But are not Corneille and Racine the greatest of poets? is not Voltaire the king of philosophers? have we not all the illustrations du temps? is not Rachel ours? is not France favored of all the muses and graces? is not ours the social philosophy, the hope of the future? Will you step over to the Faubourg St. Germain, and be introduced to the society upon which all other human society is modeled? will you have the most exquisite boots, shoes, dresses, pantalons, dinners, dances, demoiselles? What more can a reasonable being desire? Several Frenchmen went to London during the Great Exhibition, and wrote accounts of their tours. There is no more amusing reading anywhere. England is a world as far from France as the spiritual from the material. Monsieur Crapeau speaks of Bull in a strain of incredulity, and with pettishness at the total want of mutual comprehension. We shall never forget a sunny day in Rouen, which was actually chilled and darkened by a Frenchman's account of a recent visit to London. Had it been to Lapland or Siberia, to some remote region not yet familiar to geography, and beyond human sympa thy, it could not have been more delightfully dismal. At intervals he drank his claret, with a kind of clinging, pensive tenderness, like a man who should never forgive himself that he had ever lost one day of France. And we, who were bound for Albion, and meant to dine to-morrow upon roast beef, and not upon rosbif, felt uneasily, as if we were doomed to desolate exile-a Juvenal banished to Syene. There is an amusing vaudeville, which is hardly a caricature of the French feeling toward England, in which one whole act consists of a man coming upon the stage, which represents a dreary storm, with his heavy box coat buttoned to his ears, shoes with soles of preternatural thickness, and a great umbrella. He strides across the scene in lugubrious silence, and, in the universal gloom mutters hoarsely, "C'est Soonday!" and vanishes. The popular French idea of England is of an eternal and hopelessly rainy Soonday. But the French books of travel have an esprit, which is very attractive. The French genius loves to beautify details, and will serve you the most delicate dinner from the scrapings of the larder, or write you a graceful, graphic book of traveling sketches, upon the Boulevards, in Lyons, anywhere, the most familiar, or the most remote locality, and it shall be unmistakably French. It is never the material, with the French, but always the manner; hence their profound respect for the artist. The cook is an artiste; the barber is an artiste; the tailor and the shoemaker are artistes. And hence again, the details of civilization are perfected in France, and Paris becomes the most agreeable of cities to every man who can content himself with universal chique, rather than occasional taste; with society which is spirituel rather than spiritual; with the ease of Art rather than the grace of Nature; who asks of the world only well-fitting gloves, and a digestible dinner, the favor of the reigning danseuse, and an insouciance, a genial carelessness which makes him less bored in Paris than anywhere else, and enables him to slouch along toward death as little bored as possible. It is this essential want of moral heroism in the French character, which is the secret of the English dislike of France. It is not a political nor sectional difference or ambition, so much as the radical antipathy of a hearty and serious nature, for one that is speculative, superficial, and sceptical. The American is the great national eclectic, and, in the sense of adaptability, he is more cosmopolitan than the Englishman. In Paris, he is more French than the Parisian; in Rome, more Italian than the Roman; and in Britain, more English than the Englishman. He learns easily, and accommodates readily. He has a more flexible accent, a more graceful taste, than any other traveler. In Cairo, he wears the turban with edifying gravity, and in the German Eilwagen, his neighbor asks him from what part of Germany he comes. While in Paris, Mr. Bull has his shoes a little thicker in the sole, and his waistcoat a little shorter, and his checks a little more pronounced, lest he should seem to succumb to Gallic corruption, his cousin Jonathan arrives without a wardrobe, that he may appear in the very last French fashion. Jonathan follows St. Paul, and is all things to and with all men. His individuality lies in a certain rank independence and secret sense of superiority. And yet he is so complaisant that he will keep silence rather than offend, and even take sides against the essential American idea, as was so copiously proved during the European convulsions of 1848. He traverses historic lands with less scholarship, and more money, than any other traveler. It is too true that he requires every waterfall to be Niagara; every river, the Mississippi; every plain, a prairie; and every pond, a Lake Superior. It is too true, that armed with Niagara, Bunker Hill, and a surplus in the treasury, he belabors Europe, until a wise man smiles. The American, however, has a pleasure in foreign travel, which the man of no other nation enjoys. With a nature not less romantic than others; with desires and aspirations for the reverend and historically beautiful, forever unsatisfied at home, fed for years upon the splendid literature of all time, and the pompous history of the nations that have occupied and moulded the earth, and yet separated from those nations and that history, not only by space and the total want of visible monuments, but by the essential spirit of society around him; born with poetic perception amid the stateliest natural forms-forests, mountains, rivers, and plains-that seem to foreshow a more imperial race, and results more majestic than are yet his |