at the highest prices all the bowls we paint, or offer them on commission, and pay us large annual profits because decalcomania is an art so elevating and refined, and most of the artists are so poor?

Here we pause, because here the vulpine tradition interposes, and says, gravely, that publishing is not so simple a business. The publisher and the author are partners in a common transaction upon stipulated conditions, but the advantage of the author partner depends upon certain circumstances of which. he is not permitted to see the record. He is wholly at the mercy of the publisher partner. If his share of profit is to begin after the sale of a certain quantity, if it is to be a percentage on the whole number sold, and the degree of his advantage is to be determined by a hundred such details, may he not justly complain if all the records of all the details are to be wholly within the power of the other partner, and withheld from him except in such statements as the other partner may vouchsafe?

But the draft upon confidence in the honesty of others is no greater in this form of trade than in other kinds. The bondholder of a railroad proceeds upon statements which he cannot verify, and upon a confidence without which business in general would be impracticable. In fact, how many respectable publishers are or ever have been suspected of reporting to the author a sale of a thousand copies of his work when ten thousand have been sold? In other words, how many such publishers are supposed to be thieves and swindlers?

Doubtless many an author, after the "handsome notices" of the press and the private congratulations of friends, is amazed and incredulous at the publisher's statement of sales. Doubtless, also, the compensation derived from their works by eminent authors is much smaller, judging by their renown and standing, than the observer would suppose. But the reason is not that they have made poor bargains, or that they have been cheated. The reason is that there is no necessary relation between the distinction of an author and the sale of his works. The authors who receive the largest pecuniary returns for such sales are often the least distinguished.

Publishers and editors are not bands of robbers, although the vulpine tradition will still have it so. If the young poet

will bring a pearl or the young romancer a ruby, he will find the editor and publisher are eager experts who will pay the price. But because there are pearls and rubies, is it a heinous offence not to pay the price of pearls and rubies for pebbles?

PHILADELPHIA wears proudly her patriotic laurels. The city cannot be deprived of the glory of the Continental Congress, of the Declaration of Independence, and of the early Congress of the Constitution. But many a reader would raise an inquiring eye if he were told that once also her local renown in literature and art made her, in a phrase which has since been descriptive of Boston, the Athens of America. Indeed, when HARPER'S MAGAZINE appeared, the two popular magazines of largest circulation-Godey's Lady Book, which sometimes reached a monthly circulation of one hundred and fifty thousand copies, and Graham's Magazine, to which the most distinguished American authors of fifty years ago contributed -were both published in Philadelphia. The appearance of HARPER'S MAGAZINE in New York in 1850, followed by that of Putnam's in 1852, and by that of the Atlantic in Boston in 1854, marked the passing of the literary sceptre from Philadelphia.

The little volume by Professor Albert H. Smyth, of the Philadelphia HighSchool, called Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors, is a very interesting study of one form of our earlier literary effort. Nothing in the history of that time is more pathetic than the short life of each successive magazine, and nothing more amusing than the constant wrath of our writers at the British contempt of our literary endeavors, of which Sydney Smith's famous article in the Edinburgh Review is the most familiar illustration. The British sneerers, however, were not without American accomplices. The Federalists, in their anguish over the accession of Jefferson to the Presidency, were inclined, in the true Tory vein as Addison portrays it in the Freeholder, to ascribe all faults and shortcomings to the malign ascendency of the evil star of Jeffersonism. Fisher Ames, in Dedham, with fine scorn inveighs against our well-meant but not triumphant essays in literature; and Dennie, in Philadelphia, says, "To study with a view of becoming an author by profession

in America is a prospect of no less flattering promise than to publish among the Esquimaux an essay on delicacy of taste, or to found an Academy of Sciences in Lapland."

Yet Dennie edited the first really successful popular magazine, and Professor Smyth calls the Philadelphian Charles Brockden Brown the first professional man of letters in the country. The controversy with Great Britain upon the subject was acrid and incessant. We must not think that we alone in our day twist the tail of the British lion, or that the British tone is more insolent now than in the earlier days of the century. In 1814, when the improvised American navy was ruthlessly shaking Britannia's claim to rule the waves, the London Times thundered at our meek Mr. Madison-who was certainly bumped about by events in a very uncomfortable way, and whose flight from Washington was unquestionably a ludicrous incident-in these words: "Why, what an ass this fellow must be, in the very head and front of an address to his deluded countrymen thus to convict himself of plain and deliberate treason. . . . To hear him, notorious as he is for lying, for imposture of all kinds, for his barbarous warfare, both in Canada and against the Creek Indians, for everything, in short, that can disgrace and degrade a government," etc.

This compares well with the later peals of the same stage-thunderer against America, and it is not surprising that men who remembered the Revolution and took part in the second war should have preferred the nation of our old ally, even with Napoleon or the Bourbons, to the old redcoat, whose manners of the press were of the pothouse and the scullery. The same spirit and tone were carried into the general comments of travelling John Bull upon American life and character and our painful literary beginnings. No literary American was more exasperated by this conduct than James K. Paulding, and his reply to Southey's criticism of Ingersoll's Inchiquin's Letters in the Quarterly Review, in 1815, and his Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan, by Hector Bull-us, show at once how sensitive we were to the stings of British gnats, and how very imperfect was our sense of humor.

This old controversy and our modest beginnings in letters are recalled by the

pleasant book of Professor Smyth, which recites the annals of our first literary capital. But, as we said, it is pathetic to remark both the tenacity of that early literary endeavor and the brevity of its successive forms. A magazine is issued, continues for a year, for two or three years, then vanishes, and presently a new bud opens for the same brief blossoming. Even students of our native literature probably recall very few of those early ventures except the best and most permanent of them, the Portfolio, which was published for seventeen years, and ended in 1827. The magazines of to-day were as little anticipated then as the other marvellous phenomena of American development and prosperity. Even Poe, the last of the more eminent names among Philadelphia magazine editors, did not live to see the later triumphs, for he died in 1849, the year before HARPER'S MAGAZINE was issued.

And even had Poe seen those earliest numbers of this Magazine, he would not have foreseen the Magazine of to-day, with its comprehensive scope and its ample splendor of illustration, opening an endless field to the American art of wood-engraving, and an immense opportunity to the American author. A study of the New York magazine or of New York literature, made with the patient research of Professor Smyth, would be exceedingly interesting. Mr. Dennett some years ago, in the Nation, sketched with a caustic pen the story of what he called the Knickerbocker School, in which he found not much which was distinctively national. Yet for a time, in the eminence of its leading names, the literary primacy passed from Philadelphia to New York. Irving, Cooper, and Bryant were the unquestionable greater gods of our modest Olympus. They ruled unchallenged until that later constellation filled the East with overpowering light. But the glimpse of Philadelphian ascendency which the book of Professor Smyth reveals is essential to a just comprehension of the local aspects of our literary development.

THE answer of the husband going to Newport to his friend's inquiry why he had taken two cottages, One for my wife's trunks," announces that the amusement company will soon be upon its way to various resorts for the entertainment of the public. The company requires

ample accommodation for its costumes and properties, and although it is many years since the wife going to Saratoga explained to her husband the magnitude and extent of her luggage by saying that of course she could not wear a dress twice, yet the truth of the observation remains, and it may be verified at Newport to-day as fully as at Saratoga some years ago.

That remark seems to imply that the amusement company now prefers Newport to Saratoga. Can this be true? Has the sceptre of fashion really fallen from that familiar grasp? Is it no longer Saratoga, but Newport, of which the sylph of the season dreams? Or can it be possible that Saratoga is to her a ruin of Iona or a word of naught? Her grandmother was no less a belle than she. But in her grandmother's reign Newport was a quiet and staid retreat for families with family coaches and a certain weighty respectability. But the flutter, the flash, the whirl, were not all unknown, indeed, even there, since happy and lovely youth are immortal

"Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair"— but they were not the stream, they were but the bright bubbles upon it. Saratoga had then the cry, and had the hard choice been offered to the blooming sylph to go to Saratoga or to go to heaven-what a meditative moment were there!

Is the patient reader asking why the flight from the city to the sea-shore should be called the journey of the amusement company? But is not the answer another question, namely, what else is it? These palaces that call themselves cottages, as Marie Antoinette and her choicest court playing in the gardens of Versailles called themselves milkmaids and shepherdesses; these feasts beyond what Lucullus and Apicius knew; these smooth-rolling equipages, chariots of luxurious ease, and superb toilets de la rue--are they for themselves? Is it their own pleasure that the dancers and the diners and the drivers seek? Far from it. In truth, they have little personal pleasure in the incessant round. They are conscious but mechanical parts of a routine pageant. They wear what they call the smart gown, the jewels, the brocade, the cloth of gold, not for their own enjoyment, for that is consumed by the fear or the certainty that somebody else will be more splendid, but for the

spectacular effect-upon you and me sitting on the fence, or strolling on the sidewalk, or staring from a public conveyance.

"Lais looks very happy to-night," said Aspasia, one of the leading ladies of the company, smiling, as if she knew the reason. And why?" asked the chevalier. "Because I have not a single diamond. Yesterday at the house of Xenocrates I wore my diamonds, and poor Lais was dimmed. When I came into the room to-night her eyes swept me from head to foot, and saw that I had spared her. Lais is very happy." This is the play among the players. But the audience on the fence does not know the names of the players, nor wish to know. It is not the plot of the opera nor the names of the singers that they care for; it is the singing which pleases them. They award the prize to the chariot with the most footmen, to the most gorgeous bonnet, to the greatest profusion of silk and velvet. The players play to each other, indeed, and disdain the audience. But it is only

the audience on the fence that sees the comedy and enjoys it. Indeed, to the players themselves it is often mere tragedy.

The local company of this neighborhood gives its public performances in Central Park during the autumn and spring. Does it come out to enjoy the beauty of nature? to take the air? Even Corydon would not suppose it. shrewd eye perceives that it is all a play, of which the only pleasant part is the pleasure of the spectator.

His

Yet they are involuntary and not real players. They do not move the kindly feeling that attends the player of the actual stage. They hardly affect, even, to speak noble sentiments. They do not present heroic images nor suggest a romantic ideal. The queens of the actual stage, at least, assume a queenly air, and hint a queenly conduct. In some degree they open to us the realm of "Shakespeare's women." Imperfectly, perhaps, they quicken the imagination, and make us free of the world of poetry. But this is a reach beyond the skill and the art of the amusement company that plays for the summer season at Newport, and in Central Park during the rest of the year. Yet let us be patient. The players do their best, and with a pathetic constancy of devotion to costuming and posturing

which should disarm criticism. If their play does not touch the imagination nor fill the scene even with simulated royalty and heroism, if the accessories of the spectacle are beyond its substance, and if the gems the players wear are of a purer lustre, the silks of a softer sheen, than the wit or the sentiment that the play suggests, we need not be too exigent nor demand the legitimate drama of a company so equipped.

That man would have been wholly lost to the finer emotions of our common nature who, having been admitted to a front seat by the favor of Vincent Crummles, manager, should have frowned upon the high-stepping Folair or sneered at the simpering Snevellicci. It is not for us who sit upon the fence and enjoy gratis the pretty pageant of Saratoga and Newport to look a very large gift-horse in the mouth by remarking that he might have been of a better form and color and action. For suppose the players had chosen not to play, but to live quietly off the stage, where, then, would have been the comedy? Or is the supposition futile because the company is born to amuse, as newspapers exist to chronicle the times? Indeed, if you take away the properties, what could these players do?

IT was a delightful anniversary that was celebrated the other day in New York, the semicentenary of the foundation of the Philharmonic Society, a celebration which began happily with a reproduction of the first concert of the society, on the 7th of December, 1842. Swaggering To-day in New York complacently plumes itself upon its superiority in every direction to modest little Yesterday of fifty years ago, and from its misty Wagnerian heights looks down with a smile of pity upon the low levels of Rossinian and Bellinian enjoyment of the earlier town.

But pride may have a fall. That earlier town was not all bereft. If Today hears Lehmann and Patti, Yesterday heard Malibran and Jenny Lind. That fate does not seem hard. Forty years ago in Castle Garden, Whitebeard, who was Brownhair then, heard the Ninth Symphony. And the Whitebeards of that day recalled performances of Beethoven in the hall of the old City Hotel, near Trinity Church. It was a city of

small things, doubtless, compared with that which touches Spuyten Duyvil and reaches into Westchester, but such singers and such concerts were not small. Even To-day, hearing Patti exquisitely warbling, does not feel her to be Cecilia descended; but that is what Yesterday felt in hearing Malibran and Jenny Lind. To our higher musical taste the Italian opera is already thin and old-fashioned. There is even an air of comedy about it, and the compromise which essays to present the Wagner opera in Italian is but a confession.

But To-day must not suppose that its enjoyment of the great composers was unknown to Yesterday. This, indeed, is a droll conceit, for the great composers themselves were the children of a remoter Yesterday. The great composers by distinction are the Bachs, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Fifty years ago, indeed, was in music a kind of seventeenth century in literature-a season of eclipse. But it was by no means total. Undoubtedly such a performance of Fidelio as we have had under Seidl at the Metropolitan Opera-house was unknown to 1842. But Fidelio was not unknown, and the first Philharmonic concert showed that 1842 knew good music. There were eight "numbers," in our phrase of to-day, and the first number in the first public performance of the society was not the overture to Tancred or La Dame Blanche, but "Symphony in C Minor; Beethoven." It was the famous, the immortal Fifth, and its opening notes, the stroke of fate, as John Dwight called them, foretold the character of the music to which the Philharmonic invited New York to listen fifty years ago.

The symphony was the first of the eight numbers. Then in order was a scena from Weber's Oberon, a quintet of Hummel's, the overture to Oberon, a duet from Rossini's Armida, a scena from Fidelio, an aria by Mozart, and a new overture by Kalliwoda. The Rossini seems to be an estray in this company even then, but the rest would not be unworthy of a Philharmonic concert of today. The scene of the performance was the Apollo Rooms, on the east side of Broadway, just below Canal Street; and still lower down on the same side, at the corner of Broadway and Chambers, where Stewart's building stands, was Washington Hall, where Cinti Damoreau sang and

Knoop and Artot played, and many a ball was danced by the gay town of a little earlier date. How modest and simple it was! The audience in the Apollo Rooms was not in evening dress, except by individual chance. It was not de rigueur. But perhaps the enjoyment of the music was no less; and how many young listeners in the Apollo were trained by those concerts to love the great music, and by adhering to the society as it moved upward, helped to educate the taste which now happily dominates our musical world, and grows enthusiastic over Paderewski playing Chopin in place of Thalberg playing his operatic fantasias! But haughty To-day must not depreciate Thalberg. He was as truly the key to the general taste of Yesterday as Paderewski is to that of To-day. For while the programme of the first Philharmonic shows the aim of the society, it was doubt less a standard higher than that of the general taste. But the great gods of Yesterday are still the great gods of Today, and there have been none yet added by common consent. For Wagner is

THR

I.

still upon probation. He is beatified, but not yet canonized, and the advocatus Diaboli is very busy. But the recollection of the time when Yesterday was Today, and smiled as condescendingly upon Day-before-Yesterday as now it is smiled upon by the reigning tyrant-that recollection is beyond beatification. It has worked and is working its miracles, and is already canonized.

Recollection heaps up treasures which defy moth and rust, although time sometimes plays tricks with them, and even hides them altogether. Or, again, the pictures of memory, tinted with lines beyond material pigments, outlast the brilliant canvas of Titian, of Giorgione, of Tintoret. They do not fade, but glow always with the flush of dawn. Castellan is hardly a name to the golden youth of to-day. But to the more fortunate youth of yesterday she is a bright figure of Mexican maidenhood, standing, a fair princess, in the Apollo Rooms, and trilling larklike before yet she captivated an older world than that of New York fifty years ago.

HE use of physical deformity in fiction is not common. Quasimodo, the Black Dwarf, and Quilp are conspicuous illustrations of it, and occasionally bedridden women, rickety children, and the mismade girl with a heavenly mind are introduced to evoke the sympathy of the reader, or for the purpose of disciplining surviving relatives. The figure is usually for fantastic purposes, or, as in the case of Quilp-as a symbol of moral baseness-to intensify the reader's hatred of unlovely character. It needs a great deal of genius on the part of the novelist to prevent the exhibition from being repulsive. In the sister art, intentional deformity-distinguished from bad drawing-is still more rarely delineated. Morbid anatomy with the pencil and brush is not attractive. Artists usually shun human distortion and the misfits of perverted nature, as they do the unburied analyzed realities of the dissecting-room. And yet there is a great curiosity about human "freaks." Nothing "draws" like physical deformity or eccentricity, if it

is natal. The boys-or the boy in the Greek dual number-with two heads, four arms, and two legs, attract, or attracts, a greater crowd than would a perfect specimen of manly or womanly form, if such could be found. The dual boy with two brains, and only one leg to each brain, is psychologically interesting because he represents in a way the dual nature of man, the strife in him of good and evil, since his progress in the world in the act of walking is made difficult by a want of co-ordination in the two brains in the orders telegraphed to the two legs. This is a visible explanation of the reason why so many men go crooked in life. But it is not the psychological aspect of the boy that attracts the crowd; they go to see the physical freak. Now this freak is not a good subject for art, and would not make a good character in a novel. Why?

It occurs to the Study sometimes, in turning over the pages of modern fiction as one might walk through a world of distempered fancy-how the pages would appear if one could see the characters, as