260 GENIUS AND NATURE. he pleases. She comes to every eye with a new impression. All the engravings in the world do not anticipate, for you, any portion of the novelty of a first sight of her. So, as long as she sings, there will be no exhaustion to the freshness of her impression upon audiences. Heavy as Jenny Lind's features are, there is no superfluity, in repose, which does not turn out to have been very necessary to the expression in excitement. That so massive a nose can have the play of the thin nostrils of a race-horse, is one of the startling discoveries you make, in watching her as she sings. Her eyes are, perhaps, beautiful at all times-and it struck us as their peculiarity that they never become staggered with her excitement. From the highest pitch of rapt bewilderment for the listener, those large steadfast eyes return to their serene, lambent, fearless earnestness-as if there sat the angel intrusted with the ministry she is exercising, and heaven lay in calm remembrance behind them. And the same rallying power is observable in the action of the under lip, which contorts with all the pliability and varying beauty of the mouth of the Tragic Muse, and, from its expressive curves, resumes its dignity of repose, with an ease and apparent unconsciousness of observation that is well worthy of study by player or sculptor. It is curious, how, in all the inspired changes of this mobile physiognomy, its leading imprint, of an utter simplicity of goodness, is never lost. She does not sublimate away from it. Through the angel of rapt music, as through the giver of queenly bounties, is seen honest Jenny Lind. She looks forever true to the ideal for which the world of common hearts has consented to love her. FASHION AND INTELLECT IN NEW YORK. How to add the genius of New York to the society which exercises its gayeties and hospitalities, is a problem, to the solution of which, as our readers know, we have once or twice put out preparatory feelers. Knowing, as we do, that there is, resident in New York, material for as intellectual, sparkling and brilliant a society as exists in the world—and that this material is wholly unsought, and almost wholly unrepresented, in the circles most courted by inhabitants and most seen by strangers-we feel as if the excellent stones, which worthily form the base of high civilization, were being forgetfully continued into the superstructure; and that it is time to suggest the want, of such as are chiselled, to carry out the upper design of social architecture-to build fitly into its columns, and point its pinnacles and arches. New York (we mention it as a matter of news) is rich in delightful people. What we mean by " delightful people" cannot well be conveyed in one definition; but they may be loosely described as those who think new as they talk, and do not talk stale as they echo or remember. There are such in all professions-merchants, who slip Wall street from their tongues and faces as they pass Bleecker, going home-lawyers who put on and take off 'cuteness 264 POCKET ARISTOCRACY. and suspiciousness with their office-coat-politicians whose minds, though only one-eared for politics, will open both ears to anything else-fresh-minded and thought-recognizing men, of every kind of business-but they are rather less than more valued by their own sex for being thus much "above their business,” and there is no recompensing preference of them (shall we say it?) by the society standards of our "fashionable women.” They are a kind of men, too, who will go no-where "through a stooping door," and whom Society must seek. Consequently-like the classes formed altogether by predominance in intellectual qualities -they are "not in society." We refer, in this last sentence, to those whose success (in their pursuit for a livelihood) depends on being more gifted than other men with the rarer and higher faculties of the mind—artists, authors, journalists, architects, professional scholars, and musical and dramatic celebrities. There are enough of these, at any one time, in New York, to furnish every party that is given-every circle that meets, in any shape-with its fair, or European, proportion of taste and intellect. But, the fashionable world is almost entirely without "this little variety" of citizen-for, artists, authors, journalists, "stars," and that sort of people, (as any young lady with a two-thousand-dollar necklace will tell you) are not in society." It is not that the door is shut very tight, by the Pocket Aristocracy, against these aristocrats of the brain, but various small causes combine to keep it closed. The master of a new-made fortune, for instance, is very apt to feel, like Milton's Satan, that it is "Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven," and he willingly invites no class of persons to his house, by whom |