which she sang with a remarkably correct ac- where all the young women of Egypt were free cent. The audience were pleased with the com- to examine, envy and try it. For weeks it was pliment, but Alboni lacks the fire, energy and the amusement of the courtiers to watch the nusoul necessary to give full effect to that thrill-merous young women who daily left the palace ing air. veiled and limping. At last Rhodope was disApropos de la Cenerentola! It is a little covered. The friendly historian does not assert disguised to be sure by the fashionable dress in that she facilitated the discovery. She easily which she presents herself—the earliest acquaint-put on the tiny slipper and proved that she was ance of your own childhood, the earliest acquaint- the owner of it by producing its fellow. ance of your grandmother's childhood, and perhaps of your great grandmother's—it is Cinderella, or the Glass Slipper. The king kept his word, and Rhodope became his wife and the crowned queen of Egypt. If any of your readers should be incredulous, This you probably knew before. But do you or should desire to learn more minutely the hisknow the origin of Cinderella, or the Glass Slip-tory of Rhodope, I refer them to the works of per? and how very, very old is the story, which Elian, and to Strabo. It is recorded in the 17th is known by heart, and whose repetition has so book of his Geography. often excited the imagination and sympathies of every child in the land? I'll tell you. Once upon a time-but I am writing history and must specify the date-two thousand four hundred and forty years ago, there lived a young Grecian woman, a fellow slave with Æsop, (him of the fables.) at the court of the king of Samos. Her name was Rhodope. I have said Rhodope was young. She was also gay, wild, adventurous, pleasure-loving and exceedingly beautiful. But what she was most proud of was her tiny foot. It was the marvel of Samos. But how happens it-methinks you ask that in the lapse of ages, Rhodope's slipper has been converted into glass? That Rhodope is the prototype of Cinderella may perhaps be admitted; but only the wondering credulity of childhood can believe that either Rhodope or Cinderella ever wore a real glass slipper. At the risk of destroying half the charm which, in the mind of children, invests the veritable but mysterious glass slipper, I will venture the following explanation. Suppose, which is not at all improbable, that the story of Cinderella, or the Glass Slipper, was introduced into the nurseries of England, through It is not surprising that Rhodope should soon France. The French for glass slipper, is "pancease to be the fellow slave of Esop at the Sa-toufle de verre." mian Court, or that after a few years and a se- So far as pronunciation and the ear are conries of adventures the lovely and spirited girl cerned, "pantoufle de verre" and "pantoufle de should find herself in the capital of the distant, vair" are the same. wealthy and luxurious kingdom of Egypt. She was very probably just such another as the Lola Montes, or Countess of Landsfeld of the present day, she who a year or two ago was playing so distinguished a part at the court of the king of Bavaria. At any rate, their histories are not altogether dissimilar. The chronicle avers that Rhodope was one day bathing in the Nile, when an eagle stooped in his flight and bore off in his talons one of her sandals which were lying on the bank. He dropped it, says the story, (one would be almost tempted to believe that her old friend Æsop were the writer of the story,) at the feet of the king Psammetichus, who was enjoying the evening breeze upon the terraces of his palace in Memphis. Suppose that the latter is the correct mode of writing it, but that in process of time, partly from ignorance and partly to render the story more captivating to children, verre came to be generally substituted for vair in the popular mind and language. At this point of corruption, La pantoufle de verre crossed the channel and was translated of course by the word glass slipper. The term vair in heraldry signifies one of the furs employed in blazonry. It represents the skin of a small squirrel. Now the skin of a squirrel, properly prepared, is no very unfit thing to make a slipper of, and until some better proof than nursery traditions shall be adduced to the contrary, I must persist in believing that the proper name of the story, is Rhodope, or the Squirrel-Skin Slipper. After all, if I ever have a son, I dare say, as soon as he shall be old enough to understand me, shall be often caught with my boy upon my knee, teaching him the marvellous old story of Cinderella, or the Glass Slipper. I The astonished king picked up the slipper, gazed, admired, loved. It was impossible that so small a slipper could fit more than one foot. He ordered instant search to be made for the owner, and caused it to be proclaimed that she whose foot that sandal would fit should become his wife and the crowned queen of Egypt. The mysterious slip- The Hospitals and Theatres of Paris, inper was deposited in an ante-room of the palace, stitutions which at the first blush you would VOL. XV-24 hardly suppose to meet upon the same ground not have anticipated. During the last year there and to possess clashing interests, have been since were produced upon the Parisian boards 178 new Vau-devilles, 35 new Drames, 26 Comedies, 13 Operas, 2 Tragedies, 11 Pantomimes, 1 Mystere, During the late reign, the various theatres were and 1 Etude-in all 267 new pieces. In the probound to pay over weekly, if not nightly, from duction of these concurred 180 authors and 15 com9 to 11 per cent. of their gross receipts for the posers. Among the authors M. Clairville figures benefit of the hospitals. The tax was cheerfully as the most fruitful. He attaches his name to submitted to, for their receipts were then ample. 20 Vaudevilles. But one novelty was produced The good people of Paris in those days had no by the Italian Opera. It was Andremo a Parigi, processions, émeutes, clubs and banquets to amuse by Rossini. The French Opera gave 1 balletthem of evenings, and were compelled to pantomime by Ad. Adam; 1 opera and 1 ballet seek emotion and banish ennui in the moving by Benoit; Eden, a mystery, by Felicien David; scenes of the theatre. The French have no idea of domestic enjoyment as we and the English understand it. An evening at home is universally voted a horrible bore. But the revolution of February came; and the farces, comedies and tragedies which were now daily and nightly enacted in the streets, public clubs, &c., established a ruinous rivalry with the regular theatres,-to the effect that their benches were completely deserted. In the course of the three months following February, nearly all the theatres were compelled to close their doors; the receipts frequently not paying one fourth of the expenses. They promptly took advantage of the anarchy succeeding the proclamation of the Republic and refused payment of the onerous and now intolerable tribute levied by the hospitals. The managers and hospital committees were at open war. and 1 opera by Clapisson. Scribe, Lafont and LETTERS FROM NEW-YORK. NEW-YORK, Feb., 1849. I design to send you each month from this metropolis of commerce, literature and the arts, a letter, not precisely de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis, but still "various that the mind of desultory man, studious of change and pleased with novelty, may be indulged." I hope that I shall succeed at least in gratifying the curiosity and pleasing the tastes of your readers, though I may not, as certain of your correspondents do, inform their un Violent seizures were repeatedly made. The result was a compromise by which one party agreed to pay and the other to receive 1 per cent. till 1st November last. From November to January 3 per cent. was received. Under the rule of Cavaignac, the usual street amusements and club scenes were severely restricted and the theatres began to be repeopled. Order and law seemed still more likely to have sway under derstandings and captivate their imaginations. I Louis Napoleon. The hospital committees consequently rose in their demands and had the boldness to demand from the 1st of this month 5 of the 10 per cent. to which they were legally entitled and expressed their determination to invoke if necessary the arm of the law to obtain payment of the same. The managers have been compelled to succumb. They now nightly pay over to the hospital-receivers the 5 per cent., but they protest and appeal to the public against their oppressors, declaring that their receipts cannot yet bear so heavy a charge. Yet one would hardly believe that with the state of theatrical affairs indicated above, coexisted the following facts, which the Theatrical Review of 1848 proves to be true. It shows an activity among dramatic authors amid the stirring scenes of political revolution which I could am an ancient correspondent of the Messenger and have ever taken a sincere interest in its success. I rejoice that it is now conducted under auspices so favorable to its permanent welfare, and I say "macte virtute," with a cordial goodwill and a desire to assist you according to my ability. You see that I am but poor at a preface, and you may find me somewhat awkward at the beginning of my epistles, but I shall improve, sir-I shall improve as I fall into a more familiar acquaintance with those who feel both a pride and a pleasure in sustaining worthily a periodical which is admired in the North and cherished by the South. Before this letter shall reach you, you will have received and noticed the first two volumes of Macaulay's History of England, published by the Harpers in a neat, and I might add, handsome manner, were it not that each page is sadly disfig-|ing from just elements founded on reason, erected ured by being set in a frame of "column rules," with taste: strip it, cut it down, mutilate it, and as printers call those formal lines that frame each it becomes a shapeless, ugly mass of incongruiprinted area. No standard book should affect ties. Moreover it will be at the mercy of every the fashion of illustrated volumes. This attempt fresh innovator; the very materials will soon be at ornament is very much out of taste. But it cast aside, and in the lapse of time it will be reis better that the externals of a book should be solved back into barbarism, and exist only as a so marred than that the matter should be de- language of signs, a mere system of hieroglyphformed by such phonographic orthography, as ics. The advocates of progress in this matter these publishers, Noah Webster duce, have seen seem to desire to progress backward and to refit to adopt. It is difficult to imagine by what duce our present letters to the diagrams and figright an author is forced to spell according to the ures of the Egyptians. whims of printers, proof-readers or booksellers. But to return to Harper's edition of Macaulay. It is just as impertinent to alter Mr. Macaulay's The typography and paper are highly creditable; orthography, as it would have been to change the eye reposes luxuriously upon them, and midhis language or invert his style. If Mr. Macau- dle-aged gentlemen are not reminded of spectalay prefers to spell traveller with two 'l's, and to cles. Of the book itself I could not speak beput the letter 'e' in theatre after the 'r' instead of fittingly without going into an extended review. before it, is it not a piece of presumption to com- It is very fine and spirited in its style, original pel him to give sanction to such spelling as trav- and impressive in its opinions. It abounds with eler and theater? Perhaps this correct and clas- frequent passages that teem with eloquence. It sic author abominates all innovations on the pu- is more chaste and subdued than its author's misrity of his mother-tongue, how then must he be cellaneous papers, but is still vivacious and enshocked at seeing the absurd perversions which tertaining. The narrative has the interest of a he is made to father by his American sponsors! most skilfully managed romance. That mind In my judgment it is high time these unwar- must be duller than the fat weed which grows rantable liberties were frowned down by the crit-on Lethe's bank, which could not follow this ies. They are most offensive to the eye of taste. river-like flow of thoughts and words through all They are mutilations of "Chatham's language." their grand or graceful windings. They put one in mind of those cuts and scratches, rude carvings of names and initials, which are seen on the benches and statues and fountainurns in our public squares. They ought to be repressed and punished by a literary and artistic police. To the young the study of history is often an irksome task. Recounters of facts think not enough of induing with the charms of a cultivated style the results of their researches. Hume, with all his clearness, is often dry-to say nothing of his one-sidedness and skepticism. Gibbon is too Phonography or the art of writing by sounds, or lofty and ornate; the movements of his style have according to aural impressions, is a great and val- too much grandeur and precision to be attractive. uable discovery in reporting-in every way su- He is another infidel too, whose views it is imperior to stenography: no one can deny that, possible to contemplate without a sentiment of who has seen the wonderful velocity and strict distrust. Macaulay has all the lucidity of the accuracy with which the most rapid speaker's one and enough of the ornaments of the other. words may be transferred to paper. It may be He has too a keen and polished wit, a quick and called the daguerreotype of sound. But to un-apprehensive insight, a felicitous fancy, a deep dertake by a new alphabet and constant elisions faith in whatsoever is pure and lovely and of of letters to substitute it for our beautiful and good report. By the young, therefore, he will symmetrical language, as it is now written and be loved as well as admired; he will win their printed, is even a greater absurdity than it would confidence no less than their homage; they will, be to throw away all drawing and sketching in moreover, be attracted by his example and reveoil or water colors and engraving, and make ex- lations to the study of ancient and contemporaclusive use of those instruments which by the neous histories. For the latter reason, even if aid of the sun fix faces and landscapes on a sur- his intrinsic merits were less eminent than they face of polished metal. Or to make use of a are, I would cordially commend this book to better illustration, we might as well build square those whose charge it is to train and elevate the pine boxes, or plain brick walls, instead of using minds of youth. frieze and architrave, column and arch, on the Mr. Richard Hildreth, a gentleman of learning outside of our dwellings. In fact, the orthogra- and abilities—a counsellor at law and once editor phy of a language may be esteemed its orna- of a leading daily journal in Boston, has been for mental architecture. As our English is now five years past engaged in writing out from a spelled, it is harmonious, elegant, classical, spring-great variety of materials, derived from nu me ous sources, a history of the United States. He use of which one hand can be trained to do the has completed his work from the first age of the labor of a hundred hands. In England, where country to the adoption of the Federal Constitu- etchers and sketchers are as many as the works tion. This part will be comprised in three vol- they embellish, beautiful or facetious books are umes, which are now in the hands of publishers. produced that can truly pretend to artistic praise. The second part, which will occupy three vol- Look, for example, at the doings of the Etching umes more, will begin with the government under Club,-worthy of Italian art in its best days. the Federal Constitution and conclude with Gen- Look, as examples of humor, to the caricatures eral Taylor's administration. I have not a doubt of H. B. or the limnings of Cattermole. In the that the task will be faithfully and skilfully exe- department of wit and caricature, we are lamencuted. Mr. Hildreth's mind is void of all sec-tably deficient. Each of our efforts in that ditional prejudices. He will treat all the institu-rection has been a failure. Was there ever any tions of the country with fairness and honesty. thing more paltry than the wood-cut designs in As he is a scholar, reliance may be felt in the those abortive imitations of Punch, called “Yanstyle and manner in which he will accomplish kee Doodle” and “John Donkey"? Could aught his important and difficult undertaking. more despicable be imagined than the political lithographed caricatures with which a person by the name of Robinson disgusts the not too fastidious citizens of Gotham? We abound in topics, but we lack artists. The Yankee peculiarities both of character and manners have yet to be described both by pen and pencil. Is it not a singular fact, that, in consideration of the mighty advancement of our country in the science of government, in mechanics, in the arts, in literature, that there is really no good, thorough, comprehensive history written as such a history ought to be written? Bancroft is in parts excellent; but he wants proportion. He is very full "The Literary World," edited by Evert A. on certain points and slurs over others, which Duyckinck, one of our ripest scholars, best critics are equally important. Besides he gives undue and happiest writers,—a man of fine taste, a real prominence to topics, which do not seem to have lover of, and an able commentator on old English a legitimate connection with events here. We letters, has paid you recently a very high comsometimes suspect him of a desire rather to dis-pliment. From such a source it is, let me assure play the minuteness, extent and variety of his you, worth having. Pray do not let your modown attainments than to perform accurately his esty prevent you from publishing it, but rather incumbent duties as a historian. Should Mr. show your neighbors what our most distinguished Hildreth supply any considerable portion of that Northern editors think of your efforts in the comwant which Mr. Bancroft leaves as he found it, mon cause of American literature. he will deserve well of the Republic. (From the Literary World of January 27.) Mr. Putnam's new editions of the works of "The Southern Literary Messenger which, Washington Irving have met with satisfactory under the care of Mr. White, gained so high and success. These works are now scarcely obtain-wide a reputation, has been growing in attrac able in any other accessible shape, certainly in tiveness and value during the past year. Several none so desirable. Mr. Putnam publishes them of its former popular contributors have resumed in two editions—one with Mr. Darley's illustra- contains numerous masterly essays. The editor, their labors in its pages. The volume just closed tions, another without. I prefer the latter. I John R. Thompson, Esq., is a man of education have a high respect for Mr. Darley's genius in and promptitude, and is engaged heartily in rensome things: but I do not think he enters into or dering the Messenger a reliable exponent of the rightly judges the genius of Mr. Irving. There literature of the day, and an honor to the South. is a lack of delicacy in the illustrations; they beautiful typographical dress, and contains some The new volume appears in an entirely new and are broad and too real and sometimes show a articles of unusual interest carefully elaborated singular disproportion between the figures and the space they fill in the picture. and characterized by the best skill of some of our ablest writers. It is due to the gentleman It strikes me I may be mistaken-but it seems who is devoting his time and abilities so energetto me that the public are getting tired of these ically to this work, to tender him our cordial conpictorial publications. The thing has been over- thus far attended his efforts, and our earnest gratulations upon the eminent success which has done and badly done on this side of the water. wishes for the permanent recognition of the MesOur attempts of the kind are imitations, and of senger as one of the leading periodicals of the that kind which gods, men or columns find it dif- Union. The South needs an organ of the kind. ficult to tolerate. Those artists among us who try to make original drawings, are so few that, even if they possessed more aptness than they do, they would fail from hurry and accumulation of work. There is no discovery as yet, by the Richmond is a central locality; and while we cannot doubt that the Southern public will take of the Messenger, we hope that our Eastern meu pride and satisfaction in promoting the interests of letters, and especially the press, will encourage by their literary aid and deserved praise, a Jour nal so honorable and necessary to the advance-, songs, sonnets, epics and epigrams, possessed of this uninment of the region where it chiefly circulates, and the welfare of American literature." tentional excellence, we should have no difficulty in designating by the dozen; but in the particular of direct and obvious satire, it cannot be denied that we are unaccountably deficient. You will agree with me that I could hardly close the first of my letters more agreeably than It has been suggested that this deficiency arises from the by presenting a delightful jeu d'esprit, embodied want of a suitable field for satirical display. In England, in certain lines by a lady, of whose genius and it is said, satire abounds, because the people there find a accomplishments we feel very proud, on a South- proper target in the aristocracy, whom they (the people) regard as a distinct race with whom they have little in comeru lady, highly celebrated at our places of fash-mon; relishing even the most virulent abuse of the upper ionable resort for her wit and humor. classes with a gusto undiminished by any feeling that they Do not think the verses a fair exponent of what (the people) have any concern in it. In Russia, or Austria, their fair author can accomplish. She is capable of the loftiest ascents as well as of such graceful little flights as the following: TO MRS. O. W. L.* BY MRS. E. C. KINNEY. Surely thou art no bird of night Thy face thy name denies; Save, that as stars make evening bright, Oh, no! Thou'rt not a moping OWL Upon life's sunny joys to scowl, Save that the Owl-Minerva's bird Hath wisdom in his thought, And he that hears thee speak, hath heard What wisdom's goddess taught. But none that listen to thy songs, That screech-owl's name or voice belongs No! If a bird of night at all, We must for thee disclaim What thine initials say, and call *Mrs. Octavia Walton Le Vert. NOTICES OF NEW WORKS. A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. NEW-YORK: PUTNAM. B. on the other hand, it is urged, satire is unknown; because would be odious to the mass. In America, also, the people there is danger in touching the aristocracy, and self-satire who write are, it is maintained, the people who read :-thus in satirizing the people we satirize only ourselves and are never in condition to sympathize with the satire. 64 All this is more verisimilar than true. It is forgotten that no individual considers himself as one of the mass. Each person, in his own estimate, is the pivot on which all the rest of the world spins round. We may abuse the people by wholesale, and yet with a clear conscience so far as regards any compunction for offending any one from among the multitude of which that "people" is composed. Every one of the crowd will cry Encore!-give it to them, the vagabonds!-it serves them right." It seems to us that, in America, we have refused to encourage satire-not because what we have had touches us too nearly-but because it has been too pointless to touch us at all. Its namby-pambyism has arisen, in part, from the general want, among our men of letters, of that minute polish-of that skill in details-which, in combination with natural sarcastic power, satire, more than any other form of literature, so imperatively demands. In part, also, we may attribute our failure to the colonial sin of imitation. We content ourselves-at this point not less supinely than at all others-with doing what not only has been done before, but what, however well done, has yet been done ad nauseam. We should not be able to endure infinite repetitions of even absolute excellence; but what is "McFingal" more than a faint echo from "Hudibras"?-and what is "The Vision of Rubeta" more than a vast gilded swill-trough overflowing with Dunciad and water? Although we are not all Archilochuses, however-although we have few pretensions to the ηχεηντες Lapẞo-although, in short, we are no satirists ourselvesthere can be no question that we answer sufficiently well as subjects for satire. "The Vision" is bold enough-if we leave out of sight its anonymous issue-and bitter enough, and witty enough, if we forget its pitiable punning on namesand long enough (Heaven knows) and well constructand decently versified; but it fails in the principal element of all satire-sarcasm-because the intention to be GEORGE P. sarcastic (as in the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," and in all the more classical satires) is permitted to What have we Americans accomplished in the way of render itself manifest. The malevolence appears. The Satire?" The Vision of Rubeta," by Laughton Osborn, is author is never very severe, because he is at no time parprobably our best composition of the kind: but, in saying ticularly cool. We laugh not so much at his victims as at this, we intend no excessive commendation. Trumbull's himself for letting them put him in such a passion. And clumsy and imitative work is scarcely worth mention-and where a deeper sentiment than mirth is excited-where it then we have Halleck's "Croakers," local and ephemeralis pity or contempt that we are made to feel-the feeling is but what is there besides? Park Benjamin has written a too often reflected, in its object, from the satirized to the clever address, with the title "Infatuation," and Holmes satirist-with whom we sympathize in the discomfort of has an occasional scrap, piquant enough in its way-but we his animosity. Mr. Osborn has not many superiors in can think of nothing more that can be fairly called "satire." Some matters we have produced, to be sure, which were excellent in the way of burlesque-(the Poems of William Ellery Channing, for example)-without meaning a syllable that was not utterly solemn and serious. Odes, ballads, downright invective; but this is the awkward left arm of the satiric Muse. That satire alone is worth talking about which at least appears to be the genial, good humored outpouring of irrepressible merriment. "The Fable for the Critics," just issued, has not the name |