lungs, the opportunity of using these Readings as a tuningkey, is too valuable to be lost. Let any one stand at the door of the Stuyvesant Institute, as the audience goes out, and, with the absolute music of Mrs. Butler's softer tones in his memory, listen to the fashionable voices of the passers-by! If he has any comparison in his ear, he will wonder inexpressibly that the music of a tone is not more catching.

We should be willing to give any degree of offence that we could afford, if we could provoke curiosity to make this (now) easy comparison. The audiences at these Readings are of the class whose pronunciation is heard and remarked upon by the more intelligent foreigners who come among us, and (from a national sensitiveness which may be reasoned down, but won't stay down), we are not a little interested to have ✓ the nasality, by which Americans are at once recognized abroad, corrected by our gentlemen and ladies. Let any listener to Mrs. Butler observe how noble and well-bred seems her utterance from the chest, and (to double the lesson) how it adds to the power of the divine gift of language, to allow, as she does, to every sound a liberal and free utterance, and to every word its proper and unslighted fulness. And then let the departing and delighted auditor of these model tones take the first sentence uttered on the way home ("What a pleasant evening!" for example), and ring it against any remembered sentence of the play just read. In nine cases out of ten, the contrast will be as great as between a French horn and a bagpipe.

DANIEL WEBSTER,

UNDER THE SPELL OF JENNY LIND'S MUSIC.

We had a pleasure, the other evening, which we feel very unwilling not to share with every eye to which there is a road from the point of our pen. Three or four thousand people saw it with us; but, as there are perhaps fifty thousand more, to whom the pleasure can be sent by these roads of ink, those three or four thousand, who were so fortunate as to be present, will excuse the repetition-possibly may thank us, indeed, for enlarging the sympathy in their enjoyment.

In these days of magnetism, life seems to be of value, only in proportion as we find others to share in what we think and feel.

It was perhaps ten minutes before the appearance of Benedict's magic stick; and, in running our eye musingly along the right side of the crowded gallery of Tripler Hall, we caught sight of a white object, with a sparkling dark line underneath, around which a number of persons were just settling themselves in their seats. Motionless itself, and with the stir going on around it, it was like a calm half moon, seen over the tops of agitated trees; or like a massive magnolia blossom, too heavy for the breeze to stir, splendid and silent amid fluttering poplar-leaves. We raised our operaglass, with no very definite expectation, and, with the eye thus brought nearer to the object, lo! the dome over the temple of Webster the forehead of the great Daniel, with the two glorious lamps set in the dark shadow of its architrave. Not expecting to see the noble Constitution-ist in such a crowd, our veins tingled, as veins will with the recognition of a sudden and higher presence, and, from that moment, the interest of the evening, to us, was to see signs of the susceptibility of such a mind to the spells of Jenny Lind. Slight they must be, of course, if signs were to be seen at all; but the interest in watching for them was no less exciting-very slight variations, of the "bodies" above us, repaying fully the patient observation of the astronomer.

"his

The party who had come with Mr. Webster were lady" (the Americanism of that synonyme for "wife," grew out of our national deference to woman, and let us cherish it) the newly elected Governor of the State and his lady, and General Lyman. They set in the centre of the right hand side of the First Gallery, and behind them, the crowd had gathered and stood looking at this distinguished party with deferential curiosity. Republican politeness had done what the etiquette of a Court would do-stationed one of the masters of ceremony, with his riband of office, to pay special attention to these honored strangers-and it chanced to bring about a pleasant incident. It was from a wish Mr. Webster expressed, accidentally overheard by this attendant and conveyed immediately to Jenny Lind, that she was induced to vary the opera music of the programme, by the introduction of a mountain song of her own Dalecarlia. The audience,

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delighted with the change, were not aware, that, for it, they were indebted to a remark of the great "sky-clearer," thus spirited away from the cloud-edge of his lips.

We must remind the reader, here, that, to the cultivation of the voice, Mr. Webster's delivery shows that he has never paid attention. From other and sufficient advantages, probably, he has never felt the need of it. His ear, consequently, is uneducated to melody; and, in the rare instances when he has varied his habitual and ponderous cadences by a burst in a higher key, he has surpassed Art with the more sudden impassioning of Nature. Though, in reading a speech of Webster's, there are passages where your nostrils spread and your blood fires, you may have heard the same speech delivered, with no impression but the unincumbered profoundness of its truth. To use what may seem like a common-place remark, he is as monotonous as thunder-but it is because thunder has no need to be more varied and musical, that Webster leaves the roll of his bass unplayed upon by the lightning that outstrips it.

We were not surprised, therefore, that, to the overtures and parts of Operas which formed the first two-thirds of the evening's entertainment, Webster was only courteously attentive. He leaned back, with the stately repose which. marks all his postures and movements, and conversing between-whiles with his friends on either side, looked on, as he might do at special pleading in a court of law. It was at the close of one of those tangled skeins of music with which an unpractised brain finds it so difficult to thread the needle of an idea, that he made the remark, overheard by the attendant and taken immediately to Jenny Lind :-"Why doesn't she give us one of the simple mountain-songs of her own land?"

The mountain-song soon poured forth its loud beginning, impatiently claiming sympathy from the barren summits that alone listen where it is supposed to be sung. The voice softened, soothed with its own outpouring-the herdsman's heart wandered and left him singing forgetfully, and then the audience, (as if transformed to an Ariel that "puts a girdle round the earth,") commenced following the last clear note through the distance. Away it sped, softly and evenly, a liquid arrow through more liquid air, lessening with the sweetness it left behind it, but fleeing leagues in seconds, and

with no errand but to go on unaltered till it should die—and, behold! on the track of it, with the rest of us, was gone the heavy-winged intellect of Webster? We had listened with our eyes upon him. As all know who have observed him, his habitual first mark of interest in a new matter, is a pull he gives to the lobe of his left ear-as if, to the thoughtintrenched castle of his brain, there were a portcullis to be lowered at any sudden summons for entrance. The tone sped and lessened, and Webster's broad chest grew erect and expanded. Still on went the entrancing sound, altered by distance only, and changeless in the rapt altitude of the cadence-on-far on--as if only upon the bar of the horizon it could faint at last--and forward leaned the aroused statesman, with his hand clasped over the balustrade, his head raised to its fullest lift above his shoulders, and the luminous caverns of his eyes opened wide upon the still lips of the singer. The note died--and those around exchanged glances as the enchantress touched the instrument before her-but Webster sat motionless. The breathless stillness was broken by a tumult of applause, and the hand that was over the gallery moved up and down upon the cushion with unconscious assent, but the spell was yet on him. He slowly leaned back, with his eyes still fixed on the singer, and, suddenly observing that she had turned to him after curtsying to the audience, and was repeating her acknowledgments unmistakably to himself, he rose to his feet and bowed to her, with the grace and stateliness of the monarch that he is. It was not much to see, perhaps-neither does the culmination of a planet differ, very distinguishably, from the twinkle of a lamp-but we congratulated Jenny Lind, with our first thought, after it, at what is perhaps her best single triumph on this side the water, the sounding of America's deepest mind with her plummet of enchantment.

The "Echo," and the "Pasture Song" equally delighted Mr. Webster, and, after each of them, he passed his broadspread hand from his brow downwards, (assisting his seldom aroused features, as he always does, in their recovery of repose and gravity), and responded to the enthusiasm of the friends beside him, with the pine-tree nod which, from his deep-rooted approbation, means much. Let us add, by the way, (what we heard very directly,) that Mr. Webster, who is peculiar for the instant completeness with which he usually

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dismisses public amusements from his mind-little entertained by them, and never speaking of them in conversation, when they are over-talked much of Jenny Lind after the concert, remarking very emphatically, among other things, that it was a new revelation to him of the character and capability of the human voice. The angelic Swede-alone with many memories, as she will be, some day-may remember with pleasure what we have thus recorded.

SIR HENRY BULWER.

THE new English Minister, to this country, is a younger brother of BULWER the novelist, and perhaps a man of as much talent, in his way. As our readers probably know, he has had a large influence in the diplomacy of England for several years, and was, last, the British Minister to Spain. He is, in person, rather under the middle size, very slight, pale, and of an intellectual cast of features. His manners are the perfection of the style most prized in England, though rare even there-an elegance reduced to absolute simplicity and nature-quiet, gentle, considerate of others, attentive, and modest. We doubt whether there is a better model of a gentleman in the world. He was, some years ago, one of the habitués of Lady Blessington's, and certainly showed to advantage in comparison with the elegant men who formed that brilliant woman's circle of friends. Sir Henry talks or listens with equal willingness, but his information, on any subject that may come up, is sure to surprise, and his earnest truthfulness of diction and expression, impress forcibly at the time, but still more when it is remembered. We are not sure that Washington will prove an atmosphere in which he may best shine; but, appreciated or not, he cannot fail to be very much liked. General Taylor, we venture to say, will find him a man after his own heart-totally different as have been the currents of their two lives.

It will be a pleasant event in Washington to have the English embassy open house under the auspices of the gentler sex. Lady Bulwer (we believe the minister was made a baronet a year or two ago) is of noble descent, and, like all