The development and cultivation of music in the soul of America may,
perhaps, tend to arrest the progress of Filibusterism, and other
stratagems and spoils; including the spoliation of black liberty: and to
render the airs which JONATHAN sometimes gives himself--on the fishery
question for instance--tolerable. But it will in all probability produce
results yet more extraordinary. A go-ahead people will not be content to
stop short at operas and concerts. Music will be utilized; applied to
political and social purposes; employed to enhance the charms of
eloquence, and adorn the wisdom of statesmanship. Patriots will sing
bravuras at caucus or in Congress on behalf of freedom: and Presidents
will express themselves in notes arranged to form symphonies; whilst the
foreign policy of the States will take the form of overtures. The
unseemly contests which sometimes occur in the Legislature will be
replaced by grand scenas; and the stump-orator that now is will become a
stump-warbler: whilst the mob will respond in chorus. American song will
be famous all the world over, and command immense engagements, being
paid for--as no doubt it will be delivered--through the nose.
* * * * *
A BISHOP IN DISTRESS.
It is seldom that signals of distress are hoisted from the episcopal
bench; but the signals in question have actually been hung out recently
on behalf of the BISHOP OF DURHAM. One of the "friends of the Church"
has made the melancholy calculation that the good Bishop is in such an
impoverished state that, after making sundry deductions, the
poverty-stricken prelate has scarcely more than seven thousand a year to
live upon. Considering how bishoprics go in the present day, we are
astonished how the prelacy of Durham can pay at the price, and how, in
fact, the bishop can manage to do it for the money.
We shall probably be told next that it is a losing concern, and that the
occupant of the wretchedly seedy see is about to give it up in
consequence of his being "out of pocket." We recommend the Bench of
Bishops to fraternise with the cabmen in making one common stand against
the system of reduced fares to which both have been doomed in obedience
to the modern principles of economy. The Bench may object to the
association, but it is clear there is some affinity between the
episcopal and the other class, for the cabman can drive his horse, while
both cabman and bishop can drive a bargain.
* * * * *
A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR.
Among the recent visitors to London we find notified an extraordinarily
dense fog. This visitor, though somewhat obscure, created considerable
sensation, and a sort of general illumination was got up by the London
shopkeepers on the occasion. The fog arrived by the Thames, and made so
much of the short time of remaining that the visitor was nearly all over
London in a very brief period.
* * * * *
STANDING BY THEIR ORDERS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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