The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864: Devoted To Literature And National PolicyVarious
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864: Devoted To Literature And National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
At the end opposite to the oriel, I have just had placed an organ, the
twin of the new one at the Music Hall, except that the faces on the
pipes are beautiful, and do not look as if it hurt them to pipe. The
world may be too small; but the organ cannot possibly be too large.
Malibran, Jenny Lind, or Mrs. Mott usually sings to it of an evening,
accompanied by Franz, Schubert, or Mendelssohn; or Beethoven drops in to
play one of his symphonies. Sunday nights, Handel performs upon it
regularly for a choir composed of Vaughan, Herbert, the minister who
chants 'Calm on the listening ear of night,' Madame Guyon, and Sarah
Adams. Between their hymns, Robertson preaches a sermon and reads from
the liturgy of King's Chapel. This service is designed as a special
easement to the consciences and stomachs alike of those oppressed
Christians, whom modern customs and physical laws impel, of an
afternoon, to be dining and digesting precisely at the hours during
which their pastors are unaccountably and unjustifiably in the habit of
preaching.
The books upon the shelves, last not least, are less numerous than
choice. Among them still are to be found the most masterly writings of
the most masterly minds in the three learned professions, and the
noblest treatises on the nobler of the arts and sciences. There are many
'chronicles of eld,' which, if not true, as the Frenchman said, at any
rate '_meritent bien de l'etre_.' There are such few fictions as bear
the stamp of much individual thought, character, and observation.
Especially there is a great deal of biography; for biography is the
great, all-embracing epic of humanity.
Two suits of armor stand on guard, one on each side, by each
well-assorted bookcase. I always think it prudent to warn my incautious
visitors that these are _automata_, wound up and set to deal a box with
their gauntleted hands on each ear of each disorderly wight who puts a
book where it does not belong.
Below my library, and beyond my courtyard, is a boat in which I row
myself out in warm weather to visit my friends along the coast. When I
ply the oar, the crab-fishery is unproductive, droughts prevail, and I
am not often upset or drowned.
In my stable are sometimes to be found, eating unmingled oats, two tame
ponies, Mattapony and Poniatowski. They take my invalid acquaintance out
on airings in the daytime, and my lingering guests home at a reasonable
hour in the evening. The coachman thinks it is good for the horses to be
out in bad weather. He loves to wash the coach. For my own use, I keep a
large dapple-gray, an ex-charger of the purest blood. He has the
smoothest canter and the finest mouth that I ever felt; but, with decent
regard to appearances, and my private preferences, expressed or
understood, he never fails to prance in a manner to strike awe and
terror into all beholders, for full five minutes every time I mount him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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