From The Saturday Review. dress from the negroes of the Spanish colo- ABOUT a quarter of a century since, a large proportion of the people of London gave themselves up to one of those fits of idolatry which seem so strangely at variance with the generally phlegmatic character of our race. For the first time they were made familiar with the sort of negro who forms an element of modern American life; and the hideous laugh, the wild gestures, and strange dialect with which they were regaled by the then celebrated" Jim Crow Rice," produced in them such a novel mixture of wonder and delight that they could not do less than fall down and worship their eccentric instructor. So "Jim Crow" became a fixed idea with the Cockneys, referred to in countless ways and manifested in countless shapes. To the chimney-pieces of the middle classes, where Tom, Jerry, and Logic, Madame Vestris as Giovanni, and Liston as Paul Pry, had pre- No contrast could be more complete than viously been placed as household "gods," that between the exceedingly neat negro to the effigy of the shabby negro was elevated whom we have just referred and the ragged, with all honor, and aspiring youths who were uncouth vagabond who was introduced to famed for "a good song" regarded a suc- the Londoners by "Jim Crow Rice." But cessful imitation of Mr. Rice's vocal per- in his very shabbiness there was an attracformances as an object worthy of the most tion. "Lelaid, voilà le beau,” is said to have soaring ambition. Then the burden of Jim been the aesthetical maxim adopted by M. Crow's song, "Turn about, wheel about," Victor Hugo when he composed the story of illustrated by a rotary movement on the part Quasimodo, and there is no doubt that the of the singer, was caught with avidity by the shabby-not in character, but in costumesmall satirists of the day, who, when they is greatly relished by playgoers of every wished to stigmatize statesmen or journals grade. The charm of the “ Wandering Minwith an habitual readiness to change their strel," represented by Mr. Robson to the political principles, found an apt and uni-delight of the most aristocratic audience, versally intelligible illustration of their mean- lies not only in his song and in his dialect, ing in the revolving figure of Jim Crow. but in his tatters; and an Irishman who tutes a hayband for a stocking, is welcomed not only as a man and a brother, but as a peculiarly interesting member of the species. In song, dance, rags, dialect, and gesticulation, Mr. Rice was alike acceptable, and the world was surprised to find that a black face could be associated with attributes once There is no doubt that Mr. Rice's per-fastens his coat with a skewer, and substiformance was of a kind entirely novel to Europe, and that his representation of the negro of modern life must be set down as an important item in that course of ethnological instruction which at long intervals is given to the body of the people at places of public amusement. The comic black, who had become a familiar figure to the London-monopolized by the inhabitants of St. Giles' ers prior to the arrival of Mr. Rice, was a and Whitechapel. Billy Waters, the onefanciful personage, whose neatly striped legged black fiddler, copied-if not literally dress, red slippers, bare legs, and huge ear-taken-from the streets to embellish Tom rings separated him completely from the and Jerry, and Agamemnon, the attendant actual world, and he was accepted as a con- negro of the elder Mr. Charles Mathews' vention, like the ordinary figures of panto- Jonathan in England, had indeed preceded mimes. The learned, we believe, have de- Jim Crow, and had earned their share of nocided that the old stage black borrowed his toriety, but they were too much in the back ground to become the leading idols of a period; and although the respect paid to Billy Waters amounted to a sort of hero-worship, heightened by the circumstance that he was a fact as well as a figure, he had a formidable rival in Dusty Bob, who still lives in memory as the type of the old London Dust man. The worship of Jim Crow was as shortlived as it was ardent; for though his performance was novel, it could be very easily imitated, and an English actor named Dunn, who simply copied Mr. Rice, was soon considered his successful rival by the lower class of playgoers, whose opinion with respect to certain branches of art is by no means to be despised. What with the original, and his imitators, and the repetitions of the "Turn about " song in every nook and corner, people began to think the comic negro a bore, just as about eight years since a decided distaste for the pious negro succeeded the rage for Uncle Tom. Jim Crow had been forgotten for something less than ten years when negro humor appeared before the public in an entirely new shape. Instead of donning the tattered coat and hat which Mr. Rice had made popular, or bringing into fashion the discarded blue and white suit of his predecessors, the new artistic negroes accoutred themselves in evening suits of black -perfect English gentleman in every particular save the face. Mr. Rice had displayed his talent in broad Adelphi farces; but Messrs. Pell and Co. eschewed stage-plays, and got up an entertainment which even the Evangelical classes might patronize without inward misgiving. Their maxim was Odi profanum vulgus et arceo, and instead of inviting a roar from the assemblage of an ordinary gallery, they settled themselves in the most western theatre, and courted the smiles and the tears of the aristocratic. They sang about the joys and sorrows incident to negro life; and though some of their comic ditties were absurdities compared to which "Hot Codlins "is a work of high literary art, there was a freshness in their tone that gratified the most fastidious ears, while the more pathetic melodies were not only pleasing in themselves, but frequently accompanied words that, rather in sorrow than in anger, hinted at the miseries of slavery, and therefore accorded with the serious convictions of many of the audience. The form of the en tertainment, too, was entirely novel. The minstrels sat in a row of which the two extremities were respectively occupied by the artists on the "bones" and the tambourine. These, who were somewhat more in the foreground than the players on the banjo and violin, were the humorists of the party, throwing themselves into grotesque attitudes during the performance of the music, and filling up the intervals of song with verbal jokes of the kind in which the clowns of the equestrian ring are wont to indulge. Mr. Pell, who himself was "bones," - for the word at last came to denote the player as well as the instrument,-had really favored London with a new sensation. With the castanet, as an accompaniment to the elegant Spanish dances of Taglioni and Duvernay, everybody had become familiar; but this primitive rattle, played with the most frantic contortions, was something entirely without precedent. At first a few unreasonable grumblers endeavored to stem the popularity of Mr. Pell's company by declaring that the artists were not real blacks, but only white musicians with blackened faces. This pretended discovery was no discovery at all. Far from wishing to pass themselves off for veritable niggers, Pell and Co., as free-born American citizens, would have bitterly resented the suspicion that they had the least drop of black blood in their veins; so they lost no time in publishing portraits of themselves, with the white faces bestowed upon them by nature, in addition to others in which they wore the sable hue of their profession. Moreover, they styled themselves "Ethiopian Serenaders," thus selecting the name of an African country totally disconnected with negro slavery. 66 The popularity of " Jim Crow " was a rage among the middle and lower classes; but the Ethiopians" set a fashion in the strictest sense of the word. The highest personages in the land patronized their performances. An ingenious young gentleman who could play on the banjo and sing "Lucy Neale " or "Buffalo gals" was a welcome guest in the most aristocratic drawing-rooms; and if four amateurs clubbed together and imitated the entire performance of the professors, they were regarded as benefactors to their species. Let the music-books of the year 1846, and thereabouts be turned over, and it will be found what an enormous influence the Pell the Merchant Tailors' Company. They have company had over the social pianoforte per- likewise established a regular form of enterformances of their day. But though the tainment which is universally recognized; Ethiopians started under aristocratic pat- and to this form their competitors, the ronage, there was nothing in the nature of "Buckley's" and the "Campbell's," genertheir entertainment to favor a continuance ally adhere. The first part of the exhibition of exclusiveness. Italian operas and French plays will always repel the masses, from the simple circumstance that the words employed are in a foreign language, but there was nothing either in the humor or in the music of Pell's company that could not be as readily appreciated in St. Giles's as in St. James's. Consequently the people rushed into the participation of an enjoyment so keenly relished by the upper classes, and not only did imitators of the Ethiopians spring up in the cheapest concert-rooms, but a band of itinerant black musicians became as necessary an appurtenance of the London streets as Punch's show or a barrel-organ, much to the discomfiture of lovers of quiet in general, and of Dr. Babbage in particular. Among the higher classes, the predilection for Ethiopian minstrelsy apparently died out, but in the lower stratum of society the tradition of Pell was faithfully preserved; and recent events show that even in the fashionable world the love of banjoes and black faces was rather in abeyance than utterly extinct. Though negro melody and negro wit had been so done to death in every shape and in every quarter, that they seemed on the point of descending into a mere street nuisance, important only to the police, the arrival of the "Christy's Minstrels," about four years since, revived the dormant flame. A host of well-dressed folks were again heard to declare that Ethiopian minstrelsy was the most amusing thing in London, and the pianoforte books were once more filled with songs testifying to the popularity of the new favorites among the most select classes of the metropolis. consists of a concert, in which the performers appear in black evening suits, and play, sing, and joke after the model set by Pell and his associates. There is, however, this difference, that the sentimental songs are commonly without reference to the peculiarities of negro life, and are not unfrequently composed by leading musicians, such as Balfe and Wallace. The second part is miscellaneous, and contains a great deal of grotesque dancing, together with a comic scene or two, in which the shabby vagabond negro of "Jim Crow Rice" once more makes his appearance. A burlesque of some wellknown Italian Opera concludes the whole. If we consider that all this is done, and exceedingly well done, by a company not above twelve strong, we shall have just cause to wonder at the concentration of talent, musical, histrionic, and gymnastic, that has been accomplished in the formation of the troop, and still more, to marvel at its vitality. When the Arlecchino of an old Italian company died, his loss was regarded as a terrible calamity, the extemporaneous character of the "Commedie dell' arte" requiring accomplishments of no ordinary kind; and it would seem that only a rare combination of muscular, vocal, and mimetic powers would enable a man to be chief comedian of the Christy's. So firmly is nigger minstrelsy now established as one of the leading amusements of the metropolis, that London without its regular black band would seem shorn of a necessary appurtenance. The banjo is thrummed all the year round; for when the "Christy's" retire to swallow a mouthful of fresh air and to pick up a pocketful of money in the provinces, the Buckley's or the Campbell's are quick to relieve guard, and make a very respectable figure. And the Christy's Minstrels have kept their ground. Pell and Co., founded the taste, which long survived its originators; but the Christy's have secured a permanent Those who look on everything with a seriexistence to their own corporate body. Their ous face will find in the popularity of nigger principal comic artist died, their manager minstrelsy among the educated classes a sinretired with a fortune in his pocket; but gular illustration of the close connection they appointed a new humorist and subjected that exists between Puritanism and extreme themselves to a new chief, and their corpo- frivolity. Scores of persons who would think rate existence has been no more affected by it wicked to see the highest work of drathe ordinary casualties of life than that of matic art performed by the finest company in the world, will, with the utmost compla- in the drama, and to promote the encourcency, spend a long evening in listening to agement of all that is trivial. trivial jokes, provided they cannot be convicted of "going to the play." It is not that these persons object to the theatre as an edifice, for they will unscrupulously enter any playhouse in London to witness the tricks of a conjurer; neither are they particularly averse to the dramatic form of entertainment, for this is constantly employed in their presence by the artists they delight to patronize. But they must not "go to the play" on any consideration, and the distinction they draw is sufficiently practical to prevent the patronage of all that is elevating There is something melancholy in the fact that a form of religion has widely spread which manifestly tends to lower the civilization of the educated classes; but those who are content to take things as they find them may agreeably pass an evening with the Christy's Minstrels," and respect them as a clever set of artists, who have thoroughly understood how to make the best of the circumstances in which they are placed, and deport themselves ably and conscientiously in their singular vocation. 66 ALLEGHANIA. Mr. James W. Taylor of St. [ginia, to Knoxville, to Chattanooga, to King's Paul, Min., has published a pamphlet with the Mountain, to Dahlonega, to Huntsville, everyabove title, designed to show, by a geographical where drawing but the support of a population and statistical argument, the peculiar condition still loyal at heart, as he says. Two questions of the mountain districts of the South, as a source arise in our minds as we reflect on the glowing of strength to the Union and of weakness to the picture. First, we do not know why our armies rebellion. This mountain region embraces con-have not long ago been advanced more confiterminous parts of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennes-dently into a section so important and so favorsee, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and able. And, secondly, we are at a loss to exAlabama, with an area of 85,835 square miles, including 181 counties, and containing 1,373,690 inhabitants, of whom only _201,024, or less than 15 per cent, are slaves. This was by the census of 1850, and it is believed that the proportion of slaves is now still smaller. Mr. Taylor possesses one capital defect as a statistician, he does not foot his columns! We have performed this "labor of love," and hence elaborated the following table, showing at a glance the States involved, the number of counties, the free population, and the slaves: States. Virginia, Counties. Kentucky, 12 Tennessee, N. Carolina, S. Carolina, 35 181 Free Inhab. 60,160 268,295 130,572 58,653 119,358 74,920 1,172,666 Slaves. 201,024 plain how or why such a people, in such a mountain region, have so cravenly allowed themselves to be trampled on by the rebellion.-Independent. The Gorilla Hunters; a Tale of the Wilds of Africa. By R. M. Ballantyne. T. Nelson and Sons. THE gorilla hunting constitutes but a small 64,255 portion of this fictitious narrative of daring ad2,560 venture. Elephants, rhinoceroses, and "such 32,152 small deer" are knocked over in the most sports14,222 man-like manner; lions and leopards are bagged 25,923 like partridges, and the native savages, yet more 23,868 cruel than the beasts of the forest, are baffled or 38,044 overcome as counsel or valor happens to predominate. Truly marvellous are the escapes of these daring Englishmen. Now they tumble down a sheer precipice, now are tossed by an inThe writer dilates, with the enthusiasm of a furiated buffalo. This one is charged by an ele native, on the beauties and grandeur of the phant, that one by a black rhinoceros, while in scenery, the fertility of the soil for grass and the dead of night a lion springs upon the carcase grain, the wealth of the mines of gold and iron of a zebra lying beside their watch fire, and at and salt and coal, the various mineral springs, the same moment is shot through the brain by the abundance of water-streams, the salubrity of the slumbering sentinel. As to the gorilla, comthe climate, the central position, the mountain mend us to the single combat at the close of the fastnesses, and other advantages of that beauti-volume as far surpassing anything witnessed or ful region, and then argues the importance of an imagined by Mr. du Chaillu himself. The illusearly advance of the Union armies through the trations are as terrific as the narrative, and quite Cumberland Gap and along the valley of Vir- as truthful.-Spectator. From The Christian Observer. NAPOLEON THE FIRST: "THE MAN OF THE WORLD." fies that even that full success would bring no real happiness. But there may be there has been-a result which differs considerably from that pointed out in both of these warnings. A man may devote himself so earnestly to the unlawful purpose of We endeavored, not long since, to bring into light an important lesson, taught us in the life of one of the most celebrated of the sons of men. The misfortunes and suffer-" gaining the whole world," as to break his ings of Christopher Columbus, flowing in the plainest possible sequence from an error of his own, seemed to furnish a perpetual beacon-light, holding up to all future ages the warning given to Baruch, "Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not, saith the Lord." The world's history furnishes few such warnings ;-few warnings of an equally explicit and intelligible kind, and written in so legible and conspicuous a character. One, however, there is, the most striking, perhaps, of all; and claiming our attention the more imperatively, inasmuch as it is a lesson of our own time. The records of the past contain no more remarkable name than that of Napoleon Bonaparte; and they afford us no plainer or more emphatic lesson than that which is legible in the life of that greatest conqueror of modern times. To "aim high" is the counsel of an eminent English philosopher. "Not to have aimed high enough was the chief cause of the ruin of Napoleon Bonaparte. He strove, and almost successfully, to be the master of the world. If he had ever seen, he had disregarded the testimony of one who had thus recorded his experience: "I was great, and increased more than all that were before me . . . and whatsoever mine eyes desired, I kept not from them; I withheld not my heart from any joy: then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do; and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit."* And unquestionably, the question propounded by the Lord Jesus, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" never reached his heart, if indeed it ever entered his ear. There is, however, in the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, a third lesson discernible,-a lesson not distinctly expressed in our Lord's question, nor in the testimony of Solomon. The words of Christ assume, for the moment, that a man may gain the whole world;" the declaration of Solomon testi*Eccles. 2: 9-11. THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. 66 825 own heart in the effort. A man whose mental power and force of character might have secured for him the fullest amount of enjoyment that this world was capable of affording, may fail even in this temporal and sublunary pursuit, from a want of the true wisdom. A consciousness of power may excite arrogance; an unbroken tide of success may lead to inordinate self-confidence; and while the conquering autocrat exclaims, "Is not this great Babylon which I have built?" the word may be heard from heaven, "The kingdom is departed from thee; and they shall drive thee from among men." Such was the fate of Napoleon Bonaparte. And there are few more instructive lessons to be learned in the annals of the different states and kingdoms of the earth than that which is taught us in this eventful history. The early life of Napoleon exhibits to us at every step a youth of vast energy, enterprise, and personal ambition. He eagerly acquired the knowledge which was necessary for his views; readily applied that knowledge to practical purposes, and was ever on the stretch for an upward flight. While in his twenty-fifth year, a young officer, poor, and seeking employment in Paris, he could talk of his plans for a visit to the East, and exclaim: "How strange would it be if a little Corsican soldier should become king of Jerusalem!" He had exhibited both skill and enterprise, before this, at the siege of Toulon; but it was the service rendered by him to the National Convention at Paris on the 4th of October, 1795, which placed him at once on the road to fortune. The greater part of the citizens of Paris disliked the Convention, and were resolved to deprive it of power. The Convention resolved to maintain its authority, but it had but five thousand men to oppose to forty thousand national guards united in revolt. In its alarm it gave the command of its forces to Barras, one of its own members; and he exclaimed, "I have the man you want,—a little Corsican officer, who will not stand upon ceremony." The |