speeches made at the three complimentary dinners of last week, it seems, that, on each occasion, the Chairman and the hero of the evening contrived to steer clear of sheer nonsense and vacuity. But for the rest, don't let us reason about them; listen and look, and pass on as swiftly as may be. the hour carries it away in a bag of green | must remain a mystery. That men do enbaize, and for the persons who have paid tertain this preference is also likely to refor it this is an end of the transaction. A main a fact. From the reports of the dinner, on the contrary, is thoroughly and emphatically social. We give our divine or novelist a dinner; but then, in this very act, we also invite ourselves to help him to eat it. In giving him a dinner, we give ourselves one at the same time; and as there are many persons who really like taking their food in the glare of a thousand jets of gas, amid a dreadful din and bustle and hubbub, this is somewhat of an argument for them at least. Other persons, or perhaps the same persons, are also cast in so mysterious a mould as to be willing to endure an endless quantity of speech-making from others, on the bare hazard of getting a chance of making a speech of their own. In the old teapot scheme, there was no room for gratifying more than one man with a taste for oratory, or at most two. The astounding institution of a score of toasts had no place in one of those more primitive ceremonials. Hence there were a score fewer speeches to be made, and perhaps three or four score more of disappointed men. It is true that against this must be set the fact that the majority of men, who know by painful experience the stammering imbecility and fatuousness of nine English speakers out of ten, have a strong interest in suppressing oratory. But these are the silent and peaceful many, here, as ever, led by the blatant and fussy few, who divide the speechifying among themselves, and fondly believe that their victims like and admire it. They are not wholly wrong. Wherever two or three Englishmen are gathered together, under any shadow of formal pretext, there is sure to be a certain feeling that the proceedings would be imperfect without a measure of solemn oratorical shuffling and mumbling. It is possible that there were some people present at the dinner to Mr. Dickens who would have felt that they had not had the full worth of their guinea, nor risen to the full significance of the rite, if there had not been, besides meats and wines, a full allowance of tumid and second-rate oratory into the bargain. To a sensible man, this may seem extremely funny and incredible; but then so do a great many other things which we are still constrained to admit as actually existing. How anybody who could dine peaceably and meditatively at home or at his club on a piece of meat and a pint of wine, should yet prefer to eat mediocre mixtures in a noisy crowd with a cento of wearisome and, in the main, meaningless speeches to follow, It must be a serious nuisance, even to a vain man, to have to pay the penalty of a banquet, if he should venture to give up his employment, like Mr. Trollope, or to make a journey, like Dr. Macleod, and Mr. Dickens. The fat and steaming adulation which is so common on these occasions indeed for the sake of which, to a certain extent, they are got upcannot be particularly pleasant even to men who enjoy their reputation. To have praises poured over him and down his back, which would be almost hyperbolical if applied to Shakspeare himself, must make a straightforward man, with some knowledge of himself and his powers, ready to shiver. The moderate-sized mortal perched on a pedestal lofty enough for Jupiter or Apollo must have honest qualms and misgivings. To be made into a Phaëthon against his will, and to be forced to course through the heavens, is a grievous fate for him, unless he be forgetful enough or ignorant enough of his own powers to believe, in the intoxication of the hour, that his adulators are doing no more than giving him his due. As a rule, we suspect these affairs afford much more pleasure to small men than to the big man. They are placed in an unusually fine and exalted position. They become the patrons, and therefore the more than equals, of the hero of their evening. The deep gratitude which is always so ostentatiously paraded by the guest is by them taken quite in earnest. They humbly persuade themselves that they have somehow placed the great author under an obligation; that they deserve very well of him; that, if he has written delightful novels, they, in turn, have provided for him a delightful treat of food and oratory. It is curious to think how many worthy men' there are to whom to come into contact with persons of eminence even in this remote way is gratifying and elevating beyond. description to whom it is really a thing to be much thought of that they should have come under the bodily eye of Lord Lytton or Mr. Dickens, and perhaps, in the expansion of the hour of parting, should have seized the hand that wrote Pickwick or Pelham. This makes them actual friends, or at 1 1 1 -1 DEATH OF FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. least acquaintances, of the great man, after a fashion. The contagion of glory is a wonderful force in all these affairs. For some very plain man, with a name absolutely and forever unknown beyond the limits of a very narrow private circle, to find that name blazoned in the public prints in company with peers and judges and poets, is to cease to be obscure. A ray or two from the divine halo which glitters round the head of the Chairman and the illustrious guest lights up even the humblest and most obscure of the stewards. To pay one's shot for dining with eminent literary personages is to receive some breath or two of the divine literary afflatus. Who dines with literary men must needs himself be literary; and to have a reputation for being this, especially in very rural and very commercial circles, is to have a right to lay down critical laws to one's neighbours. 639 ousness of the form in which you clothe it. DEATH OF FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. OUR sheet of this day has the sad duty of recording the death of Fitz-Greene Halleck, the poet, last night, at his residence in Guilford, Connecticut, at the age of seventytwo years. Mr. Halleck was born in Guilford, Connecticut, in 1795. His mother was an Elliot, and a descendant of John Elliot, "the apostle to the Indians." Mr. Halleck came to New York in 1818, and entered the mercantile house of Jacob Barker, in whose employment he remained for many years. Afterwards he was in the service of John Jacob Astor, by whom he was nominated one of the trustees of the Astor Library. Since 1849 Mr. Halleck has lived in his native place, retired from business. The people who insist on finding good in everything may urge that, after all, this extraordinary systein of banqueting is a mark of reverence and gratitude for great genius and worth, on the part of the obscurities who crowd to dinners and reflected glory. Perhaps so. And to the veneration and thankfulness we can make no objection. On the contrary, his capacity for these profound emotions is one of the noblest parts of man's nature. It is the form assumed by these sublime sentiments against which it will very soon be high time for plain folk to protest. What is the hidden link which connects veneration with dining? Why, because I like to read skilful compilations of love-letters and ingenious analyses of the more complex phenomena of flirting, should I testify my esteem and love for the writer who can tread this lofty ground with such courage and success by going to eat my dinner in his society in a hot room with a great deal of gas, atmospheric and oratorical? The only answer is, that at least this is no more unreasonable than the ancient practice of presenting him with an utterly superfluous piece of plate. We might just as well have asked why the gracefulness of Mr. Trollope's love-letters, Mr. Halleck was by no means a volumior the vigour and fertility of Mr. Dickens's nous author, but the poems he wrote have genius for caricature, or the success with long been favorites with the public. He which Dr. Macleod has sown liberal seed possessed a peculiar vein of humor, exceedin an illiberal land, should have been re-ingly airy and graceful, and his versification warded with a teapot or an inkstand for is one of uncommon sweetness and melody. which they could have no sort of use. This, He delighted in rapid transitions from gay however, is the test of all these celebrations. to grave, and again in unexpected returns To introduce any consideration of utility is from the grave to the ludicrous. Yet when to exhibit a base insensibility to the gushing the mood was on him he was capable of emotions of the hour. Your good will is to strains inspired with the highest poetic enbe nicely measured by the entire preposter-thusiasm. There is not in the language a Mr. Halleck began to write verses in his boyhood. The earliest piece which he thought worthy to appear in his collected poems, the lines to "Twilight," appeared in the Evening Post so long ago as 1818; and the "Croaker" papers, by Halleck and Joseph Rodman Drake, appeared in our journal the following summer. Fanny," his longest poem, was written in 1819. In 1822-23 he visited Europe, and in 1827 published an edition of his poems. Several editions have appeared since. 66 To keep my life thus cheery and bright, While thine is all over? finer martial poem than his Marco Bozzaris. | Why did God make me a brave bird-soul, His verses addressed to a poet's daughter Under warm feathers, red as a coal, are as charming as such verses could well be, and his Red Jacket- -a poem occasioned by the death of the Indian chief of that name - is, aside from the touches of his characteristic humor which it contains, a poem of robust and manly vigor, worthy to be placed beside anything of its kind in our literature. Mr. Halleck was personally a most agreeable man, and one of the pleasantest companions in the world. He was an unwearied reader, and used to say that he could think of no more pleasant life than would be afforded by a large library and abundant leisure. He was acquainted with several modern languages. He studied Portuguese that he might read Camoens in the original, whose "Lusiad" has lost all of its simplicity and much of its narrative interest in Mickle's diffuse translation. His conversation was entertaining, pointed to a degree which made it almost epigrammatic, and enlivened with anecdotes, which he related with a conciseness and spirit that would have satisfied even Samuel Rogers. Bold strong wings, Was it Hand of Heaven? The wind goes sobbing' Or else in a dream his voice I heard :) not snow May be singing o'er the lamb strayed from the A DINNER was given this day week to Mr Dickens, on his departure for a visit to the United States, at the Freemasons' Tavern, between three and four hundred persons being present, and Lord Lytton in the chair. Tho chief feature of the evening was the extravagant flattery which the principal speakers lavished upon each other, in a style, as somebody says, "more like a funeral sermon than truth." Lord Lytton said that Mr. Dickens wielded a royal sceptre over the hearts of men, and that humanity obeys an irresistible instinct when it renders homage to one who refines it by tears which never enfeeble, and gladdens it by a laughter that never degrades." The last is as strictly true of Mr. Dickens as the former is false. His pathos is rarely anything but sentimental, and usually even effeminate. Mr. Dickens himself illustrated this when he ended his speech of thanks by quoting the sentimental little sentiment from Tiny Tim, "God bless us every one." Then the Lord Chief Justice extolled Lord Lytton, "the poet, novelist, dramatist, thinker, critic, philosopher," and spoke of him as contributing to "the enjoy ment, edification, and instruction of the intellectual world in all these departments." Enjoyment is a matter of taste; and no doubt there is plenty of clever writing in Lord Lytton to enjoy; but we forget which of Lord Lytton's books are instructive and edifying. Then Lord Lytton praised" those remarkable talents which first became the admiration of our Parliament, and now reflect lustre on our Bench;" and so it went on. Do clever and able men enjoy themselves the more at these festivities for all this coarse eulogy? We confess it seems to us in odious taste. - Spec tator. POETRY: By the Fire, 642. Lord Mayor's Carriage, 642. The Last Walk in Autumn, by John G. Whittier, 673. New Books THE LADY'S ALMANAC. For the year 1868. Boston: George Coolidge. AMERICAN NOTES. By Charles Dickens. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Bros. Preparing for Publication at this Office THE CHAPLET OF PEARLS. By the author of "Heir of Redclyffe.' THE BROWNLOWS. By Mrs. Oliphant. LINDA TRESSEL. By the author of "Nina Balatka." THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY. By Charles Lever. ALL FOR GREED. PHINEAS FINN, THE IRISH MEMBER. By Mr. Trollope. Just Published at this Office 50 cents. THE TENANTS OF MALORY. By J. S. Le Fanu. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the Living Age will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year; nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. The Complete work Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. BY THE FIRE. I. No, darling, I am not crying. I have not been thinking at all; Ah, love me, sister; morning mists still shrink 'neath the noonday beams; Surely the steady love of a life will banish I've been watching the fire flames flash and Tinsley's Magazine. leap, and the embers crumble and fall: No, I am not cold or tired, and my head does not ache, not much No more than an old, old wound might do, just shrinking from sudden touch. AN APPEAL BY A LONDON ALDERMAN. In his State Carriage with what pride, That gorgeous object passing by "And if," within himself, he said, And never loiter on my way, So I thought often, when a lad, Discard the Lord Mayor's Coach of State, Lord Mayor's State Carriage put away? We bade our City Barge farewell, Oh, don't! If I could have my will, And, as Britannia points the eye You City Giants, are you dumb? |