Monthly-although we say it-was the first really good popular magazine in the country. It was not popular in the sense of flash papers and dime novels, but in that of acceptability to the intelligent domestic sentiment. From the first it has been a family visitor. To many families, scattered far and wide, it often supplies the only literature, except the newspaper, which they receive. To this welcome by young and old, "without distinction of sex," the illustrations largely contribute, and no one can honestly say that they ought not largely to contribute. There is one test by which the Magazine knows infallibly whether it is still as welcome as it has always been, and the correspondent who writes in so friendly a strain will be glad to know that the infallible test proves incontrovertibly that he speaks for a larger circle than ever. THERE are two very familiar sayings the source of which is generally unknown. One is, "Approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley is praise indeed," and the other is, "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" They are from two plays of Thomas Morton's, the first from A Cure for the Heart-Ache, and the other from Speed the Plough. The Mrs. Grundy saying is one that tersely expresses the motive by which action is greatly controlled. There is a social Mrs. Grundy, and a religious and a political Mrs. Grundy, and it is always the fear of what that terrible lady may say which makes cowards of very estimable men. In the beautiful and stately essay of Elia, "Blakesmoor in H-shire," Elia speaks of "that haunted room--in which old Mrs. Battle died whereinto I have crept, but always in the daytime, with a passion of fear." But it is old Mrs. Grundy living of whom we are all in such mortal terror, and it is from the dire thought of hearing her voice that we creep about with a passion of fear. Men do the most unworthy and unexpected acts, and their only excuse and explanation is that they could not help themselves. But if you press them home upon so obscure an assertion to learn why they were unable, they own with a certain shame that it was fear of this awful being. "Who is the woman?" said the Turkish cadi when a complaint was laid before him, assuming that at the bottom of all trouble there was a woman. His assumption was justified by the oldest tradition in literature, the siege of Troy, at the bottom of which lay the beautiful Helen, and by the last incomprehensible political, or social, or sectarian cowardice, at the bottom of which lies Mrs. Grundy. The scholar in his study simply and naturally reaches conclusions that are not generally accepted. That is to say, the mass of those who have no time to think or study upon such subjects receive the common tradition about them, which is different from the conclusions of those who do think and study. The scholar's opinion is sincere, and founded upon apparent- | | ly incontrovertible reasons. Loyalty to truth demands the dispersion of illusions that exhale from ignorance, and he is morally bound to speak. But his mouth is sealed. In vain he is chided by his own conscience and by conscientious friends. "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" is his terrified answer. In "society" it is the same. This tyrannical woman is omnipotent. The brave and generous wife proposes to Edward, whose salary is small, to take cheap and pleasant rooms in a pleasant street. "Good heavens! what will Mrs. Grundy say if we live in Y Street?" Men go down to early graves or to the mad-house because of the struggle and despair to maintain a certain "style." To every remonstrance Edward has but one reply, "My dear, we live in Mrs. Grundy's world, and if we break her laws, what will Mrs. Grundy say?" The attention of the Easy Chair has been attracted to this permanent and pervasive question by some recent events in the political world. Some conspicuous persons naturally decided to say what they thought, and to do what they felt that they ought to do, and when asked in blank dismay, "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" they replied, pleasantly, that they did not care a-say, button-for what Mrs. Grundy might say. It was a position so unprecedented that to take it seemed to the church of Mrs. Grundy to be equivalent to attempting to subvert the moral laws of the universe. This is not surprising when it is considered that the political Mrs. Grundy is a very important personage. The social Mrs. Grundy's sneer may ban Edward and his wife as "those queer people," which is a form of the sentence of exile to the social Siberia. The religious Mrs. Grundy may brand the honest scholar as an "unbeliever." He may stoutly deny Mrs. Grundy's supremacy; yet it suffices to hurt his influence and career. The political Mrs. Grundy is very powerful. The man who does not mind her will or word is "recreant," "dishonorable," "sore," "silly," "false." He merely follows his own conscience instead of her will; that is to say, he does merely what every honorable man ought to do, and the only comment is a scream of horror, "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" Many of those who join in the cry despise it, and very probably they despise themselves for swelling it. But it is the condition-or they think it to be the condition-of their personal and political advantage. Besides, Mrs. Grundy's "say" has a tremendous echo. It is constantly and infinitely repeated, and it is that reverberation which makes it terrible. A man might be very willing that one copy of one newspaper should call him a dirty dog, a thief, and a liar. But when he is called by these names in a hundred thousand copies of it every morning in the week, and hundreds of other newspapers repeat it, and millions of people who do not personally know him, and who are apt to believe what they constantly see, read every day that he is a dirty dog and a liar, a man naturally begins to count the cost, and asks himself whether he had not better keep his opinions to himself if this is the penalty of expressing them. | railway directors were made to ride upon the cow-catcher, there would be few railway accidents. If railway corporations and all other associations knew that a serious calamity would swallow up their profits for a year or more, there would be very few serious calamities. The inquiry into the Madison Square disaster disclosed the fact that the lives of citizens were exposed to the chance of the tumbling down of a flimsy building which was erected in disregard of law. The jury censured "the Harlem Railroad Company for employing a civil engineer to act as an architect who is not conversant with the construction of build But the moment he yields and falls dumb, he helps to make the tyrannical Mrs. Grundy. Mrs. Grundy, in other words, is the creation of those who despise her. If those who really spurn the idol would but show their contempt for it, the stone would drop and be shivered in a moment. On the other hand, the enormous power of the political Mrs. Grundy is shown in the consternation with which contempt of her word is treated. There is nothings," and "the Department of Buildings for ing more ridiculous than the air with which those who themselves secretly hate her look upon those who quietly say so, as if they had causelessly committed hari-kari. Yet, we repeat, it is those who hate her who themselves make opposition to her will a kind of political suicide. “What will Mrs. Grundy say?" But what matters what she says, if her word is impotent? And impotent it is if every man who scorns it laughs at it instead of fears it. It is not courage which is most unfortunate in this world, by any means. "For the first time in my life," said a distinguished public man recently, "I don't care what the political Mrs. Grundy says, and I never was so happy and light-hearted." Other distinguished public | men-Webster, Clay, Calhoun-lacked the courage, asked with terror what Mrs. Grundy would say, and died broken-hearted. negligence in their duty in allowing the aforesaid addition to be erected contrary to law, and in a faulty manner; and we recommend that the entire building be taken down, as we deem it dangerous and unfit for the purposes of public assemblages." This is a decided verdict, which ought to compel not only the demolition of the building, but smarting damages. It will be interesting to watch events, and to see if any results follow this important judgment. When there is a fire in a theatre, and terrible exposure, if not actual loss, of life, there is a tremendous rumbling and uproar in the press for a few days. "Only that, and nothing more." It is doubtful if there be a theatre or a hall in the city from which there are reasonably proper means of escape in an emergency. The honest citizen thinks that he will take the risk, like the boy upon the thin ice. That is the present eud of the matter. There will be no adequate laws to assure Every man who defies this tyrannical old woman does a great public service. She is a kind of malign Diana, a triple Duessa of soci-safe buildings, and no enforcement of such .ety, religion, and politics. Every man who helps to rivet her yoke is a public enemy. "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" Let her say what she will, so long as the honest man asks only what honor and manliness say, and having heard, goes quietly on to make their word his deed. laws, until there is a public opinion which demands them. Even then, if the superintendent and executive agent of such laws is appointed because he can pack a caucus, buildings will continue to tumble down. The safe construction of buildings, like nursing and care in public hospitals, is not a political matter. But so long as these functions are made political matters, buildings like the Madison Square Garden will be unsafe, and the sick and suffering in public hospitals will be cared for by drunken nurses. THE Occasional strictures of the Easy Chair upon the want of proper provisions of safety in public buildings received sad emphasis in the fall of the wall of the Madison Square Garden, by which four persons were killed and There is a terrible legend of Crim-Tartary, many injured. There were two directions in concerning a very massive and imposing ediwhich to look for the responsibility: one was fice, which is also very ancient. It is so vast the Building Department; the other was the and impressive that travellers are profoundly Harlem Railroad Company, which owns the affected, especially those who come from counbuilding, and made the change which appar- tries where a certain number of persons are ently led to the disaster. After a thorough annually destroyed by burning theatres and and careful inquiry, the jury returned a ver- falling buildings. One such traveller was gazdict of censure against both. The law is de- ing with admiration upon the edifice, in comfective which does not provide that in case pany with his Majesty the King of the country, of loss of life by such a catastrophe-a loss and he could not restrain himself from saying: legally proved-the owner or owners of the "O King, what is the secret of the wonderbuilding shall pay in damages a large and defi-ful strength of this building, that it has neither nite sum. The value of human life can not be calculated in money, but it is very easy to calculate the probability of a company's taking a great risk from their own negligence. If VOL. LXL-No. 362.-20 | tumbled down nor been burned up?” But his Majesty the King of the country was coy, and forbore to answer. Being pressed more closely, however, at length he answered, "O stranger, its strength is a secret of the state." The stranger was not dismayed, and after much entreaty, his pertinacity overcame the reluctance of the King, who finally said, with solemnity: "O stranger, when my ancestor began to build this temple, it was laid upon insecure foundations. Thereupon he sent for another builder, and said to him: "The present corner-stone will be raised, and the present builder placed under it alive, and upon the stone laid upon the body, you will proceed to erect the wall. Should it be weak or insufficient, it will be taken down; the corner-stone again raised, you will be placed under it alive, the stone will be again laid, and the building proceed once more.' My ancestor said nothing further; and you now know, O stranger, the secret of these massive walls, and why this building does not tumble down." The stranger, says the Crim-Tartar legend, went his way much meditating the marvellous government which was able to prevent flimsy building. NEWSPAPER manners and morals hardly fall into the category of minor manners and morals, which are supposed to be the especial care of the Easy Chair, but there are frequent texts upon which the preacher might dilate, and push a discourse upon the subject even to the fifteenthly. Indeed, in this hot time of an opening election campaign, the stress of the contest is so severe that the first condition of a good newspaper is sometimes frightfully maltreated. The first duty of a newspaper is to tell the news: to tell it fairly, honestly, and accurate ly, which are here only differing aspects of the same adverb. "Cooking the news" is the worst use to which cooking and news can be put. The old divine spoke truly, if with exceeding care, in saying, "It has been sometimes ob- | served that men will lie." So it has been sometimes suspected that newspapers will cook the news. no more pardonable to misrepresent other facts than to distort the opinions of the victim of an interview. Yet it has been possible at times to read in the newspapers of the same day accounts of the same proceedings of-of— let us say, as this is election time—of a political convention. The Banner informs us that the spirit was unmistakable, and the opinion most decided in favor of Jones. True, the convention voted, by nine hundred to four, for Smith, but there is no doubt that Jones is the name written on the popular heart. The Standard, on the other hand, proclaims that the popular heart is engraved all over with the inspiring name of Smith, and that it is impossible to find any trace of feeling for Jones, except, possibly, in the case of one delegate, who is probably an idiot or a lunatic. This is gravely served up as news, and the papers pay for it. They even hire men to write this, and pay them for it. How Ude and Carême would have disdained this kind of cookery! It is questionable whether hanging is not a better use to put a man to than cooking news. Henry Wotton defined an ambassador as an honest man sent to lie abroad for the commonwealth. This kind of purveyor, however, does not lie for his country, but for a party or a person. Sir It is done with a purpose, the purpose of influencing other action. It is intended to swell the pean for Jones or for Smith, and to procure results under false pretenses. Procuring goods under false pretenses is a crime, but everybody is supposed to read the newspapers at his own risk. Has the reader yet to learn that newspapers are very human? A paper, for instance, takes a position upon the Jones or Smith question. It decides, upon all the information it can obtain, and by its own deliberate judgment, that Jones is the coming man, or (“it has been observed that men will sometimes lie") it has illicit reasons for the success of Smith. Having thus taken its course, it cooks all the news upon the Smith and Jones A courteous interviewer called upon a gen- controversy, in order that by encouraging the tleman to obtain his opinions, let us say, upon Jonesites or the Smithians, according to the the smelt fishery. After the usual civilities color that it wears, it may promote the success upon such occasions, the interviewer remarked, of the side upon which its opinion has been with conscious pride: "The paper that I rep- staked. It is a ludicrous and desperate game, resent and you, sir, do not agree upon the great but it is certainly not the honest collection smelt question. But it is a newspaper. It and diffusion of news. It is a losing game prints the facts. It does not pervert them for also, because, whatever the sympathies of the its own purpose, and it finds its account in it. reader, he does not care to be foolishly deYou may be sure that whatever you may say ceived about the situation. If he is told day will be reproduced exactly as you say it. This after day that Smith is immensely ahead and is the news department. Meanwhile the edi- has a clear field, he is terribly shaken by the torial department will make such comments shock of learning at the final moment that he upon the news as it chooses." This was fair, has been cheated from the beginning, and that and the interviewer kept his word. The opin-poor Smith is dead upon the field of dishonor. ions might be editorially ridiculed from the other smelt point of view, and they probably were so. But the reader of the paper could judge between the opinion and the comment. Now an interview is no more news than much else that is printed in a paper, and it is Everybody is willing to undertake everybody else's business, and an Easy Chair naturally supposes, therefore, that it could show the able editor a plan of securing and retaining a large audience. The plan would be that described by the urbane reporter as the plan of his own paper. It is nothing else than truth-telling in the news column, and the peremptory punishment of all criminals who cook the news, and "write up" the situation, not as it is, but as the paper wishes it to be. This is more than an affair of the private wishes or preferences of the paper. To cook the news is a public wrong, and a violation of the moral contract which the newspaper makes with the public to supply the news, and to use every reasonable effort to obtain it, not to manufacture it, either in the office or by correspondence. CHARLES LAMB, in a felicitous turn of words that makes everybody wish to do what he describes, speaks of taking "those pretty pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery Eud, in Hertfordshire." Who would not take one of those walks? What quaintness in the words Mackery End! What rural melody in the word Hertfordshire! Lamb says that he was once detected by a familiar damsel reclining upon the grass on Primrose Hill, reading Pamela, and he wishes that it had been any other book. But if any loiterer were detected sitting by a stream or under a tree in this delightful season, reading Lamb's very essay from which we quote, he could not wish the situation to be different. hill and meadow and the far undulating coun| try are all submerged in the ethereal splendor. "Pretty pastoral walks"-in the country there are then no other. The season was in the heart of June when Lamb, in later years, returned to Mackery End, and he was so exclusively a citizen, a denizen of streets, that he apparently cared very little for the landscape, and probably knew little of trees and flowers. It was the romance of the old house, and a certain higher family association, which gave his imagination a vague contact with grandeur, causing "very Gentility" to pass into his consciousness, which made the charm of the place to him. It was yesterday, and not to-day. But the pretty pastoral walks about the Easy Chair in the month of May are rich with the glory of the present moment. Indeed, from day to day, in that teeming season, the eye must be on the alert to mark each step of the swift progress. One morning the ground is all violets, the next the lilacs are everywhere in full flower, and the simultaneous efflorescence of tree and shrub and creeping plant is bewildering. From the hill your eye looks down the brilliant fresh green of the springing rye in the long upland field to the trees below, the orchard trees and the dogwood, with the bright young grass beneath, and, far beyond, the grad and spires and groves to the water, and on the other side the same varied luxuriance receding to the misty hills. In the hazy afternoon the landscape itself becomes a mist, in which the gleams of silver in a solitary land. The bland air breathes softly as the loiterer gazes; it is perfumed beyond the air of Araby. That glittering sheet of silver is not the familiar strait; it is the poet's As we write, it is the season for those pretty pastoral walks. There is one week in May-ual slope of the plain, with houses and gardens the dogwood week, when the dogwood is in blossom-which is the most beautiful in the year. All the trees and shrubs are then budding and bursting. The cherry-trees are beginning to lose their blossoms, and the apple-water lines shine with intense brightnesstrees, at a little distance, are rounded mounds of bloom. The warm puffs of air-wafts, as the young poets call them-are aromatic with the richness of the orchards, and the gardens of the Hesperides were not more exquisite in color and fragrance. There among the dark pines is the pink cloud of the Judas-tree, and under the forest trees, before they have fairly started, the shad-blossom herald of the azalea, the swamp honeysuckle. The brilliant yellow Forsythia, which comes before the lilac dares, and almost takes the winds of March, leads in the flowery train in garden beds and along the edges of lawns. But what suddenness, and what profusion! An early warm day reminds you that the time of the singing of birds has come, and that you must begin to peer after the vines and the young grapes, and you are amazed to find that you have been caught napping, and that while you were wondering how much longer fires would be necessary, the myriad firstlings of the year were already quickening, and that there were crocuses and violets and the trailing arbutus ready for the finder. From that moment a kind of Bay of Fundy floral tide swells and rises and pours all around the busy and delighted spectator. It is not a high tide of Lincolnshire only, but another deluge, of verdure and bloom, tender and beautiful, and "Broad water of the West"; it is the sluggish stream of the Arthurian legend along which slide the slow barges—the river of Paradise. "Give me health and a day," says Emerson, in his earliest book, "and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria, the sunset and moonrise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faery; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams." Let the day be a day of spring, the midmost week of May in this latitude, and the pretty pastoral walk in the suburbs will not be about Mackery End, but about the garden of Eden. LOOKING, the other day, at the photographs which hung at Bogardus's door, the Easy Chair saw a venerable head, of strong features and of rather foreign aspect, which, upon a closer inspection, turned out to be that of Ole Bull. A few evenings afterward he played at a concert, and there was great enthusiasm, the pa pers said, even if the performance was what it always was. What it always was! Does the critic remember Hans Christian Andersen's account of Ole Bull's first playing in Italy, in Rome? He had come down from Norway with his violin, and the violin was pretty much all that was left to him. He had reached the last crust, but he had youth and his violin. A great concert was announced in Rome, at which De Beriot was to play, and princesses and grand dames of every degree were to attend, and at the last moment De Beriot was ill, or was in a “huff,” and said that he was ill; in any case, he would not play, and there was universal consternation until some one thought of the Norwegian youth with his violin. So a messenger was sent in hot haste, who found the hero of hope and the last crust, and summoned him to come at once to the concert and play. The Norwegian was very shabbily dressed, but he took his violin, as the son of the miller took his legacy, and set forth to try his fortune. when his tall, manly figure emerged from the wings, and advanced to the foot-lights, the coat buttoned across his breast, and his smooth, handsome face above the broad shoulders-a young Apollo in evening dress-there was a freshness and simplicity of impression, and a personal fascination, wholly unknown to the full-bearded and mustached and finical artists whom we were accustomed to see. There was a cool repose of ample strength in his Northern aspect, and the entire audience was ready to admire and enjoy before a sound was heard. As he stood erect while the orchestra played the introduction, he bent his ear to his violin with an air of communion with a conscious spirit, and at the proper moment he dashed off into some polacca guerriera, to which he gave prodigious effect, and at once captured the audience and secured his American success. Vieuxtemps was here at the same time, an exquisite master of the violin; but he was wholly eclipsed by this "phenomenon" from Norway. There was immense enthusiasm about The theatre was brilliant with the distinc- Bull, and the papers gushed with sentimenttion and the fashion of Rome, and presently al rhapsodies; but the musicians smiled, and the Norwegian came forward in his shabby | shrugged their shoulders, and were denounced clothes holding his violin-this is Hans An- by the true believers as narrow-minded infidersen's story-wondering what he should dels, green with jealousy. It would be interplay. He resolved to improvise the fantasia esting to recur to the remarks then made upon that was floating through his mind, snatches Ole Bull's playing, and the young persons of and reminiscences of melodies of his native to-day, who are persuaded that there never land, and, as the rider who brought the good was and never can be so perfect a musical hero news from Ghent to Aix patted the neck of as Campanini, who is fitted to kindle overpowhis good horse Roland to magnetize him withering enthusiasm in the breast of the most obsympathy, the youth bent his ear to his violin, durate parent, would be amazed could they turn and touched the strings gently with his fin- back for a generation, and behold that obdugers. Then he drew the bow, and the min-rate parent shouting and violent with admiragled music of hope and memory, of aspiration | tion of Ole Bull. Fortes vixere ante Campanini. and resolve, vibrated and rang through the It is possible to see something of the youthgreat building. A roar of applause followed, ful fire and energy of the Norwegian Apollo of and the artist was compelled to come forward those old days in the photographic head that again. He asked for themes upon which to the Easy Chair saw at Bogardus's door. But improvise, and three were given him from what was it that the Chair saw in the next which to select. They were melodies from morning's paper about the same old tricks and three operas, and instead of selecting, he took h-mb-gs and blunders? Is the world awry? them all, and combined them in an extraordi- Does that green jealousy survive? Because nary and captivating improvisation, which Campanini is the hero of the hour, shall there ended in a universal acclamation, the fore- have been no Ole Bull? Let those laugh that runner of his fame. He was attended to his win. In a later paper it is recorded that Ole room with torches and music, and from that | Bull has bought some ponies for a great sum of moment Ole Bull has been one of the noted money; and the Easy Chair, gratefully recallvirtuosos of his time. ing the delight of other years, rejoices to think that the hope and violin of the brave Norwegian youth in Rome have changed the crust into comfort. It was nearly forty years ago that he first came to this country, and appeared at the old Park Theatre. The house was very full; and MR Editor's Literary Record. R. SYMONDS'S Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe' form a repast that will be relished by all persons of cultivated or schol 1 Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe. By JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. In Two Volumes. Post 8vo, pp. 393 and 388. New York: Harper and Brothers. |