. . wald revive cu a charmere in which ingled with it was amid ns, and bethe sound of the Liszt was eduderstand that the ven knows no apat freshness of the which, to thrive, retirement, could de in the blaze of the perfume-laden elinate society. Acad hardly numbered the effect was seen. He vantenance he gave his tet his hair and the carody-he complaisantly ofcisseurs his profile, which it scion to call Florentine, and on clustered in bevies under eyes, to receive, from ed glances, the prophetic od was propitious to this sort t was the moment when the of letters raised the standard and proclaimed that works of mast find their only source Gy. They ridiculed that poor century which had been so to think the patient study of werks of the past always useetimes necessary, to the most Cowed minds. Now, sponta t, what individuality is in aration,-a fundamental elewa it is necessary to direct, amelling its development or g its glow. Alone, and deo control of salutary laws, spontaneity, produce but t was not backward in the creed of the innovators. waenself into the contest with e of his character, and the faith ye, who found in the new creed cation both of his endowments He was often seen in the oons of the Restoration, after sation which had inundated 1orious sweat, to wave aside crowd, and fall into the arms read Berlioz. Think not that sco had anything in common 、、of Lamourette. Now, when cous insurrection is appeased, preciate its results, and deter mine, with impartiality, the talent of its leaders. Liszt is undeniably a great placist. Nothing equals the strength of his w the agility of his hands, the energy andi fire of his execution. He is sceneim master of his key-board; he knows al its resources; he makes it speak, gran. cry, shriek under his iron fingers, which diffuse nervous energy as the voltale re diffuses electric force. No difficulty stays this incomparable virtuoso. Force. pidity, neatness, he possesses all the qualities which pertain to the command of the instrument, to petulance of claracter, and to brilliance of imagination; and when he is seen to course over his pianoforte in the pride of a conqueror, and to pulverize it with his mighty hands, he seems one of those daring spirits who take their course on in spite of all dangers. Liszt dazzles, he stuns, he intoxicates, he crushes, he takes away your breath, he drags you into his whirlpool, he carries you off on his fiery steed as the King of Aulner carried off the terrified child on his infernal charger. He startles,-in a word, he astonishes you; he never touches you. He lets loose a deluge of notes; he heaps scale upon scale, difficulty upon difficulty-Ossa upon Pelion. He pounds like a bedlamite upon his panting pianoforte, which he presses with his knees and arms-and he cannot win from it one of those simple accents which open the fountain of your tears, and which escape from the lips of a little child. What a lesson! Our century is imbued with this belief, which eminently characterises it,that nothing is impossible to the human will. I think that the century is in error. In the Arts, above all, nothing great is accomplished without sentiment; and sentiment is an endowment which God has implanted in our souls, and which is beyond the reach of our free will. And thus it is that Art, in its highest acceptation, becomes a religion. Nobody surpasses Liszt in the gymnastics of the key-board. He knows all its tricks; he executes the greatest difficulties with an ease which is wonderful. As he aims, above all things, to astonish the ear, he seeks effects of rhythm and sonority-that is to say, the two grossest elements of musical language. Thus, that which he aims and strives to present is the tumult of material phenomena, the rude emotions, the spasmodic outbreaks of an eccentric imagination, the noise and clamor of violent passions; but he is wanting in charm and sensibility. The fire of his noisy execution is a consuming fire, which mounts to your brain, and intoxicates you with the drunkenness of adulterated wine. He knows how to portray everything except the sweet and serene aspirations of the soul; he speaks all languages, except that of love. His reckless improvisation, in which the thread of his ideas escapes him as often as common sense; his forced modulations, which are generally but harsh and violent transitions; his impetuous rhythms; his harmony, equally pretentious and incorrect; his theatric pantomime all this forms a drama which excites you like a race or a bull-fight. Liszt irritates the nerves; he does not know how to make you weep. He plays the piano, instead of making it sing; he attacks the senses, instead of touching the heart; he materializes the most subline of all the arts, and produces a physical when he should produce a moral effect. In that he is worthy of his school. Liszt, who is a man of intelligence, has perfectly comprehended that Ärt, as he conceives Art, has need of all the adVantage of stage effect; and thus he neglects nothing which will strike the eye and excite the imagination. See him make his entrance at a public concert. To begin, he tosses his gloves to an attendant, then sits down with a demonstration; he casts his imperious eyes over his numerous audience, fixing them in turn upon each of his devotees whom he holds spell-bound under his burning glance as a vulture does with doves; at last he places his hands upon the key-board, and even while rolling his thunder and launching his lightning, he is cool enough to See and understand exactly all the effect he is making. Oh! it is not thus that we learn from nature. The artist who is truly moved, who weeps and sobs in his very heart, listens but to his own sorrow, and his individuality is swallowed up in the infinitude of his ideal and his bove. When Liszt is not playing he talks, he ge-ticulates, he beats time, he tramps, he occupies the eye in one way or another. He is a skilful wonder-work Liszt, who thinks of everything, has 'hought that posterity will be charmel to possess not only the lines of his Dantesque countenance, but also the forms of his wondrous hands; he has had them modelled especially. Beyond this there is nothing, except it be in the conduct of the women who buy the casts. Little need be said of his compositions. His music is almost impossible to all but himself. They are improvisations without sequence and without ideas, equally pretentious and eccentric, and the merit of which is in the magic of his execution. How far we are from the new Mozart who was looked for ! The life of Liszt is altogether an exterior life, like that of an improvisator or a comedian. He must always have a new public to gaze at him, excite and intoxicate him with its noisy acclamations; he neither breathes nor looks at his ease, but in the midst of a crowd. Cicero has somewhere said that "The lonely man is seldom eloquent." The talent of Liszt does not exist but in a numerous assembly. Bentham wrote a curious fable upon the strategy of parliamentary assemblies; Liszt could write one equally interesting in another way, upon the art of acquiring, preserving celebrity in the nineteenth century. At a pinch Monsieur Berlioz could add some valuable and learned notes.* When Liszt perceived that his displays began to fatigue the ears of the Parisian public, and that the promised reaction of good taste threatened to entomb him alive under the dramas and the symphonies of his coreligionaires, he took his course like a prudeut man. He armed himself with his great sword and went over mountains and through valleys to conquer, like Alexander, a foreign renown; in fine, to amuse and divert the frivolous. He did not forget to send an army of historiographs whose duty was to recount his glory; and in this respect he appeared much more skilful than Mons. Berlioz. We will not follow M. Liszt through conquered kingdoms and excited people; we will not allow ourselves to recount his triumphs, to register the number of crowns, decorations, and snuff-boxes which were heaped upon him, nor to describe the spontaneous ovations which were carefully arranged for him by his couriers and correspondents. We will only say, that at Berlin the enthusiasm of which he was the object, mounted to a paroxysm, and that the young students rushed in a crowd to meet him, unharnessed his horses, and drew him to his hotel. O'Connell met This was written before the dazzling career of Mons. Jullien, and the omission of his name must not be regarded as a slight.—Translator. no such reception from grateful Irishmen. But in the midst of all these triumphs, it was Paris that occupied the attention of Liszt. His agents and the devotees whom he had permitted to circulate the bulletins of his victories, informed him in turn of the effect which they had produced upon the public. When they thought they saw the opportune moment they wrote him "come," and he appeared among us as, after years of absence, enwreathed with his success and his great talent. The plan succeeded. Liszt resumed the course of his travels and his triumphal progresses, astonishing some by his marvellous execution, and others by his splendid charity. It could not have been more skilfully done. Tender and delicate spirits, noble souls, true artists, you to whom Music is not an empty sound, a riot of sounds which astonishes and intoxicates the senses, but a sublime language by which we express the joys, the griefs, the aspirations of our souls, which have no utterance in com mon words, leave to Liszt his skilful tricks, and listen to Chopin if you can. Liszt is but a pianist; Chopin is a poet.* The great events which we have witnessed during fifty years, the gigantic struggle which we have had to sustain with the interests of the past and allied Europe, have too much developed the individuality and the aggressive parts of our nature, and excited our intellectual forces at the expense of the affections of the soul. Hence the ills which torment us, the bombast and the feverish agitation which are imprinted upon the works of this day. Our mission, children of the second half of the nineteenth century, is to fill up these gaps and re-establish the equilibrium in the economy of life, by systematising the liberty won by our fathers, by eliminating the unity of God, from the scientific phenomena which obscure his image, and by tempering the temerity of the intellect by the divine inspirations of sentiment. * Francis Chopin, born at Zelazowawola, near Warsaw, in 1810, died at Paris on the 17th of October, 1849. A virtuoso of the first rank and an exquisite composer, Chopin belonged to that school of gifted and profound musicians, of which Von Weber and Schubert were the founders. His various compositions for the piano forte are the only really original ones which have appeared in Paris for thirty years.-Note by the Author. 1854.] THE WILDS OF NORTHERN NEW YORK. WE all have heard of Brown's Tract; the Adirondack Woods, or the forests of Northern New York. Yet few have ever seen them, few are acquainted with their history, geography and peculiarities. It may seem strange in this age of intelligence and wide diffusion of knowledge of every kind, to talk, as of a new thing, about the history of our next-door neighbors, and the geography of a tract of land, the heights of which we can almost see in a clear day; to attempt to interest one by the characteristics and peculiarities of adjoining counties; to speak of a part of the Empire State, as of the Black Forest of Germany, or the Alpine wilds of Switzerland. It may be strange, yet proper and true. It is quite the fashion, now-a-days, to interest by new theories, to invent South Sea babbles, that will strike the eye and please the fancy, but will burst as soon as the bright film of words is broken. I claim a patent for no such invention, neither claim I originality of ideas. The mountains and valleys, rivers and forests and lakes of which I shall write, have been where they now are for centuries and ages; they are not new or original. The eye of God has looked down upon them since the dawn of creation; they are not new. The same forests have blossomed, ripened their foliage, and have been golden treasures for the icy wind of winter; the same waters have descended the highlands, spread through the valleys, and evaporated here and there in the lake and ocean, risen up in mist and clouds and again descended upon the mountains: they are not origiginal. Ordinary originality is not invention. If I can convey to another an idea that he now has not, if I can be the chanDel in which may flow a worthy thought, or a previously unnoticed fact, that is originality enough for me. No matter how rough the channel, the water may be just as pure. No matter how irregular and unshapely the sun may be, if it only shines. One old fact is worth a dozen original fancies. In my observations concerning the wilderness of Northern New York, I -hall endeavor to give as clear an idea as I can of, where it is-what it is-and what it is good for. First-where is it?-localize it. If we take a station in latitude 43° 53′, North of the Equator, and longitude about 740 30' West from Greenwich, on the summit of a mountain, called by some, Blue Mountain, and by others, more properly, Mount Emmons, a position 4000 feet above the level of the sea, and with a huge pair of compasses, with a radius or sweep of fifty miles, we describe a circle, with a diameter of one hundred miles and a circumference of three hundred, it will give us nearly the limits of the tract of which I speak. It is a vast plateau or table land, bounded by an extensive valley on each side; on the east the Champlain valley, on the South, the Mohawk, and on the west and north the valleys of the Black River and St. Law rence. It is the summit highland, and within is the culminating point of a vast ledge or range of hills and mountains, that years ago were heaved up by internal volcanic agencies; the lowest point of which, in one direction, is in the coal beds of Newfoundland, and in the other, down among the coal pits of Pennsylvania. It comprises the whole of Hamilton County, and portions of Warren, Essex, Clinton, Franklin, St. Lawrence, Lewis and Herkimer. In answer to the question, what it is, -there is a wide range for the observation or descriptive imagination of the observer or listener. A boundless variety characterises the view. The marshy swamp and the dry highland-the high mountain and the deep valley-the extensive plain and the long ledge of rocks--the quiet river and the foaming cataract-the pensive lake without a ripple or a breeze and the rolling waters, the white capped waves and the whistling winds-the still repose of a calm sunset and the mountain brow, crowned with a storm-cloud-the singing of birds and the cry of the panther and the howling of wolves-here the wide lake of waters, there the boundless ocean of forests the gulf beneath and the precipice above the silvery waters, the dark mountains and the purple skies;—all combined, give a startling variety, often a grandeur and sublimity to the view. This elevated plateau or table is divided into two nearly equal parts by a valley, commencing at Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, extending up the Saranac River, through the Saranac lakes, then meeting the Raquette Valley, through Long and Raquette lakes, through the Fulton chain of lakes, called by their having secured a prey. I looked behind me to the setting sun, and was so startled at the wild scene that I missed a stroke, and nearly fell overboard. I had not realized the height of the waves while looking at them from behind. But they quite hid the low shore I had left except us I rode upon their summits. The level rays of the sun shone through the red water and gave a lurid glare to every billow. All the lake was a rolling tumbling mass of dark waves, flecked and crested foa:n, and tinged with the dark red gleam from the west. Over and over, wallowing headlong in their haste, they came, innumerable racing monsters, roaring, foaming, gnashing white teeth, the vengeful inessengers of the offended lakeGod, commissioned to whelm me in their muddy depths; to vindicate the sacred solitude I had dared infringe. I trusted my passage to the winds, therefore; and with wary eye and ready hand, addressed myself to avoid the incessant assaults of the dancing foes upon whose backs I rode. As each sea sprung forward at me, a quick stroke lifted or turned the light boat, and passed the hostile wave beneath me, to roll off to leeward and knock his disappointed head to pieces, if he chose, against the iron-bound eastern shore. I drifted thus, through an hour's exhausting labor; until I was blown within forty rods of the eastern shore, and partly under the lee of one of the rocky headlands which define the bay I was seeking. The wind went down with the sun; the waves rapidly fell; and in the dim interspace between sunlight and night I reached the extreme end of the bay. Here I drew up the skiff, caught a trout or two from under the lily pads, and prepared for supper and rest. After a few moments' search I discovered a delightful little tabernacle just within the margin of the woods, hidden and curtained in by the drooping branches of three great trees. Here I speedily built a fire; cooked my trout (with pork accompaniment, upon the stew-pan), ate them; and I greased my face and hands, secundum artem, with nice warm pork-fat. "Urh! you filthy fellow!" remarks some very cleanly body. I will not submit to such an imputation. As the naughty boy said when his father was going to whip him, "let's stop a minute and argy." Filth then and cleanliness, are relative terins; dependent for their signification entirely upon collateral or accidental cir cumstances; having nothing absolute in themselves. Whale oil soap is as abstersive for what I know as the most immaculate old brown Windsor. But a plentiful application of the former would hardly fit the person so cleansed for waltzing in the "first circles." The difference is in the smell. But suppose you liked the odor of the fishy compound, and disliked that of the vegetable. Then the brown Windsor would be filthy. A judicious application of M. Slique de Grici's celebrated Haarrub, or Tonique Arabienne, leaves your chevelure in a delightful condition, so smooth and soft, exhaling inappreciable delicate tropical odors as if the Queen of Sheba had dined upon spices and then breathed upon you. But a smart scrub with a tallow candle would do it (and be it too) all but the preference, and the wick. The difference, I say, is in the smell. Prefer the tallow unadorned, and the perfumed Tonique is only fit to lubricate cart wheels. It is a mere difference of opinion then, between you and me. As Virgil would say, filthy quia filthy videtur. Filthy or not filthy, just as you think. Again, this is a question of ultimate results. I will use pork-fat. You may try, if you like, Lily White or Cytherean Cream; and we will compare complexions ten years from this date, viz: 2 at noon of June 27th, A. D., 1864, if you dare. Respice finem, my good mademoiselle. Regard results. Besides, "filthy or not filthy" is a question also of purpose. Were you filthy when you webfooted your slender fingers with that slimy sticky brown material the other day? No: because it baked into some remarkable cake. Was I filthy because I wore ragged garments and rusty boots in the woods? because I did not enter the gnarled forests all in pimlico trig with broadcloth and blacking, opera-tie and shirt-ruffles and a lorgnette to look at the bears with? No; neither was I filthy because greasy; though my face shone like a Hottentot's after dinner. If you would have waited a moment before groaning at me in that horrid way, I would have made it all clear. Why, therefore, did I grease my face? That question answered, the "urh!" will be answered. There are in the northern woods three distinct and insufferable plagues-musquitoes, gnats and sandflies. These haunt the summer traveller by wood and stream, drawing on him at sight for inconvenient amounts of blood. The mus |