in loudness but in massiveness that it impressed. We incline to think the orchestra found their most appreciative audience in the chorus. It was rare listening to those eleven hundred instruments, the grandest interpretation of instrumental music this continent, at least, has known. Who that heard them with an 66 ear to hear" can forget that wonderful rain storm from Tanhauser, or Rossini's brilliant overture to William Tell, or Schubert's Symphony? It is not probable we shall ever hear their like again. timorous, that refused to be silenced even in the face of proof. But on far better ground rested the serious fears that obtained in regard to the music. Whether eleven thousand singers who had never before sung together might not be entirely unmanageable, — and if not, whether the effect of such a volume of sound would be anything more than noise, -could not be determined beforehand. The fears for safety and order were all allayed with a first entrance of the Coliseum, when one saw how massive and spacious was the building and how perfect all the arrangements. The chorus were so ticketed as to be seated with as little trouble as though there had been but two hundred, and the same might almost be said of the entire audi-amid their lavish ovations let us fling our The members of the chorus retained the same seats through all the concerts, and became quite acquainted with their neighbors before they finally separated. The numerous entrances and broad aisles made a crowd impossible, and one realized nothing of the throngs of people until the vast hall was filled and silent, and the eye swept across the sea of fifty thousand heads. ence. But only with trial could the musical fears be allayed, and it was an anxious moment with more than the eleven thousand when Gilmore waved them up with his baton. The massive organ breathed forth its opening chord, as if to tone all into harmony with itself, and the sublime strains of Luther's choral, "A Strong Castle is our Lord," rolled out on the waiting air. The first line was electric. Not only every note but every pulse, it would seem, rose and fell with the beat of the leader, and the last note was lost in the deafening applause of the audience. From that moment the Jubilee was an assured success. But It would be hard to tell which day held the most enjoyment; each had its peculiar attractions and each found its favorites. the first had an immense advantage in its novelty. Every piece was a new wonder and surprise. It had been thought that the effect of the music would be in a great measure lost by the singers themselves, but it was not found so. One was not overborne by his part, as might have been expected where thousands sung together. It was a wonder that the music seemed no louder; it was not And our queens of song! our own Adelaide Phillips, queen in her own right, but outranked for once by the imperial Parepa, flower of gratitude. If ever the Goddess of Liberty was personified it was when Parepa, her hair banded with classic simplicity, and her flowing white robes caught up with red and blue, came forward to sing the "Star Spangled Banner." Every soul in the audience that did not bless her must have been insensible to patriotism and to music. But the gem of all the concerts was her "Let the bright seraphim," with Mr. Arbuckle's accompaniment on the cornet. That wonderful voice! so clear and sweet and high that one could hardly distinguish it from the tones of the silver instrument, ― God blesses the world when he makes such a voice. And how sweetly and reverently did its possessor acknowledge this when she waived all praise for her splendid success, in saying, "It is God's gift, and to him be all the praise." So Jenny Lind always spoke of her own wonderful powers. In speaking of the choruses one hardly knows where to begin. If the "Anvil Chorus" was the great sensation, it is needless to say it was not the best music. Among the patriotic pieces, nothing appealed to us like Holmes' Hymn of Peace, written for the occasion, and sung to Keller's American Hymn. We did not realize the sublimity in the words until they were set to that music and sung by that vast chorus. Imagine the contrast between the soft, subdued strains of the second verse, "Brothers we meet, on this altar of thine Mingling the gifts we have gathered for thee, with the full, triumphant swell of the last, when voices, orchestra, organ, drums, bells, and cannon roll forth the grand anthem, "Loud as the storm wind that tumbles the main, Bid the full breath of the organ reply, Let the loud tempest of voices reply. Roll its long surge like the earth-shaking main, Swell the vast song till it mounts to the sky." We can well believe the rumor that the author of the music, an aged man who sat in the audience, turned to his friend and grasp ing his hand said, while his eyes filled with tears, "I am ready now to die" One of the most impressive pieces, in its tenderness and pathos, was that plaintive melody of Moore's, "The harp that once through Tara's halls." At first thought it might seem out of place in a festival to peace and liberty, but how tenderly it suggests the oppressions from which the down-trodden of all lands fly to our protecting shores : "For Freedom now so seldom wakes Is when some heart indignant, breaks, It takes, perhaps, all these thousands of subdued voices to bring out the full pathos of those lines. But it was especially in the classical music, the selections from the great oratorios, that the excellence of the chorus was demonstrated. The greatest among these were, of course, the " Hallelujah Chorus" from the "Messiah" and "Thanks be to God" from "Elijah." Hardly second to these was the chorus "He watching over Israel." It was not to be expected that such a promiscuous audience as gathered there would go as wild over these as over the patriotic airs, but that they were appreciated there was abundant evidence. lf Gen. Grant really said he thought the cannon the best music, we think he either said it for effect, or intended the remark as a facetious one. If not, poor man, how he must have suffered, to be welcomed in by an oratorio chorus! For while he walked up the broad aisle with his attendant dignitaries, and the vast audience rose and waved and cheered, the chorus gave him in a grand burst of welcome, "See the conquering Hero comes!" And never was song more appropriate, not even when the bands struck up, as admiring crowds closed about the venerable Lafayette when he made his famous visit to these shores, "Where can one better be, than in the bosom of his family." It was the oratorio music that gave character to the Festival; and it is this that will be felt long, after in the effect upon public taste. For the Peace Jubilee does not die with its concerts. Already its quickening effects are visible in the musical world. A proposition is even now on foot for the multiplication of musical societies, and their organization into State associations, and these into a National Convention, whose aim shall be the cultivation and fostering of the art of music. If the plan succeeds, this event will mark an era in the musical history of our country; and in any case it will be sure to give a new appreciation of sacred music and a new impetus to its study. It is a pleasure to know that Mr. Gilmore is repaid for his labors in behalf of the success of the great festival whose conception was due to him. The benefit given to him on the week following the Jubilee was one of the best concerts of the series, and its results pecuniarily as gratifying as could be expected. To the many others whose united labors made a success of the great undertaking the thanks of the public are due. The city and country have reason to turn with pride to this unequalled Festival, at once poetic, devotional, artistic and patriotic, a fit offering to the angel of Peace. The Monument to Halleck. All who love poetry, and especially all who take pride in American letters, will be gratified in view of the respect paid to the memory of Fitz Greene Halleck, in the erection, by his personal and literary friends, of a a monument above his remains in the Alderbrook Cemetery at Guilford, Conn. The donors of the monument have also invested with the Trustees of the Cemetery a sum of money, the income of which is to be devoted forever to keeping the monument and its grounds in good preservation. The stone contains, besides the inscription to the poet, the names of his father, mother, and only brother who died in childhood. The face contains the name of the poet, with the date of his birth and death, and below, these two concluding lines of his "Marco, Bozzaris," which may well commend his own name to remembrance, He sleeps; he cannot die! As evening's long-drawn sigh, Lifting the rose-leaves on his peaceful mound, So, laden with his song the breezes blow To the smooth sea beyond the peaks of snow, The oration by Mr. Taylor was not only admirably adapted to the occasion, but is worthy an enduring place in the literature of our country. It has appeared entire in many papers, but we will transcribe a few paragraphs pertaining more directly to him who is commemorated by the monument. "In the same year in which the Coustitution of the United States was completed and adopted, the first poet was born-Richard Henry Dana, who still lives, and, despite his gray head, still keeps the freshness and youth of the poetic nature. Less than three years after him Fitz Greene Halleck came into the world the lyrical genius, following the grave and contemplative muse of his elder brother. In Halleck, therefore, we mourn our first loss out of the first generation of American bards; and a deeper significance is thus given to the personal honors which we lovingly pay to his memory. Let us be glad, not only that these honors have been so nobly deserved, but also that we find in him a fitting representative of his age! Let us forget our sorrow for the true man, the steadfast friend, and rejoice that the earliest child of song whom we return to the soil that bore him for us, was the brave, bright and beautiful growth of a healthy masculine race! No morbid impatience with the restrictions of life- no fruitless lament over an unattainable ideal- no inherited gloom of temperament, such as finds delight in what it chooses to call despair, ever muffled the clear notes of his verse, or touched the sunny cheerfulness of his history. The cries and protests, the utterances of "world-pain," with which so many of his contemporaries in Europe filled the world, awoke no echo in his sound and sturdy nature. His life offers no enigmas for our solution. No romantic mystery floats around his name to win for him the interest of a shallow sentimentalism. Clear, frank, simple and consistent, his song and his life were woven into one smooth and even thread. We would willingly pardon in him some expression of dissatisfaction with a worldly fate, which, in certain respects, seemed inadequate to bis genius, but we find that he never uttered it. The basis of his nature was a knightly bravery, of such firm and enduring temper that it kept from him even the ordinary sensitiveness of the poetic character. From the time of his studies as a boy, in the propitious kitchen which heard his first callow numbers, to the last days of a life which had seen no liberal popular recognition of his deserts, he accepted his fortune with the perfect dignity of a man who cannot stoop to discontent. During his later visits to New York, the simplest, the most unobtrusive, yet the cheerfulest man to be seen among the throngs of Broadway was Fitz-Greene Halleck. Yet, with all his simplicity, his bearing was strikingly gallant and fearless; the carriage of his head suggested the wearing of a helmet. The genial frankness and grace of his manner, in his intercourse with men, has suggested to others the epithet "courtly" but I prefer to call it manly, as the expression of a rarer and finer quality than is usually found in the atmosphere of courts. "Halleck was loyal to himself as a man, and he was also loyal to his art, as a poet. His genius was essentially lyrical, and he seems to have felt, instinctively, its natural limitations. He quietly and gratefully accepted the fame which followed his best productions, but he never courted public applause. Even the swift popularity of the Croaker series could not seduce him to take advantage of the tide, which then promised a speedy flood. At periods in his history when anything from his pen would have been welcomed by a class of readers whose growing taste found so little sustenance at home, he remained silent because he felt no immediate personal necessity of poetic utter ance. The German poet, Uhland, said to me, 'I cannot now say whether I shall write any more, because I only write when I feel the positive need, and this is independent of my will, or the wish of others.' Such was also the law of Halleck's mind, and of the mind of every poet who reveres his divine gift. God cannot accept a mechanical prayer; and I do not compare sacred things with profane, when I say that a poem cannot be accepted which does not compel its own inspired utterance. He is the true priest of the human heart and the human soul, who rythmically expresses the emotions and the aspirations of his own. sing, and fight, and labor, and love, for "God and their native land." "It is not necessary that we should attempt to determine his relative place among American poets. It is sufficient that he has his assured place, and that his name is a permanent part of our literary history. It is sufficient that he deserves every honor which we can render to his memory, not only as one of the very first representatives of American song, but from his intrinsic quality as a poet. Let us rather be thankful for every star set in our heaven, than seek to ascertain how they differ from one another in glory. If any critic would diminish the loving enthusiasm of those whose lives have been brightened by the poet's personal sunshine, let him remember that the sternest criticism will set the lyrics of Halleck higher than their author's unambitious estimate. They will, in time, fix their own just place in our poetic annals. Halleck is still too near our orbit for the computation of an exact parallax; but we may safely leave his measure of fame to the decision of impartial Time. A poem which bears within itself its own right to existence, will not die. Its rythm is freshly fed from the eternal pulses of Beauty, "It has been said of Halleck, as of Camp- whence flows the sweetest life of the human bell, that "he was afraid of the shadow which race. Age cannot quench its original fire, his own fame cast before him." I protest or repetition make dull its immortal music. against the use of a clever epigrammatic It forever haunts that purer atmosphere, sentence to misinterpret the poetic nature to which overlies the dust and smoke of our men. The inference is that poets write petty cares and our material interests,-offor that popular recognition which is called ten, indeed, calling to us like a distant fame; and, having attained a certain degree, clarion, to keep awake the sense of intellecfear to lose it by later productions which tual delight which would else perish from may not prove so acceptable. A writer, in- our lives. The poetic literature of a land is fluenced by such a consideration, never de- a finer and purer ether above its material served the name of Poet. It is an unworthy growth and the vicissitudes of its history. estimate of his character which thus explains Where it was vacant and barren for us, exthe honest and honorable silence of Fitz- cept, perchance, a feeble lark-note here and Greene Halleck. The quality of genius is there, Dana, Halleck and Bryant rose tonot to be measured by its productive activ-gether on steadier wings,and gave voices to ity. The brain which gave us "Alnwick Castle," "Marco Bozzaris," "Burns" and "Red Jacket" was not exhausted: it was certainly capable of other and equally admirable achievements; but the fortunate visits of the Muse are not to be compelled by the poets will, and Halleck endured her absence without complaint, as he had enjoyed her favors without ostentation. The very fact that he wrote so little proclaims the sincerity of his genius, and harmonizes with the entire character of his life. It was enough for him that he first let loose the Theban eagle in our songless American air. He was glad and satisfied to know that his lyrics have entered into and become a part of the national life - that the solitude - Dana in a broad, grave undertone like that of the sea; Bryant with a sound as of the wind in summer woods and the fall of waters in mountain dells; and Halleck with strains blown from a silver trumpet, breathing manly fire and courage. Many voices have followed them; the ether rings with new melodies, and yet others shall come to lure all the aspirations of our hearts and echo all the yearnings of our separated destiny; but we shall not forget the forerunners who rose in advance of their welcome, and created their own audience by their songs." The Quarterly. The Universalist Quarterly for July is just issued, with the following attractive table of contents. "The Bible's Worth in History, "Sweet tears dim the eyes unshed, And wild vows falter on the tongue." when his lines, keen and flexible as fire, burn in the ears of the young who shall hereafter the Pledge of its Divine Authority," by of his pear-trees to ascertain the quality of their fruit. Conceding all the light that has been thrown upon the Scriptures by acquaintance with what may be called its accessories, the details of life, manners, customs, opinions and modes of expression of the people among whom it was written, he holds that we make a great mistake when we regard this as necessary to a saving knowledge of the Scriptures. And laying aside for the time all those puzzling questions which ingenious criticism or sceptical curiosity has raised about the roots of the Bible, he proceeds to look a little at the fruit it has borne in the world. Rev. A. R. Abbott; "Aion and the Resur-oning with his who should dig about the roots rection," by Rev. Thomas Abbott,-which is an exposition of Luke xx: 34, 35; "The Modern Greek Testament," by Rev. W. E. Manley, a paper which points out certain errors in the modern Greek version of the Testament published by the American Bible Society, in which the translators seemed influenced by their peculiar tenets of faith; "Biblical Psychology "-an inquiry into the meaning of the terms "soul," "life," "flesh" and the like as employed in the Scriptures by Rev. O. D. Miller; "Müller's Comparative Mythology," an extended review of the great philologist's recent work "Chips from a German workshop," by the Editor; the first of two historical articles on "The Hugue nots," by Rev. J. H. Chapin; an inquiry as to the true doctrine of "Reconciliation to God," by Rev. Massena Goodrich; a review of" Recent Foreign Literature," by Prof. O. Cone, and the Editor's General Review. We find especial pleasure in the opening article of the number on the authority of the Bible. It takes for its criterion the assertion of the Savior, "By their fruits ye shall know them," and applies it to a valuation of the work and worth of the Scriptures. In the argument itself, that the triumphs of Christianity can be accounted for in no other way than by conceding its divine authority, there is nothing new. It is as old as the days of Christ himself, when "no man could do the works which this man doeth, unless God be with him." But the fresh and eloquent form in which Mr. Abbott has clothed the argument brings it home with new force to our minds. He addresses himself more especially to such as are perplexed with honest doubts as to the genuineness of the alleged Word of God. There is so much of mystery in it, so much beyond their comprehension, and so much that appears incredible; and a critical investigation of its claims and meanings requires such an expenditure of time, labor and learning, while learned men differ so widely among themselves as to even its most important teachings, that they fall into a maze of doubt as to how much or whether any reliability may be placed on such obscure and complex teachings. The author compares their method of reas Turning to the ages when the earliest of its books were written, he traces its influence on the Jewish nation, a fierce, idolatrous and almost barbarous people, in turning them from their idolatry to the worship of the one living and true God. This seemed the grand aim of the long and stern discipline of that people, the educating them into a belief in, and worship of the divine Unity. And through them the Bible has educated the world to the same belief and worship. not to-day falling down before graven images or rearing altars reeking with human sacrifices we owe directly to those early heralds of the cross who rode out into the northern wilderness, among our barbarian ancestors, with the Bible in their hands, and the tidings of a risen Savior on their lips. That we are As a stimulant to learning and a promoter of scientific research, the author gives high place to the Bible. Up to the later centuries nearly all scholarship was the offspring of the Bible and crystallized about the Church, and to-day the scholarship that is most thorough, profound and ripe, may be linked directly or indirectly with the Christian religion. So the sciences that have at first seemed antagonistic to the teachings of the Sacred Word, have but provoked a closer study which have resulted in a double triumph for themselves and the Scripture, bringing them into a higher and spiritual harmony. Of the place of the Bible in literature Mr. Abbott discourses so eloquently that we cannot forbear a lengthy extract from his essay. "The whole literature of the world con |