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XI.

MR. BRAHAM.*

WHEN we first heard Mr. Braham in his opening Sacred Concert at the Tabernacle, we were sadly disappointed. We thought then, as we do now, that he overlaid the majestic simplicity of sacred music with a profusion of useless and unmeaning flourishes, mere tricks of voice and execution, cadences, trills, and absurd repetitions. Wonderful power, the more astonishing at his advanced age, and equally wonderful science we could not help acknowledging, but his pathos appeared labored and his enthusiasm. mechanical. We did recognize a portion of the fine scorn Lamb spoke of in that magnificent piece, "Thou shalt dash them to pieces," wherein his contemptuous tones were jerked out with the same force that the fretted waves break and storm upon a rock in the raging sea. Afterwards at the theatre, on each occasion of our visits there, we were equally dissatisfied. The very indifferent acting was not relieved by any very extraordinary singing. It was the extravagance and (paradoxical, yet true) the constraint of the Italian opera. But a few evenings ago, at the Stuyvesant Institute, we at last discovered the secret of Braham's

* 1841.

powers. It is not only the amazing extent, or clearness, or melody of his voice, nor the rapid execution, nor the bril liant expression merely, but (as in all men of true genius) it lies in the harmonious sympathy between the spirit of the man and the talent of the singer. He sang admirably, the noble heroic songs from Scott and Burns, not only because he sang with power, but also with love. He then and there sang out himself, to speak after the manner of the Germans. The honest, hearty, manly old strains, heroic or naval, or even moral, of England and Scotland, are the true songs for Braham to sing. Before we heard Braham, we fancied to our eye a sort of poetical High Priest in Israel, a majestic figure of a man uttering tones of unearthly depth and beauty, in a style austere, grand, and solemn. But Old Hundred was the only specimen of the kind Mr. Braham gave of himself to any advantage. To hear Braham in "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," or "the Blue Bonnets are over the Border," in which his frequent animated calls sound like the acute report of a rifle; or "The Last Words of Marmion," where he displays the greater variety, from great force to fine tenderness, slowness and vivacity, spirit and sentiment, we say, to hear these is to hear the finest singing that is to be heard at the present day. The rich philosophy and fine poetry of “A Man's a Man for a' that," was delivered in a proud strain, evincing the generous spirit of the singer. The hearty naval songs of old England are great favorites with Braham. He sings them with all the joyaunce of a jolly Jack Tar, that creature of impulse and heart, and with a spirit of defiance at fortune, and a manly cordiality of feeling, that smack of the children of the sea. Mere sentimental songs Mr. Braham sings badly. He has a

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taste and a faculty above them; he should "chaunt the old heroic ditty o'er," and leave Moore and Haynes Bayley to the lesser lights of the hour. He has force and elevation, but little of mere elegance or softness—he is the Jupiter Tonans, and not the graceful Mercurius.

XII.

THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF

PHILIP QUARLL.

THIS delightful story, the favorite of the child's library about a century ago, has now fallen into almost entire obscurity, from which we trust a late London re-publication of the book may revive it. It is a designed and palpable imitation of Robinson Crusoe, the popularity of which led to a swarm of imitations, amongst which the above and the Adventures of Peter Wilkins are by far the most ingenious, and so full of freshness and invention as to deserve to pass for originals.

"The Adventures of the English Hermit" were first published, in chapters, in a weekly newspaper, called the Public Intelligencer, shortly after the appearance of Robinson Crusoe, which, in like manner, had been printed in a paper with which Defoe was connected. So we see our supposed modern fashion of continuing a work of fiction through successive numbers of a periodical is by no means so original a plan as we had supposed in the hands of Hook, Dickens, Marryatt, and a host of their copyists. Our own impression had led us to believe that Launcelot

Greaves, Smollett's least admirable work, was the first * English novel that had appeared in the pages of a periodical, but here we have a precedent a hundred years previous. Like Peter Wilkins, and Gaudentio di Lucca, the author of Philip Quarll is unknown. One who signs himself Edward Dorrington, a nom du plume, we suppose, is the apparent compiler of the book; but we have, now-adays, seen revealed all the arts of publication, and know very well that Editor often means an author who palms off his own writings as the lucubrations of other people. These scanty facts we glean from the preface to the late edition, and they afford all the actual information we have been able to collect on the subject. Dunlop is entirely silent, in his history of Fiction, as to the very existence of Philip Quarll, though he mentions Peter Wilkins with praise; in which said history he has finished the department of English fiction with comparative indifference and in the briefest manner.

To confess the truth, we have ourselves only a short time since met with the Adventures, and feel that we have, by so late a reading, been deprived of the pleasant retrospections to which the reperusal of a book of this sort always gives rise. There are classic works which, if not read in early childhood, lose their principal charm, which consists of a pleasure connected with early associations, such as are peculiar in themselves, and which no other period of our life may afford us. In this class of books we place all the fairy tales and voyages imaginaires, as Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Peter Wilkins, and Philip Quarll (Gaudentio di Lucca is the single book of the kind above a mere childish imagination, but worth a text-book on ethics for the boyish youth). Pure allegory is best

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