and entreats them to listen to it impartially, as to his own, and thus decide between us. Through my patron, the Count de Provence, I received those letters from the persons to whom they were written. It was to convince me of the injustice of my suspicions. What shame do I feel now! I have degraded myself by association with you. I have been deceived; but you?-tell me, man, what could induce you to act so treacherous, so dishonorable a part towards your benefactor?"

Elias was more and more perplexed. In a humble and lachrymose tone, he replied "Ah, dear patron, you mistake me. Yes, I confess; I spoke falsely; I have acted unworthily, basely. But, for all that, I am not what you take ine for-If you knew all! I am a miserable man, and deserve your pity rather than your anger. When a child, my parents and relations assured me I had an extraordinary talent for music; that I should be a great composer. In this expectation I devoted myself eagerly to the art, although it was hard for me. My first work was admired as something extraordinary, in the town where I lived; this gave me more confidence in my powers; and I thought in a great city I could gain directly, fame and wealth. I went to Vienna; but obtained neither one nor the other."

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• But then Gluck assisted you; gave you lessons and corrected your compositions?"

"He did so-but he told me at the same time that I had no genius, and would never be a composer."

"And said he not the truth? Can you hate him for that, and slander him for his candor, and because he advised you to confine yourself to the lower sphere of art, or to be rather an honest shoemaker or tailor?"

"Yes, I hate him," muttered Elias;

"and will ever hate him. He has embittered my whole life, and I will be revenged."

"Out of my sight, then, villain!" exclaimed Piccini, with disgust; "the god of a true man is honor, but your idols are egotism, vanity, envy and malice. Away!"

And muttering with rage, Elias left Piccini's house.

Piccini's opera received much applause, but that of his rival's obtained a complete victory. Never was such enthusiasm witnessed in Paris. Followed by the bravoes of the crowd, Gluck left the opera-house after the third representation, and drove to his quiet home. He had invited only his favorite Mehul to celebrate with him the brilliant result.

As they entered the room where the supper-table was already awaiting them, they started at the sight of a man in a dark cloak, standing at the window and looking at the bright stars. Hearing the footsteps, he turned round.

"Piccini!" exclaimed Gluck. "I hope not unwelcome?" said Piccini, smiling.

"By my soul, most welcome!" replied Gluck, grasping his hand; noble an adversary is an honor to me."

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SO

Say no more of adversaries," said Piccini, gravely. "Our rivalship is ended; I acknowledge you for my master, and will call you my friend with joy and pride. Let the Gluckists and Piccinists quarrel and dispute as they will, Gluck and Piccini understand each other."

"And love each other!" exclaimed Gluck, in ecstacy; "Piccini! by the soul of Art! so it shall be !" M. H.

WE took up Mr. Lyell's book, expecting to be both instructed and amused, and in neither expectation have we been disappointed. Indeed, the wellknown and well-earned reputation of Mr. Lyell, as the very head of the geological savans of the world, not only entitles him to the careful attention of the scientific world whenever he makes his appearance, but guarantee, even to the general reader, reflections and considerations which the comprehensiveness of his observations, and correctness of his deductions, must render interesting.

Mr. Lyell, accompanied by his wife, who was the companion of all his wan derings, left England in July, 1841, and returned in August, 1842. Nearly all of the entire interim was spent in, travelling over the United States, sixteen of which he visited, travelling in all, in the United States, probably not much less than 4,000 miles. His opportunities for judging of the character of the people whom he saw, were in the highest degree favorable, since his scientific investigations led him away from the main travelled roads, and into close proximity with every class-the humblest as well as the highest-of

American citizens.

Mr. Lyell came among us, we suspect, a high English tory; his mind was tainted with his national prejudices against our institutions, but yet he looked on us and ours in a spirit of candor, which does him credit; and through his report of which, we shall take pleasure in conducting those of our readers who may not be fortunate enough to meet with his book.

The reader will smile at the very first impressions which his mind received on landing at Boston.

"Recollecting the contrast of everything French, when I first crossed the Straits of Dover, I am astonished, after having traversed the wide ocean, at the reseinblance of everything I see and hear to

things familiar at home. It has often happened to me in our own island, without travelling into those parts of Wales, Scotland, or Ireland, where they talk a perfectly distinct language, to encounter provincial dialects which it is difficult to comprehend, that I wonder at finding the people here so very English. If the metropolis of New England be a type of a large part of the United States, the industry of Sam Slick, and other writers, in collecting together so many diverting Americanisms, and so much original slang, is truly great, or their inventive powers still greater."

To let the American reader under

stand what we are sure no American can fail to be inquisitive about, we will particularize some of those striking differences of climate, soil, productions, &c., which distinguish even New-England from Great Britain. Mr. Lyell has taken pains to point them out. Even the weeds of our fields possess a distinctiveness of character which surprised the observing Englishman. The entire absence of the heath, a plant which has even given its name to those wild portions of England which it has monopolized, and of the daisy, (the reader, the vile pest to our meadows "day's-eye" of Spenser,) and not, dear which we call by the same name, and the such as the lobelia cardinalis, the wild presence of those other wild flowers, rose, and the golden rod, which here to our traveller, which some day we supply their places, afforded a charm hope to be able to appreciate in the beholding of English meadows. elm-the drooping elm of our citiesour maple, our sumach, our oaks. our fire-flies, and our so-called robin, our grasshoppers, our humming-birds, our maize, and our squirrels, afford the same species of wonderment and pleasure to the English observer even of ordinary nature, as would the agavu, and cacti, and pine-apples, and parrots of Cuba to a son of New-York. Mr. Lyell represents himself as being ac

Our

tually surprised, well-informed naturalist as he is, at the clearness of the atmosphere, and brightness of the sky, and dryness of the climate of the New World, so very different is it from that which he had left. In the same connection, we cannot help noticing one flagrant mistake of which Mr. L. is guilty. Sometime in September, by the date of his journal, he mentions the sugar maple, Acer Americana, and says:

"The sap, from which sugar is made, was everywhere trickling down into wooden troughs from gashes made in the

bark."

Now, Mr. Lyell never saw any such thing in September at all, since at that season of the year the sap does not run, and if it did, it possesses no saccharine properties.

Soon after Mr. L. landed in America he made a hurried tour through NewYork, a note or two of which is all we can spare room to notice.

He had, for the first time, entered an American stage-coach, somewhere in Tioga county, and after being rather uncomfortably jolted, complained, upon his arrival at his destination, that his driver seemed to have taken pains to drive fastest over the worst parts of the road, when he was cheered with the intelligence that his driver had been, until that trip, guiltless of any previous attempts to drive, Mr. L. says, "any vehicle, whether two or four-wheeled." He thereupon takes occasion to remark as follows:

"The coolness and confidence with which every one here is ready to try his hand at any craft, is truly amusing."

And he enforces his remark with an anecdote of another driver, who represented to our traveller, in answer to some inquiry, that he, although not twenty years of age, had been editor of the "Tioga Democrat," from which he had retired, after having purchased from the profits of his office a farm, which he pointed out.

Now, in the first place, these two stories speak for themselves, and carry the certain conviction to the render that, in both instances, Mr. Lyell was "humbugged" by rogues, who took ad

vantage of his credulity; but, in the second place, we are willing and proud to admit the general truth, which forms the moral to his stories, and which we have just quoted. But, Mr. Lyell, let us assure you that, however much this "confidence and coolness" may amuse you or your countrymen, therein lies the secret of that success which has characterized American efforts in every branch of business, to which American "confidence and coolness" have been directed. American farmers turned law-makers, American carpenters turned shipwrights, American printers turned philosophers, are all familiar illustrations of the principle in question. Speaking of our nomenclature of places,

we find a remark, which we beg leave ridiculous array of classicality of which to quote. After ridiculing the truly Western New-York boasts, he goes on the same names: to say, concerning the multiplication of

"An Englishman, it is true, cannot complain. for we follow the same system in our colonies; and it is high time that the postmaster-general brought in a bill for proibiting new streets in London from and repeated fifty times in the same city, receiving names already appropriated, to the infinite confusion of the inhabitants and their letter-carriers."

As these

the interest of government-loans, it would be unjust to apply to them the disparaging comment, that it is easy to go ahead with borrowed money.' In spite of the constant influx of uneducated and penny less adventurers from Europe, I believe it would be impossible to find five millions in any other region of the globe, whose average moral, social, and intellectual condition stands so high."

One evidence he points out of the same truth, in the difficulty of obtain ing young American men and women in domestic service, although by no means degrading, and highly paid.

"Had Spain colonized this region, how different would have been her career of civilization. ! Had the Puritan fathers landed on the banks of Plata, how many hundreds of steamers would, ere this, have been plying the Paraua and Uruguay-how many railway-trains flying over the Pampas-how many large schools and universities flourishing in Paraguay!" -pp. 59, 60, vol. i.

The occasion affords Mr. L. an

opportunity of discussing the system of public lecturing in general, and of comparing the system as it exists here, with its condition in England. Let us examine his opinions and the facts set forth. Says he, page 87, vol. 1:

"If the selection of teachers be in good hands, institutions of this kind cannot fail to exert a powerful influence in improving the taste and intellectual condition of the people, especially where college is quitted at an early age for the business of active life, and where there is always danger in a commercial community, that the desire of money-making should be carried to excess. It is, moreover, peculiarly desirable in a democratic state, where the public mind is apt to be exclusively absorbed in politics, and in a country where the free competition of sects has a tendency to produce, not indifferentism, as some at home may be disposed to think, but too much excitement in religious mat

cation-who know how to select the best books, and can afford to purchase them, and if they please may obtain the assistance of private tutors-may doubt the utility of public lectures on the fine arts, history, and the physical sciences."

But, goes on our author to reason, the experience of the whole body of the clergy of every sect, and in every country, and in popular governments of the leading politicians, proves, that,

"If the leading patrons and cultivators of literature and physical science neglect this ready and efficacious means of interesting the multitude in their pursuits, they are wanting to themselves, and have no right to complain of the apathy or indifference of the public."

We are willing to let this argument speak for itself. The history of this Lowell Institution is briefly this: In 1833, Mr. James Lowell, a citizen of Boston, left America for a European and Asiatic tour. In 1835 he had reached Egypt, where, amid the ruins of Thebes, he drew up his last will, leaving for the foundation of the institution referred to, about $300,000.

One of the provisions of the bequest deserves particular notice. Mr. Lowell provided that not one cent of his munificent donation should be applied to the purchase of brick and mortar; accordingly his executors at once hired a suitable room, and entered upon the execution of the will.

How differently have other fortunes, devoted by their dying possessors for the benefit of their race, suffered! Somewhere near fifteen years have elapsed since a Philadelphia merchant, by his last will and testament, created the most munificent endowment for a college, that was to bear his name, that, with but few exceptions, the world ever beheld. He even expressly provided that but an unimportant portion of the gift should be expended in buildings. Three or four unfinished, and illy-adapted marble temples have been erected, the legacy nearly, if not quite expended, while Girard College appears farther from real and useful existence, than at any time since the death of its founder. It may not be the fault of Philadelphians; we are afraid it is the fault of human nature;

but whosoever the fault may be, the sorrowful and shameful fact stands unaffected.

But sins like this, we are sorry to say, are by no means confined to this side of the water. Half a million of dollars have already been expended upon the purchase of grounds and erection of the exterior of University College, London; and one-third of this vast sum was spent upon the portico and dome, portions of the work purely ornamental, while the rooms under the dome have remained for fifteen years not fitted up, and wholly useless. When the professor of chemistry inquired for the chimney to his laboratory, he was told there was none; and one had to be carried up which encroached upon a handsome stair-case, and thus destroyed the harmony of the artist's design. Still greater was the dismay of Sir Charles Bell, upon discovering the anatomical room fitted up like a Greek theatre, adapted to the recitation of plays. The builders were informed that an anatomical theatre ought, in construction and form, to resemble a well, so that every student could look down and see distinctly the subject under demonstration. The room was accordingly altered at considerable cost.

The liberal sums contributed for the erection of another college, King's College, of London, were more flagrantly squandered, and that, too, like Girard, long before the academical body came

into existence.

These remarks cannot be confined to the high quarters to which they have been applied. Those of our readers accustomed to travel through the state of New-York, need not to be told, that in almost every village of the interior, huge, cold, and ungainly, but expensive buildings have been created for the accommodation of academies, now, in a majority of cases, extinct; while, if the money appropriated to their erection, had been placed by its trustees in a situation to have yielded an income, and more moderate buildings erected, it is not too much to say, that the present literature fund of the state would have been a less indispensable assistance to the very existence of threefourths of the academies, than it now is. We could write a chapter on a subject to which our limits can afford but a paragraph.

Not exactly in connection with this subject, Mr. Lyell discusses the comparative merits of the American and English university systems, through which, although he does not draw any particular conclusion with regard to their comparative excellences, we will endeavor to follow him. We are aware that scarcely any subject connected with English institutions, is less perfectly understood by the American publie than this same one, and hence we approach it the more willingly, from the hope that what we say may, at least, possess the charm of novelty.

We are inclined to believe that education, in its widest and highest sense, is about as well attended to in the eastern and middle states as in any part of Great Britain. We do not, of course, allude here to that elementary education taught in our common schools, and so universally diffused among our people-here at least, England cannot offer a parallel. Nor do we mean to be understood as saying, that England and Scotland cannot afford some better specimens of scholarship than our wealth, and our society, and our political institutions have as yet been able to produce. We know that the remark will startle many of our readers, who have been accustomed to look upon those old and time-honored institutions, which so many of the Newtons and Porsons and Addisons of England have honored with years of their toil. But we repeat our assertion, that we believe that a larger number of well-educated young men are sent forth into the world from our own Yales and Harvards and Unions, than in the same period are graduated at Oxford and Cambridge. That we have not come to our conclusions unadvisedly we shall be at some pains to show. Our readers are too well acquainted with the American collegiate system, to require any particular description of it from us. Our young men are received into them after a preparatory academic course, and are then during the four years appropriated to each class, instructed in those branches of classical, mathematical, and scientific education which are best designed to lay the broad foundation for future learning, or best adapted to secure that discipline of mind, and that enlarged and comprehensive view of human learning, which always distin