THE LIND AMONG THE YANKEES.
IT is a singular trait in the citizens of the greatest Republic the world ever saw that in their paroxysms of most inspired enthu- siasm they rush to worship not that which is great but that which is minor. Even where true greatness may be in the thing wor- sbitted, that to which they bow is then some minor trait. In their reception of Jenny Lind they have caricatured the over- wrought admiration of the English until they have made it pass far beyond the sublime. The whole public is stirred, in every grade, —for there are grades in the Republic, and the quasi court cir- cular boasts of the " distinguished persons " that waited on " the Queen. of Song." They crowded upon her to stifling, and cloyed her with adulation. Major Woodhall, Mayor of New York, capped all other flatterers when he said " ire have heard Malibran and other singers ; but we all know thaeyou are the Queen of Song," —giving voice to the presumptive eulogy of his city ; for as yet, not one of this adulating multitude had heard a single note. The Model Republic had taken its ideal entirely upon trust. Jenny Lind might well " tremble," as she said, but it should not be at the overdone admiration of her- art; -it should have been at seeing all this excitement about the mere contingencies and impertinencies of her position. In England,' she might' have doubted whether much of the applause that she got was thoroughly discriminating and informed ; but here she knew, by wholesale,, that it was all uninformed, and that its discrimination was sb 'perverse as to exalt the unknown over the known,' the unheard Lind over the well-known Malibran. In fact, what the Model RePablicans were worshiping was not Jenny Lind, her voice, or her art, but her no; toriety.'
Perhaps it was not even her fame that most exalted her in their eyes, but the faculty which she has, unconsciously no doubt, of evoking great public bursts of puffery. The Model Republic is noted amongst civilized nations for its fanatical advertising mania: the Lind has proved the most advertis,able commodity in the creation, and she is straightway, erected into the appropriate and favourite idol of the nation of advertisers.
This is not the love of art, but the subjection to humbug. The freest nation in the world is ruled by an aristocracy of puffers its free press is but the tool of those despots, its esthetics but the cant of a handbill or placard. Still there is this blessed redemption, that, carried by whatever medium—as the seed of the sacred oak by birds—art will ever have its ennobling influence. As Semele bore divine offspring to Jove though he came to her in the base form of gold, so art shall have its progeny in the prostrate republic though it overcomes it in the form of humbug.
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