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and mother. A happy buoyancy supports
them against the discouraging persuasions
of reason and experience. The period of
courtship may do something to dispel the
illusion, but unless the honeymoon is con-
trived with an exceeding judiciousness, it is
then that the truth really dawns. The man
finds that his wife is only a grown-up girl,
after all; and the woman, that the husband
cannot always preserve the attractions of
the lover. So far, therefore, the honey-
moon may be "discomfortable." But, for-
tunately, the discomfort rights itself.
happy couple get views which are more
useful for the rest of their lives. And such
couples are often sadly in need of it. In
England, our national reserve keeps the
transcendental nonsense which fills the
minds of extremely young folk from com-
ing out very strongly. But in the United
States they are more freespoken. There
two people can be found to insist on being
married up in a balloon, among "God's
clouds." Having taken pen and ink with
them, moreover, they sign a superb decla-
ration to the effect that

Presenting ourselves, fully impressed with the
sublime presence of God and the joyous spirit-
ual beings of His creation, heartily apprecia-
ting heaven's highest vouchsafed happiness,
the blessed union of two souls in purity and
glowing love, emanating from the eternal foun-
tain of truth and wisdom, hence deriving some
primitive conception of the magnitude of Deity-
inspired unceasing humanity, endowed with
powers and attributes evermore approximating
Divinity, with assurances that uninterrupted
progress remains dependent upon genial social
relations, and possessing the approving sanc-
tion of cherished friends, we do now henceforth
evermore give and devote, accept and receive,
each other in holy wedlock; and we solemnly
and unreservedly avow and promise that we will
love, honour, and cherish each other as hus-
band and wife during our whole existence; and
in the express language of Holy Writ, we hope
fully pray,
"What God hath joined together
let no man put asunder."

bride and bridegroom go quietly home and begin home-life the day they are married, and take a honeymoom trip some six months afterwards, when they have had time to get accustomed to one another. Only this is not a honeymoon, and he would be an audacious social leveller, with need of cak and triple brass about his breast, who should dare to suggest the abolition of the mystic institution.

From the Spectator.

MOZART'S LETTERS.*

WE should be disappointed were we to look for the same kind of interest in Mozart's as in Mendelssohn's letters. The circumstances of the two lives were different. Different worlds surrounded the two men. Mendelssohn was happy, fortunate, appreciated. Mozart's sunny temperament gave way under the pressure of sorrow, ill-luck, and ill-treatment. He started in life badly, and he never made up his arrears. From the first he was the slave of a cruel master, and no better master would have pity on him and release him. When at last he was forced to renounce that service, he had only the most precarious support to depend upon, pupils who were capricious, and compositions that were not certain of acceptance. It is a miserable spectacle, the career of a man whom everybody now reverences as one of the greatest of musicians, but who was condemned to failure and poverty all his life, and whose very grave unknown to this day.

is

One

Nevertheless, we think Dr. Nohl has done us a service by collecting these letters, and Lady Wallace a service by translating them. Both editor and translator have their faults. Dr. Nohl should have added more explanatory notes, and should not have left the reader to supplement Mozart's letters by one of the lives of Mozart. of the doctor's omissions, which we have It is easy to believe that, in this case at had occasion to trace, is fatal to the interest all events, when they returned to earth, of the letter in which it occurs, and many the "aspect of things, like an unaired robe, such would seriously injure the collection. struck coldly against their hearts." It may Writing of the Archduke Maximilian, Mobe suspected that, when the honeymoon is zart says, "Stupidity peers out of his eyes." a failure, the result is due either to an ex- Now in the original of this letter the words travagant transcendental pitch of mind of Archduke" and "stupidity are in cithis kind, which must always end in vexa-pher, a fact we learn from Dr. Nohl himself tion, or else to some mistake in selecting in the notes to his Life of Beethoven. But the place and manner in which the time is to be passed. It is not certain, though, that something may not be said for a plan suggested in an American story. The Longmans,

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surely such a fact ought to be stated in its
own place; it adds greatly to the value of
Mozart's letters; it is apt to be overlooked
in notes at the end of another man's life.
Lady Wallace's faults are of another order.
She is, generally speaking, one of our best
translators from the German, but she is ap-
parently less familiar with Italian. In Let-
ter 11, Sentimmo la messa cantata" ought
to be," we heard the mass chanted," not
"the chanted mass," and "Campidoglio
is generally known in English as "Capitol."
Again, "jeri l'altro" is the day before yes-
terday, not the other day; and "deutscha
Compositor" (patois) stands for a German,
not a good, composer. If Lady Wallace
means to imply that German and good are
synonymous, we must beg to differ from
her; but as we presume this mistake is
merely a slip of the pen, we pass it with a
slight protest. In other parts we find that
she has softened down Mozart's phrases
almost unnecessarily. One passage, meant
to be unusually emphatic, as it is written
large in the original manuscript and printed
in small capitals by Dr. Nohl, is not marked
at all in the English. Mozart tells a story
of an infamous case of official brutality at
Innsbrück. A noble abused the manager
of a theatre in the street, and followed up
the abuse by a blow. On the manager re-
turning this he was taken to the House of
Correction by a party of soldiers, and given
fifty blows with a stick. "At the fifth
blow," says Mozart, "his trousers were in
pieces; but this most significant touch,
which lights up the whole atrocity of the
scene, is left out by Lady Wallace.

"

Even if this whole story had been left out, there would be enough in these letters to show the chaos existing in Germany before the French Revolution. Mozart began life as concert master to the Archbishop of Salzburg, at the magnificent salary of twelve florins and a half yearly. In order that he might not apply for an increase, his master always proclaimed that he knew nothing, and that he ought to go to a training school to learn music. "The slavery of Salzburg," that "beggarly Court," the Archbishop "playing the great man with me," are significant phrases. But when the Archbishop took Mozart to Vienna in his suite the slavery was more pronounced, and the beggary (though of course Mozart's salary had been increased) was quite as conspicuous. The Archbishop treated Mozart as a lackey, would not allow him to give a concert for his own benefit, quarrelled with him because he was not ready to leave Vienna at a moment's notice, and

at last drove him out of his service with the foulest abuse. "All the edifying things the Archbishop said to me, and the pious epithets this admirable man of God applied to me," writes Mozart, "had such an effect on my bodily frame that the same evening at the opera I was obliged to go home in the middle of the first act in order to lie down, for I was very feverish, trembled in every limb, and staggered in the street like a drunken man." No wonder that the Archbishop considered him "a most selfsufficient young man." Basil Hall makes a captain roar with laughter at the idea of a midshipman having any feelings, and in the eighteenth century a musician who could object to such mild phrases as rogue, rascal, ragamuffin, was evidently unfit to serve a prince. It was no doubt this overstrained delicacy in Mozart that hindered all other princes from taking him into their employment. He had many admirers, but few supporters. Gluck and Haydn could afford to praise him without reserve, and a travelling pianist, after watching him play, exclaimed, "Good heavens! how I do labour and overheat myself without getting any applause, while to you, my dear friend, it seems all child's play." But when Salieri applauded openly, it was in order to intrigue in private, and his epitaph on Mozart ran, "The loss of so grand a genius is much to be deplored, but it is fortunate for us that he is dead, for if he had lived longer we really should not have been offered a crust of bread for our compositions." The Elector of Bavaria asked, "Who could believe that such great things could be hidden in so small a head?" but would not give the small head a chance of taking off its hat in Munich. Prince Kaunitz said of Mozart that " Such people only come into the world once in a hundred years, and must not be driven away from Germany, more particularly when we are so fortunate as actually to enjoy their presence in the capital." But had Prince Kaunitz already lost his influence with the Emperor, and could he do nothing more than talk in favour of Mozart?

While such was the state of German patrons, the rest of the country was equally in darkness. After trying several Courts without success, Mozart turned his eyes to France or England. "If Germany will not accept me," he says, "then in God's name let France or England be enriched by one more German of talent, to the disgrace of the German nation!" The opera at Vienna was given up to the Italians. would be thought an everlasting blot on

"It

many sharp descents and abrupt rises of the roads there, that, seated in a diligence, he is incontinently jerked into the arms of a lady opposite.' No doubt this was a necessary preparation for writing the life of Mozart.

"Pudet hæc opprobria nobis Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli;"

Germany if we Germans were ever really to begin to think in German and to act like Germans, to speak German, and above all, to sing in German!" But in what we are apt to consider the national peculiarities of Germany the eighteenth century eclipsed the nineteenth. In matters of pa- These letters throw so much light on the ternal government and tardiness of locomo- external state of the times, that we have tion even Germany has made great improve- neglected their still more valuable additions ments. When Mozart wished to marry to our knowledge of the character of their against the will of his future mother-in-law, author. In many of them Mozart, both as she threatened a resort to the ubiquitous man and composer, stands clearly before police. "Have the police really the power us. His knowledge of his own powers and to enter any house they please?" he asks. his trust in them were proper pride with We did not know their right had ever been the genius without which they would have contested. The use of ciphers in Mozart's been vanity. He could not help despising letters prove that they were liable to be many of his contemporaries when he saw opened at the post office, and when he their inferiority to himself, and how they writes to announce his quarrel with the were preferred to him. Occasionally he Archbishop of Salzburg, he says significant- showed this contempt by an open sarcasm, ly, "I write this in our native German which rankled all the more for its truth. tongue, that the whole world may know." The victims of his epigrams might say,— This clause would hardly have been needed if the post office was proof against official curiosity. As for the travelling of those days it must have been unendurable. A carriage was detained a quarter of an hour but if they could not refute him they outside a city because the gates were under could intrigue against him, and dullness in repair. The conveyance by which Mozart high places was naturally leagued with its went from Paris to Strasburg took ten days brothers and subordinates. In these letters on the road, never changing horses, and we see Mozart's spirit gradually giving way. setting off sometimes at two in the morning. The cheerful nonsense of his earlier letters Owing to the constant stoppages, the ex- yields to gloom or bitterness. He was pense of living on the road made the dili- worked and worried to death. With a gence dearer than posting, as it was also the temperament alive to the slightest changes, custom to treat the conductor at all the and affected keenly by pleasures; a fiery inns. The roads were so bad that it was spirit that would have fretted a less puny impossible to sleep in night travel; "the body to decay, and a genius that was per carriage jolted our very souls out, and the petually yoked to the dullest round of musi seats were as hard as stone. From Was- cal lessons; enemies that harassed him, and serburg I thought I never could arrive in friends that preyed on him; an eternal Munich with whole bones, and during two want of pence, and a critic pen of his own stages I held on by the straps, suspended that would not suffer him to write down to in the air, and not venturing to sit down." the tastes which had pence to bestow,-it The truth of these descriptions may be cer- would be strange if his familiar letters did tified by Mozart's English biographer, Mr. not reflect his troubles, and partake of the Holmes, who states, in his Ramble among despondency which more than once beset the Musicians of Germany (1828), that the him. We cannot justly say that we wish diligence took six days from Munich to Vi- they were pleasanter reading, for every line enna. Nothing on the way but beer-houses that flowed from Mozart, whether on plain and the most lenten entertainments; in or ruled paper, must be pleasant to read or three days they only had one solitary dish to hear. But we wish they had been pleasof veal, bread and beer being all they could count upon regularly. Mr. Holmes also bears witness to the state of the roads; "such malignant bumps are inflicted on the inferior part of the traveller's person in the

anter to write, and that their subject-matter had not been the cause of so much pain to a man for whom we feel such admiration and such love.

From the Spectator. | evidently more and more impressed with

THE ZAMBESI AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.* the fertility of the soil and its undeveloped

sources of wealth. Gold is washed for in beds of rivers within two miles of Tette, coal and rich iron ore are to be found to any amount, whilst the cotton seed taken out by Dr. Livingstone was found unnecessary, from the fact that the cotton already introduced was equal if not superior to the

Dr. LIVINGSTONE's name is a guarantee for the fidelity of his book. It is true he shovels out information, with facts and suggestions tumbling over each other in exquisite confusion, but his facts are worth knowing, and his suggestions worth heeding. We are not sure it is not rather pleasant than otherwise to meet occasion-common American, and far above that proally with an author who has so much worth narrative that two causes were at work to duced in India, but we gather from the saying, that he is rather careless how he says it. The main object of the Zambesi prevent anything like extensive cultivation expedition is stated clearly enough. Dr. of any of these sources of wealth. There Livingstone and those who went out with seems no want of industry among the native him were instructed to "extend the knowl- population, but in the absence of the civilization which creates artificial wants, the edge already attained of the geography and mineral and agricultural resources of extreme fertility of the soil supplies with Eastern and Central Africa," and also in little cost of labour all the requirements of the negro, various ways to become better acquainted checks his desire to cultivate for the sake of whilst the slave trade effectually with the natives, induce them to cultivate their lands more largely, with a view tion of the valley of the Shire speaks more commerce. Dr. Livingstone's simple descripto their engaging in commerce with Eng than twenty blue-books of the way this curse land, supplying us with raw material of slavery eats as a canker at the heart of in return for British manufactures, and to ascertain the actual condition of the slave every enterprise. When he passed through in 1859 the Upper Falls of the Shire were trade, and by promoting other sources of studded with villages placed in picturesque profit to check it as far as possible. Their first object on reaching the East Coast Spots among the hills, filled with busy inhabitants, eager to do business with the (May, 1858) was to explore the Zambesi, its mouths and tributaries, " with a view to The soil was extensively cultivated, the strangers and exchange food for calico. their being used as highways for commerce and Christianity to pass into the vast in- people working in iron, cotton, and basketterior of Africa." It seems to have been making. And besides the ordinary crops long the policy of Portuguese officials in of millet, beans, maize, &c., cotton was cultivated in almost every village, one kind, Africa to mislead the English as to the true called the "Tonje manga," or "foreign mouth of the Zambesi, in order that slaves might be quietly shipped from it whilst the cotton," being of excellent quality, and "considered in Manchester nearly equal to English cruisers were watching elsewhere. the best New Orleans." Every village has In settling the Kongone Harbour as the true one, Dr. Livingstone has rendered an blacksmiths, and the inhabitants manufac its smelting-house, its charcoal-burners, and important service to European enterprise. He has obtained the key of a door through turing crockery, and carrying on a good native trade between the villages "in towhich not a few will probably hereafter wish to enter. Familiar as Dr. Livingstone bacco, salt, dried fish skins, and iron; the must be with African scenery, its beauty seems to him ever fresh. The immense height of many of the trees covered with creeping plants reminded him in the distance, he tells us, of the steeples of his native land, and gave "relish to the remark of an old sailor, that but one thing was wanting to complete the picture, and that was a grog-shop near the church." As they penetrated further inland, and came upon the native villages, the travellers were

*Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries; and of the Discovery of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858-1864. By David and Charles Livingstone. With Map and Illustrations. London: John Murray. 1865.

people intelligent, and good-looking, not in
the least to be judged by the low type of
negroes on the immediate coast." Evidently
the peaceful beauty of the scene, as he sur-
veyed it from the hills, and the quiet well-
to-do condition of the people, gave a tinge
even of bitterness to the memory, as the
good Doctor recalled the crowded lanes and
alley in our crowded cities at home.
squalid poor of many a well-remembered
is room enough, and to spare," he seems to
have said to himself," while they perish for
hunger;" but passing through this same
valley in 1863, the scourge of slave war
had passed over the country, and it was
a miserable scene of desolation, the vil-

"Here

Seke

"He was an ordinary man, he said, when his father died and left him the chieftainship, but directly he succeeded to the high office he was conscious of power passing into his head and he was a chief, clothed with authority, and posdown his back. He felt it enter, and knew that sessed of wisdom, and people then began to fear and reverence him. He mentioned this as one would a fact of natural history, any doubt being quite out of the question."

lages deserted or burnt, and miserable skel- | pride, sometimes fancy obliterated. etons often the only trace that human letu is not the less an able chief that he beings had been there. Dr. Livingstone, wonders if cannon could not blow away the whose imagination never outruns his judg- Victoria Falls, and possibly whiter men ment, calmly asserts that so much murder than Chibisa have shared his faith in the is involved in the very carrying on of the divine right of kings, and might not think trade, that "it is certain not more than his somewhat naïve expression of them as one in five ever reach their kind masters' altogether absurd. in Cuba or elsewhere." Without fairly facing the enormous evils resulting from the slave trade, thus carried on in great measure by half-caste Portuguese or Portuguese convicts against Portuguese laws, but with the connivance of Portuguese officials, it would be impossible fairly to estimate the importance of the discovery of Lake Nyassa by Dr. Livingstone, or of his suggestions concerning it. It appears that "the trade of Cazembe and Katanga's country, and of other parts of the interior, crosses Nyassa and the Shire on its way to the Arab port Kilwa and the Portuguese ports of Iboe and Mozambique." This trade at present consists chiefly of slaves, ivory, malachite, and copper ornaments. Dr. Livingstone suggests that "by means of a small steamer, purchasing the ivory of the lake and river above the cataracts," the slave trade would become unprofitable, as it seems it is only because the slaves carry the ivory three hundred miles further than this point, down to the coast, "that they do not eat up all the profits of the trip." A steamer thus placed, Dr. Livingstone considers, would also have immense influence over an enormous area of country. "The Magitu about the north

Valuable hints with regard to African missions are scattered throughout the work. Dr. Livingstone evidently deeply regrets the abandonment of the mission of the Universities by the present bishop, and has, we think, completely lifted from Bishop Mackenzie's name the cloud which rested on his reputation as a man of sound wisdom as well as genuine piety.

Believing, with all men who have really studied the subject, that none but the best men are worth sending, that the talk about sacrificing valuable lives for mere heathen is nothing but talk, the result of slovenly and indolent thinking, that the highest nature can always stoop the most easily, and those who grasp any truth most accurately can always define it most simply,

kind. He ought to have physical and moral courage of the highest order, and a considerable amount of cultivation and energy, balanced by patient determination. Above all these are ne cessary a calm Christian zeal and anxiety for the main spiritual results of the work."

Such a man was Bishop Mackenzie. He died in the trenches, but his name is not likely soon to be forgetton.

end of the lake will not allow slave-traders to pass through their country, and would be "The qualities [says Dr. Livingstone], reefficient allies to the English." The pop-quired in a missionary leader are of no common ulation around the lake is dense, and they grow an abundance of cotton, which they can sell at a penny a pound, or less, and the conclusion Dr. Livingstone would evidently desire to force on his readers is, that at trifling expense the British Government might promote a thriving and legitimate trade, and supplant as well as suppress the present iniquitous slave traffic. We should do injustice to the work before us if Dr. Livingstone is seldom eloquent, but we passed by the sketches of individual character with which its pages are enriched, he is always graphic. Take this description and by means of which Dr. Livingstone has of the contrast between African and Eurodone more to bring us into personal ac- pean scenery: — quaintance with the natives of the villages through which he passed, than he could have done by a far more elaborate description of their habits and social condition. We study these little pen-and-ink photo graphs, and recognize the great family likeness which we, in our ignorance or our

"Nearly all the mountains in this country our, according to the season, green or yellow. are covered with open forest and grass, in colMany are between 2,000 and 3,000 feet high, with the sky-line fringed with trees; the rocks show just sufficiently for one to observe their stratification or their granitic form, and though

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