The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-06-22
The JULY MAGAZINES.
"PutnRIn's.''

has the following table of contents:-"That
Night at Fort Wagner" BY One who was
There. "After Death Edgar Fawcett.
Anchored off Binghamton." BY Passen-
ger, "our Camping Ground" George W.
Sears. "Victor Hugo and the Constables.
Charles Hugo. Evening Shadows" Our
Established Church" 'tLavinia-Her Pro-
press"-I. Caroline Cheesbro ''Partings."
Shirley Dare. 'The Stage and Nature"
Rev. John Weiss. Zone or Both Anna
c. Bracket. Scarlet Stockings Louisa
M Alcott. "Sonnet" f. A. Hillard. ''Shy
Friends" Myron b. Benton. 'To-Day"-a
Romance. r. B. Kimball. "a Partisan
Fortune-Teller." W. E. McCann. Love in
Hermitage" N. NJ. Hutchinson. Mater
nifty" A. X. Gardner, NJ. d. japanese
Criticism Ono Tomogoro? Zine Arts of
Society: Flattery." Lucy Fountain
Monthly Chronicle of Events F. b. Per-
kins. Literature, Science, and Art Abroad
Bayard Taylor. ''Literatre-At Home"
E. c. Stedman. ''Table-Talk' Clarence
Cook Bulletin of New Publications"
From the Rev. John Weiss article on "The
Stage and Nature" we quote as follows
But the worst vice of the people, which tends
more than anything else to prolong the affecta-
tions and traditions of the stage, is its social
ostracism of the actor. This is a crime of modern
civilization. Take all the painters and draughts-
men of a country and shut them up, with prison
wards and court-yards for their daily walks, and
expect them to fill your unlimited order for
landscapes of the mountain and the plain, for
serene and stormy deeps of the armament above
or faces of the waters which glide into every
creek to WOO fancy and tell in whispers of the
beauty that goes down to the sea in ships. Send
all the colors of earth and sky, ana the pigment
of woman's blush, to their cells, but keep earth,
sky, and woman outside the wicket and will
there be lively demand for canvas? Rather
for hemp,we think, among these artists whose in
stincts are already strangled by your novel mode
OF fostering, and loll and baCken at you from
every grating Raphael found his Mother and
Child at some street corner, where beauty
answered the asking beauty of his
Imagination; the passions of the Last
Judgment were a fresco pacing FlOrence's
streets, whence the scaffolding lifted them to
the Sistine dome; the days of Venice stepped
Titian's brain in their colors. the brain soaked
up the tones of palace-shadowed lagoons in
which the gondolas flashed with dreaming
women and their jewelled lovers; Teniers and
Ostade clinked their cans with Doors, went to
all the country fairs, and blew a cloud on the
inn porches that blew the scene into master
pieces on the canvas stretched at home; Gerard
Douw and Mieris were the gossips of
the street. hattening their noses upon
every damond-pane, and with look
carrying off an interiOr-such us the
boy distracted from his bubbe-blowing, the old
woman knitting, with the flowers upon a shelf:
Rosa Bonheur must see the cattle that she
paints, and Scheffer's eyes must look through
tears at the groups Of men and women who clasp
their hands towards some ChriStus Consolator;
up and down the world go these detective bands
OF fancy, spotting their prey with dnc instinct,
1ceOergs and Niagaras cannot get into a mans
studio till vaporized by thought: and as for the
apple-Woman on the corner with the shadow of
an umbrella half down the poor, thin face and
w. ius..c ,vles, why, she sh. =. - LOO
Shy to Sit, except just where GSood puts her for
her daily bread
You turn an actor out of all the places where
your own vanities and virtues ought to pique
and to correct his dramatic instinct, and then
you expect him to be n native nobleman or n
natural fool like yourself. The domain of society
is the predestined sphere of his culture, where
he catches the elusive traits of human tempera-
ments, and learns to compare realities with the
traditions of other times and countries What
ever graces and kind proprietles exist, with
suavity and nobleness, among the rich and poor
are his to feel and study by virtue of his
Office as delincator of true things; and
they ought to be thrown as freely open to
him as the earth, air, and sky are open
to the painters brush. All the uivolities
and nuisances, the oddities and Yulgarties
which get japanned for admission into parlors,
need not be caricatured, nor just rubbed in upon
hearsay; their simple truth ought to be observed
and sketched upon the spot. There would be
different stage, l do not know but what there
would be different social life, if actors went
dandy and coquette, truth of hunker truth of
mammas with three daughters, truth of bank
stock and Pacific mills in broadcloth, truth
of robustious-minded females, truth of gentle
and beautiful women who tone the day, truth
and local coloring of the class vices and virtues,
the weakness and the strength of every taX-pay
ing name in the community.
Clergymen have a better opportunity than
actors to study ethics and habits of various
circles but they do not improve il so we'll be-
cause the mind is strongly preoccupied with
schemes of human nature which yitate the OBJ
serving faculty. Dogmatism and preconceptOn
keep realism out of theology and of science.
And even If clergyman commences his profess
sional life with an unbiased mind, he has learned
to mediate, or to sentimentalize perhaps to rea-
son, but not observe for want of contact with
the materials of life. So far, therefore, as he
ought to be describer and genial satirst of
ethical peculiarites he is less effective than the
actor can be, whose shrewd analysis is not
hampered by pulpit traditions. There must
always be a parquette to bring together the
people who on Sunday seat their temperaments
in pews. Preaching can never be dramatic
enough to transfX all follies as they rise, still
less to thrill men with a living sight of the
great passions which ennoble or disgrace the
heart. Theoretically the pulpit is a place
where the spiritual life pours ont all its hopes
sorrows, and aspirations to bid the intuitive
faculty OF men expand, to arouse the conscience
and supply necessary truths to reason, to enforce
all the great central principles of human nature;
but pracucally, 1t Is often laid waste by bigotry
mediocrity, and striving dullness by power ap-
piled TO seetarlan doctrines, by many prayer
that is stopped by cobwebs in the belfrv Inv all
viciousness. One had rather see the things of
earth misrepresented in stock-costumes than
those of heaven in a surplice, because the
preacher holds his Office from mans religious