New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-06-13
TILE .JNRILEE.

While nearly every city of the United
States is seething with the excitement OF the
political campaign, there is one quiet little
spot, situated, geographically, on o remote
inlet of our northeastern coast, but intel
lectually, as everybody knows, at the exact
center of tho solar system, where the quarrcls
Of factions do not reach and the merits of can
didates and platforms have not yet
been discussed. Conklng and Carpenter,
Sumner and Wilson, Grant and Greeley,
BENJAMIN +. Butler, Dawes, Bingham,
John Cochranc, and Zachariah Chandler, arc
names for the present unhcard and totally
forgotten in this brick Clysium, where the air
is full of harmony and the Atlantic gales are
laden with the songs of Mozart and Lowell
Mason. The happy inhabitants reck little
of problems that vex the rest of the world;
the Washington Treaty, the Baltimore Con-
ventiOn, the balloting in November, the tariff,
the taxes, touch not the serene repOse of their
souls. If they have an anxiety, it is lest
they may not all get into the pine
Coliseum next Monday; if they breathe a
prayer, it is for the safe transportation of the
big drum, which could not be got out Of
Portland till they had taken down the house
it was built in, and could not be carried to
Boston on anything smaller than an ocean
steamer. The Jubilee is the one subject Of
New England thought, and till it is over the
sympathies of all that section of the United
States will be far apart from those Of the rest
of mankind.
When somebody congratulated Mr.. Gilmore
in 1860, at the close of the first performance of
his first great musical gathering, the celebrated
band-master grasped the speakers hand, and
exclaimed, in a fresh glow Of enthusiasm,
"Sir, there is nothing left for me now except
"to get up another Jubilee twice as big as this
"onen 1t seemed an eXtrayagant bit of brag-
gadocio but Mr.. Gilmore has done it. Nay,
he has done more. He has gone across the
ocean, and put some Of his faith into the en-
perors, and queens, and other high-toned
persons and while we are all telling him
not to make fool of himself by asking for
the unattainabe, he brings back the most
famous bands of the European armies, and
half a score of the great artists OF the Old
World. Lord Granville sends Dan Godfrey
with the GrenadieTs to sOothe us into amend
ing the Supplementary Treaty. President
Theirs contributes the fifty musicians who
under one name or another, have long been
the chief representatives of French military
music. The Emperor William lends the band
of the Kaiser Franz Grenadiers, and his own
private and particular comet quartette besides
From Ireland is coming great national band,
of which we are told that it contains forty
men, all of them true patriots. And finally
our own beloved Marine Band of Washington
leaves the nuTse-maids of Capitol-square dis
consulate for few days, and exaits its horns
among its fellows of other nations. Three
wears ago Mr.. Gilmore had q thousand
performers; this year he means to have
two thousand; then his chorus mustered ten
thousand singers; now 1T will be twenty
thousand; then it was q festival of peace for
the whole United States; now it is a celebra-
ton for all the civilized world. Even nbe-
lieying and stiff-necked New-York clamors at
the door of the Coliseum and asks to be taken
in. The praries and the Pacific slope send
their societies to the mOnstrOus gatherings
and every girl and half the young men in
New England have been practiciDg Handel ana
Hail Columbia and the Anvil Chorus for the
past six months
How Mr.. Gilmore did it all is and must
probably forever remain a great mystery,
though of the stupendOus effect Of his labors
we shall soon have full opportunity to judge.
The immediate aesthetic results of such huge
assemblies We do not highly value. But their
influence upon musical culture cannot be ques-
toned, and the indirect consequences Of so
much enthusiasm over drums, and fiddles, and
trumpets, and trained voices, will be of great
Importance to popular art if only the mistake
mt
becomes grotesque.
OF Mr. Snmners sneech The aalionaIisl relic