New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1872-05-19
LETTER FROM NEW YORK.

NEW YORK, May Is, 1879.
1t may be doubted whether the ibertin
ism that fifty represents certain great news
paper constituencies here is more un
healthy symptom than the loud style OF
moral drama played by certain journals
of what is called the better class. Ger.
tainly the tone of our more pretentious pa,
pers has strikingly deteriorated in the di
rectiOn of phariseeism and insolence for a
year or two past. Editors have latterly
succeeded one another on these papers
about as often as emperors did in Rome un-
der the pretOrian regime, and the newest
set seem to agree that plantation man
young gentlemen who vulgarize the bru-
tality of the London Times in at least three
different styles and sheets, evidently sup
pose that puppyism becomes something
! else in paper of large circulation. There
is certain simplicity, you know, in the
self-cOnfdence of youthful greatness, and
the awfully impersonal personages who are
accustomed every morning, or every Thurs
! day, as the case may be, to dictate conclu-
sions for senates, courts and executives,
naturally come to think, after while, that
nobody can help sneezing when their noses
Jingle, unless he has been gagged" or has
become very depraved. A shOrtcoming so
palpable as this, is, in the favOrite sneer of
the Nation, 'not an improving spectacle
By the by, this profound mentor of man
kind, in its last number, actually indOrses
the wild motion that hardly received a vote
in the Conference on Friday, to the effect
that no minister should be allowed on a
committee appointed to investigate the
gravest charges against ministerial charac-
ter To appoint a committee at all must
seem impertinent to oracles who have so
often prescribed, ready made, to the Con-
ference the "prOper conclusion" and the
'Tight course"
The religious anniversaries have been re-
inforced with fresh and vigorous blood this
year, from ecumenical Methodism, from
Evangelical Unitarianism in the person of
Mr.. HepwOrth; from imported Scotch Cal
vanism in DR.. Ormiston, and from the IN
sUraitest section of the Free Church of Italy
in the immoderately ionized Padre Cav
azzi. The last named orator is the most
sufficient person to himself that you ever
saw on platform. 1t is little to say that
the embarrassments of an unfamiliar tongue
are nothing to him. No conceivable en-
barrassment would affect him. No re-
straints of time, place or presence seem to
to limit his absolute liberty. After hearing
and looking at him for half an hour, you
begin to think that nothing he could do or
say would surprise you; although he says
and does everything but what you could
possibly expect. His vitality and person
atty press so hard for vent, that he seems
like a volcano wrenched with internal
forces and belching titful eruptions of all
sorts from the main crater, while spirting
and fixing, cracking and rumbling all over
at the same time. There are sharp words
in plenty, and gestures fit enough; but
besides all human expression there is also
huge horse play going on that mas nothing
in particular to do with the theme or the
sentiment, and seems like the mere wanton
exuberance of animal spirits. No lustiest
boy, blowing off his soul at the moment of
release from school, could vie with Gavazzi
in the variety of inarticulate noises,
whOOps, whistles, puffs, grunts, growls,
rOars, jumps, eapers, conUortions and grim
aces, with which he accompanies himself
on that infinitely versatile instrument, his
body, while making a speech-before the
American Tract Society, for instance The
only thing can positively say he didn't do
was to turn a summerset; though, on the
other hand, there is nothing in particular
can now positively say he did do.
From italian oratory it happened that it
passed to Italian music from a trained dis
ciple of that school, at the dedication of
Rev. j. Hyatt Smiths iron church on Lee
avenue, Brooklyn. 1t struck me as a CON
tinuance of the same sort of thing, DautatiS
little more hampered and stiff
ened by generalization. The same spas
modie rushing and stopping, soaring and
diving, kicking and sprawliRg, trembling
and painting, mock pathOs and passions
mock fury and exhaustion, everything over
done and nothing genuine, and in one word,
melody totally expelled by phrenzy. / care
not what the people who call themselves
artists or critics may say, dare appeal to
the universal reason and heart of man on
the proposition that true melody is always
rhythmical from the subsection of passion
and force to the law of beauty, and that a
hot and passionate nature, whatever power !
it may have to excite, can never sway the |
passiOns-that is, can never attain high art |
in oratorY, poetry or music-untI it ceases
to be what we call an excitable nature by |
having become undisputed master of its |
own emotions. And this qualification is |
just the grand thing lacking in the 'agoniz-
ing" style of music that has come in with |
the fashion of modern languages and the |
affectatiOn Of foreign manners.
The Lee avenue Iron Church above re- |
ferred to is remarkably handsome and
pleasant place of worship for a total cost of
SIS, 900, land, edifice, furniture and all. 1t |
has $50 seats, gallery, baptistry, large /
Sunday school and Iecture-room, study, !
bible class-rOoms, etc. The platform (no
pulpit has a reading desk of the size of a
music stand on single slender shaft en-
5wined with Towering vine. Growing
lowers, vases OF flowers and goldfish and
fountains are disposed about the platform,
md the soft music of falling water mingles
with the sounds of worship. This is the
bird corrugated iron church completed in
Brooklyn, and DR.. Henry NJ. Scudder's new
,hurch, near Bedford and Fulton avenues,
low approaching completion, will be the
nnrth The latter Is of the sizn of I'll |