Year: 1878

LOST GRANDEUR.


The Sad Decay of the Southern Metropo-


lis, New Orleans.


Correspondence of Cincinnati Commercial


| have spoken with enthusiasm of the
the beauty of New Orleans; [ must
speak with pain of her decay. The city
is fading, moldering, crumbling- slowly
but certainly.


AS molders and crumbles some quaint
pleasure-house in the midst of weed
grown gardens once luxuriantly romantic
as those which form background for
the warm pictures of the Decameron, so
molders the fair, quaint city in the
midst of the ruined paradise of Louis
lana. So, also are moldering all the old
cities of the South, for their prosperity
had it's root of nourishment in the enor-
nous wealth Of the planters of rice, cot
ton and sugar, and that wealth is now
gone.


suppose that when the hatreds of
war have burnt themselves out; when
the descendants of the ruined planters
remember the family misfortunes only
as traditions are remembered; when a
new social system shall have arisen from
the ashes of the old, like the new world
Of the Scandinavian Edda from the fires
Of Ragnarock-then shall the old plan
tations be again made fertile, and the
cottonwood cleared away, and the life
OF those old Southern cities be resur-
rected. But the new South shall never
be as the old. Those once grand resi-
dences that are being devoured by mos
sy decay can never be rebuilt; the old
plantations which extended over whole
parishes will be parceled out to a hun
dred farmers from States that are not
Southern; and the foreign beauties of
New Orleans will never be restored. 1t
is the picturesqueness Of the South, the
poetry, the traditions, the legends, the
superstitions, the quaint faiths, the fam
lily pride, the ,uxurionsness. the splendid
Incidence and the splendid sins Of the
old social system which has passed, or
which is now passing away forever 1t
is all this which is dead or dying in New
Orleans, and which can hope for no
trumpet call to resurrection The new
South may, perhaps, become far richer
than the old South; but there will be no
aristocracy, no lives of unbridled luxury.
no reckless splendors of hospitality. no
mad pursuit of costliest pleasures. The
old Southern hospitality has been starv-
ed to death, and leaves no trace of its
former being save the thin ghost of
romance. The new South will be less
magnificent, though wealthler; less gem
erous, though more self-denying; less
poetical though more cultured. The
new cities will be, probably, more pros
porous and less picturesque than the
old. They will have plain streets and
plain-faced houses; they will have cheap
er balconies and commonplace facades;
they will not delight an artistic eye or
suggest curious ghostly fancies to an
artistic mind; they will be quite practi-
cal and quite unromantic. This period
of decay seems to me the close of the
romantic era Of Southern history


You are aware no doubt, that the city
is bankrupt; but without living here one
can hardly comprehend the utter hope
lessness of her bankruptcy. Her wealth
and her strange foreign beauty were ere
ated by an aristocracy which has been
destroyed beyond a possibility OF resur-
rection and were nourished by social
system that has become thing of the
dead past Even her beauty must pass
away, as her riches have passed away;
and her once generous life must con-
tract into narrower veins as the years
glide by. till it has ceased to pulsate
save in the great arteries of her com
merce Already | think her beauty is
fading and crumbling. Many of her no
blest buildings are sinking into ruin;
those dear old French houses are quaint
ly picturesque with their green verandas
and peaked gables and dormer windows,
are falling into dilapidation, and are but
too often being removed to make place
for hideous modern structures The
charming French Opera House on Bour-
bon street. where the Creoles supported
opera for nearly half century, is dark
and dead and silent Even Aimee has
not sung there, and [ suppose she could
not now fill the dress-circle boxes with
the remnant of her old Creole audiences.
Sometimes, when passing under the
sharply cut shadows of the building in
a night of tropical moonlight, fancy
that shadowy performance Of Don Gil
ovanni or Masaniello must be going on
within for the entertainment of a ghost
ly audience, and if somebody would but
open the doors an instant, one might
catch a glimpse of spectral splendor; of
dusky-eyed beauties, long dead; Of for
gotten faces, pale with the sleep of bat
tle-felds; of silks that should be mold
ering in chests, with the fashions of
twenty years ago, and of gems secretly
given to the keeping of the children of
Israel