Now the City takes her temper from the season, and is hospitable. She spreads her broad board with cakes and ale, has up her players and dancers, hangs out her lanterns and parti-colored flags, says to her musicians "strike up," and bids the strangers to her fairing. Autolycus is here, and Crummles, and Jarley, and Dr Faustus and Mr. Merryman, that our country cousins may have a good time. "Here we are, ladies and gentlemen; the show is just a going to begin, and all for twentyfive cents."

Who is it-Dickens ?-who says the greatest of American institutions is "Admittance, twenty-five cents." You do not see the point of that? Perhaps not; the wisdom of the saying is by no means so cheap as the proud national privilege it celebrates. But take its philosophy fairly in hand, and beginning with Barnum and the Baby Show, you shall not stop short of Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. Your country cousin will help along your first blind motions in search of the true significance of a maxim so profound, by showing you that "twenty-five cents" means-photographs warranted to please, with morocco case complete; a Bodleian library of startling romances--the most beart-rending, soul-harrowing of twoshilling histories; the Ethiopian mintrelsy of Buckley and Christy; the Crystal Palace; the Düsseldorf gallery; Neumann's statue; the Musical Automaton; a living skeleton and two lively anacondas; the Intelligent Ape; the Green Monster, and the Red Gnome; that Blessed Baby; Mr. Hackett's Falstaff; the Horticultural Exhibition; an evening at the Opera, with "the best place to hear;" the Fall races; Henry Ward Beecher; young Hengler; the Fairy Star; Horace G.eeley; the American Institute's fair; Mrs. Lucy Stone Blackwell, and the hen with three legs. If, starting from these, you cannot reach the Constitution of the United States, to find the same principle uppermost in the spirit of our government, you will never be a statesman. Should you happen to be a foreigner, coming hither to adopt us, you will as clearly perceive the political application as though the cheap welcome greeted you from every outer light-house along the coast.

Once, we well remember for a fact, "Admittance, twenty-five cents" was chalked on the White House door. It was some four or five administrations ago. There had been a levee the night before; for the first time, no refreshments" were served; and when two grave and potential senators would have saved the country between them in a retiring room, the President brought them. with his own hands, a fossil in a brass candlestick, which the democratic Solon-who, having just stumped New Jersey, knew something about that kind of lights,-pronounced a "dip."

As in this, so in everything he sees, your country cousin finds solemn political import, ever since the three imposing advertisements overcame him like a summer cloud at the corner of Bond street, proclaiming the Shadrach, Meshach and Abednegothe three Jews set over the affairs of the province of Babylon-who would pass through the furnace of a Presidential election, heated seven times more than it was wont to be heated, to save the country; since, in the print-shop windows, he hath looked on the parted locks that shall not be singed, and the American coat that shall not be changed, and the white neckcloth, whereonto the smell of the fire shall not pass; since he finds back hair and crinoline in the field, and hath beheld Our Jessie address her fellow-citizens from a gilt frame at Williams and Stevens'.

The town makes much of the country cousin just now. He is everybody, and he is everywhere, mistaking the Bowery for Broadway, and Bond-street for the Fifthavenue. You will know his wife by her flutters and her panics; whenever you shall find her, policeman Higginbottom will have just borne her bodily through the din and crash of much omnibus-collision. You will know his "young ladies," by their excessive overdoneness, and by the bouquets they toss to La Grange or Robert always alighting with a thump on the portly waistcoat of Amodio, or the natty jacket of Paul Brillant. And then you are safe to recognize the juveniles of the country cousin, by their nut-brown legs, sure to be fashionably exposed, and by the annoyance they inflict on the " young la

dies," whose side-walk addiction to chocolate drops they imitate with six-pence

worth of ice-cream done up in brown paper.

Especially, will you find the family at the jewelry palaces of Broadway; oftenest peering eagerly into the windows thereof, catching provoking glimpses of afar-off beauty, yet not daring to pass over the threshold which separates them from enchanted ground; but, sometimes in the very midst of Tiffany's itself.

Did ever two hours pass so quickly? Everything so magical, so bewildering, to all save the little lame boy, fresh from his Arabian Nights and Hans Andersen. First: watches, watches, watches! from the bigness of grandpa's silver repeater, to that of the shilling in their uneasy fingers; of all sorts, and prices, and colors; enameled in pink and blue, black and green; set with diamonds and pearls, and turquoise and garnets; and of a perfection and profusion to have crazed poor Peter Hele, who, with the slow heat of his German pertinacity, hatched the "Nuremburg Eggs," so called from their oval form-the worthy ancestors of this resplendent brood. The shilling-size are cunningly hidden away in tiny lockets, under bracelet clasps, in opera glasses; and there is a prettiness too fine-ladyish to be half appreciated by country lassies-a golden pocket-pistol, studded brilliantly with diamonds, having a tiny watch in the butt end of it; the pistol, by touching a spring, becomes a bouquet-holder, and under the watch, which raises like a lid, is a vinaigrette.

These Swiss marvels of minuteness in watches are usually considered a "modern improvement;" but it is known that those in general use in the olden time were much smaller than these of today. There is a will, still in existence, dated 1576, in which Archbishop Parker, bequeaths "to his frende and faythful brother in the church," the Right Rev. Bishop Ely, his staff of Indian cane, having a watch in the top; and in an account of Jewells and other furnishings sould and delivered to the Queene's most excellent majestie, (Anne of Denmark) from the Xth of April, 1607, to the February following. by George Heriott, her Highness' jewellor," there is the following" Item. A little watch set all over with diamonds, 1702."

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But the crowning glory of the diamond necklace throws even these wonders in the

shade

thirty-six stones of purest water, the largest alone worth $7,000, the whole glittering string $14,000. So costly a toy possesses very little interest except for the cold eye of speculation, so long as it remains inert and harmless in its bed of velvet and satin; but let its wealth of light form the glory of a snowy neck; let its prismatic glancings depend upon the quick motions of an eager, a restless, or a proud heart, fretting with its hidden pain; let it create passions-pride, envy, malice, downdragging vanity-itself staring right on, remorseless, cold, sharp, dazzling, the same to every beholder-and at once it comes within the pale of human interest.

Diamonds are intrinsically too valuable to possess any poetic sentiment; of all gems, they most need association to give them a claim to our sympathy. What does one care, to know that King Joseph I. of Portugal buttoned his coat with £100,000 --that a Persian monarch had a hole bored through £3,000,000, in order to wear it about his royal neck on grand court-days, or that Runjeet Sing sported a still larger amount in his armlet? And, on the other hand, what can be fuller of the romantic chivalry of the days of Charles I.--of the spirit of the luxurious amours of the court of Louis XV.-than the Duke of Buckingham's diamond tags, or the mysterious diamond necklace of Count Cagliostro?

This is by no means true of other precious stones. Emeralds, for instance, are essentially poetical; who is so unfortunate as to doubt the long-cherished belief, that when given as love-pledges, they fade or grow brighter, as the absent one proves inconstant or faithful? And the opal, with its ever-changing hues, with all the romantic superstition that attaches to the emerald, and none of its glassiness, appeals to our sentimental appreciation entirely on its own merits, as a thing of exquisite beauty and delicacy.

Pearls belong to the bride all the world over; happy she who can adorn herself for the altar with the identical set-yellowed by age, their antique setting full of a priceless quaintness-which graced the wedding-day of her great grandmother. These were deservedly the favorite jewels of the sumptuous Elizabeth. dress in which her majesty went to St. Paul's, to return thanks for the defeat of the Spanish Armada, was entirely covered with

The

a superb lattice-work of pearls, her hair interlaced with the same, and a costly necklace of them about her throat. By-the-by, the London Observer, of 1683, advertised a list of jewels, owned "by the late Prince Rupert," to be disposed of by lottery, the chief prize being a magnificent pearl necklace, valued at £8,000; and a nursery maid of the royal household of Queen Anne was tried and imprisoned for stealing a single pearl belonging to her majesty, worth £110.

But to return to our country cousins, to answer their impatient eyes. Where now? Ah! the bracelets. How barbaric, yet how simply elegant, those broad bands of gold, so pure, so virgin; how much more tasteful than the elaborate gewgaws whose rubies and diamonds frown down their unpretendingness!

And there the green-jointed length of a snake lies coiled in successive rings, while high in air, darting its golden fangs, it rears a be diamonded crest and flashes ruby eyes--the serpent still asserting its dominion over the fancy, at least, of womankind. And, indeed, this long-enduring partiality, among the " once beguiled," for so unflattering a conceit, is quite difficult to account for; surely, if other proof were wanting for the literalness of the Eve-and-apple story, this trait would go far to substantiate it. Of this sort was the depraved, or rather morbid taste which, after the Reign of Terror, made trinket guillotines the rage in Paris-a taste that would be equally unaccountable if one ever wondered at anything in the French character or its manifestations. In the account, before-mentioned. of "George Heriott, her Highness' jeweler," we find two other items apropos: "Aryng with a heart and a serpent, all sett about with diamondis;" and, "A pair of pendentis of two handis, and two serpentis hanging at them."

Perhaps the most manifestly-extravagant luxuries in this Palace of All-delight, are the vases which, in choice rarity, are disposed among its various wonders. That tallest pair-yes, as tall as sunburned Jimmy yonder, who was turned of twelve last Christmas-eve-of brilliant lapis-lazulicolored glass, set upon gold, with handles exquisitely turned, are worth $1,000. One thousand dollars at the mercy of a servant's broom-handle, or the stubborn crino

line of my lady herself! There are others at half the price, but much more beautiful, of the finest Sèvres, the flowers on them. by a curious art, painted to appear as if actually within the vase; and there are Chinese jars with their odd chow-chow of irresistible designs.

Step further back to the ladies' special province Fans of every shape, material, and price-from fifty cents to one hundred and fifty dollars-of papier-maché, sandalwood, and ivory-the last exquisitely carved, and reminding one of those much-prized dainties of our grandmother's ball-costume. With us, however, the fan is the veriest gewgaw, and will continue to be, until it means more in the hands of our belles than a toy to be pulled to pieces between the endless figures of "the German." It is not till one sees a fan in the hand of a Spanish woman, that he can understand the perfection to which refined coquetry can cultivate this, to us, useless trifle. How like a thing of life it flutters and chatters, and pleads and scolds! how the quick glancing of its jew. eled wings carries a message of hope or despair from its capricious mistress! how intimately it becomes associated with her dearest secrets, till either is pitifully incomplete without the other! how at mass, in the ball-room, on the plaza, or at a bullfight, they are equally one and inseparable! Fans studded with jewels formed a conspicuous article in Queen Elizabeth's famous New Year's gifts, and mention is made of her gracious acceptance, from her lord-keeper, when on a visit to him at Kew, of "a fine fan garnished with diamonds, valued at £400 at least."

Up stairs is a bewildering variety of clocks for mantel ornaments; and here we feel compelled to add one more laurel to the already cumbrous wreath crowning the memory of the magnificent Harûn AlRashid, by reminding our readers that the first clock seen in Europe was a present from that worthy caliph to Charlemagne.

The stern graybeard, with his bald crown, and scythe, and hour-glass, severe and uncompromising, is banished hence, and in his stead, bands of the rosy hours, attendant upon the gay goddess, chime, with ravishing sweetness, the scarce perceptible flapping of time's love-clipt wings. Many of these fanciful time-pieces are of white marble, profusely gilded, or inlaid with fine miniatures of the Louis

XV. beauties, with powdered locks and brocaded farthingales.

In elegant contrast to this rather meretricious style, are those fine French bronzes, latterly become so popular for mantel ornaments. Some of these are classical figures of great elegance, such as Kiss's Amazon, knights in armor, or in tournament, curious mythological groups, and game pieces of wonderful perfectness. One mantel-clock-an allegorical design-represents the earth supported by griffins, and surmounted by a star-crowned spirit, with cherubic attendants. Two bronze figures from Faust-the witch and Mephistopheles-are replete with the Germanesque grotesqueness, the fantastic diablerie, characteristic of the wildest conceptions of Retzsch.

A novelty for the dressing-room, certain to receive immediate approval and adoption, is the miroir face et nuque. Have you seen it-that happiest consummation of the appliances of the toilet? No more twisting off of the head to get the merest idea of one's back hair; no more blind faith in the mechanical accuracy of one's fingers in arranging its massive rolls and braids; but, by this magic-mirror, the gift is given us to see, at least a part of, ourselves "as ithers see us."

And all this conjuration, and this mighty magic, is obtained by the simplest contrivance imaginable-so simple, that you wonder why it was not stumbled upon long ago, by the stupidest of coiffeurs an oval mirror, attached by a jointed rod to any good toilet glass. This rod, projecting from the top of the glass, holds suspended, over and behind the head, the oval mirror, which reflects the back hair upon the toilet glass, just above the face.

Hitherto, this portion of the fairest ornament of woman, with all its suggestiveness, all its individuality, as one of the strong points, has remained a well-nigh undiscovered bourne, its expanse but dimly surmised, its landmarks a subject of conjecture the imperfect glimpses obtained, with much painful effort, through the agency of a hand-glass, only making confusion a little worse confounded.

No true coquette would ever consent to the touch of strange fingers in her front hair; none but her own cau twine, effectively, that beguiling tendril to just such an

angle with her favorite dimple; no one but herself can attain the curve best adapted to define the broad whiteness of her Grecian brow; and, since this gift of Venus has fallen to her handmaidens, let us see what rare beauties can be eliminated by the last touches of loving fingers on the professional aspect of the back hair.

The cheap enjoyment of the pictureshops detains our country cousins in delighted knots. At Williams & Stevens, it is Mrs. Spencer's dogs-a new pair-which especially engage their unschooled sympathies-the "Favorite and the Forsaken:" the one, a pampered Prince Charles, regaled with the dainty bones of birds, couched on silken ottomans, or velvet Brussels carpet, or in the warm folds of a crimson damask curtain, washed, and combed, and tenderly stroked, by the softest of white fingers, and decked with blue ribbon and silver bell-a heartless, insolent pet of fortune; the other, the outcast mother of four cold and hunger-clamorous pups, with frost-nipped noses and watery eyes, climbing over each other's backs in their selfish misery, the weakest always under, crying with all their four impatient stomachs for the food which the drained nipples of their forsaken nurse have not to bestow; the north end of a pile of boards their only house, a frozen brick their threshold, and icicles, bright, hard and dry, downhanging from their eaves; on the ground, the segment of a great shin bone, snatched from under some busy butcher's stall, at peril of the poor mother's life, and now quite hollow, empty, clean, licked to the last hope long ago.

If, say our country cousins, Mrs. Spencer painted that piteous wretch from the life, we commiserate her no less than her model -a shivering, empty, shrunken thing; one frost-bitten foot held up trembling; her once pure, white, sleek, silken coat--for it is plain she is of good family, and has seen better days-now all smutched and rough; her nose sharp and blue; her tail hopelessly between her legs; her ears agued despite their pricked-up eagerness; her eyes wits endy and worried out; the forlornest thing alive. Our country cousins can understand this picture well enough to be sorry they have seen it, although that element in it, which we who are sophisticated and sensitive, call coarseness, they say is

nature.

At Goupil's it is Rosa Bonheur's cattle pieces which charm them most, and they are particularly arrested by that certain simplicity, easy to feel, which makes the foreignness of the Chalk Wagon" familiar. Some home-pictures, too, take their hearts at once, such as the "Christmas Dream" and the Christmas Reality;" and an odd classical conceit, by Levasseur, after Hamon, called "My Sister is not at Home, Sir." Then there is " Fidelity"-the noble sorrow of a hound who watches by a grave-by Castan, after Dedreux ; and Eugene Lepoittevin's "History of a French Fishing Boat"-the Launch, the Departure, the Return, and the Wreck-full of the vigor, the venture, the changeful elements of coast life. Vernet's Arab Woman Surprised by a Lion," flutters the young ladies fresh from Cumming and Gerard; and his "Mass in Kabyle,”—a splendid spectacle of picturesque array-altar and cross and banner and censer, priest and soldier, scimitar and sword, spear and bayonet, burnous and turban and fatiguecap-brightens the eyes, and elates the heart, and lifts up the martial spirit of the boys.

But it is the art which comes nearest home-the daguerreotype-that appeals most successfully to the curiosity or the vanity of our friends from the provinces. Fredricks' new rooms have been filled with them daily; surprised, delighted, tittering sitters for ambrotype, Hallotype, photograph, or plain daguerreotype; groups and single sitters, lovers and sweethearts, the old folks and the toddling weans; some refreshing shape of harmless vanity evident in each, and not one in ten thousand above the beauty of those painted weaknesses which were made to be "hushed up among one's friends." And yet, of all the city's wonders, there is none of so many days as this; of all the city's pretty gifts, none which so comes home to the country's grateful bosom.

Of course, our cousins must have their opera, and ballet, and their legitimate drama. And, first of all, it is the uptownward tendency of the theatres, as of hotels, which those deplore to whom Castle Garden, or Barnum's Museum, or the Broad

way at farthest, have been, ever since their last trip to town-ten years since, perhaps -the ne plus ultra of high art in that line. In the Academy of Music, they are not easily made comfortable; they perceive a coldness; they are not at home. "A fine house, sir, but too far from the Astor." "At the Academy," they say, "you had your Fat Knight; why could you not leave us Jem Bags. We did not cry for your Trovatore; could you not spare us our Toodles? If we were content with Sleek. why should you force Shylock upon us. We were joined to that Blessed Baby; why could you not let us alone?"

But, after all, our friends are docile, and easily persuaded to fall in with the UnionSquareward march of the drama. We remind them retrospectively of the Hippodrome and the Crystal Palace; prospectively of the Central Park. We bid them mark what their Castle Garden has come to. We ask what fate threatens the late "Burton's." We point them to the Broadway, in the very act to take up its scenery and walk, even with that ghastly wound in its side, made by the envious Casca of adjacent improvement. We force them to acknowledge that not even another Baby Show can long uphold the American Museum.

So they would compound for Niblo's, with English Opera and the tight rope. But we drag them to the Academy, and show them an audience which takes its proportions from the largeness of the indomitable impressario. "La Grange is great," they cry, "and Maretzek is her prophet.” Beyond the teens, even into the forties, will they follow her. They take no count of blocks, and are careless of "the last stage down."

And so of Burton's, they grant us. By as much as the Tempest is above the Toodles, and the Midsummer Night's Dream, higher art than the Mummy, by so much is the "above Bleecker" of stage proprieties superior to the loose idea of the same familiar to the low latitude of the Park; by so much is the Burton of the Lafarge above the Burton of Rabineau's. Animam as well as cœlum mutant, qui up Broadway currunt.