own composition. These, with parts of a symphony by Mr. Bristow, were analyzed by the lecturer; who also, just before the close of the performance, addressed the audience upon the subject of Art and Society, in a humorous, pointed, brilliant, vehement, sensible, and enthusiastic manner, which excited close attention, and led to some amusing demonstrations of a difference of opinion, all of which Mr. Fry met in the most manly and generous way. We are not surprised to learn that he has sustained pecuniary loss by the enterprise, and we fear he may regard it as cold comfort to be told that he has. notwithstanding, achieved a succès d'estime, which must be invaluable to him in his future career. His course has not only made its mark upon the musical season in NewYork, but upon the musical history of the country. Were it only for the advantage of so broad a display of the radiant energy and ability which characterizes the American, we hope he will not consider the undertaking altogether a loss. Not every man can afford to fail so finely. For he must see, what we all see, that the illsuccess is in name and not in fact. This is so genuinely recognized, that we are glad to announce a complimentary concert offered to Mr. Fry, by a large number of gentlemen, which will take place upon the evening of Tuesday, March 1st, at Metro olitan Hall, the use of which, for that evening, is presented by Mr. Harding, the proprietor. Why will not every reader, whose eye falls here, and who cares for music, go and buy a ticket, even if he cannot attend? Boston is more than sharing our musical enthusiasm. It has fairly beaten us this winter. At a recent rehearsal in that city there were 3,235 tickets taken at the door. They have been inaugurating a Music Hall, and having chamber-concerts and oratorios (for which Boston is famous), and symphonies, and operas with Alboni, and all kinds of debutantes, and morning rehearsals, and Germania soirées of mingled Strauss and Mendelssohn. In fact we quite lose our breath in the effort to keep up with the rush of Boston musical enthusiasm. But this we know, not only from the quality of the music, but from our faith in the critic upon whom we most rely (Dwight's Musical Journal), that Boston has been enjoying much of the best of every kind of music, and knows how to appreciate it. Philadelphia has been listening to Mozart's Requiem performed by the young Männerchor, which was well done and well attended. Signor Perelli, whilom tenor at Astor Place, now musical director of the most aristocratic voices in Phila delphia, has been giving a soirée or two, where the singers, as well as the audience, were of the very yellowest kid. The performance, we are told, evinced the utmost care and skill in the teacher, and good general talent among the select singers. Europe offers nothing new. Auber has been appointed imperial chapel-master, and was to compose the nuptial mass for the imperial Spanish bride, Montijo. In London the musical season has not fairly commenced, but we record with pleasure, the unquestioned success, as a pianist, of Mr. William Mason, son of the well-known musical professor, Lowell Mason, of Boston. It seems to be determined that Grisi and Mario are to come in the Spring. FINE ARTS. OUR artists suffer a total eclipse nearly three quarters of the year, for the lack of a suitable place to exhibit their performances in, and, in this respect, they labor to much greater disadvantage than their brethren of the steel pen, who may publish their works at any season of the year. The opening of the National Academy of Design is the flowering of our painters, who then display themselves to all the world, or at least to all that part of it which happens to be in New-York between the first of April and the Fourth of July. During the rest of the year the painters are working like moles, in the dark, so far as the world is concerned; but, in reality, each one like a St. Simon Stylites, at the top of a tall flight of stairs in a roof-lighted studio, where they toil during nine months of the year, with occasional visits from their chance acquaintances. The Academy should keep its galleries open all the year, not only for the sake of its members, but for the public; for, unless one happens to be in NewYork during the three months that its exhibition lasts, there is no opportunity of knowing any thing of the progress of art among us. There is no show-place for pictures and statues except in the gallery of the Academy. When a fine work is produced, it is immediately purchased by some wealthy patron, or connoisseur, who hangs it in his parlor where it is only seen by his intimate friends. Our artists do not, therefore, work for the public, but their patrons; and, instead of being teachers of the people, like authors, they become, like upholsterers, mere decorators of private apartments. It is vain to hope for the appearance of a Michael Angelo or a Raphael among us under such circumstances. There is a gentleman living in the Fifth Avenue, whose drawing-room is enriched by some of the finest produc tions of the modern painters of Europe, but who will permit no one out of his own household to look at his treasures of art. Connoisseurs, amateurs and artists, have vainly endeavored to obtain permission to look at the Landseers, Eastlakes and Turners, that rumor says hang upon his walls, giving no pleasure nor instruction to any eyes but these of their wealthy owner, who, probably, derives little pleasure from them himself. They are his own property, and he has a right to keep them to himself; as much right to veil them from the public eye as to put linen jackets on his armchairs, or blinds to his windows. We would not invade the sanctity of a private dwelling, though it contained a chef d'œuvre by every artist whose name is known to fame. But art can never flourish in a country where the works of artists are hidden from the public eye. Artists will not strive to excel each other when their works cannot be seen, or waste their energies in adorning the walls of a darkened parlor. Pictures and statues are excluded from our churches; and, were they not, they could only be seen by sectarian worshippers. It has not yet been thought necessary to cover the walls of any of our public buildings with paint ings; with the exception of the suite of apartments called the Governor's Room in our City Hall, there is no building in the city belonging to the people, and open to their inspection, which has any artistic works to boast of. The Governor's room contains some fine portraits of all the Governors of the State, the Mayors of the City, and some of our military and naval heroes. The Art-Union, by its free exhibition, was doing a good work for the cause of Art, but, by some legal quibble, the operations of that excellent institution have been stopped, and nothing now remains for art but the hope that the proprietors of our great hotels, in their strife to outdo each other in magnificent expenditures, will, after exhausting the resources of the upholsterer, call in the aid of the artist to create attractions for their palatial taverns. The proprietors of the Astor House have already exhibited a most commendable spirit in this respect, and have decorated their various rooms with some very fine paintings, which have cost more than twenty-five thousand dollars. It suits the taste of English noblemen, to hang upon the walls of their drawing-rooms, and banqueting halls old pictures that have been torn from convents and churches, which represent expiring martyrs and other subjects little calculated to inspire feelings of gayety or cheerfulness. Such subjects as these we should advise our hotel-keepers, if they ever emulate the refined example of the hosts of the Astor House, to avoid, and to let their pictures be such as will charm while they elevate the feelings of their guests, or visitors. The popular sentiment may demand Scripture paintings, but they are hardly adapted to dining-rooms and parlors, where the tone of conversation and feeling is widely at variance with the looks of expiring saints and repentant Magdalens. Mr. Rossiter has painted a very large picture representing the Prophet Jere miah "rehearsing a lamentation," in which he has grouped together all the personages who might be imagined present by the river of Babylon, when the children of Israel sat down and wept over their captivity. The artist has grappled with the immensity of his subject with great boldness, and thrown over the multitude of personages he has introduced, an atmosphere of warmth and beauty that admirably harmonizes with the ideal scene. The painting is on too large a scale for exhibition in an ordinary room, and the artist has sent it to the southwest, to be shown to those who have but few opportunities of seeing a work of any artistic pretension. NOTE. THE BOURBON QUESTION.-We learn from the Rev. Mr. Hanson, the writer of the article in our last number, "Have we a Bourbon among us?" that several new and important facts have come to his knowledge, bearing upon this romantic subject, which he will embody in an article for our April number, wherein he will examine, in detail, the new work by BEAUCHESNE on the (supposed) death of the Dauphin, which we have noticed in our Editorial Notes. PUTNAM'S MONTHLY. A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art. VOL. I.-APRIL 1853.-NO. IV. NEW-YORK DAGUERREOTYPED. BUSINESS-STREETS, MERCANTILE BLOCKS, STORES, AND BANKS. OUR Philadelphia, is a plain, UR Custom-House in New-York, like large, solidly-constructed, and costly building, of white marble, which some people of delicate, æsthetic morals make complaints about, because it resembles a Greek temple. But the resemblance is not so exact that any body need be distressed by it. The Parthenon was only the expanded idea of a log cabin, and we have quite as good a right to an expanded log cabin in New-York as ever they had in Athens, for we have had a good many more of the primitive types of the Greek temple in our country than there ever were in Greece. Our meridian is very nearly the same as that of Athens, and the climatic requirements of both cities are similar. We think it is quite probable that our architects would have planned just such buildings as our socalled Greek Custom-House, if a copy of Stuart and Revett had never crossed the Atlantic, or Athens never existed. Our Custom-House is not so objectionable for being like the Parthenon, as for being unlike it. We do not imagine that Ictinus, the architect of that temple, would complain of his New World descendant for imitating his work, but, for not doing it more accurately. Our CustomHouse displays the Greek triglyphs in all their stiffness; but, in place of the ornamental metopes it should have, it has utilitarian panes of plate glass, to let in light upon the "attic cells," where customhouse clerks sit at their mahogany desks. There is a pediment with heavy cornices, guttæ and all, at either end, supported on ponderous fluted pillars; but the tympanums are destitute of sculptures, so VOL. I.-23 that they look like picture frames hung up without pictures. Perhaps, some of these days, when custom-houses shall be abolished, and this marble building shall be appropriated to a better purpose, the statuary, the metopes, and the polychromatic tints which once beautified the Parthenon, will be supplied. There is room for improvement all round us; and, when the "good time" comes, we dare say our Custom-House will receive its share of attention. In the mean time, we would advise all discontented amateurs of architecture to be tolerant towards our Greek temples, and remember that, if they are not very becoming to the uses for which they were designed, that they are very solid, have cost a good deal of the public money, and are likely to last a long time; and that, if they might have been better, they might also have been worse. Our Custom-House was built under the presidency of General Jackson, who was certainly no Pericles, and could hardly have been expected to build public edifices like him. Besides, Pericles had a Phidias and an Ictinus, as General Jackson had not, to embody and improve his magnificent projects. But the site occupied by our Custom-House has been sanctified by a presence greater than that of Pericles, or any other Greek; it was in the balcony of the old Federal Hall, which stood on this spot, where Washington took his inaugural oath, as first President of the United States, and the pediment of the CustomHouse, which now looks like a blank canvas, with a splendid frame, should be filled with sculptures representing this great event in our national history, and commemorating the spot which was consecrated by its enactment. The CustomHouse stands in a splendid position for the display of a sculptured picture; its portico rears itself boldly up in its snowy magnificence, in front of Broad-street, and is elevated from the surface of Wall-street, on a platform to which you ascend by eighteen marble steps. The two ends on Wall and Pine streets are precisely alike, but the difference of position gives a look of grandeur to the Wall-street end, which the other hardly suggests. The building is entirely isolated, fronting on Wall, Nassau and Pine streets, and having an alley of ten feet on the south side, which separates it from the neighboring buildings. As a piece of masonry, it is doubtless equal to any structure in the world; and, if let alone, will probably endure as long as the Pyramids. It is built entirely of white marble, which was brought from the Berkshire quarries in Massachusetts; and the only wood-work employed in the whole structure is in the doors. The form of the building is a parallelogram, two hundred feet long, and ninety feet wide; its height is about eighty feet. The pediment at each end is supported by eight fluted columns of white marble, five feet eight inches in diameter, and thirty-two feet high. On each side there are thirteen square pilasters, with windows in the embayed intervals. The interior is divided into a grand rotunda, and numerous offices for the different departments of the CustomHouse. The rotunda is sixty feet in diameter; the dome is supported by sixteen Corinthian columns, thirty feet high, with capitals of white Italian marble. Under the dome are the desks of the four deputy.collectors, and around the sides of the hall are the desks of the entrance and clearance clerks. All the business transacted with the Custom-House must first be begun here, and, in the little room adjoining, where the cashier keeps his desk, nearly two-thirds of the entire revenue of the country is received, and paid over to the Sub-treasurer, whose vaults are in the north-eastern corner of the building. In the crypt are the offices of some of the important subordinate officers; and it is only by a visit to this part of the structure that its solidity and massiveness can be felt. Some of the marble blocks weigh over thirty tons. The roof is of marble: the slabs weigh three hundred pounds each, and overlap each other eight inches. The building was commenced in May, 1834, and completed in the same month in 1841. The cost, including the lot, the lot, was $1,195,000; the building alone cost $950,000. Emerson says in one of his poems "Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, As the best gem upon her zone." But we Yankees have too many other good things to boast of, to feel any pride in the Parthenons which we rear for all sorts of purposes, and the Custom-House in Wall-street, solid, beautiful, and costly as it is, we are by no means proud of. Perhaps our pos Metropolitan Bank. terity may be; but our High Bridge is a much finer architectural object than could be found in all Athens, and we are not proud of even that. The late |