THE HETEROGENEOUS.
" AnairvAL of Jenny Lind at New York—Execution of Professor Webster": such is the heading of a New York letter in the papers this week. Its beginning introduces a new combination : "Three great sources of popular interest and excitement," we are told, had existed for a week,—the arrival of "the Nightingale," the killing of Webster, and sharp debates in the United States House of' Representatives. Assuredly the Great Republicans have an all- swallowing appetite for stimulants, and. manage to devour -the most incongruous at one and the same time. When yon look into the details, the incongruity appears still' more vividly. The debates in the House of Representatives, for instance, were "sharp debates" on "the conciliatory measures in relation to the North and South."
But the interest in the important debates was all merged in the execution of Professor Webster for the murder of Dr. Parkman. There was "no sympathy" with Webster ; yet the amounts chro- nicle every look, every movement: we are told of his robust health, the books he gave away, his shaking hands with this man or with that, of his appearing in "a black dress-coat and pants" —such it seems being the solemn Yankee name for pantaloons or trousers : and after describing the last farewells &c., one writer
proposes, in lieu of describing the agony of the family, to retreat and shed his tears with theirs ! Now did he effect that operaon ? 'Webster "suffered only four minutes, when his spirit fled for '.e4-er, to be judged before the tribunal of the Ilfost -High. He died deeply perutent,"—though, it is believed, with a lie on his lips! We have in this country the same tendency to gloat over the mi- nutiae of criminal exits from the world; but certainly the citizens of the Model Republic, as exhibited in these accounts, do it with a gout unknown to our tamer senses. With a like excess they outvie the Liverpool enthusiasts in their anticipatory devotion to Jenny Tin d. They get up serenades to receive her, they assemble, they shout, they adulate; they are astounded at her "manners, con not, conversation, kindness," and concert on board the steamer, and at her charity. They stare at their own numbers, and wonder at their own marvelling—larnatiou bigger wondering than any we can get up in the Old World, They are stupified at the huge sums she earns, and glorified at the ex- cess of Barnum's humbug—which deluges the Union with puffs, foments crowding almost to rioting, raises the price of concert- tickets tickets by auction ; and they hardly know which is the more go- ahead critter, the golden Nightingale or that blessed blarneying Barnum, who can humbug even Yankees. They contrive, in their wonder-insiking manner, to convert a genuine artist into an object of all but swindling. They do not scruple to exploiter even Jenny Lind's fine feelings but will bet on any woman that she will not cry half so hysterically or copiously as they made the Lind do with their extravagant, turbulent, canting idolatry. And so when they had plenty of all that, they suffer her to set out, do those stern Republicans, "to pass a few days with G. G. Howland, Esq., at his noble mansion on the Hudson"; "after which, she will sojourn for a week at Franistan, the tasteful seat of Mr. Barnum." And thus it is that the Model Republic welcomes Jenny Lind—as the successor to Tom Thumb and the "What is It," that eminent pos- ture-maker whom Barnum patronized and attempted to exhibit at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly as a wild nondescript.
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