MRS. ANNA BISHOP.

WE are not grasshoppers. We are not so devoted to the singing Muses, (that is to say,) that, like the slender-legged dilettanti“ of the fields, we have listened ourselves into echoes. Our readers, (for whom we live, move, and do our admiring,) are content to know the name and magnitude of the planets among the prima donnas, but are willing to let the lesser ladies take their "milky way," named but in nebulæ, if telescoped at all.

What our country and Southern readers wish to know about Mrs. Bishop, is the fish to be nibbled for in our inkstand this morning, and we shall endeavor, with a single eye to their satisfaction, to catch it, and it only. The critics are quarrelling with scientific bodkins, about her ear and her voice, but we take it our readers care little to know whether her voice is a 66 sfogato," or a filo di soprano-whether she commits the harmonic atrocity of consecutive fifths, or gluts the ear with her excess of the diminished seventh. They (our charming subscribers) want a straightforward, comprehensible, daguerreotypical, and as-personal-aspossible account, of who she is, how much of a beauty, whether well dressed, and (last and altogether least) what is her particular style of singing. At this we go.

MRS. BISHOP'S FEATURES.

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Mrs. Bishop should be called Lady Bishop, for her husband is a Knight; and if she has a right to his name at all, she has a right to his title. How she comes to be away from Sir Henry, and under the charge of an old gentleman of sixty, who weighs three hundred pounds, and plays the harp divinely, it is each subscriber's business to guess for himself. Public opinion has put in practice its decision, that questions of this nature shall only be raised to the professional prejudice of un-attractive women. Signor Bochsa, we may add here, is the modern King David, never named without his harp, the long known teacher of England's aristocratic learners upon this becoming instrument, a wonderful player thereupon, and has been a very handsome man in his day.

In sculpture, we believe, the face is finished last, and of the great number of women who seem to have been slighted only in the finishing, Mrs. Bishop is one. Her figure and movements seem perfection, but her features are irregular, and it is necessary to be very near her, to see what expression has done to supply the incompleteness of her beauty. When singing, her soul takes the effect into its own hands, like a clock that strikes right whether the dial is wrong or no; and the way her nostrils, lips and eyes express beauty where beauty is not, is worth deaf and dumb people's coming to learn substitution by. When she stands near the footlights on the stage, however, (and we wonder whether she knows it,) the sharp throwing up of all the shadows of her features, by the ascending light, neutralizes even this expression, and she is then seen to great disadvantage. These misthrown shadows particularly destroy the greatest peculiarity of her face-her upper lip-the nerve that follows the arched line of its redness playing with its curve like a serpent on the rim of a

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MANAGEMENT OF GESTURE.

cup, and holding the expression in command with a muscular pliableness and vivid grace, that seems as if it would force the blood through, if the nicest shade of its will of expression were not obeyed. Eyes of kindling and fearless vitality, teeth unsurpassable, and brilliant complexion, are beauties there was not so much need of educating, but they fulfil their errands to perfection. We have not mentioned her nose. She is going South, where, in the taste for blood horses, she will find an appreciation for the inspired and passionate play of her thin nostrils, of which the North is, as an audience, incapable.

If Mrs. Bishop did not sing at all, and tormented no speculation in the sex of whose qualities she has as much as she likes, she would still be an object of very great curiosity to the sex whose costume she wears-she dresses so faultlessly, and, with such consummate art, communicates her motion to what she Wears. The test is most trying, of course, in the dress with which ladies are most familiar; and, at a concert, therefore, where she appears only in the evening dress of a lady, she is seen to the best advantage for comparison; though, on the stage, whatever her costume-Tancredi or Linda, male or female—she equally presents the faultless type of its perfection. It is a rarer thing than it would seem at first naming, to see how a high-bred, thoroughly educated, unerringly comme il faut lady, dresses and bears herself in full dress, and, of this sort of courtly phenomenon, Mrs. Bishop is as fine a specimen as we ever saw in Europe. Her management of her hands and arms, her reception of applause, her look of inquiry as to the will of an audience in an encore, are all parts of the same picture of accomplished high breeding, and we presume we are not wrong in mentioning this among her attractions as a public performer.

LACK OF FEELING.

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The critics concur that we have never had, in this country, a more perfect singer than Mrs. Bishop, as to taste and execution. She has a clear, high, manageable voice, and she has taken it thankfully from nature and made the most of it. It does not seem to matter much to her what language she is to sing in, or what style of song, or what music. Her pronunciation and execution are alike admirable in all. At her concert, the other night, she did what we should have predicted was impossible for her— full musical justice to two of Moore's most exquisite melodies. But, though we say "full justice," we must add that Nature suffers no faculty to perfect itself to independence of the heart. Some tones must be breathed on by a tear as they come from the bosom, or they are not recognized by the tears of the listener. Mrs. Bishop could not be the artist and actress that she exactly is, without putting her tenderness of nature far, very far, out of reach of easy call, and, though her music is thrilling, startling and enchanting, touching it is not.

As it was a common romance, in olden time, for a fair dame to look sweet upon her lord and master's eup-bearer, we cannot be surprised that the Muse takes the whim of smiling upon the Poet's publisher. FIELDS has handed up, to Apollo, many a primrosecolored cup of poetry. His ambrosial curls, of course, teem with the aroma. MOXON, the English publisher, whose speciality is the same, and after whom FIELDS is usually called, when named in the talk of poets, has, alike, had the favors of "The Nine," and is also publisher and poet. Well, we do not know, that(under the Socialist principles that govern Helicon)—we can find any reasonable objection. Take him, oh Melpomene!

But though every body, in the Slate-and-pencil-dom which is bounded South by the Lehigh and North by the Penobscot, knows Mr. FIELDS, yet we have six thousand subscribers, West of the Alleghanies and so down stream, who would be pleased to know his stature and complexion. Immaterial as it may be to mere enjoyment of the shade, it is natural to look up at the tree. We gratify this undeniable curiosity, for the friendly readers of the Home Journal, whenever it falls in our way.