Centenary Performances in commemoration of the death-day of John Sebastian Bach--the 28th of July--are this week to be held at Leipsic, (where an assemblage of two thousand executants is to be convened for the display of some of the masters greatest works,) at Berlin, at Magdeburg, at Hamburg, and at other towns in North Germany.
The prominence which the "winged words" of Victor Hugo have recently given him in the Assembly has called forth sarcastic insinuations and bitter diatribes from all the Conservative journals. There seems to be an intensity of exasperation, arising from the ancient prejudice against poets. A poet treating of politics! Let him keep to rhymes, and leave the serious business of life to us practical men, sober-minded men--men not led away by our imaginations--men not moved to absurdities by sentiment--solid, sensible, moderate men! Let him play with capricious hand on the chords which are resonant to his will; but let him not mistake his frivolous accomplishment for the power to play upon the world's great harp, drawing from its grander chords the large responses of more solemn themes. Let him "strike the light guitar" as long as women will listen, or fools applaud. But politics is another sphere; into that he can only pass to make himself ridiculous.
Thus reason the profound. Thus saith the good practical man, who, because his mind is a congeries of commonplaces, piques himself on not being led away by his imagination. The owl prides himself on the incontestable fact that he is not an eagle.
To us the matter has another aspect. The appearance of Poets and men of Sentiment in the world of Politics is a good symptom; for at a time like the present, when positive doctrine can scarcely be said to exist in embryo, and assuredly not in any maturity, the presence of Imagination and Sentiment--prophets who endow the present with some of the riches borrowed from the future--is needed to give grandeur and generosity to political action, and to prevent men from entirely sinking into the slough of egotism and routine. Salt is not meat, but we need the salt to preserve meat from corruption. Lamartine and Victor Hugo may not be profound statesmen; but they have at least this one indispensable quality of statesmanship; they look beyond the hour, and beyond the circle, they care more for the nation than for "measures;" they have high aspirations and wide sympathies. Lamartine in power committed many errors, but he also did great things, moved thereto by his "Imagination." He abolished capital punishment; and he freed the slaves; had the whole Provisional Government been formed of such men it would have been well for it and for France.