Memoranda of the Life of Jenny Lind Author:Nathaniel Parker Willis Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BIOGRAPHICAL MEMORANDA JENNY LIND. The visit of Jenny Lind to America, professionally considered, is the first step in a new epoch. While St. Petersburgh a... more »nd Vienna were within the circle of demand for the first talent in its prime, New York was, hitherto, far without it. No singer, who could still please a court and an European capital, thought yet of a trip to the transatlantic Republic; and though sometimes, as in the case of Malibran, we have had great celebrities here before they were famous, and oftener still, have had them here after—in their dawn and in their twilight—we had never seen one of the first magnitude during her meridian. It was time that our advances in wealth, civilization, and the more refined arts, should be recognized, however, and time that all genius, which had homage to pay to nations, and fame to ask from them, should turn as promptly and eagerly to new and republican America, as to the monarchies of decaying Europe. We might think, perhaps, that this recognition was due to us long ago. It is true, there might have been an earlier Columbus for this as for other discoveries. But it . needs a leading and bold spirit, late or early, to take the first step in new valuings and believings, and Jenny Lind is such a spirit—capable of pioneering in this, as in things more sacred and loftier. The coming professionally to America, was not her first exercise of a bold and far-seeing originality of judgment, nor will it be, if she live, by many a stronger and more inspired instance, her last—or, so at least, we venture to predict, after some study of her character. Deferring to the latter portion of the volume, however, what we have to say, individually, of the professional merits and career of the great songstress, let us proceed to our more immediate p...« less