know how your own darling loves you, and—"

YOUNG LADY. "Hush! Don't bother. Here comes VIEUXTEMPS."

VIEUXTEMPS plays, and the audience listens with the air of people who are dreadfully bored, but are afraid to show it. He disappears with an amount of applause carefully graduated so as to express enthusiasm without the desire for hearing him again. The Rural Person remarks that "he doesn't think much of fiddlers anyhow. Give him a trombone, or a banjo, for his money."

MR. WEHLI then trifles with the piano. Him, too, the audience politely endure, but plainly do not appreciate. They have come to hear NILSSON, and feel outraged at having to hear anybody else. A cornet solo by the Angel GABRIEL himself would be secretly regarded as undoubtedly artistic, but certainly a little out of place.

CHORUS OF RIVAL PIANO-MAKERS. "What a wretched instrument that poor fellow is made to play upon. Nobody can produce any effect on a STEINWAY piano. It's good for nothing but for boarding-school practice."

CRITIC, (who knows Mr. STEINWAY.) "Anybody can please people by playing on a STEINWAY. I defy WEHLI or any other man to play badly on such a superb instrument as that."

YOUNG MAN. "Dearest! Do you remember the day when you gave me one of your hair-pins? I have worn it next my—"

YOUNG LADY. "Oh, don't bother. NILSSON is just going to sing."

And she does sing, with that voice so matchless in its perfect purity, that even the disappointed critic grows uneasy as he tries in vain to find some reasonable fault with it. She ceases, and amid wild cheers from the paying part of the audience, silent approval from the deadheads, and shouts of "Hooroo!" and "Begorra!" from the Scandinavian Society, MAX'S flowers are brought in solemn procession up the aisle, and laid at the feet of the Improved Nightingale.

CRITIC. "Those flowers will just be taken out of the back door, and brought in again to be used the second time. There's a hand-cart waiting for them now, at the Fifteenth Street entrance."

SIX PRIME DONNE, (who were not asked to sing at the NILSSON concerts.) "Well, did you ever hear 'Angels Ever Bright' sung in a more atrocious style? If that is NILSSON's idea of expression, the sooner she leaves the stage to artists, the better."

CYNICAL OLD MUSICIAN. "Bah! NILSSON infuses religious sentiment into her singing, and these envious creatures don't know what religious sentiment is, so they think she is all wrong. If she had sung HANDEL with a smile, and a coquettish tossing of her head, they would still have hated her, but they would not have ventured to call her "inartistic.""

YOUNG MAN. "Darling! I had rather hear your sweet voice, than listen to NILSSON or a choir of angels for the rest of my—"

YOUNG LADY. "CHARLES, you will drive me wild, with your intolerable spooniness. I'll never come out with you again. See how the SMITH girls are looking at you."

RURAL PERSON. "—So I says to the usher, 'If you think I'm a countryman who don't know what's what, you're everlastingly sold.' 'I'm from Philadelphy,' says I, 'and we've got singers there that can knock spots out of your NILLOGGS and KELSONS and the rest of 'em.' So he just—"

RIVAL MANAGER. "My tear fellow, you shust mind dis. MAX vill lose all his monish. NILSSON can't sing, my tear! She vanted me to encage her a year ago, but I vouldn't do it. Dere ish no monish in her, now you mind vot I says."

DISTINGUISHED TEACHER. "You call her an artist! Why, look here, if one of my scholars were to phrase as wretchedly as she does, I'd never show my face in public again. Her voice is so-so, but her school is simply infamous."

CELEBRATED TEACHER. "Well, I don't mind saying that I never heard her equal in point of quality of voice. She gives you pure tone, which is what hardly any other singer does."

NINE TENTHS OF THE AUDIENCE. "She is perfectly lovely. There never was anybody like her."

CONNOISSEUR, (who really does know something about music, but who actually has no prejudices.) "Her voice is such a one as MARGARET must have had when she sang by her spinning-wheel, before fate threw her in the way of FAUST. And these professional musicians will tear her reputation to pieces among themselves! Why should musical people be, of all others, most fond of discord?"

CRITIC. "There! those fools are determined to make her sing again. I can't stand this. I'll see MAX once more, and if he don't do the right thing, I'll say that NILSSON was played out in Europe before she came here, and that she is a complete failure."

YOUNG MAN, "Sweetest! may I ask you one question?"

YOUNG LADY. "No, you shan't. Will you keep quiet? Everybody is looking at you."

EVERYBODY. "Sh! sh! sh!"

NILSSON sings again. As her delicious notes die out in the thunder of applause, I make my way out of the Hall, into the clear and silent night. For not even the witchery of VIEUXTEMPS'S violin is fit to mate in memory with the peerless tones of NILSSON.

Here I meant to do some fine writing, but as this is PUNCHINELLO, and not the "Easy Chair" of Harper's Magazine, I conquer the temptation. Wherefore I accept the gratitude of my readers, and sign myself

MATADOR.

Congestion at "The Sun."

PUNCHINELLO is pained to know that the circulation of his bewitching contemporary, The Sun, is daily growing more and more languid. Paralysis has set in, and the patient but seldom has the energy to dictate the daily bulletin giving the state of his circulation.

Only a Suggestion.

It will be bad enough for the Prussian Cavalrymen to water their horses in the Seine, but if they go to driving their stakes in the Bois de Boulogne, won't the Parisians think it looks a little like running things into the ground?

OUR MASTERS OF ART.

MR. PUNCHINELLO: The knights of the pencil and easel, having returned from their usual visits to their summer haunts, and having exchanged the blue skies and grassy vales of Nature for the smoky ceilings and dirty floors of Art, (I believe that is the proper way to commence this kind of an article,) your correspondent has visited a number of them, and has obtained authentic accounts of their present occupations, and has also been permitted to make slight sketches of some of their principal works.

BIERSTADT, as usual, is painting Yos. Having entirely exhausted the Yo Semite, he is now at work on a grand picture of a Southdown Ewe, and will soon commence a view of his studio,—at sunrise. He well deserves his title of the Yeoman of Art.

JAMES HAMILTON, of Philadelphia, is painting a sunset. It may not be generally known, but it is a fact, that he paints the sun every time it sets. The following sketch will give a good idea of his next great picture. The nails are inserted in the sun to keep it from going down any further, and spoiling the scene.

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS, of the same city, is hard at work on a picture which is intended to represent, to the life, water in motion; a specialty which he has lately adopted. It is entitled "A Scene on the Barbary Coast; Water in Motion, Steamer in the Distance." The subjoined sketch represents the general plan of the picture.

Still another Philadelphia artist, Mr. ROTHERMEL, is very busy at a great work. He is putting the finishing-touches to his vast painting of the Battle of Gettysburg. On this enormous canvas may be seen correct likenesses of all the principal generals, colonels, captains, majors, first and second lieutenants, sergeant-majors, sergeants, corporals and high privates who were engaged in that battle; and by the consummate skill of the artist, each one of them, to the great gratification of himself and his family, is placed prominently in the foreground. Such distinguished success should meet appropriate reward, and it is now rumored that the artist will soon be commissioned by Congress to paint for the Rotunda of the Capitol a grand picture of our late civil war, with all the incidents of that struggle, upon one canvas.

Of the artists who affect the "shaded wood," we learn that Mr. HENNESSY, now absent in Europe, is drawing another "Booth." Whether this is intended particularly for "Every Saturday," I cannot say, but I suppose it will answer for any other week-day. At any rate, here is his last "Booth."

NAST is at work on a series of sarcastic pictures illustrating the miseries of France. Most of them show how LOUIS NAPOLEON ought to finish up his career and dynasty. In fact, should this gifted artist ever travel among Bonapartists, he will certainly be hunted down in an astounding manner, and the populace, adopting American customs, will probably congregate to see him astride a rail. Two of his smaller studies are very interesting. One of them, called "An Astray," is simply a ray of black light; and another, intended for the contemplation of persons who desire light and airy pictures, is simply a portrait of himself, entitled "A Nasturtium."

The well-known Miss EDMONIA LEWIS has been exhibiting her statue of "HAGAR," in Chicago. As HAGAR was the first woman who suffered anything like divorce, Chicago is a capital place for her statue, and Miss LEWIS evidently knows what she is about. Her name reminds me that our great landscapist, LEWIS, is at work on a picture which he calls "A Scene in France after a Reign." This little sketch will give an idea of the painting.

Most of our other artists are also worthily engaged, but time, (I believe that is the regular way to end an article of this kind) will not permit present mention of them.

EFARES.

HAM AND EGGS.

War always brings with it its signs and portents. A hen somewhere in Virginia, according to a local paper, has lately produced an egg on the white of which the word "War" was plainly written in black letters. Now, when we consider that the career of LOUIS NAPOLEON was more or less influenced by Ham, there is something very significant in the advent of this providential egg; nor should we be surprised to learn, ere long, that the same hen had laid another egg, this time with a Prussian yolk.

Eheu! Strasbourg.

Reading an old traveller's description of the famous Cathedral of Strasbourg, we note that he dwells particularly on its "fretted windows."

Ah! yes. They have much to fret about, now, have these old windows; and that makes us think whether the larmiers of the roof over them do not run real tears.

"Lo" Cunning.

The cunning of the red Indian of the Plains.

PETTICOAT GOVERNMENT.

A gaunt, tall, spectacled creature, gender feminine, number singular, person first, case always possessive, that's the standard bearer; a broomstick from the top of which floats a petticoat, that's the standard. Under that standard march in the U.S. at least 20,000,000 feminines, and—horrible to relate—gal children are on the increase.

Certainly the devil must have invented petticoats. After EVE had finished up that little apple job, she went into the petticoat business, and—hence all our tears. Instantly petticoat government became a possibility. Then, as her daughters became wiser, they invented the weeping business, the swooning business, and the curtain lecture business; they went for our pocket-books and they got them, and petticoat government became a probability. Not satisfied with the pocket-books, they are now going for the business by means of which we fill the books, and oh, what a hankering they have for public pap! They stick to the curtain lecture business, but now they do it before the curtain. Alas, petticoat government is now a certainty!

It's all very well for you to talk about the grandeur of the governments of BOADICEA, and ELIZABETH and CATHERINE, but I don't believe that BOA, or LIZZY, or KATE would have been very nice as a companion, if she and you were sitting before the fire, and she wanted stamps and was going for them as a matter of business. Besides, there was only one of them at a time, and they didn't trouble common people much, but in this enlightened nineteenth century I have seen a poor, miserable, six foot dry-goods clerk turned out of a retail store by a strapping little female, who couldn't jump a counter worth shucks. I have seen him in his misery industriously study "What I Know About Farming," squat on a farm in the West, and bring himself, his wife, and four miserable offshoots to the alms-house by endeavoring to apply the rules set down in "What I Know About Farming" to 160 acres of land. I have seen the poor, half-paid type-setters strike for their altars, their sires, and more wages, and I have seen a troop of petticoats, with gal children inside them, trot into the type-setter's place, so that the miserable compositors were compelled to return and starve on four or five dollars a day. That's petticoat government with a vengeance. Putting your nose to the grindstone isn't nice at any time, but it's awful when the gal children turn.

But that is only the beginning. They have struck for bigger things. In the expressive language of the immortal JOHNNY MILTON, they are going for the whole hog. They want to vote; some of them have been caught repeating already; they want to sit on juries, and they want to go to Congress. Heaven forbid that any of them should ever reach the House of Representatives! Imagine the size of the Congressional Globe if we should send women there! Why, there would be as great a dearth of paper in Washington as there is now in Paris. They want to shave you, dress you, doctor you into your coffins, preach a funeral discourse over your remains, and then take your will into the Surrogate's Court and fight over the little property they have left you.

They say all this means that they are our equals, and intend to show it. Listen. In a town some hundreds of miles distant there is a law firm whose sign reads thus:

Shades of our forefathers! Ghost of BLUEBEARD! Spirit of HENRY VIII! can this thing be? Imagine old LABAN'S daughter starting in business, and hanging out a sign something like this:

Don't you suppose that JACOB, if he had found that sign over his doorstep, would have raised a row, and if he had been overcome, don't you suppose he would have wondered what he served those seven years for?

Oh, young man, sitting by the side of that dainty damsel, looking so spoonily into her deep blue eyes, playing so daintily with her golden curls, sucking honey so frequently from her ruby lips, beware! beware! BEWARE! Remember, when she wants stamps, you can't put her off as your pa did your ma. You can't say, "Business is awful dull," because she'll do the business, and make you her book-keeper or porter or something of that sort

Petticoat government is all very well for those who like it. Some men go through life playing a sort of insane tag, in which, first their mothers' petticoats, and then their wives', are hunk, and they never leave hunk. As for me, give me trouser government, or give me a first class funeral procession with me for the corpse.

Brethren,