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Music and Morals in Chicago.

The Marriage of Figaro did not interest the Chicago people when it was produced in that peculiar city.  Had it been called the “Divorce of Figaro,” it would have aroused their warmest admiration.

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MR. GREELEY’S AIDS TO LITERARY EFFORT.

On the general principle that “no one is a hero to his valet,” not even a valetudinarian, it may be safely asserted that the divinity that doth hedge most great writers is lost the moment their admirers become acquainted with their habits of thought and methods of composition.  The popular delusion that H.G. “knows every thing” is calculated to work indefinite injury to some modest men who are supposed to “know something.”  GREELEY’S mind, like a camera obscura, may be said to retain its impressions while in the dark, and to lose them when exposed to the light.  He has never, to any extent, heeded the scriptural injunction against walking in darkness, which explains why so many Tribune readers are in the dark concerning the truth and justice of popular questions.  Consequently, as in the case of other great men, when GREELEY’S mind becomes pregnant with a theme, moved to pity by the neglected education and limited mental resources of many of his readers, he repairs to one of his numerous literary lairs, and ransacks the pages of the Past for plunder befitting his pen and party.  When he is about to write an editorial article on Protection, he invariably prepares his mind by reading several chapters on the “Manly Art of Self-Defense,” which accounts for the wisdom and brilliancy displayed by him on the subject of tariffs.  In order to approach a discussion of the subject of vegetarianism without prejudice, H.G. repairs to the wheezy WINDUST’S, where, for hours at a time, he literally “crams” with his favorite dish of pork and beans.  The Amelioration of the condition of the Working Classes is another favorite theme with GREELEY, and, in order to discuss clearly and cogently the many phases and ramifications of this lively and exciting topic, he devotes several hours to the study of “Idleness as a Fine Art.”  Before writing a particularly funny or spirited article upon Politics, the Fine Arts, or the Drama, H.G., it is said, may be seen for several hours at the Astor Library, poring over BURTON’S Anatomy of Melancholy.  While in the throes of literary labor upon The Great Conflict, he had numerous dogmatic discussions with Mr. KIT BURNS, participated in several flights of the “fancy” to the bird-battling haunts of New Jersey, and even pursued the ministers of muscle to the scene of their bucolic pastimes in the P.R.  It is, perhaps, unnecessary to remark that Mr. GREELEY’S Recollections of a Busy Life were inspired almost directly by frequent collusion with the pages of DE QUINCEY and COLERIDGE, whose wild lives and turbulent