The Evangelical Alliance has gone, and left behind it nothing but animosities.  It was really a vast movement of the Presbyterian Church:  Geneva and Calvin were the exclusive proprietors.  Episcopalians, Unitarians and Baptists, Methodists and Universalists, were requested to stand aside.  The communions were always at some Presbyterian church.  Perhaps they thought the Episcopal Church exclusive, as some one said an Englishman carried his pride into his prayers, and said, “O Lord, I do most haughtily beseech thee,” and that the Unitarians felt “that any man who had been born in Boston did not see the necessity of being born again.”

Every one is extremely well dressed, in spite of the panic.  The hair is worn plain and off the brow, let us thank the genius of Fashion, so that every woman has a purer, better look.  Nothing destroys the expression of a good woman like breaking over that line which Nature has made about the forehead.  Our women have made themselves into wicked Faustinas and vulgar Anonymas long enough with their frizzes and short curls and “banging,” as the square-cut straight lock on the forehead is called.  Let us see the Madonna brow once more.  The high ruff, the sleeve to the elbow, the dress cut to show the figure, all bring-back the days of our great-grandmothers:  the opera is filled with Copley’s portraits.  The bonnets, too, are delightfully large, with long feathers.  Every new fashion brings out a new crop of beauties, but I could not see what beauties were brought out by those bold bonnets of last year, which were hung on at the back of the head.

We expect great fun from Dundreary rehearsing Hamlet for private theatricals.  Mr. Sothern has been asked to write down Dundreary, that so great an eccentric conception may not be lost to the world.  He answers that he has twelve volumes of Dundreary literature!  That shows how much industry goes to even an “inconsiderate trifle.”  This fine actor and most accomplished and agreeable man has been playing in two of the poorest plays ever presented to a New York audience.  Nothing but a capital “make up,” resembling one of the most fashionable men in town, who is Sothern’s particular friend, has given them point—­even then only to New Yorkers.  Sothern’s fondness for practical joking has brought about so many false charges that he is getting very tired of being fathered with every stupid trick which any one chooses to play, and will probably drop that form of wit, so really unworthy of his great genius and true refinement, for the man who could invent Dundreary and who can play Garrick is a genius.