Daily National Intelligencer

SELECTED.

ON JUBILEES.

We extract the following from an article in a Brussels paper upon Jubilees. "The most original of these ceremonies was incontestibly one that took place at Brussels, in 1549, in honor of the festival of Notre Dame du Sablon. It is related, by John Christaval Calvette, a Spanish author, in his account of the voyage that Phillip second made from Madrid to Brussels to see his father Charles fifth. This pomp began by the figure of the Devil in the form of a monstrous Bull, spouting fire from his horns; after him marched St. Michael, armed from head to foot, pursuing and combatting the Devil. He was followed by a great number of cars, representing all the particulars of the life of the Virgin Mary, from her conception to her assumption. This was followed by a musical car of a most extraordinary kind. A bear was seen seated, who played on an organ, composed not of pipes, but of twenty boxes, each containing a cat, shut up so as not to have the power of motion. Their tails were tied with cords above. As the bear pressed the keys the cords were raised, and drew upon the tails of the cats, who then miauled the bass or the tenor, according to the nature of the airs which the performer wished to execute. The cats' voices had been so well proved, and they were so well disposed in the organ, that this music of beasts did not have a false note. To the sound of this fantastic organ, monkies, bears, wolves, and other animals, danced round a great cage placed upon a theatre carried in an immense car. Two monkies seated in the cage playing the bagpipe, regulated the figures and the stops of the country-dance. This music the bull & the orchestra arranged themselves before the hotel, where Charles fifth, Philip second and their Queens, were placed to witness this representation, which, of course, interested and amused them very much. The miauling concert given at the fair of St. German, in Paris, about thirty years ago, was said at the time to be invented by Kircher. But the Abbe St. Leger suspects that the learned Jesuit had arranged it after this at Brussels. Thus the invention belongs to us. These are not the only animals who have figured in the musical way. Hogs have taken part in representations of this sort, as we learn from a work entitled Cato—and as Bouchette relates in treating this subject in his annals of Aquitaine."