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and farther from the chance of peace, as whole nations are taken away from the work of life to be used in the work of death, and the neatest way of killing our fellow-creatures occupies every day more and more attention-one might despair for the future of humanity if we could not turn to the opposite picture presented by the Western world. There, at any rate, we have an instance where a cruel war has yet led to a lasting peace; and in the spectacle of a great continent peopled by an undivided nation, which has had the firmness and fortitude to put down internal dissensions at any cost, we have surely a political condition which is immeasurably superior to that presented by Europe, where the different nations, all armed to the teeth, are only waiting

for the chances of fortune to be on their side to fly at each others' throats. The condition of the United States shows, happily, that this degraded condition is not an essential condition of humanity. And men like Sherman, who gave up their peaceful occupations in soberness and sorrow, and took to war in order to make war impossible in their country for the future, are patriots in the truest and most noble sense."

MR. CHARLES READE makes the extraordinary statement, in his last letter to the Tribune on the copyright question, that one hundred and twenty thousand copies are not a very large sale for a book in this country, and that he has known books that have quadrupled that figure in a year's sale. We should be glad to know the titles of the books that have met with this remarkable success. We should like to hear, indeed, the titles of those that have reached the sale of one hundred and twenty thousand. With the exception of "Uncle Tom's Cabin,” we can recall no book that has met with a sale in excess of the last-named figure. Of course, we are not referring to school-books. Instead of one hundred and twenty thousand not being a very large sale for this country, onehalf the number is a very great success, and books of some of the most popular authors do not attain a sale of over thirty thousand copies. Mr. Reade is wild in his figures.

THE Spectator has a very poor opinion of the much-trumpeted "Speaker's Commentary" which was to rout secular exegetists, and place the theology of the English Church on the sure basis of demonstrated truth. It says, referring to the most recently-published volume: "Nelson, in reporting the rout of a Neapolitan army, said, 'They lost little honor in the battle, for, though they lost all they had, that was very little.' And the story recurs to us on reading the commentary on Isaiah in this volume; for we might say that small as have been the merits of the previous volumes, the demerit of the first half of this one is greater than could have been expected even in the 'Speaker's Commentary.' Whatever the promises in the original prospectus, every real student of the Bible knows that he need not look to that Commentary' for any thoroughly honest criticism, such as is available in all good commentaries on the classical literatures. Orthodoxy, not truth, is, we might say avowedly, the first object of the editors and contributors. In as far as orthodoxy coincides with truth, as it does in the main, these commentators uphold the truth with more or less, but generally considerable, learning and ability, though, being clergymen, it is mostly the homiletic side of the truth, with but indifferent appreciation of the great historical characteristics of Jehovah's chosen nation; but, wherever modern science has

shown that the old orthodox notions and phrases are not true in their literal, and still popular, acceptation-as in reference to the Creation, the Deluge, the longevity of the antediluvians, and many other unverified traditions-these orthodox errors are dressed up in language made to look as like as possible to that of honest criticism within the lines of modern thought and knowledge, but really meaning nothing, after all."

THERE is one species of American literature for which the Saturday Review can always find a word of praise, and that is the official publications of the State and Federal Governments. Of Dr. Elliot Coues's "Birds of the

Northwest," published under the auspices of the United States Geological Survey, it says: "The book is one of reference rather than of use-for public libraries rather than for the private studies even of ornithologists; but it is a necessary link in that chain of information concerning the natural history and physical geography of their vast empire which the Federal and State authorities of the American Union have spared no labor or expense to amass, preserve in print, and render accessible to students who may digest it for the general reader, or to inquirers who may desire an answer to a particular question. As we have often said before, it is only by means of such liberal official patronage that this kind of knowledge could be collected and published; and it is chiefly, if not only, in these official reports that it is to be found.".. The Rev. W. W. Gill has nearly ready for publication in London a work entitled "Myths and Songs of the South Pacific," which will contain a preface by Professor Max Müller. Mr. Gill, resident as a missionary for many years among the islands of the South Pacific, has taken down these myths and legends from the lips of the natives, and has, with great care, collated the several versions. . . . Among the autumn announcements of books of travel iu London is "The Great Divide: A Narrative of Travels in the Upper Yellowstone," by the Earl of Dunraven.

The Arts.

EDDER'S pictures are so rarely seen that when any one of them is exhibited in a public place it is the subject of much interest and comment. Vedder's position as an artist is a difficult one to define. Careful thought leaves it hard to discriminate whether it is his fancy which dominates his brush, or his knowledge of the expressiveness of paint that is superior to his poetical conception. He does not seem to possess great power in drawing or modeling the human figure; but, notwithstanding this lack, his people live in the memory longer than men and women whose hands are moulded to look like flesh and blood, or whose forms appear like veritable bone and muscle. Whether he is spiritual, sensual, or intellectual, we cannot define, nor whether his pictures are elevating or demoralizing. We incline to think the latter. At any rate, they are interesting, and they are always exciting. In two we have lately seen at Doll & Richards's, in Boston, one of them, a woman's head, makes us ask ourselves all these questions. Her flesh is pale and white, but it looks as if, should| you touch the cheeks, they would be warm and soft.

Vedder understands, as we before remarked, the expressiveness of paint, for this flesh, not very well executed, derives its character and expression from the warm, red under-tint to it, which strikes the rough and permeates the heavy opaque white which forms the skin. We have often thought, when watching the eyes of a snake, a dog, a cat, or an ox, that it was only the tradition that they had no souls which made us deny to their pleading, shrinking, or magnetic personality, that attribute of man. The converse is not infrequently the case, and we have sought in vain to discern beneath the animal gleam, which lights the eyes of human beings in some cases, any indications of a higher personality. The eyes of Vedder's people make them appear to occupy this nondescript neutral ground, till we cannot say whether he intends them or not for the types of that strange phase of humanity deficient at the same time in human passion and in any immortal spark. In the same manner that Mr. Vedder compels this common red paint to express subtile heat and fire in his face, in this picture, he uses glazes and slight scumblings of purple and pale gray to describe and vivify a purple and white drapery about the shoulders of his subject, and make the modest and sober coloring gleam, and quiv. er, and sparkle, like lambent tongues of fire in the subtile recesses of the sea-waves.

This picture of a fair, young Greek woman, with laurel-leaves growing on a tree behind her, and draped in the pearly mantle, is called "A Sibyl; " but, from the perplexity it induces in the beholder, it might perhaps better be named "A Sphinx." The key to Vedder's pictures no one knows, so far as we can learn, and over and over again we ask ourselves whether tricks of paint he has discovered cause their production, or if, under an imaginative form, he intends to depict subtile and strange conditions of human consciousness.

The other picture is more comprehensible in its way, and is besides a very clever piece of composition of light and shade, texture and still-life. It is called "The JewelBox," and is a scene at a lady's toilet. Before a glass a sort of pre-Raphaelite woman, in girdle, brocade, and long drapery, which last hangs in heavy folds till it sweeps the floor, holds in her hands an open box, and around her are ranged all the fancy articles of a toilet. Beyond her stands a cabinet, curiously carved, and above it, half concealed and partially disclosed, is a tapestry of palegreen satin, embroidered with animals and flowers. The half light and dim shade in this portion of the picture form an admirable little "bit," especially combined as it is with various ornaments on the top of the cabinet, that give it crispness and sparkle. Behind the woman, and shutting off an inner room, hangs a red-pink curtain, and this is of the magical peculiar quality we notice in the mantle on "The Sibyl." Half like the sheen on clouds at sunset, the rich fabric glows as if in broad sunshine, or more particularly still as if it gleamed with its own inherent light. A brown-porcelain vase contrasts strongly with this background, and harmonizes this composition together into a very

agreeable whole. Treated in a commonplace way, this picture would have been most ordinary, but in Mr. Vedder's hand all the little details have variety and expression.

THE development of taste in householdart furniture is very interesting to notice. When Mr. Elliott's establishment was started in Boston, four or five years ago, the range of articles that he had studied out and manufactured was quite limited. From that time till this he has given the subject his special attention, and has examined all the old rooms and old furniture that he could get hold of abroad, with reference to its fitness and beauty. By this study and by continual thought, he has adapted more and more old articles to daily use in our American homes, till now his furniture exceeds in variety as well as suitableness that which is met with in the common styles of ordinary furniture.

In a visit to his rooms, a short time since, we saw a most charming exhibition of new American furniture made of the common woods of the country, chestnut, black-walnut, butternut, and oak, besides cherry, and even pine. They were decorated with slight carving, or with paintings and tiles made largely in this country, with designs of American vegetation or of animals. Here were tiles of palegreen ground-tint, with the common wild-rose and cat-o'-nine-tails painted charmingly upon them; and there were the decorations for lovely cabinets on which were ranged choice bits of china or charming glass. One of the pleasantest of these cabinets is of blackwalnut, about eight feet high. It consists underneath of a cupboard closed with long brass hinges, in the panels of whose doors are set dazed robin's egg-blue tiles. The shelves above the cupboard are some halfdozen in number, about eight inches deep and ten inches high. Slender square pillars at either end support the front of these shelves, while the back of the cabinet is formed of very smooth panels of the black-walnut. The top of this piece of furniture is formed of small, arched niches, the whole article being simply but sharply cut with incised ornament. To relieve any appearance of heaviness, the shelves of the cabinet are made of plates of thick glass, and the designer proposes to have small silk curtains, to match the color of the room, suspended on brass wires, to hang or to draw aside from the shelves of the cabinet. As Mr. Elliott had it in his rooms, this ornamental piece of furniture, so shallow as to be light in each part of it, was filled with faïence and other jugs, and with bits of Wedgwood-ware. In our parlors at present such articles as this are nearly essential, and Mr. Elliott's design makes them very convenient for showing the curiosities they contain; and they are unostentatious as compared with the ponderous bemirrored and be-marbled étagères, with shelves so deep that curiosities must be loaded on them two or three deep, to be lost in their recesses. The cabinet we have described is so small as scarcely to fill up or diminish the space even in a moderatesized apartment, but withal it is so pretty in its honest ornament and its pleasant color, that it might be copied literally, for a bit

of "still-life," into the most charming pict-lady seated at her cottage-door, surrounded

ure.

Other very handsome pieces of furniture consist of a mahogany chamber-set-of a bedstead, bureau, and other articles-also of Mr. Elliott's adaptation. Mahogany is now quite a rare wood in our market, but these articles are made of solid boards, strips, rundles, and knots of the wood. The bedstead, which is low and very broad, has a footboard consisting of a row of small pilasters, about ten inches high, prettily grooved, while the side-posts are decorated with bunches of Spanish acorns, in bass-relief, cut in little niches in the wood. The top, which is not very high, is beautifully ornamented with carvings of oak-leaves, pleasantly formal, and not so widely separated from the natural leaf as is apt to be the case with formalized ornament. Japanese tiles of storks and sprays of peach-blossoms complete this portion of the bedstead, which time will continually make handsomer as it deepens the color of the wood.

The bureau and large dressing - glass above it are as good as the bedstead, low and broad. Side-drawers, beside the lookingglass, have square tops above them, and solid, tasteful railings of incised mahogany promise protection to any scent-bottles or fragile things that may be left upon them. The pleasantest portion of this chamber-set consists of the slender and beautiful frame of the looking-glass, with the polished oakleafed ornament of the slender pillars that support it; and the frame of the mirror is the most close reproduction of old stylesfashions in which former generations particularly excelled. Here, again, as in the cabinet we spoke of, Mr. Elliott designs to add the accessory of color and a different material, by hanging to a brass rod, across the top of the mirror, blue or green silk curtains which can be readily drawn aside to hang behind the handsome pillars that support the glass.

In all this household furniture there is scarcely one feature more excellent than the careful finish of the ornaments. To persons accustomed to, and disgusted with, rough flowers, fruit, or other objects "turned" by machinery, and always full of dust and ready to drop off whenever a dry or hot room warps the wood ever so slightly, the smooth, delicate surface of the little incised lines, curves, and, in the more elaborate articles, the fruit and flowers, give a refined pleasure. Apart from the fact that they can be kept delicately clean, the sense that the most simple decoration even has been cared for is a source of proper and honest satisfaction.

ALTHOUGH there has as yet been no formal opening of any of our picture-galleries, there are indications that the coming season is to be one of unusual interest. To give connoisseurs an idea of the high character of the importations, two or three new pictures have been added to the collection at Goupil's. The most important of the number is a painting by Hugues Merle, entitled "The Old Woman's Story." It is a large work, and forms a pendant to the "Fairy Tales," by this artist, which was exhibited at this gallery last season. The subject represents an old

by her grandchildren and their fair-faced mother, her daughter. There are six figures in the group, of which the young mother, with a naked baby in her lap, sits in the foreground, and a little girl standing at her side rests her head confidingly on her shoulder. The action of the old woman is animated, and her hands are raised in an argumentative manner, as if to give expression to her story. The group is attentive to her words, and even the baby shows interest in the recital. There is a girl standing in the background, with her head showing above the old lady's shoulder; and a boy, a bright young fellow, wearing a white shirt and corduroy trousers, is seated at her side. The group is very clev erly composed, and, as a study of pretty chil dren, aside from the interest which centres in the adults, there is much in it to admire. The face of the young mother is also charming, and this shows, as well as the other heads in the composition, the delicacy of touch, transparency of tone, and perfection of finish, for which the pencil of Merle is so justly famous. The painting of the baby, and the rich, warm tones of color given in the flesh tints, are also fascinating features in the work. The subject is well kept together, and its story aptly expressed in the title.

Another clever work in the collection is a landscape-view representing the broad and expressive French school, by a young artist named Kokan. It is a forest-view, with a roadway leading off into the perspective, and a woodman's cottage in the distance. The forest is chiefly remarkable as a study of birches, but it assumes interest from the crisp style in which it is treated, and the dark shadows which are cast over the roadway by the afternoon sun. The picture is painted with great force, and is in every sense an artistic work. A. A. Anderson, a young American artist, who went to Europe last season, has a street-scene in Cairo, which is a fine example of architectural drawing and expressively painted. The regular opening at Goupil's will take place about October 15th.

Ar the Schaus Gallery, the most noticeable among the new pictures is an ideal head, "The Angel of Sorrow with the Crown of Thorns," by Alexandre Cabanel. The features are delicate, and are overcast with an expression of deep sadness, which is heightened in effect by a profusion of dark-brown hair falling over the brow. The crown of thorns is held to her breast in the uplifted hands, and the broad-spreading pinions fill the background. The head is slightly in clined forward, as if mourning over the em blem of sorrow, but there is nothing painful in the carriage of the figure or its accessories. The face is painted with rare taste; the modeling is exquisite, and every line is drawn with the firmness and precision of a master-hand. Great attention has been paid to the foreshortening of the arms and the drawing and finish of the hands. They are painted in relief, and are as tender in texture and as transparent in tone as those of a child. One can almost see the blood as it

courses through the purple veins in those slender and perfectly-moulded fingers. The treatment of the hands is unquestionably the crowning achievement in the picture, as the face is in partial shadow, which precluded the introduction there of flesh-tints in high and diffused lights, for which Cabanel's pencil is so famous. The bust is draped with an under-garment of spotless white, which expresses purity, and perhaps sorrow, and an outer robe of a silken, pale - green texture, lined with pink. It must be admitted that "The Angel of Sorrow" showed faultless taste in her apparel, and a worldly longing after harmonious colors. The costume, notwithstanding the connection of the subject with ethereal things, does not disturb the harmony of the composition nor its exquisite expression of sentiment.

One of the largest pictures at present on view at Schaus's is by Du Paty, and illustrates an incident of the war between France and England during the "Campaign of the Island of Ré," in 1627. The subject represents the Marshal de Schomberg encamped with his troops around La Rochelle, when he receives orders to march to the relief of the Count of Toiras, whom the English had surrounded in the fortress of St.-Martin. The marshal has just received his orders, and appears seated in camp, in the midst of his officers, considering their import. Soldiers are grouped around in various attitudes, some in the act of examining their arms, and others marching in squads toward the beach. The quaint ships of the period, with sails bent, are riding at anchor in the offing, as if in readiness for the embarkation of the troops, and to sail. The picture is admirably composed, the drawing of the figures clear and forcible, and the perspective effect is excellent. There are no positive colors used in the work, but its brilliancy is nevertheless very remarkable. The sky is cloudy, and a gray tone, in consequence, pervades the landscape, which gives it an attractive as well as harmonious character. The work is treated in the broad and decisive method of the Spanish-Roman school.

burned to the socket of the candlestick, tells the story of her weary work during the night, and the tired languor of her pose, together with the wan expression of her features, suggest the idea of exhausted nature. Her attire is well worn, but she is not in "unwomanly rags." Mr. Mayer in his portrayal has maintained the connection of the subject with the text very closely, but the painful features have been so toned down that one is not shocked as might have been expected from its literal rendering. The figure is well drawn, and the surrounding accessories are in perfect accord with it. The coloring is rich, and the cool gray light of early morning, which is diffused in the room, is introduced and handled with great judgment and feeling.

Music and the Drama.

AMERICANS have become so familiar.

ized with the great powers of Ristori and Salvini in the histrionic art that they are prepared to accord a rare fruitfulness to Italy as the mother of noble actors as well as of singers. The coming of Rossi, whose reputation abroad is nearly if not quite as great as those of the former two, will complete for us our knowledge of a gifted triad, who have raised Italian dramatic art to a high place. While we would not forestall judgment derived from personal knowledge, the dignity of Rossi's place as a tragedian entitles us to give our readers some account of his life and career.

ERNESTO ROSSI was born at Leghorn, in 1829, and, like all great artists, has had a stern struggle with his conditions before finally achieving his ultimate success. He was sent to the University of Pisa to pursue the study of the law, but the bias of his tastes showed itself unmistakably almost from the outset. Jurisprudence was neglected by the young enthusiast, and he constantly haunted the benches of the play-houses in obedience to an irrepressible instinct. The bent of his feelings finally culminated by his desertion of university-life, and uniting himself with a wretched band of vagabond players, who were then giving entertainments throughout the country towns of Tuscany. For some years he suffered and struggled in vain with his inauspicious surroundings, learning little more than the mere trivial details of his profession aside from that internal development which comes of all severe struggle.

THE artists are now returning to their studios for the season in considerable numbers, and several of them have already begun their winter's work. Constant Mayer, since his return to town, has finished a large picture in illustration of Hood's "Song of the Shirt." The scene portrayed is in an attic chamber, with a window looking out upon the house-tops of a great city, in the gray light of early morning. The sewer sits in a quaint old arm-chair with her work held in hering creative genius, though but little known left hand, and partly resting on her lap, while her right hand is raised in the act of tightening the stitch. Her eyes at the moment are raised as if the thought

"Of the cowslip and primrose sweet," or of the wish for

"A respite however brief!" were uppermost in her mind. The woman has a sad but expressive face, and we can imagine that she may have been beautifulas the poet says-before she had a heart to feel and break. The candle, which has

The first vital impulse to his future greatness, as also to that of Salvini, his rival, came from Joseph Modena, an actor of strik

out of the limits of Italy. Shakespeare had not yet become known to the histrionic art of Southern Europe, and Modena was deprived of this key of international reputation, though in both Germany and France the Shakespearean tragedies had become recognized in spite of the war waged against them by the old school of classics. The example and teaching of Modena, who became deeply interested in his young compatriot, constituted the turning-point of Rossi's life. Genius, however individual and creative, nowhere displays itself more than in

the power it has of assimilating the work of other great minds, and perhaps no bigher tribute could be paid to the obscure Modena than that so freely accorded to him by both Rossi and Salvini in the acknowledgment that to him they owed the model and suggestion of what they have since accomplished.

For a long time Rossi struggled unacknowledged, though conscious to himself of great advances in his art-growth, and getting constantly the same discipline which precedes effective power. At last he became attached to the Royal Company of Comedians playing at the court of Turin, and his ability attracted notice. Madame Ristori was a member of the same troupe, and it was owing to her mediation that he was selected as one of the representative company who proceeded to the first International Fair at Paris in 1855. It need not be said that the young and unknown artist acquired little beyond drill and experience by this tour. The attention of critics and public was so absorbed in the great duel between Ristori and Rachel that the subordinate actors remained unrecognized, and Rossi's genius, had it been tenfold greater, would have remained in the dark.

Our young actor, chafed and impatient, soon returned to Italy, with the determination of forming a company of his own, by which he could appeal to the world in a more successful fashion. Three years were devoted to the task, pursued under great difficulty of collecting and moulding a troupe to his pur pose. The unequaled fitness of Shakespeare as a vehicle of displaying histrionic power had already attracted his notice, for Ristori had made one of her greatest successes in Lady Macbeth. Rossi devoted himself to the study of the English dramatist with great ardor, and finally became confirmed in his resolution to introduce the plays to the Italian stage, and make them his specialty. He had not only to overcome the difficulty of securing adequate translations, but of infusing into his company the new spirit and school of acting demanded by the Shakespearean drama. It was long before Italian audiences could be made to accept the romantic and daring conceptions of the English poet, set as they are in such an extravagant wealth of incident, with any thing like enthusiasm. Tastes modeled on the severe and narrow standard of Alfieri and his predecessors could hardly be made to appreciate the boundless imagination which laid heaven and earth under contribution for its material.

Playing month after month to empty benches did not discourage his purpose, though it reduced him and his actors, whom he had succeeded in inspiring with much of his own enthusiasm, to severe straits. Perseverance at last, however, reaped its reward, and it commenced to be whispered in cultivated and critical circles that there was a new revelation of dramatic possibilities in the Shakespearean performances of the Rossi company. The tide once turned, it set with an ever-increasing flood of interest and popularity, and "Hamlet," "Mabeth," "Lear," Othello," ," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Coriolanus," were stamped with the seal of general admiration and approval throughout the Italian Peninsula.

66

Determined to extend his triumphs abroad, Rossi, in 1866, took his Italian company to Paris, and he was at once acknowledged by the leading critics, among the chief of whom were Jules Janin, the art-father of Rachel, Sainte-Beuve, and Théophile Gautier, as a tragedian of marked genius and scholarship. He became a favorite with the French court and aristocracy, and the fashionable star of Parisian amusements. From Paris, then the European arbiter of art-matters, the tragedian proceeded to Spain, Portugal, and South America, where his acting produced great enthusiasm among the impressionable playgoers of those countries.

In 1873 Rossi played an extensive répertoire of Shakespearean pieces at Vienna, and thence proceeded to Berlin and the other principal cities of Germany. Nowhere has Shakespearean art and criticism absorbed more attention than in the literary centres of Germany. The profound, almost fantastic scrutiny given to the great conceptions of the English dramatist among the countrymen of Goethe, Lessing, Tieck, and Schlegel, makes the interpretation of them a more than ordinarily trying task before critical and cultivated German audiences. Rossi was successful in passing the ordeal, and was warmly welcomed as not merely a gifted actor, but as a subtile and searching Shakespearean student. The Italian tragedian has thus appeared before the principal publics of Continental Europe, and it only remains for him to obtain the verdicts of England and the United States. He will ere long make his debut in New York, when theatre-goers will be enabled to judge for themselves on what foundation his great European reputation

rests.

To Rossi, even more than Salvini, must be given the glory of having naturalized the greatest of dramatic poets in Southern Europe, where his name had hitherto been little more than a shining myth, or at best a closet poet, locked up except for the perusal of the scholar. This, if nothing else, will secure him a hearty reception among English-speaking audiences. Rossi's greatest performance is said to be that of Hamlet, a rôle unique in this, that, while any well-trained and thoughtful actor can produce it respectably, none but one of remarkable genius can interpret its deeper significance in a way satisfactory to cultivated audiences. While we forbear any thing like a prospective judgment or a guess at Rossi's effect on American audiences, we cannot refrain from copying an extract from a letter of Mrs. Mary Cowden Clarke, published in the Athenæum, and written from Italy in 1873:

"Last night, at the Teatro Paganini here, one of Italy's best living tragic actors, Ernesto Rossi, gave a performance of 'Amlete,' the Italian version of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet.'

It is a finished piece of impersonation, careful, and very refined. The mingled awe and tenderness that prevailed, his manner toward the spirit of his father, the abstraction and melancholy of his demeanor throughout, the aroused look of wandering wits when answering those who address him during his assumed madness, evinced scrupulous study of the author's text, and great power of acting. The famous dialogue beginning 'To be or not to be,' was delivered with a concen

trated earnestness of thought and impressed imagination that well merited the enthusiastic Although extreme quietude marked the genappreciation it received from the audience. eral tones and bearing of Rossi's declamation, yet he rose into noble energy when the passion of the diction demanded it, and his

From Abroad.

OUR PARIS LETTER.

PARIS, September 14, 1875.

HE chief art-event of the past week has been

inflections of voice were varied and expres-The production of "Faust" at the Grand

sive. The fencing-match in the last scene was an exquisite piece of grace and manliness, while the closing touch of making the Danish prince stagger on to the throned seat, when effecting the death of his usurping uncle, and there towering above the mass of human ruin brought about by his kinsman foe, formed a picturesque and appropriate final effect to the drama. Ernesto Rossi's Amlete is a beautiful piece of acting, and forms an extremely interesting companionpicture of Italian Shakespearean representations to Adelaide Ristori's Lady Macbeth and Tomaso Salvini's Othello, of which latter I sent your readers a detailed description so long ago as January, 1864."

THE subject of music in the public schools is one on which the JOURNAL has had a word to say before, and assuredly it is a topic of no little public interest. The time has come when its treatment by the Board of Education furnishes matter of pleasure and congratulation. The slovenly and inefficient method, worse than its total neglect, in which it has been taught, has long called forth the reproaches of the friends of musical education. The Board of Education has become aroused to the facts of the case, and a radical reform is promised. A committee was recently sent to examine the system as carried out in the Boston schools, and, consequent on their report, a plan has been devised which promises to meet the wants of the public with an elaborate and well-devised machinery. Before this reaches the public, a chief superintendent of music, with eight assistants, will have been appointed, one for each district, to systematize the teaching of music. Each assistant superintendent will instruct the teachers in his or her district in the method to be pursued, and give such practical drill as may be necessary. The chief will exercise a general supervision over the whole, and see that there is a general unity of purpose and plan. This is the system carried out by the Boston Board of Education, and with such success, too, that celebrated musical visitors in Boston have declared that to hear the school - children sing in concert is not the least of the many pleasures to be enjoyed in the American "Athens."

Now that public action has been taken in New York, we may look for thorough and effective work in this important quarter. It will take some time, of course, to get the new system in good working order, but its fruits may easily be forecast. Lovers of music and musical education can appreciate the influence which will be exerted on popular taste, and, with the preparation of such a vast amount of material in the rudiments of singing and music, we may look forward to the time when Boston will no longer be able to say, with justice, that it has the only really great choral society in the United States. When the new system is thoroughly organized, we hope to say something of it at more length and in greater detail.

The

Opéra. This revival, which the wide-spread popularity of the work has rendered peculiarly interesting, has attracted more attention than that of any opera as yet performed at the new opera-house. Every thing that could be done in the way of mise-en-scène and costumes has been lavished upon it, and only three firstclass singers were wanting to make the representation perfect. These, however, were unfortunately lacking. The scenery was really exquisite, and but for a certain lack of appreciation of the source of the libretto, the grand poem of Goethe, it would have been faultless. The first scene, the desolate chamber of the sage, presented, of course, no opportunity for splendor or display. In the vision of Marquerite at her spinning-wheel, Madame Carvalho decidedly spoiled the effect by keeping her wheel in motion. The weird effect of the tableau is only to be gained by total stillness. However, we owe a vote of thanks to Madame Carvalho for posing herself, and for not having a vulgar-looking chorus-singer dressed up to represent her, as is usual on the European boards. Miss Kellogg was, I believe, the first Marguerite who ever took her place in this opening scene in propria persona. second act showed us a German village-street, with the quaint-pointed gabled-houses all decked for a festival, but there were no signs of the Kirmesse anywhere, neither booths nor shows. The beautiful chorus of the old men and the soldiers was sung by twenty performers in each division. The stage was thronged in every part with peasants, soldiers, burghers, etc., and the ballet, which was danced to the celebrated waltz-music, was charming and thoroughly characteristic and appropri ate. Next came the garden-scene with walks and flower-beds and vast shady trees, but the atmospheric accessories were very poor, the moonlight coming all of a sudden just when it was wanted in very primitive fashion. I once saw "Faust" performed in Berlin when this act opened under the golden and rosy tints of a summer sunset; these faded away to give place to a cold gray twilight; the sky deepened and darkened by degrees, and the stars came forth one by one, and finally the moon rose, and the act closed under a flood of silver radiance. In the fourth act we had a scene in Marguerite's chamber which I have never seen represented on the American boards, and which is apparently introduced only to give Sichel an opportunity to sing a second aria. Then came the cathedral-scene, very grand and imposing, a vast Gothic interior, seen in profile with the side of the altar, a dark, massive structure towering high in the air, and blazing with candles turned toward the audience. A low railing of white marble with an open portal surmounted with two statues stretched along one side; it was through this portal that Marquerite came to kneel beside the altar, while the other worshipers passed on into the body of the church. The street-scene, where the “Soldiers' Chorus" is sung and Valentin is slain, followed, and was the most beautiful of all. It showed the ramparts of an ancient German town, with a steep, ascending road in the background leading through a curved archway; the battlements, crowned with statues of warriors, crossed the stage at the back, while on the right-hand side towered a mas

sive carved gate-way surmounted by a clock. The whole scene was as perfectly the Germany of the middle ages as can possibly be imagined. Down the steep road poured the returning soldiers, while the populace rushed forth on every side to greet them, and the little children followed behind them to see the show. The costumes of the soldiery were perfect reproductions of those in the prints of Albrecht Dürer. The fifth act opens with a scene, or rather a series of scenes, which are seldom or never given in America, the different phases of the Walpurgis night. The first, which probably was meant to represent the Witches' Kitchen, was very poor, the witches being represented by ballet-girls muffled up in long robes after the fashion of the spectral nuns in "Robert le Diable." The orgy amid the enchanted ruins that succeeded was a very splendid but perfectly commonplace ballet. No trace of the ghastly and supernatural element that hangs around this portion of Goethe's poem was to be found amid the glitter and gorgeousness of the dance. It was a superb spectacle nothing more. The only novel feature introduced was a ballet of Egyptian dancing-girls with golden goblets, who represented the different phases of intoxication, some of them falling prostrate at the finalean idea as unpleasant as it was new. The sudden change from the enchanted palace to the gloomy and spectral heights of the Brocken was well managed, but the apparition of Marguerite was brought in in very clumsy fashion. A rocky point, with Marguerite standing on it, was pushed in at one side, and then pulled off in very primitive style. I remembered how, in this scene in Berlin, the apparition had glided across the dark front of the mountain, a pallid form, with unmoving feet, and fixed, stony eyes, and a scarlet ring around the slender throat. Marguerite's ascent to heaven was very beautifully managed.

Tier upon tier of white-robed, silver-winged angels were grouped amid the clouds and masses of rosetinged vapor, and seemed to speed the ascending spirit on its way.

So much for the spectacular part of this interesting revival. As to the artistic portion thereof there is unfortunately but little to be said. To those who have heard the Marguerite of Nilsson, Lucca, and Kellogg, the Faust of Capoul, and the Mephistopheles of Faure, there was but little to attract in the cast at the Grand Opéra. Gailhard is nothing more than a tolerable representative of Mephistopheles, and poor, short, fat, vulgar little Vergnet was, notwithstanding his fine and powerful voice, an almost ludicrous representative of the fiendtempted sage. In fact, when he threw off his robe and gray beard in the first scene, the natural impression was that, if Satan could not get up a better-looking young man than that, he might as well let it alone. As to Miolan-Carvalho, the first and original representative of the operatic Marguerite, she is no longer any thing more than a tradition of the past. She looks, it is true, surprisingly youthful and very charming, and she personated the character with great intelligence and delicacy. But her voice is nearly totally departed, her intonation is painfully uncertain, and her upper notes are weak and worn to a pitiable degree.

The revival of "Faust" well exemplifies the weakness of the Grand Opéra of Paris. We ask for art, and we are given a spectacle. Gounod at the Opera-House rivals Offenbach at the Gaieté. There are fine clothes and splendid scenery, innumerable supernumeraries, a monster chorus, and a gigantic corps de ballet. But better fifty nights of Nilsson than a

cycle of choruses and ballets. Better the one great genius, "Catalani and four or five puppets," than this dull level of magnificence and mediocrity. M. Halanzier boasts that he need not engage first-class artists. "Every sou that I pay to Faure is so much out of my pocket," he remarked lately. "The public would crowd the Opera-House if I put a set of dancingdogs upon the stage." Very good-then let us have the dancing-dogs by all means. Only we outside barbarians thought, when we heard of the great Opera - House, on which twelve million dollars had been already lavished, that it was intended to be a nation's art-temple, and not a mere money-factory for an enterprising manager.

Meantime, the musicians are hard at work. Ambroise Thomas has shut himself up in his country-seat to work unmolested at his opera of Francesco da Rimini." The partition of his "Psyche" is said to be finished. Gounod is engaged in giving the last touches to a new oratorio entitled "Geneviève." The rehearsals of "Aida" at the Italian Opera-House are already commenced, though the opera is not to be performed till some time in April.

The new books of the week are neither particularly important nor peculiarly interesting. The Librairie Ghio announces a new edition (the ninth), with additions, of the secret papers and correspondence of the Second Empire, with fac-similes of the autographs of the Empress Eugénie, the emperor, and Marguerite Bellanger. These compromising docu

ments were found, it may be remembered, in the Tuileries after the flight of the empress. André Sagnier has just issued a volume of military tales, by Emile Richebourg, entitled "Honor and Fatherland." Hachette has published "Popular Tales of Great Britain," collected and translated by M. Loys Brueyre. "Le Bleuet," by Gustave Haller, which, illustrated by Carpeaux and preceded by a preface from the pen of George Sand, has been issued by Michel Lévy, is a philosophical romance, written to prove the possibility of platonic friendship between young persons of different sexes. Lachaud has just published "Les Mariages de Londres," a new novel, by Pierre Sandrié. The Figaro is shortly to commence the publication in its columns of a new novel, by Xavier de Montepin, entitled "The Secret of the Countess."

Art-discoveries have been rife in Paris of late, the most important (if authentic) one being that of a contemporaneous portrait of Jeanne d'Arc, painted by a Scotchman named Power. This invaluable picture was recently discovered in a garret among a number of old and worthless paintings, belonging to an ancient but impoverished family. A committee of experts has been appointed to examine the portrait, and, should they decide favorably as to its authenticity, it will be purchased by the government and will be placed in the Louvre. Another discovery was made by the workmen who were engaged in digging the foundations for the new Church of the Sacred Heart at Montmartre. It consisted of an oaken coffer, bound and clasped with iron, which contained an illuminated livre d'heures in manuscript and in a perfect state of preservation. This precious relic is to be placed in the Musée de Cluny.

General Frossard, the former tutor of the prince imperial, who died a short time ago, has left recorded in his diary an estimate, by no means flattering, of the talents of his royal pupil. He declares that his abilities do not appear to him to surpass a good medium," and that, in a bourgeois class of twenty or thirty boys, he would rank tenth or twelfth. His

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only decided talent, in those earlier years of which the general writes, appeared to be for drawing. Perhaps this last of the Napoleons may settle down into a peaceful artist after all. His projected alliance with a Swedish princess appears to be somewhat apocryphal, as the "Almanach de Gotha" bears no traces of the existence of any such person as the reported bride-elect. The present King of Sweden has no daughters; he has, however, a sister, but she is about forty-five years of age, and, consequently, nearly as old as the young gentleman's mamma.

The gossip of the theatres informs us that Théodore Barrière's comedy, now in rehearsal at the Vaudeville, is called "The Scandals of Yesterday," and is said to be a very powerful work. Alexandre Dumas is said to have nearly finished his great piece for the Comédie Française. He has changed its title from "Monsieur Candoule" to "L'Etrangère," or, rather, its title remains still undecided. Emile Augier contributes this season, not only a new comedy to the Vaudeville, but one to the Palais Royal. It is hard to imagine how this graceful, scholarly writer could ever adapt his style to the coarse tastes of the frequenters of this latter theatre. Théodore Barrière, besides the comedy for the Vaudeville before mentioned, will be represented at the Théâtre Historique by a drama called "Simone," and at the Palais Royal by a short piece, as yet unnamed. Poupart Davyl, whose "Maîtresse Légitime was so great a success at the Odéon last year, contributes a drama to the Porte St.Martin, and a piece, entitled "De Shava à Shava," to the Odéon. Lecocq is to be represented at the Folies Dramatiques by "Le Pompon," a three-act opéra-bouffe, and at the Renaissance by "Les Porcherons." At this latter theatre, a new operetta, by Strauss, entitled "Cagliostro," is also to be represented. Offenbach promises us no less than four new works for the coming season. Mademoiselle Schneider has had her coat-of-arms painted on the walls of her new and gorgeous hotel on the Avenue de l'Impératrice. It consists of a golden lyre on an azure field, with the motto "Je chante" (I sing).

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LUCY H. HOOPER.

OUR LONDON LETTER. SOME One who has chosen the strange nom de plume-for nom de plume it must surely beof Theodore A. Thorp, has just now a new play running at the Globe. It is called "Talbot's Trust," the trust in question being a young widow and her little girl. These have been left by a dying husband to one Harold Garnet, his bosom friend. And a pretty bosom friend he turns out! He makes love to the widow, though he cares not a jot for her; he robs her, forges her signature, and then attempts to run away with another woman. However, Mr. Villain doesn't succeed in doing this, and with his discomfiture the drama ends -in fact, death steps in between justice and him; he dies on a sofa in the house of her he has so basely wronged. Whoever Mr. Thorp may be, he's not a dramatist. From beginning to end the piece is weak; often it sinks into bathos. An adaptation of Offenbach's "The Brigands" follows. The libretto of this is by Mr. Henry S. Leigh, perhaps our very best writer of humorous light verses. Mr. Leigh writes a great deal for Fun, and for the famous Christy Minstrels, and I don't think there's a better hand at repartee in London. If his "Carols of Cockayne" haven't been published on your side the water, they certainly ought to be.

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