HE THEATRE: AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE OF DRAMA, MUSIC, ART AND LITERATURE-Published every week from October to May, and as a monthly during the summer, at No. 42 West Twenty-third Street, New York.

SPECIAL NOTICE.

THE Convenient size of THE THEATRE renders it an admirable record of the stage worthy of preservation on the book-shelf. There are two volumes every year.

VOLUME I, which ends September 13, 1886, contains over 600 pages. Among the portraitswhich in each instance are accompanied by an article are those of Edwin Booth as Richelieu and Hamlet, Fechter as Hamlet, Dion Boucicault, Frederic Lemaitre, M. Got, Daisy Murdock, Henry Edwards, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Mrs. Shirley, Mrs. Gilbert, James Lewis, Whistler, James Beard, Gounod, Massenet, Ada Rehan, Modjeska, John Gilbert, Sarcey, Saint Saens, Octave Feuillet, etc.; besides a number of cartoons and illustrations of plays.

Among

VOLUME II contains over 500 pages. the portraits are those of W. E. Burton, Edgar S. Kelley, Madame Cottrelly, William Warren, Lillian Russell, Eugene Oudin, Wilson Barrett as Claudian, Mrs. Sterling, Pauline Hall, Geraldine Ulmar, Marie Jansen, Emma Carson, Bertha Ricci, A. M. Palmer, Lillian Grubb, Louisa Eldridge, J. H. McVicker, Edwin Booth as Hamlet, Edwin Booth as Iago; Helena Modjeska, Mrs. Langtry, Booth as Lear, Helen Dauvray, Louise Pomeroy, Irving as Mephistopheles; Genevieve Ward, Annie Robe and Lawrence Barrett as Rienzi, besides a number of illustrations.

VOLUME III contains nearly 600 pages. Among the portraits are those of Lester Wallack, Henry Irving, Augustin Daly, Constant Coquelin, Miss Rehan as Katherine, Miss Elsie De Wolf, Mrs. Wilbur A. Bloodgood, Miss Kathryn Brady, Miss Alice Lawrence, Mrs. James Brown Potter, Genevieve Lytton, Emil Zola, Steele Mackaye, May Robson, Franz Van der Stucken, R. M. Field, M. de Munkacsy, Patti in her youth, Mrs. Vincent, Irving as Jingle, Kate Munroe, Carlos Hasselbrink, Hans Makart, John Howson, John T. Raymond, Herbert Kelcey, E. H. Sothern, C. W. Couldock, Osmond Tearle, etc.

These volumes are handsomely bound in cloth, suitable for the library. The regular price is $3.00 each, except for Volume I, of which there are so few copies now in print that the price is fixed at $5.00. As the editions are very limited those who desire to possess themselves of a record which will become more and more valuable, had better send their orders in at once.

WHOLE NO. 90.

ENTRE NOUS.

THE death of Mr. John R. G. Hassard closes the short but intellectually brilliant career of a man who has had considerably to do in moulding thoughts of the times. For several years his music criticisms in The Tribune were looked upon as the best authority on such matters in New York, and as a member of the editorial staff of that paper he was a most valuable servant and teacher. He wrote with delightful ease, and always with accuracy, upon most every subject forced upon an editorial writer. He became associated with The Tribune in 1866 as book-reviewer and musical critic, and shortly after Mr. Greeley's death held the post as managing-editor for a time. He wrote the "Life of Archbishop Hughes" (1866); the Life of Pope Pius IX" (1877); a "History of the United States" (1877); "The Ring of the Nibelungs -a Description of its First Performance, in August, 1876, at Bayreuth" (1877); and "A Pickwickian Pilgrimage" (1881). He also assisted in preparing "The New American Encyclopædia," and was in 1865 editor of The Catholic World. In 1865-66 he was engaged as a writer on The Chicago Republican.

Mr. Hassard was born in New York in 1836, and he graduated as a scholar from St. John's College, at Fordham, in 1855. He died of consumption, an insidious disease which he had been fighting against for several years.

His friend and brother

worker, William Winter, has said of him: 'He knew, with Coleridge, that the first requisite for a good critic is a good heart, and he proved that he knew it time every he took up his pen. His keen intuition as to the relative importance of persons and themes was constantly manifested, and was still another lesson of practical value.

For

He

this journalist and man of letters, this devetee of art and music, who often sat alone for hours playing upon the organ the music that he loved or that he was to dissect, was also a man of the world. He possessed the sense of proportion and fitness, an old-time courtliness of thinking as well as of manner, a sense of the right place for trifles, and a very happy faculty for silence. He was not envious and he was not meddlesome. never thought it to be his duty, when acting as musical critic of The Tribune, to regulate the musical criticism of the other newspapers of this country. If he wanted a good criticism of an opera to be printed he endeavored to write it himself, instead of writing querulous observations condemna- | tory of the criticisms published in contemporary journals. It was another of his admirable and exemplary qualities that he perceived the critical duty of giving encouragement. He looked into the future of the artist, and he could be wisely lenient."

**

I DO NOT know when I have had so thoroughly impressed upon me the fact of the directness of death and the apparent indiscrimination of it, as in the example of the dramatic end to Federici, the opera singer. You can associate the possibility of death with some people; with others it does not seem even probable. Somehow or other, Federici had infected me with the idea that in all probability he was the Mikado of Japan; for in Gilbert and Sullivan's creation he was a magnificent result-so real, so superbly individualized, that it is difficult for me to believe that all this has been annihilated. Federici's death was instantaneous. He was playing at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne, in the opera of "Faust," personating Mephistopheles. Mephisto and Faust had to descend on a slide and disappear from the stage to the infernal regions. When Federici's head was almost on a level with the footlights he seemed to have felt a mortal pang, as he grasped the edge of the opera stage. A moment after he fell from the moving trap on which he was standing and expired.

During the run of "The Mikado" at the Fifth Avenue Theatre Federici attracted much attention. He was singularly happy in his acting of the title part, and his peculiarly expressive face, his remarkable grace, and splendid costumes, did much toward the success of the piece. He had a fine voice, and his enunciation made his songs always understood and enjoyed.

The coroner's verdict was death from heart disease. It is stated that at the burial the Rev. T. H. Goodwin was so overcome with emotion that he fell in a dead faint beside the grave, and Charles Warner, the actor, had to finish the service.

EVERYBODY was affected by the death of Rosco Conkling. That is everybody who is anybody. There are some little souls who don't care and wonder why others think so much of it. But there are and have been very few men like Conkling. Great in brain, Apollo-like in physique, and every inch a man--even to his valet. His integrity has never been impugned, and as a political servant he has been true to his best convictions. He was not afraid of anything-excepting afraid to do wrong. He was a statesman, and if future history is written with that same degree of prominence as the records of Cæsar and Sophocles have been narrated, Mr. Conkling will be set down as a splendid specimen of a man, an orator, and a master of sarcasm.

THE chief theatrical events of the week have been the production of "Otello" at the Academy of Music, which has been severly criticised; the revival of“ School for Scandal" at Wallack's and the re-entry of Miss Vokes's company at Daly's Theatre. The production of Sheridan's comedy should fill Wallack's from pit to dome every night. The company has been rehearsed personally by Lester Wallack and with the dissolution of the organization it is safe to say that it will be a long while before we will be able to have so intelligent and satisfactory