three-quarter view, having a dark beard and mustacheos. He has a large, slouched hat, and a brown jacket; the right hand is tucked in the breast of his vest. Signed, and dated 1646. This is a picture of uncommon brilliancy of colour, and is in every respect of first-rate merit.

2 ft. 5 inch by 1 ft. 11 in. P. now in private hands in Paris. Price asked 15,000 fr. 6ool."

Smith undoubtedly made a mistake (or else it was a misprint) in putting the date as 1646. It is very plain 1640 on the picture.

VOSMAER, writing of the period in which Rembrandt painted this work, says:

"Dan les années 1640, 41, 42. Rembrandt a produit plusieurs portraits magnifiques. Le doreur est un de ceux où le couleurs se montre déjà dan tout l'éclat d'une gamme chaude et dorée, où la touche moins fondue s'épáte. L'expression de la vie est aussi d'une force extraordinaire dan ce superbe portrait.

"En général les portraits de cette période révèlent un esprit plus poétique, une conception plus grandiose que ceux de la première manière, qu'on pourrait nommer plus prosaïques, plus historiques. Le faire tend a devenir plus immatérie la toile et les couleurs disparaissent pour faire place à une impression qui semble immédiate."

The work is in a perfect state of preservation; the color is indeed "warm and golden." But this golden quality is not a forced one, it is not a false one. The color is pure, the background is spare, simple space, there is an atmosphere around the head as when one is in

a room.

The mouth is partly opened, the eyes on the alert, as if the man were about to speak. Yet the eyes do not stare, and the mouth is not widely opened, so as to show beyond doubt that the man is speaking. There is a happy

medium between the art which slurs over all facts and represents vagaries, and the art which chronicles all facts with a brutal persistency and pertinacity.

It is this medium which Rembrandt strikes. If it does not sound strange, I will say his man is not too much alive.

IT is in the shadows that one who knows anything of the theory of painting finds the most masterly workmanship. At a distance how dark, after inspection, how light. Only those who have handled the brush can fully appreciate this quality. It is the attainment the most admirable in painting the human face. For shadows should not be part of the face as the features are, but only necessary helps toward modeling. Few modern painters are successful in achieving this transparency in the shadowed parts of the face. We see many well-drawn portraits to-day, many with good color in the lighted parts of the flesh, but the shadows are apt to be muddy, or cold and blue.

Rembrandt sees shadows within shadows, lights in darks, that other painters would not dare record even if they saw them.

Indeed, this boldness bespeaks Rembrandt's greatness perhaps more forcibly than anything else. He saw all, he dared paint all he saw.

Observe the breadth with which the beard is painted, but the great minuteness and care with which he represents the hairs of the mustache! It is this breadth and minuteness combined, made to harmonize one with the other, as in nature, that makes us look upon this picture with something akin to awe.

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YES, it is with something like a feeling of awe that we stand face to face with the work of man's hands that counterfeits humanity so nearly.

It almost seems a mockery upon our being, that time and tide should sweep away the real man, blow him out of existence, blot out all his deeds, wash away any trace of him save this which the painter holds for us. That art should snatch his likeness thus and stay it. Mark the very glances of his eyes, his moving lips, his dilating nostrils, and thus preserve through two long centuries an image so near the quick, the living, breathing man, that the query rises in our mind on gazing upon it, could he not have made it speak with a little more labor?

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How the painting became to be known as "Le Doreur," whether it is the portrait of a gilder or a framemaker or no is not known. But whoever it is, his spirit remains with us through the triumph of art. The noble art of portrait painting, may it never die. After a lapse of two hundred years, Rembrandt seems to stretch out his hand from across the sea and from the Netherlands with a warning finger. And we must not let it die! E. K.

TO LAWRENCE BARRETT AS JAMES

HAREBELL.

WITH brush of intellect and hand of skill
And color of a rich imagination,

Thou paintest for our moral elevation
A peasant-poet, one who ne'er bore ill

To any man; whose generous heart o'erflowed
To his destruction. Borne down by heavy load
Of dire misfortune brought by treacherous friend,
Still did his faithful heart nor break nor bend
Till e'en his simple, guileless eye had seen
This fearful treachery. Then o er his brain,
His brain of kindly thought and wondrous sheen
Of twinkling fancy, there rolls a hideous cloud
Of madness, and he wanders, with this shroud
Of death wrapt round him, mid the snow and rain,
For twenty years, in peace at last to die.
And this, thy picture drew from many an eye
A tear of sorrow, pity, and of love,

A tear that lifted us so far above
This world of selfishness and sin,

That there was e'en a sight of Heaven within
The compass of our view. For this we thank thee.
M. C.

RAPID IMPROVEMENT.

(New York Morning Journal, Dec. 26) THE THEATRE, which claims to be the only dramatic magazine in this country, has made rapid improvement under the editorship of Deshler Welch. The Christmas number, just published, contains articles and poems of interest relating to society and the stage.

IN THE LIMELIGHT'S GLARE.

I CAN forgive and pity a man for having the St. Vitus' Dance, but I wish a most Unhappy New Year to the cotton-brained automaton who pounds his feet on the floor just behind my chair in a theatre. This pattern of idiot doesn't decrease. There is a fine army of them now, all with their brains in their feet. They go to a comic opera, and walk ten miles sitting in their chairs. One would think they had served time in a tread-mill. Bang, bangity bang, large, elegant bangs. You can turn right around and give the banger a scorching gaze straight in his happy eyes, but he'll never cease his sprint race till he misses the musical accompaniment. The 'twixt-the-acts cocktail scout, who doesn't walk on his own feet as often as he does on other people's, is a very fair fiend in his way, especially when he drags a wet umbrella across your shirt front. The lady in the high hat has been scolded to such an extent, that I fear another word would make the pretty thing weep. But bring in a vat of boiling oil, and into it dip, that I may hear him sizzle, the jumping-jack who sits behind me dancing a sedentary polka through an entire performance, funeral marches and all.

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SOME of our girls grow to be so beautiful, that it is all very surprising. You have to ask yourself the question: "How do they do it, you know?" Take a walk up Broadway any bright afternoon, and across your startled vision there will fit the brightest, airiest procession of January rosebuds and daisies that ever blushed their sweet innocence out of the richness of a sealskin visite. O, they are splendid, and just as magnetic as can possibly be. All the handsome actors in town make a point of going up to see them. And the girls are so kittenish over the whole thing, you know, and they nudge each other in their dear feminine way: "O, Agnes, here comes that big, lovely Herbert Kelcey, and do see, child, he has taken his moustache off, and now do you think ⚫ he is so handsome that way?"

To

And then Mr. N. C. Goodwin comes downtown with a friend. He has his collar turned up, and the happy expression on his face would indicate that there is a verbena bean in the heel of his shoe. The comicality of Mr. Goodwin does not exhibit itself in street smiles. perform that operation he goes indoors. I shan't talk about handsome actors any more this week, because it will create too great a demand for the paper. Those that I have named will be shipping THE THEATRE all over the world during the next few days.

ROBERT DOWNING is not creating any tumultuous acclamation among critics, but he is doing as well as any new man can expect to. He has undertaken a big task, and if he succeeds he can thank fortune as well as himself.

The people of these times are a very queer lot, and are seldom prepared to receive fresh talent. If Mr. Downing can stick to his business long enough, will refrain from growing any fatter, and simply hold his own as far as his art is concerned, I doubt not that he will be accepted as one of our great tragedians in about ten years from now. It seems incomprehensible to the average mind that youth and ability can go hand in hand. The hardest thing that a young man has to battle against is his scarcity of years. He has to be twice as smart as an old man, or else he is called callow and inexperienced. In twenty years from now it is likely that Henry Dixey will be nothing near the splendid actor that he is to-day.

There is a wide difference in individuals. One reaches the full tide of his powers much earlier than another. Experience is undoubtedly of great value to an actor, but in certain instances there may surely be an innate embodiment of the art that requires but little practice to round into perfection. I do not insinuate that Mr. Downing is an illustration of this, but neither his juvenility nor his limited stage career should cheat him of his just due, even from the most austere sources.

**

I WOULD like to see Helen Dauvray give all her attention to management and run a stock company in this city. I haven't much doubt of her success, for she seems peculiarly anxious to do the right thing by the public. A clever woman is really more apt to succeed in a business venture of any sort than is a clever man. This is because most of her dealings are with masculines, and from an irrepressible sense of chivalry, she receives a great deal of gratuitous aid from them. With as attractive a theatre as the Lyceum for her workshop, Miss Dauvray could gather a very strong company to gether, and by giving good plays (American plays if possible, but sink all sentiment about that, and do foreign plays if they draw better), she would be soon gaining money and fame for herself. She ought to set these plays better than any American manager is accustomed to do now. Without any display of Anglomania, she could afford to emulate the English in this respect, and besides exercising extraordinary care and expense on the scenery and mechanical effects, train every dumb supernumerary to be a blending ingredient and not a destroying blight. In a word, by her personal supervision she could perfect the details of a dramatic presentment to a point that would astonish and charm the New York play-goer. She has the material for a wonderful company at her beck and call. Her only trouble would be to get a competent "leading lady." believe that Minnie Maddern is the strongest one obtainable in America, but even she would not fill a melodramatic-flavored part. There is an abundance of leading men. could have then in invincible pairs. Osmund Tearle and J. B. Mason, for instance, Eben

You

I

Plympton and Jos. Haworth. Mr. E. H. Sothern, whom I know Miss Dauvray would never let go, is entirely indispensable. How beautiful this company could be made in the lighter regions by infusing in it the loveliness of two such girls as Eugenie Blair and Blanche Thorne. Then Miss Dauvray could sail away each summer to London and La Belle Paris, and with her discerning managerial eye pick out novelties to suit her good taste and fetch 'em over for our approval. O, I think it is the prettiest scheme under the sun, and I can hear the box-office receipts jingling like mad at this very moment.

1887. When we write it 1900, do you expect that Mr. Dixey will still be on the road with "Adonis ?"

It

MCCAULL'S Opera Company is playing a very extraordinary engagement at the Grand Opera House, Chicago. This company is far and away the best of its kind in America. would be very difficult to improve upon its presentment of "Don Cæsar." It is nothing less than grand opera. Miss Griswold, the niece of Bret Harte, is said to have a glorious voice, and Louise Parker is playing the dickens with the young grain dealers out there in the Wild West. Perugini is singing like a healthy angel, so they say, and Eugene Oudin owns three tenths of Chicago's womanhood. Herndon Morsell is with this great company. De Wolf Hopper is still singing "Birdie." Before he begins, a big gong is rung out in the wings. "Yes," he says, "I know it, but it goes."

“EVANGELINE" again! I have seen the following list of people in this piece from time to time. William Crane, Nat. Goodwin, Geo. S. Knight, Willie Edouin, Sol. Smith Russell, Henry Dixey, John Mackay, Harry Hunter, Louis Harrison, Ed. E. Rice, Richard Golden, Geo. Fortescue, William Mestayer. Nearly all the stage comedians in this country have played Le Blanc. This is not intended as a . joke upon that eminent genius Mr. E. Rice. He is not a comedian, but he can be funny on occasions, provided that you “don't talk. If you want to talk at all, talk fast."

Westmoreland.

"THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL."

THE revival of Sheridan's delicious comedy was effected at Wallack's Theatre last week with all the success which the piece usually receives in this play-house. A writer in the Era recently said that nothing is more tempting to the dramatic aspirant than that kind of waspish dialogue which shows his superiority to other men by sneering at the foibles that, suggestively, he seems to scorn. The perennial success of "The School for Scandal" may be an excuse for the endeavors, in the same direction, of men who are, to say the least, of smaller ability than that belonging to Sheridan, but the great dramatist is not the safest of models. For instance, the writer goes on to say, "without being hypercritical, it may be permitted us to suggest that the creator of Lady Teazle allowed his spiteful wit to take away from her very questionable conduct the only excuse that could be offered for it, in the plea of want of intention in her association with Joseph Surface. The screen scene, as the author's dialogue explains it, should hardly be forgiven by a husband, even as middle-aged and uxorious as Sir Peter is, and it certainly cannot be condoned by any audience who listens to the words. The cold-blooded purpose that is imputed to Lady Teazle, for the sake of a line or two of the author's wit, shows how far a cynical dramatist will go in his one desire to emphasize his caustic irony. Such lines as he puts into Lady Teazle's mouth in the screen scene might be an excuse for anything rather than the reconciliation with her husband in the last act. So that, if he suspects me without cause, it follows that the best way of curing his jealousy is to give him reason for it," and her remark afterward, in reply to the hypocritical cant of Joseph Surface, "Don't you think we may as well leave honor out of the argument?" entirely sacrifice, for the vainglory of the dramatist's aspirations to be acknowledged clever, the slender thread of innocence that attaches itself to the old baronet's country spouse.

But to return to the present revival at Wallack's, it can only be said that, while in its entirety the cast is not so brilliant as we have seen in former years at this theatre, the performance is given with considerable delicacy and energy. Mr. John Gilbert is, of course, the axis of the occasion, his Sir Peter Teazle is the only Teazle we ever think of naturally in conjunction with the play. Painters and sketchers may make all kinds of ideal portraits, but if they have not the face of dear old John Gilbert," they will not be acceptable. Mr. Kyrle Bellew is a romping Charles Surface, more like champagne than old wine, perhaps. Mr. Harry Edwards is a delightful Sir Oliver,

Mr.

Miss Robe is a "smart" Lady Teazle. She does not give it the brilliancy we might find in Fanny Davenport, for instance, but she lends to it a charming womanhood. Of course, Mme. Ponisi is good as Mrs. Candour. The setting of Joseph's library is unusually good. Henley is a surprise as Crabtree, for there is hardly a suspicion in his make-up or performance suggestive of the terrific force and brilliancy displayed in "Moths." His versatility is certainly remarkable. Mr. Charles Grooves gives a new idea of Moses, and the best we have had here in some time.

"THE HONEYMOON."

MISS MARGARET MATHER played to fair houses at the Union Square Theatre during the week in Tobin's celebrated comedy," The Honeymoon." Miss Mather, as Juliana, was pleasantly vivacious and won much applause after her scenes of tempestuous passion. Her conception of the part lacks fineness, and she seems capable of making a much stronger performance of it. Yet her acting, on the whole, was clever and impressive. We would suggest to Miss Mather that, as she is surely a gifted and pretty woman, she should make a supreme effort to dislocate the provincial twang in her speech, which now acts as a disturbing element to her most palpable charms. Milnes Levick played the Duke Aranza with a finish and solid method that was very gratifying. Frederick Paulding was nothing near a success in his personation of the woman-hating Captain Rolando. Okane Hillis was also uninteresting as Balthasar. Geo. A. Dalton made a manly Count Montalban, and Fred W. Peters created an effective character out of the small part of Lopez. Harry Eytinge, as the buffoon Duke Jacques, did not fail to create much mirth in the audience. Miss Jean Harold, as Zamora, Miss Helen Glidden, as Volante, and Miss Hattie Saphore, as The Hostess, played very well in their respective parts.

On Monday night, Miss Mather will revive her most successful part, Juliet.

BROOKLYN NOTES.

This has

PACKED almost to suffocation. been the condition of the Park Theatre during the past week, and it's all the fault of that shapely young man, Henry E. Dixey, alias "Marble," in his extraordinary play of "Adonis." His success here has been only a repetition of his experiences wherever he has played. This week, Miss Genevieve Ward in "Forget-me-not,' Queen s Favorite," "Nance Oldfield" and "Last Legs." All Brooklyn is impatiently waiting for Mr. Lawrence Barrett in "Rienzi" during week of January 10.