plished not only by making the rest of the house incombustible, but by converting the stage itself into a flue, inclosed in the brick walls which rise above the rest of

TERRA-COTTA PANEL ON FACADE.

the house. A large skylight in the roof of the stage is weighted so as to fall open when its fastenings are removed, and these fastenings are arranged to give way at a comparatively low temperature, and thus open the top of the chimney of which the walls are the sides and the proscenium opening the hearth. To put out fires

which may arise on the stage, reliance is placed, beyond the ordinary precautions, upon a novel automatic appliance. A network of small pipes is hung above the stage, filled with water from a tank in the roof, and pierced at frequent intervals with holes stopped with soft solder, which melts readily, and drenches the stage as from a great shower-bath.

Among the novelties the arrangement of the orchestra deserves mention. It is placed, not in Wagner's "Mystic Gulf," but in a brick bowl sunk below the parquet, and floored at a level which will leave the musicians visible only from the upper tiers. The sonority of this reservoir is expected materially to re-enforce the volume of tone.

Another novelty is the system of supporting the stage. The supports of the stage must be readily removable, so that any point underneath may be utilized as it may be called for by the varying exigencies of the drama. Ordinarily this requirement is fulfilled by the use of a wilderness of timber supports, any section of which may be knocked away as the space it occupies is needed. This arrangement is hardly compatible with a fire-proof building. Here a light iron construction has been devised, containing some 4000 members, which has all the facility of removal and reconstruction of the carpentry. The cellar of the stage is thirty feet deep from the floor, and this depth is divided into three stories, of which any one, or any section of all three, can be made available at once.

The main elements of the architectural effect of the interior, apart from color, are of course its great size and the grace of its lines. Treatment of detail is of comparatively little importance in the general view, except as it re-enforces these, as we may see in theatres which have not a respectable detail, but which when they are filled present a spectacle of undeniable brilliancy. We have had occasion already to deplore the economy of space which prevented the staircase from asserting itself as an architectural feature, and this is especially to be regretted, since a clever and original treatment would be both more feasible and more effective there, as being better seen, than in the auditorium. The most obvious criticism upon the detail generally is that the architect has not attempted to treat the interesting construction which he has adopt

ed. Occasionally an iron post shows for what it is, and the gallery fronts are unmistakably of metal. But with these exceptions the structure is one thing and its envelope quite another. It is treated, that is to say, in the conventional manner, in which the differences are differences only in refinement of detail. No doubt a more expressive treatment would have been desirable. But it is almost too much to require of a single architect that he should develop a decorative construction suitable to an opera-house from the modern construction of clay and metal which has been employed here. There are almost no precedents in point. M. Viollet-le-Duc, indeed, made some essays-on paper--toward the solution of this problem, but they were not so felicitous as to allure his successors to follow them. At all events, if a single architect could be called upon to develop the architecture of an opera-house out of this construction, he could not be called upon to do it in three years, while also meeting all the practical exigencies of so great a work. Moreover, it may well be doubted whether a really serious architectural treatment of an opera-house, such, for example, as would befit a real "Academy of Music," would not strike the operagoer, that is to say, the citizen in an opera hat and an opera frame of mind, with a certain sense of incongruity. He does not go to the opera, he would say, or feel, to study, nor even to have things explained to him; he goes to be lapped against eating cares in soft Lydian airs, and he prefers the Lydian mode also in the appointments of the place. A treatment mezzo serio, as Rossini said of his own music to the "Stabat Mater," is all that he will willingly endure. The architectural treatment of the interior is concentrated upon the proscenium wall. The truss already spoken of above the curtain opening is relieved at the ends by vigorously projected brackets, and the re-entrant angles of the splay are re-enforced, after the manner of the Italian Renaissance, with panelled pilasters. The wall above the opening is modelled into niches with a large panel in the centre, upon which Mr. Lathrop's allegory of "Apollo crowned by the Muses" is to be painted. On the piers flanking the opening at the level of the gallery are Mr. Maynard's figures "The Chorus" and "The Ballet." The panels of the large pilasters at the opening are filled with delicate ornaments in cast metal.

the new opera-house. The style, in deference, possibly, to the purpose of the building, is Italian, and in the Broadway entrance, which is more copiously decorated than any other part, is a correct and academic Italian Renaissance. This style has more elegance than vigor.

The portico on Broadway is noteworthy not only for the refinement of the detail, which never fails Mr. Cady in whatever style he is working, but for the breadth of the composition. This is secured by strong horizontal belts, and the vertical lines of the large order which runs through two stories, and by the simplicity of the main divisions. The breadth and simplicity of the composition will be enhanced by the more varied masses and broken lines of the flanking structures which are yet to be built. All of the de

tail has plainly been studied with great care, and all of it is marked by much elegance. The reliefs in the panels, which are unfortunately too small in scale to have, when seen from the street, the effect to which they are really entitled, have the same naïve and child-like grace which belongs to the exquisitely executed imitative modelling introduced in the capitals of the porches. It is noteworthy that this character, which we recognize as that of the early Italian Renaissance before it had stiffened into Vitruvian formula, was the character of the Italian Romanesque, and is as visible in the work of Nicholas Pisano in the thirteenth century as in the work of Luca della Robbia in the fifteenth. Where the architecture escapes from academic trammels, this naïveté may be said to be its note also.

N Leghorn, on the 24th of October, 1784, Rachel, the daughter of Abraham Mocatta, gave to her husband, the merchant Joseph Elias Montefiore, his first-born son, and they named the child Moses.

If an angel had appeared to this Joseph in a dream, or had there been at hand a prophet to reveal to these parents what their child would become, not only to the race of Israel, but to the cause of human need in any creed or clime, their delight in their first-born must have deepened into a most solemn joy of thanksgiving, even without the knowledge that his life should cover with the unbroken lustre of good deeds the span of a century.

The Montefiores were of Italian descent,

and made their first appearance in England, it is stated, not long after Manassehben - Israel's eloquent intercession with Cromwell procured the re-admission of the Jews. From this period, also, the Jews date England's commercial prosperity, on the ground that being then shut arbitrarily from arts, agriculture, and all professions, they concentrated upon and became prosperous proficients in trade. Later, when the debarred professions were thrown open, they won successes in law, learning, art, and statesmanship, and members of the Montefiore family distinguished themselves in science and literature as well as in commerce.

Moses Montefiore received commercial