ever seen in New York, on Saturday, October 11th.  Salvini lunched while here with Madame Botta, and expressed himself surprised that any one should care to go to hear him who could not understand the language.  “I am sure I should not go,” said the great actor.  He thinks he has not had a success, but he will not think so after he becomes accustomed to his audiences.  He is in private one of the most cultivated and intelligent of men, and has brought to the practice of his art a scholar’s study, a soldier’s experience and a gentleman’s taste.  I say a soldier’s experience, for Salvini has been a soldier, and fought for united Italy in 1857 and earlier.

Nilsson is much improved by marriage.  Her beauty is softer, she has gained flesh—­not to the detriment of that girlish outline, but to the improvement of those somewhat aggressive cheek-bones.  She sings better than ever, with rounded voice.  Never since the days of Salvi and Steffanoni have we had such opera in New York.  The orchestra is better, Maurel is superb, Capoul is still better, and Campanini is very admirable.  We miss Jamet very much in Mephisto, but every one else is better than before.  The house is not gay—­it misses many of its old habitues.  Five empty boxes in a row tell of the financial troubles.  It was the fashion to laugh at the Wall street men, but they gave gayety and life and movement up town as well as down town.  Many of those whose names are recorded on the wrong side of the list were our most generous givers and most amiable hosts.  Their misfortunes cause nothing but regrets.

The races at first felt the effects of the panic, but the crowd on Saturday, the 11th of October, was immense.  Somebody must get the money that everybody loses; therefore somebody can still afford to go to the races, and the last day was also very full.  Two drags set the English example of having the horses taken off and dining on the top of the coach.  The notes of a key-bugle from one of them seemed to suggest Mr. Bob Sawyer and Mr. Ben Allen; but whether those young gentlemen were of the party or not I did not hear.  With our delicious sky, and particularly this golden autumn, there seems to be no reason why we should not adopt the fashions of Chantilly and Ascot.  We are, however, a gregarious people, and the tendency is to gather together under the protection of the grand stand.

Poor Maretzek is always the first to go, and it is understood that his opera is among the great unpaid.  Every one is sorry for the poor singers, always excepting Lucca, whose jealousy of Nilsson is so aggressive that she has declared that she would sing her off the boards of the Academy of Music. She is driven like a bad angel out of Paradise, while the starry Nilsson in magnificent triumph sings on superbly to constantly increasing houses at the Academy, and is lunched and feted to her heart’s content.