Time was when the negro minstrels held possession of three or four theaters in the single city of New York, and when a dozen or more troops were traveling from town to town; and now they have long ago surrendered their last hall in the metropolis, and only a solitary company winds its lonely way from theater to theater thruout the United States. The few surviving practitioners of the art are reduced to the presentation of brief interludes in the all-devouring variety-shows, or to the impersonation of sparse negro characters in occasional comedies. The Skidmore Guards, who paraded so gaily at Harrigan and Hart's, are disbanded now these many years; Johnny Wild of joyous memory is no more, and Sweatnam, bereft of his fellows in sable drollery, is seen only in a chance comedy like 'Excuse Me,' or the 'County Chairman.' George Christy and Dan Emmett and Dan Bryant have gone and left only fading memories of their breezy songs, their nimble dances, and their flippant quips. Edwin Forrest and Edwin Booth blacked up more than once, Joseph Jefferson and Barney Williams besmeared themselves with burnt cork on occasion; but it is not by these darker episodes in their artistic careers that they are now recalled, and the leading actors of to-day think scorn of negro-minstrelsy--whenever they deign to give it a thought. And yet it must be noted frankly that when The Lambs wanted to raise money for their new club-house, they did not disdain the art of the negro minstrel, and more than twoscore of them went forth to conquer, willingly disguised in the uniform blackness assumed long ago by George Christy and Dan Bryant.