she had heard on the day before she died. I know that she and the master will be friends through all eternity, and thus the majesty of genius and the beauty of loveliness will be joined together forever. And to him who sits in bereavement to-day, may there come consolation and the gift of the tender pity of the Great Father, and may the darkened homes in Boston and Chicago be made holy for all his and their coming days, with the recollections of her loveliness and true womanly character. It is a clear, cloudless day, and had that man Gilmore, with the steam engine inside of him, made special arrangements with the weather-clerk, he could not have secured a more auspicious day. The crowd yesterday was great, but the crowd to-day is greater. The programme to-day is purely a popular one. There are the overture to Fra Diavolo, a Peace March composed for the occasion by Janotta, whoever he is, which is not original and very tiresome; the inevitable Anvil Chorus, with the artillery and bells; a sensational and rather commonplace overture, built up by C. C. Converse, on "Hail Columbia;" and national airs, which the orchestra flounder through rather than play. Indeed, if you watch Wulf Fries, Rosa, Schultze, or any of the leading players, you see their faces all scowled up as they wade through so much musical swash, so unworthy of the great orchestra. In fact, there is no atmosphere of art here to-day. The only feature of interest in the Fra Diavolo overture is the trumpet solo, which is taken by fifty instruments instead of one, and gives out a clarion blast which might wake the dead. The rest of the overture, however does not go well. The second violins are shocking. Gilmore has not got them well in hand. In the Grand March, done by Janotta for the occasion, there are reminiscences all the way through, of Tannhauser, the Coronation and the Wedding March, and the connecting links are very weak, sometimes almost stupid. The man who writes marches for such an orchestra should be inspired. He should feel the electricity of the great audience tingling through his veins. Heavens! If only Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Handel, Haydn, Meyerbeer, Rossini, anybody, were living to write for this organ and orchestra. We want columbiads and have got pop-guns--a mountain thunder-storm, and we have a silly April rain--a Jeremiah, and we have nothing better than Daniel Pratt. Converse's trivial arrangement of "Hail Columbia" is no better, perhaps not so good. It is profanation to devote a thousand instruments and an organ four times the power of that in the Music Hall to such commonplaces. The old masters would have died contented once to have got the _baton_ in their hands with such a massing of instruments and voices for the production of their works. Then, again, we are treated to Bilse's "_Marche Militaire_," to the "Star Spangled Banner," the "Harp that Once thro' Tara's Halls," and the overture to "Stradella," all good enough in their way and in their place.