A fresh edition of the opera company has come out again from Italy, and performances are given Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. Everybody, as usual, is allowed behind the scenes during the intermissions, and the other evening, in the middle of a most pathetic scene in "Faust," a Yankee skipper, somewhat the jollier from a shore dinner, walked directly across the back of the stage and took his hat off to the audience. Episodes like this are hardly common, but in Manila there are not the barriers to the stage-door that exist in the U.S.A. The artillery-band on the Luneta has several times played the "Washington Post March" which you sent me, and which I gave to the fat, pleasant-faced conductor. The championship games at the tennis-court have begun, and all of the English colony generally assemble there to see the play just before sunset. Small dinners and dances are also numerous, and the cool weather seems to be incubating gayety. February 22d. Manila is said to have the most complete astronomical, meteorological, and seismological observatory anywhere east of the Mediterranean. Not to miss anything of such reputation, several of us decided to make a call on Padre Faure, who presides over the institution, and who is well known scientifically all over the world. At the observatory we were cordially received by an assistant, who spoke English well enough to turn us off from using Spanish, and were conducted over the establishment. Here were machines which would write down the motions of the earth in seismological disturbances, and which conveyed to the ear various subterranean noises going on below the surface. Still other instruments were so delicate that they rang electric bells when mutterings took place far underground, and thus warned the observers of approaching trouble. Another, into which you could look, showed a moving black cross on a white ground, that danced at all the slight tremblings continually going on; and the rumbling of a heavy cart over the neighboring highroad would make it tremble with excitement. A solid tower of rock twenty feet square extended up through the building from bottom to top, and was entirely disconnected with the surrounding structure. On this column all of the earthquake-instruments were arranged; and any sort of an oscillation that took place would be recorded in ink on charts arranged for the purpose. Various wires and electric connections were everywhere visible, and an approaching disturbance would be sure to set enough bells and tickers a-going to arouse one of the attendants.