... . THE Carl Rosa opera season at Her Majesty's Theatre com menced on Saturday last with a performance of Herr Richard Wagner's early opera, Rienzi. It will be remembered that it was with this work the Carl Rosa season of 1879 began and that the mise en scène was of the most gorgeous and tasteful kind. On Saturday last the spectacular effects which excited so much attention last season were all ...

... THE West End theatres have done but little this year in the way of pantomimes, with the exception of DRURY LANE and COVENT GARDEN; but that is a large exception, for those two houses, when they have t ...

... WILLIAM CZERNY.-- The demand for concerted music, vocal and instrumental, is steadily on the increase, and very well it is for the pleasure of that long-suffering and enduring class of hearers who nev ...

... DRAMA. DRURY LANE. THANKS to the fraternal rivalry of Mr. Augustus Harris at Drury Lane with his brother Charles at Covent Garden play goers are not disappointed, as at one time it seemed likely they would be of one of the two great Christmas spectacles of London. The absence of an orthodox pantomime from Drury Lane would have been regretted, both for the sake of old associations and because ...

... . BOOSEY & Co., Regent -street, W.-- Boosey's Sacred Musical Cabinet, No. 25, price Is., contains no less than 100 chorales by J. Sebastian Bach. No words are affixed, but this collection of ecclesiastical melodies, harmonised with the combined skill and simplicity of the great master, will be esteemed by musicians as a treasury of no common value. Forsyth Bros., 272a, Regent- circus, W. ...

... . Thoughts upon Hunting, in a Series of Familiar Letters to a Friend. By Petee Beckfoed. London: James Toovey, 177, Piccadilly. W. 1879. JUST about one hundred years have passed since the first edition of Beckford's Thoughts on Hunting was published, and his thoughts have kept men thinking ever since. The work is a classic of the hunting-field, and whoever reads it carefully will he fain to ...

... II. IN Atheistic Methodism-- a title we do not quite understand-- in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1880, Mr. Mallock defends the position taken by him in his inquiry, Is Life Worth Living? a ...

... DONNA QUIXOTE, by Justin McCarthy (3 vols.: Chatto and Windus).-- Mr. McCarthy may very possibly have gained much in wit and wisdom by his experiences as a legislator, but his warmest admirers will ...

... ReA^EJR^I THE author of Erchomenon; or, the Republic of Materialism (Sampson Low and Co.) differs widely from Miss Bevington on the value of Materialism as a basis of morals. That lady, replying in ...

... THE EGOIST: a Comedy in Narrative, by George Meredith (2 vols.: C. Kegan Paul and Co.).-- It goes without the saying by this time that Mr. G. Meredith is a genius, a wit, and a humourist, whose work ...

... MR. CARL ROSA'S COMPANY.-- The promise not kept by Mr. Mapleson, to bring out an Italian version of Herrman Goetz's comic opera, Widerspänstigen Zähmung, has been duly kept (as is his unfailing custom ...

... . IT is a good thing to commence a New Tear well, so I com menced mine in fine style on this page by committing most egregious errors. I discovered my blunders and mistakes very soon, but not too soon for some of those quick-eyed, sharp- eared experts who do one the favour of reading and scanning one's work to be down on me in double quick style. My Editor, who is a genial gentleman, and would ...