... . MR. C. W. Spencer, a young actor of some promise, though at present deficient in training, gave a matinee at the Gaiety Theatre on Wednesday last, in order to show what he could do with Mr. Neville's old character in The Serf His effort was commendable chiefly for its sincerity of purpose. In grace of gesture and refined elocution Mr. Spencer must take a good many lessons before he can hope ...

... 'Our Friend the Bog. By Gordon Stables, C.M., M.D., R.N. London: Dean and Son, 160a, Fleet-street, L.C. It is a great thing for an author to know his subject, and iBr. Stables has an unquestionable knowledge of dogs. It is also a great thing for a man who writes a book to have some literary ■skill and taste and here Dr. Stables is lamentably deficient. A more consistently clumsy writer has ...

... OMNIUM GATHERUM.-- Mdlle. Lilli Lehmann, the original Flosshilde of Wagner's Lohengrin, at Bayreuth and elsewhere, has been so seriously indisposed that, by medical advice and managerial consent, she ...

... A Biographical Sketch bv Austin 3rebetox. Illustrated with seventeen full-page portraits. London: David Boeue. 1883. MR. HENRY IRVING has created so much stir of late, both in the old world and the new, that a biography of him comes appropriately. The distinguished actor, however, deserved a better biographer. The book is to all appearance hastily and crudely put together, and very extensively ...

... id, i the Stage Studies of Theatrical History and the Actor's Art. Bv Button Cook, author of A Book of the Play, Hours With the Players. London; Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 188, Fleet-street. 1883. An interest attached to all that Mr. Dutton Cook wrote, and there is a special and melancholy interest about his last book though possibly this may not be the last volume issued ...

... . ANOTHER of them! That grand old masher, Time, is quite prepared to mark his opinion of the drama of Eighteen Hundred and Eighty -four. The last production, I fancy, he found neither a very great failure nor a very great success, possibly a dull affair on the whole, but that is really a matter of how you take it. I would not enter on my list of friends, though grand with polished manners and ...

... I. FIRST in the field, the National Review opens with Sir Stafford Northcote on Conservative and Liberal Finance. It will not be his fault if his party fails to convince the electors that the Con se ...

... MESSRS. BOOSEY AND CO.-- Whatever may be the short comings of our kinsmen across St. George's Channel, there is something very fascinating in their music, be it plaintive or merry. Songs of Old Irela ...

... . AGAIN Mr. W. S. Gilbert has returned to the magic P in the selection of a title for his -work, and we have the Princess Ida in full fig at the Savoy Theatre. On Saturday evening, the initial night of its production, the usual first nighters were in force in the various portions of the house which they select to inhabit and have allotted to them. I was curious to investigate the young ...

... MISS ADA CAVENDISH has returned to the London stage from which she has too long been absent, and, fortunately for her admirers, has chosen for the occasion what is perhaps her strongest part. It is tr ...

... . IT is generally a difficult matter to alter the character of a public undertaking like the management of a theatre, and Miss Nelly Harris will have accomplished no light task if she has at a bound raised the low reputation of the unlucky little house which has fallen into her bands. Nothing could well be more unfortunate than the associations of the Novelty, alias the Folies Dramatiques, ...

... ROYAL ENGLISH OPERA.-- Since the production of the Piper of Hamelin, a work almost lost on so large a stage as that of Covent Garden, the republic of artists have been content with revivals of famil ...