... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. AT THE CATTLE SHOW. AT some haply far distant epoch, when the London of to-day is as much a city of tho buried past as the Nineveh of Semiramis and Assurbanipal, and when, thanks to the persistent culture of sweetness and light. man has been elevated to an etherealised being eschewing animal food, and subsisting on in finitesimal doses of scientifically concen trated ...

... I SAY No, by Wilkie Collins (3 vols.: Chatto and Windus) is anything but a favourable specimen of its author's powers. It contains a secret, which is wonderfully well kept from the reader; hut there ...

... MR. YARDLEY'S Very Little Hamlet at the Gaiety, bright, picturesque, and diversified as it is, belongs rather to the old- fashioned class of parodies, of which Poole's travesty of this very play is an ...

... Mrs. Oliphant has written fiction in many styles. Indeed she has proved herself so versatile that it would be difficult to ascribe to her any style characteristically her own, unless it were that adeq ...

... REVIEW OF THE YEAR.-- Most people take stock at the end of the year, balance their accounts, reckon up what they have gained, and resolve to do even still better next year. Musical stock-taking becomes simply a rapid survey of the year's work. During 1884 we have happily not experienced the feverish excitement of such a year as 1882, nor the inevitable reaction of 1883. We have progressed ...

... THE week before Christmas week has this year maintained its character as a dull week in theatrical annals. With the exception of some trifling additional features introduced into the performance of Th ...

... VIII. THE ART JOURNAL (London: J. S. Virtue and Co.). The yearly volume of this popular magazine is a particularly good one. There is a much greater variety than usual in the methods ...

... CRYSTAL PALACE.-- The last of the Orchestral Concerts of the present year was given at the Crystal Palace on Saturday. To-day, Gounod's Redemption will be performed, under the direction of Mr. Manns, ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. GO AS YOU PLEASE. OH, Liberty, exclaimed Madame Roland as she as cended the scaf fold, what crimes are committed in thy name! Oh, Sport, I am tempted to para phrase, what ab surdities are per petrated under thy auspices! I write these re marks with the remembrance of what someone, with either a limited knowledge of the English language or a pleasant facility of ...

... . REPORTS have been circulated to the effect that Mr. Abbey has secured the lease of the Haymarket from Mr. Bancroft, and that Mr. Henderson has arranged to give up possession of the Comedy to Miss Lila Clay. Neither of these rumours, it seems, has any secure foundation, but we shall be surprised if after all it does not turn out that a big bid for the Haymarket has been made on behalf of Miss ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. THE CANDIDATE, AT THE CRITERION THEATRE. WISHING you one and all a merry Christmas, I will make the festive season my excuse for the remark that The Candidate is very like a Christmas plum-pudding. It is rich it is full flavoured it is hot, it is season able, and on reflec tion it is rather indigestible. It is stuffed full of good things from all manner of sources, and ...

... STEAND Tiieatee.- Sweetheart, Goodhue, is the title of an original comedietta, already played, we fancy, in the provinces, which was presented on Monday ovening as the lever da ridcaa at the Strand, where Uar Boys still runs on as merrily as ever. Its authoress is Miss May Holt, who has not troubled herself to provide much plot for her little piece. The story, if story it can he called, is ...