... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. COVENT GARDEN CIRCUS. ONCE more at the Theatre Royal Covent Garden steeds replace soprani and clowns contralti, tumblers tenors, and bare-backed riders bari tones. Once more the polyglot programme of the Great International Cirque announces, subject to slight alterations, the appearance and exploits of a galaxy of talent-- equestrian, gymnastic, and comic. Once more Mr. ...

... THE representation of Secret Love; or, The Maiden Queen, given by The Dramatic Students at the COURT Theatre on Tuesday afternoon, was something more than a mere curiosity. It exhibited under favour ...

... . THE Dramatic Students, whose first essay was a Shakespearian play, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and whose second was The Housekeeper-- old-fashioned, though not old-- have now con tinued their varied labours with the study of a Restoration comedy. In this they achieved much greater success than in either of their previous efforts, for the complete freshness of the revival gave it special ...

... JOSEPH MAAS.-- The New Year has opened sadly with the deaths of two men we can ill spare. Mr. Joseph Maas was one of our few great English tenors now available for oratorio. Like his rival and friend ...

... MUSIC. THE LATE MR. JOSEPH MAAS. THE musical history of the year so re cently commenced has been clouded by an event which has not only brought de solation into a happy and exemplary home, but has filled with grief a countless number of music-lovers amongst, all classes of English society. Mr. Joseph Maas, whose recent untimely death is universally deplored, and who leaves a widow and a young ...

... . Oceana; or, England and her Colonies. By Jaiies Anthoxy Fectjiie. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1SSC. BY Oceana Mr. Froude means the great nation formed by the union of England and her colonies. Mr. Froude was an ardent believer in the advantages of federation, and he under took a journey to the other side of the world to study the ques tion from that standpoint by the aid of Colonial ...

... THE new farce, in three acts, which Mr. Marsham Rae has constructed for the CRITERION upon the foundations of a French piece of the same class, provides no part for Mr. Charles Wyndham, who has been ...

... . WHEN MM. Greney-Dancourt and Valebrégue's Tro's Pour un Mari was produced at the Cluny Theatre, Paris, some two years since, it obtained a run of about 600 nights --a won derful one for the French stage. The fun was something more than suggestive, one scene especially in the course of a civil wedding being for more reasons than one wholly impossible, so far as representation in England ...

... The old story of patient Grizel has received but little general approval in respect of its moral. The heroine has been far more generally condemned for want of spirit than cordially admired for her in ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. ON PLEBEIANS. WHAT, is reported to have asked one of those irritating sages of the last century who seem to have habitu ally gone about pro pounding dogmatically delivered questions on all manner of subjects, is the first duty i of a critic? To tell the truth, re plied the in evitable prig, ■who some- how never failed to turn up at the right mo ment to answer them. ...

... . MR. AMBROSE AUSTIN may be congratulated on the success of his Burns' Birthday Commemoration Concert given at St. James's Hall last Saturday, instead of Monday (the actual anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns), the hall being re quired on the latter day for the usual Monday Popular Concert. The weather was unpropitious, and the streets bad, yet a large audience attended the concert, and ...

... . THERE is a tradition that the arch enemy of mankind, while occupied in shearing an aged porker, made the remark, Much cry, and little wool! We regret to say that a similar comment appears to us applicable to the performances of Mr. Hermann Franke's Vocal Quartett party, on their début at his first chamber concert, given last Tuesday at Prince's Hall. They had been announced, with many ...