... Itusial SUtM an& fUtos WE have already announced that an International Musical Exhibition is projected at the Crystal Palace from mid-June to the end of September, and certain details have since been ...

... Mrs. Alicia Needham was paid the compliment on Saturday of a whole-programme recital of her songs in the Galleries of the Royal Society of British Artists, a performance given by invitat ...

... London, April 25th, igoo. At a time when everyone is praising a new book by a young writer there is a great temptation to go with the stream. But one owes something to oneself as well as to the susceptibilities of any individual author, and I must frankly confess that the reception of such a book as The Farringdons almost fills me with despair for English literature and for English criticism ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. AN AMERICAN BEAUTY. An American Beauty, by American performers, is a piece which, if I were called upon to pass a long evening with again, I should prefer to look at through smoked glasses, and to listen to it through the telephone. It is dazzling as to dresses, and nerve rending as to sound and movement. The eye tires of the sheen of the stagefuls upon stagefuls of ...

... Ulnsic OPERATIC MATTERS IT has now been settled that the Opera Season shall open at Covent Garden on Monday week with Faust, in which Madame Melba will play Marguerite, M. Saléza will be Faust, and M. ...

... Htusic THE OPERA SEASON THE Opera season, as we have already announced, will commence at Covent Garden next Monday. The work chosen is Faust, with Madame Melba as Marguerite, M. Plançon as Mephistophe ...

... London, May 16th, iqoo. The bust of Sir Walter Scott which has just been sold at Willis's Rooms to Duveen has excited some interest among the most non-literary people by the mere accident of price, it having fetched 2,250 guineas. The bust was by Sir Francis Chantrey, and it was one of two of Sir Walter that he made. The first of these, executed in 1820, is at Abbotsford, but this was modelled ...

... Htu theatres BY W. MOY THOMAS THE SIGNORA D USE'S PERFORMANCES THE prolonged absence of the Signora Duse from the London stage has evidently not weakened the hold of the great Italian actress upon the ...

... our captious critic. A TRIPLE BILL. I DO not willingly attend first night performances nowa days; they have become so deplorably objectionable, from the obtrusiveness of the professional playgoer, and the vanity of minor critics exchanging nods with nobodies, or standing up to be stared at. But I shall be all the less willing to take part in such functions in future if the additional ...

... London, May 23rd, 1900. There has just been discovered under curious cir cumstances a new portrait of the poet Cowper. The poet was born, it will be remembered, at Berk hampstead, and nearly opposite the parish church there stands an inn known as the Swan, which has been in the possession of one family for over a hundred years. A short time back, however, the Swan boasted a new landlord, ...

... gufo IJjff&els ARDEN MASSITER AMONG all the novels dealing with present-day Italy, Dr. William Barry's Arden Massiter (T. Fisher Unwin) is by far and away the most powerful. Apart from its vivid pic ...

... j London, May ^oth, iqoo. It was a happy idea on the part of Mr. A. S. Boyd, the well-known illustrator of Punch and the Graphic, to give us an illustrated volume of travel after a journey with his wife through Australia, New Zealand, and many other countries, going by way of Port Said and Colombo, and returning by San Francisco and Chicago. Mrs. Boyd, who writes the narrative, has long been ...