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... 1 London, Tune 2nd, iqoo. The printer is demanding copy, and I am off on a holiday trip, but as I write the war news is all-absorbing; mere literature is of no account, and I have no exclusive news. Under the circumstances silence is best. ^jphe only book that I have read is a new volume of Mr. Heinemann's Pioneer Series; Little Bob Dy WP> trom tne f rencn oy Atys t-ianara. Gyp's recent ...

... RECENT WAR I BOOKS The battle of bullets in South Africa is now being seriously complicated by a battle of books. Long before Long Tom had ceased to shell the besieged of Ladysmith our war correspondents had begun to bombard the be leaguered of London. In the slow old days of the Peninsula and the Crimea the chroniclers used to wait until the war was over before putting pen to paper, but ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. RIP VAN WINKLE. HALFWAY between the gaunt and loose-jointed Rip van Winkle of Rice and the round and full-bodied Rip van Winkle of Jefferson, Mr. Tree's performance comes with a certain amount of freshness. Whether it is on that account as true to life--if true or not to the author has, apparently, never mattered to anybody--I am not prepared to say. I am in the ...

... London, June 13th, 1900. Mr. W. H. Wilkins may be congratulated upon his fascinating book, The Love of an Uncrowned Queen, which, although it has been issued a month or two, I have only just found time to read. It is passing strange when one thinks of it that the story of the Princess Sophie Dorothea of Celle has not been told at length for English readers before this. She had herself a most ...

... MR. BEERBOHM TREE'S superb production of Rip Van Winkle, at Her Majesty's, a production again illustrated in the present Sketch, is going so well that there will he no need to change the hill this season. Indeed, it is not unlikely that, owing to the interest manifested by the public in this venture, Mr. Tree may elect even to start his next season at Her Majesty's with this play-- whether ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. THE ALHAMBRA. THE drama, at present gives us few now things which stay long enough with us to be worth noting before they go. The mischief comes, I fear, largely from the actor-manager system. Too many theatres nowadays get into the hands of gentlemen and ladies who consider that the public thinks as highly of them as they, on their side, do of their very mediocre selves. ...

... London. Tune 20th. iqoo. Shakspere's birthplace is to have a burst of new literary excitement during the next week or two- To-morrow the Whitefriars Club travels down in saloon carriages as far as Warwick, drives thence to Stratford, where, after visiting the Shakspere house, Anne Hathaway's cottage and other interesting associations, its members are to take tea with Miss Marie Corelli, who at ...

... llttsir WAGNER AT THE OPERA THE week at Covent Garden has been devoted almost exclusively to the music of Wagner, so that the progressive subscribers have enjoyed a suc cession of field nights. Star ...

... ISml lotfs THE SEASON THE unsettled weather of the last ten days will make records for June very conflicting and difficult to reconcile. There was ·65 of an inch fell on the 21st in a suburb five mile ...

... troks of lUfeniue THE new edition of the Royal Blue Book (Kelly's Directories, Limited) makes the 157th issue of this useful book. To those who have not access to the large Post Office Directory, th ...

... . WITHOUT staying to discuss the question whether Henry Arthur Jones is a more skilful playwright than Edmond Rostand, we may assert without fear of contradiction that The Liars of the former is more acceptable to the admirers of Mr. Charles Wyndham and the patrons of Wyndham's Theatre than the Cyrano de Bergerac of the famous French author. The. Liars, in which-- apart from farcical comedy-- ...