... NEW NOVELS With the Merry Austrian No doubt the German at home-- who is by no means the same person as the German abroad-- is much more widely and intimately known outside the Vaterland than when-- ho ...

... One does not usually conceive Louis XVIII as a humorist, but in her book on him, published this week by Hutchinson, Mary F. Sandars recounts some of the practical jokes of his e ...

... This is one of the series of Peoples of Many Lands, which Messrs. A. and C. Black publish from time to time, and which are, perhaps, better described as albums than as books. Very charming albums they are, filled with pictures by capable artists reproduced in colour and by photogravure alternately, with all the necessary racial individuality and per sonal character. Mr. Lance Thackeray is ...

... . THE Captain Kidd of Wyndham's Theatre is not to be confused with that thief and murderer of whom in connection with hidden treasure every story-teller has written, and whom every publisher has remembered once a year at least since Edgar A. Poe wrote The Gold Beetle. Not, of course, that the very great scoundrel in whose name even writers of repute have imposed upon the credulous with ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC, DAME NATURE, AT THE GARRICK THEATRE. La Femme Nue of M. Bataille-- which, if one dared to pun in these sad times, might be freely translated The Nue Woman-- had a very prosperous run at the Renaissance in 1908 with Guitry, Bady, Mégard, and other good people in the cast. Dame Nature, the adaptation by Mr. Frederick Fenn, which has been produced with success at the ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. THE BLUE BIRD, AT THE HAYMARKET THEATRE. The Blue Bird-- we learn from the preface by Mr. Trench to the English version by Mr. A. T. de Mattos-- has been a great success in Russia, no fewer than fifty- nine companies having lately played it simultaneously. Well, the same play which has such great attractiveness for the particular combination of crude instincts, new ...

... . By Vedette. My round oi tip theatres this week has. of course, meant a round of pantomimes and of other more or less pantomimic entertainments. It has disclosed a high level of average attainment, if no specially striking feature, either of invention or interpretation. In this respect Mr. Arthur Collins's production at Drury Lane is typical of the rest. Jack and the Beanstalk is ...

... . As weapons have improved, rook shooting has declined in popularity. Once it was regarded as sport for the shot gun; then, later, as sport for the rook-rifle; and more recently still, and by the elders, as no sport at all. We are not agreed that rook shooting cannot under any pos sible circumstances be sport. That much-misused title is given too often to the revived Olympic Games and other ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC THE RIVALS, AT THE LYRIC THEATRE. WHETHER The Rivals is or is not a great play must, I take it, be a matter of opinion. For my own part I think it might be better, as the Covent Garden audience-- nearly 150 years ago-- thought of the first version of Sheridan's first comedy. His friends at the time put the fault of the failure upon the man who on the night of production ...

... . By Vedette. ABOUT the first of the Christmas programmes was, I suppose, that given at the Gaiety on the withdrawal of Our Miss Gibbs last week, by way of an intercalary season previously to the production of another Gaiety novelty. The ordinary frequenter of that theatre, dropping in vaguely, as he often does, without any special inquiry as to the piece being performed, will probably be ...

... . By Vedette. ON the stage, as in the pages of a short story, there is found, as might have been expected, plenty of melo dramatic thrills in the adventure of the artful Sher lock Holmes with the wicked Dr. Grimesby Rylott and the poisonous snake trained by him to descend by a bell rope and to do his stepdaughters to death in their beds. The spectator holds his breath while the shiny thing ...

... . The author of the Parish Clerk and other books of anecdote and archaeology has given us here another volume lull of information and not th-- less entertaining because its learn ing and research are leavened with skill in description and a sense ol humour. The vanishing England dealt with is the England which the seas are gradually stealing away and the England of our history, our legend, ...