against its being called, as it still is, a portrait of William Tell. But its author is very doubtful. Be he who he may-and he cannot be Holbeinthe picture is an admirably thorough and careful piece of design, with a masterly piece of work in the foreshortened left hand especially.

66

Of the Venetian pictures, few this year are of the sacred order. Lord Yarborough sends a Magdalen of Titian (136), which cannot, I think, be by any weaker hand than the master's own. It is the same as his well-known Magdalen in the Pitti. Among replicas of the subject, says Dr. Waagen, with few exceptions, it surpasses all others, not only in transparency and warmth of colouring, but in elevation of expression." To find elevation of expression in the upturned face and streaming eyes of this stout Venetian woman, whom Mr. Ruskin once called "the disgusting Magdalen of the Pitti," is not easy; but warmth and transparency, the Titianic splendour, are unmistakeable in her hair, her blanket, her book, and the noble landscape on the right. The small Deposition of Tintoret, from the same collection (128), is also a very characteristic piece in undefaced golden tones; the landscape, with its near foliage and distant temple, the vehement graceful Maries about the corpse, are all flung in with the same headlong certainty that makes the art of Tintoret so stirring to look at, even when, for speed and carelessness, his art is almost manufacture.

And with this last of the great Venetians we leave the schools of Italy for good, so far as religious art is concerned. There are no examples to detain us of Tintoret's contemporaries of Bologna, or of their successors in the seventeenth century; and if there were, there is always something depressing in the study of those accomplished Diadochi of the art, whose accomplishment is so much more patent than their inspiration, and who wrought for the austere and militant Papacy after the Reformation in a spirit so different from that which had inspired their predecessors in the service of the humane and joyous Papacy of the Renaissance. It is in Spain that austere and militant Catholicism, the Catholicism of the Inquisition, finds its really imaginative and original expression in art. Of the great painters who flourished when bigotry and luxury ruled hand in hand at the court of Philip IV., Zurbaran is at once the most imaginative and the most austere. He is a great religious, at any rate a great monastic painter; and these two large single figures of Benedict and Jerome, from the gallery of Lord Heytesbury, represent him well (197, 200). Nothing is more masterly than these strong ascetic heads, than these conventual robes falling in broad folds and strong planes of light and shadow; nothing strikes a more appropriate note than this cleft of penitential landscape behind either saint-dark gorges of the Sierras, where white or lurid clouds roll solemnly overhead, and where from lonely rock to rock echoes no sound but the hermit's litany. Near the same place is hung a Virgin Annunciate of the Spanish school, a kneeling figure in full face, with arms extended, the atmosphere about her a golden cloud. This is very strongly and thoroughly drawn, and the dark crimson cloak of the Virgin an admirable piece of grave work. It comes from the gallery of Sir W. Miles, and is ascribed to Velazquez. As such I see that Sir William Stirling Maxwell allows it in both his catalogues-I mean that in his Annals of the Artists of Spain, and his Velaz quez and his Works. If it is by Velazquez, it is not in the manner of his maturity, and can only be the picture he is recorded to have painted of this subject while a boy in the studio of Pacheco at Seville. On a question of Spanish art I speak without book; but is not this rather the hand of Velazquez' distinguished contemporary Alonzo

Cano ?

To most of us, I dare say, the religious art that grew up in the seventeenth century among the Protestant rebels of the Catholic king in the North

will mean more-as indeed it was a thing more profound and new-than that which filled the churches and monasteries of his orthodox kingdom in the South. Here are two capital examples of that artist who, in the cities of Holland, saw in a new light the aspects of rags and squalor and calamity. The Queen's Adoration of the Magi (152) has in perfection all the elements which in Rembrandt made up such a strange unprecedented poetry; his love of gloom and faint bituminous light to bring out the solidity and at the same time the glamour of things; his intense popular sympathy and insight into poverty and suffering; his passion for grotesque Oriental properties and fripperies. The peasant mother, with her heavily-swathed babe upon her lap, sits in the night outside the shed; the star of Bethlehem lets down its light, an oily reddish perpendicular ray, from above; the thatch of the shed stands out in the gleam, and in dark shadow under the eave you can see the figure of Joseph. One king kneels forward with his gift, and two attendants kneel behind him; the two other kings with their attendants stand waiting, almost lost in the darkness is a group under a circular umbrella. Rembrandt, as usual, has taken his models from the Jewry of Amsterdam and dressed them in their own stock-in-trade; and the character, the poetry, the splendour of handling, the sense of the real and the familiar amid the unreal and the strange, of I know not what humour and mystery and solemn pitifulness, need no words for those who have eyes to see. lection of the Duke of Abercorn. It is a large second Rembrandt (153) comes from the colDeposition, with figures in life-size, quite different in composition from those versions of the subject which exist in the National Gallery and at St. Petersburg, and, I think, at Berlin. The body of Christ lies across the front of the picture, upon a white shroud, the right arm making a particularly ungainly angle. Rembrandt when he attempted to be academical left his genius behind; and this Christ is an ineffective study of that kind, with a head of some academical beauty but little of Rembrandt's intenser power. Where the painter is himself is in the accessory heads-a silver-bearded Joseph of Arimathea stooping over the corpse; a Magdalen with her hand upon her brow leaning in a faint gold light against the cross; above all, a Mary Mother holding the head of Christ, her own head coifed in pale red and white, a faint light bringing out the dolour of her features with a mysterious life and reality.

The

It scarcely occurs to one to think of the work of Rubens as sacred art. The spirit of worldliness and the delight of the eye and the pride of life, luxury and power and opulence not without vulgarity, make the art of the great Fleming a thing the most unlike in the world to the art of the great Dutchman. There are compositions of Rubens finer in the same violent gorgeous way than this great Conversion of St. Paul (110) with its plunging horses and rolling Roman soldiers; but this, together with the Duke of Sutherland's Holy Family (107) serves justly enough to represent him in the series.

And lastly, what has the English school to show us in the way of sacred art? Only two life-sized pictures of Sir Joshua Reynolds (229, 242), from his great composition for the window of New College at Oxford: subject, the Angel appearing to the Shepherds. The angel is not here; only a shepherd-boy and his dog in one piece, and two grown-up shepherds in the other. The best thing is the dog he stands among the fictitious drums and capitals of a fallen temple; but his head has all that vivacity and delicate air, with which the pet spaniel follows his mistress across the sward in so many radiant canvases of the same master. But what shall be said of the rest? Dull ugly colour without the master's charm; one of the shepherds a portrait, not good, of Sir Joshua himself, in a serge tunic, with a staff and bare calves; his companion a theatrical profile, with

extended arms; the execution empty and pretentious. It is plain the English school is here engaged upon what it does not understand. It is plain that this is not a new phase of creative genius in the religious order to put beside the mysticism of Siena, or the multifarious vitality of Florence, or the splendour of Venice, or the austerity of Spain, or the rushlit pathos and democratic Christianity of Holland, or even the commoner and more carnal pomp and energy and glow of Flanders. SIDNEY COLVIN.

THE WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY.

(Second Notice.)

WE return to this exhibition to give some account of the landscapes and other miscellaneous works.

The

Mr. Albert Goodwin sends various Italian studies, distinguished by delicate exactness in a light and bright key of colour, somewhat flat and mosaic-like in touch; the painter being evidently bent upon distinguishing the local tints, with comparative indifference to the total effect of light and shade. For years past, he has been painting in a very methodical and tentative spirit. present works mark a further stage in his practice; and we expect to see him pretty soon in full possession of his powers, both as colourist and as chiaroscurist. The Market-place, Verona, and the Assisi, are very attractive examples; San Zenon (not "Sanoni," as in the catalogue), Verona, is carried somewhat further, but with hardly so should also be looked at; and the little piece of pleasing a result. Two studies of Sea and Sky still-life, Six Inches of Jersey Granite. Professor Ruskin exhibits four studies, which, though minute and the contrary of robust in manner, are not properly to be called slight, being replete with knowledge and discrimination. The Glacier des Bossons, Chamouni, October 1874, is especially interesting in its variety of tender yet brilliant shades of colour; also the View Drawn on Ein, April 26, 1874. The Acanthus changing to Acacia, Thirteenth Century, Capital in Main Street of Assisi, is one of those pieces of architectural decorative design which no draughtsman reproduces with more refined appreciation than Professor Ruskin. Miss Clara Montalba shows very uncommon talent in this gallery. She has great quickness of perception and readiness of resource; likes a large number of different things; and conveys the spirit of them in her rapid characteristic painter-like way. She tends overmuch, however, to the blotty and grimy in handling; as for instance in the Sketch on the Thames, Limehouse Creek-which is none the less true and bold. The Study of Birch-trees at Nääs, Sweden, is very prettily and spontaneously touched off: the Rainy Day, Venice, renders with observable insight the drenched depth of defined colour which distinguishes the Venetian atmospheric effect under such conditions. Other specimens by this lady, of a different quality, are not at all inferior to these. Mr. Powell's sea-pictures mark a high point of attainment in the expression of pale and hazy effect: the light broods within a yellowish whitish veil, which obstructs and yet diffuses it. This is particularly apparent in the Loch Fyne Herring Boats, Morning, and in the smaller subject named No. 135 G. K.-Syra in the Greek Archipelago, by Mr. Andrews, is a resolute effort at obtaining absolute brightness, and a fairly successful one. Mr. Edward Goodall exhibits one of the most prominent landscape-compositions here, under the title, Son of Man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest_ (Ezekiel). Near the Great Pyramid of Sakkara: Excavations at the Tombs under the direction of Marretti Bey. When one sees a title of this sort, one knows that the painter has been putting forth his strength, hoping to attain greatness, or to be thought to have attained it; likewise one knows that, if he does not happen really to be a great man, it will not be easy for him to appear such, however high-pitched

PROFESSOR OVERBECK has been lecturing at the Scientific Institution of Cologne on the character of the plastic genre sculpture of the ancient Greeks, and on the productions of the moderns compared with the best remains of Hellenic art.

THE STAGE.

99 THE NEW MAGDALEN AT THE CHARING CROSS THEATRE.

MR. WILKIE COLLINS's New Magdalen has reappeared on the London stage, after a career of nearly two hundred nights in the country, follow ing, at no great interval, upon a career of equal length in London. Reproduced last Saturday before our town playgoers, at the Charing Cross Theatre, it was received with approval, and the generally colder audience of a second night confirmed on Monday the verdict of the first. The success of The New Magdalen is, then, an accomplished fact; and one is only concerned to know the cause of it, and to see how far it is justified. Great stress has been laid upon the moral pointed by Mr. Collins's drama; but those are little familiar with London audiences who lay any part of the success of the play to the credit of its teaching. Here and again very forcibly, the teaching is insisted on by passages of vigorous dialogue addressed in truth to the audience, but the most that the audience does is to lend itself for a moment to listen to this and to applaud it. In good time, it is forgotten, and the audience does not in reality so much applaud the cause as the cleverness of its advocate an advocate who, strongly possessed with his theme, has done unconsciously what the wily Guido, in The Ring and the Book, did consciously—that is, he has mingled truth and sophistry so that his listeners are baffled. And if in narrative "the mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure," certainly in advocacy the mixture of a truth is of incalculable value to a bad cause. A little truth will leaven a lump of sophistry; and Mr. Collins's sophistry is leavened with much more than a little truth.

No wonder then, that it is momentarily accepted by an audience moved by the art of his story: no wonder that the people's sympathy with the heroine's misfortune and admiration for the Broad Church clergyman who at some cost to himself endeavours to relieve it in unconventional ways, make them half believe for a moment that the Broad Church clergyman is wisdom itself when, preparing, like Micawber, to quit England, with his bride from the Refuge, he "despises the Old World's narrow prejudices, and its superstitions," or when earlier in the play-having himself been generous and forgiving to the New Magdalen, he propounds the monstrous proposition that "the best among us to-day may be the worst to-morrow." His personal charity, his excellent truths or truisms about the labourer's right to live, make this last nonsense palatable; but if Julian Gray had thought a little longer, he would have seen that even if best men are moulded out of faults, they are moulded, not changed in the twinkling of an eye, and would have remembered -what he must quite well have known-that the whole of life, and not one single act in it, makes good or bad. His utterance was not to the credit of his head; but he is a fine fellow, after all, and will doubtless learn his mistake in that New World to which he goes so hopefully-the good New World, free as of course it is sure to be, from every fault of the old. He will not better his heart, in the good New World, but he will mature his judgment.

The approval of the audience then is with him, just while he speaks, but when the curtain falls the moral of the play is forgotten, if indeed the moral really meant is that the new Magdalen is likely to be better at heart and more forgiving than the unsophisticated girl whose place she has usurped. Be this as it may, it is not the moralgood in its teaching of general charity: bad in its

insinuation of almost universal uncharitablenessthat makes the success of the piece, or is its chief source of interest. Mr. Wilkie Collins's judgment on certain social questions may have played him false; but his genius of construction has been true to him. And it is not because the work teaches something of the lesson taught by M. Dumas in Le Fils de Madame Aubry, and by a younger dramatist, Mr. Gilbert, in Charity, that the work succeeds. Charity didn't succeed; yet its lesson was the soundest of the three. The New Magdalen succeeds because it shows all the constructive power which bound us with a spell in the Woman in White. Briefly, The New Magdalen, considered as an acting piece, is the strongest thing the stage has seen during many years.

There is not an unnecessary character, there is not an unnecessary scene in it. Hardly is there a superfluous word. The exposition of the story and its development are as lucid and succinct as ever was the summing up of any judge in court of justice. The curtain rises on an incident of the war-the Germans occupy a position from which the French retire. Grace Roseberry, the Canadian girl nursed by a woman who was an outcast, is seemingly dead; the outcast will take her place in the new society which will never have a chance of discovering the imposture. The new Grace Roseberry passes through the German lines, in charge of an English journalist, and at that moment a German surgeon, by an operation unknown to the French, is restoring the real Grace Roseberry to life and consciousness. The first act of the play itself sees Mercy Merrick comfortably settled in the other's place: a rich young man is making love to her, and she has won the regard of Lady Janet Roy. This is success in life. And the first act ends with the arrival of the real Grace

Roseberry and her recognition of Mercy Merrick as the woman from the Refuge who had nursed her in the German war. The second act is stronger still. At its beginning Mercy Merrick is still safely in Grace Roseberry's place. No one doubts her story-the story of the other is that of a madwoman. The clergyman, Julian Gray, involves himself in the affair, and while secretly loving Lady Janet's protégée, his duty prompts him alone to see that absolute justice is done to the new comer. At length Mercy Merrick confesses to him her deception, and he waits to hear her confess it to the rest. This she is almost in act to do, when the superfluous taunts of the real Grace Roseberry change for a moment her purpose, and there is a remarkable moment for the audience -a great one for the actress-when Mercy Merrick, stung by these taunts, defies her, and in token of a new persistence calls her aloud, not Grace Roseberry, but Mercy Merrick. This is a scene weak to narrate, but powerfully conceived and powerfully executed. At last contrition does its work on the one woman, or, to speak more truly, the sympathy which is lacking to the other. She cannot see Grace Roseberry carried away to a madhouse. So she makes a clean breast of it, and in the next act, after having proved the heartlessness of every body else, goes away with Julian Gray to that new country which is the Paradise of people who can't get on in this. Were one disposed to go a little deeper into Mr. Collins's work, it wouldn't be a difficult task to show that Mercy Merrick, with her hardness and her contrition, is inconsistent beyond the limits of human inconsistency; and certainly one might decline to give her all the author's credit for virtue when she makes the confession which in common honesty Julian Gray would have made-however unwillingly-had she herself withheld it. But we are not occupied with these things. We have been occupied with showing why the piece has succeeded. Too much, it seems to us, has been made of a dubious moral: too little of a construction of undeniable power.

As a whole, the acting is adequate; and good acting is demanded. Those who know Miss Ada

Cavendish's method of play will hardly need to be told that she is best of all in the finesse of comedy, good in the strongest situations of melodrama, and much less satisfactory in passages which an actress of pure pathos might have made veritably pathetic. Of course she has studied the character carefully-small praise to an actress who means to be an artist, for doing only thatand the result of her study is the composition of a stage figure which is generally interesting, nearly always effective, and rarely touching. Now and again the stage effectiveness, so tempting, even so fitting to the character, is laid aside, and then Miss Cavendish is not only accomplished, but strong-strong at the angered moment where she defies Grace Roseberry: strong in the scene with Horace, in her expression of feverish anxiety, nervous fear, nervous laughter. As Lady Janet Roy, Miss R. G. le Thière makes a picturesque figure, and plays with thorough comprehension of a character not easy to make attractive, for undoubtedly Lady Janet Roy is more imperious than loveable. Miss K. Rivers is Grace Roseberry. It is not her fault if Grace is hard and forbidding. The actress has realised the novelist's conception, and deserves praise for that. There are only two other characters of importance: the young lover and the Broad Church clergyman. Mr. Leonard Boyne represents the first very well, and Mr. Markby acts the second better than he looks him. The piece, then, is well playedsensibly, intelligently, yet with no fine finish or fine impulse. As these people pass before you, you watch the puzzle out, hardly touched by any one's fortunes, but interested in all.

FREDERICK WEDMORE.

The Lady of Lyons, which was performed at last Saturday's matinée at the Gaiety, will be repeated at the same place to-day. Every one was glad to see Mr. and Mrs. Kendal on the London stage again, though a more sympathetic part than that of Pauline might have been wished for the

actress.

The Two Roses has come at a quick pace to its A few weeks since it end at the Vaudeville. seemed immortal, there; but now it is gone, and its place to-night will be filled by Mr. Byron's new comedy.

ONE pantomime has disappeared already—that at the Holborn Amphitheatre, where Cinderella has been withdrawn, and the classic Madame Angot come to the rescue.

ON Thursday evening-too late for any notice in our columns this week-a new comedietta was to be brought out at the Court Theatre; Miss Marie Litton playing the principal part.

FOR One melodrama the Adelphi has substituted another. A Prayer in the Storm is succeeded by A Dream at Sea. The author does not count for much in these pieces, where the scene-painter and machinist are persons of importance. Mr. James Fernandez, Miss Hudspeth, and Miss Stuart are among the chief performers in the melodrama now performing.

MDLLE. MANETTI plays Clairette in La Fille de Madame Angot at the Philharmonic, and Lange is played by Miss Katrine Monroe, who played it last at the Gaiety. The performance is in no way a remarkable one, but may draw people during a few weeks of the holidays.

THE last performances of Two Orphans are taking place at the Olympic, where Mr. Albery's new comedy is ready to succeed the famous melodrama.

CHARLES SELBY's funny little piece, called Drawing the Line, is brightly played at the Charing Cross Theatre, before Mr. Wilkie Collins's drama, which is noticed duly in another place. Mr. Macklin, Mr. Charlton, Miss Edith Lynd, and Miss Burney are the performers of the farce.

M. PIERRE BERTON, it is stated, has been offered by the new manager of the Paris Vaudeville an engagement sufficiently brilliant to induce him to leave the Théâtre Français. A good thing, this, for the frequenters of the Vaudeville, who will thus see one of the best young leading actors on the Paris stage. During his stay at the Français, Pierre Berton's light has been under a bushel. They have given him bad parts and unsuitable parts to play, and no one has gained thereby. At the Vaudeville, where no long-established rights of other people will block his way, we may expect more than a repetition of the success which he obtained at the Odéon. His performances at the "second Théâtre Français," in Le Bâtard, in L'Autre of George Sand, and Le Rendezvous of François Coppée, will always afford pleasant recollections to those who witnessed them.

COMMERCIALLY, the year at the Théâtre Français has been one of the utmost prosperity. The receipts have never been as great as in the twelvemonth just passed. But when it is remembered that the sensational performance of the Sphinx contributed as much as anything to the financial success, the result will not seem to be one so very worthy of congratulation. Latterly Le DemiMonde, accepted by all Paris critics as the master work of Dumas, has maintained the receipts of the theatre at a high level. The Chaine, of Scribe, has been less popular, and the revival of Phèdre was undertaken with an intention purely artistic. GEORGE SAND'S Marquis de Villemer-her best contribution to dramatic literature-was performed at the Gaité matinée last Sunday; Porel, Talien, Léonide Leblanc and Blanche Baretta, of the Odéon, taking the principal parts.

La Vie Infernale, a drama by Georges Richard, from a romance of Gaboriau's, has been produced with fair success at the Théâtre de Cluny.

THE Débats devotes a good deal of space to the discussion of the prospects and position of a very important Paris theatre-the Vaudeville-which hopes by the appointment of a new manager to have seen the last of its bad days. "It has passed," says the Débats, into new hands." "La tâche est lourde, mais ni l'intelligence ni le courage ne manquent aux hommes qui l'ont acceptée. Ils auront tout d'abord à lutter contre des difficultés de toute nature, car ils prennent possession d'une maison en quelque sorte démeublée, où tout manque. La désorganisation est complète: pas de répertoire, pas de troupe, au sens vrai du mot, et avec cela le préjuge défavorable qui s'attache à un théâtre 'enguignonné' depuis longtemps, si l'on peut employer ce mot. Les choses ne sont pour tant pas désespérées, et l'on a vu des malades revenir de plus loin. Le Vaudeville a un passé glorieux, et son nom seul évoque les plus brillans Souvenirs. Que d'auteurs et d'acteurs célèbres ont fait son illustration! Il a toujours compté au premier rang parmi nos scènes de genre nécessaires, et un tel théâtre ne saurait disparaître."

SPEAKING of the dramatic year just passed in Paris, M. Caraguel, who seems above the consideration of popular successes, says: "The theatrical year just dead has not been marked by any memorable event. Things have followed their accustomed train. New works have been numerous, but none has risen above an honest mediocrity."

MUSIC.

MONDAY POPULAR CONCERTS.

THOUGH the first concert since Christmas, which took place last Monday, offered no absolute novelty in the instrumental portion of the programme, it was noteworthy for the first appearance at these entertainments of one of the best pianists now before the public-Mdlle. Marie Krebs. To her, therefore, the place of honour should be given in this notice. Mdlle. Krebs is a pleasing, though unfortunately not very common, example of a wonderful child who has developed into a still

more wonderful young woman. In the case of infant prodigies there is always more or less reason to dread the fate of the immortal Mr. Toots, and to fear that a remarkable gifted childhood may be followed by a, to put it mildly, very commonplace maturity. Happily, however, both for Mdlle. Krebs and for our musical public, she has proved an exception to the too frequent rule. With years, her intellect as well as her fingers have developed; and she has come back to us now no longer a remarkable child, but a finished artist. She paid a visit to this country last season, after the conclusion of the Monday Popular Concerts, which accounts for the fact of the present being her first appearance there. She selected for her solo Bach's Prelude and Fugue in A minor, entitled in the programme "Alla Tarantella." It would be interesting to know by whom this title was given; it is certainly not due to Bach himself; it is indeed doubtful whether in his time the old dance, which was originally in common time, had assumed its modern form and rhythm at all. Some modern editor has probably re-christened it because the subject happens to be in triplets; but there are several other of Bach's fugues which might just as correctly bear the same name. Apart, however, altogether from this point, the fugue is one of the old master's finest and most genial works, and the prelude which precedes it is perhaps even more beautiful. Both are excessively difficult; but Malle. Krebs has arrived at that enviable

stage of proficiency in which no such thing as difficulty any longer exists for her. Of her performance on Monday it is simply impossible to speak too highly.

The distinctness of

It pos

her passages and the clearness of her phrasing the first requisites in Bach's music-were absolutely perfect; nor with all this mechanical accuracy was there, as sometimes happens, any hardness or frigidity. The expression was all that could be desired; and the effect upon the audience of her truly marvellous performance was so great that nothing less than three recalls would satisfy Herr Straus and Signor Piatti), Mdlle. Krebs them. In Beethoven's great trio in B flat (with showed her competency as an exponent of concerted music; while the concluding number in the programme, Schubert's Fantasia in C, Op. 159, was another piece of wonderful execution. This very fine work is one of the few by its composer the date of which is unknown. From the internal evidence of style, one would be inclined to class it among Schubert's later works. sesses the same breadth of development, boldness of modulation, and melodic charm as the Rondo in B minor (also for piano and violin) or the two pianoforte trios, all of which works were produced in the last years of their composer's life. Owing to the great demands it makes on both players, it is but seldom heard in public; such a performance, Herr Straus was a genuine treat to the Monday therefore, as it received from Mdlle. Krebs and Popular audience. The opening number of the programme was Mendelssohn's early quintet in A, a truly remarkable work for a lad of seventeen, but showing occasionally (a very rare thing with Mendelssohn), some tendency to diffuseness. Notwithstanding this, the charm of the subjects and the skill with which they are treated is so great that the work will always be heard with interest. It was performed by Messrs. Straus, L. Ries, Zerbini, Burnett and Piatti; and though Herr Straus seemed not altogether at his ease (being apparently troubled with a refractory "first string "), the rendering was an excellent one. The vocalist was Miss Edith Wynne, and Mr. Zerbini conducted.

a

Next Monday will be "Mendelssohn night," when Mdme. Norman-Neruda is announced as leader, and Miss Agnes Zimmermann as pianist.

EBENEZER PROUT.

THE Crystal Palace Saturday Concerts will be resumed this afternoon, after the usual Christmas recess. From what we learn of the projected

arrangements, there is every reason to expect that the remaining concerts of the season will be fully equal in interest and instructiveness to those that have already taken place.

commenced on Thursday next, the 21st-not on THE Royal Albert Hall Concerts are to be rethe 19th, as originally proposed, and announced

in our columns last week. At the first concert

the great violinist Herr August Wilhelm will make his first appearance for several years in this country. The event will be one of interest, as Herr Wilhelmj is ranked by many German musical critics as equal, and by some as even superior, to Joachim.

THE last number of the Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris contains a long article from the pen of M. Adolphe Jullien on the opening of the New Opera House. The critic very justly blames the management for giving a series of selections instead of some representative work. He says that they "transformed into a gala evening worthy of being offered to the Shah of Persia this solemn inauguration, which might have been a sort of musical festival, and of homage offered to the masters of genius who have for two centuries adorned the French opera." He adds that "the inauguration of the Opera, as it took place, has appeared to deny the musical history of France, and to ignore the glorious part played by our country in the development of dramatic music." He nevertheless speaks with high praise of the débutante, Malle. Krauss, who in two acts of La Juive showed the possession of great dramatic and lyric power.

Ir is interesting to note how German music seems at length to be making its way in France. At the last concert of the Conservatoire, three movements from the "Credo" of Bach's great Mass in B minor were included in the programme; while at M. Pasdeloup's popular concert on the same day, Brahms's Serenade in D was to be produced for the first time. Last Thursday the Messiah was announced, under the direction of M. Lamoureux, our excellent artist, Mdme. Patey, being engaged for the contralto music.

WEBER'S Oberon has just been produced for the first time at Bordeaux, with great success.

A FRENCH Opéra Comique company has been performing with considerable success at Singapore.