The week has been replete with dinners and: tifin parties and one delightful night-time affair was the dinner given by the Count. and Countess de Caurseulles on Thursday. They are entertaining with a series of small affairs and the guests they assembled for this particular time were Princess Ottoboni, Sir Frederick and Lady Maze, Mme. Cheverton, Mr. and Mrs. L. A. Straetmans, Captain and Mrs. Hoya, Lora Li, Mrs. C. N, Holwill, Commander L. de Luca, Mr. and Mrs, Chester Fritz, Mr. and Mrs. D. Liu, Miss Jimmie Holwill, Mr. A. Berthier, Mr. and Ins. W. Boissewan and Mr.
Mr. and Mrs. A.C. Leith were hosts at snather dinner last "night, entertaining a group of guests at thei home in Bubbling Well Road.
'The worst sufferers, materially, by the change in the Royal wedding plans will be the Westminster Hospital, which expects to drop at least £2,000 between paying the contract for' for seats partially" erected and these and other seats which will now mot be wanted. The hospital was} insured, but apparently not for this articular form of loss. "Fashionable dress makers and hotels will lose something, but not very much. The ""little seasons" ig already very gay, and, as always, the general election next month wilt seta great deal of money in motion. The past. week has been fine and. mild, after weeks lof rain and much wind, and the West End streets are a. pageant of fiovely ears and smart dresses, 'A New Focal Point There is a saying that if you stand long enough on the steps of the Royal Exchange you will see everyone you have ever known pass before you. The same is said, by the way, of th terrasse of the Cafe de de la Paix in Paris. -But centres of interest char with the times. Nowadays, perhaps, the surroundings of Westminster Abbey are the chief focal" point Certainly for variety of interest would be hard to beat. Two days ago at three in the afternoon I saw wedding whose _motor-cars there, simultaneously, a fashionable
blocked: all Abingdon Street, emer ing from St. Margaret's to a clatter of joy bells, newspaper sellers with posters announcing "Serious. illness of Duke of Buccleuch," the victim of 8 trae accident being carried, pal and unconscious into an ambulance, Punch and Judy showman whee ing his little theatre towards Mill-bank, and six huge charabancs discharging tourists, who by the names fon the vehicles had come from all over England. What material for} the peripatetic moralist!
London Bridge—Farewell "London Bridge is falling down") Jsays the old nursery rhyme. Can we make a new one to suit the demise of Waterloo Bridge? Nothing of the arches now remains but the steel casings that were put under them to prevent stones from drop-3nd even these in two places, The destroyers are far ahead of their time table and before the end of the year there will be nothing left of the old bridge but seven solitary pillars Coffer-dams will then be built roun: these, the water pumped out, the pillars demolished, and the building fof the new bridge will begin.
seems odd that no use could be found for the splendid blocks of stone that have had to be backed away. The balustrades. and cornices have been sold off for garden ornaments—prelty expensive ones 100, when the cost of carting them away added—but the bulk of the stone, many thousand tons, is being dump-Jed as useless into a pit in Hounslow, where no doubt Macaulay's New Zealander will find in it food for Jspeculation as he muses over the ruins of London. Tt is always wonder to me that past ages seem to so large an extent to have built upon the relies of their predecessors without first clearing the ground. The Forum that you see in Rome dates no further back in its oldest parts than the first century A.D., yet it is considerably below the level of the surrounding streets. When the Forum of some two centuries earlier was being excavated at the begin-Jning of this century, the workmen went down as if into a coal-mine. Apart from human work, Nature for ever piling mountains on the disused ways of men, as is to be seen the Roman reinaing at Silchester Jand "elsewhere. Oddly enough the earth does not seem to grow any bigger.
The new Waterloo Bridge, constructed of the inevitable reinforced [conerete, will be a perfect greyhound Jcompared with the old. According to the taste of the moment, it will the height of architectural _perfection, Whether we shall be in the mood to think so when it is Gnished another matter.
A Perfect Juliet 'A performance of "Romeo and Juliet" in London is always "an event at which to pause. There i play in which richness of lan: guage has so run rial, like the great Purple and yellow curtains of beesonia and boungainvillea, nor any' which makes greater demands factors and actresses. Juliet indeed, ike "Lear, has frequently been dubbed an impossible pert, onthe
that an actress who looks young enough to be Juliet cannot possibly Thave experience enough to act her.
'Yet 'Miss Peggy Ashcroft, by universal consent of critics' and audilence, hag solved the problem. This In Mr. John Gielgud's production the night before last. She has at the beginning all the girlish freshness Jand innocence which the part demands, and at the end she rises to the greatest heights of tragedy, yet, some subtle way, without losing sight of the tact that Juliet was Jalways a child but newly awakened. to the passion and pain of life, It rather sad to add that her Romeo anything but worthy of her. But {in a little time Mr, Gielgud, who in view of his heavy work as producer, is at present playing Mercutio, will take over Romeo's part, and then. should see something that will make theatrical history.
Another interesting production, but jin another medium, isthe Alm version of "The Passing of the Third Floor Back." I have not seen it yet, but Tam not surprised that the lerities speak of it in that respectful tone which always means that they would like to praise but cannot Jconseientiously do 50. The merit of Jerome K. Jerome's classic (it really deserves "that Ties in the absorbing interest of the Influence of Jone character upon. another, of one universal mind upon the wide variety Jof minds represented by the sorry occupants of a second-rate Bloons [bury boarding-house. "This the stage, with a Forbes Roberts oe Mathorison Long, could show us to perfec tion. But there is no action in the play, except such delicate touches as the maid fiching the milk, or the JCity clerk bagging the best chair: and there Is mo concealing the fact that without "action the cinema is ost, For psychological effect, for the best results of dialogue alone, we Moed the flesh and blood of the stage. The shadow life of the screen Jeannot realize. them, The general verdict on this is that it is, depressing, which Precisely what "Phe Passing of the Third Floor Back" Is not.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.