AustLit

An advertisement for a lecture (with 'illustrative readings') on William Makepeace Thackeray, to be presented by R. W. M. Johnson at the Australian Library on 10 August 1868.

An advertisement for the Royal Victoria Theatre production of Sixteen String Jack and of Dion Boucicault's Colleen Bawn on 8 August 1868, and for the upcoming production of [Charles Webb's] Belphegor, the Mountebank; or, Woman's Constancy and James Robinson Planche's The Loan of a Lover.

The publishers of the Times advise that they have become the proprietors of the newspaper 'hitherto known as the Evening Mail'. From 20 June 1868, the newly acquired newspaper will be known as The Mail and published twice weekly.

An advertisement for the Australian Protestant Banner highlighting 'Mr. Holt in Rome' and 'Prince Alfred and Archbishop Polding'.

An advertisement announcing six performances by Grace Egerton at the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts.

An advertisement for the Royal Victoria Theatre's 'complimentary benefit to Mr. W. Lloyd, for seven years stage manager to Lyster's Royal Italian and English Opera Company', 11 August 1868.

A review of the 7 August 1868 Prince of Wales Opera House production of Richard Sheridan's The Rivals; or, A Trip to Bath and Walter T. Cooper's A New Crime; or, 'Andsome 'Enery's Mare's Nest.

The 'Flaneur' muses on Sydney's recent political and social occurrences. The focal point of his article is the attempt by the colonial government to introduce a Treason Felony Act following the attempted assassination of H. R. H. Prince Alfred in March 1868. The 'Flaneur' quotes from the Spectator's response to news of this proposed act. The English journal describes the move in the following terms: 'This Legislative Act we can call by no other name than an outburst of violent and alarming political delirium'.

The 'Flaneur' also discusses William Morris's new poem 'The Earthly Paradise', saying that Morris's writing is 'musical without being unintelligible, rich without being gaudy, and warm, with the genial warmth of Heaven's sun, and not with the fires of Hell.' The 'Flaneur' explains the poem's premise and provides 'a specimen'.

The Empire notes F. S. Wilson and C. W. Rayner's 'Australian Stockman's Song', saying that 'the pleasures of a bush life are made the means of introducing to characteristic music the somewhat unpoetic life of a stockman'.

An advertisement, probably placed by Samuel Bennett (sole proprietor, printer and publisher of the Empire), for the sale of a single cylinder printing machine. The sale is being offered 'to make room for a new machine daily expected from England'.

The Empire reproduces a column from the pages of London's Spectator. The column addresses moves by the colonial government in New South Wales to introduce a Treason Felony Act following the attempted assassination of H. R. H. Prince Alfred in March 1868. The Spectator considers the move foolish and concludes: 'To our minds the greatest disrespect for her Majesty, of which an English subject is likely to be capable just at the present, is to suppose that she can give her assent to so insane, or, if not insane, then cruel, brutal and silly an Act as this.'

The Empire reproduces a column from the pages of an Irish national paper. The column addresses moves by the colonial government in New South Wales to introduce a Treason Felony Act following the attempted assassination of H. R. H. Prince Alfred in March 1868. Believing the proposed legislation to be ill-considered, the column concludes, 'they have rushed through their Legislature ... a Treason Felony Bill so wildly and irrationally tyrannical in its provisions that not a vestige of public liberty can be said to exist in the country where it is law'.