30 DECEMBER 1871, Page 3

The Londoners did not enjoy their new Statute Holiday, Box-

ing Day, very much. The shopkeepers almost universally obeyed it, but the weather was dreary beyond expression, all drizzle and slush, and the people either kept indoors, or stood about looking sad. Thousands drank at home, and thousands fuddled themselves abroad, and the police-sheets were full of drunk and disorderly cases. We have often doubted if Englishmen enjoy holidays, and 'this one certainly was a failure. The weather seems even to have affected the pantomimes. The one we saw at Covent Garden was as dreary as the evening—hardly a laugh to be had out of it per hour—and in the descriptions of the remainder we have read, there seems very little suggestive of amusement. One man at the Princess's seems to have got an idea, a Darwinian world ,with the beasts hunting Man, which may be good if it is well clone ; but for the rest, writers, scene-painters, and carpenters, seem slightly used up, while, to the despair of mankind, every harlequinade seems to have been full of Tichborne.