12 DECEMBER 1891, Page 29

Messrs. Marcus Ward and Co. have sent us a box

of Christmas

and New Year's Cards, which are executed with their usual skill, and drawn with their usual excellent taste and feeling. As usual, also, the landscapes please us best, and the comic pictures the least. Mirth has gone out of the designers of these pictures, and the happiest efforts among the lively pictures are those of animals which do not attempt to be comic, not the dancing dogs and posing birds, but the dogs and birds which are permitted to be themselves. Some of the sacred subjects, especially when they are copies of really great pictures, like the "Madonna di San Sisto," are really good.