BRISTOL, OCT. 18.

With this evening’s concert the sixth Bristol Festival came practically to a close, for the performance of Handel’s Messiah to-morrow morning is of purely local interest and may be safely left to itself.

Of this morning’s proceedings, also, it would be a waste of space to speak in detail. Sir Arthur Sullivan’s Golden Legend is at this moment a necessary adjunct of provincial festivals almost as much as the Messiah itself. Every chorister and orchestral player knows it by heart, and it is almost unnecessary to add that the Bristol singers, after having successfully dealt with Cherubini’s mass and Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet, did ample justice to the English composer’s graceful and tuneful music.

Madame Albani, Mr. Lloyd, and Mr. Santley are almost identified in the public mind with the parts in which they repeated numerous previous successes this morning, and Madame Belle Cole did her best with the contralto music, which is effective without being difficult.

The prestige of the work had been able to overcome even the spell of Bristol indifference, and the audience was as numerous as it was appreciative.

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