11 MARCH 1876, Page 20

SOME OF THE MAGAZINES.

• TizE Magazines are very good this month, each one containing some paper which either contributes a little to the sum of human knowledge, or makes the number for itself worth buying and reading.

The Contemporary contains Mr. Martineau's second paper on"Modern Materialism," in answer to Professor Tyndall, and we can hardly say too much of its power and subtlety. It is indeed,—able as was the first paper,—far the abler and more convincing of the two. We have seldom read anything which struck us as more complete, or more powerfully expressed, than the following criticism on Professor Tyndall's " potentiality " of znatter,—which potentiality the Professor will not admit to be mind. The extract is somewhat long, but our readers will thank us for giving it in full ; and we may be quite sure that after read- ing it, they will not neglect to read for themselves the whole of the article of which this is but a specimen :— "In truth, the nearer I approach the Power which Professor Tyndall pursues through nature with so subtle and brilliant a chase, and the more I try, by combining the predicates which he gives and withholds, to think it out into the clear, the less distinct does this ideal somewhat' become, not simply to the imagination, but to intellectual apprehension. A power which is not Mind, yet may potential' and exist when and where it makes no sign ; which is immanent' in matter, yet is matter; which ' is manifested in the universe,' yet is not a Cause,' therefore 'has no effects ; presents to me, I must confess, not an overshadowing mystery, but an assemblage of contradictions. I have always supposed that 'Power ' was a relative word, and that the correlative was found in the work done : ' take away the latter by denying the causation, and the term drops into five letters which might as well be arranged in any other order. Yet elsewhere this negative language is balanced by such largo affirmative suggestions that I almost cease to feel the inter- val between my critic's thought and my own. Of the inorganic, the vugetablo, and the animal realms, he says—' From this point of view, all three worlds would constitute a unity, in which I picture life as imma- nent everywhere. Nor am I anxious to shut out the idea that the life here spoken of may be but a subordinate part and function of a higher life, as the living, moving blood is subordinate to the living man. I re- sist no such idea, as long as it is not dogmatically imposed. Left for the human mind freely to operate apt, the idea has ethical vitality ; but stiffened into a dogma, the inner force disappears, and the outward yoke of a usurping hierarchy takes its place.' Bidding God-speed to this sudden flank-attack upon usurping hierarchies and dogmas, I pur- sue only the main line of march in the free 'idea.' Whither does it lead me ? It shows me the three provinces which make up our kosmos blended into one organism by an all-pervading life, which conducts all their processes, from the flow of the river to the dynamics of the human brain. This alone brings me to a pause of solemn wonder,—a single power through the whole, and that a living one! But there is more behind. This power, co-extensive though it is with nature, is not all : beyond her level we are to think of a ' higher life,' to which her laws and history do but give functional expression. May we then really think out this ' idea' of a life ' higher' than what is supreme in the world,—higher, therefore, than the human ? But scale of height above that point we do not possess, except in gradation of intellectual and moral sublimity ; and either that Ideal Life must cease to live, or must come before our thought as transcendent Mind and Will, on a scale comprehending as well as permeating the universe. With any guide. who brings me hither I sit down with joy and rest. It is the mountain- top, which shows all things in larger relations and through a more lustrous air ; and every feature,—the great build of the world close at band ; the thinning of the everlasting snows, as they stoop and melt towards human life; the opening of sweet valleys below the earlier and wilder pines ; and the final plains, teeming in their silence with industry and thoughts—is better understood than from level points of view, where the scope is narrowed or the calm is lost. But my guide seems loss content than I to rest here, and deserts me, not, so far as I can trace him, to reach a brighter point, but rather to descend into the mists. To the ' higher life,' transcending our highest, he dares not give the predicate 'Mind,' or apply the pronoun of Personality. On what scale, then, is it ' higher?' If not on the intellectual and moral, then there is that in man which rises above it ; for the power of attaining truth and goodness is ideally supreme. If Professor Tyndall can reveal to us something which is higher than Mind and Free Causality, by all moans lot us accept it at his hands and assign it to God. Bnt in order

to profess this, and therefore to deprecate as an anthropomorphism,' the ascription of mind to Him, one would have, I think, to be one's self something more than man. Only such a one could cast a look above the level of Reason, to see whether it was overtopped: and so, this fashionable reproach against religion is virtually an arrogating of a superhuman position. As we cannot overfly our own zone, no beat of our wings availing to lift us out of the atmosphere they press, surely, if that 'higher life' speaks to us in idea at all, it can only be as Perfect Reason and Righteous Will. Those who find this type of conception not good enough for them,—do they succeed in straggling upwards to a better ? Rather, I should fear, does a persistent gravitation gain upon them, till they droop and sink into the alternative faith of blind force which leaves their own rank supreme."

Mr. Arnold, whose horror of anthropomorphism is so great that it leads him, in our belief, into the very same thicket of confusions as Professor Tyndall, might derive not a little advantage from studying this paper of Mr. Martineau's; for the second of his papers on `" Bishop Butler and the Zeit-Geist " seems to us, while full of the dread, as so much of his writing is, of putting human qualities in the place of God, to result in a sort of Pantheism or Nihilism, or worship of a Zeit-Geist, which replaces God by a power much less than human. Nor can we at all agree with Mr. Arnold that the philosophy of Butler's " sermons at the Rolls" is the weakest part of Butler's writings, and that in which it is least possible to find a permanent resting-place. On the contrary, there is hardly one of the doctrines attacked here by Mr. Arnold which has not been, as we believe, more or less verified by the further investigations of modern times. Take this criticism on Butler's theory of ' compassion': " His [Butler's] theory requires, moreover, that self-love shall be but one out of our many affections, that it shall have a strictly defined end of its own, and be as distinct from those affections which seem moat akin to it, and which are therefore often confounded with it, as it is from those—such as benevolence, we will say—which nobody is tempted to confound with it. Such is Butler's theory, and such are its require- ments. And with this theory we find him declaring that compassion is a primitive affection implanted in us from the first by the Author of Nature to lead us to public spirit, just as hunger was implanted in us from the first to lead us to our own personal good, and from the same cause—namely, that reason and cool self-love would not by themselves have been sufficient to lead us to the end in view, without the appetite and the affection :—' The private interest of the individual would not be sufficiently provided for by reasonable and cool self-love alone ; there- fore the appetites and passions are placed within as a guard and further security, without which it would not be taken due care of. It is mani- fest, our life would be neglected were it not for the calls of hunger, and thirst, and weariness, notwithstanding that without them reason would assure us, that the recruits of food and sleep are the necessary means of our preservation. It is therefore absurd to imagine that, without affec- tion (the affection of compassion), the same reason alone would be more effectual to engage us to perform the duties we owe to our fellow- creatures.' The argument may be ingenious, but can anything be more unsatisfactory? And is it not, to use Butler's words, ' absurd to im- agine' that in this manner, and by this parallel plan, and thus to sup- plement one another, hunger and reasonable self-love, compassion and 'a settled, reasonable principle of benevolence to mankind,' did really have their rise in us ?"

A criticism less really satisfactory in the sense of that large and earnest criticism at which, as we know, Mr. Arnold always aims, could hardly be adduced from his writings. It is, no doubt, a true comment on some of Butler's language, which, as Mr. Arnold says, ignores too much that history of natural change and evolution to which the " Zeit-Geist " has now so accustomed us that it seems part of our ordinaryintelleetual assumptions. But look beneath the mere language, and what can be more important or more completely in keeping with the results of modern investiga- tion than Bishop Butler's assumption? Let us admit what Mr. Arnold appears to be contending for, that man's mind has a natural history, and that all we find in it now was not equally to be found in it during the prehistoric or even the earliest historic age. Let us admit that compassion,' for instance, is of later growth than self-love, still, Butler's account and analysis of it is not substantially at all the less true or the less important. If it is inaccurate to say that compassion was implanted in man because without it reason would have been ineffectual to compel us to perform our duties to our fellow-creatures, that surely is the theological mode, and probably the true mode, of saying what even the most earnest disciple of Herbert Spencer or Darwin would strenuously main- tain—that the;-society in which compassion' had began to develop itself out of the more selfish instincts, must have gained so much advantage as a society over any society in which the elements were more purely self-regarding, that it would at once attain a superi- ority in all the arts of peace, and- probably also of war. Now, what is this, but to say that withOut-the infusion of compassion into the race, reason alone was not " effectual to engage us to per- form the duties we owe to our fellow-creatures?" If it were not the purpose for which this 'particular affection' was implanted in us, it was at least the effect of its development ; and for our parts, we believe that though the doctrine of its gradual evolution is true, it is hardly on evidence, so much as on analogy and a priori reasoning, that in relation to these matters the doctrine of evolution has been established. In fact, Butler's doctrine on this subject is essentially true and as valuable as ever, though it may need to be restated in new terms to reconcile it to the more modern modes of thought. Would the race have ever been induced to eat and drink suffi- ciently and punctually enough, from pure reason and without hunger and thirst ? Clearly not. Would the race have ever been induced to hold together in any true social solidarity by pure reason and without the instinct of compassion ? Again we say certainly not. Clearly, then, Butler's doctrine is true, though it may be stated without sufficient regard to the gradual character of moral evolution. The whole of Mr. Arnold's criticism on the sermons preached at the Rolls appears to us essentially unfair to Butler, and wanting in adequate acknowledgment of the solid truth of those re- markable efforts. And the glimpse which Mr. Arnold gives us of his own refined Utilitarianism seems to us to indicate that if he should ever elaborate for us his own philosophy, we shall not find much in it to lay hold of as of permanent value. In another article, Mr. Oxenham carries on his argument concerning the revealed truth, as he holds it, of Eternal punishments, into the initial stage of his Scriptural exposition. But as yet he has touched only on the one or two passages which seem to favour his own side of the question, and not grappled with the remarkable statements of an opposite kind. Of the marvellous Persian poem treated of in the article by Mr. Schutz-Wilson we propose to speak at length in another column.

The Fortnightly, though less full of original matter than the Contemporary, has some excellent papers. There is one from Mr. Dale, on " Disestablishment," for instance, which, though not containing any very original arguments, and penetrated by the sense of social wrong, which always seems to us so incon- sistent with the religious self-confidence of Nonconformists, is full of what we should call fine pulpit eloquence, if, in our time, the phrase were not considered to convey a latent sarcasm. We should like to know, however, how Mr. Dale proves his propo- sition that " if the adverse influence of the Establishment were out of the way, the Nonconformists would probably do more for the poor than ever," a statement which, if it were demonstrated, would do much towards reconciling many minds to that great overturn. Why should they do more, when their very theory is that their ministry have special duties towards their congrega- tions, but none, except it be that of proselytising, towards those outside their denomination ? Does he rely on the additional readiness of the people to ask for their services, or on the additional readiness of the ministry to offer them? As to the ease with which the Episcopal Church would be sup- ported, we agree with Mr. Dale. There would be money enough contributed, and to spare, raised by voluntary liberality, but like every other subscription, it would be unfairly raised, by undue pressure upon the willing and undue leniency towards those who are benefited by the ministers' exertions. The question of taxa- tion is, however, a subordinate affair, as, were the glebes all sold and the tithes all devoted to education, the objection of Non- conformists to an Establishment world remain as strong as ever. Mr. Abbott's paper on the " Catholic Peril in America" is ex- tremely curious, not only from its statistics, but from the alarm which the writer evidently feels. He shows that in 1870 the number of sittings in Protestant churches in the United States was 19,674,548, and in Catholic churches, 1,990,514, or ten per cent., and that this is a proportion which has been doubled in twenty years. The proportion is still, however, small, and even if sittings are disregarded, and the numbers themselves taken instead, it does not come fully up to one-fourth. The Catholics do not even claim more than 9,000,000 out of 38,000,000, and deduce this only from the number of their priests, which must vary greatly in different districts, the normal estimate of one priest to 2,000 souls being necessarily exceeded in the West, while they admit that the total would be far greater, but for incessant desertions from the Church. Granting, however, that the figures are accurate, we fail to see reasons for the apprehensions of Mr. Abbott. Why should one-fourth of the population of the Union be able to control the religious character of its civilisation, as Mr. Abbott apprehends they will? Because, he says, a banded and active minority can always rule a divided or quiescent majority. Possibly, but how long after the attempt was made would the Protestant majority be either divided or quiescent? Because, he says, the wealth of the Catholic Church increases faster than that of any other Christian Church in America. Granting the fact, which is possibly true, as among Catholics religious bequests are works of merit, what does the fact really signify ? The power of Churches is not based upon their wealth. The poorest Catholic Church in Europp is the Irish, and it is the strongest The richest is the Austrian, and it is the weakest. No Churches of our day possess anything like the proportionate wealth of the Catholic Church in England when Henry VIII ascended the throne, or of France when the States•General met, and how many years elapsed before the Church had nothing? That the States may have great trouble in defending their =- denominational systems of education, and that they may find stricter laws of mortmain useful against a corporation which neither dies, nor wastes, nor parts with property, are possibilities which we may readily concede, but which are certainly not beyond the reach of American statesmanship. The real strength of the Catholic Church in America, as everywhere else, lies in its power of conversion, and according to Mr. Abbott, it exhibits none. It is always losing its children, and consequently, as soon as it ceases to be recruited by Irish and German Catholics, must slowly dwindle away. What is there formidable in a Church in that position? We do not say that Mr. Abbott's figures or assertions are correct, but we do say that, if they are correct, his apprehen- sions are exaggerated or unreasonable. Sir Henry Havelock contributes a paper to the Fortnightly which should be read, if for its statistics alone, by every one who is interested in the military organisation of the Empire. He shows that, apart entirely from our force in India, which is really our force in Asia, and available to perform a considerable section of our national work, we possess at home nearly double the force we had on the breaking-out of the Crimean war, and could, at six weeks' notice, without drawing on India or the Colonies, put into the field for foreign service 50,000 good infantry, 4,600 excellent cavalry, and 342 guns,—that is to say, an extremely formidable, though, no doubt, small army, complete in all arms. This is probably as many as we should attempt to send abroad, and it is, therefore, the composition of this force and the method of filling up its losses, which, it is calculated, would amount in any cam- paign to 40 per cent. per annum, that we have mainly to consider. On neither point, according to Sir Henry Havelock, is our system satisfactory. We should have to draw too many soldiers at first from the half-trained men of the DepOts and the Militia Reserve, and of men taken from trained regiments, but unaccustomed either to their officers or their comrades. The proportion of lads among them, moreover, owing to the introduction of short ser- vice, is very much too great, so great as to impair the physique of the regiments. This question of physique is all-important, not so much for fighting purposes, for the youngsters fight well enough, as for marching purposes, immature men being unable to perform the work required of them. Sir Henry would meet this difficulty by a modified ballot, for the ballot, based upon the idea that every young man in the country must run his chance of serving in the Militia, his chance being one in seven, unless he were so trained as a lad at school that he could be accepted as a qualified soldier, who need only go through his six weeks' drill a year,—that, stripped of details, seems to be his plan, and it is one to which we have no objections to raise except these. We believe the country would just as soon consent to a year's military training for every lad of nineteen, and would thus produce an effective home army, competent to any duty ; and we believe also that were pay increased with length of service, and every soldier enlisted on the same terms as every officer—that is, free to go whenever he was not wanted for active service—the Army would always be sufficiently supplied. Sir Henry Havelock, however, works out his plan with great precision, and it certainly would bear very lightly and very fairly upon the nation, which, how- ever, is not yet convinced that it must endure even compulsory training, much less compulsory service.

Blackwood seems to be unable to make up its mind to which party or person in the Cabinet to adhere. Recently it was dis- tinctly Disraelite, an attitude which, considering the language oc- casionally used in its pages about the Premier, struck observers as a little odd ; but this month it is apparently Derbyite, and raps Mr. Disraeli and Lord Salisbury alike, and with equal sharp- ness. It declares that "crusading operations, whether in the revolted provinces of Turkey or in the territorial waters of a slave-holding State, are equally uncalled for and super-

fluous ; " tells Mr. Disraeli that only foreigners are "sea- sick of the silver streak," and warns Lord Salisbury that it does not believe "there has come over this country a kind of sen-

sation, a thrill, a longing for action, a desire for a definite aim to be stated and a definite policy announced." What is wanted, Blackwood says, is a resolute assertion of British interests in foreign countries, and that her Majesty's Government should, " with equal resolution and deliberate prudence, exercise the im- mense moral authority of this country in favour of peace and jus- tice, social order and oppressed nationalities." But is that Tory policy ? We thought it was Mr. Gladstone's. There is a paper in Blackwood on Friendship which is a little too much like a ser- mon, but which contains some sound thinking, particularly this sentence, which explains the friendships between unequal intel- lects that so often excite remark :—"Friendship cannot be con- fined to great minds; people have their distinct ideas of it : some- body to feel comfortable with, to rely upon, to be able to say what they like to you with a security of being understood ; who will hear them, perhaps help them,—is what they want. Thought is not a universal article of exchange—good-will and a sense of mutual fitness may refresh the soul at less cost, and help it towards that love to the brethren which Christianity re. quires. But friendship of this character breaks down if there is too much attempt to enforce its ideal claims and duties." There is a cause of friendship which the old writers never men- tioned, and which this essayist does not dwell on, though he perceives it, and that is the relief some friends are to each other, the sense of cheerfulness, or of security, or of being comprehended, which their presence inspires. That faculty of bringing relief from one- self is often given to very uninteresting people, and indeed seems to require for its existence a certain width of difference which helps to make friendships occasionally inexplicable. The feeling does not arise from sympathy, any more than its converse, dislike, always springs from the absence of it. You may have a very strong sympathy for a human being who, for all that, bores you to death, and therefore never can be a friend in any real sense. The article on " Some Gentlemen in the City," an account of people who are as clearly indicated as if their names were given, is amusing, though in most cases a trifle bitter; and the paper on the "Powers of the Air " is amusing too, though in a different way. The writer evidently believes that the Devil " colours" the knowledge of philosophers who reject God, so as to make it mislead them, and solemnly warns his readers against reading materialistic specula- tions, lest they should doubt :—" We must not be enticed at all by the ungodly speculations of philosophy, however specious they may be. We must not entertain them for a moment (mind, I am saying nothing about facts), lest we commit the secret fault of doubting, though never so little, the divine affirmation which once for all pronounces the Creation to be very good.' If our powers were capable of dealing with so vast a subject, it might seem arbitrary and unfair to forbid our examination of it ; but ex- perience proves that we only file our minds in vain when we attempt this impossibility, and while we gain no knowledge, we expose our faith to trial, so the restriction is simply salutary." But what if they have doubted before ? The whole paper is a wonderfully naïf expression of a kind of mind which we are too apt to fancy has become extinct. The writer would, doubtless, be horrified if told that the Pope was infallible, but evidently attributes absolute infallibility to a book. As the old lady said, if it was only in the Bible, he would believe that Jonah swal- lowed the whale.

The cleverest paper in the Cornhill is decidedly the one on " Humour," in which a writer who apparently understands what humour is, and is not without a touch of it himself, essays to prove that " humour is a morbid secretion," declares that "humour implies the love of emotional contrasts," and that the most effective contrasts can be attained " with the coarse, the brutal, or the profane ; and few are the humorists who can resist the temptation to use such weapons." He holds that the general love of humour—which, by the way, he had previously denied, maintaining that two English people in three would be horrified by Sydney Smith—is due to the fact that "gentle dulness ever loves a joke," and that the more vigorous defenders of the value of humour are people impenetrable to a joke. They admire Miss Austen, it is true, but "they like Miss Austen because her humour (to use a vulgar, but the only phrase) is drawn so excessively mild. There is not only nothing improper in her books, nothing which could prevent them from being given by a clergyman to his daughter as a birth-day present, but there is not a single flash of biting satire." The whole paper is full of epigrams, and most enjoyable to read, but its thought seems to us based upon an error, viz., that the very essence of humour is mockery, and especially mockery of those thoughts which the mind in its ordinary moods most respects. That, no doubt, is the essence of certain forms of humour, and especially of the true grotesque, of satire, and of the American irreverential persiflage, though the mockery in this latter is avowedly only sham mockery, like the mockery of a little child by its father ; but there is a humour which differs from these, which has its basis in the perception of incongruities, and which has still, and we believe always will have, a strong hold over the larger portion of man- kind, including especially men of English blood. The writer says :—" If you would succeed with a large audience, you may be dull, or bombastic, or sentimental, or flimsy, or muddled; but a touch of humour is the one deadly sin." We should say that was the exact opposite of the truth, and that a man to whose other qualities were added humour would be the most successful of all with a large audience. Was Peel more successful with a great audience than Mr. Bright? or Earl Russell—per- haps the least humorous of English statennen—than Dan O'Connell? Or did Mr. Lincoln or does Mr. Spurgeon lose power by their tendency to indulge in humour, often of a very- pronounced kind ? As to humour being a morbid secretion, where was the morbidness in Sydney Smith? or what is there in the most successful bit of humour of our day, "The Heathen Chinee," which should make us predicate any bad quality of its author? The humour of Rabelais, Swift, Fielding, and many more has partly ceased to attract in England, because culti- vated Englishmen have passed out of the stage in which in- decency appears humorous, and apart altogether from ques- tions either of taste or morals, fail to understand what it was their grandfathers laughed at so much. They do not so much fail to enjoy Boccaccio's situations as fail to see what it was he was laughing at. That only proves, however, that humour, among the English, has changed its objects, not that humour has ceased either to attract or to delight. As to the savagery of Swift or Fielding, which the essayist half seems to regret, calling the litera- ture of our day unmanly, the explanation of its disappearance is simple. Men think they can improve the things they dislike, till savagery strikes them as inhuman. Give us a kind of evil, say, a foreign domination, which rouses many minds, yet cannot be removed, and we shall see plenty of the old savagery return. Its root in literature is a justified, but hopeless discontent.

Fraser is the least thing dull, as if its managers rather sympathised with the writer in the Cornhill, but there is a " pretty " and entirely new account of "Sainte Perine," the great asylum or almshouse for gentlefolks near Paris, which will interest everybody who has ever given a thought to the relief of the " gentle ;" and an account of Armenian folk-songs, a collection of which is now being pub- lished by the good Armenian monks of Venice, from which we take what seems to us a moat spirited account of a storm on Lake Van :-

" We sailed in the ship from Aghthamar, We directed our ship towards Avan ; When we arrived before Vosdan We saw the dark son of the dark day.

Dull clouds covered the sky, Obscuring at once stars and moon ; The winds blew fiercely, And took from my eyes land and shore.

Thundered the heaven, thundered the earth, The waters of the blue sea arose ; On every side the heavens shot forth fire ; Black terror invaded my heart.

There is the sky, but the earth is not seen; There is the earth, but the sun is not seen ; The waves come like mountains And open before me a deep abyss.

0 sea, if thou lovest thy God, Have pity on me, forlorn and wretched ; Take not from me my sweet sun And betray me not to flinty-hearted Death.

Pity, 0 sea, 0 terrible sea!

Give me not up to the cold winds ; My tears implore thee And the thousand sorrows of my heart. . . .

The savage sea has no pity It hears not the plaintive voice of my broken heart ; The blood freezes in my veins, Black night descends upon my eyes. .

Go tell to my mother To sit and weep for her darkened :on ; That John was the prey of the sea, The sun of the young man is set!"

Fraser also publishes a thoroughly well-argued ilea for the reform which, as we believe, would remove half the difficulties of recruit- ing, the permission to the recruit to enlist as an officer does,—that is to resign at pleasure, provided his services were not urgently required.

The two best papers in Macmillan are an account of the Son- derbund War, at once clear and eloquent, by Colonel C. C. Chesney, who should give us a narrative of some struggle on a larger scale; and a sketch of the advantages which Virginia offers to the "gentleman-emigrant," who understands something of farm- ing and has /.2,000 of capital, those advantages consisting of a plentiful but rather dull life, a chance of making considerable profits, and a climate which, in January and February, often shows 20° of frost, while in June, July, and August the thermometer often stands for days between 90° and 95°. From September to Christmas, however, the climate is delightful, an unbroken sunny, sleepy, yet fresh autumn, as pleasant as a few days in October are here :— " In a good season the Indian summer reigns supreme from Septem- ber well-nigh to Christmas ; bright frosty nights and still, dreamy sunny days succeed each other week after week. The fall wheat is put in, the corn and tobacco-crops are housed, the 'Fall' tints are in all their glory and clothe the mountains in dazzling robes, the sky is bright and cloudless, and not a breath of wind stirs the forest ; the blue wreaths of smoke curl up from a hundred tobacco-barns, while a soft haze hangs sometimes for days over everything, and shuts out the distance. Then it is that the sportsman revels in the vast stubble-fields, and the gaunt, long-haired mountaineer creeps stealthily over the rocks and through the silent gorges of the mountains in pursuit of the wild turkey, while the tooting of cow-horns and the music of the hounds, both by night and day, speak of foxes and coons about to expiate their crimes on the altars of Diana. The roads, too, are now in good order, and social intercourse between different families is more frequent than at other seasons of the year."

The labour is negro, there is an almost total absence of social en- joyment, people being " tied " to their houses by the necessity of overseeing everything, and on the whole, we should think Tasmania a much happier place.