Lord Carnarvon, Lord Stanhope, Lord Lytton, and other 'Tory notabilities,
wish that a Conservative magazine should be started, and that real pains should be taken to bring out in it any " dormant " intellectual power which may exist on the Conservative side. That is, we imagine, the true mean- ing of the oddly-worded " confidential circular " which some one has betrayed to the papers, and we do not know that it is a foolish one. It is an odd. fact that while culture is growing Conservative, the graver kinds of ephemeral literature should be so very Liberal; and it is conceivable that a. maga- zine avowedly Tory might bring out new Tory men. Still, we do not think it will. The literary Peers will not find an abler editor than old John Blackwood, or a better judge of literary capacity, and he did not create a school. There is no Tory weekly paper of mark, except the Saturday Review, which did not prosper through its Toryism, and we suspect the truth is nearly this. All England might be Tory, and yet find that a loud " No !" in a hundred pages a month was exceedingly dull reading. The party has at least one witty and able exponent in the Magazines, Mr. Traill, and he is never so readable as when lie is exposing their want of intellectual force. The Lords will not love men who treat them as he treats Lord Cranbrook, yet if the writers have no independence, they will be very tedious.
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