• THE MAGAZINES.
WE are requested to state that the "Chronicles of Carlingford" are not by George Eliot, but by Mrs. Oliphant, a very different writer, who has displayed in "Salem Chapel" a kind and degree of power not perceptible in most of her previous works. She glides in this num- ber towards the melodramatic, the young minister hearing news which makes him believe his sister in danger from one of those gentle- manly, soft-spoken, utterly cruel seducers who appear so much more frequently in novels than in real life. The little sketch, however, of his mother, troubled about her daughter, troubled about her son, in a state of nervous agitation from fatigue, yet utterly unable to control her de- light that her son should have been invited by Lady Western, is ad- mirably drawn. The only other paper in Blackwood of any interest is a racy, and, on the whole, tolerably fair biography of Andrew Jackson, the American President, who first faced secession in South Carolina. The son of a poor Irish emigrant, and originally appren- ticed to a saddler, he became a lawyer, a general, the leader of the democratic party, and the most successful of the later American pre- sidents, and all through a single quality. His will was absolutely immovable. He could neither turn from his course, nor forgive his enemies ; and this hardness seemed to his countrymen, accustomed to bend to opinion and to evade difficulties, worthy of worship. A violent duellist, he shot one personal foe, who happened to be proud of his skill with the pistol, received a severe wound, and walked from the ground without showing it, because he said "lie did not want Dickenson" (then bleeding to death) "to have the gratification of knowing he had even touched him." On his death-bed he was in- duced, says the writer, to forgive his enemies; but he should have added the American story which, true or false, exactly expresses his character. He had forgiven, he said, all the world, when the divine aaked him, "And Seba Smith, general ?" "Hell sooner," replied the dying; man, and no persuasion could induce him to alter his choice. Seba Smith had attacked him in a series of letters, which have been collected as Major Downing's letters, and which may still be read with pleasure. They are the only example of that genuine American wit which Mr. Lincoln employs, and which conceals under rough, half-slangy anecdotes keen sense and sarcasm. One, intended to answer Jackson's message against the National Bank, is a masterpiece of reasoning. The writer in Blackwood doubts, with justice, Jackson's military skill, but the popular instinct divined his real merit, a capacity for command, and the ignorant, self-willed, blasphemous backwoodsman was regarded by his party with a regard which approached to loyalty. To this day Americans, when tired of Secession and the weakness of their ad- ministrators, are wont to exclaim, " Oh ! for an hear of Old Hickory." We would strongly recommend Sir Bulwer Lytton to bring " Can- tonlana" to an end, for they will seriously impair his reputation. They are rubbish simply, prose Tupperisms, without a spark of originality, or point, or style. What is the use or grace of teaching the world at this time of day that money well managed is independence, that Strephon should wait for Amaryllis till he has a comfortable home, that time, 0 ! my friend, is money. Time wasted can never con- duce to money well managed." 'In the drawing-room, as every- where else, Mind in the long ran prevails." The Advertiser, which on Monday declared iii a leading article that the Poet Laureate's new ode was bad because he said, uplift a thousand voices strong and sweet," when there would be ten thousand voices present—a delicious bit of criticism, which is, nevertheless, perfectly genuine—could excel Sir B. Lytton in such thoughts as he puts into these " Caxtoniana." " Thalatta! Thalatta!' in Fraser, we hope to review one day in its perfect form. At present we mention it only to note en panelist how completely the idea that future punishment is not eternal is permeating literature. The hero has listened to a revivalist sermon : "'No, said Miles, such convictions as that man enforced to-night would make life intolerable, were they credible. But no one believes in the eternity of his own misery. Hope is the heaven-touched instinct which tells him that out of this evil must issue an ultimate good. It is the finger which points to the hidden blessed- ness. What heart could utter the Vale, vale in teternum vale ! without breaking? If misery be eternal, then hope is a lie.'" It would be a curious inquiry to discover bow many English preachers, not avowedly antinonnans, now preach the doctrine of reprobation. We have heard it, and heard too the cold comment of the infidel who was to benefit by the sermon, "And you call your God good. Suppose a human king did that ;" but it must now be a rare event. The remainder of Fraser is not this month very striking. Miss Cobbe contributes a readable sketch of Rome as it is ; and there is a second article on "editors of the last generation," which is pleasant reading for those who enjoy gossipy anecdote, but Fraser has no paper of the first class. The Science of History" scarcely attains to the third. The writer wants to prove that the course of events can never be predicted in the strict sense of predic- • tion, for he says either the prophecy will be published, in which case it will produce its own result by influencing men to realize it, or it will not be published, in which case the prophecy is useless. A man may surely predict, and predict accurately, that the number of suicides next year in France will be so many, and publish his prediction without in the smallest degree 'producing his own result. The real argument against such prophecies as sociologists indulge in is, that to be accurate the seer must have comprehended the mind of God, which is an impossibility. The wisest heads have failed in predicting the course of this American revolt, because it involves moral ques- tions, and is not, therefore, governed by the laws which the natural- ists suppose to regulate all the actions of men. If all human action is the consequence of natural MIMS alone, prediction must surely be not only possible, but inevitable, provided the mind of the prophet can grasp all those causes. The writer says no, for the prediction published would be a new and disturbing element. Not a bit of it. The intellect which could grasp, say the thousand circumstances which will influence the future development of English society, would calculate among them the influence of his own book. His only diffi- culty would be that the task is a little too big for human grasp. Macmillan is full of matter, but the most readable paper is still the monthly letter from America, with its almost impudently personal sketches. Take, for example, this photograph of Mr. Lincoln: "To say that he is ugly, is nothing; to add that his figure is grotesque, is to convey no adequate impression. Fancy a man six foot high, and thin out of proportion ; with long bony arms and legs, which somehow seem to be always in the way; with great rugged furrowed hands, which grasp you like a vice when shaking yours ; with a long scraggy neck, and a chest too narrow for the great arms at its side. Add to this figure a head, cocoa-nut shaped and somewhat too small for such a stature, covered with rough uncombed and uncombable hair, that stands out in every direction at once ; a face furrowed, wrinkled, and indented as though it had been scarred by vitriol; a high narrow forehead ; and, sunk deep beneath bushy eyebrows, two bright, somewhat dreamy eyes that seem to gaze through you without looking at you ; a few irregular blotches of black bristly hair, in the place where beard and whiskers ought to grow ; a close-set, thin-lipped, stern mouth, with two rows of large white teeth, and a nose and ears which have been taken by mistake from a head of twice the size. Clothe this figure, then, in a long, tight, badly-fitting suit of black, creased, soiled, and puckered up at every salient point of the figure (and every point of this figure is salient); put on large ill-fitting boots, gloves too long for the long bony fingers, and a fluffy hat, covered to the top with dusty puffy crape; and then add to all this an air of strength, physical as well as moral, and a strange look of dignity coupled with all this grotesqueness ; and you will have the impression left upon me by Abraham Lincoln." Dignity generally belongs to a man who affects nothing, and Abraham Lincolnis simple. Mr. Seward is "a man, I should think, under five feet in height, and of some sixty years in age ; small made, with small delicate hands and feet, and a small wiry body, scanty, snow-white hair, deep-set clear grey eyes, a face perfectly clean-shaved, and a smooth colourless skin of a sort of parchment texture !" He is shrewd, well read, and with what Englishmen define as Whig opinions, and left on the mind of his interlocutor an im- pression of intellectual vigour. Mr. Chase is the most striking look- in,g man in the Cabinet. "His head would be a treasure to any sculptor, as a model of benevolence. His lofty spacious forehead, his fresh smooth-shaved countenance, his _portly figure, and, his *pleasant kindly smile, 'ill seem 'to -mark the model benevolent old man, created to be the victim and providence of street-beggars." Of Mr. Welles "there is little to be said, except that he wears a long white beard and a stupendous white whig, which cause him to look like the stock grandfather in a genteel comedy, and that there is such an air of ponderous deliberation about his face that you wonder whether he has ever clearly realized, in so short a time as one year, that America is in a state of civil war." Mr. Stanton is not described, probably from an idea that if he were, he might be displeased by not bemg praised enough, and signify to E. D. that his descriptions gave the enemy aid and comfort, and that he could not remain in Washington unless he consented to describe Mr. Seward as at least eight feet high. "The Morals and Literature of the Restoration" includes an exceedingly clever but severe criti- -dam on Dryden, of- whom the reviewer says that his good lines are best when detached from the poems to which they belong. Thus we all quote the line:
"Loud as a trumpet with a silver sound,"
but this forms part of a description of Emetrius, of whom Dryden says :
" Whene'er he spoke, his voice was heard around, Loud as a trumpet with a silver sound." d
'Which is simply a description of a noisy fellow who roared if he were only asking a servant for more bread. "Homes of the London Workmen" is a careful exposure of some of the evils of crowding, written by a man who knows the subject only from the outside, as witness this sentence :
"The working classes, as a rule, are very insufficiently sensible to the evils amid which they have been brought up. They will not make a great effort, or a great sacrifice, to escape from them. They will rather huddle together in one room in a baick street in town, than incur the trifling ex- pense and loss of time involved in living out of London, and coming in to their work by railway. They are very often reluctant to submit to any rule or shadow of control, in order to enjoy the great advantages held out by the model lodging-houses." It is not a trifling expense either of money or time. As to the latter, most workmen have to be in London at six, and to arrive in time they must get up at four, for houses near railway stations are just as dear as in London. They will scarcely get back till eight even if railway directors had the brains or the justice to add third-class carriages to every train, which they will not do. Then, as to expense. The moment a working man lives out of town he loses his only insurance, viz, his wife's labour, for she can do nothing in the country, besides, in all probability, abandoning all hope of finding his children employment. This remedy for crowding is just one of those which occur to the rich, and which seem so ridiculous to the poor. The true course is to drain, clean, pave, and regulate the back streets as well as we now do the squares, to carry out the Lodging House Act sternly, and then, so far as we can, to raise the rate of wages till rent bears a lower proportion to receipts. At present it is the poor man's heaviest charge. There is a positive mania abroad for translating Homer, which has extended even to magazines. The CornIdll publishes the whole of the first book of the Iliad in English Hexameters, by J. F. W. Herschel, who has, we fear, undertaken a task above his capacity. Only imagine an English Homer by a man who tianslates Area irrepoivra "impassioned words," and adds in explanation this extra- ordinary note : " hrea irrepoirra' Winged conveys no distinct idea as applied to words. All words fly with equal speed. It is merely intensifying, and may be rendered pro re nail by any epithet denoting energy or readiness of speech." If Mr. Herschel will write a song, and try to publish it just when Tennyson has issued one, he will find that all words do not fly with equal speed. The literal meaning is "feathered" words, i.e., words incisive as arrows. Be that as it may —and we should have thought the meaning of the epithet patent to a ploughboy—what business has he to invent expressions for Homer ? If the poet was wrong in thinking irrepoivra applicable to rwea, his blunder ought, at all events, to remain, if only as evidence how in- ferior his poetical judgment is to Mr. Herschel's. The translator of Homer should be a poet, and no poet could have made these lines so tame : "Sing, 0 celestial Muse ! the destroying wrath of Achilles, Peleus' son: which myriad mischiefs heaped on the Grecians, Valiant spirits of heroes how many dismissing to Hades! Flinging their corpses abroad for a prey to the dogs and the vultures, And to each bird of the air. Thus Jove's high will was accomplished, Even from that fateful hour when, opposed in angry contention, Stood forth Atreides, king of mai, and the godlike Achilles."
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