THE MAGAZINES.
THE August number of the National Review is a strong one, and promises well for the new management. A noticeable new feature is the "Episodes of the Month,"—a series of longish notes chronicling and commenting on the chief events of the past month, which will make a bound volume of thealeview very useful for reference purposes, and give it something of the character of an Annual Register. Professor Dicey contri- butes an admirable study of "Alexis do Tocqueville," and shows how powerful was the gift of political diagnosis pos- sessed by the author of Democracy in America. He not only kept his head throughout the changes of the Revolution of 1848, but his power of estimating the true value and real meaning of what was happening. When less clear-headed men were predicting all sorts of great and noble things as the outcome of the overthrow of Louis Philippe, and were inclined to fancy " the triumph of the Paris mob as the victory of righteous- ness, '" he would not let himself be deceived. "He at once made his diagnosis of the state of society, and announced to his friends, who were carried away by the excitement of the moment, that the triumph of popular impatience and con- tempt for law could lead to nothing but evil ":— " The greatest proof, however, of Tooqueville's sagacity is his attitude towards Socialism. No man ever exists(' who entertained less sympathy with communistic ideals. In common with the beat men of his age, he adored personal freedom ; so keen was his abhorrence of tyranny that in the very midst of an insurrection he refused to vote in favour of proclaiming a state of siege. Yet he noted the true character of the Revolution of February. 'Le socialisme,' he writes, • restera le ea ractare essontiel et lo souvenir Is plus redoutable do la revolution de F6vrier. La r6publique n'y apparaitra, de loin quo comine un moyen mais non un but.' Nor does be stop here. It was not in his nature to observe a fact without seeking to understand it. He asks at once whether Socialism may not have a future before it. Le socialismo restera- t-il ertseveli dans le mdpris qui course si justement les socialistes do 1848 ? Jo fais cette question sans y r6pondre. Jo ne dont° pas que les lois constitutives do notre societ6 modern ne soient fort modifi6es i la longue ; elles l'ont dijL 6t6 dans bea,ucoup de leurs parties principales, mais arrivera-t-on jamais a les d6truire of Ii on mettre d'autres 1 la place P Cola me parait impratioable. Jo ne dis den de plus, ear, meaure que j'Audie davantago 16tat ancien du monde, et quo je vois plus en d6tail le monde mime de nos jours ; quand je considbre is diversit6 prodigieuse, qui s'y reneontre, non seulement parmi les lois, mais parmi les principes des lois, et les diff6rentes formes qu'a prison et quo retient, matme aujourd'hui, quoi qu'on on disc, le droit do propri6t6 sur la terra, je sets tent6 do croire quo co qu'on appolle les institutions neces- saires ne sent souvent quo les institutions auxquelles on est riecoutum6, et qu'on mature de constitution socials, lo champ du possible est bleu plus vaste quo lea hommes qui vivant dans chaque societ4 no so l'imaginent.' Readers of to-day may fail to appreciate the impressiveness of those words, for in 1803 socialistic sentiment, if not doctrine, has passed from workshops into drawing-rooms, and from the mouths of men on the pavement to the speeches of Members of Parliament; and Conservative statesmen advocate schemes of social innovation at which, forty-five years ago, the most violent Radicals would have stood aghast. But to persons
4)1d enough to remember the movements of '48 and the reaction of 1850 Tocqueville's language i3 startling in its boldness."
Professor Dicey's own keen sense of irony and humour—a sense seldom if ever divorced from the gift of letters—makes him specially sympathetic to many of De Tocqueville's moods. Here is his account of De Tocqueville's description of the scenes in the Chamber during the Revolution of '48 :- " Consider Tocqueville for a moment as an historic painter. There are few things in literature which can rival his sketch of Louis Philippe's Parliament when it unexpectedly reached its last day. The rage of the Conservatives deserted by Guizot, the tem- porary exultation of Liberals who thought they were destined to become Ministers, the dramatic effect of the appearance of the Duchess of Orleans and her children on the benches of the Chamber, the one moment at which it was possible that a happy mot, or a telling action, might have saved the crown for the Count of Paris, the effective silence and the effective rhetoric of Lamar- tine, all are placed before our eyes as they have never before been brought before the world. Note, too, that the humour of the scene is never absent from Tocquevillo's mind. The last Presi- dent of tho Orleanist House of Commons, with his pompous dignity, reminding one of the verger of a cathedral (une (lignite do suisse do cathedrecle) with his utter incapacity, with his absurd habit of showing his fears by flapping his hands, would have delighted Carlyle, who would have roared over the final blunder by which Sauzet deprived his last official act of all dignity he adjourned the sitting by putting on a hat too big for him and then letting it fall over his face."
—Mr. Saintsbury's paper on "Guy de Maupassant," though it suffers from a certain wordiness and stodginess, and is often pedantically irrelevant—why will Mr. Saintebury, like Dr. Johnson's Scotchman, always insist on giving us the opinions of "a person he knows," a sort of anonymous Mrs.
Harris, and endowed like that lady with an inexhaustible power of comment ?—contains some very sound reflections. Both just and well put is his description of the French novelist as the "Helot of Materialism, of Impressionism, of Natural- ism." Equally good is his remark that if Guy de Maupas- sant had "once got free—as more than once it seemed that he might—from the fatal conventionalities of his unconven- ionalism, from the trammels of his obtrusive negations, there is hardly a height in prose-fiction which he might not have attained."—Sir Frederick Pollock, in " A Fresh Puzzle of Home-rule," has, strange as it may seem, contrived to make a new point on the great question of the day. He shows that the retention of the Irish Members for all purposes, plus an Independent Parliament in Dublin, is a complete revolution of our existing Constitution, especially in regard to the rela- tions of the United Kingdom and the Empire, and then pro- pounds the following dilemma:- " Let us then see what sort of problem we should have to deal with if Australians or Canadians were to address the Mother-
country in some such terms as these We have hitherto been content to rub along with the Colonial Office, and to be ignored by the British public on all ordinary occasions, so long as we were all in the same boat. We have been willing to await future developments in patience. In the days happily now past we have borne, though not with content, to be almost told we had better
Co about our own business. Now you are coming to see that the olonial Office policy a forty years ago was a policy of cutting off your own living branches, not an innocent complying with Nature in letting your fruit drop as it ripened. That is well, and we can wait for bettor things; but not for ever. And whatever is done must be done on fair and equal terms. We will have no spoilt children in the family. Do as you please at home, by all means, so long as it is the old country and the old Constitution. You let us do as we please, oven to taxing your goods, and we have no desire to interfere with your domestic affairs. Settle the Irish question in any way that does not affect our position. But now you are doing with Ireland the one thing which can and does put us in a position of inferiority. You are setting up Ireland as a new variety of self-governing colony, and yet keeping Irish Members in the Parliament of the United Xingdoni, in reduced number, it is true, but still in the full strength to which Ireland is really entitled according to population. An Irishman may be as good as any other citizen of the Empire, but we do not see by what double dose of original merit he has earned the privilege of combining the rights and liberties of a British colonist with those of a domiciled Englishman or Scot. If there is to be double representation, territorial and imperial, we claim our share of it, mid a fair and substantial share too. The old objections about excessive distance are obsolete. We are practically almost as near to Westminster as Penzance and Newcastle--not to speak of Aberdeen—were in the last century. It is you who have made this beginning of federation, and we call on you to carry it through.' Perhaps it might be possible to frame some plausible dilatory answer to a demand of this kind. But I confess I eansee none, except that compliance with it would give a great deal of trouble."
This is a matter which may involve very large consequences, and yet it is evident that Mr. Gladstone and his supporters have never given it a thought.—Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in his story, " The White Seal," tries his adventurous hand at the humours of animal life at sea. • On the whole, the experi- ment is a success. Mr. Kipling manages to bring before us the watery solitudes of the Pacific Ocean in passages of great imaginative force. The story marks an interesting epoch in the writer's literary development.
The Nineteenth Century is disappointing this month, in spite of an up-to-date article from Mr. George Curzon on "India Between Two Fires." Mr. Curzon's mental equipment is admirably fitted for the discharge of under-secretarial duties. He has a becoming sense of the Atlantean load of responsibility which rests upon the shoulders of one who has been, and who may reasonably look forward to being again, an Under. Secretary of State. He is portentously serious about the momentous issues at stake, and has at command a copious flow of tepid rhetoric. What more can be wanted in an Under-Secretary of State P As a magazine writer, how- ever, he is distinctly disappointing. The main object of his article is to discuss the question of " buffer " States. It cannot be said, however, that he adds much to that vexed problem when he talks of " preliminary steps to a movement which, when the hour strikes, is as certain of occurrence as is the revolution of the seasons, or the diurnal succession of dark- ness and light; " of unchaining "the armed watch-dogs who are eagerly waiting to spring, each in his own kennel ; " of tidings "flashed across the wires ; " of "a dozen squadrons of Cossacks encamped amid the ruins of Balkh ;" of a second battle of the Pyramids, giving Cairo to the legions of the third Republic ; " or, in a moment of pedantic irony, of Russia, France, and England sitting down "in convivial harmony at the Asian triclinium." True, however, to the natural instincts of an ex-Under-Secretary, Mr. Curzon's general conclusions are eminently safe and non-committal. Who will venture to challenge the following ?— " Let us therefore measure full well in advance what the simul- taneous approach towards India of these two groat Powers signifies, what are the perils which it may evoke, what are the sacrifices which it demands. Let no weak concession to sentiment or fear of decisive action induce us to acquiesce in, much less to precipi- tate, their final contact. The safety of the Indian Empire is the determining test by which our policy must in each case be shaped. That that safety stands more secure while both Powers are at a distance, that it will be seriously impaired by their nearer advent, that it might even be endangered by their common impact, are the propositions which I have sought to establish. India under fire would, I believe, render a good account of herself ; but India between two fires might easily become India in jeopardy."
—A somewhat more nutritive paper on the Siamese ques- tion is that of Mr. Demetrius C. Boulger, though he has not much to say that has not already been said elsewhere. He seems to think it by no means impossible that the Chinese may act immediately and vigorously in regard to Siam. In any case, China will not allow the carrying-out of M. de Lanessau's programme for founding an Indo-Chinese Empire :- " Every year adds to China's power for war; and our informa- tion must be singularly at fault if she has not very skilfully undermined the French position in Tonquin. Prophesying is rash ; but I have no doubt that, whether it be in ten years or in a century, China will turn France out of Tonquin ; and the French, by their attempted bullying of Siam, may have expedited the date of their own discomfiture."
—" My Stay in the Highlands " is a pleasant, " talky-talky " paper about the Highlanders and their ways. There is a story of a Free-Kirk minister who, present at a discussion in regard to who, of the great dead, one would wish to call up "and invite to dinner," gave his opinion thus :—" Weel, I think I would like to meet Isaiah,—Isaiah was a grand man." We may smile, but even from the most unreligious point of view, there could hardly have been a better selection than the great statesman-prophet of the Jews. The Crofters " eat but little meat," but when they do, they " dinna like it soft as the Saxons eat it," but " like to feel that there's wark for the teeth and bit of a grit-like for the jaws."—Dr. Jessop can always be depended upon to supply Mr. Knowles's pages with something not only that is readable, but that is lifted out of the commonplace. His last heroic story from real life—for so we take it to be—is the tale of the Rev. Luke Tremain, who, in the forties, fought an outbreak of fever in the village of Rampton. The material is simple enough, but in Dr. Jessop's hands the record of the brave parson's doings be- comes a true work of art.
The Contemporary has an informing article on " Scotland. and Disestablishment," by Dr. Donald Macleod. According to him there was no feeling, even at the last election, that the Church was in danger, and therefore many supporters of the Church still voted for Mr. Gladstone. Now, how- ever, that the Kirk is seriously roused, we may look for a change in the representation of Scotland, after the example of Linlithgowshire.—In " The New Islam," Mr. Edward Sell gives an interesting account of the attempt that is being made by a group of enlightened Indian Mahom- medans to rationalise their faith, especially in the direction of the abolition of slavery and polygamy. Mr. Sell, however, is not very hopeful :— " The most recent and most notable book on the subjects dis- cussed in this article, is The Spirit of Islam,' by Syed Amir Ali, who wrote it, he says, in the hope that It might assist the Mus- lims of India to achieve intellectual and moral regeneration under the auspices of the great European Power that now holds their destinies in its hands,' a Power to which a very high compliment is paid when 'the reformers are congratulated that the movement set on foot is conducted under a neutral government.' It scarcely accords with all that has been said by the same author of the fruitful works of Islam in culture, civilisation, and freedom, when reforms can be best carried out under a Christian government. However, the reform has begun, its progress will be watched with interest ; the end it is difficult to foresee. Personally, I believe that it will elevate individuals and purify the family life of many, yet that it will, like all reform movements of the past, have very little real effect on Islam as a polity and as a religion."
The most noteworthy article in the Fortnightly is Mr. Barnet's " The Poor of the World." He found poverty every- where, but its complexion and degree varied greatly. In India, poverty seemed to him " the most striking fact," and "the chief concern of Government the preservation of life among two hundred millions of poor people." In Japan, poverty has lost half its evils by losing all its grossness and hopelessness :- " We turned away from this poor quarter as from no other all the world round with feelings almost of happiness. The habits of cleanliness shown by the state of the rooms, the order of the alleys, and the daintiness of the offices, the taste manifest in the restraint which was content with a branch of blossoms, the courtly manners which the poor showed, the patience with which they bore hardship, all combined to make us happy, even in the midst of poverty. In India we had been depressed by the hopelessness, in China by the ugliness, and in America we were to be depressed by the wickedness which accompanies poverty ; in Japan we found the poor touched by friendship into hope, and real sharers in the national life. What is the reason that Japan has no poverty problem ? One reason is probably to be found in the land system, which has given to every worker a holding and encouraged him to supply his wants by his own labour. Effort has thus been de- veloped and wants are limited. Another reason lies in the national taste for country beauty. Nowhere else are parties formed to visit the blossom-trees, and nowhere else are pilgrimages simply for the sake of natural beauty. A country life has, there- fore, its own interest, and men do not crowd the cities for the sake of excitement. There is, too, in Japan a curious absence of osten- tarious luxury. The habits of living are in all classes much the same, and the rich do not outshine the poor by carriages, palaces, and jewellery. The rich spend their money on curios, which if costly are limited ; and the most popular agitation is that against the big European houses which ministers build for themselves. Wealth is thus not absorbed, and is more ready for investment in remunerative labour. The last reason which occurs to the mind of a traveller with comparatively few opportunities for forming opinions is the equality of manners in all classes. Rich and poor are alike courteous. It is not possible to distinguish employer from labourer by their behaviour ; all are clean, all are easy, all are restrained. The governor lets his child go to the common school, and sit next to the child of the casual labourer, certain that his child will pick up no bad manners, and get no contamina- tion in thought or in person. This equality enables rich and poor to meet as friends, and gifts can pass without degradation. The rich nobles in the country, just as the university men whom we met in Tokio, are thus able to give to those whom they know to be in need, and friendship becomes the channel of charity. The question is, will this survive the introduction of the industrial system ? It is possible that some may, and that Japan may teach the West how to deal with the poor."
This, if the whole truth, is most remarkable, but, according to many observers, there is another side to the shield. In the American cities, Mr. Barnet often found the poverty problem at its maximum. In a house in Boston, he was reminded of " Whitechapel twenty years ago ":— " The poor in America live as the poor in England, but there is one marked difference—the poor of America have hope. In the lo west quarters of the great cities, in the most squalid rooms, I was always conscious that the people were looking for better times ; they had not the beaten, despairing look of our poor, and they always rose to talk of what their children would be. It is this quality, and not any superiority of relief arrangement, which makes the poverty problem seem less pressing in the States. The relief arrangements are distinctly far behind those of England."
—Sir Thomas Symonds, in " The Needs of the Navy," is pessimistic beyond even the pessimism of the ordinary service writer in a popular magazine, and fully justifies the remark of one of the leading statesmen of the day,—"I never sleep after meeting a soldier or sailor at dinner." The Navy is undone for want of men. "I would propose," he says, "as a partial remedy, the addition of 25,000 marine artillerymen and 25,000 seamen."
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