THE MAGAZINES.
THE Nineteenth Century is full of good papers, the most attractive being Mr. Gladstone's answer to Mrs. Ward, men- tioned elsewhere.—" The Defencelessness of London," though it will not startle Englishmen as Sir E. Hamley perhaps hopes it will, is well worthy of careful attention. He thinks it possible that if all arrangements were made in good time, if positions were previously selected, and if the necessary guns were provided, London might be defended by Volunteers. leaving the field army free to fight outside. Our own impres- sion is that London, from the enormous multitude of its people, is indefensible, and that its Volunteers would be far better employed in strengthening the field army ; but the ques- tion is one for experts, and on one point we entirely coincide with Sir Edward Hamley. Whatever it is resolved to do should be done without delay, so that if the danger arrives, there shall be neither confusion nor hurry nor want of material, the latter being the danger we chiefly apprehend. It is utter folly, unless it is resolved to abandon London, to leave anything to the last, or to forget the difficulty any Government will have in keeping the huge city in anything like order. The payment of wages would stop within twenty-four hours of London being threatened.—" The Disenchantment of France " is the best essay we remember by Mr. Frederick Myers. He thinks that France is losing all her " illusions,"—that is, all her spiritual beliefs, faith in the supernatural, faith in the regenerating power of utopian ideas, faith in the beauty of sexual virtue, faith even in free-will, and is sinking into determinist materialism, one effect of which is a pessimism so deep as to produce a reluctance to keep up the number of the population. Mr. Myers, who ad- duces evidence for his theory drawn from all recent literature, sees no sign on which to base a hope, though, he adds, a revival of the belief in a future state, which might arise from psycho- logical inquiry, would profoundly modify all existing mental conditions in France. The article is one of the most suggestive which has appeared in any recent magazine.—Lord Thring's assault on the County Government Bill is not as attractive as it might have been made. Its central thought, which is that the Bill is incomplete, is overlaid with too great a mass of detail. We at least cannot see why the " intermediate area," and many other improvements for which Lord Thring pleads, cannot be added after the County Councils have been brought into working order. They can make the necessary arrangements, subject to some general principle, much better than Parlia- ment can.—Mrs. Blake writes charmingly, and could have given us an admirable essay on " The Bahamas " and their Negro population ; but this one is injured by its scrappiness. Every subject is quitted for another just when the account becomes most interesting. Though not hostile to the negro, Mrs. Blake, like Mr. Fronde, evidently thinks his life injuriously happy,—that is, one in which happiness is too possible with only intermittent exertion.—Lord Lymington protests with much force against " tinkering the House of Lords," and especially against making it a " House of Superior Persons." He does not object to a few Life-Peers, and would advocate the expulsion of black sheep ; but would either leave matters there, or create a new Upper House, elected, but with a high property qualification. That alternative, we fear, would not do. The new House would either be crushed by its unpopularity as a House of the rich, or it would be in incessant collision with the House of Commons.—Mr. Childers gives a pleasant account of Nieder- bronn, the Bath in a corner of Northern Alsace whose waters are so efficacious in cases of confirmed indigestion or dyspepsia. There are hundreds of miles of road or mountain path around the place full of variety,—castles, ruins, old houses, and other objects of interest. The baths, though little known in England, have been celebrated since the days of Augustus. Only two cautions are necessary for the visitor,—never talk politics, and never write to an official in French.
The Contemporary does not attract us much this month ; but Mr. Gill, an Irish Member, states with force and calmness the only solid objection to the Closure, its tendency to make Members regard the House as one only for business, and, by reducing the amount of deliberation, to lower its influence on the public. We do not think that will happen, because a subject worthy of debate will always be debated ; but that is the weak point of the system. Mr. Gill's illustration of his argument is, however, a bad one. The House of Repre- sentatives has not been lowered by its closure rules, but by the absence of worthy objects of legislation which is the necessary consequence of the Federal system. The House, when not dis- cussing the Tariff, has little to do but job, the best evidence being that Mr. Cleveland has been compelled to veto 114 Bills in one year, 103 of them being Pension Bills.—We hardly know what to make of Mr. L. Courtney's lecture on " The Occu- pation of Land." He disclaims any idea of recommending nationalisation ; but he would, as we understand him, allow the State to insist, through Councils of Advice filled with picked men, that land, including the unhealthy quarters of great cities, should always be applied to the best, that is, usually, the most productive, use. That is a large idea, and will require threshing out in papers and speeches not quite so drily economic as the present one. We suspect it would be found in practice to threaten the enjoyment of property—not property itself, but its enjoyment—rather more seriously than Mr. Courtney is at present disposed to admit.—Mr. Bradlaugh seems to us to have scarcely thought out sufficiently his attack on the Civil List. He does not sufficiently recognise the fact that a right of pro- perty may attach to an office or a status without attaching to an individual, and he makes too light of the kind of national pledge involved in words like these, which, as he admits, are recited in the Civil List Act of the present reign. The draftsmen of the Act may have been all wrong ; but how are we to go behind it without shaking all statutory rights to property P--" It recites that the said several hereditary rates, duties, payments, and revenues now belong and are due and payable to your most excellent Majesty. And whereas your Majesty has been graciously pleased to signify to your faithful Commons, in Parliament assembled, that your Majesty placed unreservedly at their disposal those hereditary revenues which were transferred to the public by your Majesty's immediate predecessors." In practice, the matter does not signify a jot, as Parliament will settle the next Sovereign's allowance at its discretion ; but we may as well be fair in argument, and as matter of argument, Parliament has explicitly asserted the Queen's ownership of the properties she is held to have surrendered.—Principal Donaldson's paper on " The Position of Women in Rome" is curious and instructive, but we must wait to see it finished before commenting on its view.
Mr. Freeman sends to the Fortnightly Review a rather dis- cursive paper upon the House of Lords and the County Councils, full of historical knowledge, but rather too much devoid of practical suggestion. Mr. Freeman intends this, but it diminishes the interest of his remarks. As regards the Lords, his object appears to be to show that the purely hereditary character of the Upper House is an accident, and that in introducing Life-Peers or ex-officio Peers, to which latter he greatly inclines, we should only revert to the original constitution of that body. That is true ; but have men retained so much antiquarian feeling that merely to prove a method ancient is to recommend it P If it was a good method, why did it not live P As regards the Councils, Mr. Free- man is opposed to the nomination of any members by co-optation, and would rather trust the elective principle pure and simple. He fears that with the deprivation of functions, the office of County Magistrate will lose rank, but will retain hope as long as the Magistrates are unpaid. After they are paid, " the smallest office will sink into the smallest hands."—There is a most pleasant paper by Mr. Grant Allen upon Concord, the residential country town " of Bostonians, and of all country-places in America, the one best known to Europeans. Americans, be it noted, will not live willingly in.
the country, and Concord is their nearest approach to country life :- " In spite of all its world-wide fame, it is but a place of four thousand people, with a straggling, grassy, tree-besprinkled air, as befits the retreat of well-to-do retired Bostonians. American friends had taught us beforehand to expect an old-fashioned, half-English, Kate Greenaway sort of country town ; but to our European or Europeanised eyes (for I plead guilty myself to being by birth and training American) what seemed most striking and characteristic was its utter Americanism—the very new, bright, fresh, and modern aspect of the streets and shops, and houses and gardens. Concord, in fact, is nothing more than a village of villas, most, or all of them, wooden, but neatly painted, original, and often even quaint in design, prettily relieved by balconies or verandahs, and as thoroughly domestic in their style and appoint- ments as if they were really meant to live in. Apparently American architects have here solved for America in wood the same simple problem which Norman Shaw and the Queen Anne school have lately solved for the London district in good red brick —how to build pretty and convenient houses, entirely habitable, with some taste and some aesthetic purpose, out of the common and proper material of the country, and how to build them for human beings to live and move in, with strict fidelity to the demands of that given material itself. Bedford Park is of brick, bricky ; Concord town is of wood, wooden ; and that which to vulgar ears sounds like harsh condemnation, is, in the truth of things, com- mendation extraordinary."
The town is surrounded by low hills, beyond which still stretches the deep, endless forest, beloved of Thoreau, the man who strove to live with Nature alone, and annihilate care by doing without everything, but who, according to Mr. Allen, was a bit of an impostor too, always looking round to see who noticed his success. Walden Pond, Thoreau's favourite lakelet, is near Concord, and is really "a clear and deep green well, half-a-mile long, and a mile and three-quarters in cir- cumference ; a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet, except by the clouds and evaporation." It is curious that Mr. Grant Allen, though he notices all natural things, fails, like everybody else, to give us any clear notion of what is distinctive in American scenery. —Mr. W. M. Torrens wants a better coastguard to suppress the East African slave-trade ; but he must first soothe away the jealousies of the European Powers. They could organise one easily enough if they would only unite ; but to unite, they must have given up hopes of aggrandisement upon the coast, and have settled their boundaries once for all.— Madame de Borring's account of Danish peasant-life, with its carefully marked gradations of class—the labourer, the peasant-owner, and the yeoraaff not intermarrying—is pleasant to read ; but we wish she had explained what becomes of any surplus population. This little picture suggests a content almost missing in England:— " The yeoman class in Denmark object to take life sadly, and every farm-house of any size possesses a guest-chamber, built solely for the purpose of merry-makings, and used whenever an excuse for a dance or feast can be invented. Surely a sign of long prosperity and content ! Here there is placed a long table of planks, supported on barrels, but covered with snowy drapery, almost hidden beneath the good cheer. The dinner will consist of soups, varied roasts, endless cakes, cheese, and the delicious Rodgrod,' a sweet made of barberries deluged in thick cream. The thirst consequent upon this substantial fare is assuaged by many beverages ; first, the much-favoured snaps,' considered a flue tonic ; old ale, cider, and mead ; and finally, a curious drink quaintly called old wine,' the chief merit of which must lie in the name, since it is but a mixture of rum, brown sugar, and water. With simple piety, when all are seated, a hymn is sung and a blessing asked, and then the repast begins in earnest, lasting for two or three hours, to be succeeded by dancing, which is carried on till dawn."
A wedding festivity lasts three days. The cottages are very large and clean, and cost a shilling a week ; and wages average eleven shillings a week. They are kept up by the habit of the children of seeking work as they grow up outside their own villages.—Mr. F. Myers's criticism upon Matthew Arnold's poetry, though written with careful kindness, is on the whole depreciatory, his feeling being that while his thoughts are often beautiful, their form tends sometimes to be prosaic. That would not be our judgment, though, no doubt, lines can be picked out in which Mr. Arnold falls into the Words- worthian error of mistaking commonness for simplicity.
The National Review publishes a sort of round-robin, signed by nearly every eldest son of a Peer who is also a Member of the House of Commons, on the reform of the Lords. They all, Lord Hartington included, say that reform is required, and that Life-Peers ought to be created. The best-known excep- tion is Mr. Bernard Coleridge, who wishes for no reform of the Lords because he wishes to see England governed by Single-Chamber Democracy.—The number contains no very striking paper, but any one who wishes to understand what local self-government in Ireland might be like, should read the extraordinary reports of Guardians' proceedings collected by Mr. P. Bagenal. The rowdyism could perhaps be paralleled from reports of London Vestries ; but a London vestryman would faint at the idea of a municipal cheque being dis- honoured. In Ireland that seems to be a joke.
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