NOTABLE PAPERS IN THE MAGAZINES.
ME magazines are a little dull this month, though they contain some readable papers. The one which will excite most atten- tion is the article in the Fortnightly Review on "The British Army," by Sir Charles, Dile, which is pervaded by an alarmist tone. The writer's central idea is that England is not safe from an invasion by French troops, probably at a moment when we are at war with Russia; and he believes that if such an invasion occurred, we should be beaten, the Militia and Volunteers being unable to face Regular troops. They would not, he says, be folly armed ; and the con- fusion as to their arms, the rifles and the ammunition not fitting each other, would be intense. He would, therefore, besides correcting all defects of armament, erect fortified positions for the defence of London, would strengthen the Navy, and would reorganise the field artillery. The essay is worth reading, and the passages about our nnreadiness as to a sufficient supply of arms should be carefully studied ; but it is far too gloomy, and the advice to fortify London seems to us unsound. Who is to feed London ? We hold the Metropolis to be so indefensible, that if an enemy ever reaches it, peace will be imperative; bat then, no enemy ought ever to reach it. Sir Charles Dile, we perceive, thinks the invading army would number 150,000 men ; but is not that an extravagant estimate ? An army is not composed only of men, and what nation possesses the means of conveying an army of that size and its impedimenta across the Channel without an expenditure of time sufficient to allow of the collection of a formidable defending fleet P Sir Charles Dilke, moreover, throughout his paper mixes up dangers which could hardly occur together. If we were threatened with invasion, we should think little for the moment of outlying stations, or even provinces, but, our safety once provided for, should defend them by offensive action. It is not open to us to conquer any country in Europe ; but it is open to us to land, use the spade, and force that country to expel us. A bullet is not a pleasing inmate, even when it does not reach the heart. It is well, however, that the politicians who read the Fortnightly should hear all that can be said of the possibilities of invasion.—According to Mr. E. Stracban Morgan, the condition of Sicily has been little improved by annexation to Italy. The vast seoret society called the " Maffia " is still the real government, taxes all traders at its will, and secures obedience to its decrees by sentences of death. It cannot be put down, because the people are on its side ; and they are on its side because the land is par- celled out in huge estates, managed by bailiffs, and tilled by wage-receivers who are wretchedly paid, often reside five miles from their work, and are, in truth, savages. In 1885, it was found by the police that 1,200 persons were actively engaged in one murderous society, and 159 were sentenced in a single trial. The system, however, will never be cured until the tenure is reformed, and attempts to murder punished invariably with death. Juries hardly ever will give verdicts of guilty without reservations, and as a consequence, the average murder-roll in the Two Sicilies is sixteen times that of England. The picture is a frightful one, and casts much discredit upon the Italian statesmen who do not resolutely cope with it.—Mr. Alfred Wallace, in an account of "American Museums," and again in the Nineteenth Century, under the title " Antiquity of Man in North America," calls attention to the mass of evidence which scientific Americans are slowly collecting to prove that man existed on that continent as early as in Europe. He was, Mr. Wallace hints, in existence even in the Pliocene period, and the problem of his origin in the Western Continent is therefore more obscure than ever. The question is one which will be fought out better when the evidence has been further sifted, and the masses of relics now accumulating have been thoroughly examined by hostile eyes. At present, most collectors and curators are influenced unconsciously by a secret wish to believe in a fathom- less antiquity.—Sefior Emilio Caetelar does not contribute much to the solution of the problem of the Temporal Power. He says the Pope will be free and respected when he renounces the temporal and confines himself to the spiritual power ; but this is exactly what ardent Catholics deny, with this much of evident reason on their side, that a Pope cannot be free if he is a sub- ject; and if not a subject, mast be a Sovereign. Sovereignty, to be real, implies a territory, however small, and, as most Catholics also maintain, a territory approachable by the whole world,—that is, accessible by sea. We note that Senor Castelar, like all the more statesmanlike Radicals of the Continent, repudiates the notion of perpetual and inevitable war between liberty and the Church.—The series of passages in literature selected by men of letters is closed, and contains this time no example of any general interest.
The first paper in the Nineteenth Century is a careful explana- tion of the plan of international copyright proposed by Mr. R. Pearsall Smith. Under this plan, any American publisher could issue any English book in his own way and at his own price, if he affixed to each copy a stamp worth a tenth of the retail price. That stamp he would buy from some trusted officer of the Union, who would remit the money to the author. That scheme, subject to corrections of detail, seems sensible, and is accepted, we see, by men like Lord Tenny- son and Mr. W. Resent. It does not, however, meet the moral argument that the author is owner of his ideas, and has a right to the price he fixes. We note, by-the-way, that Mr. Gladstone, in a letter approving the scheme, hopes it will have immense effect in promoting " the moral and social union of England and America." It may have, but the copy- right law between England and Ireland is quite perfect, and has not had that effect.—We discuss the most important paper in this month's magazines, Mr. Arnold Forster's proposal for buying Ireland, at full length elsewhere, and have only to call attention to Mr. Johnston's admirable account of African missionary work. He is, we believe, too hard upon negro teachers, expecting from them a self-restraint which even in Europe is partly due to civilisation ; but he is generally most impartial, and his account is, on the whole, most favourable to missionary work.
Mr. Reid, Q.C., thinks Ulster will not revolt, and says so in an article in the Contemporary. So far as we see, he produces no argument except that under Home-rule "no injustice could ensue, no wrong be done to the humblest man in Ulster, even supposing that Mr. Parnell and his friends desired it." The whole paper, indeed, is mere assertion.—Mr. Wells, formerly the American Secretary of the Treasury, continues his argu- ment that the cause of the fall in prices is not the appreciation of gold, but the immense improvement in the means of com- munication. His essays constitute an invaluable storehouse of facts, but he presses his. argument very bard. There are articles the price of which has fallen sharply, though they are unaffected by new competition.—Sir John Adye, in "Central Asia,"
endeavours to disprove alarmist theories, his argument being that to invade India, Russia Would have to urge forward an army over two thousand miles, and would. arrive on the Indus, where her real work would begin, in a sadly weakened condition. General Adye maintains that Afghani- stan is a strong outwork for the Empire, and that our business is to strengthen her as much as possible without inter- fering with her independence. In the actual event of war, he hints that England and her allies would strike straight at Central Asia, where the power of Russia is weak and over- strained. This is a very different view from that held by most military critics; but till the Russian railways are completed, it is probably near the truth.—Mr. C. K. Adams sends a somewhat pessimist article on " Life and Thought in America," the drift of which is that America is ceasing to be American, the wave of emigration being so great, that by the end of the century the foreign population may number forty-five millions. That is true, if immigration lasts at its present rate ; but that is not proved, and Mr. Adams underrates the assimilating power of his countrymen. They absorb all peoples except the Irish, and a proportion even of them.—The most readable paper in the number is, however, Mr. A. Lang's on " Realism and Romance." Mx. Lang is eclectic in his views, but not in his tastes, which are strongly against the Realists. The beet of them describe so well, that he cannot read them for pain
:- "For example, there is Mr. Howells's Modern Instance.' Here is a masterly novel, and a true picture of life, but of what a life! All the time one is reading it, one is in the company of a Gentleman of the Press, who is not, and is not meant to he, a gentleman in any other sense of the word. He is mean, and impudent, and genial, and unabashed ; he has not the rudiments of taste or of breeding ; he die. tresses and diverts one beyond endurance. But even he is an angel of good company compared with his passionate, jealous, and third- rate wife, who may match, as a picture of the wrong sort of woman, with Thackeray'e Mrs Mackenzie. The whole book is a page torn out of life, as people say, and it has wit as well as veracity and observation. Yet it makes one miserable."
Of others of the Realists he says :— " One does not dream of denying that they do exhibit noble and sympathetic characters—now and then. But happy, and jolly, and humorous people they hardly ever show ue ; yet these have their place among realities. And, on the whole, they do prefer to be busy with the rarer sort of realities, with the Cousinee Bettee, and the like. And they show a sort of cruelty and coldness in their dealings with their own creations. If I were to draw up as indictment, I might add that some of them have an almost unholy knowledge of the nature of women. One would as lief explore a girl's room, and tumble about her little household treasures, as examine no curiously the poor secrets of her heart and tremors of her frame. Dir. Christie Murray, an admirable novelist, has said this, and said it well. Such analysis makes one feel uncomfortable in the reading, makes one feel intrusive and unmanly. It is like overhearing a confession by accident. A well-known book of M. E. de Goncourt's is full of the kind of prying that I have in my mind. It is, perhaps, science—it may be art; and to say that it is extremely disagreeable may be to exhibit old-fashioned prejudice. Good it may be, clever it is; but it is not good for me."
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