MR. TROLLOPE'S NEV MAGAZINE.*

Mn. TROLLOPE is very modest in the preface to his new under- taking. He is very anxious to assure his readers that "there is no settled conviction in the minds of any of us—proprietors, con- tributors, or editors—that a Saint Paul's Magazine is the great want of the age, and that the creation of such a periodical is the last and greatest effort necessary to make the country glide suc- cessfully through the remaining years of the present century."

• Saint Paul's. A Magazii.e, edited by Anthony Trollope, with Illustrations by J. E. Atillate, Ji.A. London: Virtue and Co. But the magazine speaks for itself. Its defect is a certain obvious want of ardour, not to say energy, from beginning to end, which would have been quite inconsistent, not merely with so exaggerated a sense of importance as Mr. Trollope disclaims, but even with the-

eagerness of a stream of conviction hitherto pent up, and here, at

last, allowed by the scope of the new periodical, to flow freely. It is a readable magazine, a cultivated magazine, a magazine without

anything that jars upon the taste, or offends the judgment ; but this first number is tame, has exceedingly little vivacity, and no in- tensity of purpose. There is a colourlessness about it. We do not speak so much of the tales, of which it is impossible to judge by one instalment, though even here we have known Mr. Trollope start with more brilliancy and less frigidity of manner than he does here. Perhaps it is that we are a little disappointed that Phineas Finn, the Irish Member, is a youth of the type he has so often and so skilfully sketched,—a youth disposed to halt between two courses in life,—instead of what we had ventured to imagine when we saw the advertisement, one of the leery, cunning, old, cor- rupt Irish type of member, who have injured their country perhaps more than the Fenians or Orangemen themselves, and whose low, mischievous influence no one could have shown up with a finer skill than Mr. Trollope. Phineas Finn is clearly not of this kind.

He is a well-meaning young fellow, rather weak than otherwise, who, as Mr. Trollope honestly avows, is not likely to lift those

who make his acquaintance in these pages "into any heaven either of admiration or of wrath by his virtues or his vices." Of "Phineas Finn," and of " All for Greed" (which begins with some

spirit), it is, however, impossible to judge in a single number. They may turn out either very brilliant or very ordinary tales, and so far as they are concerned we can only say that they are very readable already, with promise at least of something more than readability. But of those completed essays which fill out the magazine we can speak with more decision, and, while entirely irreproachable, they certainly appear to us feeble. The essay on " Taste " seems to us, for instance, one of the very mildest compositions we ever remem- ber to have read. It has glided over our mind and left absolutely no impression of either agreement or disagreement behind it. Mr. Trollope repudiates the idea of " padding" in his magazine altogether. He suggests that the alteration of one letter turns that objectionable word into the name of "a useful, farina- ceous, savoury, and solid food, of which men and women with good digestions and strong appetites most frequently delight to

partake." Well, the essay on "Taste" is, we think, certainly farinaceous, but it is the very blanc-mange of literature. You don't know whether you have eaten it or not when you have swallowed it, by any internal sensation, either in the palate or in the stomach. Take this, for instance, .which seems to us a fair sample of the paper, :— Moreover, though women are keen in perception, they have less re- flection and are more precipitate than men. However graceful and deli- cate by nature, they allow their judgment to be regulated, in matters of dress, by tho dictates of fashion, and grace and fitness lose their proper influence. No doubt, even in dress, there is opportunity given for the display of taste, but it is confined to the choice of colour ; for, as to it form, that seems to be definitely left to the caprice and cupidity of the tailors—male and female. Others, again, err in the opposite direction. They affect to despise fashion, and, either through contempt or indolence, take little pains about their personal appearance ; but the contempt is not a sign of a corresponding strength of mind, nor is the indolence a proof of bodily health. The "mons sena in corpore sane" is not the least apparent in the desire to appear clean and neat, and personal ex- perience leads us to believe that the proportional degree of attention , paid to outward appearance is a true thermometer of health. So that * at times a man may be a sloven or so sensitive to neatness that the ' obtrusion of the smallest hair of the beard or moustache becomes highly offensive ; and thus we find that people who are on the verge of decay become very slovenly in their habits and dress.

We owe, doubtless, these very harmless reflections to a man of really cultivated taste, but obviously also to one who has not the remotest idea that he is supplying either "the one great want of the age," or even, let us say, the tenth or twentieth iu order of importance.

The paper, "On Sovereignty," which has a sort of flavour of the editor's own style, is again terribly thin. Its central idea. seems to be that the Sovereign, though fulfilling no longer any political function in the State, does retain an important function in completing the harmony, and rounding the beauty, of the political structure :-

We may, perhaps best express our idea of the position of a consti- tutional sovereign by comparing the edifice of our Constitution to that of a beautiful church. When Americans have spoken to us of the Throne of England as being the source of political power and action,. we have often asked them to look at Salisbury Cathedral, and to say what the building would be if it were suddenly deprived of its tower and. spire. Ichabod! The glory of the house would be gone ! The men of -Wiltshire would no longer have a cathedral in which to take pride, and the pleasant little city would have lost its attraction in the eyes of all the world. But yet the church would stand and be as strong. It does not rest upon its apex. The real work for which it was built is not done within those beautiful but narrow confines. But from the tower comes that peal of bells which calls the people to the worship they love, and the spire was built that it might be seen from afar off, and recognized as the symbol in those parts of the religion of the country. So we think is it with such a Sovereignty as that which we possess.

But this illustration seems to us to fail completely when you come to examine it. The beauty of the spire is symbolic. It points away from the earth, and says, as far as stone can say, "Here is a building the purpose and object of which is not in any earthly advantage, but "In the worship the heart lifts above And the Heavens reject not."

Does the Sovereign symbolize anything of this kind with relation to the English Constitution, and thus put the true stamp of purpose, as it were, on the political institutions of the country ? If he does, this paper does not show it. It is, indeed, the leading statesman, and not the Sovereign, who should embody for us, and does embody for us, as far as any one does so, our conception of political life. The Sovereign, as the writer admits, is now only the summit of society. That we should have any one head of society whose duty it is to give a certain tone of nobility to social relations in England may or may not be a good thing. It is a good thing, no doubt, with such a sovereign as we now have, It has been a very bad thing, and indeed, for more than twenty years at the beginning of the present century, it was one of the greatest misfortunes of the day. But whether it be an evil or a good, a writer who proposes to show us the advantages of Sovereignty should at least have dis- cussed how the existence of a social Sovereign, without political functions, adds to the symmetry and beauty of a political edifice, which, as he justly says, is complete for almost every purpose of political utility without this ornamental apex. It is a thin, gold- beater-skin sort of paper, though readable enough.

Better than this is the paper called "The Leap in the Dark," though here, again, we complain of thinness, and of the ex- ceeding calmness, not to say languor, in the flow of the article. There is no strong pulse of purpose or conviction in it. Mr. Trollope's magazine seems in this its first number to wish to lead our steps

"Where peaceful rivers, soft and slow, Amid the verdant landscape flow."

There is a quiet, liberal thoughtfulness, but no vigour in the article. The best thing in it is the attempt to find out what will be the chief discriminating distinction between the Tory party and the Liberal party of the future, which the writer lays down clearly, however, only in foreign policy,—taking a hint from Mr. Disraeli's rather obscure and magniloquent sentence in his Mansion House speech at the conclusion of the session :—" What is the Tory party,' he exclaimed, 'unless it represents national feeling? If it do not re- present national feeling, Toryism is nothing. It does not depend upon hereditary coteries of exclusive nobles ; it does not attempt power by attracting to itself the spurious force which may acei- dentally arise from advocating cosmopolitan principles or talking cosmopolitan jargon. The Tory party is nothing unless it repre- sent and uphold the institutions of the country. For what are the institutions of the country ? They are entirely, and ought to be entirely, as I am glad to see they are likely to be in practice, the embodiment of the national necessities, and the only security for popular privileges.'" On this the writer of the article observes :—" If we glance through the history of the last few years, we shall certainly discover a strong difference between the language used and the principles avowed by Liberals and Conser- vatives respectively, as regards our foreign and colonial policy. We are not sure that Mr. Disraeli has not in this case lighted upon a clear distinction between the two great divisions of public opinion. The Conservatives of England ardently desired Austrian victories in the Italian war ; while the Liberals were so far seduced by 'cosmopolitan jargon' as to throw their whole sympathies most heartily on to the side of Italian unity." And he adds the follow- ing criticism on what he supposes to be Mr, Disraeli's expectation as to the narrowly "national" feeling of "the Residuum " :— " Whether that residuum, to which Mr. Disraeli no* frankly avows that he looks for the re-establishment of Tory ascendancy, —so avows at the close of a struggle from which party considera- tions were to be rigorously excluded,—is likely to sympathise with foreign dynasties struggling for existence, or with popular Move- ments towards unity and liberty ; whether a Francis Joseph or a Garibaldi, a Governor Eyre or a William Garrison, is most likely to be the hero of the new arbiters of England's destinies, we leave our readers to decide for themselves." The article on "The Leap in the Dark" is a pleasant, thoughtful, readable article, by some one who has closely watched politics. And it has more of purpose in it than the other papers we have noticed ; but it is not vigorous. It, too, is tame.

The best essay in the magazine (the tales of course not being included in the term essays) seems to us to be that on "The Ethics of Trades' Unions," unless the essay on "The Condition of the Turf," of which the present writer has formed and can form absolutely no opinion,—indeed has not even read,—be an exception. The former article is written with thorough know- ledge, and with a definite principle the bearing of which it pushes steadily through the whole article. The only fault is the title. So far from discussing 'the ethics of Trades' Unions," what it does discuss is the verge which the law ought to leave them, not the way in which the Trades' Unions ought to employ that liberty when they have obtained it. " Ethics " suggests the law of moral duty as the leaders and guides of opinion within the Trades' Unions themselves should try to conceive it. But this the writer pushes coldly aside, and lays down instead, with perfect logic, and much ability, the scope which we ought to leave them for right or wrong, and not the principles of right and wrong which the Trades' Unionists themselves should adopt for their own guidance.

On the whole, Mr. Trollope's New Magazine has made a very mild start, and leaves great room for improvement in future numbers. In variety and vivacity, and what, after all, is a good deal, vigour, it is not yet up to some of its contemporaries. Mr. Trollope is trusting, we suspect, too much to men of made reputa- tion, who have lost the spring and the zeal of their first spirit of belief and enterprise. The title-page has rather a pretty picture of St. Paul's upon it, but that great cathedral also suggests to most of us a rather cold and stony dignity, without much inward fire and life. Mr. Trollope must throw a little more warmth into St. Paul's, if he is to be as successful as we hope.