6 FEBRUARY 1864, Page 22

THE MAGAZINES.

WE have noticed the two first articles in the Cornhill in another connect:on, but there is an excellent paper oa "Training in

Relation to Health," written from the cominou-sense point of view. The writer protests against the absurd and, as regards children, cruel idea that there are abso!ute rules of training which would, if obeyed, benefit everybody. Everybody, for example, tells the dyspeptic to "take more exercise." " The simple reflection that exercise is a call upon the energies, and uses up a proportionate amountof available nervous and muscular force, will suggest that to task energies already overtasked is very injurious. After a walk of twenty or thirty miles, or any other fatiguing ex.rcise, no one thinks of sitting down to his books and papers, and severely working his brain for some hours ; but there are many who would urge a walk of twenty miles after severe brain-work, in the belief that exercise would be so strengthen- ing.' " Some exercise is necessary, of course, but its limit is the sense of fatigue, nature's owit protest against further exertion.

The writer, toa, adduces a remarkable and, as far as wo can remember, a novel point, the perfect health and superhuman digestion of most servants who are actively employed all day, but who live almost entirely indoors. The illustration would seem to prove that "the air" is not exactly the panacea we are accustomed to believe, and, in fact, there is no such thing as a panacea. The great majority of the nervous, over-cultivated, sedentary men who require these rules know each man for him- self what suits him beet, and the benefit which one gets from a dose of sea air the other obtains from a dose of iron.

An observation of the class continued for some years inclines us to believe is four empirical rules, of which, per- haps, only the last is absolutely certain. 1. Tobacco, harmless in itself, is to all such men most injurious. 2. Bramiy is better for them than wine, beer better than brandy, abstinence better than all the three. 3. Tea is poison. 4. Change is as essential to them as to the great majority of women, and for the same reason, the predominance of the nervous element in heir frames, or in more correct language, the tendency of the spine towards an irritable condition. The writer on the "life of a farm labourer is good-humoured," and rather disposed to exaggerate the average money earnings of the labourer, but he sees clearly the hopeless- ness of the career, the terrible anxiety it stamps on men and women, aud the wretched life in old age. This is not " strong" writing, but is life worth having at this price ?

"They give up the world, sell or give the furniture of their cottage among their children, and retire, separated for the rest of their lives, and doomed to meet no more as man and wife, but once a week for a short half-hour. The old woman is the first to go. She has taken to fretting at being parted from home and husband, and in six months dies, of no disease in particular. Then he is left for the first time in his life desolate in the world; a feeble old man among feeble old men; brought under restraint for the first time since boyhood, and not allowed the in- dulgences which had become in a manner necessaries of life to him. I will not kill my specimen and bury him, though his funeral will cost, nobody much when it comes. Now and then, an old neighbour and he will talk of the dead past and the dead present, and thus he goes on mournfully to the end of his days."

One penny a week more than the sum he pays his club would give this man an annuity at sixty of eight shillings a week, guaranteed by the State. The paper on " David Gray," the hand-loom poet, is remarkable for the apparently careful selection of the very weakest pieces he ever wrote, and for as entire failure to appre- ciate his true claim to rank among minor poets. The " Small House at Arlington" advances somewhat slowly, but the able sketch of a novel entitled "Cousin Phalle " has ended suddenly, leaving only a strong regret that a writer who can describe like

this should not take the trouble to work out his or her own thoughts. One can see this farm scene— "The ways of life were too simple at the Hope Farm for my coming to them to make the slightest disturbance. I knew my room, like a son of the house. I knew the regular course of their days, and that I was expected to fall into it, like one of the family. Deep summer peace brooded over the place ; the warm golden air was filled with the mur- mur of insects near at hand, the more distant sound of voices out in the fields, the clear far-away rumble of carts over the stone-paved lanes miles away. The heat was too great for the birds to be singing ; only now and then one might hear the wood-pigeons in the trees beyond the. ash-field. The cattle stood knee-deep in the pond, flicking their tails about to keep off the flies. The minister stood in the hay-field, without hat or cravat, coat or waistcoat, panting and smiling. Phillis had been leading the row of farm servants, turning the swathes of fragrant hay

with measured movement." • Incomparably the best paper in Macmillan, indeed the only one worth careful reading, for the "Competition Wallah" has only broken out in a burst of civilian hatred against the independent settler, is Mr. Mathew Arnold's second article on a French Eton.

Its object is to ask why we should not have in England a lyceum like that et' Soreze, giving first class education at about 301. a year. The rich send their sons to Eton, Rugby, and Harrow, the poor to the national schools, but for struggling professionals, small gentry, and men of small incomes but culti- . vated tastes there is out of London no resource except cheap proprietary schools, perhaps the very worst organizations for training children ever devised. Mr. Arnold insists, with his usual insight, that we need in England cheap schools which shall ' realize for each class the ideal standard of that class, schools, that is, for the middle class which shall "conveys to the spirit, at the time of life when the spirit is most penetrable, the salutary influences of greatness, honour, and nationality, influences which expand the soul, liberalize the mind, dignify the character?' Mr. Arnold would, for this end, have the State grant £20,cloa a year to be expended in scholarships for lads trained in such schools as in consideration of the scholarships will submit to inspection, and would, moreover, have the endowed schools already existing reformed and strengthened by amalgamation till in every county them should be one great secondary school called, he suggests, the Royal School of Bedford, or Bucks, or Suffolk, as the case may be. Suffolk tried desperately the other day to establish such a place, and large funds were promised, but nothing has as yet come of the design. Our own impression is that this plan meets the wants of the majority of county electors so precisely that it would obtain an overwhelming support in Parliament—a support which would beat down the opposition alike of sectarian feeling and of that horror of State interference which in England so often interrupts an otherwise rapid pro- gress. One thing is quite certain, that if something of the kind be not done, and that rapidly, the next generation of farmers, tradesmen, and small capitalists generally will be worse educated than their own labourers, while the latter will present a uniform level of incomplete and hasty education.

In the Victoria the only article which really interests us is a very hasty sketch by Mr. Hughes of the cooking dep6t is Whitechapel, and of Columbia Square, recently erected by Miss Burdett Coutts, in Bethnal Green. He found the "cooking depot "—why in the world should it not be called the " People's Larder," or some audible title of that kind ?—an excellently con- ducted institution, iu which a capital meal of meat, potatoes,

and plum pudding can be obtained for qd., and eaten in " a large, light, well-ventilated room, the pillars and walls of which

are tastefully painted." The institution, despite the heavy expenses of a first six months, yields a profit, besides interest at four per cent., and " the proprietors of neighbouring eating- houses have been reducing their prices, cleaning their premises, buying better stores, and are said to treat their customers with more civility and give them better fare than ever before." The

depot, in fact, becomes a standard to the neighbourhood.

Columbia Square is described as "like a large college "—four blocks of building four stories high, with broad stone staircases and common passages. The rooms are large, each two sets have their own conveniences, and the rents vary from 2s. 6d. to 5s. 6d. a week. They are pretty regularly paid, and the tenants take a pride in their rooms, and pay up regularly.

Blackwood contains an able article on Royal Academy reform, in which the report of last year's commission is analyzed and urged on the nation for acceptance. The case is very fairly stated on both sides, and the writer commences with a frank acknowledgment of past services and present qualifications for usefulness of the Academy. But reform of some kind is well nigh universally admitted to be required, and the inevitable abandonment of the building in Trafalgar Square, by one of the two tenant institutions must precipitate the crisis. Un answerable evidence strikingly confirms the popular impressions as to the shortcomings of the Academy. The schools are so absolutely inefficient that when Mr. Dyce undertook the his- toric frescoes in the Houses of Parliament, he was driven to the merest drudgery with his own hands for want of ade- quately trained pupils. The right of every Academician to exhibit eight pictures is an unquestionable evil. The report proposes to adapt the Academy to the increased requirements of the day by several sweeping though not revolu- tionary changes, all of which the writer supports with force. The number of Academicians is proposed to be increased to fifty. The increase to the same number of the class of Associates is also strongly advocated as connecting the Academy more thoroughly with the great body of artists, this increase being wisely modified in one respect by a limitation of the exhibiting powers at present awarded to both classes. The admission of honorary Academicians is also desirable, and that of a consider- able lay element is merely carrying into effect the spirit of the present constitution. In order to remove from the class of Associates somewhatof the resemblance to purgatory often fixed upon it, the report recommends their admission to a share of deliberative government, the upper fifty remaining, as at present, the execu- tive.

With regard to locale the Commissioners seem to lean to the opinion that both the National Gallery and the Academy would profit by the removal of the former and the surrender of the entire building to the latter. In that case, the question of space, which forms a disturbing element in so many phases of the con- troversy, would be definitively settled, and the Academy would occupy a clear and unmistakeable position in relation to the State, which would at once deprive the obstructives of all ground for resenting interference, while the Gallery, far too much made use of as a rendezvous for idlers, would in reality gain by abandon- ing the locality to an institution to which shillings are an object. Finally, the writer strongly supports the Commissioners in refus- ing to recommend any great extension in the powers or jurisdic- tion of the Academy. There is no great objection to the pro- posed medal for skilful artisans, but any attempt to obtain con- trol over schools of design or other institutions not originally started by it is far from desirable. We cannot, too, pass over without approval the hint that one half-crown day should' be reserved for those who object to fighting their way through the rooms, and that as a compensation Saturday should be converted into a free day.

Fraser contains a remarkable paper on Theodore Parker's life and writings, pointing out with equal keenness of criticism and lucidity the springs of the intense theological beliefs which were in him the dominant influence throughout life, and to sym- pathy with which his theories of morality and politics clearly traced their origin. His belief in certain great instinctive intui- tions of human nature was absolute, and just as the positive side of his creed sprang from his belief that those intuitions comprise the consciousness of God, of a moral law, and of the immortal, so the negative part may be traced to the unhesitating belief that thativer doctrine offended or jarred against his intuitive per- ceptions was evil. The writer contrasts this school of theology and its immediate corollaries with the received disbelief in any power of the mind to assert a priori the truth of any fact what- ever. The writer finally devotes himself to pursuing the line of theological thought which characterized the recent paper in the same magazine upon " Women and Scepticism," in a manner which leaves little doubt as to the authorship of the two articles being identical.

Last month we omitted to mention the appearance in Fraser of a poem of a far higher order than the average of

magazine verses. "Frederick H.Whymper" is the signature, and we hope to see it attached to more lines like the following :—

" The world of the bright Beyond,

Which never mapped out can be ; But is whispered at times to ears that hear,

Divined by eyes that see—

In the dark of the rock-bound lakes, In the mirth of the dancing seas,

On piled-up glories of sunset cloud,

Through arches of glimmering trees.

Thence, splendour of limner's dye, Thence, meaning of sculptor's hand, Faint shadows, at best, of types that abide At home in that farther land."