THE MAGAZINES.

DECIDEDLY the best paper in Fraser and one of the best in the Magazines of this month is Mr. W. Longman's on Madeira. The' habit of sending consumptive English patients to die in an African island away from their friends has, we believe, very nearly come to an end, but the old practice left an impres- sion on men's minds about Madeira which has never yet been dissipated. The popular impression about the island is that it is a sort of Northern Tahiti, a paradise on the African coast, where a girl with her lungs half gone may breathe freely in a glorious atmosphere, amid tropical scenery and a civilisation specially adapted to invalids. Part of this impression is true, but its total effect, according to Mr. Longman, is false. The climate of Madeira, though too relaxing for men in health, is, no doubt, equable and mild ; flowers will grow there, if they are cultivated, in very rare profusion, and in Funchal the hotels are not bad,

but there are other sides to the picture. The island, geologically speaking, is too young for residence. There has not been time or opportunity, Madeira never having been part of the continent, for nature to clothe itself. There is, especially in the southern portion, a striking deficiency of trees and wild-flowers. "The volcanic ravines are arid and repulsive." The "general effect is an uninteresting bareness." There are few birds, and fewer insects, and the air is therefore silent. There are no rivers, only torrents, dry when not rushing in fury, and there are absolutely no means of enjoying a walk. You can ride, though the riding is rough, and you can be carried in a hammock, but walking even in the neighbourhood of Funchal is " imprac- ticable :—" There is nowhere to walk, and the walking every- where—if you should walk—is most disagreeable. Wheeled car- riages are practically unknown ; there are three pony carriages in Funchal, but they are almost useless, and it is said that their owners intend to give them up. They can be used only in some few of the streets of Funchal, and along what is termed the New Road, which is a mixture of a Rotten Row for riding and a very fair road for carriages." There is nothing whatever to do but explore, and for exploring there is little accommodation, there being out of Funchal but two places where they take in lodgers, and to one of these it is expedient to carry your own food. The Portuguese authorities do everything they can to discourage visi- tors, and the present Governor openly proclaims that lie should be pleased if the means of communication were once more reduced to one steamer a month. It is well that it should be recognised that Madeira is for the strong, for the man who can do very rough riding and climbing, as Mr. Longman did, can enjoy scenery from the top of a ravine nearly 2.000 feet deep, and can eat any- tldng he finds to consume. Such a traveller may be rewarded by a scene of this kind :—" The beauty of the scenery culminated at the little hamlet of Crusinbas, whence we looked into a laby- rinth of dark precipitous ravines, formed by the gorges of the central group of mountains, whose peaks, fortunately nearly un- clouded for a time, resembled in their fantastic jaggedness those of the Dolomites. But their sides being densely wooded with the sparkling laurel, and the ravines themselves more tortuous, we— I will hardly say reluctantly—came to the conclusion that even the Dolomitic gorges could not equal them. There was none of the splendid rock-colouring of the Dolomites, but for wooded ravines of deep mysterious gloom, descending from piunacled mountains, it is a great question whether Tyrol must not yield to Madeira." But the invalid is better off in Algeria than Madeira, or in Pallanza than either, and avoids in the latter case a most unpleasant rough sea-voyage.—There is little else of mark in Fraser this month. The paper on Burmah is dull, though it may remind readers how large the Burmese Empire once was, and how much we have swallowed up ; and the present article on the dresses and amusements of Germany reads to us rather like a satire than a description. The writer leaves on us the im- pression of being offended by homeliness, and sometimes descends to palpable caricature. German women, no doubt, arc still very much in the stage of our great-grandmothers, but would this account have been more than superficially true of them?—

" German women are almost entirely without personal vanity. Their solicitude about their clothes, the time spent in talking toilette, has its pathetic as well as its twaddline. side. One may read beneath the talk of tags and rags, of chignons and chiffons, a very real and a very pain- ful humility. What, in our haste, we may take for vanity is just the reverse of it. This very anxiety as to appearance, this wearisome dis- cussion of sumptuary details, betrays a want of self-confidence, of self- reliance, almost of self-respect, that at once grieves and depresses the outsider. They have no confidence in themselves, no belief in being able to please but by virtue of their coverings; their dress must do it, not they ; a German girl would expect a man to fall in love with her, if at all, when she had her bast gown on ; the gown counts for so much more to her bumble mind, than the body and the soul inside it. The very words 'Putz," goputzt,' have an eminently displeasing ring of tawdriness about them, suggestive of incongruous frippery and finery."

—The question, "What was Primitive Christianity,"is answered by F. Newman, and the answer therefore need scarcely be read to be apprehended ; and the paper on " The Blue-jackets and Marines of the Royal Navy " does not tell us much that is new, except that there are a hundred deserters a month, that the younger boys are caught the better they like the life, and that the modern man-o% war's man saves his money. He is an entirely different style of person from the kind of man described by Marryat, and evidently regretted by the writer in Fraser, the man who was either a brave, shifty, careless child, or an incorrigible blackguard :—

" Taking a good average type, a man of twenty-six years of age, we find, as a rule, he is very steady, well-behaved, rather reserved, cleanly and sober, abominably conceited, personally vain to a degree ; thinks he can do anything, because he is obliged to have a smattering of so

many things ; he is, however, civil-speaking, and has very good man- ners ; he is careful, very careful, of his money, no one more so ; generally married, and proud of his home and children ; he looks at his life seriously, feels that he has to improve it on all opportunities and to fight through bravely ; but he is very much inclined to be an eye-ser- vant, for those above him have so much power over his present and future that he is naturally apt to look to them personally for approval, instead of doing his duty in a straightforward manner ; he is not very hard-working, but still a wonderful amount of work can be got out of him."

In Blackwood, the new chapters of the tale of the Indian Mutiny called "The Dilemma" are much the most effective and stirring which have yet appeared. The Mutiny breaks out in this number, and nothing could be better told than the story of the long and dreary suspense during the hot months of 1857, as the news came of one explosion after another, and the officers of the native regiments awaited their turn in futile attempts to believe that their troops would prove exceptionally faithful, and with no power to precipitate the crisis which they knew to be approach- ing. The conversation at mess on one of these days of dreary anxiety is given with great effectiveness. Some of the char- acters, too, are very ably handled, and the Brigadier's wife, Mrs. Polwheedle, is as amusing as ever, even in the thick of the tragedy which is approaching. It is evident that "The Dilemma" will be a story of considerable power, but of the heavier matter by far the most valuable is the detailed account of the position of the French Army. We confess we find it incredible, so incredible that we suspect the writer of having been deliberately deceived by officials anxious to make prepara- tions unseen by Europe ; but Blackwood is usually well informed on military matters, the essayist is obviously competent, and some of his statements as to the Direction are only too probable. He says the Direction has not been improved. General de Cissey, whom M. Thiers selected to reorganise the Army, was not equal to that great task :—" An honest man, a capable tactician, a

straight and valiant soldier, known everywhere for the bravery and energy he displayed at Borny and at Rezonville, he was de- ficient in nearly all the special qualities needed for the grand mission he had undertaken He was not the man to exter- minate routine, to crush abuses, to enforce new rules, to suppress bad habits, to stamp down opposition." He fell into the routine, pleading his hope of gradual improvement, and the Direction is very much what it was, crushed by the Bureaux, and by the old Generals, who, when asked for their opinion, report in favour of the "has been," and have crushed out, for example, any attempt to improve the military boot :—" The system of Direction now followed in the French Army is substantially the same as that

which existed before the war, and which was manifestly the main cause of the disasters of France ; nobody can pretend that any good result can be attained by perpetuating it." As to recruiting, the reserve army is not organised, the territorial army exists only on paper—where, however, be it remarked, M. Thiers always intended it to remain—and the re-engagement of non-commis- sioned officers has almost ceased. They do not care to remain without the heavy bounty which the rich used to pay them to replace their sons, and consequently a vast majority of sous-officiers have to be selected afresh every summer. This will increase the difficulties of mobilisation, already great, because, affirms the writer, the French company, now only seventy-five strong, would suddenly have to be raised to 250. To effect this properly the French Direction has invented a number of arrangements, and the general result is thus stated :—"Two companies have, several times and in different places, been put through the form of mobilisation, their reserves having been convoked for the purpose. The results have been most singular. The armament and equip- ment were effected with reasonable rapidity ; for the 500 men were paraded, under arms, in uniform, in an average of five hours from their muster at the &pat. But after that, three days were needed in each case for writing down the details and the numbers of the equipments in the regimental books !" In other words, three days are wasted in forms rendered necessary by the excessively low strength at which regiments are kept. On paper, they are full, but in reality, instead of 1,800 men, there are only 1,200 ; and the Army does not exceed 285,000 men altogether, supported by an artillery which ought to consist of thirty-eight regiments with thirteen batteries each, but really consists only of thirty-eight regiments with seven batteries each. The Committees entrusted with the reparation of this arm have only just decided in favour of steel cannon. The new fortifications are well imagined, but they will hardly be completed till 1878. In fact, the French Army, in spite of the vigour of the Assembly, is not ready, and will not be ready for years, and in the present condition of the Direction, the reorganisation does not proceed at the pace which Europe believes and France expects. It is easy to see where the weak places in this statement are. For instance, the Govern- ment may on the approach of war suspend all formulas likely to interfere with mobilisation, and the reserve is sufficiently trained to fill up all gaps, but still the article should be carefully pondered by all who imagine that the revanche will speedily arrive. While pondering it, they should remember also that from the moment of his appointment no party has seriously agitated the removal of General de Cissey, whose only superior is a trained and, within certain limits, an able soldier. Blackwood's "Review of the Session" decides that it has been, "on the whole, pre-eminently satisfactory," that Mr. Disraeli has wisely left the conduct of all measures, with one exception, to subordinates, but that it is due to the celebrated chief of the Tories (Mr. Disraeli) that we "owe the existence of a party which now represents all that is best and wisest in the English character and aims, and is finally dissociated from those influences which in times past have alienated it from the confidence of the country,"—on which what comment is possible ? If the Tory party now represents "all that is best and wisest in the English character," and if it is "finally dis- sociated from those influences," tkc., and if it is " in full sympathy with the national ideas of progress," then, no doubt, we may "hope for the guidance of a wise and sagacious rule." If only the premisses are accurate, there can, we entirely agree with Blackwood, be no doubt as to the conclusion.

In the Contemporary, we weary somewhat of "Supernatural Religion," book and answers both, but for those who still retain an interest in a controversy certainly of high importance, Professor Lightfoot is well worth study.—The two papers, however, which will be most generally read are Mr. T. Brassey's "The Advance- note, what it is and why it should be abolished," and Mr. Julian Hawthorne's "Saxon Studies." Mr. Brassey has given an account of the advance-note which is perfectly lucid even to non-professionals.

The note runs in this form :—

"Glasgow, Gth July, 1873.

"Ten days after the departure of the ship — from the last port or place in the River or Firth of Clyde, in which from any cause she may b3, before finally leaving for the voyage for which this note is issued, pay to the order of (seaman's name) the sum of £3 17s. 6d., provided the said seaman sails in and continues in the said vessel, and duly earns his wages, being advance of wages according to agreement.

(Signed) ROBERT DOUGLAS, Master. "To Messrs. HENDERSON and Co.,

Hope Street, Glasgow."

This note the sailor discounts with some lodging-housekeeper, drinks away the money, and is at last carried on board so drunk that for 24 or 48 hours he is useless. Moreover, it is because he can get this note that, unlike any other skilled workman, he spends all he has earned on a voyage, reserving nothing for the interval during which he is without an engagement. But for this note, he would be under the compulsion which induces even a navvy to keep something in hand, and might in time become as provident as the man-o'-war's man described above. No one is benefited by the advance-note except the crimp, and it has been condemned over and over again by Commissions of Inquiry ; but the shipowners like it, because they fancy it gives them a hold over the men, and they have induced Parliament, by the old argument that a sailor is not a child, to refuse its abolition, the same Parliament, be it observed, making every other form of post-dated cheque illegal. An advance-note is, on the face of it, a post-dated cheque.—Mr. Hawthorne's present article is on the Saxon Army, and contains some statements which, notwithstanding all we know of German discipline, seem almost incredible. He declares that in Saxony an officer can sentence a soldier for disobedience or mutiny to fatigue-duty for twenty years, and accompanies his statement by some sentences which, if they do not justify assassination—an accusation Mr. Hawthorne would of course repel with horror—certainly will be so misinterpreted by many readers. He says :—"Their terms of punishment vary from a few months to life, at the discretion of the officer. One cannot help being surprised that the crime for which they do penance is not always murder. And indeed, if the question is of moral accountability, were it not less sin to have slain him in one fiery instant, than impotently to curse him in cold blood every day for twenty years ?" The men thus sentenced perform the most menial tasks, settle gradually into sullen despair, and are, Mr. Haw- ---- thorne affirms, the very flower of the Saxon flock :-

"I scrutinised the faces of these canvas-backed fellows with morbid interest. There is not a cheerful one among them : many have acquired a sinister expression ; some are sullen-brutal, some sullen-obstinate, some sullen-fierce. Only a few have the passive stolidity of despair, for hope is more obstinate than most misery. Some wear a hang-dog look ; others stare us defiantly in the face. All this is what might be expected, but I was not prepared to find so many well-built heads and

countenances. I do not mean to say that there are any Licbigs or Goethes among them, but only that their intellectual promise outdoes that of their unpariahed comrades—no difficult feat, Heaven knows. Brains. of a certain kind, are desirable in the leaders of the army, but not in the army itself. The analogy with man is strict. He must not allow his arms and legs, his liver and stomach, to be intellectual ; the head is the place for cerebration, and any other member that presumes to do anything in that line ought to be licked into shape without delay."

There must be some unintentional exaggeration here somewhere. Either there must be a trial, or an appeal to the King, or the punishment is not inflicted for any serious period, except for mutiny with violence. As it stands described, it is cruelty of the most extreme kind, yet Mr. Hawthorne admits that it is supported by public opinion, the peasantry rising to arrest any " Bestra- fene " who may endeavour to escape. There are hundreds—" it may be thousands "—of them about Dresden alone.

The Fortnightly has no very striking contribution to our know- ledge, but many papers much above the average. Sir Rutherford Alcock, for example, contributes one called "The Inheritance of the Great Mogul," deformed by discursiveness, and by his trick of pouring out thoughts pell-mell till they bruise each other, but full, nevertheless, of suggestiveness. The empire of Jenghis Khan has struck his imagination, and, he thinks, with the late Mr. Thoby Prinsep, that the greatest dangers to India lie in the nomad population of Northern Asia, and in the enormous population of China :- " The aim of Genghis was literally the conquest of the world—as he conceived it,—and was nearer its accomplishment in his own life, and in that of two of his descendants, Kublai and Timur, than it had ever been before, or is likely to be again. The empire which he created counted within its limits probably one-half of the whole human race, and extended from the Sea of Okhotsk, at the north-eastern extremity of Asia, over the whole breadth of the continent as far as the Black Sea."

His descendants at one time ruled China, Northern Asia, India, Persia, Armenia, Russia, and Hungary, and their heirs are now the Czar, the Emperor of China, and the British Government, each of whom rules as a mighty empire a fragment of Jenghis's dominion. Sir Rutherford believes that collision among them is inevitable, thinks that the Czar might urge the Tartars upon India, and renew the conquests of the Mongols ; while, on the other hand, China is palpably upon the eve of a movement which may prove of the last importance to our safety :-

"Holding in undisputed possession the larger share of the heritage of Genghis Khan, with at least three hundred millions of subjects, and among them most of those warlike and pastoral tribes whose ancestors crossed the Danube six centuries ago—with, practically, unlimited resources in men and means, if they only knew bow to bring them into play—they cannot be safely despised. Nor are they likely to view the Central Asian, or any other Eastern questions in which Western Powers are occupying themselves (little caring what an Emperor of China may think or do) in the same light as we do. Perhaps with something of their own superciliousness and overweening conceit, the Powers who have any interests at stake in the East, have too long assumed that China has no future, and takes no heed. The late exterminating wars, however, against the Mahomedan rebels in Yunnan and Shensi, on her southern and western borders ; and the march of her armies even now to the frontier of Eastern Turkestan, with the avowed intention of re- covering it from its present de facto ruler,—with as little care for the wishes or interests of either Russia or England as those countries have ever shown in their dealings with Asiatics for the will of China,—should teach another lesson."

We do not see that the Czar would gain by mobilising Northern Asia, where the people, once let loose, are certain to defy him, and we question if the Moguls ever brought masses of soldiers into India, but the danger from China may be real. Those huge masses could be urged forward through Nepaul and Burmah with a weight it would be difficult to resist and impossible to avoid, and Britain in self-defence would have to ally herself with Japan, and strike with both hands, and with an intention of ending the struggle for ever, at the centre of Chinese power. Fortunately she would have in such a contest the hearty sympathy of the people under her rule, who hate the Chinese from some race-feeling, and dread them from some tradition of their exterminating cruelty. If the land contest ever began, an able Viceroy might face the Chinese Army with a million Rajpoot soldiers behind him, and a convic- tion among the whole population that the British Army was a protecting and not a destroying force.—There is a fine article by Mr. Bridge on the Mediterranean of Japan, the Inland Sea, which so fascinates all who have seen it ; a curious sketch of the revived Municipalities of Ceylon, where the passion for litigation rises to the height of a monomania, furnishing the grand excitement of life ; and a poem on the " Liberty of the Press," by Lord Lytton, from which we quote this striking thought :—

. "Low sank the Titan's voice Into a meditative murmur. Yes !' He mutter'd, as in commune with himself, 'And then, perchance, might they reveal to man That superhuman language, last e'er leam'd,

Whereby alone man's soul may be express'd.

Then, too, perchance, that soul at last set free From all that yokes it to the life of brutes, Might recognise the glorious destiny To which my purpose guides it. 0 man, man !

Dear, desperate essay of my great revolt, Could'st thou but understand me! Stupid gods, What profits you your immortality?

To be the same for ever, is to be

For ever lacking life's divinest gift—

The faculty of growth. What good in that ?

But to be ever growing young again, From ago to age eternally renew'd, Behold the gift (a gift to gods denied) My forethought bath for man alone reserved !

Death is the vain condition jealous Jove, To baffle mine ambition, bath imposed Upon its human instrument. 0 blind And uudiscerning god, could'st thou not guess That to these hands the fetter thou badst forged Gave all they needed whence to forgo a sword?

Mankind must die. The fiat bath gone forth.

Die? When I heard that word of doom pronounced, More self-restraint I needed to repress A shout of joy, than when 'twixt bitten lips My groans I strangled upon Caucasus!

Mankind must die ? 'Tis well. By means of death Man's race shall be, from age to ago refresh'd, Perpetually growing young again.

Death's salutary sickle, as it reaps The old grain, to the young the soil restores.

A man is dead, long live mankind ! From age To age, the experiehce of each single life Passes to its successor; ages roll, And in a hundred ages (what care I How many births as many deaths succeed ?) Man's progeny surpasses head by head The stature of its highest ancestry.

Hist! I have watch'd the ocean, watch'd the shore ; The sand rejected by the restless wave Grows, grain by grain, together, heaps itself Higher and higher, hardens; and at last

The wave, returning, breaks upon a rock,

And is itself rejected. Human sands, Grains of humanity, rise, higher rise, Upon each other's shoulders, and stand fast."

"The Atonement of Learn Dundas" in the Cornhill promises well as a story, and is choked with delightful kit-cat sketches of people whom the authoress thoroughly comprehends—generally from the sympathy of dislike—and "The Hand of Ethelberta" is as original as ever ; but the padding is rather poor. The best paper is the one on "Some Strange Mental Feats," in which a clever writer argues that the feats of the calculating-boys do not necessarily indicate undiscovered powers in the mind, but only a special power in their imaginations. They can call up before them the figures they want, or diagrams in place of figures, as blinded chess-players can call up the board, and as Blake could call up the features of his sitters. The writer acknowledges that the cleverest among them, like Zerah Colburn, must have had some other power, as he made his calculations quicker than a man could make them on paper, and he advances the following theory in explanation :- " The writer used formerly to prssess, though in a slight degree only, a power of finding divisors, products, and so on, which—unlike ordinary skill in calculation—required only to be expanded to effect what Colburn effected. It was, in point of fact, simply the power of picturing a number (not the written number, but so many things '), and changes in the number. corresponding to division or multiplication, as the case might be. Thus the number 24 would be presented as two columns of dots, each containing ten, and one column containing four on the right of the columns of ten. If this number were to be multi- plied by three, all that was necessary was to picture three sot of dots like that just described ; then to conceive the imperfect columns brought together on the right, giving six columns of ten and three columns each of four dots ; and these three gave at once (by heaping them up properly) another column of ten with two over."

Would it not be simpler to imagine that Colburn could call up the figures he wanted, and work them in the ordinary way, but of course with the rapidity conferred by his exemption from the necessity of using his hand ? That is merely an instance of ab- normal memory, and if he possessed that, and also great quick- ness in detecting probable divisors—which he certainly had— the problem would be very nearly explained. It would only re- main to account for his knowledge of the processes, which he always denied, but which he may have rediscovered for himself.