THE MAGAZINES.

THE best political article in the Magazines of this month, perhaps the best article of any kind, is one by the Duke of Argyll, in the Contemporary, on " Morality in Politics." It is a sledge-hammer article, full of arguments which it is impossible to controvert, yet which, if accepted, lead directly to his conclusion,—that the duty of Great Britain is to allow the Ottoman Empire to be dis- solved. We are not about to repeat the main argument, which should be carefully studied by any man with an. interest in politics, but we must quote one or two of the " points" which the Duke makes, with a brusque energy pleasant to see, in days when to believe that there ought to be a governing code of morals in politics, is to be accused of sentimentalism :—" The Utilitarian theory of morals is generally regarded with antipathy by Tories, and has in point of fact been specially associated with the prophets and apostles of Radicalism. Yet in the Eastern Question we have had this theory applied in the coarsest form by Tory Secretaries of State,—members and representatives of the old English Universities, where the doctrines of an independent morality have hitherto found an illustrious home." '4 Perish the Christians of the East," say the Tories, " so only that England be unhurt," and then in the next breath they congratu- late themselves that they are not as those Benthamites. The Turks, say they, again, are no worse than the Russians, who per- secute in Poland as the Ottomans persecute in Bulgaria. As a matter of fact, Russian cruelty differs from Turkish cruelty iu this,—that the Russians mean good to their subjects and the Turks mean ill, that the Russian end is obedience and the Turks' degrada- tion ; but if we waive that point, the Duke's reply is still com- plete and unanswerable :—" If, indeed, the persecuted sects in Russia were driven into rebellion, and if we were to use our influence in any way, directly or indirectly, to thwart or frustrate their efforts for freedom, then, unquestionably, a large share of the responsibility would be ours, and we should be guilty of an unjust and immoral act." That is our position in Turkey ; we have upheld the system under which the Turkish Christians are oppressed until there is no remedy for oppression, except insur- rection or war. The Tories, as might be expected, denounce in- surrection, but what is unusual with them, they also denounce war, and make as much lamentation over " carnage " as so many members of the Peace Society. The Duke was bred in a sterner school:— "I cannot pretend, however, to regard this result [war] as an unmiti- gated misfortune. Thole are evils in this world from which there never yet has been any other means of release than war. There are knots which cannot be untied. The baneful influence of Slavery extending as a permanent institution among our children and descendants in America, and becoming thorn the corrupting centre of all political conduct, was one of those evils Dreadful as the civil war in America was, there was, humanly speaking, no other remedy for the disease. The same may be said of the Turkish tyranny in Europe. In the history of the world, nothing but war has ever done that which has to be done in Turkey. I venture to disagree with those who talk loosely about Chris- tianity condemning war. No doubt, if .all men and all nations were to act up to the whole spirit of the Christian faith, wars would cease, and swords would be everywhere replaced by the ploughshare and the pruning-book. But in the existing condition of the world, war is a necessary evil, and by very much indeed loss of an evil than the pro- longed existence of debasing and corrupting Governments. It may even bo true that no war is legitimate except defensive war, but it is certainly not true that self and selfish interests are the only things which it is legitimate to defend."

The Tories talk of authority, and say that every man of eminence during this century has urged us to defend Turkey. Well, of all men of eminence, the one they most respect was the Duke of Wellington, and the Duke of Argyll quotes him as his ultimate authority :—" What the Duke of Wellington regarded with hope in 1829, wo can afford to regard at least with equanimity in 1877. These are his words, and with these I conclude :—"Phere is no doubt it would have been more fortunate and better for the world if the Treaty of Adrianople bad not been signed, and if the Russians had entered Constantinople, and if the Turkish Empire bad been dissolved." This article alone would make this number a success, but there is a powerful paper by Mr. Gladstone, impeaching the justice of the slaughter of the Dyaks in Borneo in July, 1849,—a paper which, we think, depreciates unduly the political obligation to put down piracy, even at the cost of occa- sional slaughters on a terrible scale, but which is a fine protest for discrimination even in necessary repression ; an extremely readable though discursive paper on things in Holland, pictures especially, by Lady Verney ; and a puzzling account of "The Religious Upheaval in Scotland," by Mr. William Wallace. Mr. Wallace believes that the tendency of opinion in Scotland resembles its tendency in Germany :— " In Scotland, as in Germany, in the Netherlands, and throughout Protestantism generally, the emphatically Protestant doctrine of sub- oasnedienthcoe jectivity is being pushed to an extreme. God's revelation in conscience is is a more important revelation than the revelation in the Bible

Confession. The Confession is rationalised, and the doctrines of repro- bation and election are absolutely removed from it. The Bible becomes the text-book of religion, but whatever in it is repulsive to the conscience or reason (in Coleridge's sense) is not to be believed. The miraculous ceases to be considered the essential or oven the supernatural element of religion. The Fall, the Trinity, tho Atonement, the character and attributes of God, remain as mysteries, to occupy the brains of free scientific students of theology, but they do not belong to the ' saving' department of personal religion."

Ho does not think, however, that the result will be a form of Theism, but a general acceptance of agnosticism under Calvinistic forms, and with the Calvinistic morality still preserved. We doubt that conclusion, looking rather to the development in Scot- land of a somewhat stern system of God-worship, loyalty to God as sovereign rather than as Deity,—the faith which is the central essence of Mahommedanism considered as a theologic system ; but Mr. Wallace has much to say for his view, which has this ad- vantage as a view, that it is definite and clear. He thinks Cal- vinism will "shade off" till the doctrine of election becomes visible again as the survival of the fittest, and predestination be once more believed in as the persistence of Force.

We are not quite sure that the conductors of the new style of magazine do not rely a little too much on the " thoughtfulness " of their readers. We cannot pretend to be sorry for our own parts to be rid of novels in snippets, and " tales" very seldom worth remem- bering for five minutes, and we quite acknowledge that a demand for magazines like the Fortnightly, the Contemporary, and the Nineteenth Century is a healthy sign, but some consideration should be shown to the stupid and the weary. Reading the Contemporary or the Nineteenth Century is sometimes a stiff bit of work, which would be relieved by the introduction of a little, very little, of some what lighter material, if it were but a chapter of history, or a disquisition on some novelty in science. One such paper, " The Life of Thomas Becket," by Mr. Froude, we have in the Nineteenth Century ; but there are ten others, all good of their kind, but all re- quiring assiduous and continuous thought. We have dis- cussed the most interesting of them, the Comtist statement of the theory of a future life, elsewhere ; and there is another argument from Mr. Gladstone in favour of Sir Cornewall Lewis's opinion on authority in matters of opinion ; an interesting paper on English views of the Eastern Question, by Mr. Grant Duff, called the "Five Nights' Debate," notable for an admission that we may be driven to take Egypt, and for a repetition of his idea— the boldest, we think, as well as the most satisfactory that he has ever put forward—that we want a Christian Prince as Emperor at Constantinople ; the conclusion of Lord Stratford de Red- cliffe's essay on Turkey, full of knowledge, but wanting in resolu- tion to take a new departure ; an able plea for Colonial federation with Great Britain, by Sir Julius Vogel, impaired, as all such papers are, by a defective sympathy with British home difficulties, and the conclusion of Cardinal Manning's "True Story of the Vatican Council." We suspect this series of papers has been much less read than it deserves. The object of reading it is not to agree with it, or even to get instruction, but to see what a great Catholic theolo- gian, who is also an Englishman and a Cardinal—quite a special position in our modern world—has to say for the mighty effort which Protestants so condemn. We do not agree with the Cardinal, but it is impossible to read his papers without seeing that the great Catholic clerics in consenting to the Council had larger ideas in their heads than the gratification of Pio Nono's vanity ; that they really thought the time had come when they must modernise their artillery, and make their organisation effective, if they were to keep their place in the forefront of the battle for the supernatural ; that they were intent on removing spiritual dan- gers, as well as on increasing sacerdotal power. On the wisdom of the method adopted there will be many opinions, but on the conviction of its advocates few who read Dr. Manning's paper will retain a doubt. They would have gone on, as we understand him—and indeed there is little room for misunderstanding—if the Council of the Vatican had been followed, like the Council of Trent, by the secession of whole kingdoms. There is sacerdotal arrogance, but there is also nobleness in a declaration like this:— " An (Ecumenical Council is not like a human legislature. It can- not suppress, or soften, or vary, or withhold the truth, on calculations of expediency, or with a view to consequences. Necessity is laid upon it. As it has received, so it must deelare. Deviation from the truth would ho apostasy ; silence when truth is denied is betrayal. This is what, it seems, Honorius did, and what some would have had Pins the Ninth do. Truth is not ours, it is of God. We have no jurisdiction against it or over it. Our solo office to truth is to guard it and to de- clare it. ' That which ye have heard in the oar, preach ye on the house-tops. For this cause the Council of Trent defined every doc- trine which had been unhappily denied or distorted in controversy from the year 1517. It ranged its decrees along the whole line of the Lutheran aberration. Was the Lutheran separation the consequence of tho Council of Trent ?"

The Fortnightly has at least ten notable papers, of which the most readable is Mr. F, Hill's sketch of the Duo de Broglie,--a sketch penetrated with a certain sympathy of hatred, which enables the writer to understand while he denounces. To Mr. Hill the Duke is an exaggeration of the French doctrinaire, full of scorn and hatred and impatience, and all the vices of fancied intellec- tual superiority, but demoralised by his long subjection to the regime of Napoleon III., whose twenty years of sovereignty demoralised an age. He does not hate the Napoleonic methods,

but only the Bonapartist men. He does not understand France, but only certain maxims, and as a political pedant, when " brought suddenly into contact with the world, and discovering that his phrases and principles are of no service to him, is obliged to fall back upon the institutions and methods of government which he finds ready-made to his hand." At heart ho is a cleric, and "his sympathies need only opportunity and the hope of success to be transferred from the recesses of secret diplomacy to the open air of public policy." Of the last remark Mr. Hill offers too little proof, but it is true that the French doctrinaires—even a Protestant like Guizot—bave entertained very strong ecclesiastical sympathies, dreading and even hating the lawlessness of thought within the opposite party. Mr.

Clifford's paper on " The Ethics of Religion" is a very eloquent and, wholly extravagant plea for the assertions that men would frame a better morality without a religion than with it ; that

they would be better without a priesthood, priests being in all times and all places the enemies of all mon—for instance, the average English rector in a rural parish is the enemy of his flock ?—and that the true God is Man. A God who wants such a

quantity of policing does not, we confess, attract us even if we could believe in him, but anybody who likes to see how far philanthropy can lead a man into believing that Man is all- important cannot do better than read Professor Clifford's last utterance. To us, the worship of the stars seems a nobler faith ; but Mr. Clifford clearly believes his own doctrines, and does not drive his readers crazy by stating about half what

he really means. Of the political papers, the most interest- ing, after Mr. Goldwin Smith's account of the Liberal defeat, to which we referred last week, is Emile de Lave- 'eye's outbreak in favour of England's taking Egypt. He maintains that, in spite of the momentary friendship of Ger- many for Russia, Germany cannot allow Russia to keep Con- stantinople, and that England's interest is not there, but in Egypt. She cannot protect the Canal efficiently without occupation. Her occupation would be a blessing to the Egyptians, and Egypt would be to her a substitute for India, which she must lose when the national self-consciousness wakes up. M. do Laveleye makes hero the mistake of considering India a nation, instead of a Con- tinent full of nations, but his plea for the conquest of Egypt is most convincing, and coming from a foreigner is a pleasing, though as we think, a just tribute to our self-love.

Blackwood is very much more lively and vigorous than usual. The new story, "Mine is Thine," is full of spirits and "go," though the author indulges in a tendency to caricature ; the poli-

tical paper, "The Storm in the East," though composed from a prejudiced point of view, is full of telling paragraphs, written by a man who is full of hatred to Russia, but is not deceived as to the limits of her power ; there is a readable paper on "English Diplomacy," by a man who believes in the " Service," but believes with a reasoning faith ; and an absolutely original and most valuable paper on the " Egyptian Campaign in Abyssinia," a real addition to political knowledge. It is written from the Egyptian side, but the author, who obtained his information from European and American Staff officers, though denying that the Egyptians were beaten, admits the extreme difficulty of con- quest. The Abyssinians, ho says, move with a rapidity which no regular army can follow ; they detest the Moslem ; and they fight always to the death, neither giving nor expecting quarter. Their ruler, King Johannes, regards the English with great favour, and is thus described

Bing Johannes had evidently made his preparations to impress the stranger at this audience. He was carefully posd upon his mat at the extreme and of the tont, on a kind of raised platform, his loft arm thrown carelessly over the neck of a tamed lioness, whose two cubs gambolled like kittens about the toot. Several of his chieftains or ras were grouped around him. The king himself seemed a man in the prime of life and vigour, his expression of countenance sullen, almost apathetic); ho kept his oyes east down, seldom looking straight at his interlocutor, but giving sudden, swift, sidelong glances, full of penetration and sus- picion. His complexion was not black, but coMoe•oe]ourad, many shades lighter than that of the negro. His features, like those of all the Abys- sinians, were high and aquiline, with nothing of what is commonly regarded as the African typo in Europe, clear-cut, with thin, compressed lips. His speech was measured and slow, and almost hesitating, as

though neither his words nor his ideas flowed rapidly. There was much native dignity in his manner, which was more reserved than that habitual to the Abyssinians, though he is of pure blood, of a distinguished but not royal family, having succeeded Thoodoros, through English assistance, after the defeat and death of that king of Abyssinia."

The Cornhill seems to be taking up a line abandoned by most of the magazines, the publication of essays on subjects not concrete—manners, opinions, and literature—full of thought, flavoured with a sub-humour that sometimes recalls Thackeray, but more frequently Addison. They are to us most enjoyable, but whether they will be equally enjoyable to the fifty thousand readers a shilling magazine desires,—whether, in fact, they are not too good, we are uncertain. A defence of Sancho Panza, as essential to Don Quixote will hardly be intelligible to people who do not understand why Cervantes' work has lived for centuries, and think of Sancho Panza merely as a buffoon. The true Philistines will hardly enjoy " Lane Philistine "any more than they will appreciate the curious wisdom of this apopthegm, which might have been uttered by Mr. Grant Duff's Spanish philoso- pher,—" The rule of majorities is good, not because majorities are wise, but because they indicate what will be endured by the stupid ;" or this sentence, in which the political value of stupidity is so neatly condensed,—It is a " discipline which requires that new things should be made plain," as also is "ridicule, which requires that new things should be made agreeable to common- sense." The " Philistine has, at all events, the advantage of being au courant with the common intellect of his time." Nor, we fear, will they better understand the half-melancholy " Apology for Idlers," with its humorous assertion that the quality of the idler is wisdom, and its racy defiance of English belief in "steady industry :"— " Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality ; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite, and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who aro scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation. Bring those follows into the country, or set them aboard ship, and you will see how they pine for their desk or their study. They have no curiosity ; they cannot giro themselves over to random provoca- tions; they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its own sake; and unless Necessity lays about them with a stick, they will oven stand still. It is no good speaking to such folk : they cannot bo idle, their nature is not generous enough ; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma which are not dedicated to furious moiling in the gold-mill. When they do not require to go to the office, when they are not hungry and have no mind to drink, the whole breathing world is a blank to them."

For a lazy summer day, when one can think, but not study, and reflect, but not pore, we cannot imagine pleasanter or more gain- ful reading than these two essays, which might have appeared in the Spectator in its best days.

The most readable paper in Macmillan, which is otherwise a dull number, is one on " Modern Diplomacy," by Mr. Harry Fyfe, and this is a good deal spoiled by discursiveness. The writer's general idea is that diplomacy has of late years been rather exceptionally dishonest, and has lent itself very readily to the restless meddlesomeness and greed which have marked some conspicuous modern statesmen, but that diplomacy might be in itself so conducted as to be a blessing to the world. That is true, but it assumes that diplomacy could, if properly organised, have a separate and self-derived mission of its own, which is not, we fear, an assumption justified by history. Diplomatists have always resembled those who used them, and an unscrupulous Court will always find trained agents ready to serve its most secret purposes. We do not see how this is to be prevented, unless diplomatists are reduced to the position of metre exponents of international law, and in that case they would be superseded on all serious occasions by secret agents at least as unscrupulous, and far less fettered by respon- sibility to opinion. Napoleon III. was always using such men. Mr. Fyfe is inclined to defend the capacity of diplomatists which has always seemed to us their weakest point, and to attri- bute their failures, especially in English diplomacy, to the tran- sition period on which they have fallen. Modern diplomatists were trained under a system in which individuals were every- thing and nations nothing, and they cannot suit themselves readily to the new circumstances :- " The old system of diplomacy was essentially personal, and took account of only a narrow range of persons and interests. It was effective, because it was entirely under the control of those who worked it, and was directed by them to definite and well-understood aims. it was, in fact, a general agreement between some half-a-dozen gentlemen as to their common interests and mutual relations, and was conducted on their behalf by trusty exports, who enjoyed their masters' confidence, and knew exactly what they wanted. The gradual development of

popular rights and opinion has now upset the old systom—at least its our own country."

That is true; but we do not see that our diplomatists begin to adapt themselves to the new order of things. On the contrary, when they have ascertained that the Emperor Alexander desires peace, they think it impossible that Russia should go to war, and misinform their Governments on that hypothesis.

Fraser has got itself rather hampered with serious serials. Five of the papers in this number are continuations, of which one has reached the fifth and another the eleventh part. This latter, "British Trade—Mexico and Brazil," though better fitted for a commercial encyclopaedia than a magazine, is well worth reading, the writer being apparently thoroughly independent He does not, for instance, believe in Brazil as City editors in- variably do, bolding that the empire has overspent itself in an effort to advance too quickly ; that the Debt is equal to seven and a-half years of a revenue raised by severe pressure ; that the trade is only £35,000,000 a year, and that a decline in commerce, when the expenditure of borrowed money ceases, is inevitable. He adds that the vast provinces are very loosely bound together, and may one day be seriously opposed to each other, and that labour is at once scarce, and from the continued exist- ence of slavery, inefficient. There is probably no empire in the world in which prosperity is so deeply undermined as that of Brazil, or in which a total political dissolution, followed by a. century of civil war, is so exceedingly probable. The late Mr. Christie indeed, a keen observer, who had been many years Minister there, held that the catastrophe might be still more violent, and that Brazil might before long be quoted as an ex- ample of an empire in which slavery had signally avenged itself, the coloured races held in an intolerable bondage extin- guishing the whites and half-breeds at a blow. The paper in Fraser which will attract most attention is one on bet- ting and bookmaking ; an attempt to describe the " book- makers'" system, which, however, though lucid, is not very instructive. We can understand how it pays to "make a book," that is, to bet against every horse in a race, varying the sum according to the odds, so that the total to be received shall exceed the total to be paid on the horse that wins ; but we want to know how the bookmaker can be sure of making the precise amount of bets he wants. Is the market limitless at a "point beyond the odds ?" Of course if there are five horses to run,—King, Prince, Peer, Decors, and Commoner, and the bookmaker can bet so that he receives £500 on each of the four that lose, and pays £1,500 on the one that wins, he will gain £500, but how is it that he can be sure of doing this? Or if so, why does not everybody do it, and the Ring consist of nothing but winners? Is the market really so big that a man with some capital and a decent head for figures can deal as if he were dealing in Consols ? If so, why is a " professional " ever ruined ? and moreover, what is the value of " information," except possibly to increase profits ? Why not rely exclusively on the mathematical certainty presented by the figures ? It is curious that in a market where dealers certainly take every advantage, and where rogues are at least as numerous as honest men, no legal documents pass, and engagements are, for the most part, kept. It is true a big dealer who did not keep his engagements would get no more business, and a little dealer would be fortunate if lie escaped with six weeks in hospital. The very curious notes from the records of the " Quarter-Sessions in Devonshire under Charles II," are continued, and are full of in- terest, but Mr. Hamilton has surely made an oversight here :— "Au extinct word may be noticed in the commitment of Robert Coad, who was convicted of ' being a night-walker, and pilfering and strubbing in the night-time.'" " Strubbing" isnot an extinct word or an uncommon one. his merely the vulgar pronunciation of " 'sturbing," i.e., disturbing, and may be heard any day in any low district of any town in England, when a virago-mother shrieks to a noisy child, "Don't make that strubbance.' "