Macmillan's Magazine, for June (Macmillan), begins with an article worth
much more than the price of the magazine, in which Mr. D. Mackenzie Wallace describes the working of Russian village com- munities, and especially the authority, constitution, and methods of the public meeting, or village assembly, by which all village life in Russia is really regulated. This remarkable and most democratic institution consists of all heads of houses, female as well as male, who apportion all taxes, and own and distribute the entire village land. We have not read so new or so interesting a paper in a magazine for months, and commend the number for its sake to all county politicians. There is not much else in the number, except an instructive and sympathetic paper on Quakerism, and a proposal which housewives may study with interest, to establish a training-school for service, which girls intending to be- come servants might attend, and learn thoroughly all they would be required to know in the households for which they are intended. The plan is elaborately drawn out, and seems defective only in this,—that servant-girls can get the same instruction without paying anything, by going out for six months on extremely low wages. Girls of the kind required cannot and will not . pay £1 entrance-fee and 10s. a week for six weeks' instruction, with a renewed fee if they stay longer. They would want twelve weeks' training at least, which would cost them £8, or the whole of their first year's wages. Where are they to get all that wealth from ?
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