SOME MAGAZINES.

THE first number of the Nineteenth Century is a very good one, though, perhaps, not quite equal to the exaggerated expectations naturally entertained. Englishmen are so little accustomed to any Index Expurgatorius, that an application to Chancery to prevent the publication of a magazine advertises it throughout the country, and people anticipate a great deal more than they are at all likely to obtain. Still, the Nineteenth Century takes its place at once, and without the usual delay, in the front rank of periodi- cals,—one in which any one can write without derogation, and in which a reader who cares for the higher literature is sure to find some paper full of material for thought. The Laureate's prefatory sonnet, with its description of " this roaring moon of daffodil and crocus," and the contributors who descend from "the sacred peak of hoar high-templed Faith," or who have,— " sworn to seek

If any golden harbour be for men In seas of Death and sunless gulfs of Doubt,"

is as fine as anything on so utterly unmanageable a subject well could be, and besides the sensational papers by Mr. Gladstone "On the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion," and by Cardinal Manning, on "The True Story of the Vatican Council," there are nine articles of which three at least are equal to any essays recently published in English. Mr. Baldwin Brown's, on the pulpit, discursive and even fragmentary as it is, is by far the most eloquent defence yet offered for the authority claimed by Christian preachers of all sects, and full of that thoughtful fair- ness which—we must say it, though it always hurts them—is so little expected from Dissenters, when discussing subjects upon which they are sensitive to soreness. His sketch of the preacher as expositor of the new law which, after the fall of Rome in England, "was in every' man's hand," ministering to crowds who hungered for the spiritual knowledge previously re- fused, is a most stirring one, and it is not from a Dissenter's lips that we expect tolerant historic thought of this kind :—

"It is not to be wondered at that thoughtful men, seeing the need of a firm authority to which some sacredness should attach, Should find it at first in the head of the State. I confess to a tender feeling towards that divine right of kings when it was young, because it is the direct parent of the divine right of peoples, and was the only possible form in that age of the challenge of secular society to the alternative doctrine of the divine right of priests. The true divine right lies neither with the one nor with the other, but with the truth, how and where soever it can get itself established. Each school had its measure of truth to contribute, but secular society would in those days have lost the power to contribute anything, if it had not been for the strong- handed authority of kings. And so that new monarchy,' with its clearly despotic tendencies, of which Mr. Green writes so ably, may have had an important function to discharge with regard to the orderly development of popular liberty. It was the form in which the State was rising to the consciousness of its unity, was feeling its strength, feeding its intelligence, and preparing itself, when it should find out in time that kings could do little more to help it than popes, to take into its own hands the management of its affairs."

Nor is it from the pulpit—and Mr. Baldwin Brown, with all his liberality, is still a Congregational minister—that we expect this kind of defence for the overweening authority which, in the days when Evangelicalism was strong, the preacher, whether Church- man or Dissenter, claimed and received from his congregation :—

"It is easy to understand how, in certain conditions, the pulpit might wield an influence not altogether commensurate with the ability of the man who might fill it. The institution would have a solid weight of its own, greatly magnified by the absence of anything which could com- pete with it in its sphere. The preacher would easily rule and be made much of in his little world. Again it is very easy to be contemptuous, and to say that in so blind a kingdom a very one-eyed man might easily be king. But this would overlook some of the essential condi- tions of the matter. Stern critics of the splendid ceremonial of the rnediteval Church are apt to forget that a cathedral during a grand function was an unbought vision of a very bright world to multitudes of the poor. It was the one thing, and a very grand and imposing Thing, which took them out of the squalid region of their dreary and monotonous lives. And if it took them up even a little above the excitement of wine, gambling, or lust, by so much it was a clear gain to them and to the community In Evangelical churches the splendours and the marvels alike vanished, but the preacher stood up, a not ignoble substitute, in their room. The services of the sanctuary wore a bright break in the order a a somewhat monotonous life. With little to compete with him, the preacher bad an eager audience around him, and in the general dearth of culture he was tolerably sure to be superior to his audience, and to have some real light on various themes to afford. This is not the place to estimate the deeper interests and results of his ministry. But the most indifferent to these might find some satisfaction in reflecting that, if he helped to make his flock self-satisfied in a narrow world, at least it was a world in which purity, modesty, domesticity, frank intercourse of classes, and ministry to ignorance and need, were sacred traditions, whose fruits help much to sweeten the atmosphere of that larger world in which we are living now."

Mr. Matthew Arnold's defence of Falkland, again, is a piece of most pleasurable reading, widely as we feel compelled to differ from its conclusions. Mr. Arnold holds that Falkland was right, because he sought a nobler ideal than either the victorious party or the defeated one,—than either the Royalist party, "with its incurable delusions," or the Puritan party, with "its old-Jewish mixture of politics with an ill-understood reli- gion." We contend that, even granting this defence to be perfect, were it true, Falkland is not entitled to it ; that what he sought was not a nobler ideal, but only a more moderate one, to be accomplished with less of "the great mutations" which he disliked ; and that in his mode of seeking it he showed at once instability of character and a want of the statesman's first quality,—the power of detecting the kind and quantity of success which is all he can obtain. If the King had conquered, how much of his ideal would Falkland have secured ? Nevertheless, we are not blind either to the truth of this rebuke to Englishmen, or to the beauty of the language in which it is conveyed :— •

" Shall we blame him for his lucidity of mind and largeness of temper ? Shall we even pity him ? By no means. They are his great title to our veneration. They are what make him ours; what link him with the nineteenth century. He and his friends, by their heroic and hopeless stand against the inadequate ideals dominant in their time kept open their communications with the future, lived with the future. Their battle is oars too, and that we pursue it with fairer hopes of success than they did, we owe to their having waged it and fallen. To our English race, with its insularity, its profound faith in action, its contempt for dreamers and Jailers, inadequate ideals in life, manners, government, thought, religion, will always be a source of danger. Energetic action makes up, we think, for imperfect know- ledge. We think that all is well, that a man is following 'a moral im- pulse, if he pursues an end which he deems of supreme importance.' We impose neither on him nor on ourselves the duty of diseerning whether he is right in deeming it so. Hence our causes are often as small as our noise about them is great."

A standard can always be described as a piece of coarsely-dyed silk, but nevertheless the contest round the standard is never a contest for a small thing. Ritual, which is Mr. Arnold's illustra- tion, may be nearly worthless, but the struggle about Ritual, as waged in England, is in no slight measure the struggle between

spiritualism and sacerdotalism,—between those who assert that Christianity is a creed and those who maintain that it is also a historic system—differences which, whatever else they may be, are certainly not small. Sir John Lubbock's paper, "On the Imperial Policy of Great Britain," is one which needed writing, being a distinct and successful defence of that policy from the charge of cynical selfishness. Sir J. Lubbock maintains that we have governed India and the Colonies for the Indians and the Colonists, that we have expended enormous sums to repress slavery and the slave-trade; and that in financial matters, if we err at all, it is on the side of liberality. All this is true, and should be stated, but nevertheless it is also true that our sense of responsibility wakes only, as a rule, when we are called upon to govern, and that our treatment of races not under our government is guided mainly by our interests. We nearly handed over the vast population of China to anarchy rather than surrender an easy source of revenue ; we permit the Christians of the East to be crushed lest Constantinople should fall into strong hands ; and we habitually allow little States like Denmark, Servis, and Crete to be conquered by strong neighbours when the little States are in the right. Of the remaining papers, the most interesting to our minds is Cardinal Manning's, written, of course, from the purely Catholic point of view, but containing a most weighty statement of the reasons which made a Council seem expedient to divines who had none of the Pope's supposed or real personal reasons for promoting it, and who hoped that it would settle far other matters than Infallibility, a hope fulfilled, as they think, in the well-known dogma. The thirty-six Bishops all over the world secretly consulted by the Pope, all, the Cardinal affirms, suggested,— " That the Council should declare that the existence of God may be oertainly known by the light of nature, and define the natural and supernatural condition of man, redemption, grace, and the Church. They specially desired the treatment -of the nature and personality of God distinct from the world, creation, and providence, the possibility and the fact of a divine revelation. These points may seem strange to many readers but those who know the philosophies current in Germany and France will at once perceive the wisdom of these suggestions."

The paper contains also the most distinct announcement we have yet seen that the Papacy is abandoning its alliances with Kings and Governments, and if the world is to be democratic, "the Church will know how to meet this new and strange aspect of the world."

We have noticed two of the papers in the Fortnightly this month, Sir J. Lubbock on ants, and Mr. Grant Duff on "Balthasar Gracian," at such length, that we can only just mention Mr. Lowe's un- answerable plea for the abolition of imprisonment for non- payment of small debts, an abuse which has reached great pro- portions. The general impression is that imprisonment for debt has been abolished, and that is true, if you owe much; but a debtor owing less than /50 can still be imprisoned, and in the year 1874 no less than 4,438 persons were so imprisoned, to the ruin of their families, and without extinguishing the debts, as is done in the case of the rich, by bankruptcy. No less than 2,257 of these unfortunates were punished for not paying debts under 40s. The system is most oppressive, and its only defence, that .without imprisonment the poor would have no credit, is almost silly. We trust that Mr. Lowe will bring the subject forward in the shape of a Bill, which must be supported by every man who values common justice or impartiality in the administration of the law. There is a most eloquent paper, too, on "The Age of Reason," by the Rector of Lincoln College, in which he argues that the seeds of most of the progress established in the nineteenth century were laid in the eighteenth, points to the present condition of international relations as evidence that progress is not unbroken ; while as regards sympathy with foreign nations, the wave seems even to recede. We cannot resist the pleasure of a rather long quotation, which ranks Mr. Mark Pattison among the deadly enemies of the

Turk :—

"Under the Roman empire—say, the Reign of Trajan—the finest portion of the Old World lay around the eastern shores of the Mediter- ranean. From the Save to the Tigris, from Costanitza to Bagdad, stretching over some thirty degrees of longitude, lies a zone of terri- tory which in natural advantages is still probably unsurpassed by any other of equal area. Eighteen hundred years ago this area was covered with flourishing cities, thriving villages and a teeming population. Roads and harbours were carefully maintained, and wealth, encouraged by security and legal order, displayed itself in magnificent buildings, public and private. The shores of the JEgean were literally covered with works of art in marble or bronze. What is the aspect of this favoured region now ? The whole of this wealth has been destroyed, and the industry which created it extinguished. Every trace of civili- sation is swept away, the population all but extirpated, and still dwindling. A horde of barbarians have occupied this garden of the Old World, not as settlers, but as destroyers. Misery, end the vices which grow out of ages of oppression and extortion, are the only social traits which meet the traveller's eye. Even nature itself seems to go backward. The destruction of irrigation-canals, and of forests, is favouring the encroachment of the sand of the desalt, and the rivers are left to their gradual work of desolation. But then this sad scene of human saffering excites the sympathy and commiseration of the Western nations, who are enjoying the blessings of law, liberty, and security. These civilised people are longing ardently for the oppor- tunity of delivering the victims of this tyranny, of bringing them within the comity of nations, within the conditions in which they might lay the foundations of their own prosperity. They are watching their opportunity, hoping for some Hercules to strangle the emus whose pestilental breath is as a blight over these fair regions. But it is not so I The civilised and powerful nations of the West look on this scene of misery and devastation with indifference. They are content to have it so. They are more than content. It is they who maintain Cacus against the shepherds. The power of the tyrant is sinking beneath the weight of his own vices, though his cruelty and rapacity are not abated. Does danger threaten his crumbling empire from any quarter, the two nations who are considered to be in the forefront of human progress organise a crusade, not now for the deliverance of the Christian population, but to perpetuate their slavery. When Crete might have been freed by a word from England, England refused to

speak that word."

We have noticed elsewhere the most characteristic paper in the Contemporary, "Reasonable Faith," by a London Merchant; but there is a well-written protest against the "Greek Spirit in Modern Literature," by the Rev. St. John Trywhitt ; a good account of the methods adopted by Catholic charity in England, —the main point of which is that the priests reach miserables rather lower than the ordinary "poor ;" an aide-mistoire to the recent history of Prussia, by Professor Blackie, which strikes us as rather wanting in historic insight ; and a paper on "Reli- gious Thought in Scotland," by Prineipal Tulloch, striking to Englishmen mainly from the testimony it bears to the gradual widening of opinion within the Scotch Establishment, and even within the Free Church, which the Principal evidently thinks has materially receded from its old position in declining to declare Professor Robertson Smith guilty of heresy for his articles in the Encycloptedia Britannica upon the Bible. Dr. Macrae, of the United Presbyterian Church, has moved that the Westminster Confession "represents the professed and not the actual faith" of that Church, and has not been prosecuted ; while the Establishment haa shrunk, since Dr. Macleed's case, from pressing its old intolerant demands. The movement, therefore, is not confined to the Establishment, but is visible in all the Churches of Scotland, and must end, Principal Tulloch believes, in a formal relaxation of existing bonds :—" Unless the present Churches are to break up altogether into a species of Congregationalism—a by no means unlikely result, in the event of &establishment, for which all the Dissenting Churches are loudly clamouring—it is inevitable that the existing creed-bonds which bind all the Presbyterian Churches must be relaxed ; and they can only be relaxed in the direction of a general declaration, to be substituted for the existing formula of subscription." Mr. Lee's short biography of Spinoza leaves us dissatisfied. It is a very clear, though not very brilliant account of what we know of Spinoza's life, conflicts with theologians, and death, with a fair estimate of his character, but contains no analysis of his system of thought. That was, of count, Mr. Bolles Lee's intention, but Spinoza is one of those men who interest us so much more by their works than by their lives, that unreflective biographies of them are a little tedious. That is no reason they should not be written, but still that is the drawback to writing them. A biography of thirty-six pages of Shakespeare without any reference to his plays might be valuable, but could hardly be classed among enticing reading. When we have said that Baruch de Espinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632, of Portuguese Jewish parents, who were probably respectable ; that he received a thorough Talmudic education, that he was excommunicated in 1656, that he thenceforward lived chiefly by polishing lenses, that he published various works, and that he died in February, 1677, we have said all of his life which, apart from his intellec- tual labour, is of any particular interest to mankind. He did not live the life of action, but of reflection, and his life with- out his work is as unimportant as that of any soldier without his victories or defeats.

The older magazines of the same price, like Blackwood and Fraser, will have much to do to hold their own against com- petitors like the Nineteenth Century, the Fortnightly, and the Contemporary, though the former has the advantage of its stories, and of those descriptive articles in which it still stands almost unrivalled. At least we do not know where else to look for the kind of dreamy, discursive, pleasant chat which we find in a paper like-" Devious Rambles with a Definite Object," with its talk about lithology and Dutch travelling and German hunger for petty fees, and its occasional humour, and still more occasional bursts of boisterously high spirits. By the way, how grave all the magazines are getting? We do not know any but Blackwood which condescends to amusing nonsense ; and as for a lively copy of verses or a bit of rhymed satire, one may turn over many hundred pages and not find a line. We extract an account of a phenomenon which has often struck travellers in Scotland,—the disappearance of the native " topazea " once so greatly esteemed :

"They were of many colours,—the smoky-brown, the purely trans- parent, the bright yellow of the topaz, the purple of the amethyst. There were found among them crystals of the beryl hue ; and these were believed to be not mere rock-crystals, but to have the specific

gravity of the gem There was a legend of one specimen, that must have been of gigantic size, in the face of a precipica,—a legend repeated in many parts of the Eastern world. I knew old people who said they had seen it at night ; and attempts were made by rifles' and I think once by artillery, to bring it down. The country has now been well swept of its rock-crystals, with their history, real and legendary. I have heard this accounted for by the presence of the Court at Balmoral, but I think a more probable cause for it is the Ordnance Survey. One would be glad enough to believe that the intelligent young men devoted to so dreary a dray found mineralogy and other cognate studies of nature a pursuit alike consolatory and profitable."

That is a good suggestion, but we fear there is one more prosaic, and possibly more accurate. The dealers can get better stones at a lower price from Brazil, and if customers are very patriotic, can call them cairngorms without being charged, except perhaps by the Devil, for the name. There is a very good estimate of Balsac, as a man and an author, in this number, and an article on the "Opening of Parliament," which has been carefully brought up to date, and which is noteworthy, at least to us, who believe that Rockwood and Knowsley are apt to think the same thoughts, from the menace with which it concludes, and which implies — the writer being, mind, distinctly pro-Turkish,—that if Turkey will not enable Russia to retreat with honour, a final settlement of the Eastern Question by the partition of Turkey may be imminent.

Only one paper in Fraser interests us much, the editor trusting a great deal too much to snippety little contributions, not re- deemed this month by any special value, but that one is very good. It is an account of the very curious region of England, known as the Norfolk Broads, the paradise of water-birds, and the only place where swans are still maintained in great numbers, so that one hundred cygnets are usually fattened in the Swan-pit, Norwich, and sent out to their owners to be eaten, with the following cooking receipt attached to each bird :— " Take three lba of beef, beat fine in a mortar;

Put it into the swan—that is, when you've caught her; Some pepper, salt, mace, some nutmeg, an onion,

• Will heighten the flavour, in Gourmand's opinion; Then tie it up tight with a small piece of tape, That the gravy and other things may not escape: A meal paste, rather stiff, should be laid on the breast, And some whitey-brown paper should cover the rest ; Fifteen minutes at least ere the swan you take down, Pull the paste off the bird, that the breast may get brown."

We regret to notice that the birds are still kept from straying by "removing,"—that is, we believe, by wrenching,—one of the pinions from the socket, a process which, carried out by the ignorant swanherds, causes terrible and entirely useless suffering. The Corporation of Norwich entirely prohibit the practice in their own swannery, and find that it is quite sufficient to cut the quill feathers of one wing. It is a little perverse of a writer who enjoys the Broads so much, though he makes but a thin attempt to describe their strange scenery, with its pervading impression of melancholy limitlessness, as of a sea under a grey-black sky, to publish detailed accounts of the best way to get there. The last thing wanted on the Broads is the tourist, with his expenditure and his cackle, and if they are much more often described he will go there, if only to say he has been, and the natives cannot always be relied on to leave him in a flat boat on a sandbank for a night or two. We are delighted to hear, however, that they do not comprehend science, and recently described a party of entomologists, which included, we hope, Sir John Lubbock, with admirable brevity and distinctiveness, as "them Butterfly Boobies."

Besides the novels, and a story called "Nils Jensen," which has merit, in the way of a certain gloomy impressiveness, and a pleasantly fresh account of the "Alps in Winter," by a writer who evidently enjoys dreamy and melancholy repose, there is a most readable paper in the Cornhill called the" Gossip of History," full at once of anecdote and instruction, a real relief, after the

heavy matter with which most of our magazines are now filled. The writer should give authorities for his stories, or at least for stories as ruinous to a great reputation as the one of Berryer, but, on the other hand, he is prodigal of his good things, and frequently gives us a paragraph like this, which would be enjoyable even if it were not authentic :—

"Some novelists, if no serious historians, have attempted to draw flattering likenesses of James IL, but most men will be of opinion that he was fairly gibbeted by Macaulay. The man looks so contemptible, deserting a young and pretty wife for ugly mistresses. I can't find what he sees to admire in me,' said Catherine Sedley ; certainly 'tis not for my beauty—and as to my wit, he has not enough to see that I have any." The accomplished Marquis of Halifax bad an equally poor opinion of his intellect, and was wont to say of Charles and James that 'the elder could see things if he would, while the younger would see things if he could ;' a cruel sentence, which is yet something of a compliment to the moral nature of James. He must, indeed, have had some good qualities, for he was devotedly served in the days of his oxile, and men rarely devote themselves for a principle which is not more or leas amiably incarnate. There is a little story told of James which shows that he possessed at least some of the Stuart urbanity. He was sitting to Sir Godfrey Kneller for a portrait designed as a pre- sent to Pepya, when the news of the landing of the Prince of Orange was brought to him. The King commanded the painter to proceed and finish the portrait, that his friend might not be disappointed."

Macmillan, besides Mrs. Oliphant's "Young Musgrave," which we heartily enjoy, has an account of "The Lesser Antilles and the Boiling Lake," rather more sketchy than Mr. Palgmve's work usually is, but very pleasant to read ; and another paper, by Mr. Goldwin Smith, on the Presidential Election, in which he recom- mends that the Legislature should elect an Executive Council, and the Council a kind of Chairman, a proposal which we should deprecate, in the interest not of America, but of the world, as the abandonment of the most interesting experiment of modern times,—the effort to reconcile perfectly free institutions with a strong and personal Executive. The world is not rid of the " in- dividual " yet, however he may "dwindle," and the point is to find him a throne on which he guards instead of endangering popular liberty.