THE MAGAZINES.

So much has occurred, and in so short a space of time, that the political articles in the magazines of the month all seem a little belated. Mr. Goldwin Smith, on "The Impending Revo- lution," in the Nineteenth Century, is perhaps the least so ; but his pessimism is so extreme that it disturbs confidence in his judgment. He thinks the bulwarks of the British Constitution are all gone, that the House of Commons has become absolute, and that the House of Commons is degraded past repair :-- "What, then, is the House of Commons ? Does it retain any feature of a national council, or even of a deliberative assembly ? Is it anything but a cockpit of faction ? Are its debates any- thing but factions wrangles ? Do not its manners too plainly bespeak its degradation ? What is its character even as a machine for doing business ? There is too much reason in its wretched plea for surrendering the unity of the nation that it is incom- petent to legislate for Ireland : the time which should be spent is legislating for Ireland, and in legislation generally, is wasted in angry and barren talk. What is worst of all, it has totally lost its independence. While it arrogates to itself omnipotence, it has itself become the slave of the Caucus and of the demagogue despot in whom the Caucus is incarnate. Members hardly keep up the pretence of voting according to their consciences."

There is plenty to justify that description in the present state of affairs ; but there are also hopeful signs, one of them being this very loss of independence. The constituencies must be attending to politics very closely when they thus " enslave " their Members. It is easy to talk of caucuses, but caucuses are most powerful when the masses are not interested. Nor can we agree that it is government by party which has brought all these mis' chiefs on the nation. It is rather government by groups, which, for the moment, has superseded government by party. To that, and to the aberra- tions of one popular favourite, we may trace all the evil movements of the last few years, not one of which, it should be recollected, has as yet been carried out to a successful issue. For a good bold burst of invective, however, directed against the present tendency of events, and calculated to make men reflect, we can recommend Mr. Goldwin Smith's latest essay.—Mr. E. Dicey is less pessimist, but even he is belated. He repeats and reinforces his old argument that the Liberal Unionists must merge themselves in the Conserva- tives, and claims Mr. Chamberlain, we think prematurely, as a convert to his views, and as having put forward a "coalition programme." His argument may be well founded, but it

reads premature when every Liberal Unionist is waiting to see what will follow the disappearance of the great leader from the political scene. For anything anybody can tell, the Gladstonian Party may drop in pieces ; and a truly Liberal Party form itself above its ruins. That is not, we admit, 'probable; but it is certain that great changes must take place, and the Liberal Unionists will wait to see their -character before they decide on their own course of action.—The remaining articles in the Nineteenth Century sre of less importance and of rather thin interest. Mr. H. Forbes, for example, tries hard to solve "the mystery of Monsieur Regnier," the plebeian intriguer, who tried, after -Sedan, to arrange a revival of the Empire. His idea was to -utilise the disgust of Bismarck at finding no Government in

France to negotiate with, and thus obtain some sort of cre- dentials from Bismarck and from the Empress Eugenie with

-which to persuade Bazaine to surrender Metz, march on Paris, and, in the name of the Empire, surrender certain territories to Germany as the price of peace. He reached Bazaine, and in part convinced him, but the Empress refused to have any- -thing to do with the intrigue, Bismarck withdrew all pro- tection, and the whole thing fell through. The " mystery " is, whether M. Regnier was an agent of Bismarck, or an agent of a Bonapartist party, or a pushing intriguer intent

-on making himself of importance, and Mr. Forbes leaves it unsolved. We should fancy the latter was the true solu- tion, though Bismarck, Bazaine, and even the Empress, in her less acute moods, thought it expedient not peremptorily to stop an effort which might show a path through what was for the moment a wonderfully complicated situation.

We are rather tired of the discussion about the "Revolt of -the Daughters," to which four papers are devoted, and which leads to nothing except new declarations that daughters -ought to live as independently as married women, if they -choose. As the real danger of that course, and its hopeless inconsistency with the English method of bringing up girls in a half-light, are carefully kept put of sight, the discussion does 48ot tend to much result. We have difficulty, too, in seeing the difference between selfishness and the " principle "

for which Miss Alys Pearsall Smith—who is much the best -writer of the four—so earnestly contends. She says :— " Your daughter wants herself. She belongs to you now, and can walk only in your paths, and enjoy your pleasures, and live your life. She wants to belong to herself. She has paths of her -own she longs to walk in, and purposes of her own she is eager to carry out. She is an independent being, created by God for the ddevelopmeart of her own talents, and for the use of her own time. Her capacities were not given to her parents, but to herself ; her life is not their possession, but her own ; and to herself God looks for an account of it. Put yourselves in her place, and ask -yourselves how you would like to have no independence, but be obliged to live always someone else's life, and carry out only some- 'one else's purposes. You have had aims and purposes in your dives, and have been free, perhaps, to carry them out. Can you dare, as mere human beings like themselves, to lay hands upon the mature lives of your daughters and say, It shall be as we please, not as they please' Does the girl owe nothing in return for the care and the

• expense of years? The true, though no doubt the rough -answer to that plea is,—` You want to be an independent, being; be one, but at your own expense, and in another house than mine.' That many girls would be happier with more independence may be readily conceded ; but many parents also would be happier for more attention. Why is the claim -of the young so superior to the claim of the old? That is not the law of Nature or of Christianity.--Professor Vambery's paper, "The Shah in England," is unexpectedly poor. The Shah while in England kept a journal, and on his return published it. He had, however, nothing to say, and no thoughts to record, and his journal is accordingly very tiresome. What happened to himself was, in his Majesty's eyes, of supreme importance, and nothing happened, except some rather meaningless recep- tions.—Mr. E. N. Buxton's paper on "The Mountains of Egypt," whither he went with his daughters to shoot the ibex, contains some admirable pages of description of a very little known region,—the eastern range of rocky hills which, t o to speak, support the Valley of the Nile. His account, for example, of the Roman porphyry quarries is a real addition to knowledge, and one only wonders why some enterprising millionaire does not repair the old slides, reopen the old paths, and send to Europe once more supplies of this magnifica_ t stone. There must be plenty of buyers at almost any price ; or is its everlasting hardness now a deterrent to men wl o do not think that anything will last a hundred years P—Mr.

S winburne sends an " Elegy " to the magazine, upon which, however, we are unable to pass a criticism. After reading it twice carefully, we have entirely failed to understand a single stanza; and as that must be our own fault, we remain silent, as in presence of a mystery above our comprehension.

The best paper in the National Review, at least for the casual reader, is "Luxury," in which Mr. Leslie Stephen endeavours to define that word, and to lay down a rule of

conduct which shall enable the rich to avoid it, without injury to progressive refinement. The paper, which is marked, we may say in passing, by a great impatience of what is usually known as charity, is full of thoughts as fine as these :—" So far as the richer class maintains certain tra- ditions, moral and intellectual—traditions of personal honour and public spirit, of artistic and literary cultivation—it may be discharging an invaluable function, and its existence may be a necessary means of diffusing a higher civilisation through the masses who have not the same advantage."

"If, indeed, there should be any man who feels that he has no right to superfluities at all while so many are wanting necessaries, and should resolve to devote himself to the improvement of their elevation, I should say, in the first place, I fully and heartily recognise him to be one of the very large class which I regard as my superiors in morality, although, in the next place, I should insinuate that he is one of those heroes who, while they deserve all honour, cannot be taken as models for universal imitation, inasmuch as I cannot help thinking that the ultimate end is not the renunciation but the multiplication of all innocent happiness."

Mr. Alfred Austin gives us a sonnet, of which the last six lines deserve quotation :— " It is the silent eremitic mind,

Immured in meditation long and lone, Lord of all knowledge while itself unknown,

And in its cloister ranging unconfined,

That builds Thought's time-long universal throne, And with an unseen sceptre rules Mankind."

The thought is well expressed; but is it quite true ? The hermit mind has done much, but the lawgiver, the poet, even the theologian who has altered the thoughts of men, has only occasionally possessed the hermit mind. The men who worked out Roman law, poets like 2Eschyltui and Shake- speare, theological reformers like St. Paul, St. Augustine, and Calvin were scarcely men to be described as of eremitic mind.

The Contemporary Review, which has almost invariably a

valuable paper in it, is this month distinctly dull. We at least cannot read with genuine interest a paper which, like Count Tolstoi's on "Religion and Morality," contains this sort of stuff :—

" The same explanation holds good with positive science in the strict meaning of the term. Such a science always has been, and always will be, merely the investigation and determination of such objects and phenomena as appear to demand inquiry in con- sequence of a certain conception of the relation of man to the universe instituted by religion. Science always has been, and always will be, not the study of everything,' as men of science at present naively imagine (a thing which is, moreover, impos- sible, as the subjects in the scope of study are of infinite quantity), but only of those things which, in order and according to their degree of importance, religion selects from the infinite objects, phenomena, and circumstances into which inquiry may be made. And hence there is not one science, but as many sciences as there are religions. Each religion selects a certain circle of subjects which must be studied, and hence the science of every time and nation inevitably bears the character of its religion in the point of view from which its examination is made. So the heathen science, reinstituted at the Renaissance and flourishing at present among la under the title of Christian, always has been and con- tinues to be merely an investigation of the circumstances by which man may attain the highest welfare, and of those pheno- mena of the universe which may be put under contribution to the same end. The philosophical science of Brahmin and Buddhist

has always been merely the investigation of circumstances by which man may be delivered from the miseries which oppress him. The Jewish science (of the Talmud) has always been the study and explanation of those conditions which must be observed by man in order to ratify his covenant with God, and to preserve the chosen nation at the highest level of its election. The Church- Christian science was and is the investigation of those circum- stances by which man procures his salvation. The true Christian science, that which is but just at the birth, is the investigation of those circumstances by which man may become acquainted with the demands of the Supreme W ill, whose instrument he is, and how he may fit them to his existence."

"What is the sense of that argument, unless the word science is first perverted from its proper meaning, which is the in-

vestigation of anything on which positive knowledge can be attained ? Count Tolstoi says religion settles the subjects of investigation; but is it to become religious that we study medicine or mathematics or electricity ? A statement of that kind is mere waste of words, not a contribution thought.—Mr. Haweis's roseate sketch.of the Mormons, again, though it is astonishing, is not interesting, each page being closed by the reader with the conviction that it must be hopelessly one-sided. If the Mormons created such a paradise, why did the Americans interfere with them ? or why did they themselves need to govern with

such a terrible despotism as Brigham Young established, and as the Danites enforced? It is, no doubt, expedient that on almost all questions the "other side" should occasionally be heard, but what we want now about the Mormon system is white light, not an almost unbroken panegyric of a corrupt creed and a retrogressive civilisation from the pen of an Anglican clergyman who seems to think that because

monogamy is not always successful, therefore polygamy is defensible. Does Mr. Haweis really mean that Mormonism produces a better civilisation than Christianity ? We ask the

question because this is what he says :—" Brigham Young lived long enough to see the free admission of the Gentile (alias

outside Christian) world into the City of the Saints, and with it those apparently inseparable adjuncts of Christian civilisa- tion, the gambling-hell, the gin-palace, and the house of ill- fame, none of which institutions were tolerated, or even called for, under the despotic and licentious rule of Brigham Young." Lieutenant-Colonel Elsdale in his paper on the "Scientific Problems of the Future," is interesting in a way, but far too vague. It may be perfectly true that the more we imitate flshes, the swifter will our vessels be ; but the point is, if it is true, how we are to do it. We certainly cannot, as Colonel

Elsdale admits, make flexible ships, and as for overcoming friction, it is to that that attention has been directed for years, Stephenson having, if we recollect rightly, told a Committee

of the House of Commons nearly fifty years ago that a gold- plated yacht could be driven at fifty miles an hour. What is the use of a paragraph like this :—

" Lastly, the problem of how to reduce the vegetable foods, which at present are only adapted to animals like the cow, the sheep, or the horse, to a condition suited to the human digestion and to the human palate, is one of great importance. The chemical con- stituents of these vegetable foods, such as grass, are similar to those which we now consume in various existing foods, and they are adapted to the requirements of the human frame. It is only a question of digestion. It can hardly be but that with the con- tinual progress of organic chemistry and medical science some means will sooner or later be discovered of solving this problem. If the process can be brought to a cheap and workable shape, the sources of our food supply will be greatly enlarged and extended, at a time, perhaps, when increasing population, and a growing pressure in the struggle for existence, will render such a result most opportune and welcome to the world."

We might just as well suggest that if man could be plugged with clay, as some fires are, and nutritive juices poured on the clay, he could then nearly dispense with eating altogether. 'There is nothing nutritive in speculations so viewy and so vague.—The essay on "Village Life in France" is valuable

because of the number of facts it contains, some of them unknown to this country, but they are much too disjointed, -and the author shrinks too carefully from deductions. His report is, on the whole, favourable to Republican education in France, the whole population having at all events learned sufficient to read a newspaper, which in 1870 was not the case. He thinks the great bulk of the population have become Republican in politics, the only exceptions being the

-" feudal " class, and the large farmers who still think it good form to profess monarchical opinions. The great present evil is over-reliance on the State, leading to incessant • demands for pecuniary aid, which the Republicans do not

see must come out of their pockets. The Republic, he thinks, has not extinguished religion, but has produced a state of opinion in which the peasant is wholly in- different to religion, never, for example, attending confession or Church service, but is still determined that certain of its ceremonials shall be kept up. He will not, for example, even if he believes civil marriage to be sufficient, tolerate the marriage of his daughters without a priest. Religious observances, in fact, keep their hold as customs.—Mr. Hunter, in his paper on "Outdoor Relief" presents a rather bewildering mass of statistics, of which the general drift ap- pears to be this. Outdoor relief pauperises less than indoor relief. The outdoor paupers in good years take to work, and melt away into the mass of the population, but the indoor paupers remain always, and tend to become a here- ditary pauper caste. Is not the true reason for that, that the unions receive all children, and especially orphans ? The reformers of the Poor-law entirely denied Mr. Hunter's thesis, but it is possible that a change has passed over the conditions of labour, and that the whole subject requires reinvestigation. Certainly it is true that the habit of immigra- tion from poor districts to rich, which has altered many of the conditions of the problem, has sprung up since the new Poor-law was established. Mr. Hunter has taken great pains to prove his case, but his paper is so gritty with figures and diagrams as to be hardly within the grasp of the general reader.

In the Fortnightly Review, Mr. Horace Plunkett, M.P., pub- lishes an instructive, though rather dry, paper, which he calls "The Ireland of to-day and to-morrow." His idea is, that the economic prosperity of Ireland will, in future, depend upon co-operation among the farmers. With incredible labour he induced numbers of dairy farmers in Limerick, Cork, Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, and Clare to form co-operative dairies, for turning milk into good butter; and now there are thirty-five societies, all of which succeed, and are so popular that their shareholders have started a co-operative agency, for the sale of butter, "which is now a complete success." Mr. Plunkett believes that the system will extend rapidly, and evidently looks to it for the economic regeneration of Ireland. He is a little too sanguine perhaps, but he has this in his favour, that work in partnership, when once started, evidently suits the clannish Irish instincts. The Celt is evidently made by nature for oo-operation, whether in creating dairies or secret societies. The paper is worth reading, though the writer is a little too intent on answering the able pessimist who in a recent number of the same magazine denounced his country- men as "Rhetoricians." Controversy in successive numbers of a monthly magazine is very difficult work,—especially to read. One has forgotten half the ideas disputed or derided. —Mr. W. M. J. Williams is an amateur Chancellor of the Exchequer, who thinks that the Treasury might obtain £16,000,000 a year from a graduated probate-duty, a graduated Income-tax, and a graduated succession-duty, half the grants in aid of rates being at the same time withdrawn. This amount he would expend thus :—" New Expenditure, &c.— Deficit, £2,500,000; Navy, extra, £2,500,000; Remission of breakfast duties, £4,000,000; total, £9,000,000;—Balance for further relief of taxation, £7,250,000." Mr. Williams gives no idea of the method of graduating the Income-tax be- yond stating that graduation is to be "cautious," and is to yield an extra £5,000,000, two statements which, we fear, he will not find compatible. He does not, we notice, even allude to the difficulty of levying the tax on Consols in advance, when almost every Consol-buyer will be pay- ing a different rate, and will consequently value Consols in the market at a different price. That is the first, though not the last, stumbling-block of any graduating scheme; and though it can be got over, the confusion it will introduce for a time will be amazing. For example, an insurance office could not deduct the Income-tax from an annuity to A until they had ascertained A's income, which A is in no way legally bound to tell them, and in most cases would strenuously resist telling them, the insurance people being in no way bound to secrecy.—Mr. W. Roberts gives some curious illustrations of the mania in the book-market for" First Editions." A first edition, as he says, is often the worst edition ; but often a single copy will be sold for more than the whole cost of the series admirably printed. " A com- plete set of the first editions of Lamb would cost probably not much under £100; bat the judicious student will obtain Mr. Herne Shepherd's admirable collected edition for less

than half as many pence, and enjoy the possession of a volume of perennial interest." It is of course an additional charm to these first editions that you cannot read them, the book being too valuable to risk its being • spoilt by fingering.

The smallest differences add to the value of a volume, and

especially differences detracting from the excellence of the book. "Three copies of -this little book—Poems by Two Brothers—were in the sale-room last year. Two were ordinarily good copies. One, being nicely bound in half- calf, realised £7; but the other, being in the original boards, with a paper label at the back, as issued in 1827, ran up to £28! A large-paper copy sold for £30." The search for these editions is, in truth, a mere variety of the collecting mania, as definite a form of insanity as the passion once developed in Holland for collecting tulip bulbs.—Mr. Grant Allen, in "The New Hedonism," furiously attacks asceticism and implicitly restrictions of all kinds, maintaining that our only aim should be self-development. The following paragraph pretty clearly indicates his drift :— " Obscurantists at the present moment are fully convinced that the breakdown of supernaturalism and the growth of a rational conception of the universe has brought us to the verge of a moral cataclysm. Over and over again they ask us, in plaintive tones, like so many parrots, If you take away religion, what have you to put in its place ?' They might as well ask, If you take away the belief in the good luck of horseshoes,' or If you take away from the Fijian his cannibal sacrifices, what will you give him instead of them ?' The simple answer is, Nothing. No emancipated man feels the need of aught to replace superstition. He gets rid of his bogies, root and branch, and there the matter drops for him. The grounds of morality remain wholly unaffected. And even the obscurantists themselves do not really believe that murders, bank robberies, violent assaults, petty larcenies, would be any more common than now if all men ceased to wear silk hats on Sunday, or to believe in the remote terrors of a visionary hell and an in- definite judgment. When they talk of moral cataclysms, they are thinking of one thing, and one thing alone, the sexual relation. That is all they mean. They imagine that to remove the supposed religions restraints on passion would be to inaugurate an era of unbridled licentiousness."

Are they not right in so imagining ? The Greek was surely a Hedonist, besides being the most intellectual man who ever lived, and he certainly gave himself up to unbridled licentious- ness. Mr. Grant Allen fancies that this will be prevented by the desire to improve the race, but if man is to die like a flower the desire of improving the race will not control him much. Why should it ? If I shall pass in a minute, why not enjoy myself for the minute P Mr. Grant Allen may be right in saying that the sexual instinct, which is in part the source of development, has been unduly despised. But is that any reason for letting it loose It requires restraint, at least, as much as, say, the instinct of reverence, which, unrestrained, becomes idolatry or grovelling superstition. —Mr. Mallock, in "Fabian Economics," again attacks his secular enemies,

the Socialists,—the drift of his argument this time being capable of reduction to a sentence. Socialism is nothing but an extension of the area of State action, which depends for its success, and must depend, upon individual action. Society, if closely organised as the Fabians would have it, will require even greater ability to direct it than at present; and can find

it only in individuals who will claim their reward in some shape. In fact, to succeed at all, Socialism must from the first become a religion, when, no doubt, all those who embrace it can live in common if they like. They do it in the only durable Socialist communities,—those of monks.