THE LIGHTER MAGAZINES.

Blackwood continues dull, but the customary political article is distinguished by moderation of tone and the absence of some of the offensive peculiarities which have recently militated against our

pleasure in reading it. This time it is only agreeably caustic, and though rather long-winded and lecturing in its exposition of the causes of the defeat of the Liberal Party, and its demonstration of the depth to which the roots of Toryism have struck in the heart of the country (Blackwood always talks of " the country," not of "the people "), it does not " overstep the modesty of Nature"— that is to say, of Tory nature. It is difficult to understand why a paper on Ashantee, formed of "Extracts from the Journal of a Naval Officer addressed to his Wife," finds a place in Blackwood, for it has neither matter nor style to recommend it. The former is neither novel nor interesting, and the latter is vulgar. There is no fun in calling the King of Ashantee "Mr. Coffee," and it is dubious taste to write to a lady about "bouquet d 'Afrique" and "those brutes of Fantees," while public interest is likely to be but mildly stirred by records of the " headers " of an anonymous naval officer, and his discomfort at being reduced to drinking his tea out of an old marmalade-pot. A charming article on "New Books," in which the writer sketches with great skill the character of the "Inconnue" of whom all the world has been talking, and hits off Dr. Guthrie, as his " Autobiography " presents him, most happily, is the beat this month. The writer is very amusing upon Dr. Guthrie's cheery depreciation of other people and comfortable sense of his own superiority, and winds up with the following sentences, which we quote because they are among the truest things that have been said about that excellent, but rather blatant Christian :—

" There is one point in this universal glorification of his concerns and belongings which is in more than usually rampant bad taste. The great event called the Disruption in Scotland—the act by which many ministers of the Scotch Church gave up their livings for the sake of a principle—is spoken of here, as in many other books of the kind, with a sort of delirious self-gratulation, as proving an amount of self-sacri- ficing power equal to any apostolic martyrdom. That there were cases in which it was, we do not doubt, where poor country clergymen, undis- tinguished by any powers which could insure popular support, gave up for a precarious possibility their certain means of existence, with no power even of trumpeting their sacrifice to the world. But it is an in- sult to the most ordinary good-sense to ask us to believe that on the part of such a man as Guthrie, the very typo of the popular preacher, there was either risk, doubt, or hardship in such a renunciation. Good- taste at least would dictate that in these enthusiastic bursts of admira- tion over an event in which the speaker played a leading part, he should at least acknowledge frankly that the privations must have been restricted to the poorer, voiceless brethren who marched after him ; victims, voluntary or involuntary, of a great party movement, and could not by any possibility, have affected himself."

The author of "International Vanities" discourses pleasantly concerning "Decorations," giving a special history of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, and gently ridiculing the pretensions of the Duke of Manchester's English "Langue."

A hard-headed paper on "Denominational Education from a National Point of View," and one sound enough, but not less dry, on " Judicial Policy," form the pices de resistance of Macmillan. The object of the first is to explain how and why, in the opinion of Nationalists, the Denominational method is not the best way of meeting the wants of six-sevenths of the people of England ; and to urge the abandonment of the eleemosynary method of operation altogether, and the application of all the national money devoted to elementary education by legally-con- stituted representatives of school districts. There is some indis- putable truth in the writer's description of both the Lancasterian and the National Societies' schools, where the scholars are interest- ing mainly as " the children of the poor," not as the future citizens of a great nation ; and there may be a little in his argument that the case is proved against these systems by the fact that to " ragged schools" are relegated the dirtiest and most neglected children, who ought especially to be the care of the State. The writer

does not oppose Denominationalism from Mr. Morley's plat- form of impartial scorn for all religion, but he thinks the religion which should be taught at the public expense in public schools is one from which no one dissents,—whicb, so far as there is such a one, may be true. But what is to be said to the Theism which objects to Christianity, to the Roman Catholicism which objects to have religion put on a rationalistic basis at all, and to Cal- vinism which thinks all religion but itself purely legal and dangerous ? Is not denominational teaching essential for these ? The second paper advocates the increase of the power of local tribunals, and their close connection with the superior Courts. " The Philology of Slang" is amusing and ingenious, the result of a good deal of study entertainingly put. " Mendels- sohn " is increasingly interesting—everyone will read these memoirs over again in book form—and " Castle Daly" im- proves. The writer has got his people in hand, and the straggling impression produced by the beginning of the story is removed. It is pleasant to learn from Miss Stanley that the " Flower Mission " is prospering, and that the country poor are as zealous in their eagerness to send flowers to the town poor, as the fortunate pos- sessors of gardens and conservatories are prompt and generous in responding to the appeal made to them by the promoters of this humanising and simple scheme of charity. It may help a little to notify here that inquiries and communications relative to the Flower Mission may be directed to Miss Stanley, 22 York Street, West- minster.

The writer of a very clever paper in the Cornhill, "On the Side of the Mistresses," proceeds to demolish the ideal structure raised by his or her predecessor, " On the Side of the Maids," by a humorous assumption that the artist in the former case was not a lady, but an inexperienced bachelor living in lodgings, who took his types of tyranny and slavery from the class of rapacious lodging-house keepers on the one band, and that of over- tasked lodging-house servants on the other. This assumption makes the reply more funny, but it rather weakens its force, for the advocate of the kitchen piano and crayon-box, and of "romp- ing," as a necessity for young persons who accept the position of domestic service, was careful to found her accusations of cruelty and repression, and her plea for " revolt" against such " serfdom " as the prevailing system of domestic servitude, upon the rules of " an ordinary, well-conducted house," and the writer on the other side argues, in reality, upon a similar basis. The reply is a re- freshing antidote to the sensational unreason of the plea for the maids, and very amusing besides. An article on " Dr. Livingstone," by Mr. Rowley, of the "Universities' Mission," is highly interest- ing. It summarises the work of the great traveller, and makes us understand his life and his character better than his own cumbrous and unreadable books can do. Miss Thackeray is not so happy as usual in her travesty of old fairy-lore. "The White Cat" is perhaps the beat known and most beloved of the whole series of the old, old stories. Age cannot wither the charms of the disguised princess, nor does custom stale her infinite variety (at least, within the experience of the present writer, who is always engaged, many deep, to tell the story to an audience of young folk, and invariably finds them inexorably exacting as to details), and therefore we looked for a masterpice of transmutation at Miss 'I'hackeray's hands. But we are disappointed. We don't care for the prince under the name of Hugh Gourlay, Blanche is not interesting, and the pulling-off of a postulant's cap and veil by an accidental bough, after the fashion of Absalom's .mishap, mimics but meanly that grand scene in which the prince, obedient and full of faith, even unto seeming death and ruin, draws his scimitar (it is a scimitar in the very oldest editions), and slices off the head and tail of the beautiful White Cat. We heartily thank the writer, however, for Bismarck, the poodle, who personates the little white dog with ruby eyes, who barked inside the walnut- shell of the old story. "Jack the Giant-Killer" still remains un- rivalled among these specialities of Miss 'l'hackeray's. We wish she would dress up the "Three Bears" for us. How harmoniously humorous would be her notion of the "Middle Bear." Mr. G. B. Smith's enthusiasm is always eloquently expressed and pleasant to read, even when we do not share it. His essay in Cornhill on "Elizabeth Barrett Browning" is a case in point. We hardly believe in her " immortality " as a poet, and we firmly bold that occasionally, in some of those very high flights which this critic rapturously admires, she wrote nonsense, and only too often unreal and seemingly affected sentiment. As, for instance, in the very passages he quotes, in which she describes Burns,— with pungent passionings Set in his eyes;"

Byron as " salt as life ;" and the Earl, in her very absurd poem, "Lady Geraldine," supposed to be written in a " chamber " down whose "purple" the poet's " tears can hardly flow at will," as,— " Just a good man made a proud man; as the sandy rocks that border

A wild coast, by circumstances, in a regnant ebb and flow." Patient study fails to make us comprehend the meaning of these two lines, devoted, as Mr. Smith tells us, to the Earl's " limning." Of the sonnets,—no doubt many very beautiful, but too many very much disfigured by mannerism,—of which he writes raptu- rously, we do not think, with him, that " they are certainly equal to all of Wordsworth's and most of Milton's," and we do not count "Aurora Leigh" among the few great poems of the world. Of Mrs. Browning's lyrical poems we admire a few much and love one, for which we would give away cheerfully all the introspection and the aspiration of " Aurora Leigh " and all the tall-talk of the Florentine verses ; it is that little gem in which the poet, without any flow of effort or affectation, tells the story of " The Swan's Nest among the Reeds." We repeat, Mr. G. B. Smith's critical

essays are always pleasant to read ; we never fail to retain some memorable passages from them, some suggestion, illustration, or

new light; but we think he allows himself to grow intoxicated now and then, and writes towards the close of an essay in a style the exaggeration of which he would avoid at the beginning. Here are a few sentences from his analysis of " Aurora Leigh :"—

" There are more passages of lofty and impassioned poetry between the covers of this one book than are contained in any single lengthy

modem poem of which we have knowledge In this poem we have a vantage-ground from which we survey the panorama of human life, illumined by the sun of genius. To attempt to extract its beauties would be futile ; it is a garden invhich every flower of sweetness blooms. Its aroma is amongst the most fragrant in literature."

We seriously doubt whether, if Mr. G. B. Smith were to read these sentences, and the whole page in which they occur, to a company of well-read persons, familiar with the poets, and ask them to guess of what work he is discoursing, they would divine the subject of his panegyric to be "Aurora Leigh." Mr. Napier

I3roome sets the solemn music of the spheres, heard of a moonlit night, when,— "Heaven's warriors close their ranks of mail, And almost clash their shining cars !"

to a pure, sweet love-song, a strain but seldom raised in these perfervid days.

Readers who remember a marvellously clever series of political portraits which appeared in the now extinct Leader, nearly twenty years ago, under the title,-" The Stranger in Parliament," will be reminded of them by the contributions of "The Member for the Chiltern Hundreds" to the Gentleman's Magazine. He is wanting in the brilliant and untiring humour of " The Stranger," but he is observant, and his style is good. Mr. Sala grumbles good- naturedly about Locomotion in London, but also arouses us to comparative thankfulness by his awful pictures of the past, and rambles away, in a very funny foot-note, to the practical jokes of the good old times, making one laugh suddenly by suggesting the ludicrous images of Mrs. Rousby, in emulation of the beautiful Mrs. Inchbald, knocking runaway raps in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, or Mr. Henry Irving imitating the sublime John Kemble by offering to ride a rhinoceros in a menagerie ! What these

eccentricities have to do with cabs and the " Underground " nobody knows, except Mr. Sala ; but as he is never dull unless when he temporarily sticks to his text, we like him much better in his chronic condition of random rambling.

Temple Bar is very good indeed. It is a long time since we have had so pleasantly-gossipping an art essay as that on Sir Peter Lely. We are sorry to learn that the widow of the artist's grandson ended her days in an almshouse. The account of the sale of Sir Peter's collected treasures, which commenced under Charles II., was carried on during the reign of James, and ex- tended far into that of William III., is very curious. Colonel Otto Corvin contributes a delightful " Chapter about Pets," in which a cockatoo, who resided in his family for twenty-five years, plays a distinguished part.

Aunt Judy is, as usual, fascinating. There is a floral fairy-tale coming out in parts,—buds, we ought to say, perhaps,—which beats all our grown-up serials easily.