THE MAGAZINES.

THE Fortnightly for this month is full of valuable, though slightly heavy papers, of which the one most widely read will be Mr. Fawcett's attack on the present position of the Government. It is an able paper, injured by acridity and by doctrinaire assumptions, such as that Government could have carried unde- nominational education, and that the failure to hold Cabinet Councils about India shows carelessness of all subjects in which constituencies are not interested. What could a Cabinet Council do for the finances of India ? We do not see either that Cabinets are stupid because the people, or a section of them, often pro- pose reforms before Ministries do, as happened, for example, iu the matter of the Irish Church Establishment. Governments in free countries should no doubt lead when they can ; but their highest wisdom is often to wait until opinion has become a little more matured, until tho people, in fact, have learned to understand the language in which they will be addressed. What would, for example, be the result of proposing a Tenure Bill assimilating English to Irish Land Tenure, as Mr. Fawcett thinks the Govern- ment ought to do ? Merely that the Government would be expelled for irritating all landholders before the tenant-farmers had become convinced that they were unjustly used. The Irish Act was based upon a history which is not the history of more than a section of Great Britain, the Northern and Western. Highlands. The fol- lowing paragraph, however, is sound, and contains in well-chosen language a warning we have repeatedly addressed to her Majesty's Government :—

" Then, again, wo were promised retrenchment, and we have esti- mates far exceeding those which the Prime Minister, night after night when in opposition, used to characterize as excessive expenditure. The

feeling of indignation in discovering that where wo were to have frugality we find extravagance, is iutenelfied by the suspicion that we do not have money's value for money spent. The nation wishes to have a strong army and a powerful navy. Not only does it desire to see our shores secure, but the people are resolved—and this is a fooling which the present Government seem absolutely incapable of appreciating— that England should not descend to the position of a second-rate power. It is not that the people aro anxious to meddle in every Continental dispute ; still less do they wish to do that which has been so often done by our foreign ministers—give advice to weaker powers, and than run away. But the nation feels that there may coma a crisis in the history of the world, when the career of a military despot will have to be checked ; when not only the liberties of Europe, but the civilization of its people, will be at stake ; and there is an instinctive feeling that all our national honour and glory will have passed away, if at such a junc- ture England were obliged to confess that she was powerless. There is no refusal to incur the necessary outlay ; but what makes the people dissatisfied is tho knowledge that Prussia does not spend so much on her army as wo do, and yet Prussia was able to march three hundred thousand men across the French frontier in perfect equipment, and it is doubtful whether, if we had been called upon to carry out our promise to defend the independence of Belgium, we could have Bent thirty thousand men to her assistance."

We only wish we were quite as sure of the national resolution as Mr. Fawcett appears to be. We think it is so, but much of the evidence points the other way, to a preference for that " adminis- trative nihilism" denounced by Professor Huxley, which defines the whole duty of government as that of maintaining order, and as a consequence, discourages all notion of binding international duty. We have rarely read a paper in which the corporate right of the State to do what is best for its people, to be intolerant of evil if tolerance spreads it, is stated with more force, but we dissent entirely from the thesis that while the end of government is the good of mankind, the " good of mankind means the attainment by every man of all the happiness he can enjoy without diminishing the happiness of his fellow-men." One must give an enormous interpretation to the word happiness" in order to accept that statement. It is by no means clear to us that the higher the character the happier must be the man, yet the " higherness "- to use a barbarism almost brutal—of each citizen must be the ultimate end of Government. We do not claim the right to sup- press the worship of Astarte because it makes men miserable, but because it debases ; nor are we to abstain from educating the millions because, when educated, they will very probably be unhappier than they are now. The necessary correlation between enlightenment and happiness is very hard to prove, and if we set up the latter as the ideal, we may some day see another Francis of Austria denying point-blank that enlightenment is the road. With Mr. Huxley's main proposition, that the function of the State in educating and guiding the people, can be limited only by expediency, we heartily concur ; as we do also in this shrewd remark upon a popular objection to that expediency :— "I am by no means clear as to the truth of the proposition [that State work is inferior to private work]. It is generally supported by statements which prove clearly enough that the State does a great many things very badly. But this is really beside the question. The State lives in a glass house—we see what it tries to do, and all its failures, partial or total, are made the most of. But private enterprise is sheltered under good opaque bricks and mortar. The public rarely knows what it tries to do, and only hears of failures when they are gross and patent to all the world. Who is to say how private enterprise would come out if it tried its hand at State work ? Those who have had most experience of joint-stock companies and their management, will probably be least inclined to believe in the innate superiority of private enterprise over State management. If continental bureaucracy and centralization be fraught with multitudinous evils, surely English beadleocraoy and parochial obstruction are not altogether lovely."

It is a curious fact that when the State works from the usual private motive, namely, to make money, it often works exceed- ingly well. The East India Company, when it became a State, earned no profit by its trade ; but no individual could work the Post Office as the State does. We cannot affect to review Mr. Mill's paper on " Berkeley " in an article like this, but we notice it in order to quote a very curious anecdote :- "Few of Berkeley's writings have been so much heard of, though in our days none, probably, so little read, as Siris '—originally published under the title of 'Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries concerning the virtues of Tar-Water, and divers other subjects connected together and arising one from another '—a work which begins with tar-water and ends with the Trinity, the intermediate space being filled up with the most recondite speculations, physical and metaphysical. It may surprise some persons when we say that the part of this which is best worth reading is that which treats of tar-water. Berkeley adduces a mass of evidence, from much experience of his own and of others, to the powers of tar-water both in promoting health and in curing many diseases, and thinks it prObable, though without venturing to affirm, that it is an universal medicine. All this is often supposed to be a mere delusion of the philosopher, by those who do not know that the efficacy he ascribes to his remedy is io part real, since creosote, ono of the in- gredients of tar-water, is used with success both as a tonic and for the relief of pain, not to mention the disinfecting and other virtues of another ingredient, the now much-talked-of carbolic acid. In any ease,

it is a valuable lesson to see how groat, and seemingly conclusive, a mesa of positive evidence can be produced in support of a medical opinion which yet is not borne out, except to it very Ensiled extent, by subse- quent experience."

A panacea is it priori an impossibility, but it is mere than pos- sible that the exaggerated praise of tar-water as a specific may have unduly lowered the appreciation of it as a very powerful

medicine.

We last week gave a separate article to the best paper in

Blackwood, the cheery, amusing, exaggerated comparison between English and French servants, which it so pleasant and instructive to read, with one's bristles of disbelief all up, and need here only mention the paper on " Fortresses by a Historian," which is worth reading by those who believe in the utility of those costly struc- tures. The writer perhaps pushes his antagonism too far when he compares fortresses to plate-armour ; but it is certain that. Marlborough smiled at them, and that they have seldom or never impeded the march of modern armies. But then, what is a fortress? Unless a priori thought is necessarily absurd, a forti- fied station commanding a railway line, or a fortified camp pro- tecting a half-disorganized army, or a fortified capital holding a

male population which may become an army, must be useful, and the examples of Bitsohe, Metz, and Paris conclusively prove that they are. The fortifications of the old world are of little use against a nation in arms, but the science of fortification may expand with all the other war sciences, and with walls protected by 16-inch plates, and moats turned into rivers half a mile wide,. fortresses may still fulfil their function, that of sheltering garri- sons, once small, now vast, in momentary distress.

We may say the same of the Coraltiii. Its one great paper, apart from the queer outbreak of genius called '° Harry Richmond," and from the story of the Princess Gallitzin, that Sister of Mercy of the men of genius who came in contact with her, the one on " Dravidian Folk-Songs," a paper worth the price of the magazine ten times over, is noticed elsewhere, and we may pass on conscience-free to Fraser, which is this month without anything exceptionally good or attractive, but with many papers far above the average. The one which will perhaps attract.

most attention is the translation of Baron Stoffel's reports on the Prussian Army, which have so often been quoted in England, which, read by the light of subsequent experience, read liko pro-

phecies, and which yet seem to us to have this one defect. While• perfectly just to Freesias they are unjust to France. _Berets Stoffel thoroughly comprehends all that makes Prussia strong, —the education, the diffused sense of duty, the infinite capacity for taking trouble ; but he does not equally comprehend that which makes France stroug,—her instant appreciation of genius„ her marvellous capacity for victory—not for defeat—and, above all, her intellectual force, which so often supplies with her the place of education. He does not see that although France in six hundred years has never won but one pitched battle against England, England, which once owned half France, has now not- an acre on her coast, that ultimate victory in that struggle rested with the Frenchman, and not the Teuton. It is useless, however, we well know, till France has won a battle, to discuss her military character, and it is with a faint protest which nobody will notice till France has again a man at her bead who suits her genius, that we recommend to all our

readers this often quoted report, the work of a man who, what- ever his birth, his engagements, or his fidelity to them—and he was utterly faithful, or he would not have written this report— was at heart a German. There is a paper full of interest and

novelty on the Lofoden Islands, the group lying off the Arctic. coast of Norway, from which we extract this very realistic passage.

It is the exact account of that Maelstr6in which was so formid able to the small vessels of the past that frightened mariners in- vented the tale of a roaring whirlpool, and curiously enough, is. rather more than less suggestive of danger than most modern accounts :—

" There is no such whirlpool as Pontoppidan and Perches describe:, the site of the fabulous 3laelsta•dai is put by the former writer between Moskenresiie and the lofty isolated rock of Sleeken. This passage is at the present day called Moskostriim, and is cue of those narrow straits, so common on the Norwegian coast, where the current of water sots with such persistent force in one direction, that when the tide or an adverse wind meets it, a groat agitation of the surface takes place. I have myself seen, on one of the narrow sounds, the tido meet the cur- rent with such violence as to raise a little hissing wall across the water, which gave out a loud noise, This. was in the calmest of weather ; and it is easy to believe that such a phenomenon occurring during a storm, or when the sea was violently disturbed, would cause small boats pass- ing over the spot to ho in groat peril, and might even suddenly swamp them. Some such disaster, observed from the shore, and exaggerated by the terror of the beholder, doubtless gave rise to the prodigious

legends of the MiteIstriire. Such a catastrophe took place, I was in- formed, not long since, ou the Salton Fjord, where there is an eddy more deserving the name of whirlpool than any in the Lofodens."

The writer probably does not allow quite enough for accident or the effect of particular winds upon the water. No one who has not seen it would credit the power of the tidal wave as it rushes up some of the great rivers of Asia, —notably the little known river the Salween, —and we can easily imagine that the opposing currents in the Lofoden Sounds only occasionally rise to the violence which would be dangerous to a " ship" of the credulous period, that is, to a broad-beamed yacht of at the outside fifty tons, Wo ques- tion if in Pontoppidan's time anything of more than that burden, according to modern measurement, had ever been seen in the far northern seas. A. ship of that size might be destroyed in the Salween in ten minutes, and a poet who said that a vast snake with a white mane seized her and dashed her to pieces, would only be relating exactly what he saw. Some such con- fusion between the apparent fact, and the explanation of the fact, must be the origin of the persistent belief accorded by Scandinavia to the MaeletrOin, Fraser has also an account of the " Ainmer- gar'. Play," which seems to us worthless ; the man so mistaking .even the facts that he calls the Madonna " lovely," and the Jesus "wooden;" and an account of the journey, written by the same hand, which is full of true and keen observation of foots, which, nevertheless, are described very much as an auctioneer who happened also to be a born artist would describe them ; and some verses called " Amor in Extremis," which puzzle us sorely. Did Defoe ever write verses filled with reminiscences of Locksley h all ? If he did, these are they, and if he did not, then we re- commend " A. C. L.," whether novice or experienced, to forget all poetry he ever read, and sing his song as his instinct bids, roughly if it must be, smoothly if lie can manage it. Rough or smooth, he will have in that vein an audience, We do not know if the usual readers of Macmillan will admire the " Vagabond's Note-Book" as much as we do, for it is utterly out of place there. It belongs to Blackwood, and bubbles over with the fun and the animal spirits and tho keen observation which used to characterize, does now occasionally characterize, some papers in that magazine, and of which this is surely a most .characteristic specimen. The writer is leaving Chicago by train :— " We were certainly not destined to pass out of the town precincts without a shook to our Old-World notions. As wo steamed slowly along through the suburbs, tolling our groat bell, we came upon one of the broad avenues lined with trees, which form such a delightful feature In all American towns. At the crossing, in the very middle of the avenue, a good-sized house was standing—a house with five windows, and a door on the side which was turned towards us. You might hire such an one for ,from forty pounds to fifty pounds a year in Clerkonwell or Hammersmith, except that the framework of this tenement was wooden, only the foundations and ehhoney-smoke being of brink. For a moment one fancied that it was stationary, and couldn't conceive how oven the laxest municipal democracy could have allowed a citizen of eccentric habits to build right in the middle of an important thoroughfare. A second glance, however, showed us that the house was upon rollers, and was only, in fact, waiting until we had passed (as a market-cart might do in England), to cross the track, and pursue its journey. I looked interrogatively at the struggler, who was standing next me, and he at me, with the kind of expression (I should fancy) of Bill Nye, when he detected the heathen Chines playing the best hewer which William had already dealt to his own partner. He was evidently suspicious of some elaborate hoax, such as have been so of ten played by our saturnine cousins on credulous Britishors. The potentate, how- ever, stood by with a perfectly innocent face, and seemed almost sur- prised when our young friend broke out, ' What has that wretched house been doing? Aro they taking it to the police-court for being drunk and disorderly ?' " These houses are bought for cheapness' sake, " toted " from town to the suburbs, and inhabited " right away " usually by a new- married couple. The paper of the number, however, is Mr. Bryce's account of " American Experience in the Relief of the Poor," which will be read by all politicians and philanthropists with keen interest, and will teach thein—nothing. The Boston system succeeds completely, and consists, to write briefly, in con- necting legal relief with charitable aid, the societies being lodged by the State in the same building as the Poor Law Board, and encouraged to assist it ; but then Massachusetts has settled in her broad, thoughtful, New-England way what she will and will not do for the poor. She will not give relief to the able-bodied at all, will let them die rather than grant out-door aid ; will at the utmost send them to a house of correction in the mouth of Boston har- bour, where they are compelled to work under au "almost penal discipline," but at any rate compelled, If England dared do that, all our difficulties would be at an end, and our poor-law adminis- tration a grand association for supervising hospitals for the infirm and schools for the young children ; but then in America the land Eras not all been absorbed, and work is more than labour, and— well, in foot, America is inhabited by Americans and not English- men, by men, that is, who trust, instead of men who distrust their own intellectual conclusions, men who are not disturbed because the operation of a healthy principle may, like the use of chloro- form, occasionally produce a death.

The Dark Blue is improviug so fast, that if the publisher would only abolish the atrocious vulgarity of the cover in which lie sells it, it might rapidly rival older magazines, in popularity as well as merit. Nothing can be better as a specimen of the old kind of narrative, the broadly comic kind, boiling over with jollity, fun, and a sort of innocent unscrupulousness, than Mr. Fuller's account of " A Billet at Cloonbawn," nor would it be easy to find a more carefully reasoned criticism than that on Mr. Browning, intended to show that the key-note of the poet's philosophy is the power of will over fate. The Dark Blue has the fault which always deters us from reviewing Tinsley, Belgravia, &c.,—too many stories of a kind which, published as they are in snippets, we are incompetent to criticise, or oven to read—but if its conductors will keep this feature within bounds, the Dark Blue will yet succeed.