THE MAGAZINES.
COMPETMON 1.5 an excellent thing, but we confess we regret p,o see it extend to shilliig ',ursine& There cannot be an unlimited demand for that form of literary olio, and the present rage for new efforts tends to diffuse the supply of available material over too wide a surface. The To icaXor of magazines, that ideal publication which should attract all classes while informing all, is by no means as yet attained. Fraser, to our minds, comes nearest to the mark, but even in Fraser one department is rather defective. The tales are not up to the mark. We have too much of "Whyte Melville," and the magazine wants one really good novel, a first-class story, such as Blackwood secures occasionally, and the Cornhill very often. The editor is wrong, too, in not making a greater effort to secure at least one really good song or short poem. Perhaps, like all men who are wearied with trashy verses from mediocre poetasters, he distrusts the public appreciation of a better article; but the impression, however natural, is a mistaken one. The hunger for genuine verse is as real and as strong as ever, and a few golden lines, a mere sonnet, so it have but the ring of the true metal, sati..! readers as much as the heaviest essay or most successful story. Ireland is the place for this kind of literary manufacture. Trumpery little publications, which nobody out of Ireland can read, frequently contain songs which no man can mistake for anything but the genuine article, hot from the singer's heart. He may be simply insane from prejudice, or fanaticism, or hate of the Saxon, but one could read abuse of oneself with pleasure if conveyed in lines such as some of the Catholic journals occasionally contain. The ideal magazine for this month, if we could only get it, would be one containing the paper contributed to Fraser by Mr. Mill; " Ravenshoe," from .Macmillan; "Fish Culture," from the Cornhill; a strong political paper, such as none of the magazines contain; "Old Dublin," from Liaiv's _Hibernian; a bitter or flattering personal sketch, if the world is not getting too mealy-mouthed to enjoy such a thing; or a bit of broad fun, like the " Gleimmutchkin Railway ;" a good song ; and a cruel literary paper, such as "Topaze" produced in Fraser on Sir A. Alison's writings. It would cost no more to produce such a bill of fare than has been expended on the first number of London Society, as Yet a conspicuous failure. Money has been lavished upon it, and the first engraving alone, by Mr. Watson, is well worth the shilling it costs, but the contents are worthy only of the poetical preface, in which somebody or other thus describes the purpose of the new serial :
"To vividly portray the numerous links, Which overlapping make one mighty chain, Coiling from brightest regions into chinks Where gloomy Sorrow sits and holds her reign."
Moses's poet would be ashamed of such stuff. Imagine Sorrow sitting in a chink, into which a "mighty chain" is coiling ;Ise? while somebody or other sketches its links. The engravings are all much above the average, except Mr. PickersgilPs "Tender Words," which is really wonderful in its woodenness; but the literature is below the level of railway reading. There is a slight and improbable but fairly written story by the author of "Who Breaks Pays," and an outspoken criticism on Christmas entertainments, and that is all worth five minutes' attention. When will editors learn that although gourmands can always appreciate a light dinner, they do not mean that unbaked puff-paste shall be the sole edible at the feast? We have noticed the best thing in Fraser, Mr. Mill's eloquent paper on the Civil War, in another place, and need only recommend it to every man with a-taste for literary diamonds, i.e. thoughts, hard, bright, and imperishable. Blackwood continues the "Chronicles of Carlingford," Whose author has tapped a new mine, the woes of a highly educated Dissenting minister on first joining his "charge" and finding himself compelled to undergo the society of his deacons, and the attentions of the female part of his congregation. It is a party sketch, as becomes Blackwood, and we doubt if a deacon's wife ever yet told the minister—till she had quarrelled with him—that she contributed to his support ; but the contest between the minister's over-sensitiveness and his deacons' obtuse vulgarity is infinitely amusing. A series of essays on "Life, Literature, and Manners," by the author of the "Carton Family," will, we hope, improve, for at present Sir Bulwer Lytton does not shine by comparison with A. K. H. B. He is out of his element altogether, and gives us sentences of this kind : "And, in the exquisite delicacy with which hints of the invisible eternal future are conveyed to us, may not that instinctive sympathy, with which life rounds its completing circle towards the point at which it touches the circle of life winding up to meet it, be a subtle intimation that, from such point of contact, youth will spring forth again ?—may there be no meaning more profound than the obvious interpretation, in the sacred words, 'Make yourselves as little children, for of such is the kingdom of heaven ?' "
The best passage in the essay is in a note:
"'The trade,' says a writer in 1661 (Graunt—Observations on Bills of Mortality), 'and very city of London removes westward.' I think it is perfectly clear, from the various documents extant, that the movement beyond the city into the suburbs commenced with the smaller shopkeepers and not with the nobles: first, because the reports recommending improvements always mention the ground as preoccupied by small tenements ; and secondly, because the royal proclamations, and indeed the enactments of Parliament in the sixteenth century against the erection of new buildings within London and Westminster, were evidently directed against the middle or lower classes, and not against the nobles. In the reign of Elizabeth the Queen's wish would have sufficed for her nobles ; and proclamations can restrain the few when they are impotent against the many. But the enactments show, still more positively, that the interdict was intended for the people. No dwelling-houses were to be subdivided into small tene meats ; all sheds awl shops erected within seven years were to be pulled down."
That is true and original besides, and he might add that to this day it is not the nobles who have moved to the far West. The territory between Park-lane, and a line drawn northward from Hungerford-bridge, would still include half the great houses of modern London. The best houses are all within a cabman's mile of Charing. cross.
"Philip" in Comshill draws to an end, and we are happy to perceive, from a hint or two in the number, that Mr. Thackeray intends to scatter his drops of happiness on his hero a little less sparingly than usual. The taste for prosaic and unhappy endings does not extend to the public. They may be exceedingly true to life, but then people read romances in order to be released from the pressure of facts, not to analyze them over again. There is trouble enough in the world for everybody without going to fiction for more, and the readers of a shilling magazine are not likely to consist exclusively of the over-pampered women and servant-maids, who alone are honest when they say they enjoy a good cry. The paper on "Fish Culture" is an excellent account of a system still novel, and scarcely tried in England, but which is replenishing the rivers and ponds of France and Germany with fish.. Thefisheries of France, both coast and river, had been completely exhausted, so exhausted that the whole extent produced less than a single Scotch stream, when, in 1842, a peasant of La Bresse bethought himself of hatching the fish eggs artificially. This he accomplished with such success that the fishes in the streams of the Vosges increased by tens of thousands, and Dr. Homo drew the attention of Government to the subject. Government established a department, and fostered a great laboratory at Huningue, on the Rhine, and great efforts are now made to cultivate salmon, efforts attended with success. Oyster-beds, too, are laid down on a vast scale, as they well may be, the commissary of the maritime inscription giving the following account of the profits of the experiment : "Three fascines, selected by chance from an oyster bank 'laid down in the year 1859, contained 20,000 oysters each ! The expense of laying down the bank in question was 9/. 4s. 2d., and if each of the fascines [800] laid down be multiplied by 20,000, 6,000,000 oysters will be obtained, and these at 16s. 8d. per thousand, will yield a revenue of 50001. r —an immense profit to obtain with so small an outlay of capital and labour." Very, only the writer has forgotten altogether the cost of the labour and boats required to get the oysters up,—a very material item. The French people, like other Catholics, regard fish as a necessity, and under the pressure of the demand, the system has extended till the French fisheries, which in 1842 were worthless, produce 602,6401. a year, and operations are about to be commenced on a great scale in Ireland. The whole article is well worth reading, though one wonders if its writer believes the statement he has made about fish culture under the Romans : "Among other stories of Roman art in connexion with fish, is one indicating that certain kinds could be so trained as to live in wine, and that fresh-water varieties could be induced to live and breed in the sea, and saltwater fish be so acclimatized as to exist in fresh-water ponds and inland rivers." Those must have been the lineal ancestors of the fish of Cockaigne, which, under a more highly developed civilization, swam about ready cooked ! Macmillan publishes a thoughtful paper by Mr. Hare, on the new method of voting introduced into University elections. Graduates can now vote by letter, a plan which Mr. Hare recommends for all the constituencies. We have always wondered why the Tories did not make a bold push for this innovation, which would benefit them inconceivably. It would enable the rich, the timid, and the sickly classes, which are conservative by instinct, to Tote in comfort, and would consequently bring them invariably up to the polL They would vote by letter even in Marylebone and Finsbury, where every respectable man is now practically disfranchised. The writer passes a little too contemptuously over the assertion that his system would favour "concussing," the oonstituencies becoming almost unmanageable except under the strict American party discipline. "Vote for the People's Ticket" is not a cry the Liberals want to hear. Nor do we think it would be wise to introduce formulas so elaborate as this: "The only addition necessary to Mr. Dodson's Bill, to have rendered the representation of the members of the universities as nearly perfect as the present restrictions in our electoral system will permit, was a clause providing that no vote should be definitively taken for more than one candidate, but that every elector might name contingently, in his voting paper, as many candidates as he should think proper, numbering them in successive order—the vote being taken for the second, only in case the first should, without it, obtain half the number of votes polled in the university at that election. In this method no vote is lost."
" Ravenshoe" is as good as ever.
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