THE MAGAZINES.

IN the Nineteenth, Century Sir William Lee-Warner makes " The Civil Service of India " the subject of an article, in the course of which he traces the history of the means by which vacancies in the service have been filled since the institution of the competitive system. In considering what improvements might be made, ho maintains that the same conditions ought not to be applied to both British and Indian candidates. For the former he favours the continuance of the present arrange- ments, laying special stress upon the value of a University education for future administrators. On the other hand, be suggests that Indian candidates should be sent for a period of at least three years to training colleges in the various provinces of India, and that a certain proportion of the vacancies each year should be allotted to the most successful students in these colleges. In this way, he maintains, India would secure proper training for representatives of all classes of her community destined for the Civil Service.—Mr. Lloyd George's land policy is discussed by Sir Gilbert Parker in an article entitled " Land Reform and the Chancellor." He criticises Mr. Lloyd George's views severely, and supports the alternative policy of small ownership, though not without expressing some doubts as to its complete satisfactoriness.

He asks especially that the means to solving the land problem shall be subordinated to the end:—

"We are more concerned with getting men on the land who will work it successfully, than with the precise form of tenure under which they shall hold it. We advocate, we press ownership, we have faith in it as the most attractive and natural and national form of tenure, and, in the end, the most efficient; but if men desire tenancy wo would place no obstacles in their way, unlike the Liberals in their Small Holdings Act of 1908, which deliber- ately places obstacles in the way of small ownership."

It would be in the last degree foolish, Sir Gilbert Parker adds, to impose artificial and pedantic limitations on the free choice of those who may wish to seek a living on the land.— Some interesting quotations are given by the Hon. Mrs. Lawrence from the diary of a gentleman (Mr. R. H. Lawrence) who visited St. Petersburg in 1806. We take from it the following anecdote :- "A Russian prince at Moscow, desirous of giving his children the best education, took a Frenchman into his house in order to teach them the French language. The attention of the tutor was not thrown away on them, they soon began to speak in the admired dialect very glibly. And the instructor grew daily in favour. It was thought necessary shortly after that a governess should be added to the establishment, that the female part of the prince's family might be qualified for the meridian of Petersburg. The French lady was informed that the boys had made a great proficiency in speaking French, and was desired to examine them. The parties appeared not to comprehend each other ; the astonished and disappointed parents, unable to explain the mystery, them- selves demanded an explanation. The lady who did understand French informed them that the children spoke very good Finnish. The rage of the Russian nobleman may be imagined, for the Finns are held in the utmost contempt by all ranks of Russians. In such a country it may be supposed that the detected tutor did not escape punishment. He was nothing but a worthless Finn."

A considerable amount of space is again devoted in the National Review, and in our view moat legitimately for the question is one which cannot in the public interest be allowed to drop, to a discussion of the Marconi affair, for not only is it dealt with at some length in the "Episodes of the Month," but it is also the subject of two separate articles, one by Mr. Maxse, and the other a report of a speech by Mr. Amery under the title "Saint Sebastian of Limehouse."

—Mr. Lovat Fraser writes upon "The Future of Turkey

in Asia," and discusses the various questions upon which attention is bound to be focussed in the near future, now that the Turks must limit themselves to Asia Minor as the sphere of their activity.

"They are not yet freed from the embarrassments caused by their treatment of subject races, and now that—despite their sudden march on Adrianople—they are setting their faces east- ward once more, the Armenian question may be expected to grow more acute. Their primary need in Asia Minor is better com- munications, and consequently the Baghdad railway project is once more being pushed forward. They will have to make up their minds about their future policy in Arabia, and either abandon pretensions which they have not the strength to enforce, or waste their impaired resources in futile efforts to extend their sway over the peninsula. They must also come to some arrange- ment with Great Britain about their questionable position near the head of the Persian Gulf, and stop the foolish actions which have produced constant bickering during the last decade. If they really want to turn barren wastes into a land of smiling plenty— a thing the Turks have never done yet—they will take in hand Sir William Willcocks's great schemes for the revival of the ancient irrigation system of Chaldea, which might be made one of the greatest granaries in the world, as it was in olden times. Then the Turks have to settle their frontier dispute with Persia, which has dragged on for more than half a century."

This last question, Mr. Fraser proceeds, is an indication that Turkey may soon begin to interest herself in Persian affairs.

Mr. Fraser reaches pessimistic conclusions in his discussion of almost all of these various subjects. " The outlook in the Middle East," he says in conclusion, " contains few gleams of brightness. The Baghdad railway should spell progress, but the menace of the Armenian problem may at any moment thrust it into the background once more. Arabia is striking out for herself. If Persia had virility enough to do likewise British statesmen might be easier in their minds."—A charming article is contributed by Mr. Austin Dobson, called "A Literary Printer." It tells the story of John Nichols, whom Gibbon described as " the last, or one of the last, of the learned Printers." Nichols was born in 1745, and was apprenticed to a printer when he was twelve. He is perhaps chiefly known from his connexion with the Gentleman's Magazine, of which he acted as editor from 1778 until the year of his death, 1826. Mr. Austin Dobson takes the oppor- tunity of giving a brief history of the magazine, which was founded in 1731 by Edward Cave :—

"In its earliest form the Gentleman's Magazine bore the sub-title of Monthly Intelligencer ; and the putative author' was announced as ' Sylvanus Urban, Gent,' a compound nom de guerre of itself happy enough to absolve its begetter from any imputation of sluggish invention. The initial purpose was simply to give ' Monthly a View of all the Pieces of Wit, Humour, or Intelli- gence daily offer'd to the Publick' in the swarming news-sheets, of which, even at this date, there were in London alone no fewer than two hundred; to add to these things Select Pieces of Poetry,' • Transactions and Events, Foreign and Domestick,' Births, Deaths and Marriages, &e., ' Prices of Goods and Stock,' Bill of Mortality,' 'A Register of Books,' and Observations in Gardening."' The most fa.nous of the contributors in its earlier years was Dr. Johnson, for whom it served for a long period, according to Boswell, as his "principal source for employment and support."—Mr. H. B. Marriott Watson writes upon " The

Problem of Human Survival," and quotes some experiences (most of which will be familiar to members of the Society for Psychical Research) in support of a belief in immortality. The most interesting article in the Contemporary is an

account by Mr. G. M. Trevelyan of " A Holiday among the Servians." This describes a journey undertaken by the writer

in June through Servia and those parts of Macedonia and Albania occupied by the Servians. Mr. Trevelyan disclaims any partisanship in the later developments of the Balkan crisis, and confesses that at the end of his experiences he came home "only with a sense of the complexities of the Balkan problem, the difficulty of getting at the full truth, and the multitude of conflicting racial standpoints, each reasonable in itself, were it not for all the others." At the same time, we gather that on the whole Mr. Trevelyan's impression of the Servians was favourable. He speaks of the Servian peasant as "a very democratic and independent person," and as being on a far higher plane than those of his own race who have lived for so long under Turkish rule. The success of the Servians as administrators, too, seems to have been consider- able in the districts occupied by them last winter. Mr. Trevelyan remarks that

" They fought the Albanians to a finish last winter, and have since disarmed them in a way the Turks never did. They have

established order and safety where murder and robbery used to be the ordinary incidents of life. They have done this both by

rough and gentle methods. They have carried off hostages of the Albanian chiefs' families to Uskub or Belgrade, and they have distributed food and seed corn (maize) in the Albanian villages. We travelled a short way with a Servian officer who was a, specialist at managing Albanians, and we saw Albanians leave their work in the fields and run up to talk to him, asking him to be their member when the constitution was established, and kissing him at parting. Apart from the kissing, I should guess that their relations to this man were rather like those of Indian hill tribes to a Sahib of the right sort. Whether these good relations are the rule or the exception I am utterly unable to say. But our impression is that the Servians are at least trying to do their duty by their part of Albania."

With regard to the new war Mr. Trevelyan has little to say, for it broke out after he had returned to England. We may quote, however, some observations made to him at Athens by M. Venezelos, who declared that " When the Turkish war began the Allies had no expectation of being able to drive the Turkish armies right out of Macedonia and Thrace. They hoped to make a little headway in parts of Macedonia, and that then the Great Powers would stop the war and insist on genuine reforms in European Turkey which would end the question. From the moment when the first victories showed that questions of partition would arise on a big scale, M. Venezelos began to ask Bulgaria to negotiate, and, if necessary, to go to arbitration, and he said that he had been asking for arbitration ever since."

—Sir Sidney Lee contributes the first of a series of articles upon " Shakespeare and Public Affairs." In it he endeavours to trace Shakespeare's views upon political questions. He

rejects the view put forward by "hasty critics" that Shakespeare was "no friend of democracy," and argues that the truth is that modern theories of popular government escaped his notice not because he was out of sympathy with them, but because they lay beyond the limit of his horizon. " The dramatist cannot be blamed for ignoring political programmes which were not in being in his time, any more than he can be blamed for omitting mention of steam- engines or aeroplanes, and for writing familiarly of objects, like perspective glasses or viol-da-gambas, which have gone out of use." Sir Sidney Lee seeks to show, however, that Shakespeare frequently indulged in severe criticism of oligarchical and monarchical theories of government. The

truth in our opinion is that Shakespeare, like all wise men, was a Whig. There were Whigs before the Revolution as there were Christians before the dawn of Christianity.—

Mr. Ellis W. Davies, M.P., discusses somewhat inconclusively the recent report of the Departmental Committee upon the Jury System ; and we must also mention an article by Mr. Joseph Burtt upon the slavery in the Portuguese West African colonies.

The Fortnightly Review opens with a short article entitled "A Great Imperial Opportunity," in which Lord Grey dis- cusses further the project for a Dominion House to be erected on the magnificent Aldwych "island site." The project is already familiar to readers of the Spectator, but Lord Grey here gives further details as to the terms of the option secured, and as to the nature of the building which he suggests should be erected. The plan of the "House" would, of course, have to be agreed to by the Dominions' representatives, but Lord Grey makes some valuable sug- gestions. His proposal includes a great central tower to be used as an hotel, a roof-garden of two and a half acres, a theatre and lecture-hall, and, most important of all, a great Imperial " Covent Garden" occupying the whole base- ment area, by means of which the attention of the home consumer may be impressively focussed on the products of the Dominions oversee, and the manufacturers of the United

Kingdom enabled to ascertain and meet the requirements of Greater Britain.—Auditor Tantum follows with some lively observations on the Session of 1913 ; and other articles of a

political character are those on " Conservatives and the Land," by Mr. J. M. Kennedy, and " Great Britain's Poverty and its Causes," by Mr. J. Ellis Barker. In the former Mr. Kennedy argues strongly against the ideas which the extreme section of the Liberal Party have adopted from Henry George, and endeavours to show that the salvation of British agriculture must be found, not in oppressive taxation, but in freedom and co-operation; that it is essential to recognize the distinction between agriculture and industry, and that this distinction should be observed above all in the

Unionist tariff policy, which should and could, thinks Mr.

Kennedy, be modified so as to assist the former without seriously injuring the latter. Mr. Ellis Barker, on the other hand, dismisses co-operation and all legislative remedies as ineffectual to cure the extremes of poverty which are the curse of British industrialism. By a statistical comparison between Great Britain and the United States he endeavours to show that the real cause of British poverty is the inefficiency of British labour; that the average worker in the United States produces from two to three times as much as his British colleague, and that this advantage is not due to the superiority of the labourer, but is in direct proportion to the greater quantity and better quality of machinery employed in American manufactures. Mr. Barker's conclusion is that "by doubling machinery we can double output and double wages."— Foreign politics are dealt with in papers on "Patriotism and Party in France" and" The Bohemian Sokol." In the former Mr. Charles Dawbarn traces the decay of the Radical Party in France, which he attributes to "savage self-interest and insensibility to public sentiment," exemplified by its opposition to the proposals for electoral reform and the Three Years' Military Servioe Bill. In the latter Mr. Walter Jerrold gives a most interesting description of the great national gymnastic institutions which were established in the 'sixties by the Slavonic people of Bohemia under the symbol of the " Sokol " or " Falcon," and which have now brought into patriotic line with the Bohemians the other Slavic peoples under the Austrian Crown. There are the usual number of literary articles, among which mention may be made of " Hamlet at Oxford," by Frederick S. Boas, an interesting paper, in which the author shows by means of extracts from the Vice- Chancellor's accounts in the University archives that the per- formance of " Hamlet," which is known to have taken place at Oxford during the reign of Elizabeth, must have been conducted under civic and not academic patronage. The number also contains the closing chapters of Mr. Eden Phillpotts's fine novel, "The Joy of Youth."

Perhaps the most interesting article in Blackwood's is that by Professor Mahaffy on " Old Country Houses in Ireland." The Georgian Society, whose publications on the old houses of Dublin have excited so much interest, propose to include as the last volume in their series a collection of typical examples of Georgian house-building in the counties ; and the researches of the Scciety have brought to light so many interesting houses of the seventeenth century that it is proposed to treat these in a separate volume. Meanwhile Professor Mahaffy has been tempted to analyse the evidence which the architectural work and decoration of these country houses gives as to the social condition of the country. In Ireland the rise of domestic architecture was not unnaturally much later than in England. Professor Mahaffy mentions only two unfortified mansions of a date preceding the Restoration, and these were built respectively by Ormond to receive Queen Elizabeth, and by Strafford for Charles I. at a time when it was thought probable that he would have to visit Ireland. But it was not till the accession of Charles II. that the domestic mansion began to be really generally con- structed. Professor Mahaffy concludes that it was the Cromwellian settlement which first gave genuine security to Ireland, and he quotes from the Travels of Thomas Dinely and Winter, the Cromwellian Provost of Trinity College, to show that this settlement was a genuine settlement, not to be dismissed with the epigram of Tacitus, " Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant." From this the Professor passes on to con- sider the early Georgian houses and the remarkable develop- ment of the style of decoration which arose from the work of the brothers Franchini and preceded the introduction of the Adam style from England. He goes on to show that the deteriora- tion of architecture, which is generally attributed by Irish historians to the effect of the Act of Union, in fact set in some years before the close of the eighteenth century, and the paper concludes with some evidences which may be drawn from the number and splendour of these houses to rebut the charge of absenteeism which is so freely made against Irish landlords by contemporary and modern political writers.—Another interesting article is that on Brazil by Mr. Cyril Campbell. Mr. Campbell contrasts Brazil with the United States, and emphasizes the very divergent views entertained by North and South respectively with regard to the mixture of the black and white races. He shows, too, that whereas from the commencement the

pioneers in the Virginias migrated there under the impulse of religious persecution, with the intention of permanent settlement, and with the memories, customs, anl traditions of their race graven indelibly on their minds, the South had for decades been the paradise of the adventtn-er, whose only object was to fill his pockets and return as soon as possible to Madrid or Lisbon. Now South America has become the goal of a genuine migration, but the effects of the earlier conditions are not to be easily overcome. Development has begun too late, and imitation has taken the place of a true political growth.—Delightful, though in a very different style, is a paper entitled " Some Account of Arcady," by Louise Imogen Guiney, which gives a picture of English rural life in the Cotswolds, that country of magnificent stone mansions, farms, cottages, and churches, where mediaeval games and scraps of ancient song still form part of the life of the people, and art is still a standing fashion, still a craft which the conditions of modern life have not succeeded in debasing.—Of the fiction the best is the short story called " Baban Miji," with which Mr. R. S. Fletcher continues his series " From the Outposts."