SOME OF THE MAGAZINES.

Ma. FROUDE, in the Nineteenth Century, swells the " Remin- iscences," by an account of Carlyle's early days, enriched with letters from his mother and his friends, especially Irving. The

account does not add much to the general vision of Carlyle, though it makes it still more clear that he was originally of a violent temper, that his religious doubts came early, and that he strongly impressed his fellow-students with the notion of some- thing separate or wonderful in him. So he also did Margaret Gordon, a young lady of Kirkcaldy, whom he describes in the "Reminiscences," as one of "the fair-complexioned, softly elegant, softly grave, witty, and comely type, and had a good deal of gracefulness, intelligence, and other talent," and whom he evidently loved. An engagement was impossible, and Miss Gordon parted from Carlyle in a letter of kindly advice, which is full of almost prophetic insight :—

" And now, my dear friend, a long, long adieu ; one advice, and -as a parting one consider, value it. Cultivate the milder dispositions of your heart. Subdue the more extravagant visions of the brain. In time, your abilities must be known. Among your acquaintance they are already beheld with wonder and delight. By those whose opinion will be valuable, they hereafter will be appreciated. Genius will render you great. May virtue render you beloved ! Remove the awful distance between you and ordinary men by kind and gentle manners. Deal gently with their inferiority, and be convinced they will respect you as much and like you more. Why conceal the real goodness that flows in your heart ? I have ventured this counsel

from an anxiety for your future welfare, and I would enforce it with all the earnestness of the most sincere friendship. Let your light shine before men, and think them not unworthy the trouble. This exercise will prove its own reward. It must be a pleasing thing to live in the affections of others. Again, adieu. Pardon the freedom I have used, and when you think of me, bo it as of a kind sister, to whom your happiness will always yield delight, and your griefs sorrow.—Yours, with esteem and regard, ' M.'—I give you not my address, because I dare not promise to see you."

She married a Member, who became Governor of Nova Scotia, and Carlyle met her twice in later life, but they never spoke again. The letters from Edward Irving are many, and are full of a grave, kindly wisdom, and of love for his friend, not unmixed with regret for what the world deemed that friend's " asperity." Like Miss Gordon, Irving perceives Carlyle's inner scorn of his fellow-men, and begs him to use his " superiority " for their benefit, and to betake himself to literature as his life-work. We cannot quote any of his letters, for we must find room for this pathetic note from Carlyle's mother, who taught herself to write, to be nearer her son :-

" Mainhill, March 21, 1821.—Son Tom,—I received your kind and pleasant letter. Nothing is more satisfying to me than to hear of your welfare. Keep up your heart, my brave boy. You ask kindly after my health. I complain as little as possible. When the day is cheerier, it has a great effect on me. But upon the whole I am as well as I can expect, thank God. I have sent a little butter and a few cakes, with a box to bring home your clothes. Send them all home, that I may wash and sort them once more. Oh, man, could I but write ! I'll tell ye a' when we meet, but I must in the meantime content myself. Do send me a long letter ; it revives me greatly ; and tell me honestly if you read your chapter e'en and morn, lad. • You mind I hod if not your hand, I hod your foot of it. Tell me if there is anything you want in particular. I must run to pack the box, so I am your affectionate mother, MARGARET CARLYLE."

Was she thinking, if not to hold his hand (Seottice," hand," spelled " hod "), at least to hold his foot as if back from destruction ? The remaining papers iu the number are not of the first interest. Sir D. Wedderburn gives a sketch of the different " Upper Houses " of the world, but it is exceedingly thin,—indeed, useless for instruction, and he has apparently no final conclusion to defend, except that an addition of the representative element to the Lords would probably make the House more impracticable. The notion that a substitute for the Lords might be found, not in a Second Chamber, but in conferring certain amending powers on the Privy Council or the Cabinet, does not enter his mind, though he men- tions with a kind of approval the Norwegian plan, under which the Second House, or Lagthing, is a standing Com- mittee of the Storthing, or popular House, and in the event of dif- ference, votes with it. Lord Brabazon, in a paper on the health of the city populations, wishes the school children in cities to be trained in gymnastics, to preserve their physique, which he believes to be deteriorating, and would even give gratis dinners to the very poor. We suspect he alarms himself needlessly. Accidental defects, arising from deficient nutrition, do not transmit themselves, and the Jews, after fifteen hundred years of the Ghettos, unimproved by gymnastics, are still among the healthiest of races,—far less liable to disease than English agricultural labourers. Mr. Myers, under the form of a criticism on Renan, discusses miracles with modera- tion, arriving at the conclusion that till we know law, we can hardly decide dogmatically what is a violation of it. In his argument, however, that the reluctance of science to study "abnormalities," e.g., the evidence for apparitions, is probably advantageous, because it is needful that the idea of the inviolability of law should " descend into the street," we are unable to agree. The danger from that belief among the uneducated is at least as great as the danger from superstition, for over-much wonder does not paralyse the mind, and fatalism, which is the ignorant deduction from inviolable law, does. Mr.

Myers studies the European modern mind, which has an instinct towards effort, too exclusively, and forgets that when we speak of "useful " beliefs, we must consider the whole of mankind, among whom the European is but one in ten. The Hon. Emily Lawless gives us a Kingsleyish sketch of "a dredging-ground," the har- bour, or rather fiord, of Killary, between Mayo and Galway, which indicates rather a habit of keen observation than pictorial power ; and the Bishop of Carlisle discourses on " Man's Place in Nature." His point is the separateness of man, which is not difficult to prove, but which Dr. Goodwin brings out with considerable force. His argument that man does things better when he uses his reason, and the beast does them worse, is very good, though we think there is an exception in the way in which South-American monkeys cross a river. They make a bridge

for the baby monkeys, by clinging in a long string to each

other's tails, which is surely reason so used as to increase their powers. Many of our readers will probably not be aware of this, perhaps the most wonderful of all the wonderful illustrations of insect instinct :—" The larva of the stag-beetle has to make for itself a hole in which it can become a chrysalis. The female larva digs a hole of exactly her own size ; but the male makes one as long again as himself, because when he becomes a beetle, he will have horns as long as his body, which the female will not; but how could he know this?" Under what conceivable impulse, except a divinely implanted one, could the larva of the

stag-beetle have begicn to do that ? He had no inherited experience of the necessity, and what made him prophesy, for

the action is prophetic

The most interesting article to us in the Fortnightly is Sir D.

Wedderburn's account of " Denmark," " the smiling country of cornfield and meadow, of lake and forest, with tall groves of beech fringing its shores," with no rivers and no mountain, the tallest hill being 550 feet high. The country contains some large proprietors, who, unlike their British rivals, know many languages and are given to books, and to advanced Liberalism in political opinions ; but the tendency of both law and opinion is towards the creation of a yeoman class, who within the last forty years have acquired such rights, that three-fourths of Denmark belong to 70,000 yeomen farmers, and one-eighth of the remain- der to 137,000 peasants, mostly freeholders. The Legislature in 1851-65 sold all lands belonging to the State and corporations to the tenantry ; in 1854 entail was practically abolished, and owners enabled to sell to occupiers ; and it is now virtually the law that every tenancy mast be for two lives—the tenant's and his widow's—while the landlord is absolutely forbidden to throw farms together, or leave them unoccupied : -

" Hence all true farms, even those which belong to peasant pro- prietors, are subjected to certain restrictions, and an owner is not entitled, except under special conditions, either to amalgamate several farms into a single holding, or to divide a single farm into several holdings. Several annual penalties may be inflicted by law upon any owner who, without the special sanction of the Minister of the Interior, either absorbs and suppresses a farm-steadiag, or neglects to provide it with occupiers within a certain period of its becoming vacant. If an owner of two farms inhabits one of them, he will almost invariably be permitted to cultivate the other for his own behoof, but never more than two altogether ; and by a law passed in 1872 the power of an owner to suppress a separate farm-steading, even with the assent of the Ministry, has been limited to particular cases. A Bondegaard (farmyard) is supposed to consist of a certain extent of arable land, and the owner is not entitled to take away from it so much land that it will cease to be a true Gaard."

The Minister of the Interior is invested in extreme cases with the powers to be conferred upon the Irish Land Court, but he does not use them, as the pressure of opinion induces the land- lords to be reasonable :-

" By a law passed in 1872, the landlord has a preferential claim against the life-tenant's goods for all arrears of rent, and be has the right of eviction upon various grounds, involving misconduct on the part of the life-tenant, who is bound to keep farm-steading and fences in good repair, and not to injure the farm through mischievous treatment of the soil. Eviction for non-payment of rent is legal, but hardly ever takes place in Denmark. Although the landlord cannot evict without some act of misconduct on the part of the life.tenant, the latter may at any time renounce his lease, if he can assign for so doing grounds which appear to be generally reasonable. The widow may renounce her life-lease at her discretion, and it is at once annulled if she marries again."

Sir David mentions, but does not explain, that it is a custom to "give security " for the rent; but land is rapidly passing to the occupiers, though about thirty noble families are protected by law, and strictly prevented from selling. The Danes, we may add, are extremely comfortable, jolly, and English ; the rent of land rises to 25s. an acre, and the fondness of the people for their country is unchangeable. This paper, which ought to have been twice as long, is of itself worth the whole price of the magazine. There is an interesting paper on " Italy," by A. Gallenga, in which he draws rather a melancholy picture of the country, in which the Liberals are split up into groups, governed by personal considerations, while the larger suffrage now proposed may, he thinks, end in dictatorships. He is far too pessimist, but his account of facts is worth reading.

We might say the same of the very striking account of the position of Ireland, by the Editor, who evidently does not think that the Land Bill will end Irish troubles ; but he is also of opinion that good government, and especially free government in Ireland, will ultimately tell, and that we are now passing through the usual terrible period when misgovernment has not ceased, but the people have advanced till they feel it keenly. The new necessity is not to dismiss Ireland, or to fuse it in England, but to treat it as what it is,—a distinct nation. ality, with a distinct ideal, and allow Irish Members sitting in Westminster to settle matters for themselves, as the Scotch do. That is perfectly sound, if the Irish will do it within certain moral laws, but at this moment we fear they would annul contracts in a way to which the English people, while they are responsible, will never consent. The remainder of the number is a little dry, with the exception of Mr. Saints- bury's criticism of Victor Hugo's new poem, "The Four Winds," and the curiously brief and lucid sketch of "Home and Foreign Affairs." Is the writer of this precis, by the way, strictly accurate in stating that " one-fortieth of the entire population of Sweden has booked passages for New York ?" We knew that the emigration from Sweden was rising to the proportion of a national disaster, but an emigration of 100,000 a year from a stationary population of only 4,000,000, if continuous, would in no long time—less than twenty years— transfer half Sweden to the New World. There is a solvent force in the attraction of the American West which the world will have to study.

In the Contemporary, Father O'Leary pens an account of Mr.

Bence Jones's experiences in Ireland, which he, doubtless, regards as most scathing. Apart, however, from some asser- tions, which seem both improbable and injurious, such as that Mr. Jones poisoned his neighbours' hounds, the allegations really amount to this,—that Mr. Jones managed an Irish estate in

the English way, taking the highest rent obtainable, farm. ing a large acreage very well and very profitably, and asserting a clear mastery over everybody and everything around him. That seems to Mr. Jones good management and to

Father O'Leary tyranny, and both views are correct, only they are correct about different places and different circumstances. The evil is not in the character of Mr. Jones or anybody else, but in the clash of two civilisations, one supported by law and the other by prescription and opinion. Apart from a few sentences, Father O'Leary writes temperately enough, but it is curious to notice how he fails to catch the English point of view. He thinks, if he proves excessive or even very high rent, he proves tyranny, and does not see that the English notion of fair rent is the rent a sane tenant will agree to pay, and can pay, with-

out anticipating ruin. A demand for five guineas an acre strikes an English squire as absurd, but not as unjust, the landlord having the right, if he chooses, to farm the land him- self. The reason the demand is unfair in Ireland is that the tenant

has from history, though not from law, a right to remain while he pays a rent which under his management, possibly bad, can

be paid, yet leave him a fair living. Another point in the Irish question—the sentimental reason of the dislike to the "plebeian oligarchy" who acquired the land from the old nobles —is well explained, in Mr. Butler's absurdly named paper, "They Were a Great People, Sir; " and there is an indirect

contribution to the same question, in the account of the Thurin- gian peasantry, by Mr. Aldis. The system of tenure there, which is copyhold proprietorship, aided by wages for labour in the Grand Ducal forests, seems reasonable, and Mr. Aldis praises it; but it involves an evil which, to our thinking, takes all that is idyllic out of it. The people, living on a poor soil, are obliged to work too hard, and save too carefully, till even the natural affections perish. If this short paragraph is true, no conceivable amount of writing can take away the impression it produces :—

" There are darker lines in the picture, it is true. The life of the peasants is so laborious, that few attain to what we call extreme old age. The records of death on the wooden tombstones in the village churchyard seldom state an age over seventy, and not very often one over sixty, while a person between forty and fifty is accounted aged. The old people, when they are past work, are apt to be thrust aside and neglected as useless incumbrances. An old woman would some- times remark in a sad way to the English stranger children, that it was time for her to die, as now she could do nothing but be a burden on her family, and the feeling she expressed appeared to be in many cases felt by the active breadwinners in relation to those whose days of work were past. Goitre, a disease brought on apparently by over- work and under-feeding, combined with climatic conditions, is very common among the women, and occasionally an epidemic fever sweeps off a large portion of the children and the weakly folk."

There is little else of general interest in the number. We may have a word to say on Dr. Radcliffe's rather mystical paper on dreaming next week, but we have most conscientiously read Mr. T. Wright "On a Possible Popular Culture," and cannot imagine how it found entrance into the Contemporary. Either we are dreaming, or it is a repetition through nearly twenty pages of the single idea that culture would do the people good. Does anybody doubt it ? The point is, how to diffuse the culture, and on that matter Mr. Wright is George Eliot's Mr. Brooke, and nothing better. In an infinite experience of magazines, we never, we gravely affirm, read a paper quite so woolly.

We do not know that we have ever mentioned the story going on in Fraser, " A Lady and Her Lover." It is very good indeed, though it moves a little slowly at times, the author painting in little touches with obvious pains. There is a good account of M. Gambetta, correcting some popular errors, and leaving the impression that the ex-Dictator is essentially a Moderate, but a Moderate who holds the Republic indispensable as an instru- ment, and would establish it, whether the people chose it or not. The writer gives some remarkable and to us novel proofs of the high estimate in which M. Gambetta holds the working Clergy of France, whom he conceives he could entirely reconcile with the Democracy, and whom he proposes to liberate from their servitude. He reckons, we fear, without the Catholic Church, but his speech at St. Quentin in 1871 explains a view quite separate from that of most of those who declare that " Cleri- calism is the enemy." Mr. Craig-Sellar, for so long Mr. Adam's right hand, pays a most cordial tribute to his chief ; and there is humour in " Beauchamp and Co."

We see nothing to notice in Blackwood, except the story, "The Private Secretary ;" or in Macmillan, except Mr. Seeley's most striking but shadowy lecture on Napoleon, whose real idea he declares to have been to found a theocracy, to revive the type of the Prophet-Conqueror of the East, an intention which snapped at Aboukir. The thesis wants more evidence, but it is most strikingly suggested. It is, however, this month in the Cornhill, a magazine very unequal in all but its stories, that the most readable matter appears. Nothing can be better or more entertaining than the sketch of Hector Berlioz—though the biographer is too tolerant—or more irritatingly appetising than Mr. Julian Hawthorne's " Pauline."