THE MAGAZINES.

THE Cornhill is full, this month, of papers, thoughtfully and excel- lently written, but a little deficient in vitality. Politics are, we pre- smile, deliberately excluded, but a magazine can touch on the topics of the day without engaging in controversy, and the Cornhill has re- 1 peatedly contained semi-political articles far more attractive to the mass of readers than the slightly skinny contribution upon "paper," a compound of letters from injured paper dealers and the Penny Cyclo- pedia. The writer believes apparently that English paper-makers are in a fair way to ruin, having to face free trade in the manufactured article without free trade in the raw material. He gives, however, no facts, and will find, we believe, like the rest of the world, that free trade compensates all protected interests by the stimulus it afforclis to energy and inventiveness. The Belgian millowner is a formidable rival in price to the English maker, but his work is decidedly inferior in quality, and we hear stories of difficulty in making the foreigner " come up to sample," which have never been related of home mann- facturers. An article on "National Character" is curiously clever and unsatisfactory. The writer admits the existence of distinctive national characters, but asserts that what is called national character is not so, but only "the character of an imaginary person or persons whom people construct in their own minds as representatives of the nation of which they speak. They know, partly by books, partly by observation, and partly by report, something of the people whom they mean to describe. They combine their impressions with more or less skill and completeness into ideal characters, which they invest with the different qualities which have struck them in individuals ; and it is this ideal person which they really mean when they speak of England, France, or America, and to which they really ascribe the quali- ties which they say are inherent in the English, French, or American national characters." All this while, not one individual character in fifty is like that of the nation to which it belongs, and whose aggre- gate effect it helps to produce. The Englishman is called energetic, but out of the five hundred Englishmen whom any observer may know, how many are really so ? The truth seems to be, he argues, that nations are governed by minorities, and our judgment is disturbed by the tendency to take them as representatives. " We say that it is the character of one people to be free, and of another to be servile, and that their institutions prove it, when, in fact, we adopt such a mode of judging of national character as to take those persons only into account by whom the institutions in question were made. Can any reasonable man, com- petently acquainted with the people of this country, affect to doubt that if, by any calamity, a despotism should be erected amongst us, it would be implicitly submitted to by a large proportion of the population ; and that if it were over- thrown it would be by the courage and skill of a small minority enlisting on its side the quiet dissatisfaction of the bulk of the people?"

Surely this is wholly inaccurate. The writer altogether forgets that if a cultivated minority universally develop certain qualities, those qualities must be latent in the majority from whom that minority is drawn. It is i only when the diamond is cut that we perceive its brilliance, but the power of being brilliant is there always, and national character does not include the acts a nation does, but the sort of being it has the capacity to become. To take the author's own illustration about

tz

ener : it is quite true that the cultivated classes do appear, to a very

sin r extent, more energetic than the uncultivated, but three-fifths of the difference is merely in appearance, cultivation bringing with it a nervous concentrated manner, and an over-keen sense of the value of time. The remaining two-fifths is produced simply by the absence of developing causes. Give the stolid peasant a stimulus of any kind and his inherent energy is at once apparent. There is a remarkable illustration of this fact afforded by our national schools. The English peasant has, in the raw, undoubtedly, a very keen dislike to leave his parish, and seems unenergetic in that particular to a very uncommon degree. But the very same class once passed through the national schools become locomotive to a degree which irritates the squires, and is breaking. up the evil Law of Settlement. The truth is, we believe, that minorities in a country, when of the same race as the majority, invariably exhibit in action precisely the qualities which in the majority are still latent. In England all classes are, in practice, of one race, the Norman, Saxon, and Dane being only species of an absolutely identical genus, and consequently the energy apparent in, say the Peel family, exists just as much in the cottager, Richard Ark- wright. The writer observes that we have constructed for ourselves a typical Englishman whom we call John Bull; but asks, "which fea- ture in John Bull's character is it which accounts for the depth and ardour with which philosophical and scientific subjects have at various periods in our history been studied amongst us ?" Love of science is not a feature in any national character. It is a mere direction of the energy which• is unmistakably visible in every line of, say, Punch's typical John Bull. The "First principle of phy- siognomy" discussed in the next article appears to be that while the physiognomy must and does indicate the character, it does so as a whole, and not through separate features. You are to take the whole faze, and not to say this nose is comic, and that chin is feeble. The writer believes that the practice of photographing everybody will ultimately lead to a great development in this science, and it might do so if we could ever be certain of the true character of the persons photographed. Unfortunately for investigators, most men act their lives, striving, often successfully, to assume the very quality they have not. This is especially true of public men, and must always imperil any theory founded on their photographs. There is, besides, a disturbing force first pointed out by the authoress of Adam Bede, which is of almost unknown efficacy. People inherit expression, and a special type of face is often transmitted without its accompanying qualities. There never, perhaps, existed a man whose taste was worse than Napoleon's, and yet the face breathes, as its very first and most apparent quality, refinement.—Mr. Thackeray's " Philip" is, as usual, an admirable study of morbid anatomy. Macmillan—one article excepted—is not quite up to the mark this month, though "Ravenshoe" is still improving. The scene between Lord Welter and Charles is admirably true ; though we are by no means certain it is creditable to English human nature that it should be so. A hearty grasp of the seducer's throat would, we fear, have been infinitely more indicative of the true instinct for right than Charles's Christian lenity. The " Victories of Love" we may perhaps notice hereafter, and we altogether object to the memoir of " The late Herbert Coleridge," by John Duke Coleridge. There was no con- ceivable reason, except his name, why Mr. Herbert Coleridge should have a biography. He never did an.ything, and if every man whose relatives think him a latent genius is to have a biography, we shall be more overrun than ever with memoirs which ought to remain in manuscript. The excepted paper is "Paris Revisited," a most im- pressive sketch of the feverish state of the apparently quiescent French mind. It is evidently written by one who detests the systeme Napoleonic; and the writer generalizes a great deal too fast, as in this instance : "And I could not but think that the effects of this unhealthy education were visible in the male population. The generation which has grown into manhood since the Empire, of, say from eighteen to twenty-eight, seemed to me singularly undersized. I am barely a middle-sized man in England; yet of half a dozen waiters in the hotel where I put up first, there was only one over whose head I could not look."

Most waiters in Paris are Swiss and Germans, and the writer possibly did not inquire as to their nationality: Still the paper is most powerful, and the result of the writer's inquiries summed up in this paragraph almost ominous. After pointing out that,the upper classes still stand aloof from the Emperor, he says : "As to the working classes—the very marrow as well as sinew of the French nation—so far from their having become imperialized, it is the very reverse pre. cess which is taking place. The great increase among them of republican views was attested to me by several men whose authority on the point was decisive for me. Before 1848,' said one to me who bad been the representative for a great town of France, we were but 2500 republicans in —; now the whole youth of the working classes there are republican.' Calmly and steadily, and with fun faith in ultimate victory—not conspiring, but on the watch for every opportunity —these men await what they deem the inevitable future. They say openly that the republic of 1848 perished for want of republicans; that it shall not be so in future. They entertain no delusions as to the Bonapartist fetishism which prevails among the French peasantry. But they believe, and I think justly, that the life and thought of the nation are in its towns, and that, where these lead, if they show themselves really capable of leading, the peasantry must follow."

Temple Bar has this month, besides " The Seven Sons of Mammon" (only three of whom, by the way, are visible), a striking, though somewhat wild, description of Antonelli, translated from the German. The account is curiously like the English popular idea, the great Cardinal being described as a thin man, with a face divided into two halves, the upper half Asiatic, two restless eyes rolling in large circles under black hair, the lower " antediluvian"—i.e. apparently tigerish. Large teeth are perpetually visible, the jaw moving up and down everlastingly, as if crunching—the mark, by the way, not of cruelty, as the writer seems to think, but of rapaciousness. The Cardinal received his guest in a small closet, talked bad French incessantly, and contrived, in the course of conversation, to leave an impression of singular ignorance. He had evidently never heard of Leonardo da Vinci, and " had a tigerish joy in blackening the French before me." And this man, thus described in an ultramontane newspaper, is the Papacy. There is the ordinary amount of padding in Temple Bar, indifferently well stitched, and the ordinary nightmare tale, called this time the "Mystery of Fernwood." " The Doctor's Family" has been raised to the post of honour

in Blackwood, and well deserves its elevation. The present number contains something very unusual in modern novels, a proposal made in the way in which the hero described might really have been supposed to make one. A collection of all the proposals recorded in the .young ladies' novels published of late years would be one of the quaintest collections of absurdity ever made, and, moreover, a most curious psychological study. The descriptions are, we may presume, exact pictures of what the authoresses imagine proposals ought to be, and suggest the oddest ideas as to the young-lady notion of outside life. The scene in the " Doctor's Family," on the contrary, is perfectly natural, though Nettie's refusal is based on the distorted view of duty, so common in Mrs. Marsh's novels. Her duty was to marry the man she evidently loves, not, as the writer implies, to maintain her nephews and a drinking brother-in-law. The paper on Dr. Marshall Hall is a clever satire on the inces- sant complaint of discoverers that they are persecuted. Dr. Hall published a work on diagnosis, which contained some genuine dis- coveries in nervous disease, and he was the discoverer of the "Reflex theory of nervous action." His attainments excited notice ; and the paper describing his discovery was printed by the Royal Society, bat a second one was rejected, and Dr. Hall considered this persecu- tion. He rose while still a young man to the front rank in his pro- fession, and an income of 40001. a year, his views were accepted by the highest physicians of the Continent, and still he talked on of his persecution and his sacrifices to science. In him, this talk was a bit of harmless vanity ; something like the protest of a curate that he is killed with preaching, but, embodied in a book, it deserved exposure. There is a paper on " Mr. Buckle's Scientific Errors," another exposure of Mr. Buckle's last volume, directed chiefly to his theory that there is no such thing as inherited aptitude; an extremely clever letter from Weimar describing the ways, politics, and new dramas of the little capital; and a curiously tolerant paper on M. Ernest Renan and his works ; but the number is generally a little heavy. What can the Editor be about in admitting this kind of rubbish into his pages ?- " Seemeth too surely Something not well,

Where blow the night-winds Down in the dell: He, who in cradle deep Laid there a babe to sleep, Never once paused to weep, Where the leaves whisper Down in the dell.

" Hollow-eyed dreamer, God guard thee well From the dread secret Down in the dell!

Better in wildered brain Feed a false hope in vain, Than by its father slain Find thy lost darling Down in the dell l"

The verses are not fit for an album.

Mr. Mill, in Fraser, completes his statement of the utilitarian philosophy. Fraser has no new tale, but the two serials, "Barren Honour" and " Good for Nothing," continue their course with their usual fitful cleverness. Mr. Boyd, however, contributes a paper on "People who carry Weight in Life," which reminds us of his earlier essays. The following is as true as it is well expressed:

"There are men, and very clever men, who do the work of life at a disadvan- tage, through this, that their mind is a machine fitted for doing well only one kind of work ; or that their mind is a machine which, though doing many things well, does some one thing, perhaps a conspicuous thing, very poorly.. You find it hard to give a man credit for being possessed of sense and talent, if you hear tam make a speech at a public dinner, which speech approaches the idiotic for its silliness and confusion. And the vulgar mind readily concludes that he who does one thing extremely ill, can do nothing well; and that he who is ignorant on one point, is ignorant on all. A friend of mine, a country parson, on first going to his parish, resolved to farm his glebe for himselt. A neighbouring farmer kindly offered the parson to plough one of his fields. The farmer said that he would send his man John with a plough and a pair of horses, on a certain day. ' If ye're goin' about,' said the farmer to the clergyman, 'John will be unco' weel pleased if you speak to him, and say it's a fine day, or the like o' that ; but dinna,' said the farmer, with much solemnity, dinna say onything to him about plougbin' and sawin'; for John,' he added, ' is a stupid body, but he has been plonghin' and sawin' ad his life, and he'll see in a minute that ye ken nae- thing aboot ploughin' and sawin. And then,' said the sagacious old farmer, with extreme earnestness, if he comes to think that ye ken naething shoot plougliiu' and sawin', he'll think that ye ken naething aboot onything!' Yes, it is natural to us all to think that if the machine breaks down at that work in which we are competent to test it, then the machine cannot do any work at all."

We may add that almost all men of special training always make this mistake. They have studied their special subject and watched its connexion with other subjects, and gradually find their own know- ledge so much more complete on their one point than that of other men, that between learning and vanity they think their own hobby the pivot on which the whole earth turns. A. sailor thinks it keen satire to say that some clever acquaintance does not know the miieu-top- mast from the top-gallant-mast. Why should he know it any more than the sailor kuows the difference between pica and long primer? Naturalists have almost always an inveterate belief in their own pur- suits, and cannot conceive how any man who does not care for botany, or geology, or physics, can have any mental power. An article on the "Social Science Meeting at Manchester" reads more like the letter of some lady visitor than of a " Manchester Man," and will doubtless attract all that numerous class who cannot decide on the authenticity of Mr. du Chaillu's discoveries until they have been told what the discoverer " looks like." Here is the writer's opinion of the personal qualifications of the meeting: "We propound a question for the ladies-What is your opinion of the personal appearance of our scientific visitors as a whole? W hen great names have been long familiar to us we have a natural curiosity about the looks of those who own them. Are they handsome or plaiii; bulky or thin ; awkward or graceful? Phi- losophy somehow, from the days of Socrates downwards, seems to have been associated with unprepossessing features, though Aristotle is said to have been a dandy. He is very clever,' we once heard a man say of another. Yes,' was the reply' lie is quite ugly enough to be clever.' We think however that the theory is falsified by the most prominent members of the British Association. Occasionally you saw a quaint set of features in union with a comical figure; but generally the philosophic faces were very pleasing."

A most readable paper on "Clubs" contains among sketches of the origin and charades of most of the more famous clubs, a curious account of the Royal Philosophers' Club, composed of members of the Royal Society, which elected anybody who sent them half a buck or a turtle, and seems to have enjoyed a right of tasting all new fruits or vegetables introduced into England. Their dinners were, a century ago, as they are still, among the best in London, though a French visitor in the middle of the last century complained bitterly of their gross feeding : "The dishes consisted of huge joints of beef and mutton, roasted and boiled, and abundant supplies of potatoes and other vegetables, which each person seasoned as he pleased with the different sauces on the table. The viands were liberally watered (arrose) with great potations of a kind of strong beer, called por- ter, drunk out of pewter pots, which are preferred to glasses because they hold a pint. This prelude over, the cloth was removed, and the table covered, as if by magic, by numerous crystal decanters filled with excellent port, Madeira, and claret. Several wine-glasses were placed before each guest, and drinking was prosecuted vigorously, the desire to drink being encouraged by various descrip- tions of cheese which were rolled from one end of the table to the other in ma- hogany boxes mounted on wheels,"

and wound up with champagne, spirits, and five or six cups of bad coffee.