THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.
Tan most urgent question of the day is discussed specifically in " The Lords and the Budget," and generally in " The Privileges of the Commons " The latter article is noticed elsewhere. Sir Robert Giffen deals with the cause teterrima of all this trouble in "Recent State Finance and the Budget." We need not go through his arguments. No man knows the subject more thoroughly, or has a greater gift for expounding it. It is cheering to find that he thinks "the Free-trade cause by no means lost," though it has been smitten in the house of its friends, while its enemies are doing their best to confound it with Socialistic doctrines of all kinds.—It is a relief to turn to the literary and philosophical contents of the number. These are more than usually good. We have, in the first place, the second part of the " Centenary," history, covering the editorial reigns of Elwin, Macpherson, and Sir William Smith, this last reaching over the long period of twenty-six years. The most interesting details about contributors are those which refer to Mr. Gladstone. They make us think both better and worse of the great limn. How admirable is his humility when he owns, in retracting some harsh criticism on Tennyson's " Maud," that he is "wanting in that higher poetical sense which distinguishes the true artist." On the other hand, how strange to find him declaring in 1858 that Palmerston Was "utterly unfit to rule, whether regarded from the financial, the legislative, or the administrative point of view," and taking office under him in June, 1859! Surely there was something in the political atmosphere that warped his sense of right and wrong.—Mr. Walter Leaf finds a confirmation of his theory of a composite Homer in the story of the genesis of the " Shahnama," as it appears under the name of its author or editor, Firdausi. We do not think that the cases are parallel, but the article is interesting and valuable.—Mr. Bertram Dobell has made some curious discoveries about Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia." He has lately come into possession of three manuscripts of the work which differ considerably from the testus receptus, as we may call it.—In " Tho Mystical Element of Religion" ive have what we may suppose to be Father George Tyrrell's latest thoughts on religion. One sentence we must quote: " What we have to do is to show men that they affirm God
in every breath every act of disinterested goodness, every pure sacrifice to truth and justice proves his sense of solidarity with a Spirit whose claims are absolute and imperative." —The other articles are "The Centenary of Darwin," by Pro- fessor Poulton ; "A Journal of the French Revolution," by Austin Dobson; "Recent French Poetry," by F. Y. Eccles ; "Early Flemish Painters," by Sir M. Conway; " Tolstoi and Turgeniev," by the Hon. Maurice Baring; and "Canning and his Friends," by J. A. R. Marriott. Of the whole thirteen, only two are unsigned.
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