THE MAGAZINES.

Tax Nineteenth Century for the month, though it contains no very striking essay, is full of readable papers. Dr. Jessopp gives us a most striking picture of the condition of a Norfolk parish, Rongham, six hundred years ago, when Edward L was King. Though light in tone, its author declares it compiled from -original research into contemporary documents, and its general drift is unmistakeable. The majority of the people of Rongham lived in a condition of misery of which their successors have little conception. It was not only that th'eir houses were mere hovels, without windows or chimneys, but only holes to let out the smoke, for Highlanders live happily in such cottages to- day ; nor was it that their food was bad, though it was so bad, especially in winter, that skin diseases, and even leprosy, were frightfully common, for low diet is known even now in Western Ireland and the Hebrides ; nor was it that clothing was scarce, the people wearing but one garment fastened by a belt, for that was -the case also within living memory in the North of Scotland. The people suffered not only from economic causes, but from want of liberty, being bound to the soil by strict laws, from bloody laws intermittently executed with ferocity, and from an extraordinary prevalence of ferocious crime. Within a single hundred, in one year-1285- when the population was as thin as it is now in the wildest part of Cumberland, twelve men and women were murdered, often for a few shillings, five were killed in fatal frays, and five persons committed suicide. The country, in fact, was full of terror, —terror of the landlords, who had all manner of privileges ; terror of the King's Justices, who hanged without mercy ; and above all, terror of robbers, who butchered undefended people for a little food. The Monasteries had not began to feed the people, as they did later on ; and Dr. Jessopp's conclusion from his researches is, that " the poor had no friends," a fact they occasionally perceived, ani resented in risings which were put down by executions. The Duke of Argyll describes "the economic condition of the Highlands" as prosperous and hopeful, except in Lewis, where the numbers of the population have again outstripped the means of subsistence. The Duke holds, in the strongest way, the conclusions of Malthus,---that there is in the human race a breeding-power which, under certain conditions, increases the population, till misery is inevit- able until it is again reduced. He attributes the prosperity of the Highlands to the thinning-out of the people, and is evidently inclined to regard emigration as the great natural check which saves nations. He regards the prospect in Ger- many, for example, where the population doubles in fifty years, with deep alarm, and quotes figures to show that the people are becoming poorer and poorer,—the first cause, we may remark, of the Judenhetze. This poverty is the secret of the great emi-

gration, which, nevertheless, does not keep down the natural increment. There is a basis of truth in what the Duke says, but he states it too unreservedly, and does not sufficiently estimate the increase of industry and of occupations to which increased population gives rise. England is certainly not worse fed since 1815 than it was before, and it is since 1815 that the grand increase of population has taken place. We do not quite understand, either, if he thinks means of subsistence the cause of increase, why he lays so little stress on the facts that in Bengal and Ireland increased numbers have not always checked increased growth. The Malthasian doctrine should work as a self-curing law, and does not, till the catastrophe, actual famine, comes. Dr. Martineau gives us a vivid sketch of the ideas which Mr. Greg expressed in "The Creed of Christendom," in which, as we think, he incidentally preposterously over-states the argument against the Fourth Gospel ; and Mr. C. E. Lewis, M.P., puts together sortie telling figures about the Con- servative electoral chances. He is a strong Conservative, but his belief is that these chances amount to nothing, the Liberal majority in England being, he says, 63, and in the three smaller kingdoms 123. That majority will hardly be shaken in England, while in. Scotland, Ireland, and Wales it will increase. It might be reduced by the Tories agreeing to a transaction with the Home-rulers, but Mr. Lewis rejects this, and sees no hope whatever, except in the conversion of moderate Liberals and the formation of a new party devoted to preserva- tion and building-up, a pessimist view which we recommend to over-confident Tory agents. The Nineteenth Century also pub- lishes a very instructive paper on the " Unknown Public," the consumers of penny literature, chiefly fiction. Mr. Wright main- tains that they are chiefly women, not by any means of the lowest class—never servants—and that their taste is for stories of the sensational kind, stories such as " Ouida " writes, but that it is gradually and rapidly being improved, till he thinks good novels of the lively kind, like Mr. Payn's, would now sell. He writes with knowledge, but we wish he had told us whether it is true, as we have heard, that the proprietors of these serials are themselves extremely puzzled to know what will sell, and are constantly surprised by fluctuations in demand estimated by themselves in hundredweights. An account of the stories which fail in this way and stop would be more instructive than accounts of those which succeed. We note, as a curious feature in the account, that when Mr. Wright himself studied these stories, the most successful were all marked by a single feature, the appearance of a fascinating poisoner as the demon and motive-power of the story, who cut all knots, and made the rich all-powerful. One would have thought that was French, and we should like to know if no suspicion ever crossed Mr. Wright's mind of what " dramatists " call adaptation.

The interest of the Contemporary consists chiefly in the paper on "Democratic Toryism," by Mr. Forwood, noticed elsewhere ; in a highly suggestive, but not very deep, paper on the religious future of the world, by Mr. W. S. Lilly, which leaves on us, we confess, the single impression that "totem finit in mysterium ;" and two most thoughtful articles on Gambetta. The first, by M. Gabriel Monod, is, on the whole, eulogistic. Admitting Gambetta's southern nature, his extreme ambition, and his irregular private life, M. Monod holds that he was a sincere patriot, utterly incorruptible in pecuniary matters—he repeatedly rejected millions, once when he was in financial straits—wonderfully free from rancour—he, for instance, made his bitter enemy, M. Lanfrey, a Prefect, and allied himself with M. Thiers, wbo had called him a fou furieux—a superb orator, and by his genius and ascendancy over men a reserve force for France. He was, says M. Monod, essentially a Conservative,—a statement curiously confirmed by the friend who sketches him in the Fort- nightly, and who declares him no enemy to the Church, though personally a Comtist of the Littre school. On the contrary, he kept up almost a friendship with Monsigneur Czacki, the Papal Nuncio, his true feeling being rather Erastianism gone mad, than hostility to religion. The State was to him all in all, a Church as well as a country, and he would tolerate no independ- ence of it in any shape. This view also is not inconsistent with the gossipy but valuable account of him presented in the Cornhill. The other sketch in the Contemporary is hostile, written by a German, who resents the needless defence of France after Sedan, the elevation of new couches sociales to power—the writer evidently agrees with the Elector of Hesse, that "brewers shan't govern "—and the mismanage- ment of the Chamber. He considers Gambetta no loss, either to

France or Europe, and gives him credit only for his wonderful eloquence. The attack is able, but leaves behind the feeling that hsd Gambetta been a well-born man, the writer's estimate of him would have been very different. Mr. Quilter exalts Rossetti once more, but he brings into unusually strong relief one ele- ment in the painter's character which is too often forgotten, his

entire indifference to the impression his pictures created. He painted what was in him to paint, without a thought for the outside world, and in that isolation lay his power, as also the limitation which ultimately fettered and, as we think, impaired it. Like most secluded men, Rossetti became his own slave,

utterly unable to get out of his own personality and the cir- cumstances which " forced him into one groove of thought and held him there like a vice." Professor Boyd Dawkins's argu- ment that early peoples invaded Britain across the Silver Streak will hardly reconcile their descendants to the Channel Tunnel, any more than his assertion that " the sea is an element of weak- ness, offering avenues of attack to *our enemies on every side."

If that is true, so much the more reason for not giving those enemies a second and dry road of access.

The Fortnightly, besides the able sketch of Gambetta quoted above, has a carious paper by Mr. H. D. Traill, a dialogue in the shades between Lord Westbury and Bishop Wilberforce, which will be read with pleasure by all who enjoy satiric litera- tare. It is exceedingly clever, full of steel-pointed little sen- tences, and delightfully free from reticence; but we cannot say that we find in it much wisdom. Mr. Trail has reproduced Lord Westbury perfectly—who but he could have said, "To really relish the Papacy from the point of view of the ruling ecclesiastical class, one ought to be Pope oneself," or have defended Infallibility, because " the solo has natural advantages over the chorus, if only that it leaves less doubt about the tune " —but the Bishop is not equally well painted. Dr. Wilberforce would have held his own far better in a discussion about the Church, and have proved, we think, that some of Lord West- bury's sarcasms were baseless, even if he had not answered an argument which we confess we find vague. Is it Mr. Trail's position that Erastianism is a wretched system, but the only one under which the English Church can flourish P Sir G. W.

Dasent's friendly account of Dr. Wilberforce is interesting, even after all recent discussions, and he adds at least one good story to the long' list of which the Bishop has been the occasion :-

"Once only in our own recollection do we remember the Bishop of Oxford silenced by a rejoinder. In general, after he appeared to have spent all his shafts, he had still one bitter arrow left to pierce his foe. It was at a meeting for the restoration of the Chapter House at Westminster, now, thanks to the liberality of Mr. Gladstone, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, most beautifully restored, but then in a deplorable state of rain. All present were agreed that the building must be restored ; but where was the money to come from ? ' Certainly not from us,' cried the Dean and Chapter. 'Our Chapter House was taken away from us by Xing Edward I. It is no child of ours. We look upon it altogether as a damnosa hereditas.'—' That being so,' said a very insignificant -person at the meeting, 'why should not the Ecclesiastical Commission restore it ? —` Ah r said the Bishop, with a sneer, that is a cow which everybody wishes to milk.' —'Yes, my lord,' retorted that very insignificant person; ' but you cannot deny that it is a cow which eats an enormous quantity of grass,'—and the Bishop was speechless."

The Rev. T. W. Fowle fights for an immediate Reform Bill, with arguments which are just enough, as, for example, that the rural population ought to have its say about county government, and that the Reformed Parliament will move with greater energy, but which do not bring conviction. The truth is that every question of interest has been so set aside for Ireland and Irish Obstruction, that human nature resents the idea of further delay, even to carry a necessary and righteous Reform Bill. The present instrument can do certain things, and let us do them, before we furbish up another. Mr. Fowle says we may lose the opportunity, but we do not believe that the reign of Liberalism will be limited to the Gladstone period, or that the resistance to reform will be really desperate. The Tories at heart all think that for them matters could hardly be worse than they are. We have read with interest Mr. Jesse Collings' view of Russian politics, after his journey there. Mr.

-Collings, for some reason or other, is supposed to be so " wild "

that it is a surprise to find his essay not only vigorous, but very temperate, and in its suggestions slightly Philistine. Mr. Collings' view of Russian affairs is the one usually entertained by well- informed persons, with the difference that he holds the Russians to have been trained to freedom by their communal self- management, and that he thinks the remedy for Nihilism is a "" Constitutional" Government. We doubt whether the effect of serfage is yet out of the Russian blood, and would much rather see the autocracy endure for a time, instructed by a free Parliament and Press, and fettered by a fundamental law securing to every individual his personal and individual liberty. Mr. Collings puts forviard the idea that by possibility the Army may take the lead in demanding a Constitution. That has been the dream of every Russian Revolutionist, but as yet the Army, though it has often turned the policy of the Czars, has never declared against them. The arrests occasion- ally reported only prove that certain officers are Liberals of an extreme type.

Blackwood, besides the continuation of "The Ladies Lin- dores "—one of the best stories Mrs. Oliphant has written, and almost equal in interest to her supernatural story now going on in Macmillan, a story so far absolutely original—ha a very short sketch of Anthony Trollops, from which we take the following anecdote :—

" This was how it happened. I was writing a note at a table in the Athenmam, when two men came in, and settled themselves at each side of the fireplace ; one had a number of The Last Chronicle of Bareet' in his hand, and they began discussing the story. Trol- lope gets awfully prosy,' said one of the critics • he does nothing but repeat himself,—Mrs. Proudie—Mrs. Prondie—Mrs. Proudie — chapter after chapter.'—' I quite agree with you,' replied the other, it is Mrs. Prondie ad nauseam 1 I am sick to death of Mrs. Proudie.' Of course, they did not know me, so I jumped up and stood between them. ' Gentlemen,' I said, am the culprit—I am Mr. Trollope- and I will go home this instant and kill Mrs. Prondie.' In the very next page, accordingly, the weak and persecuted Bishop is made actually to pray for the removal of the masterful partner who has brought so much grief and humiliation upon him; and hardly has the tragic prayer been uttered, than he is made aware of its fulfilment."

There is also a paper, stupidly enough entitled " A New Winter Resort," which is all new matter. It is a sketch of Haifa, the seat of the new colony founded in Syria, just below Carmel, by a German heresiarch, Mr. Hoffman, who, with his followers, hold that the world is to be converted to Christ, and the advent of the Messiah to be brought near, not by preaching Christianity,

but by men leading lives governed by Christ's teaching. When a community lives up to the Christian law, the Messiah may come. The sect endeavours so to live, and three hundred of them cultivate olives under Carmel, "doing a good stroke

of business with Nazareth," and dwelling righteously in their clean, commodious village, among the Moslem, who, the writer says, used to swindle them, but now respect them greatly, and copy their agriculture, and aid them in it. The founder, Mr. Hoffman, now lives near Jerusalem, and the community has adopted no special law either of property or life. It strives only to live up to Christianity, a form of fanaticism which, in these days of Anarchists and Fenians, is a positive refreshment to the weary observer. The whole paper is most interesting, containing, as it does, in addition to the history of this colony, an account of Carmel as it is, with all its monks.