THE MAGAZINES.

NONE of the half-crown magazines contain any startling article this month. They suffer, we fancy, like newspapers, from the general dullness of the times, and also, in a more especial way, from a competition which, whether it affects their circulation or not, tends to scatter their contributors, and distract that fixed attention of the public which, when- ever it is secured, makes a magazine so valuable by drawing towards it in a stream all the young literary ambition there is. In the Nineteenth Century, for example, we cannot honestly say that we care for the Rev. J. Guinness Rogers's account of "The Position of the Liberal Party." There is nothing in it except that Mr. Gladstone is the "Grand Old Man;" that the Lords must agree with democracy while there is yet time ; and that Welsh Disestablishment and Disendowment must be proposed and, if possible, carried next Session. All that may be most sensible—doubtless is so, from the writer's point of view—but one hungers for something which, from that point of view, shall be a little more nutritive.—Nor do we gain much from Mr. W. S. Blunt's defence of the Khedive, in "The Khedive and Lord Cromer," unless it be the assurance—which is, we sup- pose, authentic—that Abbas II., if much interfered with, is quite willing to resign. That is interesting and gratifying, because it will make his dismissal, if necessary, so much easier ; but then, a writer who thinks him "the shrewdest political head in Egypt" may mistake his decision as he mistakes his character. It is important, too, to know that Riaz Pasha is entirely hostile to Lord Cromer's plan of government, and is quietly working to retain to Egypt the privilege of "self-government,"—which means, of course, government by the Khedive and his Pashas. What one wishes to see is an account of Egypt which, without talk- ing nonsense about a self-government which the country has never had since the days of the Pharaohs, will convince us that our methods of administration and revivification could be greatly improved.—Nor do we gain much from Mr. Threlfall, though he is secretary to the Labour Electoral Asso- ciation, and a temperate and intelligible writer. He only advises artisans to send up fifty members, who shall form a distinct group in Parliament, and work in the interests of labour only. That is old advice, and false advice, and will fail, just as the similar policy of the Parnellites has failed.

Mr. R. Brett has put together a pleasant account of the inter- course between the Queen and Sir Robert Peel, which brings out the tenderness lurking in an apparently morose states- man, in a most interesting way. It brings out, too, the very curious influence which the Queen has exercised over successive Prime Ministers, and a certain detachment in her from them all. We see nothing new in the paper, but it is most readable and convincing.—Lady Catherine Milnes Gaskell's account of Wenlock, in Shropshire, is full of interest, but we wish she had been a little more diffuse about the popular superstitions. That subject requires more investigation than it has received, the difficulty being to induce the villagers to say what they believe. No man, for instance, would have received this really striking confidence spite of a Board school, a railway, and a bank, many are the milder forms of superstition that find here a resting-place. A white donkey at Wenlock is held to be a sacred animal. An old woman of my acquaintance who has one, will never allow it to be struck, as she is of opinion 'that the baiste be white by the finger of the Lord, and needs no Church marker.' To injure robins, or to take the nest of these birds in spring, is accounted an accursed thing. A poor woman once told me that 'her lad was a-gettin' more naturaler every year; but sure, you cucln't 'specs much else, for 'Arry he 'ad robbed a robin's nest, it being fobbed upon un as 'ow it was only an ordinary fowl's."

There you have a lad punished for the infraction of a super- stitious though humane law, while he was admitted to be innocent. If that is common, the laws of witchcraft must be held to operate like the laws of nature, with a certain inde- pendence of moral justice. The candle will burn an innocent child, and " that " which protects robins will punish even an imbecile for injuring them.—Mr. Bakewell's account of the operation of female franchise in New Zealand is a bitter one, but contains many facts. The women, he says, are all

prohibitionists, would, indeed, "burn down" the public- houses, and are all in favour of secular, as opposed to religions, education. They will not even allow the Irish Scripture- lessons to be read. Mr. Bakewell believes their motive is a belief that, with religious education, paid teachers would disappear, and they want their sons to be paid teachers ; but the motive seems insufficient. Secularity seems in New Zealand to have been carried very far :—

" There is no Bible-reading in schools allowed, and no instruc- tion is given in religion. Even history is not made a pass subject. For some time past there has been growing up amongst thinking men a very strong opinion that bringing up children without any knowledge of Christianity, and without any teaching of an authoritative code of morals, has produced, and is producing, a most undesirable state of things. A whole generation has now grown to manhood, to the majority of whom the simplest facts of the early history of Christianity are as unknown as the facts of early Chinese history. They never read the Bible at school, an& there is no such book at home; they never go to a Sunday-school, or to church except to look after some girl ; and they are as desti- tute of any religious sentiment as a horse or a cow. They are not heathens—they have no religion at all. They would not call themselves Agnostics, because they do not know the meaning of the word, but in the literal sense they are Agnostics."

Mrs. Harrison's answer to Mrs. Crackanthorpe on "Mothers and Daughters" is very amusing and bright, revealing, indeed, a striking degree of dramatic skill, but we do not exactly see her drift, unless it is that a mother should make her grown-up daughter her companion. We thought she did, rather to the husband's despair sometimes. We suppose Mrs. Harrison also endorses this very sensible advice from a French

lady :—

" When I come to England I always feel as if I were in a Dames Smiles railway carriage with the windows up. You have Woman's world, Woman's work, work for Women, Women's newspapers and magazines, staring at you from every street corner. I believe that in America they went so far as a Women's Exhibition. But women are not a separate class, and I object to being treated as if we were Esquimaux or Hottentots. I know of good work and bad work, useful work and beautiful work, but unless for very special things I do not understand women's work. We in France have admirable social workers, artists, and writers who are women, and I am far from saying that their work has not a distinctive quality; but we do not insult them by talking of women's work. You may be sure that thus you are raising two standards, and that one of them is a false one."

Mr. Chauncey Depew, in an article written with a certain passion, defends Protection in the United States, and declares that Tariff Reform will certainly be beaten :— 'The tariff reformers, therefore, find themselves in a position where it is equally hazardous to advance or retreat. They must do something, or confess either the falsity of their promises or the fallacy of their teachings. Such a radical reform as was originally intended they cannot carry through, and anything less is simply an affirmation of the Republican policy. In the mean- time, the people, harassed with doubts and fears, losing money, or out of employment, with the impatience of despair or of hunger, are clamouring for action. Every day's delay is regarded as further evidence of incapacity for government. Under these circumstances, a miracle can scarcely pass a measure which would materially alter the present law, and only a miracle can prevent the return of the Protectionists to power."

Dr. E. J. Dillon, in the Contemporary Review, essays to prove that the author of Ecclesiastes was acquainted with the teaching of Gautama, which he thinks "must have been" pretty widely diffused in Alexandria about

205 B.C., when the book was probably writ,ten. He main- tains that the Buddhist philosophy and that of Koheleth are substantially identical. This he demonstrates by an account of the dominant opinion in Ecclesiastes, namely, the nothingness of life, which seems to us overstrained. The author of Ecclesiastes certainly held, like most moralists, that life was not very attractive ; but to say that he believed extinction to be the supreme good, is to attribute both to him and to Gautama an unproved opinion. Reabsorption into the All is not necessarily extinction ; and while Gantama taught reabsorption, the author of Ecclesiastes stopped short of any definite utterance. Of coarse he may have been familiar with Gautama's ideas, and have absorbed part of them. The paper is worth reading.—We do not agree with all "A Fogey's "criticisms in his paper on "The Young Men," but this is a remark worth extracting :—

" In erudite, in historical writing, for example, one does not remark any young man who is a conspicuous rival to the youth of Mr. Lecky, for example. Indeed, wide acquaintance with the great classical and foreign masters does not seem to be the forte of the young men. One is not here talking of academic specialists and archteologists, but of writers for the larger public. Youth appears to autoschedicuse, as a rule ; to write by aid of chic, rather than from a deep foundation of literary knowledge. The horizon of many is apparently bounded in the past by Rossetti : this limitation may be compensated for by an exhaustive knowledge of Verlaine. There are, of course, exceptions, notably among some young critics who have, as yet, published nothing save in periodicals."

We should like to ask "A Fogey," if he does not find among a majority of youth with literary or even scholarly instincts, a new dislike of strenuous intellectual labour. That seems to us quite a separate "note" of our day, and it is not easily explicable, unless it be from the absence of the old discipline which compelled us all to work. The intellectual youth of to-day are very clever, and in a way well informed ; but they like to arrive at conclusions as women do, by trusting their intuitions.—Mr. John Rae sends a clever paper on "The Eight-Hours Day," really full of knowledge. He maintains that short hours increase the productiveness of the human machine; and in the course of his argument he certainly proves that the long-houred Americans do not do more work than shorter-houred rivals. They used to do while they were more intelligent, but the British workman is catching them up in education. The following statement of the wage-earning power of different nationalities in America will surprise many readers :—

Number of Workers.

Nationality. Average Income.

111

... Welsh ...

... 614 dollars.

62 ... ... Scotch ... ... 572 „ 276 ... ... German ... ... 569 „ 385 ... Irish ... ... 551 „ 238 ... English ... ... 534 „ 1294 ... American ... ... 520 „ 24 ... ... French ... ... 463 „

The climate has perhaps worn out of the American a certain staying power, as it has visibly worn his flesh down. It seems that the Australian who works short hours beats any other labourer. "He never dawdles," said Sir G. Tryon.— Mr. Lilly sends an able paper against the modern theory of crime, under which the criminal is really held to be a sick man, and the justice of punishing him, except by detention, is directly questioned. Mr. Lilly holds strenuously by the right of retribution, and is half-inclined, we fancy, to believe that the lea talionis is the result of a divine instinct. This would lead to torture, and we are not sure that Mr. Lilly does not exaggerate even the deterrent influence of whipping. It is a very good punishment in some cases, but judging from the experience of the Army and Navy, we doubt its universally deterrent effect. The men were always incurring it, and that knowingly. If it could not conquer the desire to get drunk, how can it conquer the much stronger desire to live by crime ? Mr Lilly, we note, is inclined to think that pauperism is the great cause of crime ; but is it ? Men who have been sentenced are very well fed and lodged, but they go back to crime again, even when work is open to them.

Mr. Norwood Young's defence of Australian solvency will be most welcome and instructive to all investors in Australia; but it would have been even more instructive had it not been so closely confined to the hostile statements in the Investors' Review. It is not quite enough to prove that the Colonies can pay their debts, which Mr. Young certainly does, but it must also be shown that they are willing. We do not doubt that ourselves, but there is in England a latent belief that the powerful Labour Party only sanctions' borrowing in order to keep up the rate of wages, and that when no more can be obtained, it will " scale " the interest in order to reduce taxa- tion. The people of New Zealand, under extreme pressure, have been scrupulously honest; but there is a fancy that I New Zealanders are specially English, and therefore speci- ally honest in recognising obligations. The paper, how- ever, is a most useful one, though its writer does hint that we " force " money upon the Colonies. Is not that nonsense ?—The article in the Contemporary Review which will be most read is probably Mrs. Crackan- thorpe's on "The Plaint of the Old." She states that " plaint " thus :—" The root idea underlying the monotonous, the oftentimes querulous, cry of the old with which, now that attention is called to it, the very air seems to be filled, is, in a word, this: Though their creature comforts are well looked after, influenza and chills kept at bay, gout and rheumatism severely dealt with and dieted, they are left wholly by them- selves. Thus their mental loneliness becomes well-nigh in- tolerable." That is clearly put ; but the remedy is still obscure. Mrs. Crackanthorpe, we fancy, sees none, except in advising the old to sympathise with the young, and to culti- vate optimism within themselves. That is good advice doubt- less ; but why should not the young sympathise a little with the old, and abandon them less to their mental loneliness ? The old are often entertaining, even if they cannot talk of amusements with any passionate interest. We fancy, by the way, Mrs. Crackanthorpe makes one mistake. Old ladies are rarely deserted, for they never lose their interest in the social drama. It is old men who are sedulously made comfortable, and then left to bore themselves.

The best paper in the Fortnightly is Lady Jenne's exceed- ingly sensible and temperate answer to Mrs. Crackanthorpe on " The Revolt of the Daughters." Lady Jenne maintains that, except among the hysterical and nervous girls, whose number, of course, increases with the pace of modern life, there is no more revolt than there always was, rather indeed less, because there is so much more education, and so many more oppor- tunities for healthy mental activity :—" It is very difficult to picture a happier life or one of greater freedom than girls now enjoy, or one more replete with varied interests and pursuits. If a girl is intellectually inclined, a 'University career is open to her, where she can distance her male com- petitors. If athletic, she can take her part in all the sports and pastimes formerly the sole monopoly of her brothers. If sentimental or of a humanitarian disposition, she can find ample scope for her powers in work among the poor and in nursing. If frivolous, there never was an age when society was pleasanter or more delightful for girls, or when there were fewer restrictions on their enjoyment, and those only of such a nature as to prevent them going 'too far ahead' until they have acquired some moral ballast." The restraints re- maining are very few, and they do not depend on conventions, but on laws which could not be abolished without abolishing girlhood altogether at very great risk both to purity and innocence. There are, we believe, those who do not believe that the risks exist ; but Lady Jenne has a wide experience of life, and she plainly states her doubt as to the safety of further experiment :—

" It is exceedingly difficult and invidious to say what the age should be (if there is any) at which the restraints which, we think, are necessary for young girls should be relaxed. There is obviously a period when, if a woman does not marry, she may be allowed freedom both as regards the way in which she will lire her life and as to the maternal control, but we should say not before she is twenty-five. We know that the acquisition of a. privilege, when it comes in the order of things, is not so precious as when wrested in conflict, and the enfranchisement which a woman attains by age is somewhat tainted, and not of the same value in her eyes. It has, in reality, a value far greater than it would have had in earlier days, for she has learnt something of life, and experienced some of its difficulties, and she is better able to appreciate the proportionate value of what she acquires, and will not run amuck, outraging and violating every rule of con- duct and decorum—which she would, in all probability, do if she were eighteen or twenty. We do not say this from a disbelief in the inherent purity of girls, but with the ignorance of youth, the strength of its impulses, the unscrupulousness of men, and the varied temptations of life, how could we trust any girl, left to herself, to sail safely through the troublous sea on which she would embark ? "

— There is a very pleasant paper by Mr. Herbert Spencer, in honour of the late Professor Tyndall, which will one day be quoted in biographies of its author. He confesses to a rather radical change of opinion. Unlike Professor Tyndall, who was a Carlylean, he believed in the self-government of mankind, but he has seen reason to abandon that view. "My faith in free institutions, originally strong (though always joined with the belief that the maintenance and success of them is a question of popular ,character), has in these later years been greatly decreased by the conviction that the fit character is not possessed by any people, nor is likely to be possessed for ages to come. A nation of which the legislators vote as they are bid, and of which the workers surrender their rights of selling their labour as they please, has neither the ideas nor the sentiments needed for the maintenance of liberty. Lacking them, we are on the way back to the rule of the strong hand in the shape of the bureaucratic despotism of a socialist organisation, and then of the military despotism which must follow it; if, indeed, some social crash does not bring this last upon us more quickly." The pessimism of age may be visible in that remark, but it also embodies the experience of a life.—Equally pleasant is Mr. Goldwin Smith, in "Oxford Revisited," though his final remarks will not be considered delightful by advanced women. Tolerant to all other innovations in Oxford, the Professor dislikes the steps taken towards the co-education of the sexes, as tending to alter the masculine character of the Univer- sity, without any adequate gain to the general instruc- tion of women. He doubts, indeed, whether young men generally would enter the lists against girls. We see no evidence for the doubt, and though we agree that the present movement is probably only a sign of a passing unrest, we can see no harm, if girls like to learn classics, mathematics, or physics thoroughly, in the Universities recording that fact. It is much better than letting those who learn fancy they know everything, when nothing is distinct to their minds.— We grow a little tired of discussions on Socialism ; but Mr. Mallock's exposure of "Fabian Economics" is very conclusive, especially as to the folly of forbidding men to accumulate. The great argument, too, against equality, the fact that pro- duction is mainly due to "ability and not to labour," is very strongly enforced. Mr. Mallock shows that but for this factor, the present population of Great Britain could not be even maintained, and asks how, if the State destroys the stimulus which now induces "scarce brains" to exert themselves, the Socialists hope to make them do it. Of course time Socialists will reply that pay can only produce willing. ness, and as the able will be willing to exert themselves, nothing will be lost. That is to say, they believe that their system will change human nature, as religion has failed to do. Well, let them try it, and organise a society, say, in a Mediterranean island, on their principles and see. As Mr. Mallock cleverly puts it, if governing ability is not required, why do not the great Unions with their large revenues start factories of their own, and so supersede the objectionable capitalists P—Professor Karl Pearson offers evidence derived from collected observations at Monte Carlo, that the "law of chance," as understood by mathematicians, does not tally with the results of experience. Its validity is upset by the intrusion of a factor of unknown potency, which, if we understand the argument aright, we may briefly de- scribe as the " unconditioned chance of recurrence," either in a number or a colour. A long "run" has no business to occur, but in its perversity or impudence it happens, to the con- fusion of mathematics. We knew at least one good mathe- matician who thought he had discovered the immutable law of roulette, tried it, and lost everything. He continued to believe in his law, all the same.

The newest paper in the National Review is Mr. St. Loe Strachey's appeal to the Lords to introduce the Referendum by tacking it to the Home-rule Bill. He shows that it would be easy to take such a vote, and of course it would be truly democratic; but, unhappily, after convincing the Lords, he has to convince the Commons, who simply reply that the system is fatal to their authority. It places the people above them, and they mean to be at the top.

Miss Gerard's "The Rich Miss Riddell," now running through Blackwood, is even better than her work usually is ;

and there is a lively paper on " Shikar " by Sir E. Braddon, with a curious criticism on elephants, whose intelligence the hunter finds slightly demonic. It never comes out, he says, except when it is not wanted.