THE MAGAZINES.

THE Nineteenth Century is the most interesting of the maga- zines this month, though we cannot give Sir Wemyss Reid, -whose article is on the Russian distrust of England, credit for more than sound historical judgment. We entirely agree with him that the cause of the distrust is English hostility, manifested for nearly sixty years, leading in 1855 to actual wear and in 1878 to the tearing up of the Treaty of San Stefano; but he does not explain the curious problem why the Russian diplomatists, who are so well-informed, have not recognised the disappearance of this hostility and the wish in both English parties for an entente cordials. They seem unaware of that change, and we should like to -know the true reason for that doubt of our present good faith.—There are five other papers on the crisis, 3ne of which, Mr. Gladstone's, we have mentioned else- where. We may state here, however, that it is a pre- sentment of a possible English obligation to act alone much stronger and more persuasive than the Times' sketch of it gives readers reason to believe. Mr. John Burns's essay, too, on the same subject is well worth reading as the view of a "demagogue." It is surprisingly well written, and its thesis, that we eould, if we pleased, act alone, and by seizing Gallipoli compel Europe to redistribute Turkey, is, we believe, substantially sound. Mr. Burns's policy may be too daring, but there is vigour and life in it, and a keen appreciation of the great points in the situation.—Mr. G. F. Parker, United States Consul in Birmingham, is a passionate anti-Bryanite, able, but over-c.mvinced that men with means of their own are never distressed. We extract a paragraph of value :— "Of the 11,000,000 heads of families in the Union, half are land- owners—three-fourths of them free from debt. The investments in banking, manufactures, and commerce are widely distributed, in small amounts, and every owner is interested in preserving the value of his holding. The 5,000,000 depositors in savings banks —not institutions for investors, but used for the purpose implied in the name—with an average saving of 400 dollars each and a total of 2,000,000,000 dollars, are not likely to encourage any scheme which threatens values. The result of this universal distribution of property and material comfort—in spite of the talk about the rich growing richer, and the poor becoming poorer —is that only 5 per cent, of all the wealth of the United States is held by persons worth more than 1,000,000 dollars each, and only 25 per cent, of it by persons with fortunes between 100,000 dollars and 1,000,000 dollars. On the other hand 27 per cent. is owned by those worth from 10,000 dollars to 100,000 dollars, 37 per cent. by those worth from 1,000 dollars to 10,000 dollars, and only 6 per cent, by those worth less than 1,000 dollars."

To make that paragraph conclusive one would like a state- ment of the amount owing by the last 61 per cent., and of the degree of contrast between their position to-day and their position ten years ago. If everybody is so comfortable, why are so many swearing at large?—Mr. Oakley dislikes the presence of "women in Assemblies," because men in debating with them are always at a disadvantage; cannot, when they are foolish, tell them they are fools. That, no doubt, is a loss of a means of education, but men can pass women's arguments

by as if they had not heard them. That is done every day when men whom the audience respect lapse into foolish talk.—

We have discussed Lord Welby's estimate of Lord Randolph Churchill elsewhere. Coming from the first of civilians it is an unexpected panegyric, going, as we think, beyond the truth.

Everybody, however, will read the paper.—Mr. Bent gives an interesting account of "The Dervish Frontier," which seems in places to be rich in gold; and Mr. J. H. Round contributes a valuable sketch of the efforts made to induce Queen Elizabeth to accept the Archduke Charles, son of the Emperor Ferdinand. The envoy selected, Allinga, was received by the Queen in audience on January 17th, 1564, and on other

days, and inflicted on her Majesty a series of speeches which read like sermons of an antique type. The Queen, who we fancy was not a little bored, replied always by a sort of non possionus, admitting, indeed, that if the interests of her people

demanded it she must marry, but declaring that she would rather be a servant and remain single than be a married Queen. She hated marriage, she said—qua- marriage—and if she could help it would marry nobody. Allinga did not believe her, but, as events proved, she had revealed to him her true mind. She, in truth, feared a master, and rejected Royal offers as vehemently as those of her own nobles. The narrative is taken from a document found in the archives of Wurtemburg.

Everybody seems to be interested in the paper on "Russian Ascendency in Europe" contributed to the Fortnightly Review by a writer who signs himself ‘.Diplomaticas." It is, in brief, a statement that Russia is intent on internal improve- ment, that she has spent 225,000,000 on railways which do not yet pay, that she has made her alliance with France in

order to get money and secure a long spell of peace, that her population, and with it her strength, is increasing rapidly that she has no desire for an autonomous Armenia, which might prove a second Bulgaria and would certainly develop discontent among Russian Armenians, and that consequently she will maintain the status quo in Turkey, even if Lord Salis-

bury says pleasant things. That is a definite view of the situa- tion, and quite entitled to attention. The answer to it is that Russia cannot preserve the status quo if Abd-ul-Hamid is left free and uncoerced, and that if she is devoted to in- dustrial progress she must in the interest of that progrest compel a restoration of order in Constantinople. No shop- keeper can make a ra-ofit with murders going on next door, if only because of the row outside, and the consequent distraction of his own attention. He must stop that in order to be undisturbed in his own business.—Mr. T. Drapes maintains that the reported increase of insanity in Great Britain is only apparent, and is based upon an increase in the number of persons under detention in asylums, which is not due to an increase of liability in the population, but to the accumula- tion of cases from a lower death-rate in the asylums themselves Mr. Drapes considers that the offici& figures prove his argument, and certainly they seem to do so.—Major Martin Hume shows that Philip II. of Spain, bloodthirsty tyrant as he was, was exceedingly fond of his children ; a statement said to be true also of Abd-ul-Hamid. There is no reason in

the world for thinking it surprising. Tigresses are as fond of their young as cows ; and men like Philip II. hate their opponents, not their friends.—Mr. Francis H. Hardy, writing on "The Battle of the Ballots in America," declares that the silver men who seek bimetallism captured the Democratic party, that its union with the " Anarchist " party has disgusted them, that the Republicans are straining every nerve, and that the result will be a popular majority for Mr. McKinley of 1,200,000 votes, and of more than a hundred votes in the Electoral College. He believes that the real strength of the Bryanite party is hostility to England, and that its numbers in the West are overrated. That is possible, as it is possible also that the blunder is the other way. The ballot keeps its secret, and the real mass is silent till it votes.—Mr. John McGrath's is the feeblest article in the number. He admits that Ireland is quiet, and its popular parties disorganised, but he maintains that the sentiment of nationality is in Ireland as strong as ever. He would have Mr. Balfour, therefore, see that " Ireland's difficulty is England's oppor- tunity," and settle the Irish question "on broadly national lines." Read "Nationalist" for "national," and we have his precise meaning. Considering that Mr. Balfour leads the House of Commons because his party rejected the Nationalist programme, the suggestion seems wanting in adroitness. Lorcl Rosebery could govern Great Britain upon that line.

The Contemporary has a trenchant attack upon " American Women" by Cecil de Thierry, who appears to be a New Zealander. She or he is astonished at the fulsome flattery that the Americans pay to their womenkind. In America there is, she declares, no such thing as the young girl. "She is a child and then a woman. The transitional stage, beautiful in its blending of innocence and maturity, is omitted." The American woman, we are told, is insatiable, and always asking for more "They are as insatiable as Moloch, and as ungrateful as re- publics. They are luxuries for which man must pay with the sweat of his brow, affecting the while to regard it as a privilege. And, in a minor degree, the same is true of the average woman. She is a queen, the stranger is told—not a queen, whose life has in it more of pain than joy, in the aristocratic sense, but a queen, as a vulgar democracy has conceived such a personage should be —luxurious,beautiful, indifferent to everything but her own com- fort. In effete old monarchies,' one queen is found to answer the purpose of her existence to the entire satisfaction of her subjects and the world; but in America there are hundreds of thousands of them, and not one maid of honour among them all. But the homage paid to them is not quite so voluntary as it seems. No one knows better than the American woman how to demand those privileges she has grown to consider as her rights ; and if it could only be brought home to her, it is one of the least hopeful signs that her supremacy will be of long duration. She is a human orchid, who requires an artificial atmosphere in which to bloom. Hence money, and plenty of it, is essential to her existence. In an indirect way, therefore, she is responsible for the trusts and rings, and other repulsive features of the race for fortune in every State of the Union. Nor is extravagance con- fined to the tich. It is as general among all classes as gambling. Sometimes it gives rise to amusing incidents. Some young Western farmers in New York were once asked by a smart re- porter why they had come to Castle Garden in search of wives. If we married an American girl,' answered one of them, we should have to employ a foreign woman to take care of her."

So the indictment proceeds till it ends in the following :—

" It is in social intercourse that the American woman is seen at her best, and, it may be added, at her worst. In a country where the political field is largely occupied by the ' boss ' and the Irish agitator, and the importance of the army, navy, and civil service dwarfed by the pretensions of the millionaire, it is the only outlet for her ambition outside of the literary and artistic arena. That it is so regarded by the great mass of the people is proved by the nature of the American girl s education. She must be amusing at all costs. She must be a past-master in the mysteries of raillery, too often at the expense of earnestness and sweetness. She must never be at a loss for a reply ; thus her retorts are as crushing as they are merciless. Even her coolness tends to the same end. It would not carry her through the ordeal of Ann Askew, or enable her to surpass the achievements of Lady Derby, or Blanche, Lady Arundel. But the worst that can be said of her in her social character is her tendency to ostentation and extravagance. She is also too fond of making paltry class distinctions and of giving dress the importance of birth in Europe. She would do well to liy to heart the pregnant remarks of an eminent American on litera- ture in his own country : 'We have need of a more vigorous and scholastic rule, such an asceticism as only the hardihood and devo- tion of the scholar himself can enforce. We live in the sun and on the surface—a thin, plausible, superficial existence— and talk of muse and prophet, of art and creation. But out of our shallow and frivolous way of life can greatness ever grow 1""

All this strikes us as absurdly overdone, and not a little spite- ful and ill-natured. The truth is, the American woman is ta a great extent a myth,—a creature of newspaper paragraphs and gossip. As a matter of fact, the women of ninety-nine American families in a hundred are exceedingly hard-worked, careful women, and if their men-folk err it is not in treating them like idols, but in letting them get careworn and over. worked. The expense and difficulty of getting servants is by itself enough to contradict the pampered-idler theory. As for the women of the rich and refined classes, they are like rich women elsewhere,—occasionally very idle, luxurious, and extravagant, and also occasionally very simple and austere in their lives. These attacks on American women as a whole are as senseless and as tasteless as the equally silly attacks on English women as a whole.—In a curious article on "Devil Worship and Freemasonry," Mr. Legge shows what a fine mare's-nest the Roman Catholic Church has got hold of in regard to the alleged connection between those slightly comic but entirely harmless people the Freemasons and

Satanism.—Another very interesting article is that on 'The Archetype of the 'Pilgrim's Progress," by Richard Heath. The writer shows that the idea of Christian's journeys

was in all probability taken frcin the experiences of the Anabaptists, with members of which sect Bunyan had pro- bably come in contact.

The National Review is fall of the American crisis. It contains not only an article by Senator Tillman, the well- known Southern supporter of Mr. Bryan, but also "A. Visitor's Glimpse at the Contest" by Dr. Eccles, and a tiiplo article on "The Bimetallic Side of the American Crisis" by

Messrs. Powell, Hepburn, and Schmidt. Senator Tillman would not be Senator Tillman if he did not write with a certain fierceness and zeal. He is evidently very confident that Mr. Bryan will win :—

"Bryan declares the people are too poor to come to see him,. therefore he is going to see them ; and if his strength holds out, he is going from State to State, until the 1st of November. Aside from the influence of personal contact and gratification of the people at being courted, leaving out of account the inspiration of political independence, the Democratic candidate, untainted by connection with syndicates and banks and millionaire manufac- turers, appeals to the sensibilities and admiration of his country- men by a simplicity of manner and eloquence of utterance rarely equalled. His daily speeches of one or two columns are telegraphed all over the Union. The suffering masses are enthused as they have never been before in their lives. The Republicans have un- limited money, and will use it without scruple to buy all the votes they can, but the Australian ballot law in most of the States pro- tects the individual voter from the dictation of his boss or the delivery of his vote, should he sell it. It is a battle between, capital and labour, a battle between the yeomanry of the country and the wage-earners of the cities, against the domination of money. The campaign has opened in all the States, and thousanda. of speakers on both sides are at work day and night. The people,. even at this early day, two months before the election, turn out. by the thousands at any and every opportunity to bear the issues discussed. It is a campaign of education sure enough, and so far as I can judge, the Democrats have the best of it, and Bryan's chances are far brighter than McKinley's. The wish may be father to the thought, but I myself have been in the northern States of Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, and of my own knowledge I can say the number of Republicans who are leaving their party to vote for Bryan is astonishing."

Senator Tillman's estimate of the figures is as follows :-- "Now to give a clear idea of the strength of the respective. sides :—The electoral college is composed of 441, members, and it. takes 223 to choose a president. The States south of the Potomac and the Ohio and west of the Mississippi have a combined vote of 231, enough to elect. While the Republicans claim several of these States, and all the rest, the Democrats are confident of carrying not only these, but they are counting on Illinois and Indiana with certainty, and are hopeful of carrying Michigan,. New York, and Maryland."

Mr. Rowlatt sends to the National a readable article on the Bar. His account of " devilling " and its unfairness is just, and it is not a little strange that barristers in large practice should be content to allow other men to work for them without payment. If we mistake not, the plan at the Chancery Bar is to pay the "devil" half-fees. That is a very reasonable and fair arrangement, and one would imagine that public opinion must gradually force its adoption throughout.

the profession.

There is a highly pessimistic article in Blackwood upon Li Hung Chang's visit to Europe. The writer, who is-

evidently well informed, believes that the Grand Secretary's object was to obtain permission to raise the duties on imports,

that he has not succeeded, and that he will not be able to. carry out any of the reforms which he desires, or which, hints.

the writer, he says that he desires. The old party in China, which recently clubbed a German officer for trying to teach the troops, will, he believes, prove too strong.