THE MAGAZINES.

Tae Contemporary Review has several serious papers, of which the most attractive, judging by public comments, is one from General Gatacre on the barbarities alleged to have occurred after Omdurman. We do not ourselves perceive that he adds much to the previous information published on the subject, except upon two points, but it is pleasing to have official and direct testimony to the care which Lord Kitchener ordered to be taken of the wounded. The two points are these. We take General Gatacre to admit a probability that camp followers and the " friendly " Jenkins, who have good cause for a blood-feud with the Baggaras, did murder a good many of them when they got the opportunity. We fear that happens in all Eastern warfare, and fear also that the superior officers, while insisting on rigid discipline among the troops, did not think themselves responsible for the con- duct of the friendlies, whom, indeed, they may not have been able to control or punish. Nothing, in fact, short of a massacre of savages who were fighting for us world have ensured complete order. The other point is that the troops did shell a miscellaneous crowd of flying fugitives, soldiers with women intermixed among them ;—

" Now, it is an axiom in war to disorganise a beaten enemy in every possible way, and by the use of cavalry and guns to endeavour to break up his formation so thoroughly that he will be unable to make a stand or offer for the time being further resistance. If this rule were neglected by a commander, be would merely be driving his enemy away from one spot to fight him in another, it might be without having done him much

damage The Khalifa's beaten army retired up the Nile, and, as is usual with boudanese, was accompanied by many women belonging to the troops. As they moved in masses up the bank and at some distance from it, it was impossible to prevent casualties amongst the women, but it was equally impossible to allow large unbroken bodies of Dervishes to escape unmolested because they were accompanied by their camp followers; it is one of those necessary consequences which have to be accepted in war."

The cause of the slaughter of the women, in fact, was the utterly unsoldierlike conduct of the Dervishes, conduct which even Afridis avoid, in keeping women with them on the field. Exactly the same difficulty usually occurs whenever a population rises in insurrection in the West India islands, or, indeed, whenever any negroes, except, we fancy, the Hausas, take the field.—The place of honour in the number is justly left to M. de Pressense, but his essay on "England and France " is a little disappointing. He is partially blinded by the situation in France. He fancies that there is an outburst of militarism in England, and that this is the cause of the strained relations between the two countries ; but he is mis- taken. No one here wishes for war, as M. Cambon will find if he and his chiefs will only be reasonable, and settle im- pending questions with a sincere wish for cordiality. M. de Pressenee is deceived by a confusion between the English readiness to fight if too much galled and an English wish to make war because of the strength of the Fleet. It is a melancholy thought, nevertheless, that if M. de Preasens6 does not understand us nobody will—The discussion by the Right Hon. G. Shaw•Lefevre on "London Street

most gravely and thoughtfully advanced, is that the widening of the great business streets of London is im- possible on account of the enormous oast, and that the

better alternative is the running of new streets through property of lower value, and the buying up of the wretched gardens which in places like Marylebone Road narrow the roads while injuring the houses. We made that latter pro- posal more than thirty years ago, but its execution has been stopped by the preposterous prices asked for property which is often positively injurious to the owners. Even under the most favourable circumstances the cost of a London improve- ment is tremendous :—" Ludgate Hill has been widened of late years in this manner. The houses were set back for a length of 800 feet, 1200 square yards of land were added to

the street, at a cost of £284,000, and the street was widened by about fourteen feet. The cost, therefore, was at the rate of £1,874,000 per mile of length, and the land was bought, for the most part, without trade interests, at the rate of £1,145,000 per acre. In the case of the Strand improvement at Holywell Street, the property to be acquired by the removal of the block of buildings between these two streets is of an inferior character, but it is estimated that the cost will be £569,000. For this sum the Strand will be widened for 500 feet in length, or at the rate of £6,008,000 per mile, and about t h ree- fourths of an acre of land will be added to the public way."

Even London cannot pay such sums out of rates, and must either find some new source of revenue, or content itself with continual but rather small improvements. The present writer would incline to reimpose the Coal-duty, which would enable the Council to raise £25,000,000 as an improvement fund, and let them expend it on plans of their own, subject only to a veto from the Local Government Board on needless expendi- ture; but the Government shrinks from taxation, and the Council from any supervision. The whole article abounds with facts lucidly stated, and should be read by any one interested in London.—Mr. R. P. Cobbold's account of his trip to Lake Balkash, in Russian Turkestan, is a little dull, and oddly enough does not contain any description of the lake itself. Mr. Cobbold does not even seem aware that the lake, two hundred and eighty-two miles long, is in the opinion of geographers slowly dying, its level declining a foot in every five years. The region is, however, so little known that any careful account of the journey there will be read with atten- tion. The throw-off point is Vierny, capital of the province of Semiritche in Siberia, from whence, with a Russian permit and Cossack escort, one gets along through Kirghiz country in sledges.—Professor Fiamingo's paper on the policy of the Holy See is readable and vigorous, its essence being that Leo XIII. is devoted to France and Spain, and dislikes Germany, America, and Italy as now constituted. The essay contains an extraordinary story about the Pope's attitude in the recent war :-

" The bitterness of defeat is still felt at the Vatican, where a sentiment almost amounting to hostility towards the United States prevailed during the war. Leo XIII. is known to have prayed that he might be called away before witnessing the fall of the noble Spanish nation, and only when two prominent American prelates residing in Rome pointed out that the attitude of the Holy See might bring down persecutions on the Catholics of the United States was this attitude changed to one of mute and passive resignation."

The story may be true enough, but who tells anybody outside what the Pope prays about P

The Nineteenth Century for this month begins with two articles on the so-called crisis in the Church. In the first Lord Halifax maintains that the High Church party are the inheritors of the Catholic ideas of the Church before the

Reformation, but declares that there is less difference between his party and the majority than is generally imagined. He writes temperately and with eloquence; but we take it the following extract states nearly his whole posi- tion, and he will find, we believe, that the immense bulk of the English will say : ' This is Romanism, not Protestantism,' and will turn away :—

"There is no one, among those who insist most strenuously on the necessity of the Sacraments, who denies that the Christian soul has direct and immediate access to God, or believes that the Sacraments will save us as mere mechanical instruments with no moral correspondence on our part. There is no one who is in the habit of going to confession, who thinks that he thereby acquires a greater facility to sin with impunity, or that he is able to divest himself of his personal responsibility towards God. There is no one in the habit of attending the daily Eucharist, morning by morning, to the infinite happiness and benefit of his soul, who believes that such attendance at the memorial of Christ's Death and Passion will profit him anything, except in so far as he associates himself in heart and soul with the offering which our Great High Priest once made on the Cross, and now pleads at the Altars of His Church. There is no one who asks the prayers of those brought near to Christ within the veil, who confuses their intercession with the mediation of our Lord and only Saviour. There is no one who prays for the dead who does not know that this life is the one period of probation allotted to us. There is no one who rejoices in the fullness of grace and glory granted to her whose correspondence with the Divine Will entitles her to the unique glory of being called the 'Mother of God' who does not know that Mary is what she is in virtue of the merits of her Son. There is no one who believes the bread and wine in the Eucharist to be what our Lord calls them—' His Body and Blood' —but believes also that the manner of our Lord's presence in the Holy Sacrament is not according to the natural manner of bodies, but is sacramental, after the manner of a spirit, an absolute mystery, to be apprehended by faith."

Lord Halifax states incidentally that his party will not give up the Reservation of the Sacrament, and be- lieves that if they are turned out, it will be to the

profit of the Church of Rome. We agree ; but is that an argument, or even a menace P We object entirely to deprivation, but it is not from fear that a few hundred English gentlemen will go over to Rome. How many will remain there P—Mr. G. W. E. Russell threatens all who assail

the Ritualists with consequences of another kind. " If," he says, "a Parliament, rightly including Jews, Turks, infidels and heretics, lays its profane hands on the Eucharistic faith and worship of the Church, or upon the Ministry of Recon- ciliation, the demand for Disestablishment will be beard in such a volume of voices as will shake the episcopal bench with unwonted tremors." Will the laity go for Disestablish- ment ? that is the point, not whether a section of the clergy will. We are for comprehension, and not exclu- siveness, but until the laity have become Ritualists threats of

this kind seem to us idle as well as unbecoming ; idle because the laity support the Church, unbecoming because if

religion is really involved, secular consequences do not greatly matter.—Sir H. Howorth, writing on the Czar's Rescript, defends war as practically the method through which new and vivifying forces make themselves apparent and beneficiaL He pleads his unpopular cause exceedingly well, but for once he is too sparing of words. He should go over the history of man a little more minutely, and tell us how he proves that the rush of the Tartars—a very big war indeed—proved vivifying, or bow the wars, civil and other,

which reduced Italy to her servitude of centuries benefited mankind. Is not war rather a necessary evil than a clear source of good P We should like to demur, too, to his argu- ment that war is the supreme test of national value. The Turks at their strongest were great warriors, and were of even less value then than now.—Mr. W. F. Lord on " Lord Beaconsfield's Novels" is interesting—it is so rare to hear them praised now—but we question if he dislikes sufficiently Lord Beaconsfield's tinsel. As a novelist the Conservative leader had very singular powers, especially sarcastic powers,

keen insight into men, and a strong though spangled imagi- nation, and we rather wonder that his stories are so little read; but he was horribly unequal. Compare Coningsby or Sybil with Endymion, or the two halves of Contarini Fleming with each other. We refuse, by the way, to class Alroy as "poor." Mr. Disraeli felt the East, and there are passages in Alroy, who was meant to be a Jewish hero, which are full

of the special Jew genius with its mixture of cynicism and imagination. Mr. Lord is eminently right and very keen-

sighted in assigning "high spirits" as one of the charms of these novels, a charm the more remarkable because most of the heroes who in them hunt for the Sangraal fail to find it. We cannot endorse the judgment that Sybil is inferior to Tancred. The political discussion may be out of place, but it is enlightening, while the religious discussion in Tancred leads nowhere, except, it may be, to the rather absurd fantasy that God is a geographer.—We have noticed Mr. Mivart's article on " The New Psychology " elsewhere, and the rest of the number interests us but little.

Blackwood's Magazine, "No. M.," has expanded into a special double number in honour of its thousandth issue, and the result is remarkable for quality as well as balk.

Mr. Andrew Lang, generously oblivious of the slighting allusions in a recent number, leads off with a genial tribute in verse to " Our Fathers," and the topical "Nos Ambrosiana" which follows, with Christopher North as Symposiarch, is embellished with spirited poems by Moira O'Neill and Mr. Neil Munro. The apocryphal chapter " From the New Gibbon" is a brilliant literary feat, and most incisive as a piece of political and social invective. Fiction is handsomely represented by two of the "crowned" authors of the year, Mr, Maurice Hewlett and Mr. Joseph Conrad, as well as by Miss Beatrice Harraden, Mr. Hugh Clifford, and Mr. Bernard Capes.

Miss Harraden's brief allegory, " The Gift of Fulfilment," is extremely clever, though not untinged by morbidity; while Mr. Conrad in the opening chapter of " The Heart of Dark- ness" paints with marvellous skill and a complete absence of effort the horror of a vast African swamp governed by men devoid of capacity and guided by the lowest motives of self- interest. Mr. Charles Whibley traces in ten pages of terse yet vivid prose the tragic career of that strange Frenchman, Arthur Rimbaud, poet, pioneer, and trader; and the " Looker-

on," a propos of Mr. Lecky's recent estimate of Mr. Gladstone, vindicates t he historian's moderation by telling Boehm's anec-

dote as Boehm told it to him (the "Looker-on"). Among other pleasant articles in a memorable number we may especially note Mr. Ian Malcolm's paper on "Jamaica," and the second instalment of Sir John Mowbray's "Seventy Years at West- minster," which is full of enlightenment as well as amusing anecdote. When Sir John went to kiss hands at Wind sor in 1858 on being sworn of the Privy Council, he walked back to the station with Lord Derby, the Lord Chancellor (Chelmsford), Lord Sefton, and several others. " Lord Sefton remarked to Lord Derby, We shall be at Paddington before my brougham will be there.' Lord Derby rejoined, Walk, my boy, walk ; it will do you good.' On which the Lord Chancellor observed, 'No, my Lord ; be will say to you-

" How blest is he who ne'er consents By ill advice to walk ;" '—

a remark that was very appropriate, as the day was stormy, the path muddy, and Lord Sefton was attired in light lavender trousers and thin patent leather boots." He con- firms Sir William Fraser's statement that Disraeli only once laughed in the House of Commons, and gives a vivid account of the incident. Here, again, is a characteristic anecdote of Disraeli's skill in evasion, when attempts were made in 1861

to " draw" him on the subject on the Civil War in America. " On one occasion I recollect a question being put, which he answered in these playful words, ' I can only reply in the words of Lord Palmerston to a question put by Lady —, "I cannot see farther than my nose, and that is a very small one." '" The sympathetic " appreciations " of Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis at the close of the paper will be read with much interest.

The author of " The Disraeli of Liberalism " in last month's Fortnightly contributes a further article on the future of the Liberal party, the gist of which is contained in the following sentences :— " Lord Rosebery is the only Liberal leader whose record has been sufficiently consistent and moderate, and whose present position is sufficiently authoritative and free, to enable him to lead his party out of the house of bondage and into the living air of living issues. Lord Rosebery represents not alone the only practicable foreign policy, but the only practicable Irish policy of the Liberal party. The educator of his party has not only educated it forward to a degree of idealism in Imperial questions ; he has educated it back towards a sober realism upon the Irish question."

This " realism " is defined as the abandonment of the "un- utterably futile attempt to achieve Home-rule by party effort," and the postponement of further steps " until the moment,

whenever that may be, of such a development of events as in showing that there is still an Irish question to settle, would effect at last a settlement by consent. More or less a party of Home-rulers—but no longer a Home-rule party—that is the way out." And again :—" Home-rule is no longer urgent.

Home-rule can wait. Home-rule mast wait If it comes, it will come by an evolution of events, and not by the Parliamentary manceavres of a party."—Baron Pierre de Coubertin's paper on " France since 1814" is aimed "against those legends with which contemporary history and especially our own annals abound." He denounces Jacobinism, scouts the "legendary enthusiasm with which the French nation has so long been supposed to have welcomed the return from Elba," eulogises Wellington for intervening with Alexander I. in order to secure respect for the integrity of France after Waterloo, applauds the policy and " intense moral energy" of Louis XVIII. and the patriotism of Richelieu and Decazes, and concludes with a retrospect of eight years, 1916 to 1824. The article, in short, serves as a preface to Mr. Bodley's recent work on France.—Mr. Beckles Willson, writing on " Newfoundland's Opportunity," anticipates that the propelling power exerted by Mr. Reid will shortly bring about a settlement on the basis of pecuniary compensation for the cession or extermination of the French rights.— " The War Game in South Africa" is the title of Mr. Morley Roberts's bitter onslaught on the disintegration and de- moralisation of Johannesburg. He consoles himself with the reflection, however, that Mr. Rhodes, whom Johannes- burg dreads, "has the future in his pocket," chiefly in virtue of the force of finance, which he is strong enough to use. Mr. Roberts writes with more vigour than lucidity. —Of the two articles on "The Commercial Future," that by Mr. Benjamin Taylor on "The Commercial Sovereignty of the Seas" is chiefly remarkable for its statistics. In 1861 America had within 400,000 tons of our shipping; in 1898 she had 11,812,017 tons less than we had. Bnt just as her mercantile marine was destroyed by one war, Mr. Taylor is convinced that it will be recreated by another, and predicts that the twentieth century will witness an un- paralleled contest between Great Britain and America for the commercial sovereignty of the seas.—" An Irish Unionist," taking much the same alarmist view as the writer in a recent number of the National Review, calls on the Government to come to the protection of the Mayo graziers and landlords, intimidated by the new United Irish League. "Much as Mr. William O'Brien may be discredited in Ireland," he writes, " he has at least power enough left, when backed by the greed of the cottier peasantry of Mayo, to bring as much ruin on his own adopted county as he wrought on Tipperary in the past." The case of Michael Duffy, described at length in the article, if, as the writer says, it is typical of the state of affairs in Mayo, goes a long way to justify his appeal for the proclamation of the county.— Mr. Richard Davey contributes a critical estimate of the novels of Count Albert du Bois, a young Belgian diplomatist, who, though deeply influenced in his methods by Flaubert, has raised the standard of revolt alike against the naturalists and the decadents. The passage quoted from his pamphlet "Ideal et Reel," is notable if only for the remark, "If the Good and the Beautiful do not exist, let us create them."— An instructive article on " Dangerous Trades " is contributed by Mr. H. J. Tennant, M.P., who declares that the legislative task demanded by the situation is "the repeal of the employers' power of objection to Special Rules, and the bestowal of additional powers upon the Secretary of State." The State must recognise, he adds, that appeal to employers' sentiment is no remedy.

Mr. H. C. Thomson, whose remarkable book on Rhodesia was noticed in the Spectator of December 17th, drives home some of his weightiest arguments in a paper on "The Rule of the Chartered Company" in the National Review for February. Dispelling the false analogy so often insisted on between the charters of the East India and the British South Africa Companies, he points out that while the avowed object of the latter was humanitarian rather than commer- cial, that object has been used merely as a veil for the forcible acquisition of territory, and the enforced servitnde of its inhabitants. As regards the material development of the country, Mr. Thomson observes that the country has not been fairly tested. Rebellion and rinderpest have delayed its development, and, while admitting that there is every reason to hope that it will gradually force its way to a condition of prosperity and independence, he remarks :—" What has damaged it is, that it has been treated from the first as a boom country, and when, in the face of unforeseen calamities, it has failed to realise the ex- travagant anticipations formed of its capabilities, people with just as little reason have begun to lose faith in it altogether. The phenomenal success of Johannesburg has demoralised every one in South Africa, and has engendered a restless anxiety to grow hurriedly rich, which is not a good thing for a young colony." His most damaging quotations are from those,on the spotoar_most directly concerned, e.g., the recent statement of the Bulawayo Chronicle :—" It is becoming every day more evident that we must depend on ourselves, that a resumption of faith must emanate from Rhodesia, and not from optimistic speeches by chairmen, or expert reports by nonentities." As for the railway, he quotes from Mr. Rhodes's candid speech at Port Elizabeth on the mutual ad- vantages to North and South of the extension to Tanganyika : —" You will send me the goods, and we will bring down the millions of labourers and distribute them amongst the mines. At Tanganyika they laboar for twopence a day." —The monthly commentary on the Dreyfus case contains an exhaustive examination of the scope of the inquiry by Sir Godfrey Lushington, to which his letter in the Times of Tuesday forma a valuable postscript; an article on the clerical crusade by Mr. F. C. Conybeare full of significant and sinister extracts culled from sixteen issues of the Pelerin and the Croix, strictly religions newspapers; and a paper from the editor on "The Only Mystery," in which Mr. Manse pats this pertinent query : "Why have the French military authorities fought so furiously against the Revision of the Dreyfus case, seeing that, on their own assumption, the guilt of the prisoner is so glaring that nothing can result from a rehearing except a confirmation of the original conviction P" The last sentence of the article, in view of the most recent developments, is also worth quoting : "The only possible service foreigners can render is to prepare public opinion for the crimes that are contemplated should the Cover de Caseation be successfully intimidated at the eleventh hour."—Mr Maurice Low in "The Month in America" pays a tribute to the remarkable astuteness displayed by the President as an apostle of expansion in his tour in the Southern States, and retorts with crushing effect on the Southern critics who have resented his (Mr. Low's) condemnation of the recent hideous massacres of negroes in Wilmington. Scratch a Southerner,' is Mr. Low's last word, " and you will find a negro hater." —The number also contains a charming paper by Mr. Austin Dobson on " Grub Street of the Arts "—the St. Mar- tin's Lane of the last century—and a spirited vindication of Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons and Lord Raglan, his two chiefs in the Crimea, by Admiral Masse, who deals some rude knocks to Mr. Kinglake, Sir Edward Hamley, and Sir William Russell.