THE MAGAZINES.

IF Mr. Frank Harris, the editor of the Fortnightly Review, is, as we half-fancy, from his recent attempts, just trying his strength as a novelist, he may rest content. His story of June was an excessively unpleasant one, and his story of this month has in it something horrible ; but they will leave, taken together, no doubt in the mind of any competent critic that their author has a genius for story-telling, that he can devise an exciting narrative, can create the effect of atmosphere in a most unusual way, and can make his characters reveal themselves in their entirety without the aid of description from the outside. The very air of Spain is around the reader of " Montes, the Matador," and Benvennto Cellini might have written his account of his own up-bringing, of his courtship, his jealousy, and its result. There is a positive genius for effect in that account of his own training among the bulls,—a training so complete that it imparts to his splendid courage a certain taint, of which his final exclamation shows that he is himself conscious, a taint as of treachery. It is a story to read, not for enjoyment, which to most natures it will not give, but for the pleasure to be derived from seeing fine and original work.—This number of the Fortnightly contains also one of the very best serious articles we ever remember to have seen in a magazine. It is the first of a series on South Africa, by "A South African," and consists of a preliminary description of the country which has the rare merit of being perfectly intelligible. It is strange how the majority of " Colonists " and "old residents" and even " natives " fail in that. One gets, it is true, some idea of Australia, but only the novelists describe South Africa ; no one has given an idea of India, though Meadows Taylor enables us to realise bits of its scenery ; and there is not in literature that we know of, a good attempt to enable strangers to under- stand the distinctive features of Nature in the American States,—do you who question that tell us how many hedges there are in the American Union P The returned South African makes us understand what " the Bush" is like, and wherein lies the charm of the Karoos, the vast barren, or nearly barren, ledges by which Africa slopes southwards to the ocean, which prints them on the minds of all who cross them with ineffaceable force. We have not space to extract the account of the Karoo, a bit of word-painting which seems to us absolutely perfect, and must apologise even for this quotation about the bush :— " If, leaving Cape Town, we go a few hundred miles eastward, along the coast, we shall find the lowland belt assume a new character. The hills, though high, are softer and more rounded, and covered completely with soil and coarse, short grass; or their sides, and even summits, are clothed in bush, stretching some- times for ten, twenty, or fifty miles. This bush is neither forest nor scrub. In the valleys of high mountains, or along the beds of watercourses, it often becomes forest, with thick-stemmed, timber producing trees ; and monkey-ropes thicker than a man's arm hang from the branches, and there is forest shade and still- ness. But, in the main, South African bush is composed of creeper-like shrubs, sometimes attaining 40 ft. in height, and of many various hollow-stemmed succulent plants, aloe, elephant's food, euphorbia, the last of which here often attains the height of a tall tree, but is so light that cut down a child may drag it. Sometimes the bush is more or less continuous, the shrubs and bushes being intersected everywhere by what seem like little dry paths. But in its most characteristic form the bush consists of large isolated clumps of vegetation ; there is the kunee, a great creeper-like tree, whose interlaced branches, touching the ground everywhere, form beehive-shaped masses looking like immense Kafir huts ; around it spring up elephant's food, namnam, and wild asparagus, and perhaps a tall euphorbia tree, with its cactus- like leaves, shoots up into the air through it. These clumps of vegetation, sometimes almost solid, and often forty or fifty feet in circumference, are divided from others by spaces of short, smooth grass, usually brown, except after the early rains. In this bush it is particularly easy to lose oneself. As you pass round clump after clump, there are always others of exactly the same shape as before, and you find sometimes you have gone two or three times round the same mass. Oxen once lost in this bush may not be discovered for days, though behind the next clump, and it is almost hopeless to look for them unless one can gain an eminence and oversee a wide reach. This bush is the peculiar home of the great scarlet geranium, now common in English hot-houses, and of the delicate blue starlike plumbago, and of endless ferns ;. but the heaths and flowers of the Western Province are not found here. Eighty years ago this tract was alive with elephants, lions, bush-buck, and wild animals of all kinds. Now the elephants are extinct, except where artificially preserved, bush-buck are scarce, a few large leopards may still be found in sequestered kloofs, and wild cats and monkeys are still not uncommon, but a lion has not been seen here for forty years. Thousands of small birds are found in the bush, who feed on the berries abundant everywhere ;

in the depths of one kunee tree twenty or thirty will sometimes be heard chirping."

Everything, be it remembered, is on the vastest scale ; the bush covers provinces, the Karoo would hold a hundred counties, the grass-covered plains northward, in Bechuanaland, for -example, would contain kingdoms ; and it is a specialty of South Africa that more than in any division of the world you are aware of this :—" There is nothing measured, small, nor petty in South Africa. We recall once, many years ago, travelling from Port Elizabeth to Grahamstown in a post-cart with a woman just come from England. All day we had travelled up through the bush, and at midnight came out on a height where before us as far as the eye could reach stretched the bush, without break or sign of human habitation. She began to sob ; and, in reply to our questions, could only say inarticulately, ' Oh, it is so terrible ! There is so much of it!'" {It is a curious comment on this statement, that in another article of the same magazine, Mr. Doyle estimates the forgotten region of Gazaland, King Gungunhama's territory, at 480,000 square miles, two Frances with England thrown in, hardly inhabited, and fit for European life.) A bigness which terrifies is everywhere, as is also amidst the variety of scenery an underlying likeness or close relation throughout the whole. It is all " African " in the impression it leaves,—an impression arising in part from a certain separateness, in part from the peculiar dry heat, which is not like Indian heat or South American heat, but is a distinct and recognisable effect of the sun, and in part from the fact that, in one respect, every pro- vince is like every other. In each and in all there is the strangest mixture of races, nationalities, and colours ; one peculiarity or another may be more predominant in one pro- vince, but none is strong enough to mark off that province from the rest. In every Colony and State, and in a less degree in every Dependency of South Africa, mankind is jumbled.—Nothing else strikes us much in the Fortnightly, for we are unable to estimate highly Mr. Wells's " Re- discovery of the Unique." It is merely a statement, so far as we see, in rather too pompous a form, that thoughtful men, 'after being a little bewildered by an over-reckless application of the ideas of universal and irresistible law, are rediscovering that no two leaves are alike,—that, in fact, perfect similarity between any two things does not exist. That, says Mr. Wells, is fatal to the atomic theory and to the Cab Act. We dare say it may be, and that it may make miracle probable besides, as Mr. Wells thinks; but before speaking so positively, we should like microscopic investigation of all kinds to advance a little further, to be pursued, say, for another century or so. Pending that search, we may suggest that, to affirm, as Mr. Wells seems to do, that the identity of two numbers is an illusion, is only to destroy one's power of thinking. He means, we suppose, that numbers are representative, and that the things represented cannot be alike ; but for all that, to say that e cannot equal s2 is to destroy the reasoning power, and make all thought, including Mr. Wells's thought, illusory.

We do not remember—perhaps it is our own ignorance —ever to have seen the name of E. Nesbit appended to a magazine story before. If " Blue Roses," in Longman's Magazine, is a maiden effort, it is a very hopeful one. There is humour in the writer, of a finely restrained satiric kind which has become a little scarce.

The story-tellers are strong in the heavier magazines this month. Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in " The Finest Story in the World," Contemporary Review, only plays with a startling fancy, that what we think the story- teller's imagination may occasionally be only his memory, that now and then the " locked door " may open in his mind, and he may be recounting to us all unconsciously things he has done or witnessed in a previous life ; but his illustration of his hinted theory is exceedingly good. The difference of style between the weak bank-clerk recounting his present experiences, and the same man describing as a sketch for a novel the life of a Greek galley-slave which he had passed through, and, in fact, remembers when he thinks -he is only inventing it, is a real triumph of literary art. It only needs, but no doubt it does need, a larger scale of work. In this paper, as in " The Light that Failed," and in many of his ballads, Mr. Rudyard Kipling gives the reader a singular impression of feeling about in his mind, as if he knew that somewhere in it there was an instrument of rare power, and he could not yet find the handle.—Mr. Spielmann gossips pleasantly about the artists who have worked on Punch, telling us occasionally a fact of interest, among others that Mr. Tenniel has given us, first and last, two thousand cartoons in Punch,—an enormous mass of work, usually of the first class. That he is not exhausted yet is shown by his noble drawing, " Dropping the Pilot ; " and we should like one day to know—may the day be far off !—whether he has or has not generally originated his own subjects. Everybody who writes on Punch remarks on the singular cleanness of the great comic journal ; but that, remembering the English taste, seems hardly so noteworthy to us as the absence of vitriolic humour. Dirt would not pay Punch, but savagery very often would, and the good-humour of so many wits for so many years is really noteworthy. There was a trace of savageness in the older caricaturists which has disappeared, and while welcoming the improvement, we hardly understand its cause. The people are hardly so much softened as they appear in Punch.—There is not very much in Sir H. Parkes's " Union of the Australias," except evidence that the Premier of New South Wales is a thorough political optimist, and very hearty in his approval of Australian Federa- tion. It is really pleasant to read a prophet so entirely certain that the future will be a pleasant one. In these old States of Europe, we all are ready to doubt it ; but something in the air of Australia—can it be the local champagne P—seems to make even old men cheery.—Professor Stokes's paper on " The Apology ' of Aristides" will be read with interest by all educated theologians, and they will share his hope that the " Apology " of Quadratus, who died for the faith in A.D. l25, may be discovered also. The " Apology " was presented by the Athenian philosopher Aristides to the Emperor Hadrian, and though widely circulated at the time, was supposed to be lost. It has, however, been discovered by Professor Rendel Harris, of Pennsylvania, in the Convent of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, though translated into Syriac from the original Greek. It has been published in English by the University of Cambridge, and is the earliest account, outside the New Testament, of the views entertained by Christians. This is Aristides' view of the nature of God :—

" The Apology which Aristides the philosopher made before Hadrian the King concerning the worship M God : I, 0 King, by the grace of God came into this world : and having contemplated the heavens and the earth and the seas, and beheld the sun and the rest of the orderly creation, I was amazed at the arrangement of the world ; and I comprehended that the world and all that is therein are moved by the impulse of another, and I understood that He that moveth them is God, who is hidden in them and con- cealed from them ; and this is well known that that which moveth is more powerful than that which is moved. And that I should investigate concerning this mover of all, as to how He exists—for this is evident to me, for He is incomprehensible in His nature— and that I should dispute concerning the steadfastness of His government, so as to comprehend it fully, is not profitable for me ; for no one is able perfectly to comprehend it. But I say concerning the mover of the world, that He is God of all, who made all for the sake of man ; and it is evident to me that this is expedient, that one should fear God and not grieve man. Now, I say that God is not begotten, not made ; a constant nature, without beginning and without end ; immortal, complete, and incompre- hensible ; and in saying that Ho is complete I mean this—that there is no deficiency in Him, and He stands in need of nought, but everything stands in need of Him : and in saying that He is without beginning I mean this—that everything which has a beginning has also an end, and that which has an end is dis- soluble. He has no name, for everything which has a name is associated with the created ; He has no likeness, nor composition of members, for he who possesses this is associated with things fashioned. He is not made, nor is he male or female. The heavens do not contain Him, but the heavens, and all things visible and invisible, are contained in Him. Adversary he has none, for there is none that is more powerful than He. Anger and wrath He possesses not, for there is nothing that can stand against Him. Error and forgetfulness are not in His nature, for He is altogether wisdom and understanding, and in Him consists all that consists. He asks no sacrifice and no libation, nor any of the things that are visible : He asks not anything from any one, but all ask from Him."

The Nineteenth Century is full of papers of the second class, though Mr. Rennell Rodd's account of Aristoteles Valaoritis, "the poet of the Klephts," the brigand•liberators of the Greek War of Independence, is perhaps entitled to a higher place. Valaoritis, a wealthy noble of Epirus, was also an ardent Hellene, and a poet who, his countrymen think, will live for ever. He used the tongue of the people instead of that of the literary class, and thus shut himself out from1general recognition ; but the vehicle he employed only added to his local popularity. Mr. Rodd confesses his inability to give

more than the matter of his verses, and the following lacks, of course, the ring of the double rhymes, the swing of the original metre. It is strong, nevertheless, its subject being the flight of the Vizier All from the insurgent Suliotes, who, with their women at their head, attacked and defeated him in a defile :—

"They fly, they fly—the doom is just, And pale fear follows in their wake ; The black of night and the night mist, These are their only company.

They dash through forest and ravine, The spurs drip drops of blood; The horse flings spume-flakes like the sea— Ali is afraid—he is but just in time.

As he goes by, it needs but a wind's breath, A creaking branch, a falling leaf, A bird that flies, a roebuck scared away, A little stream that murmurs in the gorge, And All trembles at them all !

A cold sweat bathes Ms forehead; His horse pricks up his ears, holds breath, And draws up sharp—it was a wolf went by !

The horseman grips his saddle tight, His eyes behold Tsavellas everywhere; On every side he seems to see The gleam of naked sabres.

His white beard, white like snow, Is caught by the wind, blown across his mouth And back, divided round his throat As though it meant to strangle him ; And as the sea waves, blown on by the south wind, Are lost running on into the darkness, And only visible to sight By the foam that blanches their crests, So on this night the horse flew past As a wave runs up into the gloom— A sable wave round rolling With All Pacha's beard for foam."

—Mr. W. Frewen Lord ventures to attack Paoli, the Corsican Dictator, who, he thinks, was treacherous to the English after he had invited them to Corsica, and ultimately made the island untenable to them. We were well rid of it; but it is not easy to understand, if the facts are as Mr. Lord represents them, why such a myth gathered in this country around Pasquale Paoli's name. —Rajah Mull Manohar pleads for State grants to revive the artistic industries of India, but gives no reason why they should not revive of themselves. Whatever the English may have done, they have not lessened private wealth in India, or rendered it difficult for any native to build either gateway or palace or temple. It was not the State which paid for the best examples of Hindoo architecture, or the State which bought either the splendid stuffs or the muslin like "woven wind."—Mr. H. H. Champion on Labour is always interesting, and he can write most masculine prose; but he does•not give us much nutriment this time in his defence of the Eight-Hours Bill. What he does give is a savagely spirited attack on the new captains of industry, and great dis- tributors who are so rapidly buying out the old owners of the soil. Which, however, he thinks the worse offence, sweating one's employs or buying out an old family, is not exactly clear. We are not very fond of the new millionaires, but Mr. Champion might remember that the old families also " bought out " old families, though they paid only in hard blows.—Sir J. Stephen gives us a clear account of the law of gambling, and would have it declared illegal in itself, and all bets made void, even if made through an agent. We have no objection, but we greatly doubt if the change would. have much social effect. The crowd on a racecourse which bets with a bookmaker does not sue him for not paying.

It calls him a "welsher," rips his clothes off, and kicks him as near to death as it dare.—Mr. Arnold-Forster makes a valuable suggestion on the question how to use our two thousand Naval Volunteers. He says :- " At the present moment there are stored up at our principal dockyards nearly one hundred torpedo-boats. These are known as first-class torpedo-boats'—they are from 90 to 100 ft. in length, and have a speed of from sixteen to twenty knots. It so happens that by the changes in naval construction they have become practically obsolete for the purpose for which they were originally intended. Too small to keep the sea, they have been replaced by larger boats of 180 ft. and upwards. Too large to be hoisted on board ship, they have been supplemented by large numbers of 60 fit boats. At present they lie smothered in tallow and white lead in the dockyards, an embarrassment to the dockyard officials and an incubus to the Navy. On the rare occasions when they are sent to sea special crews have to be found for them, and to furnish such crews calls are made on the seagoing ships. As a rule, the best officers and the best seamen, and very often also the best engineers, are called away for the purpose. The ship's company from which they are taken is_ obviously rendered less efficient, nor is the scratch crew, despite the excellent materials it is composed of, a good one. Officers and men are unaccustomed to the boat and its peculiarities; its machinery is often novel; by the time they have learnt to make the best use of the craft they are taken out of it. As a rule, the boat's crew is totally unacquainted with the intricacies of our home waters ; moreover, be it said with respect, the blue-jacket is almost always a very inferior boatman.

He therefore recommends that these boats be handed over to Volunteer crews, with guarantees for their efficiency. " If my plan be carried out, a single telegram will send to sea 100 torpedo-boats manned by some of the beat seamen in the United Kingdom, men who know the territorial waters per- fectly, who are capable, daring, longing for distinction, and gifted with the initiative which is essential to success in naval operations." That seems sense.