THE MAGAZINES.

No one has as yet sung fittingly the Jubilee Ode. The Poet- Laureate's was a failure ; and Mr. Swinburne's, which is a hymn to England, not to her Queen, though it contains some fine lines, is full also of verses which are nothing but words. What, for example, can be more like mere noise than this ?—

" As music made of rolling thunder

That hurls through heaven its heart sublime, Its heart of joy, in charging chime, So ring the songs that round and under

Her temple surge and climb."

This, however, is a fine image. England is standing,—

" The sea cast round her like a mantle, The sea-cloud like a crown."

And this is no inadequate description of our Monarchical Republic :—

"A commonweal arrayed and crowned

With gold and purple, girt with steel At need, that foes must fear or feel, We find her, as our fathers found,

Earth's lordliest commonweal."

Mr. Buchanan's ode in the Contemporary, which he calls " Annus Aureoles," is rather a statement of reasons for not rejoicing, each as Ireland, the social evil, and the recurrence of conquest, and though the reasons are sometimes strongly stated, the melody is often a jingle to which we never can grow recon- ciled. The most important paper in the Nineteenth Century, Mr. Gladatone's reply to Mr. Lecky, we may notice hereafter ; but the number contains many readable papers. Mr. Carlin's, on The Mental Happiness of Animals," is perhaps a little dreamy, and we should hardly call the play in which undoubtedly many beasts and birds indulge a mental pleasure. The sense of victory which falls so constantly to the share of wild beasts must, how- ever, be mental, and so must that enjoyment in freedom of which all beasts give such obvious signs. The sociability of animals must create, when gratified, mental pleasure, and that enjoyment which so many of them delight in, which we mortals call " kef.," must be more than rest, and be in some measure mental. Mr. Carlin, however, pushes an optimist view somewhat far when he claims for the animal world. immunity from anxiety. Many animals are intensely anxious when parted from their young or expecting danger, and we have no proof that they are not as uneasy as human beings at the prospect of hunger. At all events, some of them will undergo severe labour in order to avoid prospective want, and we can hardly dissociate foresight of that kind from anxiety. Miss Knatchbull-Hageseen's sketch of life in Newnham is bright and entertaining, though she would have done a service if she had entered a little more into the reasons which as yet induce the girls of the "leisured classes" usually to avoid the female college. It certainly is not fear for their religion, though that is often alleged, Newnham being as orthodox as the rest of the world ; or dread of becoming too cultivated, for cultivation of a kind is fashionable. We fancy a certain difference of custom as to the age at which girls are "finished" ie becoming clearly marked as a dividing-line between the two upper grades of society, and has much to do with it, Lady Gladys entering society just at the age at which a girl-student from the profes- sional class enters college. There is, however, some preju- dice besides, which Miss Rnatchbull.Hugessen's paper may do a little to dissipate. She draws a picture of a healthy, active, and well-filled life, needing only reform in a trick of dowdyiam which many of the best educated of the Newnham and Girton students are apt to catch, and which stands in curious contrast to the maeherism of their brothers and cousins. The subject of Mr. Woolner's paper, the beggar-poet, James Chambers, was interesting in a way as a "character," but hardly as a poet. It is rare to find a man who wanders as a tramp through life hardly clothed, never fully fed, and lodged usually in outhouses on the straw, yet who incessantly occupies himself with making rhymes. Chambers seems to have been pious and honest ; but he was a beggar all through, always whining for relief, and never turning to work even in his thoughts. He possessed, however, some genuine poetic feeling and some occasional faculty of poetic expression, both of which are shown in "The Wounded Soldier's Return," though the majority of his ballads quoted by Mr. Woollier are limping rubbish worse than those of Poet Close. The really interesting point about the man is his life, which was rather that of a wild animal than that of a human being. Some undefinable instinct kept him for ever on the tramp, and he could not stay in a lodging even when one was provided for him. Miss Gordon Cumming's article on " Strange Medicines " will strongly attract those who are interested in the by-ways of the human mind. AU races seem at one time or other to have attached medicinal virtues to preparations made from the flesh or bones of strange beasts, and in China or Japan they are still believed in, the few native doctors in the latter country who adhere to the old practice importing snake-skins, tiger-flesh, mammoths' bones, rhinoceros and deer's horns, and dried scorpions. Miss Caroming found all these things in the shop of a druggist, who would besides sell you a pre- paration from almost any animal known in Japan. The native doctors are being rapidly extinguished by competitors familiar with the science of Europe; but one wonders whether they were conscious impostors, or if they had any theory such as many cannibals undoubtedly have, that the qualities of the thing eaten pass to the eater. That is, we believe, the explana- tion of the Chinese passion for tiger-flesh ; but does it extend to other drugs of the kind P And if so, what quality is powdered narwhal ivory supposed to impart P The editor of the Fortnightly Review has almost filled it with Jubilee papers, accounts of the progress of literature, science, thought, music, and material wealth during the Queen's reign. They are all well written by competent hands, but they are all, to us at least, unattractive. An exception may be made for a piece of brilliant writing by Mr. J. A. Symonds, in which the historian of the Renaissance essays to prove that the scientific advance of our day has deepened spirituality. With his argument that science tends to show that the ultimate energy must be a mind, we heartily agree ; but we can hardly follow the meaning of the thought in the lines we have itali- cised. If the world can think, why not a tree ? And what do we mean, or Mr. Symonds either, if we say that a tree thinks P A state of consciousness far below thought is thinkable, and all things may, if we misuse the word, be " conscious ;" but to be more conscious than man, the inanimate must think, which is a contradiction in terms. Or if, again, we are to assume that the inanimate is animate, our senses tell us nothing, and what is

the use of thinking about anything? It is better to believe in the doctrine of " Maya " at once, and suppose that consciousness itself may be a deception, and that as evidence is impossible, so is true thought

"Finding thought to be the very essence of man considered as a natural product, we are compelled to believe that there is thought in all the products which compose this universe. Nothing can be clearer, as the result of three centuries of scientific industry, than that there is neither loss of elements nor abrupt separation of species in the Homes, but that the whole is wrought of the same ground materials and evolved in ite multiplicity of forms out of the same fundamental constituents. If then we discover thought in man upon one plane of this immense development, how can we deny it to existences on other planes P How can we conceive that the primitive energies out of which the whole proceeded were not conscious or pregnant with consciousness P If mind is our sole reality and self, is it not the sole reality and self of all? Does not our mind necessitate an universal mind ? Must we not maintain that, the universe being in one rhythm, things less highly organised than man possess consciousness, in the degrees of their descent less acute than man's ? Must we not also surmise that ascending scales of existences more highly organised, of whom we are at present ignorant, are endowed with consciousness superior to man's ? It is not incredible that the globe on which we live is vastly more conscious of itself than we are of ourselves; and that the cells which compose our corporeal frame are gifted with a separate consciousness of a simpler kind than ours."

Of the remaining two papers, one is an article on the Session, by "A Gladstonian Member," who says the Government is respon- sible for the waste of time that has occurred; and an immense paper on the military position of Great Britain by Sir Charles Dilke. It is pervaded by a most pessimist spirit, the writer evidently believing that London could be "rushed," even by a small force landing in the South-East of England. His practical advice, however—which is, in brief, to perfect our artillery, rearm the infantry and Volunteers with the repeating-rifle, and make sure that our stores of shells, cartridges, and powder are sufficient—is worth attentive study. If we are ever conquered, it will be from unreadiness in matters in which—as, for instance, in artillery—improvisation is impossible.

We do not care about Mr. Gladstone's paper, in the Con- temporary Review, on "The Great Olympian Sedition," except as a literary curiosity, though he may be quite right in thinking that that strange legend may cover some historic fact in the development of Greek nationality. Mr. Dale's paper, "The Liberal Party and Home-rule," is a temperate statement of the views of those who still think that the Liberal Party may be reunited about Ireland. We cannot, however, think those views well founded. They rest upon the theory that the Gladstonians are secretly ready to give up many of the most important provisions of Mr. Gladstone's Bill, and especially the right of Ireland to legislate wherever legislation is not expressly forbidden, and the separation in the fiscs of the two countries. We can see no evidence of any such change, and fear that the Gladstonians with whom Mr. Dale discusses the subject are the most moderate of their party. Certainly they go far beyond their leader and the most moderate of the Parnellites, who are the ultimate masters of the situation. Mr. R. L. Stevenson's account of his father, the engineer to the Board of Northern Lights, and inventor of the best lights for lighthouses, is far too abort, but it reveals a most interesting man, who seems to have united in himself the characteristics of two races :— " He was a man of a somewhat antique strain : with a blended sternness and softness that was wholly Scottish and at first somewhat bewildering ; with a profound essential melancholy of disposition and (what often accompanies it) the most humorous geniality in com- pany; shrewd and childish ; passionately attached, passionately pre- judiced; a man of many extremes, many faults of temper, and no very stable foothold for himself among life's troubles. Yet he was a wise adviser ; many men, and these not inconsiderable, took counsel with him habitually. I sat at his feet,' writes one of these, when I asked his advice, and when the broad brow was set in thought and the firm mouth said his say, I always knew that no man mold add to the worth of the conclusion.' He had excellent taste, though whim- sical and partial; collected old furniture and delighted specially in sunflowers long before the days of Mr. Wilde ; took a lasting pleasure in prints and pictures; was a devout admirer of Thomson of Budding- etas at a time when few shared the taste ; and though he read little, was constant to his favourite books. He had never any Greek ; Latin he happily re.taught himself after he had left school, where be was a mere consistent idler : happily, I say, for Lsotantius, Vossius, and Cardinal Bona were his chief authors. The first he must have read for twenty years uninterruptedly, keeping it near him in his study and carrying it in his bag on journeys."

He was a man of morbid conscientiousness, very humorous, and such an artist in language that when suffering from partial aphasia, he would reject word after word as inaccurate or in- adequate, and at last leave his sentences unfinished. That is a portrait of a man of whom one would rejoice to hear more.

"Faith Healing and Fear Killing" we have noticed elsewhere, and to us the article of the number is Mr. Lang's moat amusing protest against the lengths to which accusations of plagiarism are now carried. Novelists, in particular, will soon be forbidden to use the " common forms " of sensational plots, and be cora- polled to add footnotes to explain whence they derived their information. This form of hypercriticism is absurd, as well as often malicious ; but does not Mr. Lang unconsciously attach a little too much importance to it? Was any author of merit ever really injured by a charge, more especially a groundless charge, of the kind P Mr. Howard Evans, in his very determined paper on " Leasehold Enfranchisement," proves what needed little proof, that freehold is a better tenure for building land; but he does not prove in the least that the Legislature has a right to break contracts made by full-grown men quite familiar with the subject-matter. That the country would be happier if all men owned their houses, we fully believe; but so it would be if they all owned property of any other kind. That is no reason for distributing property among them all. Mr. Rider Haggard has lost an opportunity. He might have described Cyprus as no one else could do, and so have made every Englishman realise what that dependency really is ; but, instead, be has only given us an argument for capitalising the tribute-293,000 a year—now paid to Turkey. The island needs money for improvements, and if the tribute were capitalised, would have 863,000 a year to spend on much-needed improvements. That is perfectly true, and if Cyprus elects to remain for fifty years with us, it would be wise to pay off the Sultan; but it is rather hard that States which profess intense eagerness to quit our rale should ask us to pledge our credit for them.

There is a valuable paper on English coinage in Murray's Magazine, by the Master of the Mint, with illustrations which make us fear that the art of portraiture, as applied to coins, has retrograded in this country. Certainly no coin struck since the accession of George I. bears a por- trait approaching in merit the one of Charles II. by Thomas Simon, engraver of the Mint at the Restoration. It seems to us that this question of portraiture is much more im- portant than that of design, and that modern carelessness on the subject is almost criminal. All pictures will disappear in a thousand years, but the coins will remain. The portrait of the Queen to appear on the coins after the Jubilee is ungainly to the last degree; the veil falling behind spoils the pose of the bead, and the Imperial Crown is falling off. We agree that the St. George, and the Dragon is a truly national device, and only wish it were the reverse for all coins, ridding us for the future of those confused shields the meaning of which the people have forgotten.