THE MAGAZINES.

THE Fortnightly has a strong number this month. We have noticed Mr. Watson's fine poem elsewhere. In "Georges Darien" Oaida deals with a new French writer who describes

the seamy side of French military life with terrible realism. It was, it seems, Georges Darien's misfortune to be con- demned to serve in one of the punishment battalions of the French Army. To these penal regiments, quartered in Africa, are sent all the insubordinate conscripts of the French Army.

English officers sometimes speak well of the plan, as it avoids imprisoning men who are only guilty of acts of insubordi- nation and not disgraceful crimes. If, however, Georges Darien tells the truth, they must be veritable hells upon earth. Here is his account of some of the horrors of Biribi-

such is the slang name given to the punishment battalions

Another soldier, Barnaux, has had some liqueurs given him by a comrade; Barnaux is drinking with the men of his marabout, when a sergeant enters, espies the irregularity, takes the offender before the officer in command. Barnaux refuses to say who the giver of the liqueur was. The Captain orders him to be put in irons. They have put him d is crapaudine. that is, with his arms bound behind him and chained to his ankles. He is cast down thus on the sand of the camp. Because he moans with pain they gag him with a dirty rag they tie his chin to his head with a cord. He remains all the night thus, tied up into a shapeless packet. In the morning when they change sentinels they perceive that he is dead. The gag has stifled him."

Here, again, is Ouida's summary of another portion of the book :— " Read only of the punishment of the tombeau for simple sins of negligence or thoughtless mirth. The tombcau is a canvas cover, stretched on stakes, making a cage a metre Ion,' by sixty centi- metres wide, into which the soldier condemned to. this torment is obliged to creep on his stomach as best he can. In this cage he spends days, weeks, months, at the caprice of his tyrants, with a litre of water as his only drink, and nothing but the canvas between him and the scorching heat or icy rain, or blinding desert dust. On hot days the water in his little can evaporates rapidly; and at the will of the corporals in charge of him he may be kept thirty-six hours without other drink and without food at all. Remember, as you read these lines, that the tombeau has been the home for months of the man who describes it ; a home on the scorching Algerian sand in the parching African weather ; a home in which he envied the jackal its lair and the vulture its wings ; a home in which his flesh rotted and his manhood swooned."

We fear that this account of the things done in the punishment battalions in Algiers and Tunis is, to a great extent, well founded. Undoubtedly the fact that in a conscript Army it is unnecessary to think whether the service is being made unpopular has a demoralising effect in the matter of punishments. The knciwledge.that whatever happens the men will always come to the colours in unending streams makes the authorities callous. It is greatly to the credit of our officers that while maintaining all the essentials of discipline better than the French, they contrive to give punishments in a way which does not make the service unpopular or drive away recruits. Their secret is not gentleness, but as far as is humanely possible, justice. Strict discipline is not unpopular if the men know that they will not be punished for offences they have not committed. But.naturally it is much easier to deal reasonably with men who are in the Army because they chose it as a profession than with the unfortunate lads who are swept into the ranks against their will, and who look on their military service as pure misery. An English soldier when he feels miserable says, "What a fool I was to join." A French conscript in the same position says, "What a cruel and vile thing it was to force me from my home and put me against my will into this place of torment." There is a world of

difference between these two moods.—" Gibraltar as a Winter Resort" will interest all who know the Rock. No doubt a hotel built up the hillside at a thousand feet above the sea-level would provide a splendid climate under the British

flag and give sea and mountain air combined. The difficulty is the very proper desire of the military authorities to keep down the civil population in a place which is, after all, only a huge fort. The hotel, however, would be sure to empty itself weeks before war had been declared, and the authorities

might then use it as a convenient barrack. That Gibraltar will in the end become one of the greatest ports in the Mediterranean, we do not doubt.—" The Clondyke Gold- fields " is an article that will be eagerly read. The author says that some of the early miners made £200 a day in Klondike.—The last article, unsigned, is a clever piece of

criticism of the German Emperor. Here is the writer's summary of theresults of the Kaiser's policy:—

"We may now sum irp the results of the Emperor William's activity in the domain of foreign politics since his dismissal of Prince Bismarck. These are :—(l) Germany has lost her position as the leading Power in Europe ; (2) Russia has

taken her place ; (3) France has become the ally of Russia ; (4) the Triple Alliance has almost ceased to exist ; (5) England has been alienated from Germany ; and (6) the bond beliveen Russia and Germany has been snapped and not renewed. We have lately been told that out ot this confusion a new European system is to be constructed by the genius of the German Emperor. The idea is that the five continental Powers are to be united in a coalition against Great Britain, who is to be bled or dismembered for the benefit of all. Only a very sanguine person will dismiss this story as too absurd to be true. One thing, however, seems clear. If this extravagant scheme is not realised, the only alternative for Germany will be Isolation."

The Contemporary contains an account of the Klondike region by Mr. Harry de Windt which is of importance, as be was in the district only a year ago. Though he admits the hard- hips, he thinks that the stories of the cold have been exaggerated. There is seldom any wind, and therefore the

low temperatures are bearable.—" Germanicus's " account of the revolt of South Germany against the Prussians and Junkerdom is most curious. The Bavarians and Wurtem- bergers and Badeners are German patriots, but unless driven by external pressure it seems doubtful whether they will much longer endure the Prussianising of the Empire. The old Emperor never forgot he was the German Emperor. William II. seems on the high road to become the Prussian Emperor.—Mr. Norman Hapgood's study of Mr. Morley is a most remarkable piece of criticism. Though its method is reasonable and balanced, it is in effect quite merciless, and will set up a feeling of indignation and reaction even in readers who are not inclined to admire Mr. Morley greatly either as a man of letters or as a politician. Mr. Morley is at bottom a Jacobin, though a Jacobin steeped in British moderation, British respectability, and British common-sense —we admit that this sounds a contradiction, but it is nevertheless true—but one is annoyed to see him written about like this :—

" To gain a position of influence in politics, and to assure him- self a place in criticism, without the aid of instinct for action, charm of style, personal magnetism, wit, or eloquence, he has certainly kept his gifts employed at a higher rate of interest than is earned by most men of as few talents. His somewhat limited field has been cultivated with a thoroughness that brought a larger crop than many a richer and broader area. In the moralism, where we find so readily the boundaries of his personality, we must find also a partial explanation of his accom- plishment The difference between him and many other critics caged in the straitness of their convictions lies somewhat in his intellectual mistrust of many of the qualities which limit him, which leads him to avoid some of their worst results and to get out of them as much as they can do. His clear-headed scholar- ship gains much from this check of his perceptions on his instincts, and so does his statesmanship. Mr. Morley's dozen volumes have given him a settled rank as a critic who is valued by the scholar as highly as by the general reader ; and this rank is due largely to his moral nature, to the ethical seriousness which in its extreme is his artistic failure, to his moral nature, which made his attention loyal to a few large facts and principles and helped him to give order to all his studies, at whatever sacrifice of vivacity. His misfortune is that these principles are not timely, that they do not form a message needed and welcomed by the times, like that of Matthew Arnold, for instance, or that of Ruskin ; and, of course, also because they are not set in a style of distinction, but rather in one soured by moralism and desic- cated by science ; so that the row of books stand on the shelf of the temporarily useful merely, read because they give certain information more intelligently than any other summary treatises now obtainable. His tone guoguo modo scripts est semper legitur. Mr. Morley himself finds history always interesting. He handles large subjects with a sincerity and a dignity that testify to their importance."

The following account of Mr. Morley's style is also far too severe :—

" This lack of artistic feeling for language, which accompanies so naturally the cloud of moral judgments that chequer Mr. Morley's writings, shows itself in single epithets. Turgot, when- ever he is mentioned, however casually, is always the great' or the wise Turgot ' ; 'justly,' admirably," rightly 'are constantly stuck on to quoted judgments with no other effect than to destroy the charm ; a swarm of things in the world happen 'too often ' ; unpleasant words like ' hateful ' hover over the pages ; if the laxities of genius are mentioned, the English nation is imme- diately dubbed with an unpleasant adjective for its supposed censures on the genius' conduct ; 'only partly true' is fastened like an icicle on to an interesting quotation ; and so on as long as we choose to continue the task of showing specifically the evil wrought in literary execution by the subordination of artistic to moral sensibility. IfJr. Morley is well able to see this truth in others. Macaulay's pages, he says, 'are the record of sentences passed, not the presentation of human characters in all their fulness and colour.' The moralist has his excuse for being and for writing ; but it is a commonplace that the laws of art apply to his work also."

Brilliant as Mr. Norman Hapgood's writing is, we think

we could, if we cared to do so, make a fairly damaging list of weaknesses of style out of his essay. Still, as we have said, Mr. Norman Hapgood is a writer of very remarkable powers. We want to hear his idea of Sir William Harcourt as much as Mr. Pecksniff wanted to hear Mrs. Togers's idea of a wooden leg.—Mr. Stead gives an account of "The Latest International." Certain French and English schoolmasters and schoolmistresses have hit upon a plan under which English boys and girls are set writing letters (in the opposite language) to an equal number of French boys and girls. Boys write to boys and girls to girls. Some of the letters are most amusing ; one from a French boy to an English boy is com- posed in the precise style of "Auguste en Angleterre."

The National Review has this month several bright papers in addition to the weightier political matter which is always its mainstay, and for which the statesmen and the publicists have so often reason to be grateful. Mr. Leslie Stephen's " Johnsoniana " is a singularly brilliant and agreeable study of Johnson and his circle. Of Boswell himself one might have thought there was no more to say, but Mr. Leslie Stephen contrives to add some very interesting and diverting touches to the picture.— Mr. Birdwood's "The British Civilian in India" should prove a useful corrective to those who imagine that the normal member of the Indian Civil Service is a miniature prancing Proconsul, who devotes what time he can spare from tiger-shooting and flirtation to bully- ing and oppressing amiable Hindoo gentlemen, who know a great deal more about Shakespeare and Herbert Spencer than he does. Here is an account of one of them who died doing his duty, and a most difficult duty, to the people of India. Mr. Birdwood quotes from a writer in the Times of India :— " The dead set made at him [Mr. Rand] in native papers, the abuse piled on him even in the grave, may possibly suggest to even his own countrymen that, where so much mud has been flung, some deserved to stick. He is pictured as a hectoring bully who took as much delight in dancing on the feelings of the people as an Irishman does in flourishing a shillelagh. I knew him well for several years, and a more inoffensive man never worked in the public service. Reserved, shy, silent without being a bit morose, I do not think one-third of his own countrymen in Poona knew anything of him, though he was a prominent figure in the opera- tions for nearly four months. He was the least excitable man I ever met. I do not think he had what is called a temper, but like most quiet Englishmen, with clear, level-headed minds, he had an iron will and a loyalty to Government akin to worship. He had a work to do, and he set his whole heart to do it without fuss or ostentation, and he freed the city from pestilence in less than two months. When the leaders of society . . . . . . had fled, from the city, reducing the population from 118,000 to less than 70,000, Mr. Rand's mind was untiring in means to crush the plague. The splendid organisation was entirely his work ;—not a single substantiated case of ill treatment of man, woman, or child has been brought against the men who worked under his orders. The city was saved, and when the work was done, Poona thanked him by taking his life as if he were a malefactor. He was just, fearless, loved thepeople for whose salvation he gave his life, and there is absolutely no foundation for the interested outcry that has been raised against him."

" The Month in America," a very well-written, if some- times slightly partisan, record of things American, contains the following curious and significant anecdote :—

"I may be permitted to recall here an incident which is, of course, familiar to the officials of Downing Street as well as those in the great white building on Pennsylvania Avenue, and which simply shows that the easiest way to meet a bluff is to 'call' it. Some years ago, when the Seal Question first assumed an acute phase and, under Mr. Blaine's absurd contention of Behring Sea being a closed sea and the preservation of the seals being in the interest of public morality, British ships were being seized and interfered with in the most high-handed manner, the British Minister called one day at the State Department and said to Mr. Blaine that he had been instructed by his Government to inform him that, in the ease of the seizure of another ship flying the British flag, the admiral in command of the British fleet at Halifax had been instructed to recapture such vessels, and, if necessary, to employ force. The British Minister took occasion to renew his assurances of distinguished consideration and left. Mr. Blaine pondered and acted. Instructions were at once telegraphed to commanders of the revenue cutters in Behring Sea revoking previous orders to seize British ships, and that season came to a close without a recurrence of the obnoxious interference with the work of the sealers. Le sage entend d demi mot."

"Why do I call him names when he hasn't attacked me P Why, because I want people to see I'm as good as he is, and not afraid of him though he is a Duke and I'm on.ky the son of a younger son." As far as we can gather from internal evidence; that is the spirit in which Mr. George Russell attacks his kins- man, the Duke of Bedford, in his paper, "Land and Lodging-

Houses," in the September Nineteenth Century. The taste of the article is deplorable and the arguments extremely poor. All the talk about "lordly lamentations," of putting "his tears not into a bottle but into a book," and of places that "stink of Duke," seems to us very cheap, while the suggestion that

the Duke of Bedford's account of his inability to work certain of his agricultural estates at a profit is vitiated by the fact that he is a very rich man from other sources

is clearly quite beside the mark. The central fact of the Duke's book was that he possesses certain estates which yield him less than nothing, and which yet will be reckoned on his death as worth many hundred thousand pounds, and be charged accordingly with heavy Death- duties. The answer is, of course, that the Duke can sell his land. But to this he in effect replies that, even if he could do so, selling would mean a great injury to the population on the estates. We by no means conclude that there is no answer to the Duke of Bedford's dilemma, but he put his ease with perfect propriety, with great moderation and reasonableness, and in excellent taste. To imagine that it is somehow an answer to, or at any rate a score off, the Duke of Bedford to scream out, " Yah 1 how about your London house-property ?" is ridiculous,—especially, too, as the Duke of Bedford made no concealment of the fact that his income from other property enabled him to work his agricultural estates on the non-economic lines, which, according to him, are the only lines fully consistent with the moral and material requirements of the people who live on his land. it is, however, not worth while to follow Mr. George Russell's attempt to be "nasty " to his cousin, merely because his cousin has published a very readable, interesting, and well-written book. Readers of Mr. George Russell's paper will, however, note with amusement the way in which he dwells repeatedly upon his family and his ancestors. He is evidently very proud of his ability to abuse not only a Duke, but a Duke who is a cousin.

One really thought that this kind of inverted snobbism had died out, but apparently it has not, at any rate, in the exalted circles in which Mr. George Russell is careful to let us know that he was born and bred.—Lady Glenesk writes a paper to show that people live longer now than they used, and that they may in the future attain an age five times as much as the age at which they reach maturity,—i.e., to one hundred and twenty-five years. —Mr. James Payn is always welcome as an essayist. His paper on "Old Age" is full of good stories. We have only room for one. When the Ettrick Shepherd quarrelled with Sir Walter Scott, he began one of his letters, " D—d Sir."—" The French Aristocracy" should have been much more interesting than it is. It ought to be, but is not, an account of the various noble stocks that have survived all the changes in France. The summary, however, with which the Count de Calonne closes his paper is interesting :—

"A fair idea can be formed of French society as it exists to-day. A tenth part, at most, consists of old families that have survived the revolutions, and who live generally in retirement, far from the busy, noisy world. Melly have placed their sons in the army, and a number cultivate their land, some of them with an energy worthy of being imitated by professional farmers. Nearly all their names can be found in the list of the Agricultural Society of France, mingled in equal proportion with the names of the men most esteemed in scientific agriculture. Three-tenths at least belong to what is called /a noblesse de la contrebande, while another tenth are connected with the higher liberal professions, literature, the sciences, pure and applied, the different classes of the Insti- tute. and the upper professorships. The remaining half consists partly of politicians many of whom have held office, and partly of great financiers, a large number of whom are of foreign origin, some of them occupying, owing to their intelligence, their wise conduct, their generosity, or the circumspection they display in their delicate position, a very high place in public esteem. Such are the elements forming French society at the present time. It has no profound vices, little pride, enough vanity not to care to be caught in fault, a sufficiently moderate thirst for pleasure to allow others, sprung from the ranks, to take the lead, fairly broad principles, measured convictions, elevated judgment in matters of taste and intellect, a love of country that has nothing narrow about it, and, to crown all, a charity so beneficent, so efficacious that slanderous tongues attribute it to a selfish desire to satisfy oneself in helping others. For our part we look upon this kind of egotism as being equal to a virtue."

—"Fancy Cycling for Ladies" gives " tips " for performing various evolutions on the bicycle, and gives them in more in- telligible language than is usual.—" Dr. Von Miguel, 'the Kaiser's Own Man," is a very curious study of the poacher turned gamekeeper, who seems likely before long to become the German Emperor's chief adviser. It is possible that he is that already in fact, though not in name.—The Moulvis Rafiuddin Ahmad writes temperately and sensibly as to the feeling of the respectable Indian Mahommedans towards the British Government. He does not believe that there is any disaffection among them, nor do we, if he is thinking of the best class of educated, self-respecting Mahommedan gentlemen.

Sir Herbert Maxwell contributes an amusing paper to Blackwood this month on "Heraldry in Practical Politics." He deprecates the desire, which has been written about lately, to assign "a quarter in the Royal Arms to Colonial bearings," on the ground that the Colonists, not being aliens, claim as British subjects a title in the existing Royal Standard. The intimate association of the Colonies with the Mother-country would, therefore, argues Sir Herbert Maxwell, not be enhanced by giving them a right to bear "a missionary passant gardant, holding in his sinister hand a hymn-book, and with his dexter pointing a moral, all proper." Yet if the suggestion is constantly made and insisted upon, the Colonies may feel slighted if it is not carried into effect.—In a short article on "The British Soldier as a Plague Commissioner" Major-General Tweedie criticises the action of the civil authorities in Bombay in allowing the work of suppressing the Plague to pass more or less into the hands of the military. "The robust per- sonality and energetic action of the British soldier" imported, according to General Tweedie, a fresh element of horror into the situation ; and he further describes the "consternation produced among the women by the intrusion of Europeans."

In Cosmopolis Professor Max Miller continues his " chatty " and interesting talk about Royalties, great and small. People who like to hear about Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses, will find his paper delightful reading. There is a very characteristic story of Tennyson and the Queen of Holland, but it is too long to quote.—Mr. Henry Norman gives some comments in "The Globe and the Island" on recent events in Bulgaria which should be noticed by those interested in political developments in the Balkans.