THE MAGAZINES.

THE two stories in the Cornhill, "Wives and Daughters" and Armadale," always go on well, the weak chapters when they occur serving only as crust for the pâté, and this month there is some good padding besides. The paper on " Old Election Days in Ireland " describes a state of affairs which to modern readers seems almost incredible, a time when the most civilized class in Ireland was governed by a social law like that which regulates life among the Red Indians, when every public meeting was the occasion of a fight, and duels were fought publicly as between the knights of old, and men insulted each other simply to enjoy the luxury of a combat it l'outrance, and skill with the pistol was the one necessary qualification for promotion and success. From 1744, when the election at Newry was said to have "gone on with the greatest spirit" because a poor fellow was murdered, to 1815 almost every election produced its duel, any one which did not being pronounced a tame and therefore slightly discreditable affair. These duels differed from those so frequent both in England and France in the bloodthirstiness of the combatants, who always tried to kill, and therefore almost always employed pistols, and took, it must be added, every possible advantage of each other. If the dearest friends differed "a little hotly, each was expected to kill the other, a refusal except under very exceptional circumstances involving exclusion from society. Rarely indeed did it happen that a duel ended like the one fought at the election for Castlebar. Two close friends, Bingham and Brown, were contesting the seat, and Brown was informed that his duty was to insult Bingham and kill him out of the way. The difficulty was the absence of any ground of quarrel.

"Brown did not lack courage ; what he wanted was an excuse : but an Irishman's invention is a marvellous machine, and Brown's was in full and efficient play, as he sauntered into the Castlebar elnb•room and saw Bingham writing a letter, at a table adjacent to a window which looked into a field or garden. Brown walked slowly up to the writer, who was quite unconscious of his adversary's ap- proach, and leaning over him, said very distinctly and un- pleasantly :—'Bingham ; you lie !'—Bingham looked up with mingled astonishment and fierceness, and then, addressing the members of the club (who were scattered about the room), as if he could scarcely believe his own ears,—' My G—d, gentlemen ! did you hear that ? And I that never spoke to him !'—' Never mind, Bingham,' said Brown ; if you didn't speak a lie, you were thinking one !' " They fought, Bingham missed, and Brown "gave" his adversary his life, who was then considered bound in honour to retire from the contest with an adversary who had shown so needless a spirit of chivalry as to abstain from killing a disarmed man. We recommend the history of this time to those who still believe in the utility of the duel. There never was a society in which men maintained so savagely the " point of honour," and never one more wickedly corrupt, demoralized, and unhappy. The men who fought these combats were the men who kept their tenantry in the posi- tion of savages, who, as Mr. Grattan has told us, thought the chase of a bloodhound after a man an exciting sport, and who involved themselves, their children, and their estates in the ruin which cul- minated in the Encumbered Estates Act. A paper on " Etna in Eruption " contains the following description of the lava stream in motion, a description which within the range of our reading is almost unique in its accuracy and force :— 66 Not much further on we came in presence of the actually flowing lava stream itself. Essentially the scene was much more striking than that which we had already witnessed. The latter owed much to the contrast of the landscape, still more to the happy accident of the pure morning light. The former had a more terrible grandeur of its own—one which needed nothing to add to it, and which nothing could have lessened. For a mile, it was said, in width, and to an uncertain length of which a mile and a half might be visible, stretched a mass of lava, over the greater part of the colour of black lead. The extreme edge of the front was twenty or thirty feet high ; it was not broken into distorted forms, like the edge higher up, but rose gradually in layers like those into which over-thick paste settles in being poured into a cup, showing to the first glance in how fluid a state it had been. A few hundred feet further back was a second stage, composed of the lava of the new stream, which overlay the entirety of the first lava, and spread besides in shallow depth outside the former margin. This, unlike the other, was tossed into pinnacles, one mass of wild incoherent formlessness in detail, yet defining with perfect accuracy the contour of the underlying earth, as the deposit upon petrified flowers defines their form. From its face came no smoke and little steam, but sulphurous gas, like in appearance to that from a limekiln, rendered every shape uncertain, and quivered so densely in the hollows as to merge all substance in a dancing haze, destitute of colour. Along the border of this lava was a sloping wall of red, some ten or fifteen feet high. At first sight it seemed to be stationary, then gradually the eye caught a movement of Objects on its surface, of stones, or bits of solid lava, fallen from the hardened top, and at last it could be seen to lap slowly on with even motion, licking under it with absolute indifference to size or kind whatever lay in its course. This slow, silent, never-ceasing lapping of the lava gave a sense of irresistible power, like that conveyed by the action of a slotting machine, which cuts into the thickest iron like a conscious being doing a thing unconsciously because of its insignificance ; and at the same time it excited a feeling at once of repulsion and of fascination, as do the movements of a snake, probably from the absence of the noise and of the outward evidence of effort which are the usual concomitants of motion. Something horrible there was, too, in the lightlessness of the red. Except where some bit, bulging to rapidly, tumbled off and exposed the more glowing red of the inside, the aspect of the fused portion was just as gloomy as that of the cooled surface."

Fraser gives the place of honour to a thoughtful and exhaustive paper on "Parliamentary Reform," a subject which seems to interest educated minds now almost as much as it interested the popular mind in 1831. The writer assumes that the question must be dealt with, and advises that the Houses should proceed, in the first place, not by bill, but by resolutions affirming the principles upon which it desires Government to proceed. He believes that four resolutions would be passed by a vast majority ; first, that the principle of numerical supremacy is "distinctly repudiated ;" secondly, that the representative system is imperfect until the working classes are admitted ; thirdly, that such admission must not give them the preponderance in elections ; and fourthly, that the distribution of representatives should be made as conformable as possible to the distribution of property and population, without introducing the " vicious principle" of equal electoral districts. These resolutions carried, a Committee of the Cabinet would have to decide upon a practical measure, and the writer offers a selection of them, leaning strongly towards Mr. Bagehot's plan of transfer- ring seats from petty to great boroughs, and in those boroughs only reducing the franchise. He regrets the petty boroughs never- theless, arguing that the great towns do not choose statesmen, and that the apparent absurdity of allowing Honiton equality with Liverpool is only apparent. He puts this latter point with unusual force, through a quotation from the Edinburgh Review. "The apparent scandal disappears when we observe that every Liverpool and every Salford is represented ; but only three out of 60 Honitons, and only one out of 90 Arundels. Every town with more than 25,000 inhabitants is represented ; but the eighty- six towns, containing each between 2,000 and 3,000, with an aggregate population of 227,000, have only one member among them. Of fifty-eight towns, with 3,000 to 4,000 each, and an aggregate population of 212,000, only three have members. Of forty-four towns, with from 4,000 to 5,000 each, and an aggre- gate population of 199,000, only nine are represented, and so on_ Thusthe members for Honiton and the members for Arundel, if regarded (as they ought to be) as representing all the unrepresented towns of that size and sort, have a constituency as numerous as that of Birmingham or that of Southwark. . . . He forgets, however, while talking of the unwillingness of great towns to choose states- men, how unwilling statesmen are to contest great towns. The aristocracy, from among whom most of our statesmen are drawn, naturally prefer counties or small boroughs, simply because they are less troublesome. Does he suppose Marylebone would reject Mr. Gladstone, or the City Lord Stanley, or Liverpool Sir George Grey, in favour of an inferior candidate of the same opinions ? No doubt great cities are sometimes capricious, aft Edinburgh was when she first turned out Macaulay and then re- elected him in his absence, but it is chiefly because they so seldom get really strong men to stand. When they do they adhere to them, as Southwark adhered to Sir W. Molesworth and Sheffield. to Mr. Roebuck. The paper on "Her Majesty's Court of Probate" is thin and scrappy, but contains some good stories, among which this is one of the best " General S—'s fortune was settled upon his daughters, with the proviso that in the event of either of them marrying a peer the greater part was to be forfeited, a precaution probably adopted from the Gen- eral's apprehension that his children would be sacrificed to prop up the fallen fortunes of a needy patrician, and not in contemplation of his daughters' hand being sought by one of the wealthiest nobles in the land. Whatever the reasons, the difficulty was adroitly surmounted by the simple process of the Duchess making a present of her fortune to the Duke, and then marrying him."

The exquisite simplicity of the device seems to have blinded the writer to the question whether it is quite honest to take a man's wealth in direct defiance of the condition on which he gave it you.

General S—'s mistake was one incessantly repeated by fathers who try to postpone the date at which their sons shall inherit their estates. At twenty-five, thinks the father, my son will be much wiser than at twenty-one, and so makes that his year of majority, quite forgetting that at twenty-one the heir can sell or pledge his

reversion, and that the restrictive clause simply involves a heavy reduction in the amount of the property bequeathed. The paper on " Toleration " is a little didactic, but its author draws a fine distinction between the proper and improper use of the word. We may, he argues, be said to tolerate anything which we regard with moral dislike, yet do not interfere with, but it is not tolera- tion to endure beliefs to which we have no such antipathy. Thus a liberal Christian may allow that he only tolerates poly gamy in India, but it is absurd for him to talk of " tolerat- iug " a Jew. He makes, too, a real point, though one we have frequently made, when he says that the English policy towards Romanism involves the cardinal error of throwing the Catholic laitfluto the arms of the Catholic ecclesiastics, they at heart disliking their influence almost as much as Protestants do. Catholics introduced the law of mortmain, Catholics have in Belgium ordered the inspection of nunneries, Catholics have everywhere on the Continent tried to make the State sovereign over the priesthood. By including both in a com- mon dislike, we lose the whole assistance of men who could and -would chain the priests far more strongly than we shall ever be able to do. The paper, however which will attract most notice in Fraser is the first of a series of memoirs intended to illustrate the secret history of Russia, prepared by a deceased Russian general officer. The present selection is not of much historical import- ance, the writer trying to give a more favourable idea of the Emperor Paul I., and only succeeding in deepening the impression that he was almost a maniac. He asserts that the rule of the Empress Catherine was gentleness itself, and that it was Paul who first introduced the system of espionage into regiments and society afterwards carried to such frightful lengths. He declares, however, that Paul really tried to do justice, that he opened a window in the palace through which petitions might be thrown, that he himself read them, and that the replies were printed in the gazette—a great check upon high-handed oppression. He fell nevertheless under the influence of General Araktchejeff, a colonel of artillery at Gachina,—the camp which Paul had organized before his accession,--and subsequently Governor of St. Petersburg and Grand Master of the Ordnance. This man retained his influence through two reigns, and was a brutal " monkey in regimentals." Sir Brook Fossbrooke and Miss Marjoribanks advance a little in Blackwood, but the authoress of the latter must beware lest in the endeavour to obtain a minute perfection in painting her character she becomes a little tedious. We would not have missed the scene between Lucille and the Archdeacon on any account, but it is a trifle long, and the lady's art a little too artificial. Cornelius O'Dowd has been to Ireland, and Ireland has made him, slit always makes gifted Irishmen, rather melancholy than gay, in spite of the single charm which the writer still allows to linger in Dublin society.

" Dining out is much cultivated still in the Irish capital, and with no small success. There is a great deal of good looks, some actual beauty, excellent fish, and very tolerable claret. There is, besides— and long may it survive those scores of English imitations Dublin affects—a hearty cordiality that greets you at the threshold, follows you to the drawing-room, goes with you to the dinner-table, and never leaves you till the last shake-hand at parting. Of this I know of no equal anywhere. England assuredly has nothing like it, nor has France, nor Germany, nor Russia, nor Italy. Nowhere that I have ever been have I ever felt the same atmosphere of kindly geniality—of that courtesy that will not be satisfied with mere politeness, but asks to be accepted as evi- dence of good-will, even to friendship. What a priceless charm is shed over intercourse when this element of liking is diffused through it, when the magic of hospitality makes each guest imagine that he sits in a seat of honour, and is there through no mere ritual of a conventionality, but through the claim of real affection!"

If Cornelius O'Dowd could drive into English heads the idea that cordiality of manner is a virtue second only to cordiality of heart, he would have done more for the reformation of English manners than all the essays recently written upon them. The Scotch know the truth, and some Frenchmen, but in England cordiality, at first sight is accepted as proof positive of an intention to swindle. Blackwood is the only one of the magazines which con- descends to publish a bit of real poetry. This reverie of Cleo- patra's, dreaming that she has been a tiger, though we will not say much for the morality of its inner meaning, is the work of a genuine poet " I will lie and dream of the past- time,

/Eons of thought away,

And through the jungle of memory

Loosen my fancy to play ; When, a smooth and velvety tiger, Ribbed with yellow and black, Supple and cushion-footed,

I wandered where never the track

Of a human creature had rustled The silence of mighty woods, And, fierce in a tyrannous freedom, I knew but the law of my moods. The elephant, trumpeting, started When he heard my footstep near, And the spotted giraffes fled wildly In a yellow cloud of fear.

I sucked in the noontide splendour Quivering along the glade, Or yawning, panting, and dreaming, Basked in the tamarisk shade, Till I hoard my wild mate roaring, As the shadows of night came on, To brood in the trees' thick branches And the shadow of sleep was gone ;

ThenI roused, and roared in answer And unsheathed from my cush- ioned feet

My curving claws, and stretched me,

And wandered my mate to greet. We toyed in the amber moonlight,

Upon the warm flat sand,

And struck at each other our mas-

sive arma- How powerful he was and grand! His yellow eyes flashed fiercely

As he crouched and gazed at me, And his quivering tail, like a ser-

pent,

Twitched curving nervously. Then like a storm he seized me,

With a wild triumphant cry, And we met, as two clouds in

heaven When the thunders before them fly.

We grappled and struggled together, For his love like his rage was rude ; And his teeth in the swelling folds of my neck At times, in our play, drew blood.'

Macmillan has less than usual, though there is a good paper by Professor Cairnes on "Negro Suffrage," deciding in favour of that experiment, and another in which Mr. Ludlow endeavours to revive the faint English reminiscences of the American Presidents. His sketches are a little too condensed for critics to remark on them, but we think, while generally agreeing with his verdicts, that he ranks Washington too high and Jackson toe low. Morally Jackson was, as compared with his great predecessor, as a rough to an honest man, but intellectually we are not quite so sure, believing that Jackson had what Washington had not—a clear view of what mankind really wanted from the American Union, that the States were not to be reproductions more or less perfect of European kingdoms, but the home of a race who should work out in practice the enticing theory of true equality, of a people who should believe that the object of political systems is the elevation of the whole body of those who obey them. Washington would have been Well content if the higher ranks of society were educated, refined, and happy, Jackson wanted all — blacks excepted—to share in the full benefits of civilization. Mr. Galton finishes his curious speculation upon hereditary talent and character, arguing that the deliberate selection of able and beautiful women by able and beautiful men would inevitably produce a race far surpassing that at present existing in the world. He produces of course a great many examples of transmitted qualities, but he does not remove any of the principal diffi- culties. He wants, we presume, a race distinguished at once by intellectual and physical power. Well, is it proved that high intellectual cultivation is not decidedly injurious to physical power, some of the greatest of earth's sons having been weaklings? Secondly, is it clear that intellectual qualities can be transmitted at all, the sons of Charlemagne, for example, having been com- paratively imbeciles? Is it within human capacity to foresee what intellectual result the combination of the father's and mother's intellectual tendencies will produce, and finally, if natural selection be in the human species a true law, how happens it that it does not operate unconsciously, that no race either in wisdom or physique has

risen above the level of Pericles or Marcus Antoninus? Mr. Galton says the peculiarities of each race are transmitted generation after generation, which with reservations is true, but does not prove that the properties intensify. On the contrary, the most marked peculiarity of the best-known race, the intellectual impenetrability of the Jews, has disappeared, and has been replaced by its reverse, an adaptability so remarkable that Heinrich Heine is more Ger- man than the Germans.