THE MAGAZINES.

Ix the Contemporary Review Mr. Julian Hawthorne continues his "Saxon Studies," sketches of life in Dresden, with even increasing spirit. He gives the rein to his quaint humour, and though, we think, unfair in his judgment on the bovine elements in the Saxon character, a character to which perhaps only the genius who painted Raveloe, the scene of "Silas Manlier," could do full justice, Englishmen will forget that, in enjoyment of his really. wonderful writing, and we may add, his evidently heart-felt appreciation of their character. He cannot forbear from bitter epigrams--as, for example, "Who calla the Saxon cold? Is there any devotion," he asks, "warmer than mine to me?"—epigrams which, read by recent Saxon history, must be pronounced utterly unjust ; but he pours out his true self in sub-acid, humoristic apostrophes like this:— "Now, the Berlin Government seems desirous of proving (what we Americans have already proved to the world's satisfaction, if not to our own), that people living, no matter how far apart and under what different circumstances, may be united in mind, sentiment, and dispo- sition as one man. To this end, what method more effective than to ordain a universal beer, and forbid the brewing or drinking of any other? Condense into one the many inconsiderable principalities of Gambrinus [the German Bacchus]. True, though men can apparently be induced by the proper arguments to accommodate themselves to whatever political or moral exigencies, beer is of a more intractable temper, and persists in being different in different places. But surely Prince Bismarck, who can do so much, will not be beaten by a beverage • the difficulty will be ultimately overcome, if military dis- cipline and legislation be worth anything. Two alternatives suggest themselves at once. The first, to create a uniform climate, soil, and water throughout the Fatherland—not an impossibility to German science, I should suppose ; the second, to brew the beer nowhere save in Berlin, to be drunk on the premises. Berlin would thus be secure of becoming the centre of attraction of the Empire; and if, as is believed, Germans are Germans by virtue of the beer they drink, if all drank the same beer, of course they all would become the same Germans. Moreover' if this may be done with the nation, why not apply the principle to the individual? A nation is but a larger, completer man ; and if a nation may be concentrated at a single point, as Berlin, why not concentrate the persons composing it into a single individual, as Bismarck? Having swallowed his countrymen, the Prince could thereafter legislate to please himself ; and might ultimately proceed to swallow himself into a universal atom."

Perhaps next in interest to the striking article of Mr. Julian Hawthorne comes Mr. R. A. Proctor's, on "The Past and Future of our Earth," a paper written in a style of more than his usual power and ability. He represents the epoch during which life has been and will be possible on the earth as one infinitely small in comparison with the ages during which life was impossible from too great heat, and the ages to come in which life will be im- possible again from too great cold, and he gives as the verdict of science, after all its latest discoveries, many of which he paints for us very graphically, that man can no more find out the secret of the Eternal purpose than in the days when, as yet, science, properly so called, was not, though faith was. On a single point, Mr. Proctor's view is worth extracting, and it is so obviously wise that it may send our readers to the essay itself :—

" I may remark that, even apart from the evidence which the most eminent biologists have brought to bear on this question, it seems to me illogical to accept evolution as sufficient to explain the history of our earth during millions of years prior to the existence of life, and to deny its sufficiency to explain the development of life (if one may so speak) upon the earth. It seems even more illogical to admit its operation up to any given stage in the development of life, and there to draw a hard-and-fast line beyond which its action cannot be supposed to have extended. Nor can I understand why it should be considered a comforting thought, that at this or that epoch in the history of the complex machine of life, some imperfection in the machinery compelled the intervention of God,—thus presented to our contemplation as Almighty, but very far from being All-wise."

Mr. Fitzjames Stephen has a paper, marked by his usual force of style, on a subject which seems to us very little suited to his peculiar power of thought,—" Necessary Truth." It is an onslaught on what seems to us a very able and sound essay of Dr. Ward's on the same subject, but Mr. Stephen is always missing the point. For instance, he attacks in it a remark of Mr. Martineau's, which Dr. Ward had praised, that though our "idea of the infinite" is not clear, if clear can only be applied to conceptions of which the out- line is distinctly marked, it is yet clear enough in that logical sense in which clearness consists "not in the idea of a limit, but in the limit of an idea? On this Mr. Stephen comments as follows :— " The 'idea of a limit ' is contrasted with the limit of an idea,' as if there was a difference in the sense because there is a difference in the sound of the two expressions. Retranslate the metaphors into pictures, and it is obvious that the two phrases moan the same thing. The idea of a limit' is the picture of a boundary. 'The limit of an idea is the boundary of a picture. Now, as the boundary of the picture must be part of the picture, and must be itself depicted, it is obvious that these expressions mean one and the same thing."

Mr. Stephen is either talking nonsense, or has quite missed Mr- Martineau's meaning. The "limit of the idea" of true emulation, for instance, is, on one side of it, the point where the wish to be equal to another passes into the wish that that other should be kept back in order that he may not get beyond me. But I need not necessarily have any "idea of a limit" to emulation,

emulation kept well within the proper limit of its meaning ; I might think that true emulation might be indulged without limit, while a very strict limit ought to be kept on any tendency in the passion to pass beyond, its proper type. So Mr. Martineau speaks of "the idea of the infinite" as perfectly clear in this sense, that it is the denial of the possibility of a boundary. If I say space is infinite,' I mean that whenever I try to limit space in thought I must fail, because the only conceivable boundary to space is the edge of more space, which therefore is not a limit to space. That is a clear idea, in the sense of an idea the limit of which I perfectly understand. I have no "idea of a limit " to space, because I cannot form one ; but I have a perfect conception of the "limit of the idea" of space,—namely, that it is confined to ex- tension in all possible directions, and does not trench on the idea of time, or the idea of thought or of energy. Mr. Stephen writes with great vigour, but he misses his aim almost as regularly as he takes aim. Professor Lightfoot, in the first paper in the Review, has made a very powerful onslaught on the scholarship of the anonymous author of "Supernatural Religion." A scholar who is so careless or so slipshod as to translate " Lucam videtur Manion elegisse quem crederet," "Marcion seems to have selected Luke, which he mutilates," cannot look for much mercy from a scholar of Professor Lightfoot's type. And it seems that the Greek of the anonymous author is even more slipshod than the Latin, and the German itself not immaculate. Professor Lightfoot is replying to a sharp attack on the candour of his brethren among the apologists, and may therefore be allowed a little sharpness in his own tone. But we think he would have done well to consider, when he charges the anonymous author with stating fully all the least satisfactory of the orthodox explanations of difficulties, and ignoring all the stronger ones, that the relative strength of these pleas is a matter requiring very delicate judgment, in which it is exceedingly difficult for a man of one way of thinking to know what a man of the opposite way of thinking will regard as his stronghold. However, there is no question but that, on a. few important points, at least, either defective care or defective

scholarship has led the author of "Supernatural Religion" to miss altogether the force of his opponents' case.—Professor Tyndall completes his paper on "The Atmosphere in Relation to Fog- signals," but almost necessarily, the theoretic interest of his discoveries was, to some extent, exhausted in the first paper.

The Fortnightly, apart from Prof. Clifford's paper, which we have discussed at length elsewhere, is full of good contributions, of which Mr. Cliff e Leslie's on "Auvergne" and Mr. Dicey's on "The Repub- lican Defeat in the United States" strike us as the first in interest. Mr. Leslie draws a striking picture of the central province of France, which includes two Departments, — the Centel, a mountainous region at which Afichelet sneers for its rough wine and its crops of acid though plentiful apples ; and the Puy de Dome, with its mountains, and the fertile plain called locally the Lgmagne. The latter resembles in most essentials any other rich tract in France, the differentia being an extra desire to keep down population and to hold property together; but in the former we meet with all the ideas supposed to be extinct in France,--a pre- ference for large farms, an extravagant reverence for primogeniture, and a conservatism which appears to be immovable, and which springs apparently from the keenest family feeling. The "Auverg- nats," known throughout France as patient, stupid, and efficient doers of all hard work, come from the mountain region, remit home on the average /200,000 a year, always return to their own land, and are moved to their emigration mainly by the desire that the eldest male shall retain the patrimonial estate. This feeling is, in fact, the mainspring of the social condition of Auvergne. The girls enter convents in large numbers, partly from piety, but chiefly to protect the estate ; and the boys become priests or emigrants from the same motive, returning in the latter case when they have accumulated enough to live on. "In winter the whole mountain region is under snow, the roads are often im- passable, and the members of the mountain family are shut up together with their dumb companions, the cattle. Then the life of the mountain pastoral farmer is the same from father to son, and from age to age ; the whole neighbourhood, too, follows the same occupation, and leads the same life, so that there is a sur- rounding mass of uniform and primitive usage and thought." From the same motive the families decline to produce children, till in the mountains the population slowly decays, the rate of wages rises high, the competition for labour among masters grows savage, and the people are among the best off in the world. The common rates for labourers are 2s. id. a day during ordinary seasons, and 35. 4d. during harvest ; masons earn half -a- crown a day, and every morsel of land in the plains is fiercely contested for at auction. In spite, however, of this state of affairs in the mountains, revOlutionary ideas are powerful in the plain, and respect for ecclesiastics is not widely diffused, while the first thought of the people everywhere alike seems to be the physical prosperity either of the individual or the family Mr. Edward Dicey, who was in the United States during the recent overturn of the Republican party, and who, with us, thinks that the South ought to have been governed for a time from above, holds that the main cause of the recent revolution is weariness of the Negro as a nuisance, and thinks that the Demo- crat will relegate him to State control, and that the White will almost immediately begin to govern him again. He says :—

" The equality of relations existing in the South between white and coloured citizens is still an artificial arrangement, upheld solely by ex- ternal force. Mankind possesses a marvellous aptitude for accommo- dating itself to accomplished facts; and if the Southerners once realised that, for good or bad, they had got to live on terms of absolute legal equality with their former slaves, they would endeavour to make the best of an unwelcome necessity. But they recognise no such necessity. • If it were not for the interference of the Federal Government, their superior numbers, intelligence, energy, and organisation would soon enable the whites to reduce the blacks to the position of a subject caste. The re-establishment of slavery is an impossibility, except in the event of the South obtaining independence ; and even then I doubt its being seriously contemplated. But if the North could be induced to modify the policy of reconstruction, to leave the Southern. States to settle for themselves the relations between the emancipated slaves and their former masters, or in other words, to govern the South according to Southern ideas, the re-establishment of white supremacy would be a matter of ease."

There will be a kind of resurrection of old Southern opinion, producing the old difficulties, and followed by a return to re- pression, exercised, Mr. Dicey thinks, through the present evil scheme of" bogus" Governments. They were, he holds, a necessary evil. The Northerners were not prepared to reduce the Southern States to the level of Territories, they would not bear the taxa- tion necessary to maintain an efficient army, and they were there- fore compelled to employ the "Carpet-baggers "—that is, immi- grants of a low kind—and " Scaliwags,"—that is, corrupt mean whites, born in the South, but willing for pay to uphold the negro cause. He believes that if this kind of government, bad as it is, were persisted in, the races would learn to live together, and holds that at the very worst it has its compensations :—

" It is barely ten years since the Confederacy was overthrown ; and after a war in which the material resources of the South wore sacri- ficed as freely as the blood of her sons; after a social revolution which necessarily entailed ruin on every planter in the country, and dis- organised the whole commerce of the South, it might have been ex- pected that years would elapse before its main industry would revive. Yet last year the money value of the Southern cotton crop was actually greater than it was in the year preceding the war. Now if there is one thing clear, it is that the revival of an enormous industry is inconsistent with a state of anarchy. In some rough and rude sort of fashion the reconstructed Government of the Southern States must have supplied protection to life and property. As proof of the same conclusion may be cited the fact that population has increased largely in the Slave States, that the cotton crop has been mainly made up of petty parcels grown by free labour on small holdings, and that the new generation of negro planters has begun to hoard money to such an extent as to con- stitute one of the alleged causes of the financial difficulties of the Union. In fact, under the system of free labour, and legal equality between black and white, initiated by the Republicans, property in the South is changing hands, and a new class of proprietors is springing up in the place of the old slave-owning interest."

The majority of the papers in Fraser this month strike us as slightly dry, Mr. W. L. Watts's remarkable account of his expedi- tion up the Vatria Jiikull, the unknown mountain region of Ice- land, not excepted, but there is a political paper in the number which will well repay attention. It is a proposal to add to the House of Commons twenty men who shall be elected by the general body of electors throughout the kingdom, each elector who chooses voting for one man whom he thinks worthy to sit in Parliament, and surrendering for that occasion his local vote. As the vote would be by ballot, and the number of persons who made their option unknown, the writer calculates that the most eminent men in the kingdom would be sure of a return. The Associations would, he thinks, be powerless. That is possibly true, but we doubt if the Churches would be,—whether, for instance, the un- broken Catholic vote of Great Britain, now valueless in a local election, would not be thrown for a heavy list of general candidates of the Catholic creed. That might not be an injurious result, but it is not the result to secure which the wi iter has devised his plan.

Blackwood is prosy. In addition to the invariable dose of dogmatism upon our own politics, we have an article on the French Chamber and the Septennate which is as dogmatic, and even more dull, because it is not enlivened by the touches of personality which sometimes render the Tory magazine amusing. There is nothing personal in this—except, indeed, a statement that the mere name of Prince Napoleon (Jerome) "makes one shiver "— and the tone of lofty admonition, of settling off-hand difficulties which are hardly serious to the supreme capacity of the writer, is in bad taste. Advice to the

French Conservatives to "practically and wisely accept the Empire, and use their votes to bring it back," and an assurance that an Imperial restoration, "even if it be only a temporary and not a final solution, will, at all events, give momentarily to these trembling politicians a greater and more solid peace of mind than Septennates or Republics can bestow upon them," must surely be the rash utterances of an individual who has no acquaintance with French Conservatives. The series of "International Vanities" is brought to a conclusion by a clever, amusing article on "Glory," in which the writer draws a forcible con- trast between the ancient military idea and the modern, as represented by war before the time of Ninuat—who, according to history, by inventing conquest, destroyed pure military glory,— and since, down to the last developments of the requisition, annexation, and indemnity system. The writer's view is that whatever be the utilities of war, it never has been and never can be an honest process, and that consequently it is an unclean origin for glory. He proceeds to treat of purer sources of renown, but returns to his Vanities in an amusing farewell ; in which he acknowledges that, on the whole, we had better adhere to them. The present instalment of "The Abode of Snow" is interesting. It affords us a great deal of information respecting the Chinese Tartars, and the physical features of Chinese Tibet. The author—who declares that though the Chinese Mandarins lay on the Lamas and the people of Tibet the blame of keeping all Europeans out of their country, while the Tibetans lay the blame on the Chinese Mandarins, they all combine to insure the result — inclines to the belief that the relig,ioua reasons to which this policy is assigned are fictitious,

and that its real motive is the existence of gold in Chinese Tibet, and the dread of the fact becoming universally known. He gives a very alluring picture of the probable wealth of the western district and says that, no doubt, gold would be procured in large quantities, were the knowledge and appliances of Cali- fornia and Australia set to work in search of it. "The Man- darins," says the writer, "are well aware that if it were known in Europe and America that large gold-fields existed in Tibet, no supplications, or prayers either, would suffice to prevent a rush into it of Occidental rowdies ; and that thus an energetic and boisterous white community might soon be established to the west of the Flowery Land, and would give infinite trouble, both by enforcing the right of passage through China and by threatening it directly." A horrible description of the punishments inflicted on offenders against the Government in Chinese Tibet, and of the rigour of Tartar discipline in general, somewhat spoils our plea- sure in reading this surprising narrative. One is glad to forget the people and their hard lives, in contemplating such a picture as that on which the traveller gazed during his ten hours' journey over the great Kung-ma Pass from Namgea to Shipki, at which point he was forced to abandon all attempts to proceed further into the dominions of the Grand Lama. " Agathon " is a fine poem, in which the longing of the tired spirit and the dulled imagination for the old Pagan gladness—for "The Beauty that was Greece, and the Glory that was Rome "—is eloquently expressed. It mingles with the poignant regret for vanished youth in the indi- vidual, and is altogether sad, but beautiful. These are two of the best verses :—

"Vain, vain, the hope is vain

Our skies are dull, and through the ragged firs A slow, cold wind is blowing. Far away From driving clouds and rain A joyous breeze the rich .7Egean stirs, And o'er the dimpling waves light sea-birds play; But no queen Athens in her beauty bare Bathes warm with golden hue in the deep violet air.

The city of the pleasant gods is cold;

No more the mellow sunlight streams On naked rocks that spring to marble rare ; Temples and legends old Are empty as a poet's vanished dreams ; And though we hear the dawn was wondrous fair,

Yet by no flash of art, nor labour slow,

Can we bring back the light that faded long ago."

Macmillan has relapsed into the severely solid form from which the magazine unbent for a few months, surely not to its dis- advantage? Now, as almost always, its contents are meri- torious, and supposing the editorial design to be strictly limited to educational processes of an advanced order, they are consistent with such a design. But they are so nearly unrelieved, that we almost question our right to include Macmillan under the general heading of this article, solely on the strength of the instalment of "Castle Daly" for December. If one read no other magazine, the contents of this one would be as "filling at the price" as Sam Weller's muffins, for we find a heavy course of antiquarianism set before us, some remarkably solid criticism, a tough morsel of religious controversy, and a piece de risistance of political economy, —all excellent things in their way, but difficult to manage at a sitting and all at once. The discourse of the Archbishop of Canterbury (delivered last month to the members of the Church Institute at Margate), on "Certain Current Fallacies respecting Supernatural Religion" is soothing rather than strong, gently persuasive rather than assuring, and in short, much better spoken than printed. Mr. Thomas Hughes's article on " Ismailia " is a somewhat cold abstract of Sir Samuel Baker's book, which would be the better for a dash of imagination and suggestion of the picturesque. Canon Gircllestone's manly, earnest, plain-spoken article on "Lessons Learned in the Eastern Counties" is the liveliest paper in the December number, and his quaint description of himself as "so thick-skinned that people might just as well attempt to hurt a rhinoceros by pelting him with paper pellets" as to rouse him by hard words, is almost the sole touch of humour in the magazine, in which we have come to expect some, of late. "I am sorry to disappoint my assailants in the Labourers' Union Chronicle," says the pachydermatous plague of the farmer and champion of the labourer, "as I used to do those at Halberton, who were wont to say that if they could only make me cry or put me in a passion, there would be some hope of me. But I cannot help it. My skin is thick, and there is an end of it." The most interesting thing in Macmillan is, perhaps, the letter to the Editor by the author of the able and well- informed articles on "Prussia and the Vatican Council," which consists chiefly of an analysis of the Bull Unam Sanclam of Boniface VILL, and a contrast between its infallible teaching and Archbishop Manning's statement of the doctrine of Civil Alle- giance in his last month's letter to the Editor of Macmillan. The Archbishop is charged in so many words with literary bad faith in giving one interpretation of the doctrine of Civil Allegiance to the English world, while well knowing that the Papal Curia has always rejected that meaning, though often disguised its rejection, the Popes really maintaining with the Bull Unapt Sanctam that the Pope holds an absolute authority over all temporal sovereigpties. It certainly looks as if Dr. Manning would have great difficulties in explaining away the contradictions between his own doctrine and that of Boniface's Bull. We should add that the writer suc- cessfully vindicates the accuracy which Archbishop Manning had impugned, and which we thought he had successfully impugned, on all but one point, and that seems to have been a mere clerical error in writing a date.

The Cornhill is as strong in poetry as Blackwood. "Secret Affinities" is a fanciful piece of pantheism, admirably rendered from the French of Theophile Gautier, in which the lover and the lady are traced from, and likened to, their previous forms of life as pearls, birds, and flowers. Mr. G. B. Smith contributes an essay on "Heywood's Dramatic Works," in which he displays his usual taste and discrimination, and more than usual moderation. He sums up the dramatist—who is so shadowy as a man that we know neither when he was born nor when he died, and only gather incidentally from one of his poems that he was a native of Lincolnshire—in the following appreciative words :— " He does not appear to have worked as a dramatist from any fixed principles of composition, but to have interpreted with all the simplicity of a simple nature those phases of life which came under his own direct observation. Regarded in this light, we know of few authors who deserve so high a commendation. Nature is with him in all, and his trust in the best human instincts is unwavering. He is not appalled by the corruptions of society or the villany of the individual ; he has faith that human nature will shine out, pure and unsullied, after its tempta- tions and its anguish ; and he entertains no doubt whatever as to its ultimate excellence and goodness. Infused by a beautiful spirit of tolerance and virtue, he remains, not a grand or magnificent being, but one thoroughly true to himself, and with more than the ordinary capacity for interpreting the aspirations and emotions of humanity."

"Thoughts of a Country Critic" is the title of a pleasant essay upon modern art criticism of the Morris and Rossetti school. It is humorous, good-humoured, and true, and the sting of it is in its tail :—" The last time I saw mj; Oxford friend was in Bond

Street ; he had been looking at exhibitions black and white and blue and green, and was full of the ' sweetness ' of his own friends and the worthlessness of everything else. I listened for a while to his jargoning, and then left him and turned into the National Gallery, and there sat down before a Titian and a Turner, and clean forgot all about him and his friends and their principles." Mr. Black is taking his story easily in point of pace. It makes little progress, but he gives us a cleverly char- acteristic letter from Mr. Roacorla, and brings Harry 'I'relyon into proper prominence. Harry's petulance about Wenna's self- sacrificing charity is very amusing, especially where he says to her:—" I quite agree with Mabyn that you overwork yourself in doing for other people what the lazy beggars ought to do for themselves. Oh, I know more than you think ! I'd wake some of them up, if I had the chance. Why, they look on you as a sort of special Providence, bound to rescue them at any moment. I was told only yesterday of old Mother Truscott having said to a neighbour, Well, if Miss Wenna won't help me, then the Lord's will be done." The author of an article on Monte-Dore is anxious to make a remote part of France favourably known to the English public. He may interest them in the natural beauties of the mountain baths of Auvergne, but he depicts anything but a pleasant place of sojourn. Very nasty and very dear suggest themselves as comments upon the whole narrative.

In Temple Bar we find the usual preponderance of fiction, and some readable, short essays. A sketch of the brief residence in England which formed an episode in the life of Rubella, and of Anthony Vandycles long abode in this country, with the business relations established by both, is the most, interesting of these latter. "A Night Terror_ in Africa" is a capitally worked-up description of an absurd incident.

The Argosy is enlarged to the size and advanced to the price of the ordinary shilling magazine. The indefatigable editor contri- butes two-thirds of the contents, which are not remarkable. Her "Johnny Ludlow" story, "The Other Earring," is a great falling- off from its predecessors.