THE MAGAZINES.

THE July number of the Nineteenth Century is nearly as good as a magazine can be, at all events at a time when magazines are so over-numerous that there are scarcely enough writers to fill them with good material. Sir A. Lyall's essay on "Official Polytheism in China" is a most striking paper. Its writer has always shown the keenest interest in the genesis of creeds accepted by large masses of men ; and in this instance he has been attracted by the singular fact that the mass of the Chinese make no distinction between the spiritual and temporal, but believe that both are affected equally by their Emperor's decrees. Sir A. Lyall holds that in China we are still seeing the actual process by which venerated men have grown into gods; and writes thereupon a wonder- fully interesting essay, upon which we have dwelt elsewhere. The paper needs large expansion, but even in its con- densed form we have rarely seen one more suggestive or full of interest.—Almost equally good, from a totally different point of view, is Mr. T. W. Russell's, on the recent licensing clauses of Mr. Goschen's Budget. Mr. Russell is still.a teetotal fanatic who holds that drink is the grand curse of mankind—he should just live six months among the teetotal races—and he denies absolutely that publicans in Great Britain have any legal rights ; but then, he affirms strongly their equitable right, and warns his friends that in denying it they are defeating their own cause. They are bemused by ideas of their own importance:—" They live in an atmosphere of public meetings, great and small. They believe that Exeter Hall is London, that the Free-trade Hall is Man- chester, that the Philharmonic Room is Liverpool, and that the sum-total of all their assemblies is England. They are entirely mistaken. The Temperance party is not a large,— it is, speaking relatively, a small party. The teetotalers, or total abstainers, constitute its working strength. How many do they count all told ? At the best it is mere guesswork. But suppose I admit that there are 1,500,000 adult abstainers in the United Kingdom,—what then P If we take the popula- tion at 40,000,000, and count three out of six as adults, we get 20,000,000 adults in the United Kingdom. Now, even if I double the number of adult abstainers—and, as I have said, there are no data to go upon—the figures will still leave the Temperance party a small part of the total population." Mr. Russell thinks that the true compromise will be found in a notice of so many years, ten being his number. Possibly, though we should have said that the ordinary term of a lease—twenty-one years—would be more just ; but there is a contingency with which he does not reckon. The liquor question will never be settled without a dissolu- tion ad hoc; and whenever that is taken, it may turn out that the English people, who are Northerners, intend

to go on drinking just as much or as little as they like, without asking Parliament's permission. If a Referendum could be taken to-morrow, it is possible they would reject compensation and the suppression of public-houses by about equal majorities.—Sir J. Pope Hennessy prophesies that all European enterprise in Central Africa will end in failure, but furnishes no proof, except that Dutch enterprise has so ended. That is true, and so has Portuguese ; but that is no reason why English and German should. The mere fact that Negroes do not die out before white men is nothing to the question. Neither do the brown races of India. Nobody dreams of settling white labourers in Central Africa, or even of superseding the Negroes by Indian and Chinese immigrants. What is imagined is that, with careful government, Negroes may be raised in their own land into peaceful taxpaying cultivators, with a proclivity towards Christianity, very likely in its Roman Catholic form.—Dr. H. Snow, Surgeon, Cancer Hospital, maintains that cancer is an increasing disease, the deaths per million in England and Wales having steadily risen from 385 to 610; while in Ireland "the total population in 1864 amounted to 5,675,307, among whom the deaths from cancer are stated to have been 1,498 (males 664, females 834). In 1884 (taking a period of twenty years for the comparison), the population had decreased to 4,962,693; while the mortality from cancer had increased to 1,947 (males 836, females 1,111) ;" and a distinct though smaller increase is noted in New York. The increase is, in fact, undoubted, and Dr. Snow attributes it to the increased pressure on the nerves caused by modern conditions of life, his theory being that cancer, especially in women, is due, in the cases where direct injury can be excluded, to nervous causes :—

" It is found that of the last 250 female patients admitted with the special forms of cancer referred to, 43 gave some grounds for the suspicion of mechanical injury as the direct excitant; of whom, however, 15 described themselves as having undergone much pre- vious distress and anxiety in the period immediately preceding the appearance of the new-growth. In 19 no obvious cause was apparent; 32 gave a history of specially laborious occupations, of hard work and privation ; while in 156, or 62 per cent., an account of immediately antecedent mental trouble (to the exclusion of every other possible factor), often in very poignant and unmis- takable form, was ascertained, on a necessarily somewhat cursory investigation."

Dr. Snow, we should add, is at variance with popular opinion in discrediting the influence of heredity.—The King of Sweden concludes his monograph on Charles XII., which is not a very satisfactory one. He explains one or two of his acts, particularly his strange march into Southern Russia, and brings out what to us is new, his extraordinary popularity in Turkey ; but he does not give his readers any clear idea either of his hero's policy or his character. He holds him to have been a religious knight-errant, but he does not in the least explain what he wanted, or how he hoped to obtain it.

There is little for the general reader in the Fortnightly Review. Mr. Stanley's book supersedes, or rather stifles, the interest of estimates of his travels, and of our position in Africa, of which there are no less than four, one being written by Mr. Johnston, the explorer, now Consul in Mozambique. He maintains that the Salisbury agreement secures all we heed in Africa, and places Great Britain in a better position than she ever was in before. It now remains to utilise the terri- tories acquired, and for this work Mr. Johnston's first and last demand is one for competent men. The great Companies, if they are to succeed, must first of all avoid jobbing, or rather, for that is the truth, job only in favour of the trained and qualified:—" Let them find administrators—perchance in that great recruiting ground of rulers, British India—who shall be honest, fearless, energetic, cultured gentlemen, with power to overawe and sternly repel the turbulence of savages, tact to soothe the pride and win the esteem of Arabs, and just enough enthusiasm to enable them to withstand a trying climate and overlook the boredom of the wilderness. So shall the directors of these Companies carry on the work of England in Africa, and eventually retire with a well-earned peerage."—For the rest, we do not care about Mr. G. Moore on the split in the Paris

Salon ; or Mr. Lanin's new additions to the horrors we know of Russian prisons; or actors' opinions on actor-managers ;

or Madame Darmesteter on the workmen of Paris—a lament chiefly over the extinction of the old Guilds, but full of curious antiquarian details—or even Mr. Grosse on the eternal ques- tion of American copyright. The latter, however, does give us a bit of a speech which is worth the price of the magazine.

It was spoken in Congress by Mr. Payson, of Illinois, and it defeated the Bill in favour of honesty :—

" I have no doubt that if I could go into the library of the gentleman from New York, every book that I would find there would be bound in morocco, sumptuous books, and shelves crowded. with them; every engraving upon his walls would have a mammoth gilt frame about it ; all that great wealth could buy would be there without regard to expense, except [? unless] the gentleman from New York is in favour of putting art upon the free-list, as I have understood; so his pictures would come in free of duty. Men who are millionaires and have no and to their money are in favour of this thing—free pictures for themselves and high-priced_ books for the poor; but the poor man who handles a dollar only when it bears upon it the impress of a. hand that is calloused with toil, and which is moistened by sweat which comes from his brow, if he wants to read a copy of the Fortnightly Review, possibly even_ in his lowly station, having more delight in literary matters than. the gentleman from New York may have (applause), and yet [sic], by the legislation which the gentleman from New York is strenu- ously endeavouring to pass here, he is asked to pay 75 cents for that, when the American publisher will furnish it to him for 40 cents. I say to the gentleman from New York, I am for legis- lation for the benefit of the poor, rather than for the man who. lives in a palace."

If any novelist had invented that speech, he would have been denounced in America as a reckless libeller, and in England. as a poor caricaturist who did not understand the limits of his art.

There are two unusually good contributions to Macmillan's Magazine, besides Mrs. Oliphant's admirable story. One, on "Farm-Pupils in the Colonies," explains why a gently nurtured lad, intent on agricultural life in America or the Colonies, must either pay a premium for his education, or work for two years.

as a farm-hand; and the other is a story, called "A Waltz of Chopin," by the author of that suggestive fantasy, "Ant Diabolus, ant Nihil." He reveals in this short tale that he has an unusual power of touching the springs of pathos, and. creating characters at once rare and real. His shabby Danton- like musician is, to us at least, absolutely new.

M. Gabriel Monod is not quite so nutritious as usual in the Contemporary Review; but his view of French politics is. interesting. It is decidedly optimistic. He thinks that the parties, under the pressure of the social question, are approaching each other, and even that the bitterness between France and Germany is, since the dismissal of Prince Bismarck, becoming less. The French, he says, watch the young Emperor with interest and even sympathy, fascinated by the extraordinary mixture of characters they perceive in him. He maintains, too, that France is advancing in the right direction as regards the higher education, and will shortly be able to record the re-creation of her Universities, destroyed by the Convention, which was jealous of all Cor- porations, and desired to confiscate alike their influence and their reveunes.—The Rev. B. Waugh publishes a terrible indictment of the system of child-insurance, to which he traces a system of wholesale infanticide by neglect. He quotes from the report of the health officer of the Potteries. the following figures, which are worth whole pages of argument :—

"In connection with this subject (infantile mortality)

the history of our experience at Leek may be interesting and useful. There has been a burial society here for upwards of thirty years, which has been well worked and proved of great service to the inhabitants. For certain reasons the directors saw fit in the year to discontinue the insurance of lives of infants under one year. At that time the infant mortality was 156 to 1,000 born, a little over that of England generally. In the following year the mortality dropped to 109.—the lowest point ever reached. As soon as the local society declined this class of business, the branches of several large insurance offices took it up, and vigor- ously canvassed for the same, and in the year 1878 the mortality rose to 170; the average for the last seven years has been 170, and during the year just closed it reached 186, while that for the whole of England and Wales was 147."

Mr. Waugh is in favour of the total and immediate abolition of child-insurance as the only adequate preventive. He is possibly right, though the plan seems harsh, and we have every honour for his zeal ; but he would exercise still more influence if he would keep himself from screaming. What is

the use of saying that "a child dishonoured is a nation's bane" ? What does he mean ; and how is the nation more poisoned by one child's murder than by any other cruel crime?

Mr. Graham Sandberg condenses into a readable form the narrative of the visit to Lhassa paid. by Baboo Sarat Chandra Doss, a bold Indian employed as an explorer and secret agent by the Government of India. He resided for some time in the Tibetan capital, protected chiefly by the desire of some of the great Lamas for Sanscrit knowledge, and by a great Tibetan lady, to whom he had introductions. She could not comprehend how English and Indian women could content themselves with only one husband :—" I do not see,' observed Lhacham, how Indian women can possibly be as happy as Tibetan women are. The former have to divide among many the affection and the property of their one husband, whereas in Tibet the housewife, one woman, is the real mistress of all the joint earnings and inheritance of several brothers. These, her husbands, being sprung from the same mother, are un- doubtedly one, and therefore the same flesh, blood, and bones. Their persons are one, though their souls may be different." Chandra Bass's report upon Lhassa has been hitherto kept in the secret archives, but is now published, with other reports and a new map of Central Tibet. Mr. Sandberg, we may notice, underrates Chinese influence in the country. He thinks it could be readily shaken off; but the Tibetans have been hostile for hundreds of years without ever shaking off China, which, in the event of a serious insurrection, would call its warrior Mongol clans into the field, and go on fighting, after her traditional way, for a century or so without stopping. China rarely loses anything that her people seriously intend to keep ; and the Tibetans, brave as they are, are unsuccessful fighters.—We are not greatly interested in the wild ideas of Mr. Bellamy, the author of "Looking Backward," perhaps the least sensible and most attractive of all recent novels with their scene laid in Utopia. The basis of his thought is con- tained in this paragraph,—

" The human heritage must, therefore, be construed, and can only be construed, as an estate in common, essentially indivisible, to which all human beings are equal heirs. Hitherto this com- munity and equality of right have been disregarded, the heirs being left to scramble and fight for what they could individually get and keep. Thanks to the growth of human intelligence, a world in revolt testifies to-day that this insane injustice is to be suffered no longer. Unless humanity be destined to pass under some at present inconceivable form of despotism, there is but one issue possible. The world, and everything that is in it, will ere long be recognised as the common property of all, and under- taken and administered for the equal benefit of an."

Why "equal" benefit? The problem is contained in that one word, which is a pure assumption. Suppose Mr. Bellamy is right, and that he is a social prophet in the old sense of the word, are he and his compositor equals in spreading his ideas? If not, and they clearly are not, where does the equal

right come in? Certainly not from Christianity, for Christ taught the direct contrary.—Mr. Sydney Webb's paper on " The Reform of the Poor-Law" is worth studying, if only for its fresh statistics of pauperism. Mr. Webb's idea is the

-transformation of the Poor-Law into a pension system, and though he is rather wild, particularly in his notion that "the people" are hungering to give pensions, whereas their real desire is to keep rates down, he is decidedly suggestive. We disagree with the principle of his system, which would be fatal

to independence of character, but there is little doubt that the Poor-Law begins to need another reform, which shall be based more or less on the principle of insurance. What makes him say that the poor-rate is " the property of the poor " ? Granting that it is a rent-charge on property, which is a large concession, it is surely the property of the nation, not of the poor only.