SOME OF THE MAGAZINES.

-ME Contemporary this month is full of papers noteworthy either for themselves or for their writers' names, or—as in the case of the article on the Prince Consort----for the unusual knowledge of the rumoured author. Among the second class we must still place Mr. Grant Duff's "Notes of an Indian Journey," which strike us as quite unworthy alike of his abilities and reputation. They are the merest jottings, and recall nothing so vividly as the worst pages of Dr. Livingstone's diaries. We can find in the whole eighteen pages nothing deserving of note except Mr. Grant Duff's admission that words cannot describe the Taj, the second, if not the first, structure for beauty in the world, and nothing for extract except these two sentences. The first is a plausible, though imperfect excuse for the Indian engineers' trick of submitting sanguine estimates .— "I heard a point bearing on the endless controversy about Indian public works more forcibly stated than hitherto. 'It is all very well,' said one of my fellow-travellers, for people at home to say, "Don't snake sanguine estimates ;" but suppose we don't make sanguine esti- mates, what happens? By no possibility can we keep the amount of our estimates secret. It gets out, and then every native subordinate

does his very utmost to take care that he and his work well up to our estimate. Making sanguine estimates is absolutely necessary, if we mean to keep down actual costs."

An engineer's business is to tell the truth to his employers, and leave them to ensure or neglect secrecy, as they please. Our second note is a remark which can never be repeated too often :—

,.How little do even the most intelligent people at home who have not made a special study of India at all realise what an enormous country it is ! I have just been reading an article, obviously by a man of sense and ability, from which it is clear that he believes the one great subject in India at this moment to be the Bengal famine. I landed

twenty-soven days ago, yet I have hardly heard it named The modern system of 'special correspondence' is very disturbing to the mental focus, bringing some things into undue prominence, and throw- ing others far too much into the shade."

If Englishmen would only remember that India is as large as Europe west of the Vistula, contains nearly double the popula- tion, and is four times as much divided by language, they would be able to begin to learn the elementary data of Indian political speculation.—Mr. G. P. Badger's article on Mohammedanism, or rather on Mr. R. B. Smith's lectures upon that subject, strikes us, coming from such an authority, as unexpectedly thin. Mr. Smith, for example, shrinks from the effort to explain the causes of the success of Mohammed's doctrine, and Mr. Badger endea- vours to supply the hiatus thus :—

"It is not within a reviewer's province to supplement his treatise; nevertheless, the importance of the subject prompts me to do so. In the first place, then, the Muslim formula, 'There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Apostle of God,' has this advantage over the Christian, especially with barbarous or half-civilised races, that it is far more simple, is easier to be learnt, and conveys in one utterance all that is necessary to be believed in order to salvation. The New Testament is not wanting in similar brief symbols, e.g., This is life eternal that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou haat sent;" or Acts xvii., 31. The exigencies of Christianity, which in Christendom have led to metaphysical amplifications of these summary professions of faith, have placed a serious difficulty in the way of mis- sionaries to non-Christian peoples, who are incapable at the outset of apprehending complex truths, and find it difficult even to retain them in memory, to say nothing of other rigorous but salutary conditions attached to induction into the Church. A still more potent reason is the fact that Christianity inculcates a far higher morality than the Knran, and makes heaven the final reward, not of the bare professors of its tenets, but of the truly penitent, and those who love as well as fear God."

That these are among the reasons of the spread of Mohammedanism may be admitted, but surely Mr. Badger forgets the strongest reason of all. Mohammedanism, like Christianity, preaches equality of rights, and Mohammedans, unlike Christians, act up to their creed. The Faith opened a career to all talents. From the day when the Prophet made his negro slave a Commander-in- Chief, every post in the Mussulman world has been open to every Mohammedan, irrespective of birth, colour, or pecuniary means, not in theory only, but in practice, till men still living can remember when Ibrahim Pacha, grandson of a tobacconist, was within a single step of the throne of the Khalifs. In India, undoubtedly, where the creed spreads so rapidly as to be a danger, this is its first attraction.—Mr. Orby Shipley, in an essay on the Public Worship Regulation Act, which comes into operation in July, sets forth at great length the reasons which induce him to urge the clergy to refuse to obey the law. These reasons, though repeated over and over again in different words, all reduce themselves to one,—that the Act destroys the grand principle that ecclesiastical laws are to be administered by ecclesiastical judges alone, and is therefore an abrogation of the spiritual rights of the Church. Mr. Orby Shipley argues at great length to prove this proposition, but be seems to us to a great extent to waste his breath. Does anybody seriously deny it, or deny either that since the Reformation it has always been so, —that the Church has always been subject to the authority of a lay Parliament? No doubt there was a time when the presence of the Spiritual Peers was held essential to an Act, but when they were present their vote was constantly over - ridden by that of their lay brethren, while the judgment of Ecclesiastical Courts has always been subject in one form or another to an appeal to the Crown. We dislike the Act as much as Mr. Shipley does, but it is no unprece- dented interference with the Church, and does not on English Church principles justify secession. The lay Judges do not make the law ; they are only to state what the law is. If Mr. Orby Shipley really intends to advise secession, he should wait for the action of the Court, and secede in protest against a heresy, and not on behalf of an idea which no English layman will accept, the right of the sacerdotal Order to remain in a State-paid Church, yet be exempt from State control. We are not quite certain whether it is secession that he advises, but it is difficult to attach any other definite meaning to his final summary:—

"This question must now be answered. The reader will remember that one line of argument, the practical, has alone been followed in the present paper. If only a portion of what has been urged against the New Act can be maintained, there can be no doubt of the reply which must be given. As no valid objection can be raised against the argu- ment in its main features, any difference of opinion on minor points may be ignored. On this broad basis the writer takes his stand, whether as Churchman or as citizen. In the latter position he sees that the State has practically abolished the legal jurisdiction of the English Episcopate which the Bishops have enjoyed, with the consent of the law, from time immemorial. In the former, he believes that the Church has thereby been practically deprived of rights, the exercise of which are essential to a full adherence to the first principles of the Christian faith. Both positions are combined in the case of a clergy- man of the Established Church. He is forced, as a matter of conscience, to form an opinion and to come to a decision. As the question ultimately resolves itself into one of obedience to God or man, the writer can only, with much diffidence, yet with all earnestness, make answer that,—We -cannot recognise the new Judge, we ought not to obey the New Court, created by the authority of the Public Worship Regulation Act."

Every one should read the anonymous paper in the Fortnightly on what we could have done for France or Belgium, if only to see all that can be said on the weakness of this country for operations on the Continent. The writer believes that Great Britain could accomplish nothing in the field from want of num- bers, forgetting, we think, what a spear-head a British corps d'armie would make to any Continental army, except perhaps the German ; and that the only fortification we could hope to defend effectually would be Antwerp, and even there we should be beaten :—

" The French once wholly or nearly crushed, Germany could take its own line as to Belgium. Her Generale would be too wise to break their men's heads against the works of Antwerp, occupied by a hundred thousand soldiers at least, nearly half of them English. They would simply occupy the whole kingdom up to within gunshot of the fortress; dispose the chief part of the force thus used so as to check any sudden issue from it ; and then trust to the sure effects of time, and live on the country."

That is just what we should question. Fifty thousand English- men in a fortress like Antwerp, with the sea for a base, would, if we read our history aright, compel either Germany or France to make, an effort for its capture, which, within twelve months, would overstrain either State, and enable every enemy it possesses, assisted by English money, to bring their armies into

• the field. That we ought to be able to do much more than this is true, but this is not nothing.—Mr. Lewis Carroll, one of the most delicate humotuists of whom England can boast, contri- butes a reasonable and moderate protest against vivisection, con- eluding with an earnest prophecy that science will yet claim man as a subject for experiment.—We are not usually much moved by metaphysical argument, however audacious, and think it far better for the world that its secret unbeliefs, as well as its secret superstitions, should be brought into the glare of day, but we confess to a sort of anger at Professor Clifford's misrepre- sentations of Christianity. According "to the popular and re- e,eived theology of Christian communities," he says, Christians believe this or that monstrosity, and no doubt there are persons who believe such things, or think they believe them, as there are persons who believe or think they believe that science can solve questions outside the possibility of material data; but philosophers ought not to confound them with the foemen who alone are worthy of their steel, the thousands -who hold Christianity intelligently. In so doing, they are as unphilosophical as those missionaries who try to convert Catholics by telling them they are idolators, or Jews by denouncing their reverence for ceremonial, and infidels by telling them that their doubts are suggestions of Satan, for which they, and mot Satan. will be held liable in another world. Nor can we believe that anything is really gained for the cause of science by the application of the satiric method to theology, or that the argument that as atoms are indestructible, they must originally have been formed out of nothing by a Mind, is really destroyed by a retort of this kind :—"Because the sea is salt and will put out a fire, there must at one time have been a large fire lighted at the bottom of it. This can only have been effected by the agency of the whale who lives in the middle of Sahara." Satire so applied yields not the wish for truth which it is the duty of all scientific men to cultivate, but the wish for any answer which may even seem to rebuke such presumptuous language. What is the use of asserting as a blank fact, and in italics, that "longing for deathlessness means simply shrinking from death?" Why not assert that longing for light means simply shrinking from dark- ness? Of course it means it, and a great deal else too, as Professor Clifford will perceive, if he will analyse his own mind when he next calls for candles that he may go on writing.—Mr. Lyulph Stanley condenses from the Report of the Commissioners appointed to investigate the subject a terrible picture of the treatment of the Indian coolies in the Mauritius, where they form two-thirds out of a population of 326,454, the remainder being negroes, half-castes, and less than 10,000 whites. Mr. Stanley shows on irrefragable evidence that the original blunder of importing three males to one female has led to the institution of polyandry, and to an extraordinary num- ber of murders from jealousy ; that the education laws are entirely neglected ; that the Indians accumulate very little, and that they are reduced by exceptional legislation to a condition very little removed from serfage, a condition which, we take it, they would bear readily enough, but for the extreme injustice with which, as they think, they are treated by the local magis- trates, who are either planters or governed by planter opinion. The remedy, as Mr. Stanley suggests, is the abolition of long contracts for labour and of exceptional laws, the restoration, in fact, of the Indians to freedom. They have a right, in a country without poor laws, to be vagrants if they like, more especially as they are always ready to work for wages and kind treatment. We may add that the remedy ought to come soon, or we may yet see the scenes of the Mutiny repeated on this little overcrowded island. These Indians are not negroes, they are not light- hearted, and they are not impressed with a notion that the white man is invincible. Some day, if they are harassed as they now are, they will spring, and civilisation in the Mauritius will die in a morning.

Blackwood has a remarkable paper headed, "France and Germany," and evidently written by a man who thoroughly under- stands the military condition of France, but is not unwilling to lend her rulers a little help in diffusing the impression that France is powerless. His statement is that the immense military credits taken since 1871 have been spent secretly on military materiel,— cannon, rifles, and fortifications ; that the regiments have been systematically thinned to save money ; that the territorial army exists only on paper ; and that France has not, outside Algeria, 200,000 soldiers on active duty. She is, in fact, powerless, or at best only a second-rate power. That this statement is in the main true, we believe ; but then it is also true that the replacing of war materiel is far advanced, that the cadres are exceedingly numerous, and that France, outside her army, must contain at least 600,000 thoroughly drilled men, every one of whom would be in the ranks at a fortnight's notice. The Germans, if they invaded, with their wonderful mobility, would probably reach Paris, but whether they would a second time compel it to capitulate is a different matter. Paris would this time be very differently fed, garrisoned, and aided. Still France, if let alone, will be patient, and we have only to ask, with the writer, whether Germany will be equally so. It is a greater trial for her, because, not to speak of the immense taxation she is bearing in blood and money, she has not that great support of patience, the sense that the evil cannot be helped :— "With France, forbearance is a material necessity ; with Germany, it is only a moral obligation. The difference is vast between the two positions : it is the difference between impossibility and possibility between slavery and liberty, between fatalism and free-will. France cannot ; Germany can. France has not to trouble herself about duty, but simply to prepare force ; Germany has force all ready, but is obliged to hold it muzzled, because it is her duty not to use it. This being so, some members of the Prussian Staff find duty disagreeable; they chafe against it ; they long to throw off its bonds, am], as La Rochefoucauld expresses it, to employ their force in 'supporting the sufferings of other people,' instead of their own."

Macmillan has little of interest this month, but there are some striking passages in the paper on "Virginia and the Gentleman Emigrant ;" and Sir Bartle Frere sends an account of our guest, the Sultan of Zanzibar. The following paragraph describes in a few words the essential difference between the scenery of the Northern States and that of Great Britain :—

"It is almost impossible to give a person unacquainted with America any idea of what the settled parts of the Northern States and Canada are like—they are something so utterly different from anything in the Old World. Perhaps what would best explain my meaning would be to say, that in the former countries there is nothing that comes up to our idea of the word 'rural.' It is true, there aro neat farm-houses (but then they are built like English seaside villas), green fields, and clear streams, and all the essentials which are generally understood to make up the word ; but an entire look of newness pervades everything. The appearance of having been carved and manufactured out of the universal forest, and laid out like a chessboard, forces itself on the imagination, and refuses to be shaken off."

Parts of the South, on the other hand, are very different, but the gentleman emigrant, whom the writer advises to select Virginia, should pause, unless he has capital and knows well that he can govern men ; and if he has both money and capacity, why should he not stop at home ? The Sultan of Zanzibar is Bargash, fifth son of Said bin Sultan, himself the grandson of the second Imam, elected to the throne by the sect of the Ibadhiyah, who for a thousand years have ruled the kingdom of Oman :—" He is a middle-aged man, with the extremely simple, pleasing manners of an Arab of high birth ; sensible and observant, of some literary attainment in his own language, and especially well read in Arab theology." His alliance is valuable to this country mainly against the slave trade, but he has also harbours which make his country an important base for military operations. The ruler of Oman is indeed the only Chief between Suez and China who possesses a marine of any consequence.

Fraser seems to us to be becoming a little too literary. There is want of matter in its padding, an absence of papers adding to the general sum of knowledge in the world. Mr. F. Newman's attack on the morality of Alexander is probably the best in this number, but we confess we should have enjoyed a sketch of his career more than this account of one side of his nature. The tone of the analysis, too, is a little too hostile. That Alexander was cruel may be admitted, and it is quite certain that the Oriental form of authority, the desire to exercise sway by pure volition, intoxicated him as it has intoxicated most men sub- mitted to the temptation ; but he is surely misjudging when he nproaches Alexander for imprudence in attacking Asiatics with so few soldiers. He had thrice the number Nadir Shah had, and he contemplated building an empire like the English, supported by native as well as by Greek soldiers, whom, more- over, he could have reinforced effectually from Persia. Alexander, had he lived, would have governed Western Asia, and perhaps India besides, through a warrior caste, with Greeks for its nucleus and all brave ruffians for its auxiliaries ; and his plan, if immoral, was not impossible, but was subsequently carried out by the early Caliphs. Nor can we see the insolence Mr. Newman detects in this old story :—" 'If I were Alexander, I would ac- cept Darius's offers,' said Parmenio. 'So would I, if I were Parmenio,' replied Alexander, insolently and foolishly ; yet it is lauded as a right royal sentiment." It seems to us to indicate rather the self-confidence of genius sure to acquire all he desired, and therefore determined to submit to no partitioning. Of course, it is not moral, but we do not see the use of judging Alexander by the modern moral standard.—The sketch of "Peasant Life in North Italy" is extremely vivid, and apparently truthful, but there must be another side to this somewhat idyllic picture of the Apennine life. Otherwise, there is at least one place in the world where the mass of men are decently happy—which is not pro- bable.---The authoress of the "German Home Life" has for the moment worn out her stock of thoughts, and her paper on the language is poor, while her illustrations of German coarseness is almost comic in its affectation. Why in the world should the great lady not say aloud that her dog had been twice sick ? The satire on German exactness in giving each person his or her precise title is a little worn, and has not much meaning now that we see that the German habit of organising a nation as strictly as a regiment—which is the ultimate reason for these absurd forms—has succeeded in its object. Official forms are always exact, and all forms in Germany are official.

The Cornhill, besides its stories, which are excellent, has two most readable papers,—on "Life, Past and Future, in Other Worlds," a most suggestive account of the probabilities that planets may be exhausted or in a state of preparation for life ; and on the high technical skill of the mad genius, "William Blake."