THE MAGAZINES.

THE Rev. R. W. Dale, in the Contemporary Review, protests against the exclusion of the Irish Members from Parliament upon the grounds that the Empire belongs to Irishmen as well as Englishmen, that we need all the help procurable, and that ultimately the difficulty of securing obedience, particularly in the Army, may be too great, the latter an argument of some validity. The paper is well written, but Mr. Dale, we perceive, leans to an untried and, as we believe, impracticable form of federalism. He would have a Parliament for each country, but would leave to an Imperial Parliament full power of revising and controlling these subordinate Legislatures. The central body would still remain "omnipotent," and would, in practice, be set free to govern the Army, the Navy, and the Colonies, and to control foreign policy. He would find, we fear, that " politics " would mean an inces- sant collision between the central and the dependent powers, and that in any hour when opinion was hot, his machine would not work, or would work only because the really strong Power, England, imposed its will by force on the remainder. It is to be noted, however, that Mr. Dale has a definite scheme in his mind, good or bad, and is not writing only vague thoughts. Professor Max Muller has found in Weimar copies of Goethe's letters to Carlyle, which were bequeathed by the poet's grandson to the Grand Duchess of that State. The letters, translations of which are to be published, contain full accounts of Goethe's ideal of a " world literature," as opposed to a merely national one, an idea which appears to Mr. Max Muller most admirable. We are not quite so certain. Suppose the world penetrated by a single literature, would not the thought of the world be a little same, and the planet something of a country town ? Mr. Max Muller seems to think that war would cease ; but suppose the only consequence were that all wars were civil wars ? Britain and Ireland enjoy, so far as we know, the same literature, and are not therefore in affectionate accord. Mr. S. Smith, Member for Liverpool, has visited India for the second time, and writes a moderate and thoughtful paper on her condition. He is in- clined to allow an addition of representative members to the Legislative Councils of India, and would make of the University graduates the basis of an electorate,—a bad scheme, which would end in the complete misrepresentation of the people.

Suppose Mr. S. Smith applies it in England first. He is also desirous of admitting natives into the Indian Council at home, a reasonable suggestion, hampered only by this diffi- culty, that the Council would cease to be secret, and therefore free. It would debate methods not of benefiting India, but of pleasing Indian orators. Mr. Smith thinks British rule a good thing in India, but is burdened with a doubt that it impover- ishes the people. The machine is costly, no doubt ; but would a cheaper one produce the same result P One year of anarchy in India would cost more than many years of European salaries. Mr. Smith's figures are startling :— " The late able Finance Minister, Major (now Sir Evelyn) Baring. estimated the average income of the people at 27 rupees per head, say £2 Os. Gd. at the preseut exchange of ls. Gd. per rupee ; but, as Indian accounts are all kept at the old rate of 2s. per rupee, for the sake of comparison with former years it may be reckoned as £2 144. per head per annum. That would give 540 millions as the total income of the 200 millions of people who inhabit British India. Our best statists put the aggregate income of the 36 millions of people who inhabit the United Kingdom at 1,250 millions, or about £35 per head, against £2 143. per head in India. I must adt, however, that the most intelligent natives I met put the income of India at less than those figures. Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, than whom there are few better statists in India, puts the average income at only 20 rupees per head, or 400 millions sterling for British India. These very low estimates are confirmed by much collateral evidence. The average rate of wages up country is from 2 to 4 manes for common labour, or say, at the former value of the rupee, 3d. to Gd. per day —about a tenth of what is paid for the same class of labour in England. Then the Income-tax tables show a marvellously small area of high incomes. It is well known that a penny on the Income- tax produces about two millions sterling in England, and the assess- ment commences with incomes of £150 per annum. In India the same rate, commencing with incomes of £50 per annum, but with some large exceptions (such as the native zeminclars, or landowners), produces rather over 2200,000 per annum. The comparison is not at all an exact one ; hut, speaking broadly, I should say that an Income-tax in India only yields one-eighth or one-tenth of what it does in the United Kingdom, though the population is six times as large. The great complaints in many parts of India as to the pressure of the laud revenue tell the same tale. The whole amount collected is 22 millions sterling, which is little over 2s. per head of the population. It is bard to believe how so small a tax should press heavily ; yet I fear it is an undoubted fact that in the poorer parts of the country it is collected with difficulty, and in years of scarcity causes no little suffering."

Sir E. Baring's estimate is a high one, being £13 10s. a year per family ; but we imagine he counts only earned income, omitting accumulated wealth not yielding interest altogether. The total hoard of India is enormous, and constitutes a grand reserve fund. The average poverty of the people is, however, considering their industry and the richness of their soil, a most perplexing factor in the problem, though it would not seem so terrible either to Russian or German statesmen. We must not forget that Indians neither drink liquor nor eat meat, two enormous deductions from the expendi- ture of a working household. Mr. Holman Hunt finishes his autobiography, which contains an unconscious revelation of a very fine and true nature. His conclusion is that the English method of encouraging Art is "false and destructive in its operation," and that Art as a business is not an attractive one. We fancy that Mr. Hunt underrates the proportion of failures in every pursuit, and hardly understands how severe a struggle life is in England to all but those possessed of capital. He would have had Lit little suffering if be had even inherited two thousand pounds ; and with less, life is for all pro- fessional men a sharp battle, in which it is said one clear third rerish defeated. If this is true, as it certainly is of professions like the doctor's, it must be far more true of pro- fessions like the artist's, who really, to succeed, requires a gift. "Phil Robinson" sends an admirably written account of " Osman Digna's Garden,"—that is, practically, of all notice- able things on the shore of Suakim, whether in the water or above it. Poor man ! he took home a rare lamprey, only to find, as most discoverers find, that the British Museum possessed "a large series " of them. This is a new explanation of the name of the Red Sea :— " Yet one more word about coral. I have read somewhere, as an explanation of the name of the Red Sea, that ' it abounded in red coral,' and there is no deubt of it that a red coralline material, of very rich tint and resembling in substance a number of little tubes disposed regnlarly side by side, exists in prodigious quantities' More- over, for several miles from the present beach—indeed, right away to the foot of the hills--the ' sand' is chiefly composed of pulverised coral and shells. Close under the surface, for miles together, lie beds of these materials fossilised, and the soldiers digging their ditches round the camps turned up immense quantities of huge clam shells and coral-lumps, with which they decorated their earthworks and fortifications generally. I remember counting on a sand-bank, upon

which the men had written the name of the' H Redoubt' in large fossils, no fewer than twenty-five varieties. Coral is the building material of the Red Sea towns, and though it is bleached white, it is worth noting—for the sake of those• who cherish the remembrance of the Hebrews' miraculous passage—that if the waters of the Red Sea were to recede, the prerailing tints of the fresh-growing coral would probably be red. On the Jedda side a very curious black coral is found at the depth of fourteen fathoms, and• the long sticks of it that I brought home with me have a polish on them as fine as that on jet."

The best paper in the Review is, of course, M. Gabriel Monod's " Life and Thought in France," though we would warn him for once to be a little thinner. He crowds his paper with thoughts and facts till his reader is a little bewildered, and he himself, in one or two paragraphs, becomes scrappy. It is a pity, because there is nothing of the kind in the world quite equal in know- ledge and serene impartiality to his periodic sketches.

The Fortnightly Review is dull this month. The political article on the coming elections does not strike us as very nutritive. The writer thinks Mr. Gladstone will triumph because the elections will go as they went last year. The bulk of the electors care nothing about Home-rule, and will still vote for or against Mr. Gladstone. Ireland, Scotland, and Wales will stand

by him, and so will the British labourer, partly because he

dreads the Tories, but chiefly because he is an ultra-Conserva- tive, and will vote Radical because he voted Radical before. Only the boroughs will revolt, and they revolted at the last Election, in the hope, the writer says, that a new Government would benefit trade. This view, as it seems to us, misses the true question. Nobody doubts that the bulk of all parties will vote as they usually do ; but then, nobody doubts either that a minority will not. As that minority is a Liberal one which has rejected Home-rule, Mr. Gladstone will lose its sup- port, and the other side will gain it. The true question, there- fore, is whether the transfer of Union votes will be large enough to change results in counties, and to overbear in boroughs the effect of the transfer of Irish votes to Mr. Gladstone. Upon this the Fortnightly throws no light. Mr. Charles Waring's- paper on the "State Purchase of Railways" contains a mass of useful information and much thought; but it is, we fear, inopportune. He contends that the public will never get the full benefit of the railways, especially in the matter of low and equal rates for carriage, unless they are taken possession of by the State. At present, directors only look to profit ; and they will speedily do so still more, for the tendency is towards amalgamation, which means the extinction of competition. Mr Waring would, therefore, have the State issue a thousand millions of Consols, and take possession of the lines, working them through a Government Department. We believe in his case to a considerable degree, but the time is not favourable. The operation would be a gigantic one, and might materially reduce the value of State securities ; while the tendency of Parliament would be to enforce the lowest possible rates, to the considerable danger of the Treasury. Mr. Glad- stone, in his heyday, might not have shrunk from such an undertaking, but his successors certainly will. Mr. W. L.

Courtney sends us a thoughtful criticism of Mr. George Meredith's novels, from a rather hostile point of view. He holds that the novelist is always Adrian Harley, in " The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," watches his own creations with a tolerant smile, and introduces into his pictures too mach con- sciousness. That is true, but does not explain Mr. Meredith's comparative failure. He is, perhaps, the cleverest novelist alive, has a deep insight into character, is sometimes a good story- teller, and is always a great maker of epigrams. Yet he is enjoyed only by the few. His work is nearly perfect, yet leaves a general impression of tediousness. The explanation in our minds has always been a kind of monotone in. his writing, which becomes wearisome, but it is not quite

satisfactory even to ourselves. The total absence of simplicity in his work is perhaps a better one. He is like a fine actor who

can never be still, or a beautiful woman who is always, and con- sciously, showing off. Mr. Theodore Child gives us, in " Pictures in London and Paris," a clever and interesting, though somewhat scrappy, sketch of the present condition of English and French art, the latter of which he thinks quite dominated by a realistic theory :— " The modern French painters seek absolute and textual truth ; their aim is to give us by their pictures exactly the seneations of a real vision of human nature or of that more mysterious nature which is not human. In modern French fiction, as in modern French paint- ing, the process is observation of nature, selection and composition.

The artist starts from the sensation and not from the idea, and whether he be a writer, a painter, or a sculptor, what he seeks above everything is the vivid pictorial impression, the presentation of the facts or the events which contain their own morality. In life and in nature there is no morality, no conclusion, no rounded story. C'est comme ca, et voila tout."

He severely condemns the want of thought now so marked among English painters, declaring them to be, as a body, " singularly patient and singularly unintelligent." Dr. Morel' Mackenzie, in a sensible, though not very interesting, essay on the progress of medical science, which he thinks advances, though it will not do all the unlearned public expect from it, makes this startling suggestion. He is complaining that original discovery does not pay :—

" The publication of Harvey's immortal Eeercitatio de Motu Cordis was immediately followed by the loss of most of his patients. For this incompatibility between research and praotice I can see no remedy, unless a way can be found of freeing the physician from his dependence on patients without lessening the salutary stimulus to exertion. If the State were to undertake the medical guardianship of its subjects, and doctors were to be Government officials, paid not by individuals but out of the public purse, on a scale strictly com- mensurate with their activity and success, the sick would probably be just as well cared for as at present, and their attendants would have a position of greater freedom, and at the same time of greater dignity. Promotion in the service would be strictly according to merit, as estimated by the medical body itself, and special encouragement would be given to original investigation. It appears to me that this plan would have all the advantages claimed for the endowment of research without its drawbacks."

That is curiously characteristic of the hour. If the State is to .dose its subjects, why should it not feed them•?

In the Nineteenth Century, Mr. Godkin publishes a paper on "American Home-rule," which is well worth reading. It is mainly an account of certain disorders in America, such as the Anti-Rent War in New York in 1839, and the bitter contest between whites and blacks after Emancipation, during both of which Americans committed the same kind of crimes as have recently disgraced Ireland. Nevertheless, Home-rule has suc- ceeded, and is entirely popular. The deduction is apparently that people will resist unpopular systems by crime, and that the most certain mire is to place all power in their hands. We should like to hear the negroes' opinion upon that point. Mr.

Godkin entirely forgets that local self-government may, in certain conditions of society, involve oppressions on the minority which the general Government, ennobled by a larger view of human affairs, would never sanction. In such conditions, the more civilised power would have no right to delegate its authority. The only excuse for the existence of slavery in the United States was that the nation had not delegated power over slaves, but simply tolerated crimes outside the jurisdiction conferred on it by the national compact. Mr. Godkin is mis- taken in thinking that we regard crimes like the murder of the bailiff Finnca.ne as proofs of Irish unfitness for self-govern- ment. We only quote the case as proof of the extent of the social antipathies in Ireland, and therefore of the danger of entrusting all power to a class in whom those antipathies are burning. Mr. Godkin's general conclusion is a little dogmatic :—

" It is true, at least in the Western world, that if you give com- munities in a reasonable degree the management of their own affairs, the love of material comfort and prosperity which is now so strong among all civilised, and even partially civilised men, is sure in the song-ran to do the work of creating and maintaining order; or, as Mr. Gladstone has expressed it, in setting up a Government, 'the best and surest foundation we can find to build on is the foundation afforded by the affections, the. convictions, and the will of men.' "

Would he•give Paris the management of its own affairs ? Yet the people who set up the Commune are among the brightest in the world. Is he quite sure, too, that Irishmen so love material prosperity as to be sure to insist on order ? They say they do not, and certainly in all their recent conduct they have post- poned prosperity to other considerations. Look at the denun- ciations of the linen trade, as a support of the British connection. Mr. J. C. Robinson, in "Light and Water-Colours," strongly maintains the proposition that water-colour drawings of value intended to be preserved for long periods of time should be locked up, the action of light on them being slowly destructive, more especially to the • vegetable pigments. Mineral pigments survive better, and it is possible that science may yet give the painter indestructible materials ; but at present all colours fade, though in different degrees :—

" In the Oxford University collection of drawings by the ancient masters is a large bistre pen drawing, an elaborate copy of Michel Angelo's Last Judgment,' by a contemporary sixteenth-century

artist. This drawing has been exposed to the light for a long period under glass, both.at Oxford and before it came there; consequently it has waned and dwindled to a very pale and shadowy status. One figure in the composition, and one only, nevertheless, retains its pris- tine force of tint, standing out like a dark rock against a vaporous sky. This is the figure of Charon, on the lower part of the com- position, ferrying over condemned souls in his boat and striking them with his oar. The fact is, the simple-minded artist, anxious to invest the evil one with superabundant terror, drew the grisly fiend with black pigment, doubtless Indian ink or lamp-black, and this colour, being in its nature quite unchangeable, has stood its ground perfectly, whilst all the rest of the work executed in bistro has almost faded off the paper.

The reason why oil-paintings are less injured by the sun is not so much the difference in the materials employed, which is not great, but the difference in the quantity used, which is. There is, in fact, more paint to be worn away, and that takes time. Mr. E. A. Sassoon adds little to the current arguments in favour of bimetallism, but we see he admits what is constantly denied, that India is profiting immensely by her " phenomenally profitable exchange," which, among other things, is helping the exporters of Indian wheat to drive the American growers out of the market. The Countess of Galloway, without much new light, pleads for the extension of the suffrage to women, who, she hopes, would take in the State the position once occupied by the Church, that is, they would steadily test political plans by the rules of morality. That would be a formidable argu- ment on her side if it were proved ; but is it true P There is very little evidence that, except on a single subject on which their interest and morality coincide, women are more moral than men, and certainly in politics they have not displayed special obedience to the moral law. From Semiramis downwards, female sovereigns have been at least as unscrupulous as men, and in civil wars they have been rather more savage.

The Cornhill continues Mr. Rider Haggard's new novel, " Jess," the scene of which is laid in the land he knows so well, South Africa. So far, the story is powerful, and full of that distinct originality which belongs to the author of King Solo- mon's Mines. " Court Royal " has ended, greatly, we confess, to our relief. It is like a jewel made up of diamond-sparks placed without a pattern. It positively gleams with dashes of cleverness, observation, and out-of-the-way knowledge; but the total impression is barbaric. Nothing is harmonised, and no incident in the story could possibly have occurred.

Mr. Marion Crawford's story in Blackwood, too, is very good, —full of subtle observation of unusual characters ; and we have enjoyed the account of John Gwillim, the old herald, who died in 1621, and whose book on heraldry, full of learning, absurdities, and humour—he describes the early Puritans as " hedge-hogg holy ones "—has been the delight of men devoted to the " science " ever since. Gwillim was most anxious to prove the antiquity of arms, and twisted all kinds of texts from Scripture into evidence; but he seems not to have known, as Mr. Oliphant points out, the facts mentioned by Greek writers, and, of course, knew nothing either of the extreme antiquity of the practice of bearing them in India, or of the universality of totem-worship, from which the use of family insignia may be remotely descended.

We find little in Macmillan ; but there is a sketch of Grattan's Parliament which should be studied by those who believe the conduct of that body to be a proof that Ireland needs only a Parliament to be prosperous.