THE MAGAZINES.

THE great multiplication of magazines begins to tell a little upon the quality of each one. At least, we fancy there is less concentration of ability, and greater readiness to admit mere padding. It may be the accident of a season, but there have been of late decidedly fewer striking numbers, nor do we see this month any essay of first-class merit. There are fair papers in multitudes, but nothing which is felt to add distinctly to the reader's stores of thought or information. The best in the Nineteenth Century, certainly the newest, is the account of Lhassa, the Tibetan capital, by Mr. Graham Sandberg. Lhassa has never been entered by living European, yet minute accounts, and even plans of it, are in the hands of the Government of India, which is steadily exploring Tibet by means of a regular school of spies, lads from Sikkim, who are trained to the work at Darjeeling. One such lad, whose name is, of course, concealed, lived a year in Lhassa; while the head-master of the school, a pure Bengalee seized with a passion for Tibetan studies, travelled in disguise in Tibet for nearly a year. He and other explorers found Lhassa a great city, standing on a wonderfully fertile plain 11,600 ft. above the level of the sea, and surrounded by mountains which rise often to 16,000 ft. The plan of the city, as we read the description, resembles a slice of onion, successive circles of buildings encompassing the centre, the Cho-Khang, the grand cathedral or St. Peter's of Buddhism. Each ring is studded with great ecclesiastical buildings or colleges, outside of which is a ring of parks, chiefly belonging to the nobility; and outside these, again, often at distances of five miles from the centre, huge monasteries known and famed all over Tibet. The city, indeed, is in its essence ecclesiastical, and its life is derived from the troops of pilgrims who swarm into it from all countries believing in the Northern form of Buddhism. The attraction of these devotees is the hope of seeing the Dalai Lama, the lad who is supposed to be incarnate Buddha, and who now is only permitted to live until he is eighteen. After that age he would possess all temporal as well as spiritual power, but before it the temporal dominion belongs to the Regent and his Council of five, four of whom are lay- men, usually old Generals. Consequently, no Dalai Lama for sixty years has passed his eighteenth year, it being part of the policy of Pekin, where the rise of an able Lama is keenly dreaded, that he should be poisoned. The Bengalee head- master, Sarat Chandra Das, disguised as a Lama, saw the Dalai Lama of 1866, a child of eight, who, seated on a throne, drank tea and ate rice in presence of the great officials of

Tibet, and chanted a hymn of thanksgiving. He dwells upon the Potala Hill, almost in the centre of the city, covered with sacred buildings, all of which have gilded domes. Mr.

Sandberg gives no estimate of the size of the city, but describes it as vast, and there is no doubt that it is the Rome or Mecca of all Northern Buddhists, whose votaries number millions, not only in Tibet but in China Proper and Asiatic Russia.—Mr. T. W. Russell's paper, on " The Irish

Land Problem," will be read with eagerness by all politicians. His opinion, that of the most intelligent and moderate of all the advocates of tenant-right in Ireland, is contained in brief in this paragraph:— "This dual ownership in the soil ought to be terminated as speedily as possible. It is easy to write these words, but they cover an enormous transaction, and one sufficient to tax all the energies and the resources of English statesmanship. The path is tolerably clear. In a very short time the judicial rental of Ireland will be well known, because I hold that, taking the cases decided and those on account of which originating notices have been served, the entire number of tenants entitled, or who care to have judicial rents fixed, has almost been reached. We there- fore know where we stand, and what the respective rights of the parties are. In any great scheme, such as has been foreshadowed, the country ought to be divided into three parts : there are first the congested districts ; secondly, there are the encumbered estates ; and, lastly, there is the balance of the country, whore things are in a fairly prosperous condition."

In the congested districts, which stretch from Donegal to Kerry, to a depth of fifteen miles from the sea, Mr. Russell would have the State acquire the whole soil, and redistribute the tenants before selling it to them. In the case of encumbered estates, he would compel sale to the tenants ; and as to the remainder of the country, the same method must be applied also, because if not, every good tenant will have just cause for discontent. In brief, Ireland must be purchased and sold to its cultivators,—a tremendous operation.—Mr.

W. Collier will delight all sportsmen by his argument that

animals are far less sensitive to pain than men, and that insensibility increases as we descend the scale, until it well may be that in fish pain, as we understand pain, may be nearly non-existent. His principal grounds for this belief are the absence in wounded animals of the series of symptoms known in medicine collectively as " shock," and the certainty that pain originates in one definite part of the brain, the proportion of brain therefore regulating the extent of suffering. We do not under- stand him to say that animals feel no pain, but that it is less than we imagine, much of the appearance of it in wild creatures being due to fear. Well, but what is fear, if it is not the dread of renewing a previous experience of pain P There is no instinctive fear, for animals which have never known man, the most generally dreaded of all creatures, do not fear him —A Mahommedan gentleman, Mehdi .Ali, repudiates Sir Lepel Griffin's assertion that Hyderabad is ill-governed, and says that great progress towards good govern- ment has been made there, one concrete piece of evidence being the rise in the revenue receipts, and the other a large immigration from British territory. The latter argument would perhaps be more solid if it were certain that a native cultivator preferred civilised order to a profitable farm ; but Mehdi All writes temperately, and carefully separates himself

from the new Indian Radicals.—Dr. Max Muller writes a most curious account of the legendary ring still preserved by the reigning family of Anhalt, one of the oldest in

Europe, and popularly believed to have been the gift of the Queen of the Toads. The ring, however, is of the fifteenth century, and the toad legend may be the result of a mispronunciation of the common ellipse for Margarethe,—Grete, which became Krote. There was in the fifteenth century a famous Princess of the house bearing that name, who may have bequeathed the ring as a warning to her descendants to beware of fire. Dr. Max Muller, however, inclines to the idea that the legend is a survival from the pagan period, when some goddess personified as a toad was believed to favour the house of Anhalt Dessau.—Mr. Gladstone gives an account of a book which must, we fancy, be somewhat repellent,—the autobiography, in nearly a thousand pages, of a young Russian lady, Marie Bashkirtseff. She seems

to have been a girl of rare artistic gifts, abnormally precocious, and eaten up with vanity and the desire of dis- tinction. She was musician, singer, and sculptor, throwing

herself, like a true Slav, into each successively with her whole energies, and wore herself out at twenty-three.— The Rev. J. Guinness Rogers replies to Mr. Atherley Jones in an article the substance of which is that no party of moderates can long succeed, the victory always belonging to the men with ideas and enthusiasms. That is a half-truth, valid only at particular times, the function of ruling successfully belong- ing through long periods of years to the moderate and un- enthusiastic. England was governed by Whigs for a hundred and fifty years.

In the Contemporary Review, the first article, a remon-

strance with Italy for joining Germany, attributed to Mr. Gladstone, is, if that attribution is correct, the most im- portant, and is dealt with elsewhere.—Mr. Miller, a mis- sionary occupying quite a unique position in Madras, in a paper on missionary education in India, answers Mr. Townsend's allegation that educated natives do not become Christian, by the assertion that their spirit and tone, as well as that of native society generally, is distinctly Christianised. That, of course, is a final argument, if it is true, for all except the subscribers to mission work, who, we fancy, are anxious for something else ; but then, is it true? It is admittedly not quite true of Bengal, and we should like to see a considerable body of opinion forwarded from Madras, the opinion of lay Europeans and natives. Even if it is favourable, it would not prove that a concentration of energy in evangelising a body of native pastors, who should be left Asiatics in language and thought, would not be a more effective method. Mr. Miller, however, has great experience, he is independent of the Societies, and he argues with a graciousness of temper not invariably present even in mis- sionary discussions.—Colonel F. Maurice sends some note- worthy reflections on the experience gained by naval men during two years of " Naval Manceuvres." Their net result is this,—that science has diminished the efficiency of blockading squadrons, and increased that of blockaded squadrons. The difficulty of coaling the former at sea, for instance, is in- superable, and their commanders communicate by despatch- boats, while their enemies use the telegraph. The following sentence upon another subject is also a pregnant one :—

" It appears, then, that Sir George Tryon's view is that, in any future naval war, two fleets that come within sight of one another will be forced to fight to the last man, unless the weaker fleet is within immediate reach of protection. For the constant liability of modern complicated machinery to get out of order leads to such continual enforced delays on the part of ship after ship in a. fleet, that if one fleet should for any length of time be engaged in chasing another less powerful, it would be continually picking up the 'lame ducks' that had dropped behind."

—Mr. Runciman's " Ethics of the Drink Question," written, as its author confesses, by one himself only liberated from the demon through hard suffering, is singularly eloquent; but we do not see that it adds much to the argument. Mr. Runciman himself is very pessimist; says the crave for drinking always attacks the brightest and best-educated lads, so that know- ledge is no defence ; and admits he has little hope, except in appeals to fear of the hopeless ruin drink produces. If that is the case, there is no hope at all, for drunkards tremble and drink on ; but it is, we trust, an exaggeration.

Certainly, certain classes have ceased to drink to excess, and we do not know why all should not.—Mr. Albert Shaw adds something to Mr. Bryce's black account of American State Legislatures, showing that the States are gradually restraining those bodies not only by limiting their Sessions, but by inserting elaborate laws into the Constitu- tions, and thus placing whole departments of work beyond

the representatives' reach. The Iowa Constitution, for example, "wiped out all opportunity of local and special legis- lation, provided for the uniform organisation of municipal

bodies, removed the election of Judges from the Legislature and gave it directly to the people, authorised general laws for the incorporation of private Companies, and fixed the character of legislation upon various important subjects." Short Sessions are not found to work well, all proposals being rushed, and this rule is gradually being abandoned.—Mr.

Justin McCarthy, who discusses with great temperance the question of University education in Ireland, says the Catholic hierarchy leans now a little towards the scheme of three Universities,—one for Protestants, one for Protestant Dis- senters, and one for Catholics. We do not see the necessity for more than two, the second to be a purely Catholic estab- lishment with a State endowment, and, of course, a State right to ascertain that the education is thorough.

The most instructive article in the Fortnightly is one on " The Armed Strength of France," the gist of which is con-

tained in the following paragraph :-

" The total strength of French troops which could thus be made immediately available for massing on the frontier, may be estimated at :—Officers and men, 750,065 ; guns, 2,160 ; horses, 243,468 ; and carriages, 40,907. The whole of these troops com- pletely equipped, and provided with two days' rations for imme- diate use, would be concentrated in their own districts ready for transportation to the frontier on the night of the sixth day after receiving the order to mobilise. The ranks would contain no recruits, who would remain at the dep6ts—their places being taken by the fully trained reservists. After sending these 750,065 men to the front, there would still remain at the depots 278,724 fully trained men, 326,416 men with one year's training, 203,940 men who had been trained with the reserve, and 492,314 men available for employment as non-combatants. A portion of these reserve troops would be immediately organised for etappen duties on the lines of communication, and the remainder held in reserve to fill gaps in the ranks at the front."

That is a most formidable force, if France has a General who can move them, and a commissariat department which can keep them fed when in motion. There is no evidence as yet on either point, and the writer evidently thinks that the huge fortified camps erected all over France to bar the passage of an enemy towards Paris may hamper the movement of her armies.

They certainly may if the attack is well directed, more especially as if the enemy once crosses the frontier, he may halt and await attack. The French can no more let him remain than a man can suffer a bullet to remain in a dangerous part of his body. Honour will not permit it, not to speak of material considera- tions. All French defences, too, presuppose a march on Paris ; but suppose the march is southwards P—Mr. D. F. Schloss believes that the industrial war may be ended by the profit- sharing method ; which is in great measure true, but is very like saying that when men are wise, folly will be little. The kind of man who can make a business, wants to make it for himself, not for himself and a council of his workmen.— Mr. Grant Allen's " Plain Words on the Woman Question "

are not plain words at all. He lays down the undeniable proposition that the main functions of women are to be wives and mothers, and that they cannot get rid of them ; but draws

no deduction except that the emancipated women are going on the wrong lines. What lines should they go on, then?

Apparently, he wants some radical change in the marriage law, but he does not say what, though it is to be in the direction of enabling women to escape from slavery.—Mr. R. S. Gundry, who knows China, is not very hopeful of any progress there, either in building railways or anything else, and, except as regards strategic lines, is probably right. His paper is full of information ; and he gives proper place to that strange deficiency in Chinese institutions, the want of an Imperial currency. China is full of silver, but the only coins in use are one worth the seventh of a farthing, and one worth £10, a solid lump of silver. A mint has recently been set up to coin Mexican dollars ; but the country wants a silver coin worth about a rupee, and made legal tender throughout the Empire.-----Mr. Horace Victor's account of " Eastern Women " is interesting, because he really understands their point of view of life; but he greatly underrates the evils of the harem system. No doubt it is only an ideal, and most Asiatics, 90 per cent. at least, are monogamists; but in spoiling an ideal you spoil a nation. Mr. Victor acknowledges that Easterns, women as well as men, " exalt the physical at the expense of the spiritual part of man's nature." "It [their religion] refuses to look upon him from any tran- scendental point of view. It regards his material reality as

the main part of himself, and it endows his sensual pleasures with an intrinsically noble value of their own, apart from any

other consideration." Quite true ; but how could any one pass a stronger condemnation on the Asiatic idea of life P—The Rev. J. Verschoyle has done a service to all true lovers of wild nature by his enticing description of his march through the huge forest of Roncesvalles, which he traversed accompanied only by a guide and a mule from Roncesvalles to the Maladetta, the highest point in Aragon. This region is as wild a mass of woodland, valley, and sierra as the heart of man could desire ; yet the traveller is safe, and is entertained in the scattered hamlets and peasants' houses not inhospitably :

" I had entered the forest country of Navarre, where the great beechwoods filled the valleys like a sea, and tossed their leafy spray high against the grassy slopes of the mountain ridges ;

there I had tasted the delight of open-air existence, lived in close communion with Nature; the fresh breath of the forest world at dawn, the `cool silver shock' of the plunge in the living sapphire of the mountain stream ; the delight of finding, after hours of walking in the hot hazy windless twilight of the wood, some hidden fountain-head where the maidenhair bowed its slender black stems with their tender green tresses, above the clear mirror ; while from its pavement the delicate spires of silver sand rose trembling through the crystal water as if moved by the quiet breathing of the naiad below. Then I had found myself in the midst of the savagely grand scenery of the Aragonese sierras, among rock- walled, pine-plumed barrancos, a land of streams, where the glacier rivers thundered in the hollows of the glens, and from the tall Cliffs the cataracts dropped veil above veil of crystal water, which fluttered slowly and leisurely down and broke beneath into a gleaming mist that wore the iris of the unclouded sunlight. And above the rock walls I had seen the peaks and snow-streaked ridges of the higher sierras, and below them the forest-glades and mountain-slopes glowing with the deep blue of the iris and the delphinium, or the purple of the monkshood ; while by day the sun poured down a flood of scorching flame from a cloudless sky, and by night the stars trembled brightly in the cold, keen air. And higher up in the sierras I had seen where deep-blue glacier lakes slept, blue as indigo, save where against the whiteness of the glacier sloping under it the water showed a pale sapphire ; or, when the deep-blue mirror was ruffled by a wind from the peaks, the hues of the mallard's neck swept over it."

—Mr. J. Welsh pleads with unusual eloquence for an agree- ment between Russia and England to terminate the evil reign of the Turk, who will otherwise perish in a sea of blood. By all means, if Mr. Welsh will only suggest a guarantee that Russia will keep her side of the agreement. If we could only rely on her word, say for fifty years, Asia could be made indefinitely happier ; but that security is, as yet, unattainable.—Mr. E. B. Lanin's account of Russian society is almost an incredible one. It is a description of a race of evil children filled full with a kind of fatalism which induces them to believe that all will go well when the first step in anything has been taken. According to him, heedlessness is the most prominent quality of the Russian mind, and is shown on the most serious occasions. The writer would, we think, find much of this heedlessness in all peoples except the few which, like those of Western

Europe, have been drilled into perpetual self-restraint. He attributes to the idea of fatalism, also, the extraordinary leniency of Russians towards scoundrels. They think, or at all events feel, that crime is a kind of misfortune to be pitied and condoned.

The National Review is dull,—or would be, but for the " slating " of George Meredith by Mr. William Watson. That is a piece of vigorous writing, though we do not wholly agree with the criticism, except as regards Mr. Meredith's occasional absurdities of style.. The objection to his plots as obscure is overstrained. As a matter of fact, the novelist's art is sufficient to make the reader accept unexplained action, just as he accepts it every day in real life. It was a thing such a man would have done, though you cannot tell why he

did it.

Blackwood publishes the commencement of what promises

to be a remarkable story, by " J. Maclaren Cobban," clearly a pseudonym. The writer uses, and uses well, a half-super- natural machinery, the hero having apparently discovered a method of prolonging and filling life by stealing vital force from his fellow-creatures. The conception is a weird one, with much more originality in it than Lord Lytton's in " The Strange Story," he adhering to the old alchemist notion of a drug which could renew youth. The author, too, keeps his or her imagination well curbed, though he has invested his magician, who is no magician, but only the possessor of new scientific knowledge, with the usual ascendency over all beasts. Why should they be attracted, instead of repelled, by unusual fullness of life P

In Macmillan, Mr. Clark Russell finishes "Marooned," far and away the best of his recent stories, if not the best of

them all; and Mr. Goldwin Smith sends an account of the last Jesuit move in Canada, the object of the paper being to show that the veto possessed by the Dominion on the Home- rule powers of the Provinces is a mere illusion. The statesmen of Ottawa dare not exercise it when the provincial majority is in earnest, as it was in passing the Act incorporating the Jesuits and permitting them to hold landed property. Mr. Goldvrin Smith believes that the Jesuits are intent on driving out, or rather, buying out, all British settlers, and concen- trating all power in Lower Canada into their own hands. It is quite possible they are; but the Jesuits, with all their faults, have at least this one virtue,—they never win. They have not even kept Paraguay, and are at this moment objects of suspicion or hatred in all Catholic countries on the globe.