THE MAGAZINES.

THERE is no article in the Nineteenth Century of commanding interest, but several that are very readable. "The Trafalgar

Captains," by Mr. Laird Clowes, would have delighted Mr. Stevenson, and might have been made the text for an article on "The Commanders of British Frigates," to form a sequel

to the paper on our Admirals in Virginibus Puerisque. Nelson, in one of his despatchee to "my Lords," declared, a pro pos of

one of his great victories, and with that boyish enthusiasm that shone so pleasantly in whatever he wrote, that it had been his happiness to "command a band of brothers." Mr.

Clowes's paper is, in a sense, an amplification of this phrase. It shows us what manner of men were Nelson's Captains.

'Truly they were enchanting people, these heroes who passed their days in storm and battle on the old wooden ships. But let no one suppose they were mere Vikings. The Admirals and Captains of the Great War had, like Nelson, a strong touch of humanity and of sentiment running through

them. Here is the account of Captain Duff, "who was cut in two at Trafalgar, and his body covered with a spare Union- Jack ":—

" He was a devoted husband and father. Writing in June, 1804, he said : It was a month yesterday since I left my dearest wife and little ones. I hope ere many more that some good fellow will have made Bonaparte quiet, as I fear till he is so we shall have no peace.' Of a dinner with Collingwood on the 29th of October, 1804, he wrote : I went on board my Admiral yesterday to dinner, without being invited, and left the first-lieutenant here to take my place. I had a note from my old friend Gardner, who is here in the Hero,' saying the Admiral would be glad to see me, as he dined there ; so I went, and found, as usual, a very In3arty and friendly welcome.' About theatricals at sea he wrote in November, 1804: You cannot imagine how gay we are to be to-night. About a week ago I received a petition from the gentle- men of the cockpit, requesting to be allowed to perform the tragedy of Douglas, with the pantomime of Harlequin and the Mi/ler ; and last night a ticket was sent to me with a bill of the play I went to the theatre last night, and I can assure _you it was no bad performance. Between the play and the farce we had a most excellent Irish song from one of the sailors. The snusic, indeed, was very good, and the entertainment for the .night concluded with God Save the King.' The whole was over a quarter before eight o'clock. They had several scenes, not badly painted. The ladies' dresses were not very fine, but did credit to their invention. Lady Randolph was all in black, made out of silk handkerchiefs ; and I believe Anne's dress was made of sheets; but upon the whole they looked remarkably well.' On March 27th, 1805, when the French seemed inclined to come out .of Brest and to risk an action : Should I, unfortunately, fall, I hope that our friends will take care of you and our dear little ones. I have done all, my dearest Sophia, to make you and them comfortable that our small funds would allow; but I am sorry to say they are very small indeed. I regret much you never would allow me to speak of making a settlement, nor would look at the one I had made."

The passage about the theatricals should be noted by those .who imagine that a King's ship at the beginning of the

century was always a sort of floating hell with the men on the verge of mutiny owing to the terrible severities prac- tised by the captain.—Under the title of "The Land of

Frankincense and Myrrh," Mr. Theodore Bent gives us some more of his delightful travels in Arabia. But though the article is capital reading, we have a complaint. Mr. Bent makes many mentions of rains, but he does not tell us what the ruins were, or anything specific about them. This is a great mistake. He should not forget that many of his readers,

like the lady in Shakespeare, love a ruin but even too well, and are greatly annoyed at being led up to ruined walls (and by a ruin expert, too), and then told nothing about them. At the .end of Mr. Bent's paper is a fascinating account of an ." Abyss." If Coleridge had read it before a supper of cold meat and pickles, or an extra dose of opium, we should have

had a new " Kubla Khan."—All who are interested in the . mechanism of prose should read Mr. Frederic Harrison on

• " Ruskin as a Master of Prose." It is full of inspiriting and sympathetic criticism, and infinitely better worth reading than Mr. Harrison's sermon about Positivism in the Fort. niglilly.—Other readable papers are those on the late Mr. Locker-Lampson, and on "The Need for an Antarctic Expedi- tion." This last paper gives some curious proof as to our want of knowledge of the marine zoology of the Antarctic Seas. For example, scars and wounds are found on the seals, apparently given by an animal armed with a sword. Yet no animal capable of giving such wounds has been found.

The National Review has a "breezy " paper by Rear-Admiral Fitzgerald in answer to Admiral Maxse's "Fraternal France." With the abstract aim of the paper we are in entire accord. That aim is to prevent the growth of ill-feeling between us and France ; but we do not think it is at all fair to accuse Admiral Masse of promoting ill-feeling by exposing as he did the attacks made upon England by a section of the French Press. Such exasperating attacks can only be checked by the disapproval of French public opinion. But French public opinion will not be moved unless the harm that is being done by intemperate writing is occasionally pointed out, as it was by Admiral Ma.xse in his able paper on "Fraternal France." We should be equally glad to see some French writer collect the ill-tempered things said against France in the English Press as a warning to English jour- nalists.—In "Recent Finance" "An Observer" gives an interesting account of the boom in South African securities :—

"Finance has recently gone mad. The investing public, tired of buying Consols at 1071 and upwards, or of putting money into Home Railway Ordinary Stocks with the prospect of an uncertain return of 3 per cent., has betaken itself in real earnest to the Mining Market, and with the aid of unprecedentedly cheap money has there worked up a boom' such as is unparalleled in the memory of the oldest inhabitant of the Stock Exchange. It may seem absurd for an article which is devised to sketch the broad effects of finance and to trace its connection with the political and other events of the day, to begin by calling the attention of its readers to the wild speculation that is now going on in mining shares ; but the fact is that this speculation is actually absorbing the whole attention of the financial world, and that events which would in ordinary times have given markets a qualmish fit of the shivers, are passed by unnoticed as long as lia.ffirs keep good.' The German Emperor may hint plainly at the possibility of civil war in his own dominions ; Spain may go weltering farther into the mire of insolvency in her impotent attempts to cope with the insurrection in Cuba ; the Bank of New Zealand may be found to be once more in need of bolstering up by the Colonial Govern- ment, not to mention the infinite possibilities of nervousness that normal markets would have discovered in connection with Turkish obstinacy in the East, and Russian interference in the Far East —but all these things are unobserved or speedily forgotten in the face of the fact that Chartered shares continue their advance. And this at a time of year when everybody is generally holiday- making and business on the Stock Exchange is usually confined to a narrow trickle of investment orders. Whereas lately every day has seen a fresh shower of new companies, each with more alluring prospects than the last, poured down the speculative gullet, and every night Throgmorton Street has been crowded, till six o'clock and later, with a mob of perspiring jobbers booking their bargains as fast as their pencils will run."

Mr. Spenser Wilkinson always writes with force and judgment, and even when we differ from him we do not fail to find much that is thoughtworthy in his articles. His keen and vigorous paper on Chitral is no exception. His opinion is that not to have retained Chitral would have been extremely dangerous. Well, Chitral has been retained, and we do not wish to reopen the question, but we cannot agree with Mr. Wilkinson's thesis—a thesis which underlies his whole article—that Russia is the enemy. This is how he puts the problem of our relations with Russia :— "The proposal that Great Britain should come to an under- standing with Russia is to me unintelligible. There are two things disagreeable to us that Russia may attempt : she may con- tinue her advance towards India, or she may try and get hold of Constantinople. I understand those who suggest an agreement to propose that we are to consent to Russia's taking Constanti- nople in return for an undertaking on her part not to cross a given line in Asia. But she has already undertaken not to cross a given line in Asia, and I fail to see how she can add to the force of the assurances already given, or give these assurances any validity lasting beyond the minute when she is ready for a quarrel. Our consent to her taking Constantinople would be gratuitous ; if a Russian dominion over the Straits would harm us, we should be doing ourselves a needless injury in acquiescing in it; if it would not harm us, we ought, in any case, to abandon our opposition to it. A more general form is sometimes given to the proposed understanding. We are to cease opposition to Russian policy at all other points, provided she keeps still in Central Asia. In other words, we are to purchase peace in Central Asia by consenting to the Tsar's wishes, right or wrong, in other parts of the world. This view rests on the assumption that the Tsar will, and can, endanger India unless special means are taken to keep him in a good humour. For after you have agreed to his taking Constantinople, the geography of Asia will be much the same as it is, and the Tsar will be just as able to attack India as he is now. The moment you quarrel with him he will be at liberty to attack you, and your fears for the Indian frontier will be the fulcrum of a lever by which he will move your policy upon all questions except that of India in any direction he pleases. The proposed understanding would entirely fail to compass the object in view, which is to keep it out of Russia's power to disturb India."

Mr. Spenser Wilkinson appears to us to be begging the question. Those who advocate an understanding with Russia do so because they hold that it would do us no harm what- ever for Russia to possess Constantinople. "If," he says, "it would not harm us, we ought in any case to abandon it."

Exactly so, and when it is abandoned it will be found that so great an alteration has taken place in foreign politics that Russia will have no motive for attacking India. "An under- standing with Russia" is perhaps a misleading phrase. Let us say instead, the adoption of a clear and reasonable attitude in regard to Russia and Russia's chief aim, the acquisition of Constantinople. At present, we bar the fulfilment of that aim, and without adequate reason ; and so, without adequate reason, incur the hatred of Russia. Let us cease to incur this hatred, and we shall have greatly strengthened our position in Asia and in Europe. We do not want to buy off Russia by giving up a valuable possession, but we want to get the benefit of the fact that Russia being in Constanti- nople will not hurt us, and that Russia once in Constantinople will not think of India for another hundred years.—Under the head of the "Tourist Problem," "A Tourist" gives some seasonable information as to whom to " tip " and what to " tip " in Continental hotels. Here is his tariff :—

" Our single man who has stopped at an inn on the Continent for a period of from six to ten days should, we have shown, give

The Head-waiter ... 3 francs The Head-porter 3 „ The Chambermaid ... 2 „ The Boots — —

„ The Under-porter, but only when usefol outside Hotel ... 1 „

The travelling bachelor will thus spend about nine francs in tips when be stops a week."

The Contemporary's article on "The Japanese Constitu- tional Crisis and the War" is not so interesting as it ought to be, but it adds to the evidence accumulating on all sides that "the retrocession of the Liaotung peninsula has soured and embittered the whole nation."—Miss Julia Wedgwood's paper on the late Sir James Fitzjames Stephen has, like all that writer's work, insight and sympathy. The great Judge's mental attitude is well put in the following sentence :—" He had a passionate scorn for those who tried to manufacture belief out of desire, and he never distinguished between the masquerade of wish as belief, and the conviction, which seems to us to afford the best evidence of spiritual truth, or, indeed, of all truth, that added power is the teat of knowledge."

We have alluded above to Mr. Frederic Harrison's paper in the Fortnightly on "The Reaction and its Lessons." Of course it has able things in it, like all his writings, but taken as a whole it is about as unsatisfactory a sort of sermon as one could possibly imagine. —" A Roman Reverie," by Mr. Austin, has some pretty musing on the Imperial city, and it is marked by a manly tone in regard to Rome in its aspect of the Italian capital. No nation, he says rightly, can be sacri- ficed to the wathetic sensibilities of the collectors and con- noisseurs.

Blackwood keeps up the very interesting and important series of articles which are being contributed to its pages by "Our Correspondent in China." The present one is called "The Battle of the Yalu," and gives an astonishing picture of Chinese folly in the matter of preparations for war. The curious thing is that the Chinese very nearly had quite as efficient a fleet as the Japanese. If they had not been so mad as to dismiss Captain Lang, RN., from their service, he would have given them a fleet as good, if not better, than that of their enemy. In 1886 Captain Lang declared that three years more of training would make the personnel "fit for any duty they might be called on to perform."—Space will not allow us to describe "The English Officer : as He Was and as He Is ; " but we must point out that it is a very interesting and readable paper. Macmillan's Magazine is pre-eminently the home of the literary and historical essay, but occasionally the editor gives us a short story of really high quality. He has done so in "The End of It." There is no author's name. Here we have a tale of Irish outrage, which for realism—the artistic, not the reporter's, kind—cannot be surpassed. "The End of It" has one quality of the short story to perfection. It delineates character by suggestion so effectively that its five pages of narration give us three distinct and vivid creations,—the hard,. grasping woman who is murdered, her weak, cowardly hus- band, and the Captain of the Moonlighters. The writer of "The End of It" will be heard of again, unless he or she is one of these miracles like "Single-speech Hamilton."

The New Review contains this month selections from hitherto. unpublished " jottings " from Coleridge's note-books. Some of these philosophical " snap-shots " are in Coleridge's happiest vein,—quite equal, that is, to the best things in the famous "Table-Talk."