THE MAGAZINES.

THE Nineteenth Century publishes several most readable

papers this month, besides Sir Wemyss Reid's eulogium on Mr. Gladstone, which is interesting from its writer's enthu-

siasm for his subject. His chief topic is the reverence of the North of England for Mr. Gladstone, of which he gives many

striking instances, and he seems not to see that this sort of leader-worship, however well justified, is not exactly Liberalism. If we may believe him, the English outburst against Turkey after the Bulgarian atrocities was due to Mr. Gladstone. That may be true, is certainly true in part ; but in what sense is it creditable to Englishmen ? who ought, one would think, to have felt the necessity for intervention without fiery eloquence from any leader. For the rest, Sir W. Reid adds nothing that we see to the explanation of Mr. Gladstone's

influence,—the unaccountable influence, that is, of a Celt with genius and a high morale over ordinary Englishmen.—Sir G. S. Clarke writes sympathetically of the approach of America to England, and says with perfect truth that it has

its justification in the common interests of both countries; but he might with advantage have supplied fuller illustrations of those interests, some of which are based on the consciences rather than the pockets of the two peoples.—Sefior A. G. Perez, "Member of the Cuban Junta," does not add much to our knowledge of the oppression exercised by Spain in Cuba, and his assertion that the Cubans are an exceptionally "gentle" people is not fully in accord with evidence; but the following paragraph reveals a system which would of itself justify insurrection :—

" To carry any kind of weapon, even the native arm known as the machete,' used in farm work, is forbidden. Everyone is obliged to possess and carry on his person a document, called a cedula personal,' in which is enumerated every physical detail of the owner ; as, for instance, the complexion, height, age, shape of the nose, if a moustache or beard be worn, 'whether married or single, and any other signs or peculiarities that might be of value in case of the need of identification. This document must be exhibited whenever the owner intends to appear in a public office for business purposes, or requires any official paper, such as a power of attorney, a warrant, to establish a suit, &c. ; also when- ever an official or a policeman requests its production. It is also necessary to carry this document when travelling from one place to another. It is good only for one year, and costs from 23 to 100 dollars, according to the position of the owner, his profession or business. Any person under suspicion may be arrested with- out a warrant, held in prison without trial, and even without stating to him the grounds for his arrest. This kind of arrest is called 'Detention Gubernativa ' (arrest by order of the Govern- ment). Personal safety and liberty are therefore things to be enjoyed only in dreams."

—The most attractive articles to the general reader are, how- ever, the sketch of Oxford in 1898, by the Warden of Merton, and the account by Miss E. L. Banks of "American Yellow Journalism." Mr. Brodrick believes that Oxford under- graduates are a distinctly improved breed, who have become more sensible, gentler, and more refined, 'without giving up their boyishness or their fondness for escapades:—" Upon the whole, it may be said with confidence that Oxford under- graduates, as a class, are more virtuous, better conducted, and better informed than their predecessors in the reign of

George the Third, though it must be added in justice that they get their virtue and their knowledge on easy terms. Not having been persecuted at school for obeying the elementary precepts of Christianity, or left to puzzle out their lessons by the aid of miserable dictionaries, grammars, and text-books (perhaps in Latin), they attain a higher average level of morality, of information, and of culture. But it may be doubted whether that strength of character and indepen- dence of intellect which is developed by hardship and stern discipline is not less common than in the olden days." The "Oxford Movement" is at an end, but the discussion of religion is more active than ever, the bias, thinks the Warden, being towards a rather high orthodoxy tempered by rationalism. Mr. Brodrick believes, we think justly, that the influence of the two greater Universities upon English life is deeper than ever, and tends to incessant diffusion :—" All the head masters of the leading public schools, nearly all the head masters of the metropolitan and provincial grammar schools and high schools, and most of the classical assistant. masters in these schools are graduates of Oxford or Cambridge, while the academical element largely preponderates among the masters of private schools and private tutors of the superior class." These teachers, aided as they are by the great majority of the influen- tial clergy, and by an extraordinary number of journalists, per- manently keep up the feeling that Oxford and Cambridge are centres of light. Mr. Brodrick, however, might award just praise to the institutions he loves, without being quite so contemptuous of younger Universities. After all, Oxford and Cambridge cannot teach the whole English-speaking race. —Miss Elizabeth Banks declares that the "yellow journals" are becoming a serious evil in the United States. They are so called because of the immense success of some papers pub- lished in the New York World by a reporter who was styled "the Yellow Bid," and they are really halfpenny papers started by men with large capital, who pay heavily for anything sensational, and are utterly unscrupulous in creating excitement. They have an immense circulation, and being very clever as well as unscrupulous, they exercise a dangerous amount of influence. They certainly go strange lengths :—" When, on my return to America, I first took a position on a yellow journal something over a year ago, I knew little or nothing of the sort of work that would be required of me as a yellow woman journalist.' I knew only that I needed money, and that I was offered by a yellow journal a good salary. My first inkling of what was expected of me came when I got my first assignment. I was asked to walk the streets of New York in the moat dangerous part of the city, 'allow' myself to become arrested as a disreputable woman, spend a part of the night in gaol with women of the street, and write up a brilliant account of the affair for the next morning's paper ! It is probably unnecessary for me to say that I declined my first assignment !" Miss Banks asserts that these journals do not wish for true reports, but exciting reports, and that their female employees in particular — who are very numerous —are summarily discharged when they report that the moral evil or social abuse which they are ordered to " expose " does not, in fact, exist :—" Some time later I was making an investigation which concerned the welfare of the working girls. I did not undertake to write fiction—only to write truthfully of my experiences as they came to me in a certain mode of living. As the experiences came to me I wrote them and they were published. In the midst of the series hundreds of anonymous letters began to pour into the office, declaring that if your reporter proves thus and so, it will injure the cause of the working people, and we always thought your paper was the friend of the poor workers !' Straightway the mandate went forth that I was to so 'manage' my experi- ences as to make them prove such and such a thing, whether they really proved the other thing or not !" Miss Banks declares that there is no cure for the evil except the devotion of "millions "—in dollars presumably—to establish respect- able rivals to the yellow papers, but she does not explain how the respectables are to be made to pay. Will the people buy unsensational, but truthful, narratives ? That seems to us the coming difficulty of journalism, one, too, which must be overcome if the Press is not one day to be suppressed as a public nuisance, or placed under a vigorous censorship.— Mr. T. W. Russell states the case against moneylenders with his customary lucidity and force, but he does not con-

vince us that it would be either wise or right to entrust an unlimited right of cancelling contracts to Judges not specially selected for the purpose or bound by any rigid precedents. " Cadi justice" may be good justice when the Cadi is Solomon, but it is usually fatal to commerce, which depends not so much on the justice of any law as on its inflexibility.

The magazines are still discussing the fate of China, but as yet the volume of light has not been very greatly in.. creased. The original point in the first article in the Con- temporary Review on "Our Future Empire in the Far East" is that the writer, who, on the whole, dreads European ascendency in China as likely to be fatal to the industrial prosperity of Europe, thinks domination there would be easy. He holds that the Chinese, unpatriotic and poor, without hereditary leaders, and separated from each other by barriers of dialect and habits of thought, would obey Mandarins selected by Europe without hesitation. England, for ex- ample, could actually rule the gigantic valley of the Yangtse, and by modifying the trend of the education which all Chinese seek, could raise the people to a much higher level of morality and civilisation. He does not, be it observed, re- commend the annexation of the valley, but maintains that it would be easy. This is, of course, the crux of the whole question, and we wonder which is the right view. Oar own is that the Chinese would prove singularly difficult to govern without a severity which the British people would never tolerate for any length of time. Submissive as he appears and in a way is, there is a stubborn force in the Chinaman which has kept him separate for three thousand years, and has enabled him to resist all influences tending to change, and he has a trick of forming secret associations which last for centuries, and are always directed against the powers that be. The histories of Singapore and Labuan do not suggest that Chinamen are easy subjects to govern. Still the experi- ment has been but imperfectly tried, and the British have never failed,—except with Irishmen.—Mr. J. A. Hobson disputes in a temperate and reasonable manner the dogma that conquest materially develops trade. He maintains that our trade with foreign countries grows faster than our trade with our own possessions, adducing some striking figures. Thus since 1835 we have been incessantly expanding the area of British dominion, with the following commercial results :•—•

EXPORTS OP BRITISH PRODUCE TO

Annual Averages.

1855-9 1860-4 1865-9 1870-4 1875 9 1830-4 1835-9 1890-4 1895-7

••• ••• ••• •••

• •• ••• • •• •••

•

Foreign Countries. Countries.

765 71-2 76-0 78-0 77-9 76-5 77-1 77-1 784

••• ••• ••• ••• •••

• •• •••

••• Percentage of Total Values.

British Foreign Posses,ions. Countries.

23-5 ••• 63-5 ...

28-8 ••• 66-6 ...

240 •••

22-0 ••• 74-4 ...

22-1 66-9 ...

235 .•• 65-5 ...

22-9 ... 65-0 22-9 ••• 67-6 21-6 ••• 70-1 ... British Possessions.

31-5 33-4 27-6 25-8 331 • 34-5 35-0 34.4 29-9

Of the total trade of the country, which in 1896 was seven hundred and thirty-eight millions sterling, only one hundred and eighty-four millions was with our own possessions. The answer is, of course, that we are sure of the Imperial trade, but not of the foreign trade, and the question is if that answer is correct. We doubt it, believing that no country will refuse to sell goods to us, and that if it sells it may take our goods in payment. A" Financial Journalist," in his paper on "The Art of Blackmail," does not add much to our knowledge of City venality beyond the remark that promoters consider 25,000 their highest bribe. He evidently believes that the promoters who bribe are worse than the low journalists who accept bribes, and would make such bribery a penal offence, but he does not clearly explain why the bribery pays the promoter. Does the ordinary investor really put his trust in financial articles ? His suggestion that respectable journals should be more frank in their comments on new companies is sound enough, but to make it work, the law of libel must be altered in a way which we fear would tend greatly to the profit of financial blackmailers.—Dean Farrar thinks that the evidence is against the existence of any genuine likeness of Christ, and that the reason is that for three centuries early Christians would have thought such a likeness irreverent, and always preferred the use of symbols such as the Lamb. It was not till A.D. 692 that Christians were exhorted to paint Christ in human form. That is true

IMPORTS PROM

enough, but does it bear greatly on the question F No like- ness of Christ, in the ordinary sense of the word, could have been made after his death, but no description of him need have been irreverent. Is it not at least strange and suggestive of orders from himself that of all who followed him in life and treasured his sayings as priceless possessions no one has described his appearance F It is even doubtful, as the Dean mentions, whether he was of striking or of mean appearance, though the argument from the impression be made is distinctly on the former side.—There is no light article in this number, but any one who enjoys savage writing will appreciate "Wanted : a Defeat," by 'A New Radical" His real belief evidently is that if the Radical party is to regain power it must get rid of the present leaders, who are almost all at heart old Whigs, and adopt a new programme, of which, if we understand his hints, an Irish Land Bill for England would be a main feature. We do not believe the proposal would be popular, and indeed rather distrust the ultimate popularity of all the "Socialist" pro- grammes, including even old-age pensions, unless they are based upon insurance; but the writer certainly analyses Liberal difficulties with an unsparing hand. Practically, his judgment is that if the Liberals win the next election they will make the country dislike them more than it does now ; but the pleasure of reading his paper is not derivable so much from his thoughts as from his trenchant phrases. He, at all events, minces nothing, telling the Liberals, for example, that the Irish question alone must wreck them. They cannot govern without the Irish vote, and cannot move forward with it.

The Fortnightly contains nothing of first-class importance this month. It opens with an article on "The Dynastic Crisis in Spain," by "A Spaniard," who is a partisan of General Weyler. Nothing, the writer thinks, can save his country. Her population has been drawn from the Eelds into the towns to work at manufactures for which a market existed in the colonies owing to the protective duties. Now the colonies are gone, the manufactures will crumble, and immense numbers of people will be destitute of a livelihood. The rich, in whose interest the country 1)...s been administered, will be rained, and there is no party etrong enough to attempt a general reconstruction. The Carlists are weak, so are the Republicans, the populace is disaffected because justice has been venal and oppression universal. The cause of this general disorder he finds in the adoption of constitutionalism by a country unfit for it ; and this has been aggravated by the mistaken action of the Queen. Long pages of malignant personal gossip reveal plainly enough the sentiments of a certain section of Spaniards towards the Regent. She has the bourgeois virtues; she is not affable; she does not go to bull-fights; and she had the courage to censure General Weyler's action in Cuba, which the writer seems to consider the one reasonable piece of work done by any officer in late years. If this Spaniard represents the mass of his countrymen, heaven help Spain.—Another article, signed " sums up Mr. Chamberlain's foreign policy in the phrase," Free markets for our working population," and discusses the chance of his getting a free band to carry it out. The writer asserts not merely that Mr. Chamberlain forced Lord Salisbury to assume a menacing attitude over the Niger question, but that his resignation was even formally sent in, which we believe to be an absolute delusion. — An article of general interest, which we hope will be widely read, is Dr. Malcolm Morris's on "The Prevention of Consumption." No one, it appears, is born doomed to the disease; a predisposition may be inherited, but the disease can only be acquired by infection, proceeding in most cases from bacilli liberated in the spittle of consumptives. Dr. Morris reprints a paper of excellently worded recom- mendations for preventing the spread of consumption, drawn up and circulated in Glasgow.—Mr. Archer has a charming critical essay upon the work of Mr. A. E. Housman, whom, in our judgment, he proves to be a true and original poet. —We must protest against a paper by Mr. Fox Bourne upon the troubles in Sierra Leone. It is admitted that the hut-tax was a mistake, but not, as he seems to think, because the population is too poor to pay it. African natives, accord- ing to Miss Kingsley, object to taxes upon dwellings, but would pay a poll-tax. Very likely also the black frontier police require careful supervision, but the country must be policed

by black men, and no police force is perfect from the inoep, tion. No good purpose can be served by depreciating, as Mr.

Fox Bourne does throughout, the justice, integrity, and ability of the men who serve the Empire on that deadly coast ; and this is the more intolerable because his article displays a marked ignorance of facts. The expedition against the Sofas undertaken in 1894, which he considers a wanton aggression, was sent to deliver our protectorate from a band of savage banditti who had devastated the country, as they devastated every other country they came across, like locusts, and inflicted unspeakable cruelties on women and children. Yet Mr. Fox Bourne says that they "offered themselves as peaceful residents."

The National Review for this month is an excellent number. Mr. Arnold White in his article on the "Russian Bogey" emphasises the important fact that Russia, though invulner- able as far as we are concerned, is also impotent to strike. For six years her supplies to the Far East can only travel by sea,—that is, by our permission. When the Trans- Siberian railway is completed she will have the power to pour men into China ; but in war Russia has always been unready, and there is every reason to suppose that a call for mobilisation would bring to light numberless flaws in the machine. In war she has gained only one great vic- tory single-handed,—Paltowa ; her weight in an alliance

Mr. White perhaps underrates. She helped to overwhelm Napoleon ; in conjunction with France she might help to overwhelm Germany. But taken singly we agree with Mr.

White that Russia is an overrated Power.—Mr. Mame writes weighty words on the Dreyfus case. Taking M. Cavaignac's great speech as summing up the whole of the evidence for condemnation, he shows—as it seems to us con- clusively, unless there is some evidence of a very different kind from that yet produced—not merely that Dreyfus was illegally condemned, but that he was innocent. To begin with, the bordereau—the only evidence against Dreyfus sub- mitted to his counsel—is never mentioned by M. Cavaignac. New evidence is produced which Mr. Masse thus sums up :—

" In order that a Departmental victim may perish the Minister —being obliged to abandon the basis of the prosecution—pro- duces three letters, of which neither the accused nor his counsel ever had cognisance at the trial. Two were written in 1894 and one in 1896,--i.e., two years after the trial. The present Chief of the Intelligence Department had already sworn that one of the 1894 letters does not refer to Dreyfus, while the late Chief of the Intelligence Department is prepared to prove that neither of the 1894 letters has any connection with the Dreyfus Case, and he confidently avers that the third letter—that of 189G—is a forgery.

It is in truth a clumsy, palpable, and grotesque forgery."

In addition to this scathing indictment Mr. Masse reprints the deposition of Count Casella, who states that Colonel Panizzardi, Italian Military Attache at Paris, affirmed to him that Colonel Schwartzkoppen, German Attache, declared, first that Dreyfus was innocent, secondly that Eaterhazy was guilty. France seems to have adopted her ally's methods of dealing with free speech ; but, at least, in Russia they would not make a hero of Esterhazy.—Among the other articles we note "A Reminiscence of Manila," by Mr. Frank Bullen, who relates with singular eloquence the terrible life history told him by a half-caste native. Men who have seen Spanish rule in Manila will probably agree with Mr. Bullen that it is a moral duty for the United States not to relinquish the islands to Spain. Like all Mr. Bullen's work, this remarkable paper is shot through and through with a sense of picturesque- ness and literary charm.—A pleasant article on the position of married women in America confirms our opinion that the English matron has a happier lot than the American, who is practically forbidden to be on friendly terms with any man.

Blackwood's Magazine is, as usual, full of readable things. Mr. Baumer Williams strings together a series of extracts from a collection of letters written by Southey to his friend John May. " Southey's private letters," said Thackeray, "are

worth piles of epics ; " and certainly no man in the history of literature grows so much in one's estimation from every new revelation of the facts of his life. — Sir Herbert Maxwell discourses in his delightful way on "Odd Volumes," —mostly old books of sport ; but amongst them is a work on trees by Dr. Lowe, which robs us of a cherished illusion by establishing the fact that no existing yew-tree can be more than five hundred years old. Few, be thinks, at'ain to a third century.—The article on " Smollett and the Old Sea-Dogs" is an attempt to prove from the scanty records of naval life

a century ago that Smollett did not caricature the sailor in any unreasonable degree. Cases of strange brawls between naval officers are quoted from Rooke's journal, and the writer has some excellent observations upon the habits of mind likely to be induced by the excessively rigid etiquette which shut off the naval Captain in a splendid isolation, so far as social intercourse was concerned, alike from officers and crew. —But the most characteristic thing in the magazine is the charming account of the Faroe Islands,—one of those articles combining the picturesque with the human interest, of which Maga seems to have an inexhaustible supply inaccessible to any other periodical.

The English part of this month's Cosmopo/is contains a paper by Vernon Lee on "The Young Generation and the Old." The old and the young, she tells us, "are perpetually making each other suffer." Her sympathies are evidently entirely with the latter. We do not agree with her premises, but supposing them to be true, we do not think Vernon Lee's prescription would mend the matter. It is rather vague, but it seems to come to this. First, that young people should be taught the truth (oh, shade of Pilate !), not "special concoc- tions of what is, what might be, and particularly what ought to be (according to taste), freely made palatable with what couldn't ever be." Secondly, old people are to help the young towards a solution when they give vent to the "old, old despairing cry, What am I?" Surely young people now give so much time and diligence to solving this question that they might be left to succeed alone, so that the rest of the world may have leisure to find out something Mrs. Crawford writes about the Italian novelist, d'Annunzio. She says : "Love, passion, the attitude of man towards woman, of woman towards man, absorb all his attention. For him life possesses no mightier secrets, no further problems ; and hence, even at its beet, his work is singularly one-sided. Convincingly true within its own limits, it becomes essentially false as a representation of human life in its widest aspects. A single novel of d'Annunzio fills the reader with amazed rapture. A course of d'Annunzio produces an inevitable reaction, and I can understand its awakening in many readers a sense of actual nausea."—Among the French papers, "Gene et Choses de Sicile " is perhaps the most interesting,— rather idyllic than realistic, however. At first, the island, seen from the sea, did not make upon M. Rod that impression "de jamais vu" for which he had hoped ; but if he is a little disappointed with the "hoses," he is in love with the " gens." He describes with delight their manners, their gesture, " harmonieux et grave, rhythm e comme une phrase musicale, h la fois thetttral et spontane," and their religion. Kindness to animals seems part of their rather pagan form of Catholicism. All the beasts have their patron saint : "On appelle volontiers lea animaux an nom de lenr saint, ainsi in familiarite monte jusqu'au paradis. Les bêtes, lea hommes, lea saints, ce ne sont pas trois regnes separes par de grandes intervalles. C'est un ensemble oi lea nuances se confondent, oi lea inega1it4s disparaissent." The intervention of the saints or of the Virgin is invoked in the commonest occupations of every-day life. A Sicilian woman will put her bread into the oven and commit the baking to the Madonna saying, "A present ma fatigue est fink ; a vous de vous fatiguer vierge Marie."