THE MAGAZINES.
THE essence of Lord Charles Beresford's paper on "Urgent Questions for the Council of Defence," which has the place of honour in the Nineteenth Century for February, is contained in the following most important sentence :—" Thorough training and splendid courage are necessary to act coolly under the appalling and unforeseen circumstances which must occur in a modern war of steam shipping. These can only be obtained by perfect drill and discipline, and it is absolute folly to think you can bundle on board a lot of long- shoremen, or even first class seamen from the mercantile marine, and that they could at once perform the duties which must fall upon a man-of-waraman in action. The merchant seaman is no longer three parts a man-of-warsman, and a man cannot be trained to work and fight a modern breech- loading quick-firing gun within the same time as when guns were chiefly 32-pounders or similar smooth bores, worked by manual power without machinery." It is, we fear, too true that the Admiralty still rely on a sudden increase of the Royal Navy from the mercantile marine, and that this increase will not include men of sufficient training. At the same time it must not be forgotten that the means even of this country have limits, and that if the demand on the people is over- strained we shall have a reaction which will leave us partially undefended. We have steadily supported a great increase to the Navy, but we are not convinced that it is possible for Great Britain to be mistress of the seas in all seas at one and the same time. Lord Charles Beresford does, however, a great public service in repeating on all occasions that men are as important as ships.—There is little new in Dr. Montagu Lubbock's article on the Plague, except that it has never appeared in the New World—certainly not for want of dirty cities there—and that while the flesh-eating animals suffer from it the graminivorous beasts appear entirely to escape. That statement, if correct, is a very curious one indeed, for graminivorous men such as high-class Hindoos certainly do not escape.—Mr. E. N. Buxton sends a really remarkable account of "Timber Creeping in the Carpathians," a narra- tive of six or seven days' deer-stalking in a great deer-forest on an eastern spur of those mountains near what may be considered the junction place of Russia, Poland, and Hungary. We do not enjoy hunting-stories, and hardly understand why the pleasure of deer-stalking is so greatly increased if the beast carries mighty antlers; but no one who cares for literature can be blind to the skill with which in this case the difficulties of the chase are painted. Imagine a woodyard with great trees growing in it, each with its under- growth, and you get some notion of a Carpathian forest, which is so full of fallen timber that every march is a sort of obstacle-race, and even the deer do not like it, and make where they can for the few and narrow tracks. No pony could move from one beat to the other, and all the tracks are slippery. There is almost total silence in the forest, the birds being few, large animals other than stage quite absent, and even the stags very few, seven or eight of the larger beasts being a good bag for a season. Mr. Buxton, how- ever, shot three, and is evidently proud of himself, not un- reasonably his readers will say when they have fully realised the difference between a deer-forest in Scotland and one in the Carpathians, where, by the way, Mr. Buxton incidentally tells us no middle class exists. There are the nobles and there are the peasants, the latter servilely deferential until, as Mr. Buxton does not tell us, they see a fair opportunity, as in 1867, of springing at the nobles' throats.—Mr. Herbert Paul's account of the latest contributions to the biography of Gibbon is a very fair, though over-condensed, biography of the historian, marked, of course, by the peculiarity which dis- tinguishes every sketch of him that we have ever seen. The essayist, while doing the fullest justice to the Decline and Fall, cannot conceal a certain personal contempt for the greatest of English prose litterateure. Fully recognising a certain—what shall we call it P—smugness and selfishness in Gibbon's
nature, we nevertheless always wonder whether if, instead of being a fat man, he had been a chivalrous-looking one, or if he had seemed in any way the superb artist he really was, he would still have been despised. His fate with the fair has been, in fact, his fate with his biographers, and it is a singular one. To give him his true place among mankind it seems necessary to know nothing about him except his work.— Mr. Courthope's defence of poetry as the fitting vehicle of poetic thought is a fine piece of subtle criticism, but once or twice he is, we think, guilty of overvaluing metre as a life-giving element in poetry. He says, for instance :—" Poetry lies in the invention of the right metrical form—be it epic, dramatic, lyric, or satiric—for the expression of some idea universally interesting to the imagination. When the form of metrical expression seems natural—natural, that is, to the genius of the poet and the inherent nature of the subject—then the subject-matter will have been rightly conceived." That is true enough, but does it quite cover the whole ground P—would it not, for example, exclude the Psalms in the authorised English translation ? That translation is not metrical—was in- tended in form to be strictly prosaic—yet if that version is not poetry, there is no poetry in literature. The whole paper, however, is a fine one, and we cannot but admire the judgment which has selected the following lines from the Tempest as an illustration of thought which could not be expressed in prose without indefinite loss :—
" And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-cap't towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inhabit, shall dissolve ; And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."
We see nothing in this month's Blackwood calling for special notice except the marvellous pathos of a short story, " Rah Vinch's Wife," almost spoiled for most readers by the unusual dialect, and a paper on Southern California, which has the usual quite separate quality of Blackwood's descriptive papers. A magazine is, of course, a living entity like a newspaper, but it is really a subject of thought why papers of a certain kind of merit should as it were drift by instinct to particular magazines.
If we had read this one, say, extracted in a Californian news- paper without acknowledgment, we should be as certain that it originally appeared in Blackwood as that a verse of Shelley's had not been composed by any other poet. There is nothing special in the paper except flavour, but then how in the world does a flavour get into a magazine which must in its long life have had many editors and at least a hundred contributors of this peculiar kind of material?
Mr. Henry Norman in the first article in the Contemporary Review is, we fear, wasting much energy and accumulated knowledge. He shows almost to a demonstration that Russia has by her recent agreements with China and her successful attempts to push on the Trans-Siberian Railway placed her- self in such a position that she will acquire Manchonria and the Liau-tung Peninsula, and practically dominate the counsels of Pekin. There is no answer possible to his argu- ments and the evidence of his facts; but, then, is any answer required? As we understand the matter, the British Govern- ment entirely agrees with him so far, but seeing no means of resistance without a wasteful expenditure of strength, abstains from remonstrance, and accepts the probability that Russia will acquire another great province, and will seat herself on the Northern Pacific in a great port capable of fortification and free from ice. The question is what harm we are to sustain from that decision, already ratified by popular consent, and already, as Mr. Norman admits, irreversible. Mr. Norman says we shall lose our trade and possibly that of all North China, but we should like to know more clearly why. Why, that is, should Chinese and Tartars under Russian influence be worse customers than Chinese and Tartars under the influence of the Chinese Emperor ? He thinks the Russians will keep us out, but we are sceptical as to that. Russia wants revenue from indirect taxation, like all other States, and the way to get that is to foster trade by letting in the goods which form the substantial basis of trade without reference to nationality. The French, who are quite as jealous and as Protectionist as the Chinese, wished to keep the trade of Indo-China to themselves, but nevertheless we have got it, as we shall get that of Port
Arthur or Newchang, if either grows to be the Odessa of the Far East. Mr. Norman says we can protect ourselves by using our right of preventing China from increasing her import-duties ; but there is something mean in that expedient. As long as the duties are the same for all alike, why should we fear, or whence does our moral right to limit Chinese independence in the matter arise P Mr. Norman writes well and knows much, and everybody interested in the subject should read his paper, but we have a distrust of all diplomatic methods of improving or creating trade. Insist that we shall be taxed like other people, and then send better articles as cheap as other people, and we shall absorb the trade. Mr. Norman says there is a conflict coming in the Far East, and to meet it Japan is arming with all her might, while we are doing nothing. Why should we do anything ? Indeed, what can we do except fight Russia as allies of Japan, in order to secure a trade which at all events may come to us without fighting. Surely we have enough on our hands with- out a war like that.—The remaining articles of this number are with one exception decidedly dull, though one or two of them are instructive, particularly Mr. W. H. Dickinson's on "The Water Supply of London." We confess that among the water schemes he treats of we should prefer the Water Companies as they are, with stricter management and an obligation to bring up and distribute more water. The universal Water Trust would, we admit, be worse than control by the County Council ; but why should we adopt either, unless, indeed, the Council, in consideration of water profits, will reduce our heavy taxation. We see as yet no evidence that the Council proposes to do anything of the kind, or that it cares if rates rise to 10s. in the pound.—Canon MacColl's article on "The Musulmans of India and the Sultan" is full of knowledge, but it may be all summed up in the single sentence that in 1855 we fought for the Sultan, and in 1857 the Mussultuans of India tried to throw off our yoke. They felt no gratitude for our aid to the " Khalif," and would feel no indignation because we tried to compel him to govern better. Those among them who say they would, have probably relations with Turkey.—The excep- tion we have mentioned is the paper by Mr. Norman Hapgood, whose name has hitherto been unknown to us, but who clearly will do good work. He shows in his study of Lord Rosebery as humourist, a power which is very rare,—a. power of criticising humour so as to make it reveal the mental powers and weaknesses of its author. The paper, which is much too short, does not lend itself to extract; but we have not read a better bit of half-literary, half-political criticism for a long time. It is most kindly in tone, but Lord Rosebery has rarely endured a more damaging attack.
A writer who does not give his name reviews in the Fort- nightly Review the conduct of the Unionist Government, and declares that the handwriting which presages its defeat is already visible on the wall. It will not come just yet because the Rosebery party among Liberals will not tolerate Sir William Harcourt as Premier, but it is coming fast. Lord Salisbury's diplomacy has failed because he will not give up Cyprus or evacuate Egypt; Mr. Gerald Balfour has estranged the whole of Ireland from the Government ; the Evangelicals in the Church think themselves betrayed by Lord Salisbury; nobody will have Mr. Chamberlain's plan for old - age pensions; and, though the Education Bill will pass, it will alienate every section of Church feeling. Time will show whether the essayist is a true Cassandra or only a carping old woman ; but meanwhile his diatribe does not strike us as especially nutritive. What in particular does he mean by implying that everybody adulates Mr. Balfour, who is harder hit in Parliament and out of it than almost any politician within our recollection.—Mr. Louis Garvin on " Coventry Patmore," Professor Sully on Mrs. Meynell's view of children, and Mr. Lilly on " The Mission of Tennyson" are all criticisms of ability which will be read with interest, but which afford little scope for any notice beyond a recom- mendation to read them.—Mr. Grant Allen in a paper on "Spencer and Darwin" exalts Mr. Spencer as a philosopher of the widest range, and depreciates Mr. Darwin, whose chief work was " to help the lame dog of Lamarckian evolutionism over the organic stile." That may or may not be true, but the truth depends, in part at least, on the authority of the speaker, and we have as yet seen no evidence that the great biologists consider Mr. Grant Allen to be
possessed of such authority. He knows something of science, perhaps much, and uses what he knows in his decidedly clever, though disagreeable, novels with much skill and audacity ; but when he weighs men like Darwin and Spencer in the balance he steps perhaps a little beyond the place which the scientific world has as yet assigned him.
Mr. Wells on " Morals and Civilisation " does not instruct us much. His notion is that morals vary with civilisation, which is very like saying that the laws of harmony vary with it. What varies is not morality, bat the general appreciation of particular moral laws. A certain delightful vagueness in Mr. Wells finds a remarkable expression in the following epigram- matic sentence :—" But the mere fact of the irresponsible useless millionaire wandering wastefully at large, points clearly to a defect in our existing structure of moral concep- tions." Does Mr. Wells think it needful to modern morals to shut all millionaires up in lunatic asylums, or would he exempt from that harsh fate any millionaires who were miserly ? Mr. Wells believes that the people who write and preach and teach need only the discipline of a moral ideal to make the world very much wiser as well as better. So say we; but then we also say that we have, and have had for more than eighteen hundred years, that moral ideal before us, and that Mr. Wells, even if he locks up millionaires, will not better it much There is a very pleasant sketch of Maria Holroyd, Lord Sheffield's daughter and Gibbon's friend, which is not a review of her letters, but really brings her before the reader; but the remainder of the fifteen papers present little to attract. The half-crown magazines, in fact, are now too numerous for writers quite worthy of their pages, and their conductors are compelled to publish much padding, which, though seldom poor, is as seldom very interesting. They want a new breed of writers, and for the moment the age is not prolific in essayists.
The most valuable article in the National Review is one by the Right Hon. O'Conor Don, who was Chairman of the Financial Relations Committee, and who defends their Report with much force, and at the same time with moderation. We cannot criticise his paper without writing an article, but can cordially recommend its perusal to all who desire to under- stand that aide of the discussion. The answer to it is, of course, that Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, and not the separate entity which in the Report it is assumed to be. —Dr. Shadwell's paper on bicycling is really a statement that many persons, girls especially, suffer from nervous disease in consequence of their use of the wheel, and that the mere fact that the rider is not tired is no guarantee that the exercise is good for him. It causes to many persons, in fact, too continuous an anxiety. That is probably true; but does not Dr. Shadwell in his well-intentioned and useful warning a little underrate the effect of habit P A great many things cause nervous strain for a little while, which ceases when facing the danger has become habitnaL The disease he speaks of is very like shyness, and in many instances, at least, wears off. —Mr. Foreman's paper on the Philippines would be more persuasive if he were not quite so absolute, and gave us a clearer idea of the fighting strength of the insurgents. He gives their number at forty thousand, of whom five thousand only are armed with rifles, but makes no estimate of their courage or military capacity. He believes their instigators to be Chinese half-breeds, not Japanese, and confirms, what we have repeatedly pointed out, that it is the priests who are the great objects of the insurgents' fury,—a very curious fact by no means yet explained. Mr. Foreman thinks the revolt will be put down, and attributes much of it to education, which he says has a bad effect on natives. He admits, however, much misgovernment.
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