THE MAGAZINES.

THE political articles in the magazines for May are all, of course, devoted to the Home-rule Bill. The best of them are Mr. Lecky's eloquent and thoughtful attack on it in the Con- temporary Review, in which a volume of objections is often.

compressed into a sentence ; the extremely able defence of the financial clauses in the same review, signed " Nemo," and evidently written by some expert in Treasury management ; and "Irish Opinion," in the Fortnightly, by Professor Dowden, an interesting account of the mass of feeling which, in Ireland itself, has been expressed against the Bill. The one it is most necessary to read is " Nemo's," which certainly seems to prove that Mr. Gladstone or his assistants have thought out the financial details of the scheme with great care ; that Ireland is liberally treated, as she will begin with a surplus of 10 per cent., equal to one of 29,000,000 for the United Kingdom ; that the " fetter " placed on British finance in future has been exaggerated ; and that the power of levying a tax on Ireland in war time does exist. The feeblest portion of the article is the last, because it assumes that war expenditure would be met by an in- crease of the Customs and Excise, which Ireland would pay, and an additional 3d. on the Income-tax, which Ireland would not pay. It is quite possible, however, that a great war would be paid for in a different way, and quite certain that the addition to the Income-tax would be much heavier, and in either case Ireland would totally escape. The paper is, however, well worth careful reading ; while the value of Mr. Leaky's may be sufficiently discerned from the following sentence :—" It does not need to be a great political economist to predict the effect upon the prosperity and credit of a country of setting up a

Government which is in violent opposition to its great indus- trial forces, which owes its existence to systematic attacks on contracts and on debts, and which consists of men who have been judicially pronounced guilty of criminal conspiracy."— We can see no value in Mr. Clancy's furious attack on the financial clauses, except as a measure of the fanaticism of the Nationalist Party. He evidently considers that financial

justice to Ireland would be done if Great Britain voted her a compensatory gift of 2250,000,000, and quite forgets the fact that if Ireland has been overtaxed, which we should deny, the taxation. has been voted by a Parliament in which she was not only represented, but over-represented by 20 per cent.—The Fortnightly Review publishes also a

singularly attractive article by Mr. H. 0. Forbes upon "The Chatham: Islands," the little group of islands near New Zealand which have recently had so remarkable a history. They were inhabited by a people who called themselves the Moriori, a cheerful race, numerous and healthy, full of mirth and laughter, dressed in sealskins or mats, and courageous enough to resist the Englishmen's landing." In 1835, a body of Maoris, nine hundred in number, contrived to land there, and in five years the doom of the unhappy people

had been sealed :—

"In 1840 the group was visited by the New Zealand Company's agent, Mr. Hanson, in the 'Cuba,' accompanied by Dr. Dieffen- bath, the celebrated naturalist, who afterwards wrote a history of New Zealand. This obeerver records that the Morioris, who a few years before likened themselves to the koriwri or flax-stalks in number, or to the young of the wild grey duck on the great lagoon, had at the data of his visit decreased to less than ninety souls by their five years of slavery. 'They are the labourers,' he Bays, and porters of their masters, who have no notion. of any- thing like moderation in the labour they exact ; so that ulcerated backs bent almost double, and emaciated paralytic limbs with diseased lungs, are the ordinary lot of those ill-fated wietc.hes.' The Kaupepe, as the Morioris called their oppressors, had not only used them as beasts of burden, but as their stalled cattle. The dying remnants of the race still tell of that dreadful time when as many as fifty of their ancestors were roasted in a single

oven ; and when the ghastly sight of the shore laid out with the dead bodies of their men, women, and children, sometimes for a length of a quarter of a mile, might be witnessed. The few Morioris that still survive may almost be counted on the fingers of the hands."

We do not remember, even in the terrible history of the Pacific islands, a record quite so awful, and it should be re- membered when we mourn over the approaching extinction of the Maoris as a pure-blooded tribe. Mr. Forbes traversed the islands in search of bones of the Moa and other extinct creatures ; and though he found none, he found quantities of evidence, which we have not space to condense, in support of the theory that there once existed a great continent in the Southern Pacific, stretching from the Antarctic ice-cap to South America, and the Australian and the New Zealand conti- nental islands :—" In the days, however, when the ancestors of the plants and animals now living or whose fossils prove their former existence in these far-separated countries, had their common home in this Antarctic continent, it was a land, not buried under ice, but smiling under a bright and genial climate and clothed with a vegetation sufficient for the sus- tenance of a large and diverse fauna. We know that such climatic conditions must have existed in the Antarctic area, during the height of the glacial age in the Northern hemi- sphere. The inhabitants of this genial land lived, multiplied, spread abroad, and, through lapse of ages modified by their

surroundings and the latitude of their homes, graduated into many diverse species, till the creeping on of the glacial age in the Southern hemisphere compelled them gradually to migrate further and further northward."—There is another paper on the question whether the universe is infinite, by Sir R. Ball, which, unlike most of his astronomical papers, is a little in- definite. We take him to mean that the notion of a centre round which the universe that we know revolves, can be almost positively disproved, but that the probability of that universe

being limited is as great as the probability that it is not. e discussion has, of course, only a metaphysical interest, the u verse which certainly exists, being almost too vast for thoug'i t ; but it has some bearing on our conception of God as a being who never limits his own creative power. We know that God gives outline to all created things of which we have per- ception, and why not, then, to the created universe ?—Lord

Brassey, in his account of the West Indies in 1892, records some conclusions which may be usefully summarised. The Blacks, he says, are not in favour of annexation to the United States, as they do not like the inferior social position of their colour there. The decay of the sugar-industry was not due to emancipation, but to a violent fall in the price of sugar, owing to competition. It was £60 a ton, and is £16. The coolie, however, costs almost precisely what the slave cost —viz., is. 6d. a day—and does as much work. The way to make sugar pay better is to set up factories for extracting and purifying it by the best machinery, which can only be done by combination, each factory requiring the produce of at least five thousand acres of sugar-cane. The future of the islands will depend on the introduction of new tropical cultures, among which those of fruit, cocoa, coffee, tobacco, nutmeg, and, as we should think, tea, may safely be reckoned. It is

to be noted, as a curiosity in commercial history, that the taste for spices once world-wide has seriously declined, and in some countries may be said to be extinct.

There are two papers in Blaelcwood of unusual value, the careful, though rather prejudiced, account of " The Russian Acquisition of Manchooria " from the Chinese, who ceded it practically as a bribe to the Russians not to enter into combination with the British against them in 1857, and a most curious account, from the Burmese point of view, of the over- throw of King Theebau. The writer is either an artist in fiction of quite a separate kind, or he has really obtained an account of the transaction from within Theebau's palace. We presume the latter to be the case, and would call attention to the picture of the Queen, her complete ascendancy over the King, and her fatal influence in forcing on the war, under an idea apparently that so great an Empire as the Burmese could not be overthrown, and that the Burmese army was a real force. Mark, too, the entire indifference to cruelty manifested by the narrator, while her fidelity to the Queen and affection for her come out so strongly. The reader can smell the air of Asia all through the narrative, and if it is fictitious, which we do not think, that is a triumph of art. The Nineteenth Century for May has no paper of any

especial mark. We have been most interested in Mr. J. W. Fortescue's on "The Influence of Climate on Race." He is inclined to think that the warmth and bright skies of Aus- tralasia are enfeebling the English there. Even in New

Zealand, with its climate of Italy, they tend towards a happy- go-lucky frivolity ; and in Australia, especially the towns, they grow reluctant to work hard, and are hysterically afraid of the competition of Asiatic labourers. In the sub.tropical parts of Australia, on the other hand, they are admitting such labour because they cannot, or will not, do the work them- selves. Mr. Forbes looks, therefore, to the ultimate adoption in the greater part of Australia of Hindoo labour guided by White men, We fancy he exaggerates a little. It is quite true that the influence of climate in Australia has not been suffi-

ciently studied, and quite true also that the native-born Whites tend to take life more e'asily than we do; but the facts do not prove that White labour is impossible or difficult in the Pacific. White artisans work bard in the Southern States of America and in the Argentine Republic, and in both the usual heat must be as great as in Australia. It is true that an Australian, when he can, avoids out-of-door labour with his hands, and with that object betakes himself to the cities ; but then that is true of Europe also. The world is

not disposed to work nearly as hard as it did. Mr. Fortescue makes the remarkable admission, which seems to kill hia case, that Australian mechanics do not greatly care to become employers.—Captain Younghusband, who, we believe, is regarded in Northern India as an unusually qualified explorer, sends a paper on the invasion of India- by Russians from a Russian point of view. His idea is that the Russians would threaten the English on the Helmund, but really attack via,' Badakshan and Chitral,

compel the evacuation of Cabul, and then offer a peace on the condition of partitioning Afghanistan, with the Hindoo,

Koosh as a frontier. That, if accepted, would be a good Russian base for further aggression ; while, if not accepted, the advance would be continued to Candahar. After that,

Captain Younghusband declines to discuss that "infinite universe called the Destiny of Nations," but evidently would watch and hold Chitral, where at present we are ill-prepared. So be it, if we must ; but we still prefer the old policy of leaving Afghanistan to defend itself with a little help in money and arms, and fighting our own battle behind

the Himalaya.—Dr. Jessopp furnishes an excellent account of the recent discovery in Brent Eleigh, Suffolk, of a monkish history of St. William of Norwich, the Saint said to have been crucified by the Jews in 1144, whose body worked innumerable miracles. The history throws curious light upon the manners of the age, and suggests to Dr. Jessopp serious doubts whether the popular idea of the anarchy pre- valent in the time of Stephen is not greatly exaggerated. Certainly, according to this book, it did not extend to East Anglia :—

"The sheriff was quite able to repress any popular outbreak, and to protect the Jews from violence. If a rowdy squire com- mitted an outrage the crime was at any rate the subject of a formal inquiry. We hear nothing of hectoring knights and tur- bulent barons. Men move about from place to place without four of molestation. Trade goes on without hindrance. Com- merce, too, appears to be flourishing ; for we hear more than once of sailors and their ships delivered by St. William's prayers from the perils of the deep. The names of county magnates are the same names which appear, in the persons of their ancestors and descendstnts, in the annals of the earlier and the after-time. The diocesan synods are held regularly, and the clergy attend them in largo number. From anything that appears to the contrary, the Fast Anglian folk were living quietly and happily, the bond of kindred indeed singularly close, and the mutual affection of parents and children conspicuously strong."

—Professor Max Muller sends an interesting account of .Madame Blavatsky, whom he believes to have been originally a rather hysterical young woman with a thirst for a new creed, which she fancied she had found in India. She probably believed this creed, but towards its diffusion she held miracles to be necessary, and accordingly invented them:— " When I expressed my regret to one of her greatest admirers that Madame Blavatsky should have lowered herself by these vulgar exhibitions, I was told, with an almost startling frankness, that no religion could be founded without miracles, and that a religion, if it was to grow, must be manured. These are the iTsissima verba of one who knew Madame Blavatsky better than anybody else ; and after that it was useless for us to discuss this subject any further." Dr. Max Midler believes, of course, that Madame Blavatsky placed her spiritual teachers in T alba to avoid. cross- questioning. but he says she was a clever woman who had really acquired some Indian learning :— " But when we come to examine what these depositaries of primeval wisdom, the Mahatmas of Tibet and of the sacred Gauges, are supposed to have taught her, we find no mysteries, nothing very new, nothing very old, but simply a medley of well- known though generally misunderstood Brahmanic or Buddhistic doctrines. There is nothing that cannot be traced back to generally accessible Brahmanic or BuddliiStic sources, only every- thing is muddled or misunderstood. If I were asked what Madame Blavatsky's Esoteric Buddhism really is, I should say it was Buddhism misunderstood, distorted, caricatured. There is nothing In it beyond what was known already, chiefly from books that are now antiquated. The most ordinary terms are misspelt and misinterpreted. Mahatma, for instance, is a well-known Sanskrit name applied to men who have retired from the world, who, by means of a long ascetic discipline, have subdued the pas- sions of the flesh and gained a reputation for sanctity and know- ledge. That these men are able to perform most startling feats and to suffer the most terrible tortures is perfectly true. Seine of them, though not many, are distinguished as scholars also ; so much so that Mahatma—literally greataouled '—has become an honorary title. That seine of these so-called Mahatmas are impostors is but too well known to all who have lived in India. I sin quite ready, therefore, to believe that Madame Blavatsky and her friends were taken in by persons who pretended to.be Mahatmas, though it has never been explained in what language even they could have communicated their Esoteric Buddhism to their European pupil. Madame Blavatsky herself was, according to her own showing, quite unable to gauge their knowledge or to test their honesty, and she naturally shared the fate of Ctesias, of Lieutenant Wilford, and of M. Jacolliot." —Cavour's judgment on the repeal of the Union is curious, not only because he thought that repeal would be most in- jurious to Ireland, and especially to Irish prosperity, but because he thought English adhesion to the plan a simple im- possibility. He had a mind which foresaw, but the existence of a statesman like Mr. Gladstone as an English popular favourite was beyond its range. He could as easily have imagined a French Minister who would restore the privileges of the great Provinces.

Apart from politics, the Contemporary Review is dull. The subjects are either abstruse, or, as in Vernon Lee's "May- flay Dialogue," the treatment is obscure. Vernon Lee's sub- ject is the ever-recurring one,—the proper means of elevating the poor ; but though we have read her paper most carefully, and with the pleasure her style always imparts, we have no idea of the counsel she wishes to prevail. The rich are, apparently, to make themselves good and wise for the benefit of the poor ; but how is not stated. We suppose this is the summary of Vernon Lee's teaching :—

"We must train ourselves to disliking injustice and suffering irrespective of whore and when, and to dislike it Worst only where it really exists in largest amount or &cutest degree, closing our ears and eyes to the fallacious appearance, the mere hallucination of our egoism, that things are worse because they happen to be under our eyes : they are not, any more than objects are bigger because they are near. Or rather, I should have said, let us use the present, the near at hand, to learn from it what must be the fuoture and distant, getting to know the larger by our knowledge of the smaller, instead of letting the smaller make us forgetful of the larger."

If We understand that dictum at all, we prefer the old one,

no the good that is nearest your hand," if only because you are so much more likely actually to do it.—Mr. S. Whit- Ina" paper on "The Anti-Semitic Movement" is full of highly interesting facts, illustrating the universality of the movement against the Jews ; but the writer's deduction is not quite cleat We take it to be that the Jew advances only Where the race around him is intellectually weak, and that consequently the true defence against him is to cultivate character at'

succeed. That ma the Christian. Then the Jew will cease to y be true enough; but it is a counsel of perfection taking

Russians, for example, ages to accomplish, a work which the want to accomplish now. Mr. Whit- man's attribution to much received of a wish for dominance to Jews is contrary opinion but it is, we believe, true, and accounts for some of the detestation in which they are held. We were hardly aware,

A

by-the-way that this detestation was so strong in Austria. Antis chief of an influential Prince Liechtenstein is the avowed party bent on the boycott of the Jews —nay, on their exterminat.on. Parliament and town council are charged with emitic electricity, which produces periodical explosive shocks. As we write, the Viennese Municipal Elections have resulted in the return of forty-six Anti-Semites, which gives this party one-third of the Council. In former years the Anti-Semites were returned by the lower classes, but at these elections they received a large number of votes from the well-to-do class (Daily Chronicle, April 18th). A Vienna newspaper winds up it§ daily matter in the sense of avterum cense°, Judwant esse delendum. The hatred and vilification of the Jew in Austria are only limited by the capacity to lend them public expression."