FOUR MAGAZINES.
Tits Magazines of this month contain no brilliant, or even notable paper, unless it be M. Gabriel Monod's sketch, in the Contemporary Review, of life and thought in France. That is always perfect in its way, as the clearly worded judgment of an impartial and thoroughly informed mind. Would it not be fair to give the name of M. Monod's translator, or does he perhaps write English P If so, he has mastered our tongue as perfectly as Frenchman ever did,—more perfectly even than M. Louis Blanc, who, though he remained, when speaking, singularly French in accent, and sometimes even in idiom, could write English at full speed better than ninety-nine cultivated English- men in a hundred. M. Monod, like most sensible Frenchmen, thinks the decree expelling the Princes a great blander; but thinks also that the Comte de Paris made a mistake by standing forward after the decree avowedly as a Pretender, thus justifying the decree in many eyes. He holds M. de Freycinet to be a dexterous political time-server; declares that General Boulanger is, since Gambetta, the one Frenchman who has excited the enthusiasm of the crowd, and conciliated the soldiers of the Army ; and sums up the political position thus
Daring the sixteen years that the Republic has nominally existed, and especially daring the seven years that it has been entirely in Republican hands, the number of those who have an interest in its continuance has become very great. It presents less risk of revolu- tion than any other form of government, because it leaves the possi- bility of power open to all parties ; it has given France sixteen years of such tranquillity as no other country in Europe has enjoyed, and liberties which she has hitherto possessed under no other system, and which no other system could have tolerated. This is too often for- gotten, and the Republic does not get all the gratitude it deserves, for custom soon stales the sense of benefits conferred ; bat a very little reflection is enough to open one's eyes to the immense amount of liberty—liberty of the Press, liberty of association, liberty of public meetings—now enjoyed in France. Even the Catholics, who consider themselves persecuted, benefit by it along with the rest, and their charities, their clubs, their schools, their associations of all sorts, have a scope and freedom of action never allowed them under the Empire. Thanks to this liberty, France is now covered with a net- work of societies and associations of every kind, workmen's syndi- cates, societies for production and consumption, shooting clubs, musical clubs, gymnastic clubs ; there is a whole world of free, spon- taneous life, a development of individual initiative, which brings men into combination, and constitutes in itself a political education ; and which perhaps is storing up for the future the collective forces needed to counterbalance the disintegration and excessive indi- vidualism brought about by the levelling spirit of democracy. The risk we really are running just now is that of falling, through the momentary triumph of Radicalism, into a state of financial disorder, administrative corruption, and political helplessness, which must lead to general uneasiness and discontent. It is easy to foresee what would follow."
M. Monod, personally, rather believes in the new " Colonial " policy, seeing in it a proof of the " vitality " of France ; but he admits the existence of two utterly diverse currents of opinion, one of which condemns the acquisition of Colonies as simple waste. Of the English papers, perhaps the one which will be most read is that of Mr. W. T. Stead, on " The Future of Journalism." It is penetrated with a simple yet high-flown vanity, and spoiled with falsely eloquent sen- tences, of which the following is a specimen :—" The rustle of the myriad sheets of journalism," sings Mr. Stead, "unfolded afresh every morning and folded for ever at night, supplies a realistic falfilment of one part of the old Norse saga of the Ash- tree Ygdrasil, whose roots were watered by the Norns, and on whose leaves were written the scenes of the life of man." That is horrid rubbish, to speak plainly ; but there is a thought in the article, nevertheless. Mr. Stead's idea is that if a daily journal could have correspondents everywhere, full of devotion to the paper, and able to collect not only information, but opinions, the editor would have very great political influence. We dare say he would, and, indeed, under the ten-pound suffrage, Mr. Barnes and Mr. Delane very nearly filled the position; but an accurate divination of the opinions of the million has hitherto proved impracticable. The idea, too, is not quite con- sistent with another on which Mr. Stead lays stress. " I contend," he says, " that on any given occasion it ought to be possible for an editor to ascertain authentically in twenty-four hours the views of all the Cabinet Ministers and ex-Cabinet Ministers in town—not, of course, for publication, but for his own guidance and the avoidance of mistakes." God help the unhappy Minister besieged on every critical occasion by, say, twenty able editors, all resolute to ascertain his views ; and God help the editor who is to study at once general and individual opinion ! He will find, being human though an editor, that the one function disturbs his competency to perform the other, and that he will end either by changing his opinion from hour to hour, or resolutely adhering to his own, just spoiled, or, as it were, blurred by too many counter-currents of influence. Mr. Stead asks too much,—that an editor shall be at once a corpora- tion and a person, a creator and a funnel, the most pliant of mankind and a man at once honest and original. The public will smile at his grandiose attitude ; but it is, we confess, curious to old journalists, who distinctly believe that the influence of the Press over electors is declining yearly, to read his evidently gen nine utterances of precisely the contrary belief. Mr. Henry T. Fincks tells us something new, if only it is true, when he says the potency of condiments—mustard, for instance—depends upon their odour, not their taste, and that not only the cost, but the gastro- nomic efficacy of wine varies according to its aroma. His paper, however, is an enjoyable one, full of that slight yet conscious exaggeration which, when a man can really write well, has much of the effect of wit. We wish Mr. Gosse had explained more fully the unintelligible admiration of his contemporaries for Sir Philip Sidney, who before he was thirty was considered a great personage in Europe, while his death was treated as a national calamity of the first class. No other diplo- matist and soldier ever had that position, and the idea that it was derived from his hold over those with whom he came in personal contact is surely inadequate. That the hope of his countrymen had fixed upon him may be true ; but why did it so fix? M. Emile de Laveleye sends a thoughful paper on "The Situation in the East," the aim of which is to suggest quietly that Prince Bismarck still dreads a coalition against Germany, that he clings to the Austrian alliance as his sheet- anchor, and that he would not be sorry to see Russia and Austria quarrel in the Balkans. The present may be, in his judgment, his best time for war, for he is sure to reckon himself as a great factor counting towards success in that enterprise, and his time is rapidly slipping away. This is not a general view in England, but it is a possible view, and M. de Laveleye does a service in bringing it so prominently forward.
Mr. Dillon is the only writer who this month touches on the Irish Question, and he has not much to say. He maintains, in the Nineteenth Century, that Mr. Parnell's Land Bill was a reasonable and moderate Bill, intended to prevent a renewal of the Irish land war this winter, and that it was rejected in a most inju- dicious way. We agree in part with the last opinion ; but Mr. Dillon's idea of moderation is an Irish one, and he does not bring forward any new facts. He only asserts that Irish tenants are less able to pay than ever they were, which is, we think, true only of a few districts. His article will not contribute much to the general enlightenment, while it will increase the partly unreasonable English feeling that Irish sensitiveness makes practical compromises very difficult. Englishmen compromise, not only to be rid of quarrels, but of the feeling which prompts them. Sir Rutherford Alcock's account of the religions quarrel in China, which has recently excited so much attention, is well worth studying. He maintains that the Chinese genuinely hate foreign missions, that their disposition to attack them is a permanent cause of danger both to Europe and to China, and that the danger is intensified by the extreme arrogance of the Catholic, and espe- cially the French Catholic, clergy, who often assume the posi- tion of great functionaries, and claim the right of sheltering Christians even when they are criminals. Sir Rutherford thinks the Chinese feeling natural enough, and believes that the transfer of the representation of Catholicism at Pekin from France, which is an aggressive power, to the Pope, who controls no soldiers, would greatly conduce to quiet excited feeling. The present arrangement does not prevent outrages, while it does exceedingly embitter the governing class. Mr. F. W. H. Myers pursues his speculations on the separate action of the hemispheres of the brain, which seem to us, in this paper at least, to lead to materialism of the most utter, and, indeed, exaggerated kind. If, as in the first case he quotes, the mere separation of the hemispheres resulting from an accident has produced two entirely separate characters, then there is no such thing as character, and by consequence, no moral respon- sibility. That may be proved to be true, as anything else may, by sufficient evidence ; but it does not induce us to share Mr. Myers's hope that when part of the apparatus has dropped away, the remainder may develop better things than before. If it is all apparatus, we do not care one straw what it develops. Horse-chestnuts are not nice, and sweet chestnuts are ; but we see no reason whatever for holding the one tree nobler than the other. Mr. Myers is always interesting to read, from the quantity of out-of-the-way evidence he collects. The Bishop of Oxford, writing on " Sisters-in-Law," only repeats the argument that if you allow marriages with sisters-in-law, you must ultimately allow marriages with all affines, which is true, but has been sufficiently discussed. There are plenty of unions prohibited by instinctive feeling, as, for example, marriage with an adopted daughter, which, nevertheless, it would not be wise, still less necessary, for legislators to prevent. Mrs. A. Kennard, on "Gustave Flaubert and George Sand," is exceedingly thin, but amusing and readable ; and Mr. Barnett gives us the results of his experience as to distress in East London. He would induce the unskilled to form unions, would organise relief much better, and through the denominations, and would admit working men into the Boards of Guardians. He would also have the rich live among the poor, an idea which, if it could be carried out, would produce much, but which is wonderfully con- trary to the modern notion of equality. Why do those dis- tricts of East London which enjoy equality in its perfection sigh for the residence of the rich among them P Miss Twining seems to think we do not want working men as Guardians so much as rich men who would prevent or punish the " workhouse cruelties" and workhouse irregularities, of which she furnishes a distressing account. She has pleaded the same cause for a generation with success in certain matters—we believe it is to Miss Twining that infirm paupers owe the comfort of pillows— but there is almost as much to be done as ever. The practice of trusting pauper-patients to pauper-attendants, who simply hate them for the trouble they give, seems to be incurable. Mr. C. Kin- loch Cooke's article on "Europe in the Pacific" does not tell us much that we could not learn from any good encyclopaedia, though we agree with his statement that Australia is rapidly beginning to need Federation and a Navy. She has Colonial interests to protect in the Pacific, and to protect them adequately needs force to be at her own unfettered disposal. The idea of an Australian Navy, with ships liable to hire by the Imperial Government when required, is a sagacious one. Colonists, however, if they wish to influence English opinion, must learn to make their writings less intolerably dry. Nobody wants snippets from gazetteers.
The principal paper in the Fortnightly Review is an account by Professor Dowden of a manuscript of Shelley's, which he intended to publish, called "A Philosophical View of Reform." It contains one wild idea, the necessity for paying off the National Debt by a tax on the privileged classes who contracted it, and by a partial and carefully regulated confiscation ; but it is full also of moderation and practical sense, and would be regarded
by most Radicals of our time as slightly behind the age. Shelley desired most of the reforms of our time, with the exception of the ballot; but he had a confidence in the regenerating effects of Liberty by itself, which is now much diminished. He regarded equality of possessions as a dim and extremely distant ideal, but thought it possible to make the cottage so happy and so civilised that equality would not be desired. Professor Dowden's paper is a distinct addition to what we know of Shelley's mind, which might, had he lived, have devoted itself to politics. He thought politics higher work than literature, and gave in his book the following estimate of the work that political philosophy had already performed :—
" Modern society is a machine designed for useful purposes, whose force is by a system of subtle mechanism augmented to the highest power, but which, instead of grinding corn or raising water, acts against itself, and is perpetually wearing away the wheels of which it is composed. The result of the labours of the political philosophers has been the establishment of the principle of Utility as the sub- stance, and liberty and equality as the forms, according to which the concerns of human life ought to be administered. By this test the various institutions regulating political society have been tried, and, as the undigested growth of the private passions, errors, and interests of barbarians and oppressors, have been condemned. And many new theories, more or less perfect, but all superior to the mass of evil which they would supplant, have been given to the world."
Mons. G. de Hennin draws a striking picture of the decay of Turkey, and declares that Abdul Hamid's only policy is to keep
the Powers at variance. He distrusts them all, but Germany least; and he will ultimately follow Prince Bismarck's advice. He does not care about Bulgaria, but is anxious to keep all that
he can retain, especially Constantinople. M. de Hennin does not believe, as most Europeans do, that an Asiatic Turkey is possible, but holds that on the capture of Constantinople the Asiatic Empire of the Turks will be immediately dissolved, Western Asia passing back in morsels to its natural owners, more especially the Arabs. " Stepniak " adds one more to his many pictures of Russian life, his object this time being to show that the Russian Mir, the Communal Council which really
governs the peasants' lives, has bred in them the ideas of equality and fraternity. He does not show that, to our minds; but he does show that the Communal Council is the most vital institution in Russia, and trains the people to what is really political life, though it be only the life of the parish. He affirms that the Council, in opposition to the Russian civil law, distri- butes property within its jurisdiction not according to kinship, but according to work done in the family. It thus reckons a son-in-law after a certain number of years as a son, and a con- cubine who bas laboured for a long time in the fields as a wife.
The most acceptable paper in Macmillan is a sketch of the late Master of Trinity, not full enough, but original and appre- ciative. We must wait for a perfect account of that singular
and powerful satirist ; but the following, besides being new, is most pathetically suggestive :—
" There is a strange pathos in his criticism when he was first shown the magnificent but somewhat appalling picture by Mr. Herkomer, taken when he was not far from the end. ' Da I really look as though I held the world so cheap ?' he said. It was like a kind of recanta- tion, a kind of protest against the opinion which held him to be so innately an unkindly man ; a kind of claim to be reckoned as one of the human race whom he was popularly supposed to despise. And an intimate friend has related to the writer a very affecting incident which shows the same deprecating attitude of mind. He was sitting with the Master, who had inquired whether he had lately heard any news of a common friend.' Yes,' replied the other; he's a very unhappy man : he's eaten up with destructive criticism : he began by an intense admiration of Niebnhr's method, and be has allowed it to invade the whole of his own life.'—The Master was standing with his hand on the handle of the door, but he turned quiokly at this, and it was obvious that his eyes were full of tears.—' Ah !' be said ; ' criticism is a great thing, a very great thing—bat it's not everything.'"
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