THE MAGAZINES.

Sin W. W. HUNTER concludes " The Old Missionary " in this. month's Contemporary Review. It is by far the best story of the kind ever told, and indicates in its author the possession of high dramatic faculty. The Old Missionary is a figure splendidly idealised, yet in no way removed from what might well have been the attitude of an actual teacher of the faith in India. Widen Dr. Duff, Anglicise Dr. Heberlin, give deeper reflective- ness to Mr. Hilton, and any one of the three might have been accepted as the living basis of this lofty conception, the author of which, moreover, has made intelligible some of those springs of native action which seem to Europeans so bewildering. The con- duct of the young Brahmin convert, for example, which seems to- ns so heartless, is in exact accord with one of the best of Indian impulses,—the resolution to live up to an accepted'faith without

regard to consequences. It is useless to give an outline of a story which derives its force from the touches with which its principal character is built up, and we prefer to extract this paragraph as at once a specimen of its author's style, and an account of one of the many circumstances which make

India so completely and so consciously for Europeans the 4. Land of Regrets :"— " Next evening we buried him. Amid the ceaseless changes of Anglo-Indian life there is one spot—only one—that is always quiet. Let a man revisit even a large Bengal station after a few years, and which of the familiar faces remain ? He finds new civilians in the courts, a new uniform on the parade-ground, strange voices at the mess-table, new assistants in the indigo factories. The ladies who bowed languidly from their carriages are bowing languidly elsewhere : as for the groups of children who played round the band-stand, one or two tiny graves are all that is left of them in the station. The Englishman in India has no home, and he leaves no memory. In a little station like ours the graveyard was very solitary. Of the sleepers beneath the tombs not one had a friend among the living. Some of them had fallen with sword in hand, some had been cut off in the first flush of youthful promise, some had died full of years and honour. One fate awaited all. No spring flowers were ever left on their for- gotten graves, no tear was ever dropped, no prayer ever breathed, beside their resting-place. At the beginning of each cold season, the Magistrate entered the walled enclosure with the public works officer to see what repairs were needful : at the end of the cold weather he inspected it again, to see that the repairs had been carried out. During the rest of the year the dead lay alone, through the scorching blaze of summer and under the drenching deluge of the rains, alone, unvisited, forgotten."

—Mr. G. Russell's sketch of his celebrated kinsman, whom, in opposition to his latest biographer, he will call by his proper

but unpopular title of Lord Russell, leaves a definite impres- sion upon the memory, and, we think, adds one or two touches to the general impression of him. He was, we hear with some surprise, a man of singularly placid temper :—" A frequent, though by no means an inseparable, accompaniment of high courage is good temper, and this gracious quality Lord Russell possessed in a singular degree. When he was a little boy, going to his first private school, we read that he was very good on the road and very pleasant,' and his amiability of temper only increased with years. It is hardly an exaggera- tion to say that no one ever saw him angry. He was incapable of being worried. Political cares never spoiled his sleep. At a critical moment in Irish affairs he could find distraction at the opera. His spirits were equable. He was cheerful, and full of fun. He went much into society and enjoyed it." And he could on occasion say a sentence of singular adroitness :—

" It may very well be that some tradition of this early inde- pendence, or some playful desire to test the fibre of Whiggery by putting an extreme case, led in much later years to an embar- rassing question by an illustrious personage, and gave the oppor- tunity for an apt reply,—' Is it true, Lord John, that you hold that a subject is justified, under certain circumstances, in dis- obeying his Sovereign ?" Well,' I said, speaking to a Sovereign of the House of Hanover, I can only say that I suppose it is."

—Mr. Giffen's paper on " The Gross and the Net Gain of Rising Wages " is an argument that all workers must have bene-

fited by the improvements of late years, or they simply could not do the higher work now required of them, which we may dis- cuss hereafter ; and we have nothing to say about Mr. Sidney Webb's defence of an Eight-Hours Law, except that we cannot see why, if his arguments are sound, Parliament should

not pass a Four-Hours Law at once. If it is certain that the nation will lose nothing by a law making eight hours the term of daily labour for adults, why should it lose anything if four

hours were the term P Our objection to the measure is not the loss it would produce, but the oppression involved in such an interference with human freedom ; but still, the loss may be a serious matter. Mr. Webb seems not to perceive that, though tired men may work badly in the last two hours of a day, the machines which do most of the work are incapable of fatigue. Shortening their labour must involve a loss, which of course it may be wise to incur, but which will have to be faced.—Professor Sayce should not be

so brief. He knows "Ancient Arabia" probably as well as any man alive, though scholars say he is a little too sanguine ; but the evidence for the immense assertions contained in the following paragraph, irrefragable as it may be, should have been given at more length :-

" We gather, therefore, that as far back as the time of Solomon, a rich mid cultured Sabnan kingdom flourished in the south of Arabia, the influence of which, if not its authority, extended to the borders of Palestine, and between which and Syria an active commercial intercourse was carried on by land as well as by sea. The kingdom of BMA had been preceded by the kingdom of Ma'in, equally civilised and equally powerful, whose garrisons and colonies were stationed on the high-road which led past Mekka to the countries of the Mediterranean. Throughout this vast extent of territory alphabetic writing in various forms was known and practised, the Phoenician alphabet being the source from which it was derived. The belief accordingly that pre-Mohammedan Arabia was a land of illiterate nomads must be abandoned; it was not Islam that introduced writing into it, but the princes and merchants of Ma'in and Thamud, centuries upon centuries before. If Mohammedan Arabia knew nothing of its past, it was nct because the past had left no records behind it."

In the Fortnightly Review, Mr. Dowden's criticism of "Literary Criticism in France "is full of thoughtful writing, but can hardly be noticed in a cursory account like this, except perhaps by one passing remark. Is he not more than just to M. Sainte-Beuve's method P Better critic on certain kinds of work probably never existed, but surely there is some- thing even of the absurd in a method which is thus described:— "He tells us how we are inevitably carried from the book under our view to the entire work of the author, and so to the author himself ; how we should study the author as forming one of a group with the other members of his household, and in particular that it is wise to look for his talent in the mother, and, if there be sisters, in one or more of the sisters ; how we should seek for him in le premier milieu, the group of friends and contemporaries who surrounded him at the moment when his genius first became full- fledged ; how again we should choose for special observation the moment when he begins to decay, or decline, or deviate from his true line of advance under the influences of the world ; for such a moment comes, says Sainte-Beuve, to almost every man ; how we should approach our author through his admirers and through his enemies ; and how, as the result of all these processes of study, sometimes the right word emerges which claims, beyond all power of resistance, to be a definition of the author's peculiar talent; such an one is a 'rhetorician,' such an one an improvisator of genius.' " It would be most interesting to know the character of Shakespeare's grandmother, but should we thereby be better qualified to criticise Hamlet ?—Mr. Addington Symonds's "A Page of my Life" is really an account of the little known

people of Graubunden (Grisons), whose specialty, in Mr. Symonds's eyes, is that, while internally full of fire, they are externally men in masks,—that is, with set, expressionless, yet powerful faces, like Romans of the decline. The women are uncomely, but the men magnificent athletes, a difference which must be the result of some social peculiarity, probably too much work thrown upon the women to do :-

" The faces of these young men make me pause and wonder. They are less like human faces than masks. Sometimes boldly carved, with ardent eyes, lips red as blood, and a transparent olive skin, these faces yield no index to the character within by any changes of expression. The speech that comes from them is simple, well-bred, unimaginative, destitute of ideas and emotions. And yet I know that these same men are capable of the most tenacious passions, the suddenest self-abandonment to over- mastering impulse. It seems as though their concentrated life in village homes had made them all of one piece, which, when it breaks or yields, splits irretrievably to fragments."

—Mr. Bourchier argues well for the claim of Austria to be protector of a Balkan Confederation ; but we suspect he underrates the great religious difficulty ; and Mr. T. P. Sykes pleads pleasantly for less oppressive methods of educa- tion for the half-timers," the thousands of children who, in the North, give half their time to education and half to work

in the factory. They are, he contends, too tired to learn as other children do, and need fewer subjects and brighter methods of tuition, methods interesting to overtaxed frames.

M. E. B. Lanin is surely, in this chapter of " Russian Characteristics," too hostile to the Slays. According to him, Russians are not only incapable of honesty, but do not regard honest conduct as anything but a mark of intellectual de- ficiency. No society with that for its belief could hold together for a century. We question if commerce would be even possible. Asiatics are sharp, and, if you will, dis- honest in business ; but the Asiatic who dishonours his own bill, or breaks a bargain to which in his own judgment he has agreed, is a rarity. M. Lanin says there are great book- selling firms in Russia which live by bribing publishers' apprentices to steal their masters' books, and even bring up their own children to that business. One sach firm there may be, but to represent such conduct as a practice taxes our credulity.—The author of " The War Scare of 1875 " believes that Prince Bismarck did at that time mean war, and that though the attitude of Russia and England probably arrested it, peace was actually due to the Emperor William, who over- ruled his Chancellor. Statements of that kind require per- sonal testimony, which will not be procurable while Prince Bismarck lives.

In the Nineteenth Century, Sir Julius Vogel, formerly Premier of New Zealand, argues that the great obstacle to a federation of the Empire is Colonial dislike to it. This dislike is based on a belief that England will let the Colonies secede when they please, which Sir Julius holds to be entirely unfounded. He thinks that, when the time arrives, England will hold her Colonies by force, and that she ought, in order to avert what would be a great civil war, to press on Federation. All that seems to us viewy, though we are quite prepared to admit that the English readiness to allow secession may prove to be exaggerated. South Africa, for example, in the-interest of all Eastern Africa, might not be allowed to secede at will. That England would, however, attempt an impossible reconquest of Canada, or blockade Aus- tralia, to the ruin of her own merchants and bond-holders, is to the last degree improbable. The project of Federa- tion has never been before the people. When it is, we shall, we think, see the immersion of England in the Anglo-Saxon ocean scouted out of the field of politics.—The Rev. Dr. C. H. Wright, in " The Stamping-Out of Protestantism in Russia," declares that the whole power of the Russian Government is exerted for the stamping-out of Protestantism, especially in the Baltic Provinces, the object being to make all Russia at once Slav and Orthodox. There is no doubt that this is the tendency in Russia, but a good deal of the persecution con- sists, we imagine, in theory at all events, in the prohibition of proselytism from the Greek Church, and therefore of much argumentative preaching. This is, we suspect, the origin of the freedom allowed to Mahommedan teachers, which so greatly hurts the excellent Dr. Dalton. The Synod has no fear of Orthodox Christians embracing Mahommedanism.—In the notices of books by men of eminence, Mr. Gladstone, we observe, greatly praises the Memorials of a Southern Planter, by Mrs. Smedes. It is the biography of Mr. Dabney, a large planter of Mississippi, who appears to have been a kindly master to his slaves, and to have developed, when ruined by the war, much grandeur of character, especially in the way of self-effacing stoicism. Misfortune, moreover, brought out a religious element in Mr. Dabney which was latent in many of the planters, and distinguished some of their principal leaders. They had made up their minds that Christianity authorised slavery and its consequences, and apart from " the institution," were frequently Puritans.—Mr. E. F. G. Law thinks that Persia is waking up, the evidence being that she is thinking of railways, and what is called "developing her resources." So is China, and in neither case will there be any result except a slightly quickened locomotion.—Mr. Gladstone's paper on "Electoral Facts" is interesting as evidence of his unfailing hopefulness, but makes on our minds no impression. It is as impossible to deduce from by-elections the result of a General Election, as to deduce from to-day's weather the weather of next year.

In the National Review, Sir G. Baden-Powell declares, on a careful study of Mr. Gladstone's figures, that under his plan Ireland, which now pays £11,672,000 in taxes, would be obliged to pay £14,369,000, and this with probably reduced means, while she would lose the advantage of the loans made to her, now amounting to £45,598,000, of which £10,599,000 have been remitted or written off. That Ireland under Home- rule will be more heavily taxed than at present, we have little doubt, for every second man in the Kingdom will desire Government service ; but the loss of loans and remissions of loans is more doubtful. The Irish Members are still to sit in Parliament, and will vote steadily for the Government which offers Ireland the most money.—Mrs. Jeune sends a pleasant paper on the new occupations of women, and tells them quietly that they are, and will remain, inferior to men in strength ; that their grand duty, maternity, was imposed by Nature, and is unavoidable ; and that their present desire to compete with men is nothing but a hot fit of excitement, and will pass away. May it be so ; but the fate of the Roman ladies who endeavoured to be as powerful as men was a different one. They killed marriage by making it too disagree- able, and the class of great Roman ladies insensibly disappeared.