THE LIGHTER MAGAZINES.
ONE remarkable result of the sudden Dissolution is the absence of a political article in Blackwood. The thunder was no doubt prepared, and has perhaps been reserved with no little pain, especially as it will have been stolen by the Tory papers during the week of battle, and of no use in the future. A Postscript, en- titled "The Political Surprise," of only two pages, is so mild that it is evident the Bobadil of Blackwood was too genuinely astonished
to come up to the mark in his usual fighting trim, and so he is all stamp and button. All the papers are interesting, two are re-
markably so. They are respectively "The Two Speransky " and 4‘ Scepticism and Modern Poetry." The first is an authentic tale of Russian official life, whose heroine is Madame Speransky-
Bagreeff, the novelist, whom the writer calls the Russian Miss Edgeworth. It illustrates political life in Russia at the time of the peace of Tilsit, in the reign of Alexander, surnamed the
4‘ Blessed." Certain of Count Speransky's letters to his daughter, during his governorship of Siberia, which have been expressly trans-
lated for Blackwood, are very remarkable, and the story breaks off at a tantalising point, as stories "to be continued" ought to do, if they are cleverly edited, even when they deal with real life. The second is an essay on "Scepticism and Modern Poetry," which is a valuable contribution to modern criticism, in its dispassionate but earnest demonstration of the paralysing influence of want of faith on the poetical faculty :—
"In the hands of a poet like Milton," he says, "the Titanic war against Heaven is capable of a certain amount of diabolical picturesque- ness, but the merely human unbelief, the distracting doubt, and the shuffling ingenuity that nibbles at this creed and that without arriving at any definite conviction of its own, is the most unpoetical thing in the world. No amount of artistic skill can make its effusions pleasing. Seeking sympathy and finding none, they seem to be all conceived in the melancholy minor, without any of tho natural plaintiveness of that key, and with a double share of its hopeless dejection. There appears to be a place in the realms of the imagination for either God or Devil; but upon the Laodicean lukewarnmess, upon the apathetic neutrality that is neither hot nor cold, Poetry turns her back"
Yet there is a lyrical poetry of sad and hopeless yearning for faith, no less than of grateful acknowledgment of it. We have not space to quote some striking remarks upon
Shakespeare, but no reader can fail to appreciate them, and the author's rapid, but masterly analysis of the genius of Shelley,—
which he commences by observing that Shelley's "inability to conceive a heaven with a God in it to whom he could pay rever- ence seemed to drain away all humanness and homeliness out of him, until his poetry became quite as unearthly as his adverse critics judged it unbeavenly." The bit of fun for which we habitually look to Blackwood, now that humour is dead in all the other magazines, is supplied by "The Philosopher's Baby."
It is delightfully amusing, and the truest and wisest piece of satire we have met with for a long time.
Macmillan gives the sister island what her people would call "a strong turn." A serial story called " Castle Daly, the Story of an Irish Home Thirty Years Ago," commences fairly, but is not strikingly interesting or vividly characteristic. " Reminiscences of Duelling in Ireland" has the attractiveness of a personal narrative by a survivor of the old regime—he is, we fancy, the last—but is slightly marred by misprints, rare in Macmillan. One occurs in a proper name. It was not Dr. Dingenan, Judge of the Prerogative Court, who fought one barrister and frightened another on the ground, but Dr. Duigenan, whom every one knew. The translation of Hiller's " Mendelssohn " progresses with increasing interest, but the present portion breaks off awkwardly. It includes a letter in which Mendelssohn describes the effect upon its bearers of an overture composed by Hiller, and runs off into a striking strain of anthetics. Hiller gives us an impression of remarkable completeness and order in Mendelssohn's intellectual nature. The sketches of Spanish life and character which have been attractive features for some months, are brought to a conclusion by a melancholy letter on the decay of faith in Spain ; from which it is evident that there is no religion at all outside the Established Church of that country—the Catholic —and lamentably little within it. A collection of Sir George Rose's jokes, though they are all good—even when farthest-fetched —has the unaccountably depressing effect always produced by a collection of jokes. Any one who has read the life of Sydney Smith all at once and straight through is acquainted with the depths of such depression. Miss Phillimore gives us one of her welcome papers in Part I. of "The Princd-Printers of Italy." It is written with the complete mastery of her subject, and the clear fluency of style, without any digressions, characteristic of her ; but there are too many foot-notes, and they are even more distracting and fatiguing in magazine pages than in a formal book. Her readers would be content to take her authorities for granted for the present, and they might figure as an appendix in the reprint, which will be a valuable work. We have referred to Dr. Michael Foster's lecture on the duties of vivisection and his attack on the "malevolent ignorance" of some of its opponents in another column.
The novel in the Cornhill, to which we thought so lofty an origin as the pen of 'George Eliot ' might possibly be assigned, is not the work of that illustrious writer ; but it is, though the second instalment is not quite equal to the opening chapters, a remarkable production, and it goes beyond the high and sanguine hopes with which the previous works of its author, Mr. Hardy—" Under the Greenwood Tree" and "A Pair of Blue Eyes "—inspired us. This gentle- man has a career before him in the higher walks of his art —a sphere of which the ordinary ' popular ' novelist class have seemingly no consciousness—towards which be will be helped by a close study—not degenerating into a servile imitation—of the great novelist whose popularity is the best refutation that novel- readers have to offer of the common charge against them of general ignorance and bad taste. There are some admirable bits in these chapters ;—little touches of description, subtleties of qualification, scraps of rural conversation, worthy of the habitues of the immortal "Red Cow ; " an incidental biography of a village character, who turned pious after a jeunesse orageuse, and an account of how Gabriel Oak played the flute to a critical audience. The author errs a little on the side of over- finish, his pages are too closely packed with sentences which all demand equal attention, for readers who do not read with genuine pleasure, if they cannot also read with indolent ease. Only such can Mr. Hardy fail to please. A paper on all sorts of ciphers and symbol language, called, "Missives in Masquerade," has the unfailing attraction of a puzzle with a solution within reach. We are glad to be done with "Young Brown," a story which has been intensely dull since its commencement at- tracted to it an undesirable attention, and which its writer has finished up with absurd abruptness, and the most inappropriate " tag " we have ever chanced to remark. "Wisdom is justified of her children," applied to such a story, must be either a profane or a foolish quotation ; judging from the antecedents of Young Brown, we think it is both. The third period of the French Press forma the subjrct of a third clever essay, and in an appre- ciative and lively p,.2er on Mrs. Gaskell's novels we recognise the hand of Mr. George B. Smith. We agree to some extent with him about "Wives and Daughters ;" but we don't think he gives the writer sufficient credit for Dr. Gibson. His analysis of Airs. Gaskell's qualities is admirable.
Mr. Cowden Clarke contributes to the Gentleman's Magazine some "Recollections of Keats," which will be read with pleasure. It is more than half a century since the "beloved schoolfellow and poetical pupil" of the now veteran writer bade the friend who was with him lift him up, and not be frightened, but, thank God ! it—meaning death—had come ; yet he is not forgotten, he who declared that his "name was writ in water."
Saint Paul's appeared last month in a new cover, and with Mr. Strahan's name as publisher. We had not space to welcome its first number, but we do so now, including the second in the greeting, for they are both very good indeed. In No. 2, Mr. Hasell die- cusses" Calderon's Martyr-Plays," in Mr. MacCarthy's translation, with taste and judgment ; "Matthew Browne "gives us a charac- teristic paper called "The Apotheosis of the Policeman ; " and Mr. Buchanan turns some of his notions respecting " Master-Spirits " into rhyme, in some verses called "The Ship of Folly," which were certainly not written on board. Their satire is well aimed, and their moral is true.
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