THE MAGAZINES.

Tan Magazines are full of politics this month. The Nineteenth Century begins with a paper by Mr. W. E. Forster on "Imperial Federation." Mr. Forster is strongly moved by the idea that, unless the links between the mother-country and the great white Colonies are drawn a little tighter, the end will be separation; and,•deprecating separatfon as injurious to all concerned, he looks round for a practical method of increasing unity. He finds it in the creation of a -Board of Advice, or Colonial Council, composed of the Agents of the Colonies, and bearing to the Colonial Minister the relation which the India Council bears to the Secretary of State. He would have this Council consulted on all questions of peace and war, and all arrangements for Colonial defence ; and hopes that it may ultimately develop into a Federal Council of the Empire. We have no objection to the scheme, and strongly support any increase in the status and responsibility of the Colonial Agents ; but we question its practicability. Would the Colonies, which have bitter jealousies of their own, submit to the opinion of a majority ; or would Colonies so distant as those of Australia and North America feel any common bond unfelt now ? And, moreover, would the English people bear the Council's interference P We should like to see the experiment tried ; but would rather treat the Agents as Envoys, and summon them when a Colonial concert was needed than seat them in a permanent Council. Mr. Forster thinks the Council would be pacific; but we are not so sure of that. Would not each group, if sure of English support, be rather disposed to war for its own especial " Monroe Doctrine P" Mr. Matthew Arnold's " A Word More about America" is also in essence political. Ho is inclined to think better of Americans than heretofore, for he says their institutions suit them, and, being at ease, "they see straight." The institutions of Englishmen do not quite suit them, and they do not see straight. If they did, they would work their departments through plebeians instead of aristocrats, would divide G rent Britain and Ireland into provinces doing their local work as the American States do, and would make of the representatives of Provinces a strong Second Chamber. In fact, he would federalise England, though leaving, perhaps, to the central body more power than it exercises in America. We will not ask Mr. Arnold why he thinks that he alone sees straight, for that is an error which in some degree pertains to every man among us. We all could govern the Empire if we were only let. But we may ask him why he thinks his plan would content Ireland, or how far it would create that " Ireland" with a separate if not independent life, history, flag, and place in the world for which the Irish majority are yearning. Of course, Mr. Arnold's paper is full of bright sentences, humorous illustrations, and little gems of criticism—like the cut, as of diamond on glass, which he administers to Sir Lepel Griffin ; but his plan seems to us too literary, too far apart from the traditions, as well as the aspirations, of the people. Of all systems of government, the one they understand least is the Federal, which requires in the States or Provinces a degree of tolerance of each other's mistakes and experiments very alien to the British mind, the essence of which is that there is a right way—the British way—and there is no other. Lord Pembroke's idea for " the reform of the House of Lords " really comes to a House of Notables, partly hereditary, partly sitting ex officio, and partly nominated by the Crown. It has been tried in many countries, and has not developed either strength or efficiency in any. The people would not care a straw about the opinions of a Council of dignified old gentlemen, sure to be Tory in sentiment., and without any representative rights. We doubt if a Second Chamber can be constructed at all in England ; but certainly it cannot be made up of nominees. It would have no force behind it, and the first time it differed with the Commons on a serious subject it would disappear. Dr. Bucknill sends a most able paper on " The Abolition of Proprietary Madhouses," which he recommends strongly, but witha temperance of tone and definiteness of thought not always found in writers on the subject. He points out that if private madhouses arc abolished, the only persons to be provided for will be the two thousand or so payingpatients, who might all be housed either in asylums under the Lord Chancellor, or in a long-desired extension of the system of public hospitals, the grand object being that it should not be the interest of the mad-doctors to keep patients in custody. Mr. J. W. Furrell's article on "The Colour Question" will greatly interest the few who, like Mr. Gladstone, are anxious to decide whether the human perception of colours has,•or has not, become finer. Mr. Gladstone thinks it has, quoting as proof the Greek want of words for the finer shades. Mr. Fnrrell, however, shows that the modern Indians, whose perception of colour is past all question, labour under the same paucity of words. They have no word for " brown," calling most of its shades " red," a name by which they also describe claret-colour, while they call dark-brown and dark-blue " black," and have no word for blue, the word so translated, " nil," meaning indigo, and being strictly limited to certain shades. To call the sky " nil " would to them sound ridiculous. The want of a word for brown is the more extraordinary, as the Indians detest hearing themselves called " blacks " in English, yet in every native dialect describe themselves as black. Mr. Farrell offers no explanation for this curious defect of language in India, which has been noticed by all observers; but something of the kind exists even in rural England, where brown cows are classed as red, and a purple berry is distinctively called the blackberry. May not the explanation be that words finely discriminating colours are only used or wanted when writing has become

general, the man who only speaks his orders either showing a pattern of the shade he wants, or describing it by naming some leaf, or wood, or flower, as we do when we say, rose, or pink, or violet, or maple ? This word, not being written, would differ in every district, and indeed, in every trade, and never become a permanent word at all.

The Contemporary is heavy, though instructive. There is only one purely literary article, Mr. Roden Noel's critique on Tennyson, for Mr. Bryce's critique on Sardou's " Theodora " is really an admirable little monograph on the Empress and her real character. He holds that, though originally a harlot of the evil type which Gibbon describes, she, as Empress, lived cleanly, and became a most dignified and powerful ruler, remarkable only for the pitilessness and vindictiveness often found in sated voluptuaries. We wish he had made his paper perfect by giving us, as M. Sardou's work admits of his doing, his own conception of the character of Justinian, which is still one of the problems of history. Was he really a timid, irresolute, and half-sighted man, with the single faculty of choosing in all departments most efficient agents ? There have been such men, even in modern times—as witness Philip II. of Spain, and,—though we do not mean to bracket them together,—to a considerable extent Louis XIV. of France. The most important article, Mr. Justin McCarthy's attack on Dublin Castle, we have noticed elsewhere ; but the ablest by far is Principal Fairbaira's on " Catholicism and Apologetics." We have rarely read a finer or more just description of the effect which the Anglo-Catholic movement has exercised on both the Anglican and Catholic Churches than -that which is contained in pages 175-178. It will be strange to many Englishmen to find a leading Presbyterian writing like this : " It is a blunder of the worst kind to imagine that any one form of Christianity can be served by any other being made ridiculous. It belongs to the madness bf the sectary, whether Catholic or antiCatholic, to believe that his own system grows more sane as others are made to seem less rational. But the Protestant ought to be pleased to discover the reason in Catholicism, as the Catholic to -find the truth in Protestantism ; what makes either ridiculous snakes the other less credible. For if there is difference there is also agreement, and while the difference is in man's relation to the truth, the agreement is in the most cardinal of the truths that stand related to man. If Christ lives within Catholicism, he ought to seem the more wonderful, and it the less odious to the Protestant ; if within Protestantism, he ought to appear the more gracious, and it the less void of grace and truth to the Catholic. Unmeasured speech is either insincere or nnveracious, and the worst unveracity is the one that denies good to be where both good and -God are. Now, the movement that made many men better Christians by making them Catholics, did a good deed for Religion. By showing that there was reason in Catholicism it made history more reasonable, made, too, the honesty, saintliness, intellectual integrity and thoroughness of many schoolmen and thinkers more intelligible, and evoked the charity that dared to love and admire where religious and intellectual differences were deepest. There were, indeed, more irenical influences in the movement than the men who conducted it either imagined or desired."

The article which will be most read will, however, be Mr. Arthur Arnold's, in which he pleads for the total enfranchisement of the soil, on the ground of the monstrous indebtedness of the landlords. He believes that this indebtedness amounts in the aggregate to 2400,000,000, costing the landlords eighteen millions a year :— " I cannot find any evidence of probability that the debt is less than that vast amount. Authorities in England and Scotland have told me that six times the gross estimated rental may be taken as a fair average, although many estates are probably charged with three -times that burden. Evidence is scattered throughout many Bluebooks. The most trustworthy is that of the ' family solicitors,' and from among that class I take Mr. Bartle Frere, of Lincoln's Inn, as one of the widest practice. Before the Select Committee on Land Titles and Transfer, Mr. Frere, in reply to Mr. Gregory, another eminent solicitor, gave it as his opinion that estates in England are charged as heavily as estates in Ireland, and Mr. Gregory did not appear to differ from this statement. In Ireland, the indebtedness of the landed gentry has been more closely investigated. English and Scotch landowners shrink from inquiry which Irish gentlemen have accepted in order to strengthen their complaints against the Land Act of 1881. From Ireland there is a volume of evidence. I take only the most valuable, that of Mr. Hussey, who has dealt for many years with an agricultural rental amounting to a quarter of a million sterling. Mr. Hussey estimates the agricultural rental of Ireland at £14,000,000. It is important to notice that the highest assessment of Ireland, that of 1881, under Schedule B of the Income Tax, in respect of the occupation of land, is 29,080,694. In 1882, before the Lords' Committee, Mr. Hussey replied to Lord Cairns that the encumbrances and charges upon Irish land amounted to more than six times the gross rental,—that is, to more than 284,000,000What was the agricultural rental of Great Britain at the time to which this estimate applies ? No one will dispute the authority of Sir James Caird as to England and Scotland. He stands generally upon the figures of Schedule B, which, according to Mr. Hussey, and to evident probability, are considerably below the actual figures. In 1878 the assessment to Schedule B for the United Kingdom was £69,172,300, which was thus divided :—England and Wales, £51,566,033; Scotland, 27,669,584; Ireland, £9,936,681. In that year Sir James Caird estimated the annual rental of agricultural land, excluding all mineral rents and all holdings under ten acres, at £67,000,000, and the capital value of that rental at £2,000,000,000. If we adopt this as a basis, and take the calculation of six times the rental as the average debt, the result is in excess of 2400,000,000."

No wonder that remissions of rent are difficult, and that the landlord who remits too largely receives remonstrances from his poorer brethren. Mr. Arnold advises the landlords to join hands heartily with the land reformers, and half hints that if they will, they may be aided in part by State loans. Mr.

Myers continues his papers on the investigation of the unknown forces roughly called "spiritualism," his text this time being

"Automatic Writing." His conclusion is "that the unconscious mental action which is admittedly going on within us may

manifest itself through graphic automatism with a degree of complexity hitherto little suspected, so that a man may actually hold a written colloquy with his own waking and responsive dream ; and, secondly, reason has been given for believing that automatic writing may sometimes reply to questions which the writer does not see, and mention facts which the writer does not know, the knowledge of those questions or those facts being apparently derived by telepathic communication from the conscious or unconscious mind of another person." It is the second conclusion which will arouse most antagonism, for we all know that in dreams we answer our own questions. If Signor G. Boglietti's account of Italian literature is as correct as it is forcible, the fiction of Italy is in a horrible phase. Zolaism triumphs, and is made worse by an admixture of cruelty, and of the Italian tendency to a peculiar form of blasphemy, which suggests that the old contempt for the gods has lingered dowa to our own time.

The Fortnightly begins with three papers on the ideas of the new voters by Mr. Broadhurst, "A Trades-Union Official," and

Mr. A. Simmons. Mr. Broadhurst thinks the electors will return six miners and as many mechanics ; that they will demand payment of Members ; that they will insist on Members attending to business ; that land will be enfranchised and its accumulation prevented ; that the Leasehold Enfranchisement Bill will be passed ; that Egypt will be abandoned ; that the hereditary principle in the Upper House will be suppressed; and that workmen will insist on entering the Cabinet. The "Trades-Union Official " generally agrees, especially as to the Leasehold Bill, but—although he asks clearly for free education —he is generally a little vague. Mr. Simmons is distinct enough. He thinks the new voters will desire manhood suffrage, free education, a compulsory power of purchasing farms from the landlords, a democratic County Government Bill, an Allotment Act, and a " second ballot " to prevent the appearance of dummy-candidates at elections. These desires are a little various ; and we imagine the order in which they are expressed is rather haphazard. Mr. Shaw-Lefevre again attacks proportional representation, in which he shows that the system would, in an extraordinary number of cases, leave the balance of power—and, therefore, the returning power—in the hands of the Irish Party ; and intimates an

opinion, which is, we think, accurate, that under the singleMember system seats will be more secure. The Member and the electors will know each other better. Mr. T. Hare, the author of the "Hare scheme," protests against the vivisection of boroughs, and declares in favour of the representation of women. Mr. Traill doubts, at considerable length, whether Coleridge was the great religious philosopher his admirers contend,—whether that description of him is not, in fact, a "pious legend." His method of proving this is to show that Coleridge accepted the idea of "grace," and therefore gave up all his previous opinion that "man is an essentially religious being, having a definite spiritual constitution ;" thus reducing his philosophy to useless

ness. Is not that just a little nonsensical ? Suppose Mr. Traill were writing of the British Army ; would he say that to say " the' English soldier is the better for discipline," is inconsistent with saying that " the Englishman is essentially a soldier, having a definite fighting impulse ?" Discipline is as external an impulse as grace ; but it does not nullify the internal one. Mr. Trail further denies that Coleridge made the incomprehensible doctrine of the Trinity more acceptable, by showing that there is a Trinity in every human being, and says he merely confused the ideas of relation and personality ; but surely if the relation of the Three Persons was made clearer, " the acceptability of the idea " of their existence was increased. Perhaps, however, we are arguing about nothing, for Mr. Train's definition of a religious philosopher is too high to be attained. "But that Coleridge was a great spiritual thinker, in the sense of a great religions philosopher, who so succeeded in connecting and co-ordinating the doctrines of theology with certain necessary metaphysical conceptions of the human mind as to enable, if not to compel, everybody who has once grasped the conceptions to accept the doctrines—this I cannot for a moment bring myself to admit."

Did anybody ever so enable everybody to accept a doctrine since the beginning of time? Was there never a great Catholic religious philosopher ? Yet how many Protestants, entirely able to grasp the conception, have been unable to accept the doctrine embodied in the word " sacerdotalism." Mr. Wilfrid Blunt finishes his contributions about India, with some views upon Native States, which are, we think, the least interesting he has published, and which glide off into an attempt to fathom that deep cesspool, the politics of Hydrabad. He is actually credulous enough to believe that the Calcutta Foreign Office discredited Saler Jung, in order to retain sixty appointments in the Ceded Districts of Berar ; and if he does not also mean to imply that it either approved or rejoiced in his removal by poison, be uses words very carelessly.

That the Indian Departments often are deceived by corrupt Europeans in Hydrabad is likely enough ; but that they care for patronage to this extent is absurd. They may wish to keep the Districts, in defiance of Treaty, from a profound conviction that, if handed over, they will be misgoverned ; but that is the extent of their error. It is useless, however, here or in India, to write about Hydrabad ; for party spirit has risen so high that if anybody affirmed that Lord Ripon had poisoned Saler Jung in order to extort a bribe of a million from his son, for securing him the succession, there are people who would believe it, every word. Mr. Kebbel's paper on " Jane Austen at Home" is most entertaining, particularly the following passage upon the class to which Mr. Woodhouse belonged :

"There was in those days a particular grade of society, now all but extinct, which haunted these large villages and small country towns, and seemed somehow or other to be associated with the days of stage-coaches and to have perished with the advent of the railways; families quite unconnected with `trade,' with small but still sufficient incomes, who did nothing at all in life, and seemed to wish to do nothing. Mr. Woodhouse is just such a man ; Mr. Bennett was another. They were not county gentlemen; they were not professional men ; they were not necessarily sportsmen ; if they farmed, it was only for amusement. They would have shuddered at the thought -of speculating ; they vegetated quietly on a fixed income, which they were careful not to imperil, and formed the main ingredient at those card parties and early supper parties which were the amusement of our grandfathers and grandmothers in these secluded spots, and which imparted a familiar flavour of sociability and gaiety to the country life of the period, which has now long ago departed from it."

These people lasted down to the middle of this century, and then somehow grew scarce, nobody can imagine why. We believe ourselves that they all retreated into the " residential districts," and so were lost ; but we wish Dr. Jessopp, or some writer like him, would give us particulars of theil. fate. Surely they have not all been ruined, or deported, or obliged to work. Mr. Kebbel has a hearty admiration of Jane Austen, in which

we cordially sympathise ; but does he not once or twice go a little too far ? He says of the heroine of E,aama :—" Her sauciness is her great charm, and the sparring between herself and Mr. Knightly is scarce, if at all, inferior to the scenes between Beatrice and Benedict." We should have said that Miss Austen had failed in Emma, imprinting on her a stamp of slight vulgarity, which probably existed in the original she drew from, but which she did not intend to leave.

Mr. W. E. H. Lecky breaks out in a new fashion in Misentillod, sending a little poem on the reasons which, amidst the muta tions of men's thoughts, have preserved safely a " little snatch of ancient song." It is genuine poetry, there is no doubt of that, as any one will realise who reads even this little extract :—

" The pulse of thought is beating quicker, The lamp of faith begins to flicker, The ancient reverence decays With forms and types of other days ; And old beliefs grow faint and few As knowledge moulds the world anew, And scatters far and wide the seeds Of other hopes and other creeds ; And all in vain we seek to trace The fortunes of the coming race. Some with fear and some with hope, None can cast its horoscope.

Vap'rous lamp or rising star, Many a light is seen afar, And dim shapeless figures loom All around us in the gloom-Forces that may rise and reign As the old ideals wane."

There is also a delightful description of a holiday in Canada. by Mr. Frederick Pollock, positively fuller than it can hold of

little descriptive sketches. We could mark in its few pages a score of sentences like this about the climate of Quebec : "Looking down from the citadel on the St. Lawrence the traveller has one of the grandest views of this kind in the worb3, heightened by that wonderfully clear atmosphere which in England we vainly long for. Only the clear early light of the finest English summer morning can be likened to the atmosphere which people live and breathe in all day on the Western Continent, and even that falls short of it." No man has any right to tell us a thing like that, and quit the subject without another word. Mr. Morley gives us his impression of George Eliot, which was one of deep admiration for a sur passing genius, checked, if we mistake not, by a keen sense of her want of spontaneity and ease,—the special want which her letters bring out so plainly. In his " Review of the Month," the editor defends Mr. Gladstone's policy in Egypt as the only practicable one now that we are there, and exposes the un reality of all projects of federation between England and the Colonies.