TILE MAGAZINES.

THE magazines are very grave this month, not to say dull. There are several instructive papers scattered among them, but none that are pre-eminently readable. One of the best is M. Emile de Laveleye's paper, in the Contemporary, on "The Future of Religion." He holds that the religions impulse was never so severely attacked as at present, when democracy, under some strange illusion, has allied itself with Darwinism, which latter, seeking as it does the survival, and therefore the ascendency of the fittest, is essentially an aristocratic theory of the universe. Irreligion is becoming dominant, and the gospel of irreligion must be the search for sensuous or intellectual enjoyment. M. de Laveleye thus sketches the scene

Heaven is at last empty, and the places of worship entirely deserted. There is no God, no eternal and immutable type of truth and justice ; no prayers can be addressed to a merciful Father, supreme source of comfort and consolation for the desolate and afflicted; there is no hope of another and a better life, where there is no more sin, and where the just are rewarded. Religion has altogether vanished, like the elementary myths which our early predecessors believed in. Irreligion is no longer the privilege of scholars and learned men, as in the eighteenth century. If Atheism is indeed the truth it must be openly preached to all. There will be many who vrill say to the people : • What is the tuse of a religion ? Religion supposes a God, and God does not exist. It is a mere word of no meaning, invented by terror, imposed on credulous minds, turned to account by fanaticism, and enlarged upon by the dreamings and empty meditations and reveries of ages. God is a mere mirage of man's personality. Man ! you were bowing in adoration to yourself. You were worshipping your own image. Stand Up; and raise your head too long bent to the dust beneath the yoke of tyrants and priests ! Produce of earthly clay, you have nothing to hope for beyond this world. You need look for nothing in a future beyond the grave, for that future does not exist. Your lot is limited to an existence here below ; endeavour then to make the best of it, and to secure for yourself a large share of enjoyment and of the good things of the earth. For there is no compensation elsewhere."

That theory once adopted, the virtues must perish, for man, if he dies with his body, has no reasonable motive for sacrificing himself or suppressing himself for his fellow man :—" Duty

without God or a future life is a very fine word, but it has no meaning whatever. To make disinterested attachment to what is right the guiding-star of human actions, and conse- quently the foundation-stone of society, is a mere return to the errors of Quietism, which taught that the love of God should be nnalloyed with any feeling of self whatever. It is always most profitable to re-read Bossuet's and Fenelon's dis- cussion on this subject. Fenelon was condemned, and justly so; his arguments applied to an ideal man who has never

really existed." M. de Laveleye maintains, therefore, that as a return to barbarism cannot occur, man will remain religions, and as a new creed is impossible, that he will remain Christian. We entirely agree in his forecast, but not in his reason for it. There is no particular reason why, if there is no God, civilisation should continue, and no evidence in history that it cannot perish. It is a far better argument to say, what is undeniable, that religion will not die because man is com- pelled, be it by his own nature or by external impulse, to concern himself with the greatest of problems, and so concerning himself, to arrive from time to time at what he considers certainties on the subject ; and that any race once certain finds in its certainty a new source of strength both for conquest and for progress in civilisation. We wish M. de Laveleye, who has been much struck with the saddening effect of irreligion, had said a little more about it. Does he find that result in French as he does in German communities P—The Rev. J. Guinness Rogers argues, with a temperance of tone curiously in contrast with the vehemence of his thoughts, that Mr. Chamberlain and the Unionists are coming to be regarded as traitors to the Liberal Party, and that it is once more becoming evident that in England there can be but two parties. He writes well, but his argument is chiefly an assertion, and we should like those who agree with him to consider whether, in writing all Whigs out of the Liberal Party—for this is what his policy amounts to—before the Union Question is decided, they are not fatally imperilling that party's future. Certainly they are postponing its triumph for years, perhaps for a generation.—" The Impartial Study of Politics," by Professor Seeley, does not attract us, strongly as we agree with it. Might it not all be compressed into the sentence, To know politics, study history ' P—We are more in- terested in Mr. J. Scott Keltie's view of British interests in Africa. He wishes for an exchange or two, notably one to secure us Delagoa Bay; but he thinks that England, in the general scramble for Africa, has by no means come the worst off. "She has indeed selected the choicest fragments, not even excepting the Congo Free State: practi- cally, the whole of South Africa, where there is room for - millions of European colonists ; the Niger region, giving access to the rich provinces of Central Soudan; the Lake region, with its teeming populations and great possibilities; and the immense Somali country, backing on to Abyssinia : surely we ought to rest satisfied, and allow other nations to do the best they can for themselves without envy." There is a great deal more in that sentence than in most of the pessimist rubbish one reads ; but we have not yet acquired free access to our new dominions in East Africa. We want undisturbed communication between the coast and the Lakes, not to men- tion a passable route northward. We wish, while Englishmen are slowly learning up this question, that somebody would publish a map of Eastern Africa, or all Africa, with distances and areas plc drily stated. Waif the blunders we make are due to an imperfect appreciation of these elementary facts.

Mr. Gladstone maintains, in the Nineteenth Century, that the settlement of the Anglican Church effected under Queen Elizabeth and revived at the Restoration, was effected by the Church itself, and not imposed upon her by any lay authority.

• He believes that in the time of Henry VIII. an aversion to the authority claimed by the Papacy was widespread among • the clergy and even the Bishops, and produced the " Recog- nition " of the King's supremacy in 1531, and the voluntary • petition in Convocation in the same year praying that if the Pope would not surrender his right to first-fruits, the Kingdom should withdraw from his jurisdiction. After the brief interlude of Mary's reign, the Recognition was confirmed under Elizabeth by Act of Parliament, and was never assailed in any legal way by Convocation, though the Lower House did ask the Bishops to tell the Peers that they considered the supreme power of governing the Church to belong to the successors of St. Peter. The Bishops, however, took no action, and Mr. Gladstone contends that "there never was in either Province so much as a question of a synodical act to reverse, or even modify, the formal and valid proceedings taken in the time of Henry." Volumes, we suppose., could be written on that point, but we doubt if many laymen would, in our day, consider it of much importance. What is certain is that the Anglican Church has for three hundred years admitted in some sense the head-

ship of the Crown. Whether that admission was originally quite voluntary, matters no more than whether the early Councils were or were not greatly affected by the inter- ference of the Christian Emperors.—Sir W. Hunter's sym- pathetic, and in the main accurate, account of the change which has passed over the spirit of the missionary order in India, will be read with great interest, and with a general assent to his conclusion, that he does "not expect that any Englishman, or any European, will in our days individually bring about a great Christian awakening in India. But he thinks it within reasonable probability that some native of India will spring up whose life and preaching may lead to an accession on a great scale to the Christian Church. If such a man arises, he will set in motion a mighty movement, whose consequences it is impossible to foresee." We must, however, dissent in part from the most intellectual portion of Sir W. Hunter's article, in which he appears to argue that Buddhism and Hindooism are religions of despondency, because they arose at a time when mankind was unhappy, and that now that Indians are happier, they may turn to Christianity, which is a religion of hope. We should say, on the contrary, that it is when man despairs that he appreciates Christianity most, and that it spread first in the Roman Empire among classes which were miserably unhappy. The despondency of the Indian creeds is a result not of circumstance, but of a proclivity of character, and will one day manifest itself in the Indian form of Christianity. The virtue of resignation, which the Westerns of to-day ignore almost as completely as they do the vice of gluttony, will yet in India regain its place in the Christian ethical scheme. The appreciative tone in which Sir W. Hunter deals with missions is the more remarkable if he himself accepts Christianity rather as a splendid system of ethics than as a revelation. At least he says:—" Christianity comes to the Indian razes in a spirit of conciliation which it did not disclose before. It thus presents its two most practical claims on human acceptance. For, although to a fortunate minority Christianity may be a religion of faith, yet I think that to most of us it is rather a religion of hope and of charity." —Mr. Frederic Harrison's indictment of modern artists in Picture Exhibitions will strike most of those artists as horridly clever. He accuses them of having no ideal, and of having broken loose from all laws as to subject, and therefore of- painting what may be described as novelettes, or, in France more especially, worse things. They forget the eternal limitations on what can be 'painted, as well as the ends—simplicity, nobleness, and beauty—which they should bear in mind. The consequence is that the com- munity which buys pictures gradually loses its critical power, a result greatly assisted by the huge "exhibitions," by which the merits of good painters are swamped and the faults of bad painters stimulated. All that is sound enough, as is the singularly eloquent criticism of the Salon; but does not Mr. Harrison go a little too far when he denies that a comic picture can be good art any more than "a comic building, a droll town hall, or a laughable palace" P Surely humour must have some place even in Art, and Hogarth can hardly be struck by a dash of the pen out of the list of painters. Were the builders of the early Gothic churches no architects because of their gargoyles P—Professor Tyndall makes his dry subject, the lights in lighthouses, most interesting by his narrative of recent experiments; and Mr. H. H. Champion states plainly the intention of the Labour Party to make their vote at elections depend upon the acceptance by candidates of a Bill restricting the hours of labour. That gained, he hints, taxation may be shifted from workmen on to the shoulders of the happy possessors of surplus incomes,—an impossibility, by-the-way, unless all liquor is exempted from taxation. Mr. Champion wishes to avoid promises, and acknowledges the incompleteness of his data; but "1 shall be surprised-and disappointed if it is not found at the next General Election that about one hundred of the contests have turned solely on matters of vital interest to labour." With a hundred labour candidates, and a hundred teetotalers, and a hundred " free-land " men, and a hundred men thinking only of Ireland and Wales, it is possible that in a few years the country may demand a change not in the laws, but in the depositary of legislative power. Parliament will certainly be totally incompetent to govern.—The Bishop of Colombo's rather ambitious article on "Buddhism "—he really writes (p. 134) as if he had discovered that great creed—ends in a

most valuable statementlderivedfrom his personal experience : —" In practice the Ceylon Buddhist, among the masses, is both better and worse than his creed. Better, because, instead of a distant Nirvana or a series of births, he has before him the next birth only, which he thinks will be in heaven if he is good, and in hell if he is bad; because he calls on God in times of distress, and has a sort of faith in the One Creator, whom his priests would teach him to deny. Worse, because his real refuge is neither Buddha nor his Books, nor his Order, but devils and devil-priests and charms, and astrology and every form of grovelling superstition."

The most vigorous article in the Fortnightly Review is Colonel Maurice's answer to an attack on his Official History of the '82 Campaign published in the April number of the Edinburgh, Review. The impression made upon the mind of a reader who does not know war is quite final ; but it would take a skilled soldier to notice it as it deserves. We must confine ourselves, therefore, to calling attention to Colonel Maurice's statement as to the extreme embarrassment in which the impatience of the public often plunges those who command in foreign expeditions. The public demands that " something " shall be done, their irritation is reflected in Parliament, Cabinet Ministers grow alarmed, urgent letters are written which are almost orders, and the General has need of all his firmness and all his prestige to avoid action for which he is not ready, and which at the least delays his ultimate success.

Colonel Maurice - declares that this difficulty, or, indeed, danger, has become a most serious one, and. we do not doubt he is right ; but does not the blame fall rather on the Cabinet than on the public? Surely it is the Ministry, and especially the Minister for War, who ought in such cases to be plain- spoken, to tell the public that it is ignorant, and to insist that, at all events until he has failed, the General shall be let alone. We hardly recollect more painful testimony to the grand defect of modern English statesmen, their habitual want of fortitude in resisting any cry which comes, or is sup- posed to come, from a great body of voters. That it is true testimony, nobody who recollects the comments which preceded General Napier's attack on Magdala, or General Wolseley's attack on Coomassie, can doubt; but we had fancied the country had, as regards the Egyptian Expedition, _been more patient.

It was not so, however, the experience of that campaign being the experience of others :—

"Ministers themselves, who in England never go through that training for understanding the work of armies in the field, which on the Continent it is the duty alike of statesmen and of princes to undergo, become alarmed. Imploring letters from men whose entreaty is very nearly a command reach the General. We have the greatest possible confidence in you, but you see how we are placed. Do, for heaven's sake, do something. Let us have some- thing to show that you are not idle.' All this comes just at the time when work is at its very hardest, but when to 'do' anything of the kind that is required means at the very best most serious delay in the achievement of the final result.'

—The author of "Our True Foreign Policy" bears the highest testimony to some of Colonel Maurice's calculations as to the force England could, if her Fleet were increased, exert in a European war—a force equivalent to that of an army of 300,000 men—and urges that the country should join the alliance of the Central Powers, insisting as her quid pro quo on effective aid in Asia The policy is broad and intelligible, and we coincide as to all preparations ; but is it not wiser to keep free of alliances till events develop themselves a little more P To incur the deadly hostility of France while still uncertain if we need allies, seems to us scarcely wise.—K. Henri Rochefort pleads for General Boulanger as a patriot, which he may be ; but he does it on the assumption that the General is a consistent Republican, which seems to us a misuse of words. We rather fancy, however, that Rochefort lets the cat out of the bag in the following story, the moral of which is that he will risk the dictatorship to defeat Germany. We can understand that policy easily .enough, but how is it Republican?—" Quite recently, M. Clemenceau, mistaking the character of this immense movement of public opinion, and looking with suspicion upon the intentions of General Boulanger, predicted all sorts of sinister eventualities, and said at last to me, Boulanger will yet put you in Mama.' 'So much the better,'

I replied ; I shall be content if he will but give back to France Alsace and Lorraine.' "—" Through Bulgaria with Prince Ferdinand" leaves on us only one distinct impression, that the Prince is not a strong man, though he is an . miable

one ; and Miss Robinson's contrast between pawnbroking in England and abroad leaves no impression at all, except that she is uncertain whether pawnbrokers or monts de pit6.

are best for the poor. The following, however, as regards the extent of the evil, is new to us. The "leaving-shop," or illicit pawnbroker, almost frustrates attempts at protective legislation for the poor :—

"They will take goods which no pawnbroker will accept, and from children, with whom, under a certain age (twelve throughout the kingdom, but raised by local police acts to sixteen in London and many other large towns), he may not deal. They will receive pledges which are obviously stolen and from drunken persons, and finally they are open at all hours and on Sunday. Against these many advantages must be set the fact that the transactions being conducted under the subterfuge of a sale no ticket is given, and therefore there is no security that the pledge will be returned, and that interest is charged at the rate of one penny in the shilling weekly, or £433 6s. 8d. per cent, per annum. Glasgow at one time enjoyed unenviable notoriety for the prevalence of wee pawns,' and in 1840 there were known to be seven hundred of these brokers in the city, who between them must have lent out more than half- a-million of money at this extortionate interest. The vigilance of the police has done much to lessen this scandal ; but such places will continue to exist so long as there is a class so poor, so drunken, so wretched and degraded as to be outcast from the pawnbrokers."

If borrower and lender alike consent to the fiction of sale, it is difficult to see where remedy can be found.—We can hardly believe that Mr. E. Carpenter intends to go so far as he appears to do in his article on "Custom." Apparently he holds man to be an animal with an "illusory difference," and morals to be bandages from which we shall be freed. At least, he says :— -

"And, indeed, it is obvious that for true vitality custom must be laid aside. For custom is an ossification. Some day man will use all actions indifferently, or rather to meet the requirements of the moment. Then he will be alive all over, and not do anything because he is dead. He will not be a slave. All human practices will find their use, none will be forbidden. He will eat grain one day and beef another ; he will go with clothes or without clothes ; he will inhabit a hut or a palace indifferently, according to the work he has to do ; he will use the various forms of sex-relation- ship without prejudice, but with regard for what in really needed. And the inhabitants of one city or country will not be all alike."

There are savages in the Andaman Islands who have to all appearance attained that stage of development, and remain,

nevertheless, the lowest savages upon earth. Perhaps, how- ever, Mr. Carpenter is only preaching in a crude form the old and dangerous doctrine that the perfect man needs not law.

The only papers in the National Review which have much interested us are Lady Jersey's very pleasant sketch of the silver-lead mines of Laurium, and Mr. Stanley Leighton's account of Nonconformity in Wales. One Company at Lauritun produces 10,000 tons of lead a year, which is sent to England, France, and Germany to have its silver extracted from it. With each shipment a hypothetical analysis of quantities is despatched, and this is the experience of the Company, which is French :—" We always agree with the English. They have even written back to say, You said the quantity of silver was so much, we find it so much more and send the balance due to you.' It is different with the French and Germans. They constantly try to take advan- tage."—Mr. Stanley Leighton maintains that Nonconformity is declining in Wales, where it has become essentially political, and derives it strength mainly from its hold upon the vernacular Press. At the same time, the Church is increasing, the number of the clergy having been in 1831, 700, and in 1886, 1,377. These figures will, of course, be disputed ; but we all, perhaps, accept the statement that "Wales is Noncon- formist" with too little inquiry.

Blackwood is one of the most readable magazines this month.

It opens with a remarkable review of "Robert Elsmere," written from the point of view that even if physical miracle is allowed to be impossible, the moral miracle of Christianity cannot be explained as Mrs. Ward explains it. Her scheme, the writer contends, in no way accounts for the Galilean peasant whe reversed yet fulfilled all antecedent expectation, and dying an admitted failure according to Jewish theories, yet conquered all that was great and wise and progressive in the world :—

" There can be no doubt that to the eye simply of a secular historian, the short career of the Galilean peasant is the very crisis of the destinies of mankind. For from that moment of time human life took an inconceivably wider range than ever before— its interests became more momentous, its passions of fear and hope immeasurably deeper, as the belief in a future life took possession of the soul. The world and the human race were transformed, and the decisive indication of it is the stupendous dominion erected by the Church, which would have been utterly impossible in any previous ages of the world. No more ruthless tyranny can be imagined in its corruption, no more powerful instrument, when exercised in good faith, has ever existed for stimulating and enforcing the highest ideals of virtue of which mankind is capable. The power of the mediteval Church, political and social, is an out- ward and visible sign of the profound influence which Christianity has exercised, and is capable of exercising, over the inner nature of man."

That is not new, but it is excellently put. Why did men accept from any teacher the exact converse not only of all they had hoped, but all which man instinctively believed? It is not instinct which teaches that humility is good or revenge evil.—The paper on Sylt, an island off the coast of Friesland, from which Hengist sailed to the conquest of Britain, deals with entirely new matter. The island is a paradise for the archaaolo- gist, who may study for ever its old legends, its antique ways, and its three thousand people, who, born Frieslanders—that is, early Englishmen—are slowly, since the conquest of Schleswig- Holstein, becoming Germans, while the island itself is becoming a German summer resort. The account, though too large a space is devoted to legend, is curiously interesting.—Mr. Coutts Trotter does not tell us mach of Australia, but he does tell us, what most travellers will not, something of the born Australians and their peculiarities. He notes, for example, that, like Mrs. Trollope's Americans, they all spit, and they all are acquiring the nasal twang which Anthony Trollope explained, we think, as the pronunciation always adopted by people who wish to assert themselves. The laxity of discipline in bringing up children is also American, as is also the habit of boasting, though Mr. Trotter notes as a special trait that Australians do not boast of the size of their vast possession, though it has room in it for France fifteen times repeated. On the question of emigration, "I found, a consensus of opinion to this extent, that an able-bodied and steady man, willing to put his hand to whatever work offered itself, could not fail to get on. The wages even of the casual migratory labourer are 68. to 7s. a day, often with board and lodging added. More than once on the road, meeting these fellows tramping along, my driver or companion has recognised them as new chums' by the cut of their pack, and added that they could not be good for much, or they would have half-a-crown in their pockets to pay for a coach-fare." Low wages in Australia may be taken in the rough as British wages with board and lodging thrown in.—There are some valuable hints in the paper on "The Portuguese in East Africa," one being that the Boers dislike and dread the idea of German rule, and another, that even if they could acquire Delagoa Bay they would not, because, if acquired, they would feel a necessity for protection from some maritime Power.