THE MAGAZINES.
THE Cornhill is this month by far the most readable, if not the beat of the magazines. There is nothing so pleasant in any of them—though " Mrs. Clifford's Marriage " in Black^wood promises to be good—as the "Small House at Allington," and nothing which displays such intellectual power as " Romola." We shall be forced, after all, to retract our criticisms upon that extraordinary performance. It is a waste of power, but then the wealth is wasted by one the residue of whose abundance is greater than other novelists' riches. Such an intellectual study, to use an artists' phrase, as "Tito Melema," has not been placed before the world in this generation, and we know not which to wonder at most, the accuracy of the anatomical knowledge displayed, or the art with which that knowledge is infused — there is no other fitting word—into the readers' mind. The story strikes us as unreal as ever, as much overlaid with drapery interesting only to the antiquarian, but the marvellous figure in the centre, the gentle, intellectual, soft-hearted villain, is redeeming all. The drama is arranged by carpenters, but Shakespeare might have exulted in Tito. It is impossible even for genius to do more than combine the results of insight ; but where can George Eliot have seen the working of a mind exquisitely refined, and even broad, yet so rotten with cowardly selfishness, that even in hatred, "that cold dislike, which is the anger of unimpassioned beings, does but harden within him ?" By the way, the artist has not yet caught the idea of Tito, though the drawing of Dolfo Spini, the bull-headed roue, is admirable. There is no capacity of enjoy- ment in that watchful face. The next is a curious but somewhat sketchy paper on the comparative cost of the French and British armies, by a writer evidently thoroughly informed. His general conclusion is, that " we pay half a million more than the French for one-fourth the number of men and one-seventh the number of horses." The facts brought forward, remembering those propor-
tions, may be reduced to a very few lines.
British Army. French.
Administration £201,833 ... £95,506 Justice 58,708 ... 48,241 Education 296,288 ... 99,205 Clothing 597,264 ... 876,000 Stores and Factories 3,160,000 1,478,000
The writer gives an amusing account of the peculation which injures our contract system, but he does not settle the ques- tion whether England does not get more for her money than France does for her thrift. All our regiments, it must be remem- bered, are, for service, regiments d' elite. That there is wretched jobbing in the departments is likely enough ; there always is in all departments which cannot be scrutinized except by men of technical knowledge ; but jobbery must be on a very gross scale to multiply military expenditure fourfold. The roots of the difference are, we believe, the free con- stitution, and, despite the Crimea, the comparative efficiency of an army which serves in all climates, and which in Mexico would not have halted for months at Orizaba. General Forey has nothing to do which Sir Edward Lugard did not per- form in Behar, and the reason General Forey leaves it undone is simply thrift. The British army would have paid for mules their weight in silver, but it would have had them, and with them Mexico. The temptation to systematic plunder which rests on French armies, and which is produced by excessive economy, costs France more than lavish allowances would. The "Dark Church in Vienna" is a bit of melodrama, meant, we dare say, to be very impressive ; and the paper on the " Medi- cal Evidence of Crime" is, on the whole, poor. Its author remonstrates on the responsibility thrown by our legal sys- tem on the doctor who attends a case where he suspects poisoning, and suggests, " Let the Chief Commissioner of Police, be empowered, by Act of Parliament, to supply any medical man, who may apply to him in such a difficulty, with the assistance of two medico-legal experts, paid servants of the Crown, and perma- nently appointed for this very purpose. These gentlemen would advise the doctor upon the facts which he would report to them, and especially as to the desirability, or otherwise, of calling in the detective police—a measure which involves a serious responsibility." Calling in experts is quite possible now. There is not a toxico • logist in England who would not give secret and trustworthy advice to a doctor in such a dilemma, and the responsibility com- plained of is simply the responsibility which rests on every human being of doing his duty to the best of his light. The State might just as well appoint experts to diminish the responsibility of opera- tions. " Aids to Beauty, Real and Artificial," is a taking title ; but the writer's teaching is a little trite. Enamelling, we are told, is dangerous, because the skin is a breathing organ, and rouge and pearl powder give the complexion that muddy look so universal in actors. Hair-dyes are "assthetical errors," because, though they may improve the features, they produce a dissonance which injures the character of
the face. These reflections are not very original, but the follow- ing remark will interest all women and some chemists :—" There is a herb which I could name, the effect of which is to make the eyes lustrous as those of imagined Houris ; but with this feverish splendour there is a feverish blackness of the lips ; and as the herb very much disturbs the equable current of the circulation, and injures the nervous centres, I refrain from disclosing so dangerous a secret." The writer, we are happy to perceive, does not join in the moral condemnation sometimes passed on false hair.
wig may be just as much clothing as a shoe, and is not one whit more unnatural. Even the objection to rouge and pearl powder is overstrained, the immorality consisting chiefly in the deception, which would cease to exist if their use were frankly acknow- ledged.
Fraser is dull, despite a readable paper on " Scotch Innocents," the half-witted persons who wander, or used to wander, about Scotch villages, and who were objects rather of mirth than of pity to the people. The following story is a good one, if it be only true :—" A divine of the old school, who preached in broad Sootch, and carried on imaginary conversations with the devil, in the style of Luther, in which the latter was invariably worsted, had one day driven his adversary into a earner (metaphorically, of course), where he was mercilessly pounding him with the exultant cry, ' I have you now, my birky.' Perhaps the doctor might have per- suaded him to tak' a thocht an' mend,' but this consummation, so devoutly to be wished for, was frustrated by Jane Carr, who, actuated by a sense of natural justice, started up and exclaimed, ' Oh, doctor, dinna ye misca' the deil ; he is the best freend ye ever bad. If it were na for him, ye wouldna have muckle to do.' The most valuable paper in the number is a somewhat dry sketch of "Theology in Holland," of which the writer gives a very hopeful account. Leyden, he says, is permeated by liberal but still constructive theology, under the headship of Professor Scholteu, a man "who has laboured chiefly in the field of dogma, and has attempted to form a system which shall be as logical as the old seventeenth-century Calvinism, without in any way shocking the reason or the feelings of enlightened men." His rival is M. Opzoomer, of Utrecht, a man formed in the school of Comte, who " thinks that the empirico-critical investigation of Christianity is the chief business of the theologician, and considers that the system pursued by the great masters of physical science is that which the student of divine things ought also to follow." The clergy of Holland are remarkable for their learning, and therefore, though the Church system is Presbyterian, for their aversion to tests. The General Synod in 1854 " frankly declared that it was as undesirable as impossible to attempt to hit upon some form of words by which all its pastors must consider them- selves bound, and recommended that doctrinal distinctions should be kept out of sight as much as possible, and that faith and charity should be recognized as the only essential conditions of union." About three-fourths of the clergy belong to some shade of liberal opinion, a fact w hich the writer attributes to the long paralysis of the central authority, the General Synod having been sus- pended for 200 years, but which may be partly due to the mode of election. The advowson is supposed to belong to the parish, but the right of presentation is really exercised by a very limited body, called a consistory, and ruled by the most eminent local laymen. The paper on " Law and Lawyers in England and Scotland" is thoughtful, though the profession will probably question its main conclusion. Its author believes that events are tending towards the fusion of the two branches of the profession—a result which will be hastened by the decreasing profits of the bar. Every legal reform sweeps away some source of emolument, and the total amount of litigation is moreover steadily decreasing. As the people become educated, they under- stand their own rights and liabilities. There are no arrears in any Court, and though the judges have not increased in number, they are not now worked as of old. The average value of civil suits before the higher courts is yearly decreasing, and, in 1861, was only 71. 7s. for each judgment, and the same process is observable in the County Courts. In the Court of Chancery the number of bills filed was, in 1861, the same as in 1753, and the vast majority of civil suits, more than seventy-five per cent. are unde- fended, while less than two per cent. are ever brought to trial. The profit of the remainder is falling more and more into the hands of attorneys who have a habit of training sons and nephews for the bar, and whose patronage is so essential that "the barristers are, in truth, but a higher stage of the ' managing clerks,' in common law or chancery, of some great lawyer's firm." The attorneys are, in fact, rising, and counsel sinking, till they will in the end amal- gamate, to the infinite reduction of legal expenses.
Blackwood contains nothing of the slightest mark except the beginning of a new story, " Mrs. Clifford's Marriage," which promises well, and a very dull political paper upon the opening of the Session, devoted chiefly to the theorem that as measures are to be Tory men ought to have office, and an attack upon Mr. Gladstone, whom he accuses of luring the nation towards democratic finance, whatever that quaint bugbear may be. The knowledge of the writer may be estimated by the following sentence :—" If the crop of cotton in America were to fall off in extent (as it has done during this civil war), and the Americans, when peace is restored, were to place (as they have talked ,of doing) a prohibitory duty upon the export of cotton, while we did not retaliate by placing an import duty on the manufactured article from their ports, what would our manufacturers think of this sort of free trade ?' " The writer does not perceive that his prohibitory export duty would extinguish the cultivation, while a prohibitory import duty would effect nothing, except to drive American exporters to adopt a roundabout route, and there- fore to charge English people a little more than they otherwise would.
Mr. Kingsley has finished the " Water Babies," greatly, we sus- pect, to the delight of all the readers of Macmillan, who cannot ap- preciate somewhat far-fetched satire in the style of a nursery tale, and there is now room for the one good story Macmillan for some months has lacked. The most valuable paper is, we pre- sume, the lecture delivered by Professor Max Muller ; but the most readable is decidedly one on the " Russian Political Press," which contains some facts new, we suspect, to Western Europe. One of them is the statement that all the older journals of Russia are rented by their managers from the Government, which owns the copyrights, " plant," and presses. The two principal papers, the Moscow Gazette and Petersburgh Gazette, pay each a rental of some 10,0001. a year. The latter is a decided advocate of constitutionalism, but the danger of losing their lease renders its proprietary al ways moderate. The Northern Bee is the radical organ, the Northern Post the representative of the Ministry of the Interior, and the Journal de St. Petersbourg of the Foreign Office. This, like the Invalids, is published in French. The tone of all these journals is more or less friendly to reform, and a considerable amount of liberty seems to be permitted by the censor—a liberty which in some directions becomes almost freedom. The Messenger, for example, a monthly journal, is allowed to point to England as the true model for Russia, and to advocate free speech, the right of meeting and " Parliarnentarism " itself. It would almost seem as if the governing clique looked to the English system as the one they must adopt if compelled to abandon their Asiatic form of rule. Another paper, the Contemporary, even advocates socialism with impunity, the Court considering, with some justice, that if society in a country like Russia were reduced to a dead level they should remain at the top—the one permanent desire of all Courts, who fear loss of status much more than loss of power.
The Rev. Canon Robinson, who writes upon sermons, does not seem to have much new to say. His best suggestion is that the Church should accept of readings from standard divines, as an acknowledged part of her services ; but it is, we fear, impracticable. Our churches are governed by female opinion, and women would rather listen to the washiest rubbish composed by the idol of the hour, than the finest address which he could select from Tillotson and South. The only working remedy is to walk out as soon as the prayers are over—an act which, though requiring some social nerve at first, would, in a few weeks, be regarded as an allowable or necessary incident of the service. Mr. Robinson says this can be done now. The writer knows, at least, two churches where the preacher, in his domineer- ing vanity, locks the door, preferring the risk of an action for false imprisonment to a possible affront to his own idea of his surpassing eloquence.
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