THE MAGAZINES.
THE serious magazines for November are scarcely so interest- ing as usual. There is no paper among them all of the first class, and none that is specially attractive. The Nineteenth Century gives us perhaps the best list, and that is a poor one, the editor even admitting a discourse by Mrs. Besant on "The Conditions of Life after Death," which we can only characterise as dreamy rubbish. What she says, if true, would amount to a new revelation; but there is not a particle of evidence that the seven regions, of which she talks, exist any- where except in her own imagination, or that any soul, with its " subtle " body, and two slightly less subtle shells, has ever visited them, still less has returned to record its experience. We see no use and much mischief in such papers when they claim to be more than reveries, and even as reveries they are not attractive.—The first paper, by Francis de Pressense, on "England and the Continental Alliances," is thoroughly French, full of great exultation in the visit of the Czar, and of advice to England to come to terms with the Dual Alliance by giving up Egypt to conciliate France, and making conces- sions in Asia to conciliate Russia. We want at all events a little more definiteness in our advisers, a little plainer speak- ing as to what we are to receive in return for the sacrifices, not only of position but of principle, required at our hands. —Mr. Wilfrid S. Blunt is definite enough, but we do not know that he is more satisfactory. He would have Lord Salisbury call a European Congress to settle affairs in Eastern Europe, and allow the future of Egypt and Khartoum to be part of those affairs. The Congress would arrange apparently what is to be done at some time or other with the whole of the Turkish dominion in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but at present would only open the Dardanelles, place Turkey under financial control, and allow Russia to protect the Armenians. Surely if a Congress is to be called, and that supreme instrument of Europe is to be invested with any executive power, it might employ itself to better purpose than this. That Russia dreads the ambition of the Armenians may be true; but is it reasonable to believe that she dreads it to such a degree that she cannot be persuaded to act except through a Congress, which in the present temper of the Great States would probably only register the grounds for national hostility and suspicion P—Professor Ma.haffy in "The Modern Babel" argues strongly that English will shortly become the lingua franca or business language of the world. The only obstacles he can see are that we yield with courteous imbecility too great a place to French, as, for example, in Egypt, and that we make no effort to introduce an intelligible system of spelling by gradual reforms, such as spelling
sovereign" " sovran," and above all by introducing accents so as to show at once on what syllable the stress ought to be placed. The latter suggestion no doubt would be a real help to foreigners, and is followed already in all good dictionaries ; but it would be a nuisance to the English themselves, and as regards many words would accentuate rather than remove the differences between English and American. Mr. Mahaffy's paper is clever, like all he writes, but we fear the world must wait for its universal tongue, and that, when it gets it, dif- ferences of pronunciation will leave the classes which use it partly unintelligible to each other. The tendency to divergence is very strong. Even the learned, who, one would think, could speedily settle all difficulties, have not been able to accept a common pronunciation of Latin and Greek, though in their case there is one possible and simple rule which would produce uniformity, namely, to pronounce Latin as Rome does and Greek as Athens does.—Men in search of invest- ments, now a very numerous class, will probably read with interest the paper by Mr. S. F. Van Oss on "The Westralian Mining ' Boom,' " the burst of belief in the gold-mines of West Australia, which has in less than three years floated seven hundred and thirty-one gold-mining companies with a nominal capital of £75,871,000. Mr. Van Oss, while admitting that a few mines have done well, intimates his belief that the movement is to a great extent a craze. The reefs, he says, are erratic and shallow, there is a lack of water, the cost of transport will be great, and labour is as yet far from abundant. He therefore advises the public to be very cautious and even sceptical, and at all events to await developments for a year or two. He is probably wise, but he perhaps forgets too much that great expenditure, even on a craze, will soon overcome two of his obstacles, lack of water and deficiency of transport, and that the search for gold always is, and always will be, something of a big gamble. It is the total outturn, not the outturn of any mine or system of mines, which is of national importance. It is quite clear that the people of West Australia believe in their mines, or they would not tax themselves as they are doing to facilitate their development. —We have rarely been more puzzled than by Mrs. Blyth's "Sketches Made in Germany." They simply bore us to death ; yet we are conscious of a certain cleverness in the sketching, and of keen insight into the superficial indications of character, and can imagine readers who will rise from them with clearer ideas, though certainly not more favourable ideas, of the average good German lady of the professional claw. We have little doubt that to those who kncw the class well, some of the touches will seem poignant even if they pronounce the dialogues as a whole dill, as we should certainly do.
The paper which will be most read in the Contemporary Review is Mr. Trail's on "Sir William Harcourt ; " but we do not think, clever as is the parallel which he draws between that statesman and Lord Beaconsfield, that it will do much to clarify the general judgment upon the Liberal leader,—it
in fact., an echo of that judgment. To Mr. Traill, as to the public, it appears that Sir William Harcourt must for the present lead the Gladetonian party, because he is by far the ablest debater on that side, and the party cannot do without an able debater. But of Sir William Harcourt's convictions, policy, or purposes Mr. Trail discerns no trace; rather he is inclined to believe him in the main devoid of all those things. Sir William appears in his pages as an Opportunist of the first force, who may be Premier some day, but who if he is will be accounted by some a charlatan, and by almost all an enigma. His true claim to the leadership has, however, never been better stated than in these sentences :—
" Among great orators, whether of Parliament or of the plat- form, Sir William Harcourt is certainly not to be numbered. His set and solemn efforts of oratory are seldom even moderately successful, and have sometimes been even comically disappointing in their combination of the laborious and the ineffective. Even as an impromptu debater his style is too ponderous to be thoroughly telling, and at no time could he have stood a moment's comparison with such past masters of that art as Mr. Chamberlain, or, in his day of vigour, the late Lord Randolph Churchill. But as he has shown again and again, and never more conspicuously than of late when the odds have been most against him, he is a Parliamentary strategist and tactician of the first force. In a word, he has proved, by the acknowledgment of both friend and foe, that he is a leader who can really lead ; and there is an ever-growing conviction among his party that he is the only one of their leaders who can. With what amount of floating hostility among his followers Sir William Harcourt may really have to contend one does not know. That such a feeling exists in fact is probable enough ; that it has been grossly exaggerated by gossip is more probable still. But both fact and gossip may be quite safely dismissed from consideration. Popularity is a strong card, but capacity is a stronger. A party's choice of its leader must in the long run be determined not by their abstract preferences but by their concrete necessities ; and the tools to him who can handle them' is the principle which must ultimately prevaiL"
Mr. Dillon's paper on "Russia and Europe" does not strike us as containing anything new except an argument, powerfully put, that the friendship of Russia is absolutely necessary to France. It is so usual to see the argument put the other way, that Russia greatly needs France—which is only true financially—that it is interesting to see the other side so unhesitatingly stated. Mr. Dillon believes that Russia's preoccupation just now is the Far East, and there- fore advises Great Britain to come to terms with her. We quite agree; but does Russia want concessions in the Far East only P—Dean Farrar's account of the two Archbishops, Magee and Benson, is interesting, but he could, if he pleased, give us a much more complete study of the latter, who is still but imperfectly understood. We prefer to quote the really brilliant paragraph in which he answers the exclusive and often narrow-minded advocates of extempore preaching :—
"Dr. Magee told the clergy that if they wished t3 speak extem- pore they must • burn their sermons into their brain.' He regarded a written sermon as something entirely different in kind from an extempore one ; he spoke of written sermons as religious addresses or meditations. Yet surely all who have heard sermons for years together would say that, while a sermon learnt off by rote (for that is what most so-called extempore sermons are), or really spoken (which is very rare indeed) in unpremeditated words which come fresh and burning from the heart, may produce more immediate effect, it is on the one hand doubtful whether such tours de force produce so deep an ultimate impression ; and on the other hand it is certain that not one man in a thousand has the requisite gifts to preach in this manner. There are some who pride themselves on a style of extempore speaking which consists only in pouring forth a cataract of twaddle, • In one vrtak, wasby, everlasting flood.'
St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom in ancient days—Tillotson and South, and Burnet, and Barrow, in modern times—were regarded as consummate preachers ; yet they frequently, and in the latter instances invariably, wrote and read their sermons. If we take the very greatest names of modern preachers, names of men who have produced ineffaceable impressions on countless souls — Chalmers, Melville, Maurice, Kingsley, Newman, Stanley—all of these read their sermons. Newman, while his words went thrilling to the souls of generation after generation of Oxford undergraduates, never lifted his eyes from his book, or raised the tones of his voice. Liddon, who b.•gan by preaching with notes only, during all the later years of his life wrote and real his sermons. If I may mention two only of the living—Dean Vaughan and the Archbishop of Armagh, who are among the most eloquent and delightful of living preachers—both read from their manuscripts the thoughts that breathe and words that burn.'" That needs only the rider that the most influential of all preachers, men like St. Paul or Peter the Hermit or Mahommed, have relied upon their extempore powers, to be a very complete statement of the case.—Mx. Theodore Bent's account of his "Travels among the A.rmenians " is fall, as usual in his writing, of good de- scriptive sentences,—but though he gives us a clear im- pression of Sis, the Canterbury of Armenia, he gives us no impression of the Armenians, except that they are vain of their ancient history—by no means an unusual foible. Their notion that they are the oldest people in the world, because the Ark landed upon Ararat, is after all only one of many instances of literalism in rendering Scripture. We should like to have had Mr. Bent's impression as to who the Armenians are. Are they now pure whites P—The remaining papers in this number are, to us at least, rather dull, Mr. Parker's on the Presidential Election, which is instructive, being besides a little belated. One could hardly read all those details after November 3rd.
" Diplomaticus," in a paper in the Fortnightly Review on "Lord Rosebery's Second Thoughts," approves Lord Rose- bery's present policy, but accuses him of turning his back upon himself, he having on August 16th, 1895, expressly approved separate action by Great Britain, and also of missing a grand opportunity of rescuing Armenia. Had he been ready, this writer says, to support Russia in the Far East, he might have forced any terms he pleased upon the Sultan :— " Among the demands of Japan was the cession of the Lino- Tong peninsula, a demand which seriously menaced the East Asiatic interests of Russia. Prince Lobanoff was scarcely prepared to deal with the Near East and the Far East at the same time. He accordingly made overtures to the British Government to join in an intervention in China, with a view to keeping Japan off the Asiatic mainland. I understand that he intimated to Lord Rose- bery that he might make almost his own terms for the support demanded of him. Never had a British Minister a more splendid opportunity of achieving a great coup. Had he seen clearly at that moment, or if seeing clearly had he acted with courage, the Eastern Question would have been settled to-day. In exchange for his support of Russia in the Far East—a support, be it re- membered, which would have served the best interests of this country in that region—he might have stipulated for a free hand in Turkey, or might have arranged for combined action. Or if he was not anxious to thrust himself between China and Japan, he could have seized the opportunity of Russia's preoccupation in the Yellow Sea to force his terms on the Sultan."
If that statement is well founded, Lord Rosebery clearly missed a golden opportunity ; but we suppose the truth is be did not care about Armenia, and did care about Russian advance in the Far East. He expressed, it will be remem- bered, his belief that the Chinese question was more impor- tant to this country than that of Turkey,—a belief, we fancy, absolutely peculiar to himself.—Mr. W. Knox Johnson's sketch of Catharine II. is too brief to give much instruction, and he places too much stress on her remarkable good fortune. Those with whom good fortune is continuous, generally deserve it, at least by ability in pursuing their ends. Catharine had much of the true Royal faculty of selecting able agents, and she seems never to have inspired dislike in any one.—Major Griffiths's essay on the proper way to conquer the Soudan has lost some of its interest now that it has been resolved to pause for a year and await events, but his judgment on Sir H. Kitchener will be read with interest :—
" The fact remains that the Sirdar will now take rank with the young soldiers of promise who must be counted with in the future when wars are afoot and good men are wanted for service in the field. He has done right well. He has shown both constancy and moderation : the first under ninny hard buffets of fortune, the latter to an extent hardly expected in him by those who fancied they knew his character. Ill-luck certainly pursued the expedition closely ; an epidemic of cholera with imperfect means of combating it ; elements severely hostile; the loss of a new gunboat just when its services would have been most effective —all these were blows that would have discouraged any but the most tenacious spirit. His moderation won him the warm approval of the authorities. He showed it no less in his action than in his requirements. In tho field he never risked a chance by over-confidence, never sacrificed success by expecting too much from his untried and in a great measure untrueted troops. That he has been ably seconded and ungrudgingly assisted by all and single does not detract from his achieve- ment. No doubt he had at his elbow some of the best of the coming men in our service, and from Cairo he was denied nothing that General Knowles and the army of occupation could give him. But it is only given to the true leader to utilise his advantages to the fullest extent, and Kitchener has exhii.ited a somewhat unlooked-for power in exacting and obtaining the best efforts of those about and under him."
—Mr. H. W. Wilson's predictions as to "The Struggle Before Us" are well worth attention as able statements from the pessimist point of view, but we distrust his counsel as to the only way out, which is, in fact, to join the Triple Alliance. We doubt the Alliance, even if it were joined, ever fighting for Great Britain—its leading member thirsts too ardently for British property. — Of lighter articles, the most readable are Mr. Train's bright and entertaining parallel between Mrs. Humphry Ward and Lord Beaconsfield as political novelists, and Mr. F. Gallon's dreamy sketch of a possible mode of communication with Mars. It comes to this, that if there are scientific people in Mars, and if they know how to make electric flashes, it would not be mach more difficult to make out what they mean than to decipher Hittite characters. Possibly ; but has anybody yet deciphered in these antique tongues an inscription full of abstract thought ? We do not want the Martians to tell us facts, but what they think. The discussion, however, until we are a little nearer the perfect telescope, is of only intellectual interest, and we are quite willing to concede exceptional ingenuity to Mr. Galton.
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