A FEW OF THE MAGAZINES.

THE difficulties under which the writers of " time " articles for magazines labour are amusingly exemplified by a paper in Black- wood, on M. Klaczko's "Two Chancellors," which in its English form has had a great success, and may boast of being the best- reviewed book of the year. The article entitled "Prince Gorts- chakoff and Prince Bismarck" gives a clear summary of the book and a clever analysis of its conclusions, but the writer's own con- clusions form as pretty a specimen of anachronism as one could de- sire, if one had to furnish an explanation of that " i13111"th an inquiring pupil. If anything connected with the present dreadful and dis- graceful phase of the Eastern Question could be funny to any mind except that of the Earl of Beaconsfield, the complacent crowing of the following sentences would be funny, when contrasted by the reader with the facts which each day's telegrams convey to him, and the actual aspect of things in the East of Europe and also here at home : —" I see no Europe !' was the exclamation of M. de Beust, in a celebrated despatch of 1870, as its organised impotence stood un- veiled before him. It has been the high mission of Great Britain in the recent troubles to restore to Europe her confidence in her- self, to renew the public respect for treaties, to vindicate the col- lective rights of the Great Powers against the pretensions of the Triple Alliance, to enforce that non-intervention in the disorders of an unhappy State to which the Continent is pledged, and to secure to the public voice of Europe the final settlement of those difficulties which are temporarily entrusted to the arbitrament of an unimpeded struggle." That is a fine phrase ! On the whole, we do not remember ever to have seen a finer. We offer it, after the manner of Count Fosco, to the consideration of an excited public opinion, as a definition of the situation equally soothing to the feelings and the conscience of that public. "Difficulties temporarily.entrnsted to the arbitrament of an un- impeded struggle," is a definition of the situation of which the Foreign Office itself might well be proud. But this is not 911; though the writer might have rested content with such a triumph, he continues "It has been an achievement worthy of a great Conservative Power ; and we doubt not that, when the oppor- tunity arrives, the men who have recalled Europe to a sense of public right will know how to attend to the claims of the unfor- tunate populations which suffer from Ottoman misrule, and in the perpetuation of whose misery and dependence public safety and English prosperity have no sort of interest or stake." We can hardly decide whether the audacity of this passage, in its lauda- tion of an "achievement" which has not been achieved, or its cyni- cism, in the implication that if English prosperity were interested in perpetuating the misery and dependence of the wretched provinces over which we permit the Turks to rule, that perpetuation would be the proper thing, is the greater. The conclusion is silly, and indeed would have been hardly less so if it had been written for last month's Blackwood. The depth of bathos is reached in the remark that "the heroic achievements of the last ten years have given all of us a taste for the less dramatic, but more conserva- tive, results which flow from respect for treaties, love of order, and political sympathies, which a keen sense of justice repels from the borderland of mania, and restrains by reason and prudence."

The borderland of mania, policed by reason and prudence, is a literary image which ought not to have escaped edi- torial observation. A very long paper on "Country Life," to the glorification of England, and the depreciation of France, on the grounds that the latter country is sadly cut up by those

contemptible creatures the small proprietors, who restrict the pleasures of gentlemen by their preposterous power of refusing to be overrun with game and its slaughterers, is readable in parts, but

prosy, and pervaded by an appetite for killing which detracts from its pleasantness. The best passage in this article is a sketch of a walk through the Black Forest, from Baden-Baden towards Stuttgart, which gives one an imaginary treat of a rare Idud.

poem called "Primavera," of the delicate and dainty order, has a good deal of merit in it, but its recapitulation of the

tender and delightful gifts of the flitting goddess to the earth she merely kisses and passes from, seems almost spiteful at this season of regret. Two short stories, in addition to its serial, is an unusual amount of fiction for Blackwood, and the innovation is not an improvement. "The Friend of the Hero" is would-be humour, mangui, and " Nenuphar " is an un-

commonly silly sample of the school of semi-allegorical romance, for which De La Motte Fouque's " Undine " is answerable. The continuation of Mr. Andrew Wilson's" Run Through Kathiavrar " is delightful reading. It is not so picturesque as his "Abode of

Snow," but there is more human interest in it, and that interest is amusingly developed. The Kathis—whose origin is an obscure and fiercely-debated problem—are rather nice "natives." Mr.

Wilson gives a very curious account of their customs, among which the following is almost as singular as that related in the experiences of Sindbad, by which a man was restrained by the strongest possible motive from contriving the death of his wife :—

" Among the Kathie, when a mother dies, her relations not only take sway the children from the widower, but also carry away all his movable property at the same time, with the exception of one brood-mare. The enstom of the race does not allow him to make the slightest resistance to this despoilment, and his children are brought up by the relatives of his deceased wife. This custom certainly affords a very efficient protection against wife-murder, and probably sprang up in a state of affairs in which something of the kind was specially needed. The custom remains, though the special necessity for it has disappeared. My reader may thus understand how he would be placed if he had been born among the Kathie. If his brother died and left a widow, my reader would have to take that wife, even though she might be over sixty ; if his own wife died, his movable property and all her children would be taken from him. In the leaving of the brood-mare, we may perhaps see a trace of Tartar origin."

Sir Charles W. Dilke's additional chapter to "Greater Britain," in Macmillan, is one of the best magazine papers we have ever read,—

in its order, indeed, the very best. The writer has caught up the swing and the vividness of his former memorable book of travel with great fidelity and success, and the "chapter," which, under the title of "English Influence in China," tells us something of every-

thing in China, is a political essay, a personal narrative, a social study, and a picturesque sketch all in one, is faulty in only one

respect,—there is not enough of it. We could bear a whole book about the Malay Peninsula, Java, and China, from Sir Charles Duke; and we are sorry he has refrained from describ- ing his impressions of Canton, of which he says, with the magnificent nonchalance of a man who can, and does, run

all over the world when the fancy takes him :—" I know no city, so easily accessible, which is so unlike every other in the world." We should not have thought of Canton as "easily

accessible," and would prefer a description of it by Sir Charles Dilke to any of those we have already, especially that we might compare it with the Marquis de Beanvoir's. The purpose of the article is one to be examined at more length than we can accord to it here : Sir Charles's point is that we are too high-handed with the Chinese for the interest of our influence, and are in reality advancing that of Russia, by driving China into an alliance which will not only have unpleasant consequences to our ally, the Ameer of Kashgar, but will cause the granting of privileges to Russia in overland trade which may ruin our commerce upon the Chinese coast. The following paragraph is one of the most important in the paper :—

" The day after a number of Hong Kong merchants had told me that

their trade was ruined by the Chinese blockade, I examined for myself the statistics, and I also inquired of the highest authority in the colony what truth there was in the statement. I found that in spite of the general dulness of our Eastern trade, the trade of Hong Kong had not at that time decreased. The fact, however, that our Eastern trade is

stagnant is a small one by the side of another. Our export trade to China will disappear, and its disappearance is but a matter of time. The day will come when the Chinese, with cheap labour, will make for themselves all, with the exception, perhaps, of woollen. goods, that we can make for them with dear. They have cotton, coal, water-power, and clever fingers; and we shall be lucky if they only supply them- selves, and do not also rob us of foreign trade."

Sir Charles Dilke tells some curious facts about the coinage, or rather the no-coinage, in China, and strongly urges "co-opera- tive policy, as the only policy which can maintain our China trade." He gives us a delicious, but tantalisingly brief glimpse of his "interpolated" trip to Java, where, if the Dutch have killed Art, nature has been too much for them, and is lavish in life and

beauty. For the rest, this is a strong number of Macmillan, with Mr. Wemyss Reid's monograph of "Charlotte Brontë" in-

creasing in interest; and Miss Phillimore's history of "Italian Drama" arriving at Metastasio, and therefore being more attractive to a greater number of readers than in its earlier chapters. The writer dwells with enthusiasm on the great reform worked by Metaatasio in the taste of Italy, and the beneficial and lasting influence exercised over his country by the high religious and moral tone of his works. Mr. John Oxenford's "Bogies of Bulgarian Song" introduces us to some of the queerest conceptions of human imagination that have ever been hunted out in any folk-lore, and to some of the trick- siest sprites. There is true pathos, however, in the one Christian ballad which tells how the soul of Janke could not be taken up to heaven, until the parents watching by the bed were beguiled by the angels into leaving her for a moment, during which—the mother's vigilance removed—she died.

A brilliant Cornhill, and yet not quite satisfactory. The second part of "When the Sea was Young" is as fascinating as the first, and taxes the mind of the reader to the full to grasp its wonderful details, while it defies his imagination to follow the marvellous suggestions of the subject. "Among the Heather" is a delightful paper, full of information charmingly conveyed, and of re- freshing leisure. One's mind strolls, but with its eyes all alert, through the scenes in which the writer invites our company. Here is more folk-lore—this time of the Bushmen—very curious, full of innumerable stories about ani- mals, which prove that these savages, who were, we are told, of the lowest kind, had, when they invented them, a fertile fancy which hardly consists with this classification of the race; and boasting one most comical creature, the Mantis, known to zoolo- gists as a beautiful green insect, but invested by the Bushmen with extraordinary powers. The writer of this paper, which is founded on Dr. Bleek's Report to the Cape Parliament, considers that the myths indicate that the Bushmen are not genuine South- African aborigines, but that they are intruders upon a still older race. A pleasant sketch of Sir Richard Steele, but without suffi- cient sense of his humour, and rather too complimentary, we think, to "Prue," and a translation of a Japanese lyrical drama called "The Death-Stone," almost as dreary as the Japanese novel recently published by Mr. Putnam, at New York, are among the contents of the magazine. The first chapters of a serial, entitled "Across the Peat-fields," are rather dull, and we regret to find the story of the Marquise de Vemeuil in Cornhill. She was the basest of the base women who ministered to the vines of Henri Quatro ; his conduct towards her was per- haps a shade worse than his conduct towards his other mistresses; all the transactions in which the two were mutually concerned were of the worst and meanest description. The narrative of them can serve no purpose, elucidate no historical point, illustrate no epoch concerning which any doubt exists in any mind. Such details are unedifying, nninstructive, and revolting, appertaining to the pourriture of history which is best hidden out of sight and banished from memory.