THE MAGAZINES.

Fraser has a valuable though slightly dogmatic paper on the treatment of habitual criminals, in which the writer accepts Lord Kimberley's Bill merely as an instalment of reform. He believes that two facts have been overlooked by the authors of that measure, the excessive difficulty experienced by convicts in obtaining work in England,—a difficulty not so greatly felt in Ireland, where confidence in the law is weak—awl the shortness of mental sight universal among the criminal class. The first difficulty, he thinks, will ultimately drive us to a system of locking up criminals for very long periods, while the second makes long periods of penal servitude quite useless as deterrents, and therefore, like all useless punishments, cruel. He would, therefore, have two forms of imprisonment ; one, highly penal, to be inflicted for short periods, and another, merely protective, to follow the former, and to be continued as long as needful, or for life. This protective imprisonment should be made singularly mild :— "It should be divided, we will say, into three successive terms, of five years each, the first of which should be exempt from any rigour of discipline not required for the maintenance of order and for pecuniary purposes, whilst each of the others should bring with it more and more of indulgence. During the first so much labour should be enforced as would provide the cost of the prisoner's subsistence on prison diet, such cost to be computed as for a diet regulated under the provisions of the Prisons Act, 1865 (28 and 29 Vic., cap. 126, sec. 21). But after so much labour shall have been exacted as may be sufficient to pay for his prison diet and other costs of his confinement, the prisoner should be at liberty to improve his diet, so far as food is concerned, by the fruits of any additional labour he may be disposed to employ for that purpose. In the second quinquennial term he should be privileged to provide himself, at his own cost, by additional industry, with tobacco and a duly limited quantity of spirituous or fermented liquors, and with harmless books, whether instructive or entertaining, and with any other innoxions articles which may contribute to his comfort and enjoyment. In the thud quinquennial term he should enjoy, in addition to the privileges of the second, that of absence on leave within prescribed limits of time and place, and on prescribed conditions, one of which should be that he shall have previously earned by prison labours such a sum of money

With the main suggestion we agree, as we believe we must come to some such division, but the idea of mildness is carried too far. Neither tobacco nor liquors ought to be allowei, and leave of absence should be entirely out of the question. The true model for a prison of this kind is the vast establishment maintained at Jubbulpore for the protection of Indian society against Thuggee. The Thug sent there dies to the world, but he is neither tortured nor ill-treated, but becomes under strict but lenient supervision an ordinary artisan. His employment is teut-making for the Army, and we believe the system which has extirpated Thuggee is entirely self-supporting, the men's labour being worth more than their keep. Leniency is of course an essential condition of the system, but it must have one limitation, that open mutiny or escape should be punished as mutiny or desertion is in the field, by a sentence of immediate death by military execution. The necessity of obedience should be enforced as the laws of nature are enforced, but that secured, the life of the prison should be as

nearly as possible the life of a well-regulated factory. We recommend another paper, "Erie Campaigns in 186S," to the careful attention of all who are interested in American Railways. It is a marvel of clearness, and shows how completely the American

capitalists contrive to master industrial undertakings, using their enormous power not so much against the public which travels, as English directors do, as against investors, who are daily and hourly ruined by fluctuations of which they know neither the cause nor the limit, and which are got up by speculators who, when assailed, buy injunctions from judges and Acts from the Legislature: We quote one paragraph, clearly explaining an incident in the Erie War which at the time puzzled us greatly, the hold which tho Erie speculators had over the currency :—

" The National Banks of New York are, together, to the United States, pretty much what the Bank of England is to England. Their financial condition governs the financial condition of the whole country. The Act under which they are established obliges them to have always in their vaults a reserve of legal tender notes, or 'greenbacks' as they are called, equal to twenty-five per cent, of the indebtedness of the bank to depositors, borrowers, &c. Consequently, for every diminution of the amount of 'greenbacks' held by a bank it must contract its loans by three times that amount. This law furnished the 'combination ' a sure base from which to manceuvre. All the stock which they bad been creating and issuing they had sold for cash, and this cash was supposed to amount to not less than ten millions of dollars. Besides this sum they controlled near four millions more. The entire amount they deposited among the banks of New York City. Then, without warning and by simultaneous action, they demanded payment of the whole of this immense sum, and they demanded it in greenbacks." Greenbacks ' being the only legal tender in the country (except the ' demonetized ' gold), the banks were obliged to pay over every dollar in 'greenbacks.' Not only was this enormous sum, near fourteen millions of dollars, thus withdrawn from circulation and locked up in private repositories, as it were, in a moment ; but the same action rendered necessary the instant reduction of loans to three times that amount, or near fortytwo millions more. The financial resources of New Yolk were substantially reduced at a blow by some fifty-five millions of dollars."

Even London could scarcely endure a shock like that, and it half ruined New York. Many securities fell 30 per cent. at a blow,

Government bonds declined 5 per cent. in one day, merchants

were compelled to force sales of goods at any price, and the speculators who had agreed to deliver shares by the hundred thousand, which in the frightful fall no one would take, cleared in " differences " 30 dollars a share. Anybody who, reading this account,

speculates in American railway property, deserves to lose his money, and will.

Blackwood depicts the " progress of the Revolution" which is to destroy the Constitution, in the darkest colours, predicting that if

the Irish Church Bill pass the United Kingdom will cease to be a constitutional monarchy ; but he produces no new argument, and his melancholy predictions of confiscation have all been heard before. Another paper, on "Self-Government in Ireland," is more practical ; but it only amounts to this, that we ought to keep up

Protestant communities as loyal camps in Ireland, garrisons against the "blind disaffection" of the Catholic population. Is not that the policy we have been pursuing for three hundred years, the policy which has so utterly and completely failed that, as the writer himself says, the Catholic population, that is, five-sixths of the whole people, regard our rule with blind disaffection ? The best thing in Blackwood, apart from a new story called "A Year and a Day," which is lively and original, is a story by Cornelius O'Dowd of a practical joke he once played. Mr. Boyton was to have made a grand ultra-Tory speech in the Dublin Rotunda against emancipation, when, after the meeting had assembled, it was announced that the Marquis of D—, a great territorial magnate, wished to speak to the resolution. The leaders gave way, and, to Mr. Boyton's unutterable disgust, the Peer made a wretched speech, in reality destructive of his own case. Boyton's rage caught the attention of Cornelius O'Dowd ; he heard what the orator would have said, and told the dismayed editor of the party he would give the Marquis a speech. He wrote out Boyton's, it was published, the Marquis was declared everywhere to be a great orator, and ever after believed that he had uttered the great speech.

The Cornhill, though very readable, contains no single paper of striking merit. The first part of " Wallenstein and His Times" will interest from the dramatic force with which the writer collects his incidents ; but he hardly does justice to the character of the Emperor Ferdinand, perhaps the most self-sacrificing

fanatic who ever sat on a throne to do irreparable mischief to his people. The writer believes him to have disgraced himself in battle, but the sort of cowardice which induces a man to accept a violent death rather than sign a document which violated his conscience scarcely deserves that epithet. This is highly dramatic.

Sixteen nobles had forced themselves into the Hofburg, with a paper which they commanded Ferdinand to sign under pain of death. He was entirely without resources, but he absolutely refused :—

" He was no warrior, had indeed disgraced himself on the only occasion wherein he had ventured to show himself in arms ; but now he was every inch a hero, as impassive as if he had been cast in brass. Old Rodolph and Maximilian, valiant as they were, might have been proud of their descendant. 'Sign!' thundered Thonradtel for the last time, and more than one keen blade was pointed at Ferdinand's unsheltered breast. • A moment more and—' Hark ! what's that?' cried Jorger of Harahan's, dropping the point of his weapon in startled surprise. 'Himmel!' growls nagger of Alensteig, 'but it's a cavalry trumpet. Gin Thurn be in the town ?' And up it came, clear and ear-piercing, that rousing Lira-la which horsemen love to hear. They rushed to the windows, and as they did so the trumpet-blast died away, and the ring of bridle and sabre and the clatter of many hoofs took its place. Another minute, and a dense body of cuirassiers trotted into the square, and pulled up with a ringing shout, right tinder the windows. Whose are these?' questioned the nobles in astonishment. That was soon settled. A mass of the new comers threw themselves from their horses and dashed up the stairs without ceremony. There was a scuffle without, and then the chamber-door opened and admitted a tall thin figure, surmounted by a hard stern countenance, with piercing black eyes, heavy moustache, and short, bristling, black beard and hair.—'Wallenatein!' cried the Emperor, bursting from his impassibility.—' Ter Teufel !' screamed Thonradtel, crushing up his document, and dashing out of the palace, followed by the red of the deputation, and preceded by the valiant Bigger, who tripped over his sword and rolled from head to foot of the stairs. The house of Habsburg was saved."

The paper on " Cynicism" is a clever defence of the occasional use of vitriolic criticism ; but it does not meet the greatest objection to the art, that it tends to compel the original to defer to the opinions of the average. "Let us only reflect, to use one obvious illustration, how much good would be done if in every church there came in at sermon-time the cynic who is so often denounced in his absence ; if he was accommodated with a seat, and allowed to put the clergyman a few questions afterwards in private : would not the logic to which we are treated be generally sounder, the eloquence more severe, and a little more care be shown not to shelter sheer nonsense under the respect due to sacred things?" Very true; but there the critic is his subject's superior, and even there would not the next sermon be intended for the consumption of the cynic, and not of the congregation ?

A new story by the Author of John Halifax is commenced in Macmillan ; and Mr. Wreford sends a striking resume' of the arguments recently advanced in Naples before the Supreme Court in favour of the marriage of priests, arguments familiar to Protestants, but which when received with cheers by Neapolitan Catholics, have all the force of novelty ; but the paper which interests us most is an over-short one on the Drama in England and France. The writer has a real and, as far as we know, an original thought to express, that the decline of the Drama in England is due to our national reluctance to self-analysis, to the morbid anatomy of human character. "Foreign nations have never shrunk from this, but on the contrary ; and for two centuries the French drama has in reality rested its whole fabric upon the development of character,—upon the causes which have determined certain men to do certain deeds." No doubt much of this self-analysis is to be found in novels, and more in poetry ; but the writer denies in very forcible language that a poet, even of the highest kind, can ever be quite the equal of the highest form of dramatist :— " It is not true to say that a great poet has as much influence as a great dramatist: he has not, for the element of publicity is wanting ; the electric action of soul upon soul, the immediate action of man upon man. It is for this that the drama in itself is the grandest form of expressed thought—it contains all others. To be a supreme dramatic poet (we will take Shakespeare, Calderon, Giithe, as the highest examples-.... Schiller comes long after) a man must be everything else. He must be a politician, an historian, a poet, a philosopher, and an orator. He must combine two radically opposite natures, and be at once a man of action and of thought ; he must conceive and criticize, but, above all, he must directly and publicly impress a crowd of other men."

The poet has, however, this great superiority, that he addresses himself directly to the mind of the reader, while the dramatist has to employ a medium, the actor, which may colour, alter, or debase his oratory to any extent. Even Shakespeare may be made so weak that his poetry does not "impress a crowd of other men" in the mouth of an actor who cannot act. Mr. Browning would perhaps make a great dramatist, and his drama might be even a higher good to this generation than his poetry ; but does the essayist know an actor in England who could give the Pope's speech in The Ring and the Book the effect it gains from frequent repernsal ? With the writer's high opinion of Lord Lytton's plays we cannot sympathize, but we believe that if he lives at all, it will be as dramatist ; and we are, with the writer, grateful to him for these two lines from the Rightful Heir. The speaker is defending a riotous spendthrift, and says his motive is to be found ". . . In the pauper's grand inebriate wish To know what wealth is ! . . ."

There in two lines is the explanation of the Benjamin Higgs of our time.

The May number of St. Path is rather slight, though there are papers on the present situation of Italy, Central Asia from the Russian point of view, and Mr. Disraeli and the Mint which are worth reading. In the last of these -Mr. Disraeli is bitterly attacked from the strictly Civil-Service point of view, the writer arguing that Mr. Mushet, the next in seniority, had a right to the DeputyMastership. So he had, no doubt, provided that it was for the public interest that he should have it ; but surely that rider is needful, if England is not to be handed over to an irresponsible bureaucracy ? Mr. Disraeli says distinctly it was not for the public interest, that the department required new blood, in plainer English, that business in the Mint is managed too much after an old-fashioned routine. Mr. Disraeli may be telling fibs, but what is the country to do, if it cannot take the statement of a Prime Minister on such a point? Somebody must decide if an office is in good order or not, and who is to do it, if not the responsible Parliamentary chief? It is very hard on Mr. Mushet, no doubt ; but the hardship is not greater than any shopkeeper suffers when a more energetic or lucky rival takes away his custom. Besides, the Civil Service exists for the country, and the single question in the matter is whether the State did or did not benefit by Mr. Mushet's supersession—a point which the head of Her Majesty's Government must be left to determine.

We noticed the most prominent article in Temple Bar last week, but may remark that Mr. Bentley has secured a novel from the author of " Cometh Up as a Flower."