SOME MAGAZINES.

AVE noticed last week the best paper in the Fortnightly, and the remainder of the number is a trifle dull. We notice, however, that the editor either by accident or design, is trying an experiment which ought to be tried, and which deserves success. He has no novel. The possibility of publishing a monthly magazine without a novel is of course a question, but if it is decided in the affirmative, there will be more and better monthly magazines. Our own impression is that there is room for at least one which shall gradually take the place of a Quarterly, and this is the precise function of a periodical like the Fortnightly, filled as it is with political and social essays which have all the air of speeches to the public. Very valuable speeches they often are, and we can conceive no reason why they should not be acceptable, if only the editor will remember that the first thing desirable in discussion is to be truthful, which he is, at any risk of offence ; and the second thing is to secure an audience, which he does not always do. This, for example, may be a valuable, but it is a dry number. A sentence

like this is a strong dose, . even in a review. "Slowly elaborated developments of the parts of the medulla and of the brain concerned in the acts of speech we may presume had taken place in remote individuals of the parent race, as they acquired additional powers in this respect ; and the power of developing similar structural connections between nerve cells and nerve fibres, thus established, having been handed down and gradually rendered more perfect by hereditary transmission through countless succeeding generations, the infant of to-day is born, perchance, with the potentiality of developing a nervous system as complex and as perfect in this respect as any which may have preceded it in its own ancestral line. Inheriting, therefore, this developmental tendency, when the parts actually begin to shape themselves so as to bring about the necessary nerve and nervo-muscular connections, then there is only required the proper stimulus to give the function (of speech) an impetus, and gradually to develop it in all its perfection. This impetus, we may presume, is given by the passage of nerve-currents downwards from those superficial portions of the cerebral hemispheres concerned in the acts of intellectual Perception and of Memory, to those other parts which are the motor centres concerned in the acts of articulate speech." We do not agree with the idea we believe that passage to convey, knowing that a certain dominion over language sometimes precedes in the history of a race an equivalent power of thought, but still the idea is in itself clear enough when it has been considered for half an hour. But we would just ask the editor, whose own style is pellucid to a fault, how many of the men he wants to read his periodical will read that sentence sufficiently often to know what it means,—if, to be quite plain, he would under any circumstances take the trouble himself ? That a monthly without novels may be a success we firmly believe, but then it must be a monthly with many readable papers, and this number has only one or two, the sketch of Lamennais being the second. The useful paper on "The Suez Canal" scarcely tells Englishmen the one thing they want to know. That the big ditch can be dug is nearly certain, the point to be settled is whether when dug it will be of any use to the world, or any profit to the shareholders.

Blackwood, though rather dull,—wanting O'Dowd,—is full of good papers, a most readable sketch of Bishop Berkeley, for example—person who said there was no matter, wherefore, says Byron, it was no matter what he said—and of Beaumarchais,—or rather of the grand incident in his life, his fight to prove that a French judge had taken a bribe, and then cheated the briber,—a sketch which brings out the leathern tenacity of the man in a way we have never seen, and also his singular position, a position almost unique in his day, of adventurer-statesman. The man had ideas, politics, patriotism, and even a certain uprightness, but wanted all his life to make a fortune out of those goodly posses sions. The following estimate of him, however, is surely a little overchanged ?—

" Beaumarchais bad within him the capabilities of about six extraor dinary men. His law pleadings were written with such genius that, like the Lettres Provinciales ' of Pascal, they have survived the interest of the quarrel from which they sprang. His two best comedies would have done honour to Moliere. He wrote chansons which Baranger would not have disowned ; he had no mean aptitude for politics, diplomacy, and intrigue ; and, in addition to all these, he had the managing, mercantile, and financial talents of a Brassy, a Baring, and a Rothschild. But there was more even than all this: his Menwires, his readiness of wit, and his presence of mind, and his promptitude of speech, and his extraordinary and sudden resources in the face of overwhelming difficulties and unforeseen dangers, prove that he had the highest gifts of an orator and a statesman ; his prose writings testify to his possession of the highest gifts of eloquence, for which no opportunity existed for other use than that to which he was necessitated to confine them. If under a despotic government, starting in life from a very humble condition, he agitated all France with a wretched lawsuit about fifteen Ionia, what political eminence might he not have reached had he been placed, like Sheridan or Burke, on the benches of an Opposition, or if, indeed, he had only been born fifty or sixty years later in his own country !"

Add Bernal Osborne to Mr. Laing, and we should be nearer Beaumarchais' true force. There is a curious puff of Major Dwyer's book on "Seats and Saddles, Bits and Bitting," in this number, curious, we mean, because Blackwood is not given to pails, and the writer evidently believes his author to be the greatest living authority on his subject. He makes eu passant a curious remark :—

" When we knew that sore backs alone can disable a cavalry force; that a regiment numerically three hundred strong may not be able to bring a hundred and fifty mounted troopers into the field; that Lord Cardigan's reconnaissance into the Dobnidscha left him but a handful of men fit for duty ; that at Solferino 3,500 horses were available out of a force of 10,200, it is time to inquire by what system of care and precaution the Austrians contrive to avoid this disaster. And that they do so we ourselves can amply testify. We remember the arrival of a lightcavalry regiment, the 'Lichtenstein Chevaux Lagers,' at a remote part

of the empire, after a long and weary march in deep winter. The regiment numbered eighteen hundred mounted men, and we were curious to know how many were puffed in review by the general who inspected them on the day after their coming ; we learned that leas than twenty horses were reported sick ; and these included snow ophthalmia, kicks and injuries by accidents, and the other disasters of a long march."

As there is no doubt whatever that the one drawback of English cavalry is the liability of the horses to sore backs, Major Dwyer's book may be worth careful study.

To our minds, the best paper in the Cornhill—which, by the way, is publishing a most original and readable novel under the title of "That Boy of Norcott's"—is the one on "The Vehm," alone well worth the shilling. The writer purchased in Dortmund, the ancient centre of the Vehmgericht, a history of the Vehm, compiled in true historic form from original documents, and sums up somewhat sketchily, but still clearly, the result of his reading. The Vehm was not a mystic body executing secret sentences, but a tribunal instituted by Charlemagne to maintain some kind of order in his newly conquered dominions. It lasted through the Middle Ages, the single tribunal ultimately dividing into many, and was worked in this way. A kind of jury, generally of important persons, met in the open air, at fixed intervals, and heard complaints against persons too powerful to be dealt with in any ordinary way, and especially against the robber knights or other strong persons addicted to robbery on the highway. The proceedings of the Court were recognized throughout Westphalia as legal, its methods were slow and regular, the criminal was cited four times, if he appeared he was tried fairly according to the ideas of his time, and the only peculiarity which distinguished it from other tribunals was that its sentences were actually executed. Most Courts were disobeyed, but the Vehm inflicted only one punishment—death, and in only one way—by assassination. Its

agents waited till the criminal was off his guard and then hanged him to the nearest tree, leaving his sentence in writing stuck to the tree with a dagger. As the tribunal and its sentences were. strictly legal, the assassins could not be called to account, and — as we suspect, but do not know—were seldom resisted, except by the victim himself, lest the contamadous should also be declared criminals. Usually punishing only known offenders, decreeing

only death, and waiting years to execute its decree, the Vehm struck the imaginations of rude men as the Inquisition did afterwards, till all manner of legends were allowed to encrust the simple facts.

A permanent Vigilance Committee in California recognized as a legal institution would be almost precisely like the Vehmgericht. The

paper "On Relics Ecclesiastical" is full of pleasantly told gossippy descriptions of the different relics worshipped in Europe, such as the Holy Coat, the pieces of the Holy Cross, the leathern girdle of Christ once the property of Constantine, now in Aix la Chapelle ; and so on. We extract a statement which we fancy will be as new to most of our readers as to us:—

" The Holy Sepulchre itself, or what is shown as such, had a narrow escape of being removed. In 1600 there came to Florence a mysterious person calling himself Faccardino, Emir of the Drnses. He described himself as a descendant of 'Pio Goffrido,' and consequently an enemy of the Turks, and offered to get possession of the Holy Sepulchre. The Medicean Chapel at Florence was actually built for its reception. A squadron of ships was sent to the coast of Syria, under the command of Inghirami; and Faccardino and his associates, gaining access to the Sepulchre, began to cut it off, when the Greeks discovered them. The rascals managed to escape, but the marks of the saws remain there

St. Pauls still contains " Phineas Phinn," quite enough value for its price ; but it has also two bits of fair padding,—.a short, but lively, and just estimate of Sir Robert Peel ; and a temperate, but somewhat Conservative account of the "upshot of the Elections." We extract from the biography an account of a half forgotten man, the first Sir Robert Peel, father of the statesman :—

"He was a Tory of the Tories, a sturdy sharer in all the regular old English prejudices, a fierce repeller of newfangled notions, a natural enemy of Frenchmen, a hater of Catholics, a Church-and-King man outsad-out. He was infinitely startled and scandalized by the French Revolution, and shouted God save the King !' with a strength of lung and heartiness of tone which awoke an echo far and wide in England. In December, 1792, he was the chief mover in a local demonstration of loyalty, which culminated in a meeting held at Manchester. The speeches were doubtless stirring, and the audience, on their way home, became riotously loyal. Robert Peel was taxed with the disturbances which took place on the occasion by some member of the House. I only,' he replied, cried "God save the King !" ' In 1798, when the Government was pressed for money to carry on the war, he put down .£10.000 as the contribution of the firm at whose head he stood. A man like this deserved enconragement, and in 1800 he received a baronetcy. George III. had a special favour for him. 'An honest man,' said King George,—' a very honest man,' when his name once turned up; and, as the Royal manner was, kept repeating, 'a very honest man.' A rich manufacturer who headed the Manchester mob in shouting 'God save the King !' and could not see very much harm in sacking the house of a Socinian or Papist, was as an angel sent from heaven in the eyes of Farmer George. Peel's own man of men was Pitt. Ho almost literally worshipped the subsidizing minister, and, as hero-worshippers are apt to do, made the object of his adoration look sometimes rather absurd. He published a pamphlet to prove that the National Debt was a positive source of prosperity, and stood stoutly in the breach against his own son when sacreligious hands were going to be laid upon Pitt's inconvertible paper currency."

St. Pools believes that the Reform Bill has but slightly changed the composition of the House of Commons, though it may have modified its tendencies, which is only the ordinary remark, but it offers a separate explanation of the Conservative reaction said to be visible in Lancashire : —

"To talk of this result being due to the Conservative interests of the working-class seems to us childish. The manufacturing population is most assuredly not content with its lot, and while it remains discontented its natural bias must always be, wisely or unwisely, towards the advocates of reform and progress. But yet, in the face of the widespread Conservative successes in tho centre of the cotton trade we cannot honestly doubt, that the Conservative cause was, to say the very least, not unpopular for the time with the masses. The explanation of this apparent anomaly is not, we think, very difficult to discover. London is such a mass of unconnected cities that the dwellers therein find it hard to realize the influence which local events produce upon the whole community in our great provincial towns. The Clorkon well outrage bad been forgotten by Londoners long before the dissolution of Parlia

ment. But in Lancashire the electors were materially influenced by the vivid impression left upon the public mind by the attack on the prison van at Manchester, and by the other Fenian outrages of 1867."

Fraser has a valuable paper, obviously by its editor, upon some new facts which Mr. G. A. Bergenroth thinks he has discovered about Katharine of Arragon. Mr. Bergenroth believes, on the evidence of certain letters in the Spanish archives, that Katharine, previous to her marriage with Henry VIII., had committed herself with a friar of her household, and "forfeited the right to be considered a lady of spotless honour,"—a theory which Mr. Fronde, on a careful analysis of the letters, somewhat contemptuously rejects. Judging from the evidence, as marshalled in Fraser, Mr. Fronde appears to have altogether the best of the argument, the letters only establishing what, no doubt, was the truth, that the high-spirited but narrow-minded and superstitious Katharine was completely governed by her confessor, like thousands of other Spanish women before and since. We are not, however, equally sure that the Spanish Ambassador did not think the friar's influence an occasion for scandal in the Court; his demands for an " old " confessor point rather to that, than to a mere wish to be rid of a man who was not sufficiently pliable in his hands. The paper on "The Ministry and the Irish Church" is worth reading, though not very original ; and so is one on "Educational Endowments" by Mr. G. Fitch, a gentleman entitled to speak with authority on all such subjects. Mr. G. Fitch, one need not say, would utilize all existing educational charities, but he would also apply a strong preventive to the growth of any future abuses such as now prevail :—

"Ere long it may be hoped that statesmen will try to estimate the enormous mischief which is done in England under the name of benevolence ; and will see the need of a more energetic and organized supervision of all public charities. When they do this, they will certainly be prepared to go a step farther, and while permitting the free exorcise of testamentary rights as between persons and persons, will make it illegal to devote any money to public objects, except through the agency of some recognized body, which is amenable to public control. Is it too much to expect that we shall soon see the wisdom of restraining the power of private persons to tamper with any ono of those great national interests, such as education and tho relief of the poor, which demand organization and fixed principles, and which still more imperatively demand complete readjustment, from time to time, in accordance with the supreme intelligence and will of the nation, as represented in Parliament?"

That is the Prussian system, and in principle is a mere extension of the law of mortmain, but we fear individualism in England is too strong for any such reform.

The Argosy has rather a tendency to trashiness in general, but we must except from this criticism the really remarkable series of tales signed "Johnny Ludlow,"—as to the authorship of which we have not even a guess,—which contain some of the moat vivid sketches of life and character, some of the truest humour and of the finest pathos, that we have seen in English fiction for many years. There is, perhaps, a little incongruity in putting so much depth of treatment into the mouth of a professed schoolboy. But, this fault excepted, there is admirable keeping in the style. The story in this (January) munber,—of the pointamau who caused a railway accident by forgetting to turn the points, is one of the very best of this fine series.