THE MAGAZINES.

NONE of the Magazines are very striking this month. The Con- temporary is perhaps the best, but that is also a little heavy. "A Few Weeks upon the Continent," by the Duke of Argyll, might have been called "A Jaunt by an Amateur Naturalist," being chat about the birds and fishes and natural features of the country, as seen in a journey by rail to the Tyrol, and back by the Brenner into Italy. It is eminently readable chat, fall of suggestion, but from the nature of the subject, without definite purpose or instruction. Major Grey's advice in the "Indian Dilemma" is to annul the "Perpetual Settlement," the great

engagement by which Lord Cornwallis fixed for ever the laad-tax of Bengal, and so made that Presidency the wealth- iest and quietest of our Indian possessions ; to compel the Native Princes to contribute their quota to military de- fence ; and to raise local regiments from among the half- castes of the cities of India. The latter proposal is one for the consideration of experts, the great difficulty being to ascertain whether such regiments would be cheaper than regi- ments of Europeans. If the boys were taken very young, educated, fed, and drilled as the lads for the English Navy are, and sent to sea for at least one year, to give them health and perfect discipline, they might make a valuable force, and would certainly be faithful ; but the Eurasians have as yet shown little desire for military life. The breach of the Perpetual Settlement would, however, be as distinct and gross a breach of faith as the repudiation of the National Debt, and unless carried out in revolutionary style by the direct and final confiscation of all estates by Government, would be met by resistance of a very dangerous kind. Bengal discontented would cost more to govern than the Treasury would gain by what, in plain English, would be a violent robbery. A severe succession duty, . one year's income on each transfer, might possibly be imposed, but the repudiation of the Settlement would unsettle the very idea of property among sixty millions of people. Dr. Karl .Hillebrand, "On the Sources of German Discontent," is, as usual, amusing, and, as usual, conservative. He denies altogether that Germany is over-weighted, saying that the German pays only 15s. in taxes where the Englishman pays 40s. and the Frenchman 543.—a remark absolutely .without meaning, unless the Professor means to allege that Germany is as rich as France or England—and declaring that no German, and especially no German of the middle class, would abolish the military system. He doubts the formidable character of Socialism, and attributes German discontent, first of all, to the new poverty of all salaried persons, who have to provide for new wants and meet new prices with their old means ; and secondly, to the unrest produced by "the pre- ponderance of the half-educated," an argument he proposes to explain hereafter. Mr. Leffingwell's paper on " Free- lrade, from an American Stand-point," is nothing but a formal assertion that Protection has succeeded in the United States, noteworthy only for this, that the author makes no attempt to deny that the consumer has been severely fined. His argument is that the system is worth its cost, for it has made the Union independent of the foreign manufacturer. In other words, it is just and wise to plunder the majority for the 'benefit of the minority, if, in return, the whole community is isolated, from the world. That argument would justify the Corn Law. Mr. Lousdale Bradley's substitute for the Income-tax is a graduated stamp-duty on most of the paper transactions of human life, including the contracts signed on 'Change, and must often have been considered by the Treasury ; Professor Stanley Jevons denies that the new money- order system is sound, or equal to one-pound notes, or cheques on the plan of the Cheque Bank, and asserts that the new scheme involves an inconvertible paper currency ; and "Matthew Browne" indulges himself in an intellectual caprice called" From Faust to Mr. Pickwick," in which we, at least, can see no merit. What can be the use of trying to establish a relation between Mr. Pickwick and Gretchen, as is done in the following lines ?— " The part which is played in the Dickens squib by the good and simple-hearted Pickwick is in the great poem played by Gretchen. In Pickwick there is no problem put at all ; but we feel that the problem put by our own hearts is solved for us. In the great poem, the problem is put in a hundred forms—in the Second Part tiresomely and fantastically—till we come to the end." Why not write on the relation between Isaiah and Miss Austen, or attribute intellectual kinship to Hamlet and Mr. Trumbull, the moralising auctioneer in Middlemarch ?

The Fortnightly is rather dull. "The Sultan's Heirs in Asia," by Mr. W. S. Blunt, the drift of which is stated elsewhere, is to our minds the best paper; that on the "Division of Land in France," by Mr. Barham Zincke, being too gritty with figures, the most noteworthy of which is that the exact number of landed proprietors in France in 1858, the latest complete return pro- curable, was 8,264,795. The remainder of the figures, which refer to the increase of subdivisions, are quite useless for the purposes of comparison, until we know whether the population of France is normally stationary, or is artificially made so. It is the rapid increase of the population without an equal increase of means which alarms the advocates of peasant. proprietorship or fixity of tenure in countries like Ireland. We see little new in Mr. Probyn's paper on "Religious Liberty and Atheism," and he is wrong in saying that Christianity flourishes in the United States, in spite of absolute religious equality. In most of the States the oath of an avowed atheist is still rejected, and Mormonism is put down by law. The triumph of Christianity against persecution is much better evidence, but Christianity in several countries was successfully propagated by force. If Ilindooism gradually died away under the force of opinion, there would come a time when a law declaring libido() worship illegal would accelerate its decease. The law would be objectionable for other reasons, but not because it would be inoperative. The objection to persecution is not its futility, but its injustice and inconsistency with Christianity, which latter point, we must add, Mr. Probyn clearly perceives. Mr. Auberon Herbert sends a protest against State education, which is vigorous, but involves all through a peatio principii. Mr. Her- bert says the State Department crushes out originality ; but is originality the thing sought through education ? Might not a gymnast say with equal sense that State food would render the body less capable of tours de force ? The education is only food, and can no more deprive the mind of originality than regular dinners can deprive the body of lissomeness. The choice is not between specially arranged diet and ordinary diet, but between ordinary diet and none at all. Mr. Herbert's advice to workmen is to get rid of compulsion, and to decentralise education, allowing each town to educate in its own way. But suppose the corporation of Hellhole refuses education, or teaches on some preposterous system of its own, intended mainly to convince children that strikes are irreligious ? Mr. E. Atkinson's essay on the connection between the freedom of agriculture and the profit of agriculture is a very striking one. His contention is that when the farmer can own his land he adjusts his agriculture to the conditions almost without fail, but does not do so if he is only a tenant. The conse- quence of such ownership in America, aided by the immense development of means of transit, is a competition against which the English farmer cannot struggle, if he continues to grow wheat. Mr. Atkinson evidently believes that this competition will become much sharper, till the whole social system of England is revolutionised, as he thinks, greatly to the benefit of England, which will be the making-up shop of the world, importing all raw material and nearly all food. English landlords will not agree with him, but they should read his calculations. Mr. C. H. Pearson continues his valuable argument on "Democracy in Victoria," the drift of which is that great aggregations of land should be checked, in order that too few partners in the joint concern should not acquire too preponderant an influence in it, his plan of checking being a land-tax on properties above a certain extent. If influence really follows the land, he will find, we suspect, that no such tax will operate till it is actually heavier than the revenue derivable from the land ; but that is matter for experiment. Otherwise there is no injustice in the principle, land being a necessary, and limited in quantity even in Victoria, where a third of all assigned lands belongs to 200 persons.

The Nineteenth Century is full of readable papers, all of them a little thin. Mr. Matthew Arnold sends one on "The Future of Liberalism," which makes us a little impatient, with its high_ sniffing contempt for the work which, in default of better, Liberals find to do. He thinks Burial Bills, Game Bills, and the like rather contemptible, and says we ought all to attack in- equality by laws abolishing the freedom of bequest, inequality being in our day the great brutaliscr. What is the use of a suggestion like that ? Even granting, what we should not grant, that inequality of condition is the master-evil of the United Kingdom, what is the use of proposing a remedy which could not be carried without a revolution, which is utterly inconsistent with our manners, the power of bequest being the chief source of household authority, and for which not one elector in twenty would vote ? We could not con- ceive of a more hopeless crusade than one against liberty of bequest, and verily believe it would be easier to carry a pro- gressive succession duty, and so pulverise property for the benefit of the State. Perhaps, however, we do Mr. Matthew Arnold injustice, and he is not caring so much for the equal distribution of property after death, as for an opportunity of telling the upper class that it is materialised, the middle class . that it is vulgar, and the lower class that it is brutal. He does that twice,—and it must be a great relief to him.

Mr. Ma.Bock sends a characteristic essay, thrown into the form of a conversation, on the thesis that agnosticism offers man no adequate temptation to sell-denial; and Mr. E. D. J. Wilson a powerful argument for the adoption of the cloture in Parliament, from which we extract his description of the actual working of the system :— "Parliamentary discussions in France proceed according to a list of Members who propose to speak, and who inscribe' their names beforehand. In the ordinary course, the President, when no one remains to speak, asks the Chamber whether it wishes that the de- bate should be closed. But the Chamber, if it considers that it has been sufficiently informed to come to a decision, may at any time demand that the discussion shall be brought to an end, even when the list of speakers inscribed is not yet exhausted. The general rule, however, that a speaker shall never be interrupted except by the President, restricts the demand for the clOture to the pause at the end of a speech. A further limitation is imposed by the general rules that a Minister must always be heard, whenever he claims the right to speak, and that after a Ministerial speech one Member of the Chamber may insist upon replying. Moreo.ver, if it be proposed to adjourn the debate to the next day, this question obtains precedence over the demand for the clilture, and a division must be taken on it first. Finally, the clOture is not put to the vote if called for by a few isolated Members ; it must be demanded by une portion notable of the

Chamber, before the President will entertain the question. No speech

is allowed to be made in favour of the proposal, and only one against it. The vote is then taken, but the clilture is not pronounced unless

a majority of the Members are present ; if there be any doubt as to

the will of the Chamber after a second trial, the discussion is con- tinued. When the cliiture has been pronounced, Members may speak

upon the manner in which the question should be put ; Ministers must be heard in virtue of their general right ; and amendments may be withdrawn. A discussion may be subsequently reopened, in whole or in part upon the subject-matter, by a formal vote of the Chamber."

The ciiitare advances business, but it is at the cost of discussion, which is sometimes as important as action. It would not, we fear, in this country, put an end to obstruction. M. Francisque Sarcey gives us a bright account of the rise of the Palais Royal Theittre, an account full of clever criticisms, though ending in a rather pessimist notion of the future of this peculiar theatre ; and Mr. G. B. Brown a thoughtful description of modern French Art; but we have read with most interest Mr. G. Holyoake's "A Stranger in America," in which, with many remarks which have been made before, there are some acute, and many humorous. It would be difficult, for example, to put this rather sharp condemnation into more gentle words :— "In the United States there are newspapers of as great integrity, Judges as pure, and Members of Parliament as clean-handed as in England ; but the public indignation at findimr' it otherwise is nothing like so great there as here. John Stuart Mill said that the working- Classes of all countries lied—it being the vice of the slave caste—but English working-men alone were ashamed of lying, and I was proud to find that my countrymen of this class have not lost this latent attribute of manliness ; and I would rather they were known for the quality of speaking the truth, though the Devil was looking them square in the face, than see them possess any repute for riches, or smartness, without it. Far be it from me to suggest that Ameri- cans, as a rule, do not possess the capacity of truth, but in trade they do not strike you as exercising the talent with the sonic success that they show in. 3}ta y other ways."

The article is full of mere chat, sometimes exceedingly trivial, yet the reader lays it down with a feeling that he has somehow mined information which he did not expect. This, for example, is most suggestive :—

" The effect of American inspiration on Englishmen was strikingly evident. I met workmen in many cities whom I had known in former years in England. They were no longer the same men. Here their employers seldom or never spoke to them, and the workmen were rather glad, as they feared the communication would relate to a reduction of wages. They thought it hardly prudent to look a foreman or overseer in the face. Masters are more genial, as a rule, in these days; but in the days when last. I visited these workmen at their homes in Lancashire, it never entered into their heads to introduce me to their employers. But when I met them in America, they instantly proposed to introduce me to the mayor of the city. This surprised me very much ; for when they were in England they could not have introduced me to the relieving-officer of their parish, with any advantage to me, had I needed to know him. These men were still workmen, and they did introduce me to the mayor as friend of theirs;' and in an easy, confident manner, as one gentleman would speak to another, they said they should be obliged if he would show mo the civic features of the city. The mayor would do so, order his carriage, and with the most pleasant courtesy take me to every place of interest. To this hour I do not know whom I wondered at most,— the men or the mayor. In some cases the mayor was himself a manufacturer, and it was a pleasure to see that the men were as proud of the mayor as they were of the city."

The most valuable paper in Fraser is Mr. Freeman's, on "The Austrian Power," but it is not new. The world needs to be re-

minded every now and then that there is no Austria, though there is a very powerful "House of Austria," which rules many kingdoms and states, but politicians are now hardly so forget- ful as Mr. Freeman assumes. And we think that for the pur- poses of his argument, he does the House of Hapsburg one injustice. That House is, as he says, utterly selfish and atten- tive first of all to dynastic interests, but we do not believe that it is prejudiced, that it cares one jot for either German or Mag- yar. On the contrary, we believe that it has for thirty years been extremely doubtful whether it should not announce itself Slavonic, and crush the higher classes of its subjects through the lower. It had very nearly made up its mind in that direction when it annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, and if it could win Constan- tinople would, we believe, be content to reign there as the South Slavonic Power. Its one fixed impulse is to reign over as much of the world as it can get, on almost any terms, and to this end it would be Liberal or despotic, German or Magyar, Slavonic or Gipsy, if Gipsies were numerous enough to provide it with an army. That is not a heroic condition of mind, but it is the Hapsburg condition, and always has been, though the history of the house is flecked by efforts after despotic centralisation,— and there might be conditions of Europe in which its peculiari- ties would be useful. The House has a trick of surviving all deluges, and has still millions of devoted followers. Professor T. K. Cheyne's study of Job does not, we confess, impress us.

We do not doubt that the author of the book was a great poet, and he may have travelled much, but we do not see what is gained by declaring him "foremost among psychological poets," or comparing him to Milton, Dante, and Goethe, or explaining verses like these as the outpouring of a man With "an eye for political changes, which occur in the East with such startling rapidity ":—

" He leadeth counsellors away stripped,

And maketh judges foolish ; He looseth the belt of kings, And bindeth a cord upon their loins; He leadeth priests away stripped,

And bringeth the firmly rooted to a fall (xii., 1749)."

We do not see why those thoughts should not have occurred ti. an early Arab emir, even though it is certain that he had seen

the Nile and probable that he had visited cities. Fraser is evi- dently not over well pleased with the action of the present Ministry, and is inclined to think it disposed to do big things

much too rapidly. The writer has not the smallest sympathy with Toryism, and declares that Sir S. Northcote, who never had any authority but that of office, has now none at all, and that the Tories have put themselves under three men of the inferior order of statesmanship, Mr. Chaplin, Mr. Gorst, and Sir H. Drummond Wolff ; but he has almost as little sympathy with Liberalism. His conclusion is that this Parliament will not last very long, and that the Reform Bill may be very speedily introduced. Mr. Blackmore's remarkable story, "Mary Anerley," approaches its conclusion.

In ]Iacmillan, Mrs. Oliphant's story, "He That Will Not When

He May "—what is the reason for the didactic titles now given to novels P—advances rapidly, and is becoming exciting, the sketch of the central figure, the claimant of fortune and title, being singu- larly fresh and vigorous, and the number altogether is above the average. The sketch of the Albanians by Mr. C. L. Fitzgerald, though entirely without purpose, unless it be to show that the Albanians will ultimately merge themselves in the Slays and Greeks, is full of incidental information, especially about the Miriditis, the ancient Catholic clan, who can produce 20,000 fighting men, and who, under the hereditary chieftain, styled by them the " Doda," have for generations past almost ruled the

Mussulman clans of Albania. Mr. Wheeler's account of peasant- life in Bengal is a good prgeis of the remarkable book "Peasant- Life in Bengal," by Lal Behari Day, which deserves to be better

known; and we have found much interest in the over-short and slight sketch of the life of the shepherds of Sutherlandshire, the men who, of all men in Great Britain, perhaps lead the lone- liest and most peculiar lives, and come through all fine speci- mens of their class and country, active, sober, and on the whole, in spite of much hardship, contented. They often see scarcely a face except their wives' for months on end, and their greatekt excitement is saving their sheeps' lives :—

"On all farms, especially on those where the ground is steep, or where there is much cliff-land, as on the coast, sheep often get crag- bound ; that is, are tempted by the sweet, fresh grass to climb down to some rock or ledge from which they cannot get up, and unless seen and rescued, they of course die. The enormous extent of some sheep-farms prevents the minute examination of ground which can be

given on southern pastures ; 60,000 or 70,000 acres in the Highlands are occasionally let to one man, and some farms have an ill reputa- tion for this kind of loss. The shepherd in such cases has to be let down by ropes to their prison, and, their legs •being tied together, gets them hauled up. Sometimes the stupid things, frightened and bewildered, throw themselves over the rocks just when help is near, and if it is the sea which is below, a boat is, if possible, brought round to be ready to pick them up."

Mr. Bence Jones, in his account of the "Social State of Ire- land," certainly takes the bull by the horns. He denies every- thing, declares that the tenantry of Ireland are barely 500,000, or a tenth part of the population, and affirms that,—" The simple fact is that, with very few exceptions, tenants have not improved their farms ; they have not been industrious, or skil- ful, or sober ; a large proportion are indolent and scheming ; the rents have been less than the value; nor has there been any general oppression or hardship put on them to hinder their prosperity:' He would govern the country,—which he assures us is quite full of liars—through the strictest enforcement of the law, sentences of a month on the treadmill for every breach of it, and the protection of unlimited competition, which would end, as he intimates, in the abolition of peasants and the in- troduction of the large-farm system. Much of his idea is probably sound, though it is vitiated by a dislike of the people; but his plan must be preceded by some reform of the tenure and system of government which will give the body of the people an interest in supporting the law. Mr. A. T. G. Goodrick brings out the interesting fact that, partly owing to the mili- tary system, partly to the wretched salaries of the Professorate, and partly to a general spirit of centralisation, the Universities of Germany, which in 1789 were forty-five and in 1815 about twenty, are being reduced in practice to three,—Berlin, Leipzig, and Bonn. All Professors desire to be called to these Universities, where they are fed.