SOME . MAGAZINES.

THE Fortnightly is this month, we think, best worth its price. It has at least four very striking articles, one which we notice elsewhere, on the right of society to put incurable patients to death, at their own request, i.e., the right of society to aid as well as legalise suicide ; another by Mr. Crompton on caste legislation, a cruel exposure of our habitual unfairness in legislating for ser- vants and employers ; a third on Louis Napoleon, by Albert Dicey, a most eloquent expose of the utter selfishness of Napoleon, a view which has changed with every change in his relation to our material interests; and a fourth, on "Causes of War in the Present European Situation," by M. Emile de Laveleye. M. de Laveleye is apt, perhaps, to be in a degree " viewy," but his views are always worthy of attention, and this time every paragraph in his sketch of the state of Europe will be found to provoke thought. His leading idea is that many as the causes of war seem to be, there are but two, the seizure of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany and the geographical position of Bohemia, that can be fairly classed as serious dangers to the peace of Europe. The dream of a Great Germany, with sixty millions of people, resting on the North Sea, the Baltic, and the Adriatic, undoubtedly exists ; but then it is held in check by great forces which Prince Bismarck evidently respects, for otherwise be would hardly have engaged in the danger- ous contest with the Papacy which it will take two or three genera- tions to fight out. The reunion will come naturally if Austria falls to pieces, and till she falls to pieces Germany has need of Austria

to resist an alliance between Russia and France, driven into alli- ance by the events of the war. This permanent danger for Ger- many has hardly ever been stated more accurately or in fewer words :—" We were certain in any case, they say, to have to defend ourselves against a war of revenge on the part of France. Now that we are covered in front by the line of the Vosges, by Metz, and by Strasburg, and behind them by the Rhine and its fortresses, the invasion of Germany has become nearly impossible. All we have done has been to seize the cannon that was pointed against our- selves, and turn it against the enemy. True, but is not this undeniable strategic advantage more than compensated by the fact that, in any complication in which Germany may find herself involved, she will always have to put to her military debit the hostility of a warlike nation of thirty-six millions of men, who will ally themselves with any power whatever in the hopes of recovering Alsace? Germany, powerful as she is, has fastened to her feet a terrible ball, which will fetter the freedom of her movements for many a year to come." M. de Laveleye doubts the seizure of Holland by Germany, believes that if England were in serious danger in India she would meet Russia in the West, holds—a very remarkable opinion— that Italy is of all States the one least exposed to the danger of war if she keeps quiet, and propounds some most original views as to the German interest in reconstituting Poland, and as to the possibility of Sweden becoming aggressive. We question his view as to Poland, believing that he has left out of sight the German feeling that Poland is uncivilised, and as to Sweden, thinking he has been misled by history. Modern Sweden might become in a life-and-death struggle a point d'appui for England in the Baltic, but nations with five millions of people scattered over enormous territories can scarcely in our day become aggressive, whatever the apparent temptation. The whole article is thoroughly worth reading, and the sentences about the gain Europe might acquire from a federal union, or even a close alliance between Belgium and Holland, will provoke much thinking. Only, can an Ultramontane State and a Protestant State work cordially and persistently together in a league designed mainly to secure a common foreign policy ? Supposing the league to exist now, could Holland and Belgium "pull together " as regards Italy, or any one of the hundred questions on which the Papacy thinks its policy must be non-national ?

The Contemporary is, perhaps, a little too heavy, despite some striking bits from Herbert Spencer, better, we think, when taken as separate thoughts than as divisions of his argument. His description of the two religions we all learn, the religion of amity on Sundays and the religion of enmity on week-days, is very clever ; as is also his savagely satirical attack on English a.dini- ration for courage, that virtue which the "Tasmanian devil" possesses in the highest degree ; while this attack on Altruism, or the unregulated doctrine of brotherhood or self-sacrifice, deserves perhaps a higher epithet :-

"If he had the courage to think out clearly what he vaguely per- ceives, he would discover that self-sacrifice passing a certain limit entails evil on all,—evil on those for whom sacrifice is made as well as on those who make it. While a continual giving-up of pleasures and continual submission to pains is physically injurious, so that its final outcome is debility, disease, and abridgment of life ; the continual acceptance of benefits at the expense of a fellow-being is morally in- jurious. Just as much as unselfishness is cultivated by the one, selfish- ness is cultivated by the other. If to surrender &gratification to another is noble, readiness to accept the gratification so surrendered is ignoble ; and it repetition of the one kind of act is elevating, repetition of the other kind of act is degrading. So that though up to a certain point altruistic action blesses giver and receiver, beyond that point it curses giver and receiver—physically deteriorates the one and morally deteriorates the other. Everyone can remember cases where greedi- ness for pleasures, reluctance to take trouble, and utter disregard of those around, have been perpetually increased by unmeasured and ever- ready kindnesses ; while the unwise benefactor has shown by languid movements and pale face tho debility consequent on disregard of self; the outcome of the policy being destruction of the worthy in making worse the unworthy."

We do not know that we thoroughly appreciate such excessive impartiality as Mr. Bayne tries to display in his paper on Crom- well, for after all, we can never be absolutely impartial about anybody while be is a living figure to us; but we rather enjoy the Duke of Argyll's neat, pedagogic, and nearly unanswer- able "smash-up" of Mr. Knight's recent paper on "Prayer." We do not mean that Mr. Knight is smashed, for we are more perplexed than the Duke to see clearly what his exact position is, bat certainly the form in which he has expressed it is. A man does not argue the better for being a Duke, rather the worse, for he does not in his own heart expect such hard hitting, but it is pleasant to find a Duke striking out like this. Mr. Knight's first proposition is :—

" 'Prayer is a power which is removed altogether from the sphere of physical causation' (p. 183): The difficulty in accepting this proposi- tion is that we are wholly ignorant how much the sphere of physical causation' may include. If there be indeed two 'spheres' absolutely separate—the physical and the spiritual—they are in such inseparable contact, in (for example) our own organism, that we cannot in the least tell where the one begins and the other ends. Many men are now in tho constant habit of talking of Thought as a 'cerebration,' and they seem to regard this language of essential to a correct understanding of what Thought is. There can, therefore, be no practical value in a de- finition which assumes an absolute separation where none such pro- bably exists; where certainly none such can be proved ; and the linos of which, oven if it existed, cannot, confessedly, be traced. Strange to say, Mr. Knight's third proposition admits this:—' That the spiritual and physical forces are inter-related and reciprocal' (p. 183): If this be true, it does not seem quite easy to understand how the one is a sphere open to prayer, and the other is a sphere to which prayer is inherently inapplicable.'"

There is nothing new in that paragraph, but then there is no answer to it, and it disposes of one of the most frequent and most tiresome of all the objections to prayer, the rigid limit the ob- jectors are usually disposed to place upon the action of spiritual forces, as if they could by possibility have no physical result,—as if terror, for example, did not affect the pulse, or Will modify the power of the muscles.

There is nothing in Macmillan quite so good as Mr. Lecky's paper of last month, which we forgot to notice at the time, and which was by far the beat answer to Mr. Fronde that has yet appeared ; but Mr. Spalding's paper on "Instinct," criticised last week, is a most valuable contribution to its history ; there is a curiously subtle suggestion of character in the otherwise slight story called "Passages in the Life of a Bachelor ;" and a most interesting close to the biography of Mims Sylvius Piccolomiai, Pius II., the most thorough "Italian" perhaps who ever sat upon the Papal throne, an astute intriguer, who was yet frank and even honest, deeming as he did that a man's opinions should be modified or even made by the conditions amid which he was placed :—" To me, "Eneas Sylvius seems consistent throughout. He is a culti- vated man, adapting himself gracefully to his surroundings ; his opinions, both moral and religious, develop themselves spontane- ously, so as to accord with the position which his talents are winning for him —a position which is day by day rising higher and higher, and so making greater demands upon his better nature, and free- ing him more and more from the lower requirements of self-interest." lEneas was the last Pope who conceived the idea of a Crusade, and as this writer affirms, from somewhat morephilosophical ideas than his predecessors :—" The Turks had conquered ; but by gaining s place in Europe they might become amenable to European ideas. Pius did not understand Islam and its strength ; he did not appre- ciate—how could he ?—the difference between the fiery Turks who had captured Constantinople, and the Teutons who of old had broken up the Empire of the West. He still thought there was a chance that the Papacy might repeat its bloodless triumphs of the eighth century, and that the barbarians of the East might be per- suaded, or overawed, to bow before the dignity of the Roman Pon- tiff." To this idea Pins II. made himself a kind of martyr, rousing kings, rousing the people, and finally declaring that he would himself head the enterprise. He actually went to Ancona for this purpose, only to find that he was behind the age, that the Kings would not follow him, that the rabble was useless, and that the Crusades were at an end. He died partly of fatigue and partly of mortification, and died as he lived, a cultured, kindly man, with human failings and human vices, but always a cry in his heart for the higher life, which he could always understand :—

" As it was, however, the bedridden Pope lived three weeks at Ancona, sinking gradually, and preparing for his end ; his last hours show us the same strange confusion of littleness and grandeur, of simplicity and affectation, of selfishness and goodness which marks his entire life. After crying like a child over the thought that when he was gone there would be no one to look after his nephews—for he knew too well the fate of Papal favourites—he died with his arm round the neck of his friend, the Cardinal of Pavia, and his last words were, 'Do good, my son, and pray God for me."

Mr. Creighton takes rather too low a view of his character, omitting, as we think, a certain enthusiasm for duty as he under- stood it which was extremely rare in the epoch of the Renaissance, but he has produced a very charming biographical essay.

There is a striking paper in the Dublin University Magazine upon the intellectual capacity of General Grant, a really good defence of him, which we recommend to politicians ; and a good paper in Blackwood on the Sauget Ryot, written, however, by a man who does not enter much into the peasant's interior life ; and "The New Reformer," which in the last two numbers has been a little too full of what we may call an indigestible Liebig's extract of Army Reform —too nutritious to be very amusing —becomes lively and even brilliant again. The sketch of the sup-

posed crisis due to Von Ueberlisten's haughty recommendation to our Ambassador, that England should mind her own business, and not trouble herself with European arrangements which .do not concern her, and of the coalition ministry under the Duke of Ulster, which is formed as a result of that menace, is exceedingly skilful ; nor can we withhold our sympathy from that great statesman, not only for the wreck of his hopes that he might be permitted in his retirement to complete his work on "the Calculus of the Unthinkable," but for the very unmanageable coalition team he has taken in hand, whereof we suspect Mr. West, the "true reformer," will prove one of the least tractable. That very lively paper The Over- seer had evidently formed too sanguine an estimate, if not of Mr. West's abilities, at least of his temper and capacity for obtaining as- cendancy over the minds of colleagues. Mr. West is too vain and too incapable of self-oblivion to manage a very manageable wife,—much less a Cabinet of lively susceptibilities. We cannot admire the political articles in Blackwood, which seem to us weakened by a *sort of undiscriminating rage ; but as a bit of viciousness, this attack on the Spectator for defending Mr. Gladstone is very clever indeed :— " Feeling probably that an unpleasant ordeal may be before the Ministry, one of their friends, by way of showing that attacks when 'they come must be simply the outbreak of bitter personal animosity, discusses the question why Mr. Gladstone is hated. There is a little delicate compliment too in this, because a man, to earn hatred, must have something determined and lofty in his character. People do not waste hatred on amiable, peaceful, fickle whining beings, who claim 'kindred with plebeians, and prate about universal good-will. To our knowledge, Mr. Gladstone has never attained to the dignity of being hated, except by the Whigs. For ourselves, we do not think a bit more severely of the Prime Minister than we have thought for years past. We said that he would prove a failure, and that he would be proclaimed as such from the house-tops ; and if the Radical Press is to be trusted, the prediction is accomplished. Not a journal or review but has a stone te throw • the shortcomings imputed, if they should be put together in one indictment, would rival the American 'Case ;' but after all, the up- shot is that this brilliant Minister is regarded with universal dissatis- faction, and thought, by Radicals as well as by Conservatives, incapable .of governing the country. As to hatred, it is a weak device of some backer of his, to make people suppose there is something positive in his • character. Nobody wants to injure Mr. Gladstone, although every one desires that he may not injure the nation—feeling much as the Irish- man did after firing into a covey of partridges= No miss at all ; the divil a miss • what would I be killin' the poor craturs for? I made them get out of that, though, and that's what I wanted.' Lot Mr. Gladstone but get out of that, and although he will be censured to the end of his days for the mischief that he has done, he may con his Homer or his Bracllaugh in the assurance that no vengeance will follow him to his retreat. We little thought that it would ever be our part to step in between the Premier and the fangs of his own hounds ; but odd things happen now and then."

All that about one of the haughtiest and most determined poli- ticians in Europe, who, with a faculty for making himself hated and three-fourths of the Press disinclined to him, still keeps him- tell steadily at the top.

The Cornhill has little padding except an account of Theophile Gautier, quite admirable in its intellectual fairness and insight ; and a vigorous sketch of our sea novelists, in which justice is done tor the first time that we remember to Cooper's sketch of Long Tom Coffin, the ideal whaler, and to Smollett's extraordinary power of describing ship life as it once went on inside the cabins, but the writer surely makes a mistake in his account of Michael Scott, the one man of high poetic genius who has ever written sea novels. Are we under a mere delusion in saying that this extraordinary man, who might, but for the absence of some sense of melody, have lived for ever as a poet, wrote the "Cruise of the Midge" as well as "Torn Cringle's Log "? If he did not, Blackwood picked up two men who could describe tropical scenery as only poets can, who could pour out original characters like sprats from a bucket, and leave them there on the ground, uncared for, and who could make yacht life seem more attractive, to men as well as boys, than any other kind of existence. There may have been two of them, but repetitions are very rare in literature.

Fraser, but for one article, would be rather poor. "A. K. H. B.," in his "suggestions towards making better of it," is at his very worst,—that is, he is more sententious than Tupper and more common-place than anybody ever was. The account of Joe Smith is hackneyed, and the " Brambleberries " should be relegated to their proper place, the poetic column of a country newpaper. Will the editor parse these lines ?— " They are my friends Who are most mine,

And I most theirs, When common cares Give room to thoughts poetic and divine, And in a psalm of love all nature blends."

Or give rhythm to these?— " If he draw you aside from your proper end, v..: No enemy like a bosom friend."

Or defend the rhyme in these ?— " We only touch by surfaces ; But Spirit is the core of these."

Mr. Graham's account, however, of the Dominion of Canada is

most excellent, and we only wish we had room for his sketch of one of our forgotten great men, Lord Selkirk, the man who built up the power and devised the system of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany, the solitary organisation in the world which has ever been thoroughly successful and thoroughly humane in its treatment of Red Indians.