The Cornhill Magazine. Jubilee Number. (Smith, Elder, and Co. ls.)—The
January number of the Cornhill appears in a new white and yellow cover to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its first publication. But the celebration is not merely external, for it contains several delightful articles specially written by dis- tinguished authors to commemorate the occasion. Mr. E. T. Cook has provided an amusing general sketch of the magazine's career, while special accounts of the editorships of Thackeray, Leslie Stephen, and James Payn have been written by Lady Ritchie, Mr. W. E. Norris, and Mr. Stanley Weyman. We begin to realise that their task was not always a pleasant one when we read that the pressure of public opinion forced Thackeray to stop printing Ruskin's "Unto This Last," and forced Stephen to refuse a novel of Mr. Thomas Hardy. There cannot be many men who, while possessing the highest literary powers themselves, would consent to hold a position which involved such an unpleasant ditty as this. But Thaokeray and Stephen did it on these occasions with scarcely a complaint. The Coe-nein was fortunate, too, in having the aasistance at the critical moment of Thackeray's resignation of Mr. Greenwood (of whose death we learn with regret at the moment of our going to press) whose services are perhaps hardly enough recog- nised in this jubilee number. No special article, however, was required to commemorate Mr. George Smith, for his name must appear as the greatest support of the whole magazine, and of every editor in turn. The many brilliant essays and poems which the present number contains, in addition to these extra pages, give every promise of another fifty years scarcely less brilliant than those which have passed.
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