CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Victoria Magazine.—The first number of this new shilling magazine, issued by Miss Faithfull, has appeared in good time. It is not, as might be expected from the publisher's name, a woman's magazine, and has not in this number one woman among its contribu- tors. The articles are all readable, but the best and most original, Mr. Senior's paper on Egypt, is far too short. Magazines should never be scrappy, and the most self-indulgent of readers would have borne twenty pages of Mr. Senior's acute cross-examination of foreigners in the Pasha's service without flagging or weariness. Mr. Dicey writes an amusing, but sketchy description of social life in the United States, and Mr. Townsend an equally sketchy account of an Englishwoman's career in India. Mr. Hutton contributes a curious analysis of the -"psychology of the mediatized spirits," and decides that while the hypothesis of communication with spirits does not explain the frauds, the hypothesis of fraud does not explain the facts. The inevitable tale is contributed by Mr. T. Trollope, and may be good by and bye; and the only contribution which even in a first number must be condemned is the first. The ode which opens the magazine is simply rubbish.
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