THE MAGAZINES.

THE extraordinary inequalities sometimes visible between dif- ferent numbers of the same magazine has always been a puzzle to us, but it is explicable, compared with the tendency of all maga- zines for any particular month to rise or sink above an average level. If their conductors were dependent on events, as journalists are, that would be natural ; but they are not, and yet it is the rarest thing to find one magazine singularly good or bad when its rivals are neither, or very dull when many of the others are brilliant. A kind of uniformity of tone sometimes pervades the whole ephemeral literature of a month which, considering the num- ber of pens employed and the variety of subjects selected, suggests some impossible theory of mental contagion. This month, for example, the magazines are at their average level. There is nothing very striking in any one of them, unless, indeed, the strange paper called " The Confessions of an English Chloral-eater" in Belgravia, of all places in the world, is the re- cord of a genuine experience, and there is nothing conspicuously bad. They are filled with good papers, some instructive and many readable, but all just a little dull. The first article in the Contemporary, for instance, an analysis of the Jesuit Father Maim- bourg's opinion upon Infallibility, is extremely good and clear, showing, as it does, how many great Catholic theologians have denied Infallibility ; but then it is upon a subject with which men are getting bored, as they are, with all respect to Mr. Peter Bayne's earnestness and eloquence, with the Cove- nanters, Charles II., and Argyle. Even Mr. Julian Hawthorne grows a little wearisome, his extravagant hatred of the Dresdeners developing this month very little humour, though he writes a savagely instructive account of the grand university amusement, fighting duels, the object of which is to give or to receive a severe face-cut. The following judgment, however, judging by the con- duct of the Saxon troops during the wars of 1866 and 1870, must be due to prejudice rather than to insight, prejudice such as that which induces a Canadian to assert that no American has any physique :— "A crowd of upwards of a hundred students are standing about in knots, discussing the instant fray. They are not a physically noble race ; almost every face is marked with disease latent or developed, and the figures are ill-hung, awkward, or weakly. No other land, perhaps, could show so large an assemblage of young men with so small a leaven of physical manliness. Half of these wear—not the sportive eye-glass- but the sober earnestness of spectacles. There is a fortune for oculists in Saxony ; and I should not wonder if a good part of the current belief in the national learning might be traced to the sage and studious aspect bestowed by these semi-universal spectacles. As a matter of fact, how- ever, their genesis is from bad diet, and perhaps from some quality in the atmosphere. Most foreigners who have lived long in Saxony will have found their eyesight more or less impaired."

7---Lord Pembroke gives us a paper of some interest, not, indeed, for its thought, which is old and thin, but for its description of a state of mind common among the rich. He says :—

" They would do the right thing, many of them, if they could be sure what the right thing is; they would devote their lives to doing good $o others, if they could be sure that they really were doing good. But they cannot, and so drift on unsatisfactorily enough, without any con- sistent principle or fixed purpose in living; satisfying their benevolent impulses by mere intermittent whims, supported and justified only by religious doctrines and arguments that they daily question and ignore ; satisfying their luxurious and stingy impulses by whims (generally, I fear, less intermittent), justified and supported only by a so-called Political Economy, that they would shrink from a thorough-going Acceptance of; with no much better guide in life than to be rather ,like each other, a course that reminds the observer of nothing so much as a crowd of blind men holding on to each other, under the impression that by so doing they will be led in the safest direction. They cannot feel thoroughly sure whether charity is right or wrong, they cannot feel thoroughly sure whether luxury is right or wrong ; and cannot, above all, put a limit to either of them. They do not even know, thoroughly, whether energy and earnestness are really of any use. A deplorable picture, truly I but many will testify to the truth of it, even some from the restless activity of whose life no one would guess the presence of such maddening and disheartening uncertainty. Many a young life, full of lofty aspirations and bright promise, is dragged down into selfishness and indifference ; many a man, full of great powers, has lived and died almost useless from its chilling, enervating influence. Almost every one has suffered from it more or less, at one time or another."

He believes that the causes of this condition of mind are, firstly, the growing belief in fatalism, or rather in the hopelessness of any solution to the puzzle of the universe ; secondly, the increasing readinessto ask Cui bono ?human power being so slight ; and thirdly, the awe-inspiring feeling, which science tends to deepen, that man's work and being bear only a microscopic relation to the uni- -verse. This, Lord Pembroke thinks, will cure itself, for "when man realises that he cannot remove mountains he will set to work on molehills," but his only panacea for the others is work ; do the little good you find to do, and believe that too grand speculation must be futile, because we cannot know enough of the conditions. That is not a gospel which will do much good. A few will be benevolent, as Lord Pembroke advises, and as we perceive he him- -self is tilting to be, but the remainder will say, "As I do not know ,tether-the terminus, or the road, or the object of my railway travel,

I shall take the softest seat, keep up the window or down as I choose, and snooze the time away." People who need not work will often enough work hard, but let Lord Pembroke try an hour's digging in the dark. He might as well turn crank. The truth is, that he is convinced that alleviating human misery must be good somehow, and that, though a thin streak of light, still is a ruahlight which makes work possible. Only in using it he should remember that he is practically denying the truth of the doctrine of Fate.

The Fortnightly is full of good papers, though they will none of them be specially attractive to the general reader, who will scarcely even understand Mr. Clifford's elaborate, though easily written discussion on "The First and the Last Catastrophe,"—an effort to show that, although we can in no way time the beginning of the universe, we have much evidence to showthat the world began to solidify between one and two hundred of millions of years ago, and that though we can say nothing as to the end of the universe, the end of this earth, and with it of consciousness upon the earth, is as probable as science can make anything. He will certainly not be tempted to patient reading by the gloomy con- clusion that study of the origin and probable destiny of the universe is useless, because we have from a scientific point of view no data whatever to go upon :— "In any case, all we know is that the sun is going out. If we fall into the sun then we shall be fried; if we go away from the sun, or the sun goes out, then we shall be frozen. So that, so far as the earth is concerned, we have no means of determining what will be the character of the end, but we know that one of these two things must take place in time. But in regard to the whole universe, if we were to travel forward as we have travelled backward in time, consider things as falling together, we should come finally to a great central mass, all in one piece, which would send out waves of heat through a perfectly empty ether, and gradually cool itself down. As this mass got cool, it would be deprived of all life or motion ; it would be just a mere enormous frozen block in the middle of the ether. But that conclusion, which is like the one that we discussed about the beginning of the world, is one which we have no right whatever to rest upon. It depends upon the same assumption that the laws of geometry and mechanics are exactly and absolutely true ; and that they have continued exactly and absolutely true for ever and ever."

It is curious to see a professor of pure science, who will believe nothing but what can be proved, declaring speculation as useless as the most bigoted believer. Thought is useless about the universe, writes Ali Tade to Mr. Layard, because God rules :-- "Listen, oh my son I There is no wisdom equal unto the belief in God. He created the world ; and shall we liken ourselves to

in seeking to penetrate the mysteries of His creation? Shall we say, 'Behold this star spinneth round that star, and this other star with a tail cometh and goeth in so many years? Let it go r He from whose hand it came will direct and guide it." Thought about the universe, writes Mr. Clifford, is useless, because science alone can guide us; and as the laws of mechanics and geometry are not absolute, science can give us no help whatever. Mr. Morley continues, but does not conclude his sketch of Diderot, a really remarkable instance in biography of an author understanding a man with whom he has the sympathy neither of love nor hate ; and Mr. W. H. Roberts gives us a most striking account of the effect of the Poor Law in demoralising the agricultural labourer. He declares, and to a great extent proves, that the Poor Law has had a most potent effect in keeping down the wages of the farm- labourer, in destroying his self-reliance and independence of character, in training him in the use of subterfuge and deceit, and in deadening to an appalling extent his natural affections. That labourers should claim an allowance for " nursing " sick parents is perhaps natural enough, as they think the money their right, but they often, when refused the money, send them to "the house," regarding the parish as an enemy, who otherwise would get the better of them,—and there are stronger instances than these :—

" The poor children will be brought to the workhouse by the grand- mother, who will declare before their faces, and amidst their tears and sobs, that ' she can't keep 'em, nor won't,' and that she will leave them there. In a recent case of this kind, a very pretty and interesting little girl was brought before a Board of Guardians by an elderly woman, very tidily dressed, and looking very comfortable. The child, she said, was one of four belonging to her only son, lately dead. The widow was trying to maintain the other three, but this one had been with her grand-parents since her father's death. The woman admitted that her husband was a carter earning good wages, and that they had no other child or encumbrance; indeed, it was evident from the appearance of both that they were very comfortably off. What more natural than that this solitary old couple should have taken the little orphan to their hearts, and cherished her during the few years she would have required their help ? But no ; they had got hold of the notion that the parish ought to keep her, and neither persuasion nor reproach, nothing in short but the strong arm of the law, could

make them do that which, under the circumstance; was not only a duty,-but should have been a delight."

-Mr. Lepel Griffin defends the examinations for the Civil Service against the charge of failure as an intellectual test, bait admits that some change should be introduced to ensttre the candidates knowing something of the world, and men, and marrnem. It is, he says, not in the selection of candi- dates, but in the training of selected candidates that the system fails; and suggests that residence in a university should be obligatory.—Mr. Corrance gives us an extremely adroit paper on "Tenant-right," intended to show farmers that a tenant- right law will really benefit only the rich among them, and that they will obtain more from custom when it has solidified itself than an Act of Parliament can give them, hoping thus, we fancy, to throw an apple of discord into their ranks ; and Mr. J. C. Morison a high, but critical appreciation of Mr. Pattison's "Isaac Casaubon." It is difficult to make extracts from such a production, but we seldom remember to have read a more delicate bit of complimen- tary criticism by a reviewer who, while so appreciative of his author, still hits the blot in his work thus

"The subject chesen seemtt to me an ungrateful one, and unworthy of Mr. Pattison's powers and labour. The lives of students are proverbially dull, and from the nature of the case, they must be so in proportion as they were successful students. But Casaubon is dull even in his own -class. The worthy man was so amply provided with the quieter virtues, he was so meek not to say tame in spirit, so pious, so painful with his constant groan over time lost through gossiping friends (I believe he Was a gossip; and deplored it as Johnson did his fondness for lying in -bed), that it is impossible to take any vivid interest in him. He had net a single vice or exaggerated virtue to give piquancy to his career. He had not even a splenetic temper to give him pungency like Scaliger and Bentley, and add to all this, he was, as Mr. Pattison admits, defi- cient in original genius. Hence the choice seems to me not a happy one for a writer like-Mr. Pattison. But he may justly retort that that

busthestrof mine, that he felt drawn to the life of Casanbon, and that it is impertinent in a reviewer to find fault with his choice."

The political writer in Blackwood gives us his usual supply of writing, made weaker in style than usual by the absence of any one in power to vituperate, but stronger in meaning by the unusual presence of a distinctive thought. He says that Mr. Gladstone's Government, which assailed almost all institutions, spared two, the Bench of Judges and the House of Commons—a blunder, for Mr. Gladstone never could bear to pay new Judges properly—and the new constituency, called into being, let us not forget, by the Conservative leader; appears inclined to attack both. The elec- tion of Dr. Kenealy by Stoke-upon-Trent was a declaration of want of confidence in the Court of Queen's Bench, and showed, as the writer says, and as we have always' argued, that the ballot is, as regards the voters, " a demoralising agency," and there is a possible doubt whether the constituency trusts the House of Com- mons. The writer is indebted to Mr. Disraeli for his epigram, but there is a thought to be considered in this sentence :—

"The depositary of power, it was once observed in a celebrated political novel, in this country, is always unpopular, and eventually falls. The House of Commons has erected a splendid dominion, and wielded it with wonderful success, but no one knows if it is fixed in the affection of the newly-enfranchised masses. They know and appreciate the distinction between a Throne and a Republic, and there have been various indications that they are Royalists in their tendencies, and consider the power of the Crown as unduly in abeyance. However this may be, those who, like ourselves, are attached to Parliamentary insti- tutions and form of government, may well attend to the relation between the House of Commons and the masses."

Why does Blackwood think the power taken from the Com- mons may be transferred back to the Throne ? Is it not at least as likely to be transferred to demagogues far more destruc- tive than those men to whom the title has hitherto been assigned? —The author of the papers " ln a Studio " has rather weak- ened his own force by adopting the dialogue form, which he can- not manage, his interlocutors talking like over-solemn essayists ; but his information is well put and worth remembering. He asserts that the moderns who are showing such extravagant taste for art have by no means reached the appreciativeness of the ancients. Zeuxis grew so rich that he refused to sell more pic-' tures, and gave them away to cities ; and Nicias declined an offer from Attains of £15,000 for a single picture. Apelles received £5,000 for a portrait of Alexander, and gave £12,500 for each picture Protogenes had in his studio. Julius Czesar gave £20,000 for two pictures of single figures, one Ajax and the other Medea ; and M. Agrippa paid to the municipality of Cyzicus £10,600 for two more. Lucius Mummius refused £52,000 for a picture of " Father Bacchus" which he had seized in Greece, and Tiberius gave 60,000 sestertia, or nearly half-a-million, for a picture by Parrhasius. Cicero argued that Verres had compelled Heim, a rich Sicilian, to part with a little bronze Cupid by Praxi- teles because Verres bought it for only 21,063 ; and Nicomedes' offered to pay off the public debt of Cnidtux—" good aid ingeng," says Pliny—if the citizens would give him Praxiteles's statue of Venus in return, and was refused, because it was the glory of the city. " But- what shall we say of Lollia Paulina, the rival of Agrippina, whose dresses alone were valued at £382,916 ? " Nero gave nine- teen millions in presents only—rather more than Louis Quatorze spent upon Versailles—and " There was Pallas, the curled darling and lover of Agrippina; who was enormously rich, and to whom Juvenal alludes as a type of wealthy men, in the line, Ego possideo plus Pallanto et Licinio.' He left a handsome estate in land—I speak only of land now—of some £2,921,875. Then there was Seneca, the philosopher and moralist, who always preached the virtues of poverty and self-denial, and professed the virtues of Stoicism, who left about the same amount, given to him in great part, I suppose, by Nero ; and Lentulus, whose real estate amounted to about £3,229,166; and Isodoros. who disposed by will of 416 slaves, 3,660 yoke of oxen, and 257,000 other cattle. These were all fairly well off, one might say ; but apparently Marcus &auras was superior to them all in wealth."

These fortunes are perfectly possible, if we recollect that the wealth of a plundered world was in the hands of a few Roman nobles ; but it must be remembered that in those days all statistics were more or less inaccurate, that even now a popular estimate of a man's wealth is often ludicrously exaggerated, and that a Roman household consisting of slaves, and food to a Roman noble costing scarcely anything, his surplus could all be devoted to the competition of luxury. The writer is to continue, and should begin by a rather more exhaustive statement of the value and purchasing power of the coins in which the ancients described wealth.

We have discussed elsewhere the most readable of the papers in the Cornhell, that on "The Cost of Living," but there is a good essay on "Luca Signorelli," a painter scarcely known in England ; a most thoughtful and pleasant one on the Greek idea of Helen of Troy, the diamond-hearted woman cursed or blessed, as was Mary Stuart afterwards, with Aphrodite's spell, the spell of fascination for men for whom she herself could scarcely care ; and a most entertaining, though scarcely just, biography of Hazlitt. There is insight in the writer's account of Hazlitt's peculiar temper, his intense or overweening sense of his own individuality, his innate, though peculiar sensuality, and his capacity of hatred, but we think he underrates his intellectual power. Hazlitt was a critic of the first order, so great that a man like Scott overpowers his hatreds, and compels him, in spite alike of his prejudices and his theories, to be just. The judgment that " whenever Ilazlitt writes from his own mind he writes what is well worth reading" is sound, but is perhaps a little less than Hazlitt's due in his oven department of art. When judging living persons " Hazlitt sees through coloured glasses, but his vision is not the less penetrating" :—

"If he darkens the shades, and here and there exaggerates an un- gainly feature, we still know that the shade exists and that the feature is not symmetrical. De Quincey reports the saying of some admiring friend of Hazlitt, who confessed to a shudder whenever Hazlitt used his habitual gesture of placing his hand within his waistcoat. The hand might emerge armed with a dagger. Whenever, said the same friend

(Heaven preserve us from our friends!), Hazlitt been distracted for a moment from the general conversation, he looked round with a mingled air of suspicion and defiance, as though some objectionable phrase might have evaded his censure in the interval. The traits recur to us when we read Hazlitt's descriptions of the men he had known."

He was happiest, though most bitter, upon his own early friends

" Brooding over his injuries and his desertions, Hazlitt has pondered almost with the eagerness of a lover upon the qualities of his intimates. Suspicion. unjust it may be, has given keenness to his investigation. He has interpreted in his own fashion every mood and gesture. He has watched his friends as a courtier watches a royal favourite. He has stored in his memory, as we fancy, the good retorts which his shy- ness or unreadiness smothered at the propitious moment, and brings them out in the shape of a personal description. When such a man sits at our tables, silent and apparently self-absorbed, and yet shrewd and sensitive, we may well be afraid of the dagger, though it may not be drawn till after our death, and may write memoirs instead of piercing flesh. And yet Hazlitt is no mean assassin of reputations."

Macmillan has a capital bit of padding, the "Tercentenary Festival at Leyden," by J. P. Mahaffy, which will revive all it readers' interest in the half-forgotten University which still num- bers 800 students, and some of the greatest names in Europe among its Professors :— "It should be noted concerning the students that, as their culture is superior to that of English and Irish students, so their habits and ways seemed not inferior to the average Oxford or Cambridge men. The Dutch are not the least like the average German student—untidy, poor, and duelling ; and even where the German students are gentlemanly and refined, as many are at Gottingen, there always remains the bar- barism of the duel. The Dutch are far above this level. They have private means. They are even accused of extravagance. They live in handsome lodgings, with good appointments. They have good wine

and good cigars for their friends. They do not give their enemies the satisfaction of hacking their faces. Their conduct all through the feast, as stewards, as spectators, as audiences, was most exemplary. At the solemn giving of degrees there was no approach to the disgrace- ful scenes which have often been the opprobrium of Oxford and Dublin. They were hospitable, generous, and enthusiastic ; and always gentlemen. There are now nearly 800 of them, residing for four years at least. They pay from £10 to f20 in fees, and if not preparing for any special profession, consider law the best general training. Thus about two- thirds of them appear to be law students."

Nothing in Fraser this month is of striking merit, but there are several papers in it of interest, and the number is, on the whole, quite up to the average. Mr. Carlyle gives us a paper on the portraits of John Knox, which is really a condensed biography of the Scottish Reformer, but does not modify seriously the usual English view of his character as a great and self-sacrificing and successful but narrow ideologue, a Hebrew prophet, as Carlyle calls him, with the deep devoutness of the Hebrew, and also with much of his inner sternness and capacity of hate for all he deemed offensive to the Lord. Mr. Carlyle decides, mainly on internal evidence, in favour of a portrait of Knox which belonged to the Barons Somerville, and which he believes, in common with some great experts, to be a copy of a picture by Porbus, the original of which may be in existence. The portrait as given in this engraving differs from all others in a certain appearance of reflective intellect in the upper part of the head, in a broader roll of the under-lip, which is, however, in all portraits slightly thick and protruded, and in a certain indefinable expression which suggests the ecclesiastic rather than the warrior. The face is as stern as any other portrait of Knox, but it is far more reflective, and admits of the possibility of that trace of humour in the character which Mr. Carlyle always maintains to have existed there. The evidence, as we have said, is very incom- plete, except as to the authorship of the picture, but it will probably lead to a strict search for the original, which, we suggest, should be sought out of Scotland, in any place where the thirteenth Baron Somerville can be ascertained to have been.— A paper on "Tetuan," not in itself very fresh, contains a suggestive paragraph on a singularly secluded tribe of Jews in Morocco, who believe they settled there before the Captivity, and maintain a semi-independence in the mountains of the Atlas :— " The members of the first division claim to bo descended from some of the Jewish nation who, they say, left Palestine and migrated to the Barbary States before the Babylonian captivity. They reside in the Atlas mountains, and always attach themselves for protection to some Berber tribe, the language of which people they speak ; they are per- mitted to bear arms, and are naturally more independent than the Hebrews of the plains, whom they affect to despise. Very meagre and untrustworthy are the accounts generally received of the Atlas Jews, as they never visit the low country, and communication with them is both difficult and hazardous ; it is a fact, however, that a city inhabited by this race exists, either in the distant recesses of the Atlas, or be- tween that range and the Sahara desert. The descriptions given of it are very vague, and even a fair approximation to the locality cannot be indicated. '

Is the evidence for the existence of such a city any stronger than the evidence for the existence of an independent Aztec city some- where in the mountains south of Mexico ?—There is a sound paper on Recruiting, which, however, recommends the ballot for the Militia, and will therefore not be listened to till the country feels itself in danger ; and a précis of some of the secret papers of the Second Empire, from which we take the following telegrams, which show the utter disorganisation and helplessness into which the French Army had been allowed to fall

"Here are a few selected ones. From Persigny to the Emperor on the declaration of war :=Accept my warmest congratulations. The whole of France will follow you. The enthusiasm is universal.' From the Emperor, at Metz, August 1 :—' The Empress is not entitled to ap- point Generals for the Army. That of General Grandchamp must be cancelled.' From the Empress on August 7 :—' I am much pleased with the resolutions of the Ministry. I am convinced that we shall send the Prussians across, tepee dans les reins.' Filen to Duperre, September 4: The Empress wishes you to pay no attention to orders from Bouillon. The Emperor cannot understand the real state of things.' One General telegraphs from Bitche No money in the public chest.' At Metz, neither sugar nor rice, nor coffee nor rice.' 'They are sending us enormous packages of maps which are utterly useless—not a single map,' &c. Another General :—' Just arrived at Belfort. Can't find my brigade, nor a general of division. What am I to do? Don't know where my regiments are." Of the 800 artillery collars at St. Omer, I find 500 are too small. What is to be done?' One of the Commissariat at Chalons Just received from the Army of the Rhine a requisition for 400,000 rations of biscuits and supplies. I have not a single ration of any kind, except coffee and sugar."