THE MAGAZINES.

WE have noticed elsewhere the first article in the Nineteenth Century, the " Protest " against competitive examinations. Lord Armstrong's protest against the " Cry for useless know- ledge" is quite as interesting. Speaking from his immense experience as head of a factory employing thirteen thousand. hands, the great gun-maker gives a strong opinion against scientific technical education, unless it is intended for the improvement of the children themselves. They will not, he believes, be the better artisans for it. At Elswick, his ex- perience has been that although excellent scientific and prac- tical teaching is provided almost gratis, only about 350 men and boys avail themselves of it, and-

" About two-thirds are journeymen and apprentices employed in the works. The remainder are employed elsewhere, and not un- frequently leave mechanical work and become teachers in schools or obtain employment in some other capacities where literary or scientific tastes can be gratified. I cannot very confidently say that those who continue their mechanical employment become as a rule more skilful workmen in consequence of the scientific in- struction they have received ; but when they possess the qualities -necqqaory to make good foremen their acquirements in practical science naturally contribute to their being advanced to such posts, and in some cases they work themselves up to much more im- portant positions. They are generally men of ability and good conduct, which favours their advance more than their superior education. As to the advantage resulting to the Company from this scientific teaching, it improves the class of persons from whom selections are often made to fill vacancies in positions above those of ordinary workmen ; but it would be absurd to say that the suc- cessful competition of the Company with foreign manufacturers is in any degree due to the educational measures it has taken."

Lord Armstrong maintains that we are not being beaten by foreigners except in dyeing, and attributes that to the failure of the great English dyers to avail themselves of the highest chemical ability. Lord Armstrong incidentally

mentions the very striking fact that there are in London alone four thousand industries separate enough to be mentioned in

the Post Office Directory, and asks if there is to be technical education for them all. It is a good paper on the unpopular .side, but does not convince us. It assumes that education prevents or impairs the " practical " training which Lord Armstrong very justly values so highly. Why does it P —Mr. Prothero's paper on Frederick III. is a succinct statement of the case for Sir Morell Mackenzie.—Baron

Ferdinand de Rothschild sends a readable account of the Comte de Brienne, who in 1651, at sixteen, kissed the hands of Anne of Austria as Assistant-Secretary of State. He had inherited the appointment. He worked under

Louis XIV., and enjoyed his confidence till 1663, when he suddenly fell into disgrace, was kept in a light imprisonment in St. Lazare for eighteen years, and lived ever after, till his death in 1698, in strict retirement. He amused himself by composing his memoirs, which are to this day valued for the light they throw upon the reign. It is possible that the disgrace was just, though more probable that De Brienne ventured to rival his Sovereign in a love-affair ; but his account of the King in his earlier years is uniformly favour- .able. Those years, in Baron Ferdinand's opinion, are too

-often forgotten by those who think of Louis XIV. only as the tyrant he afterwards became. We wish he would explain one -great mystery in French history. Why did the great nobles of France, who had been fighting their Kings all through history, suddenly develop that extravagant loyalty towards them ? Was it all self-interest, or was there not also a rise of a new, and in its way great idea,—that of what we now call Legitimacy P—Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, in an in-

teresting paper on " Public Buildings in London," makes a suggestion which may be valuable. He would enlarge Westminster Abbey for monumental purposes by building "on the site of the houses on the north side of Old Palace Yard, fronting the House of Lords, and those in Poet's Corner," a Victoria Chapel, 200 ft. by 90 ft. It would com- municate with the Abbey by a cloister under the buttresses of the Chapter House, and would supply us with a Pantheon for .some generations. The expense would be considerable ; but there is, it appears, a fractional surplus of £120,000 to arise from the Coal Dues of 1889, which legally belongs to nobody, and which might be appropriated by Act to the extension of the Abbey.—Mr. Montague Crackenthorpe pleads strongly for the fusion of the Unionists with the Progressive Con- servatives, but he suggests no reason for hurry. He may

be right in saying that the Unionists will be stranded when the Irish Question is settled ; but when will that be ? It may take three more Parliaments at least, too long a time to plan

for, at least in a democratic age. There should be a little patience among thinkers, as well as statesmen.—Mr. Rees thinks German conduct, English conduct, and American con- -duct almost equally bad in Samoa ; but though his paper is

full of knowledge, he does not discern the true propor- tions of things. A great policy cannot be laid aside because 'Germany is rough and America vacillating in Samoa. We -should like, too, to hear the German side of the matter.—

The Rev. S. A. Barnett suggests that an agricultural training farm might find work for " the unemployed," and no doubt it might for a few of them ; but is it work they would like to do P If it is not, how are we to make them do it ? If they are to be bribed on to such farms, the experiment, though worth trying, would be a costly one.—The number ends with an article from Mr. Gladstone, in which he expresses and justifies the view

that the Anglican Church was built, in the main, by Queen Elizabeth out of the resources of her own mind, with little help from her people or her clergy, who would have preferred a more Puritan development. The pith of the article is con- tained in the following paragraph:— "In this portion of her work the Queen obtained a substantial though not a complete success. She gave tolerable satisfaction at the time, as is evident, to that large number of her subjects who saw that the independence of the nation was safe in her hands, and who were not given to religious extremes. She adjourned her quarrel with the two organised parties which were actively polemical, until an epoch when her position was consolidated, and she had strength sufficient to encounter each of them in turn. It was beyond her power to bring about a reconciliation between them, or even to prevent the struggle of the opposing elements within the Church itself from eventually arriving at a crisis, two generations later in our history. But the conclusive issue of that crisis in 1661 clearly showed that, so far as public worship was concerned, and altogether apart from any religious question on the merits, she estimated more correctly than either of the dissatisfied sections the sense and tendencies of the nation."

The Contemporary has no article this month of special interest, unless it be Principal Fairbairn's brilliant account of " The Genesis of the Puritan Ideal ;" but all its papers are readable. The best of them, as we have said, is Principal Fairbairn's, the central thought of which is that the Reforma- tion culminated in Calvin, and that it is to his reign in Geneva that we owe Puritanism :- " To understand what Calvin did, we have but to compare Pro- testantism as it was in 1536, when his work begins, with what it was in 1564, the year of his death. In the former it seemed everywhere confronted with dangers insurmountable ; in Ger- many threatened by the jealousies, hesitancies, petty passions, ulterior and meaner ambitions of the princes, threatened by the astute policy and unbroken strength of Charles V., who was but waiting his opportunity to strike ; divided in Switzerland by cantonal factions and racial aversions ; without any foothold in France or the Netherlands; lying under the heavy hand of Henry VIII. in England, whose action grew the more mischievous the more anti-papal it became ; with so few adherents in Scotland that they could be counted on the fingers. In the latter year the influence of Geneva had penetrated Germany, and, even where provoking resistance, had quickened the whole body Protestant ; had converted almost the half of France, and enlisted her noblest sons in the army of reform, with the royal Cond6 and the gallant Coligny at their head; had gone like iron-drops into the blood of the Netherland Churches, and made the heroes that broke the mighty power of Spain ; it had reached England, created the Puritan spirit, the faith that was to determine her political con- stitution, condition her religious development, and create her most fruitful and characteristic colony ; had sent Knox into Scot- land with a theology that was to nurse a brawny race, civilise a people, and with a polity that was to effect the completest and happiest revolution any nation ever experienced. Without Calvin and Geneva, these things would not have been ; and without these things Europe and America would not have been as they are to- day—not so good, so well ordered, or so free."

There is truth in that fine passage, but history writes on it a curious comment. Geneva is the least Puritan of cities, and of all the places Dr. Fairbairn has named, Scotland is the only one in which Calvinism remains a living force. Even there it is probably slowly dying, or undergoing a transmutation which will leave it a very different system. Dr. Fairbairn rather strains words when he says that " Calvinism is Stoicism baptised into Christianity, but renewed and exalted by the baptism." The two systems have points of likeness ; but the secret of Stoicism is pride, producing for its gratifica- tion an intense self-regulating and self-suppressing force, and that of Calvinism is self-abasement before a Deity who is not only absolute, but unbound by his own laws and his own character. The latter has produced magnificent results, yet it has in it essentially this malign quality, that its moving spring is fear. Its defenders protest that they love God; but the love they preach is indistinguishable, at least in the writings of the most fearless among them, from loyalty towards a terrible Sultan.—The account of Hamdi Bey is an interesting one ; but if he reads it, he will not love Mr. Bent. Hamdi Bey, son of Edhem Bey, a renegade Greek who rose to be a Grand Vizier, is Artist-General to the Ottoman Empire, paints all pictures the Sultan wants, keeps all art treasures, and controls all monuments of antiquity. He is high in favour with the Sultan, and uses his influence to keep all foreigners from studying or even seeing any antiquities in Turkey. He desires beyond measure the fame of a discoverer, and locks up everything - he can reach, lest

his discoveries should perchance be anticipated. The effect of this policy is to prevent many peculations, and much de- struction of artistic things, but to paralyse all archaeological investigation. Hamdi Bey is in profession a Mussulman, 'but

he will drink wine, and he has married in succession two French wives, the latter of whom finds life as a Turkish khanum very ennuyant.—Mr. A. Forbes's criticism on the Emperor Frederick's Diary does not strike us as nutritive, but it contains an original view of the Emperor William's character. He is represented as a man who foresaw his course from the first, who intended to build, and did build, the German Empire, and who, being possessed of great insight into character, deliberately chose Bismarck as a man who would force him to overcome the great defect in his own nature,— a certain habit of hesitation arising from a conflict between his immutability of purpose, and a reluctance to use the necessary means. He knew Bismarck would force his hand, and liked him for that reason. That is super-subtle ; but can such a character exist in a very strong man P We should say that the Emperor was a simpler man than the theory suggests, conscious of a certain want of intellectual insight, and choosing his great agent to supply his want.—Dr. R. W. Dale gives his impressions, derived from recent travel, of the character of the Australians. He confirms in a very decided way an opinion we put forward on the occasion of the Aus- tralian centenary. The Australians are a more joyous, more gracious, and happier race than the Americans, a difference which Mr. Dale attributes partly to their history, Australians never having been persecuted ; partly to the strong admixture in them of Scottish and Scoto-Irish blood—surely an odd opinion—and partly to their climate. They are decidedly pleasure-loving, and display in all things a certain large news of spirit. We are convinced that this is true ; but Dr. Dale's further analysis of differences between the Colonies strikes us as a little overdrawn. He finds the people of "Victoria the most energetic ; those of New South Wales most English ; those of South Australia most thoughtful and gentle, not to say languid ; and those of Tasmania quietly resolute. He confirms the idea that life in Tasmania is, or might easily become, more quietly pleasant than life in any other Colony,—that is, if the governing desire is not to make money. Dr. Dale, we are sorry to see, thinks that Australians will yet resort to dark labour, and become aristocrats directing inferior races ; but he admits that on this and most other subjects, opinion about Australia must be speculative. The time has been insufficient for full data.

The first place in the Fortnightly is given to a series of papers by Admirals on " What our Navy Should Be," which will create more impatience than confidence in the public mind. The Admirals want so very much. Admiral of the Fleet Sir Thomas Symonds wants, for example, "300 lieu- tenants, 5,000 more seamen and stokers, 5,000 marines ; 20 sea-going battle-ships of high freeboard, equal to blockade in all weathers ; 60 cruisers of high speed and good size, no pig- mies loaded with engines ; 20 of these should be 10,000 tons, of light quick-firing gun armament and great coal capacity : 100 torpedo vessels are needed of a much larger class than our present ones, which are all too small and unseaworthy." Admiral Sir Geoffrey Hornby wants thirty more ironclads, 199 more fast cruisers, and a supply of torpedo-catchers ; and Admiral Lord Alcester advocates an immediate construction of -20 first-class ironclads, 40 first-class cruisers of twenty-knot speed, and 5,000 more marine artillery, besides 5,000 bluejackets. Such demands only alarm the public, and make them think ex- penditure is going to be endless. An Admiralty must consider expense as well as needs, or the discussion will end in a decision to put up with the Fleet as it is, and run all risks.

Canon Taylor's vicious attack on the accounts of the Church Missionary Society leaves on our mind the impression which all missionary finance leaves on it,—namely, that the secretaries to missions understand finance well enough, but do not understand bookkeeping. They never will make their figures suffi- ciently clear to the outside world. One reason for this is a reluctance, resulting from experience, to rouse the jealousy of the poorer clergy ; and the other is a habit arising from the impossibility of appearing to distrust collectors and managers who are rather allies than agents. The confusion might in part be corrected, but mission accounts will never resemble those of a railway. The Canon wishes for celibate missionaries, and never alludes to the greatest difficulty in the way. The celibate missionaries must be young, because they would not agree to be celibate for life ; and the natives of Asia and Africa will not believe in the chastity of young unmarried inen, unless, like the Roman priests, they are under perpetual

vows. This distrust is incurable, and deprives the celibate of half his influence. The mortality among missionaries' wives in Africa is lamentable enough ; but the Canon forgets that the majority of them are missionaries in spirit themselves ; and when he says that they cannot live among a naked popu- lation without getting " scathed," he talks nonsense. After the first three months, dark colour is dress, and the absence of clothes as unnoticed as any other race peculiarity. If missionaries' wives get "scathed," why not the wives of all other men P—Mr. H. H. Johnston's argument in favour of Stanley's safety will be read with strong interest by every one interested in African exploration. There is no more com- petent witness to be found, and he believes that Stanley has reached Einin Pasha's country, and is now aiding him in its government, or is marching westward, intending to reach the Niger, where the officials are expecting him. Mr. Johnston believes that this incomparable feat may be accomplished, because Stanley would probably be protected by the Senoussia, the mighty association of dervishes which sways Mussulman opinion from Darfur up to Tripoli. Mr. Johnston adds that Stanley, though he can fight when pressed, invariably manages Negroes by patient, half-jocular kindness, and that his repute is so great, that had he died, the rumour would immediately have been borne all through East Africa.—Mr. Morris's paper on "The Revival of Handicraft" is well worth reading, not only because its writing will give pleasure, and because its thought—the beauty of hand-made work as compared with machine-made work—is sound, but because of a certain spirit which pervades it. Mr. Morris is that contradiction in terms, a cultivated Socialist, and he has the capacity to see that if inequality is to disappear, something must disappear besides wealth. There is an intellectual aristocracy, as well as one of wealth, and it is, on the whole, not only the less conquerable, but the harder of the two. Mr. Morris quite perceives that, and the quiet hate for " superior persons " which penetrates this article is most noteworthy. Mr. Morris says :—" The cultivated middle class is a class of slave-holders, and its power of living according to its choice is limited by the necessity of finding constant livelihood and employment for the slaves who keep it alive. It is only a society of equals which can choose the life it will live, which can choose to forego gross luxury and base utilitarianism in return for the unwearying pleasure of tasting the fullness of life." There is no practical lesson in the article that we see ; but we suppose Mr. Morris, with his fierce raps at " vicarious " work, means to say that if we all did a little more of our own work, say our carpentering, and so gave it individuality, we should be happier. Well, some of us would and some of us would not ; and meanwhile, pending the reign of equality, let each man choose. &sthetically, we agree with Mr. Morris ; but it is not an ethical question, let him talk as he likes. It is bad for a man's taste and happiness that he should pass his life in machine-tending, instead of making things ; but it is not wrong.—Lord Compton's account of " Palmyra, Past and Present," is most interesting. It contains nothing new, but we had hardly realised before that the great city was only a hundred and fifty miles from the Mediterranean, or that it was so completely a creation of civilised Arabs, who here displayed a talent for architecture usually lacking in the Semites, though it reappeared again in Moorish Spain. Imagine a city like this, built with Roman massiveness and Oriental taste!— "A main street, flanked with a double row of columns, fifteen hundred in number, and forming two colonnades, led through the city and under a splendidly carved triumphal arch to the entrance of the great temple. Each column, with deeply cut Corinthian capital, supported an entablature, and in some cases a second and smaller colonnade rose above the first, whence foot-passengers could watch the busy scene in the street below. Half-way up each of the larger columns, and projecting towards the street, was a atone bracket, on which stood the statue of some worthy citizen, and underneath were inscribed in Palmyrene and Greek characters the virtues or services of the person thus honoured. Not only did the Senate and people thus commemorate great deeds, but families were allowed to erect a statue of some beloved member, and in one case a widower thus recorded his grief at the loss of a virtuous wife. On the north side of the grand colonnade, besides ornamental buildings and baths, numerous temples were erected, each one adorned with portico, columns, friezes, entablatures, and ornamental niches for statues. Solitary pillars, some of very great height, rose in the centre of open spaces, monuments of services rendered to

the State Half-way down the main thoroughfare was a piazza formed by a cross street, which, flanked with columns, led to one of the chief temples. This piazza was vaulted over, the roof being supported by four massive columns of granite speckled with blue, which had been conveyed here with infinite

difficulty from Egypt. At short intervals in the colonnade were portals with arches leading to the palaces and houses of the nobles. At the extreme end of the street, three-quarters of a mile from the triumphal arch, was a portico enriched with a lovely design of great bunches of grapes and vine-leaves. Behind it stood a tomb of one of the Palmyra chiefs containing massive sarcophagi with sculptural wreaths, and busts in medallions. Stone portraits of the dead reclining on one arm and clothed in Roman costumes showed the taste of the Palmyrenes for Western art."

Palmyra is perishing. The springs which tempted Solomon to make it an emporium- for the transit trade have been de- stroyed by earthquakes, and the sand is slowly covering up the mighty ruins.—Mr. Frederic Harrison's " Apologia " is, like everything else he writes, full of admirable English .and lucid thought, but lacking wholly in persuasiveness. He starts always from the gigantic assumption that Positivism is an admirable creed because it supplies the place of spiritual religion, which would be a loftier faith if true, but is not true :--

" It is the truth of supernatural religion that we find wanting, not its sublimity. We quite agree that the orthodox view of Creation, Resurrection, Judgment, and Celestial Bliss is a very sublime idea. But is it a sublime poem, or a literal truth ? And how are all the endless contradictions and enigmas which these problems present to be solved? There are hundreds of schools within the theological pale, which all give different answers, and dispute with interminable fury. Which are poor, busy, practical men to believe ? We have been trying to find some safe ground for the essential-religious wants of the human spirit, on a theory of life and death not nearly so sublime, it is true, and far more human, but then, as we think, a great deal more real and certain."

But surely that is the very question at issue. In precisely the same way, Mr. Harrison assumes that the philosophical orthodox believe in the resurrection of a wholly immaterial entity, and asks what that means, and whether it is not like

asking, " Are triangles happy hereafter P" or, " Is the Rule of Three conscious of its own bliss ?" We thought the philosophic orthodox believed, as St. Paul did, that the future body bore to this body the relation that flower did to seed, not that it was a non-existent entity. They use, owing to the feebleness of language, indiscreet words sometimes ; but that, we conceive, is what they think. Mr. Harrison, again, assumes that Humanity must be greater than the tribe or the nation, which, he says, has often been a subject of reverence ; but then, is the assumption true? We should say much of humanity was a minus quantity ; that it would be nobler, for instance, without

Negroes. Mr. Harrison apparently would argue that London with the Whitechapel murderer in it, must be somehow higher than London without him. We say that the mission-station in East Africa with ten inmates is more to be reverenced than

the whole province which contains it. To say otherwise is to worship, not nobility, but bigness. And, finally, Mr. Harrison says all pessimistic reflections upon man degrade God. " It is impossible to degrade Humanity "—he means the idea of Humanity—" without degrading God." Why ? Is it not pos- sible to have a low opinion of an undeveloped creature, with- out a low opinion of him when developed P Christian science acknowledges that the world must cool, without acknowledging that man must perish. He will live, though under nobler condi- tions. It is curious to read in such a paper Mr. Harrison's judgment that, if there is a future condition of reward and punishment, then the regular sequence of orthodox conclusions follows, and there must be not only Heaven but Hell, not only an Intercessor but a Chief of Infernal Spirits, not only a God but a Judge and Judgment. It is as if Mr. Harrison with one side of his head were a Positivist, and with the other a Roman

Catholic. He believes, we note, that the " humanitarian wave" has transformed Christianity, to its great improve- ment, and apparently deduces from that, that Christianity is mortal. But has the humanitarian wave transformed Christ,

or even the human conception of him ? Was he not the same to the Romans, who were not humanitarians, as to us ?

The National Review has too many articles not quite up to standard ; but there are few politicians, or lovers of literature either, who will not be attracted by M. Filon's really admirable criticism on Lord Randolph Churchill's oratory, absurd as they may deem his estimate of the orator's destiny in politics. M. Flion does not understand Lord R. Churchill, but he does understand his charm. By-the-way, we have missed somehow the really splendid figure by which, according to M. Filon, Lord Randolph described the British domination in India,- " It is a thin coat of oil on the surface, which preserves the calm of an ocean of humanity and controls its storms." Mrs. Oliphant gives us in Blackwood another of her "Little Pilgrim" essays, attempts to peer into another world. This one is full of descriptive writing, some of it wonderfully fine; but it is in parts •unsatisfactory. The attempt, which is, in fact, nothing less than to describe the redemption of a soul which has actually reached hell, is, indeed, too lofty for mortal powers. it is curious to see that unconscious Calvinism adheres even to Mrs. Oliphant. The appearance of " the Face" (of Christ) to some individuals of the lost, and not to others, seems to u.s purely despotic.