THE MAGAZINES.

THE advocates of the South are beginning to despair. The writer who in Fraser this month strives so hard to be impartial would,

we suspect, had the South been successful, have displayed far less moderation. He is disposed to think, with Mr. Cairns, that the best of all speedy solutions of the struggle would be an inde- pendent, but weak South, confined within the ocean, the Gulf, and the Mississippi; but his arguments against emancipation indicate a secret liking for slavery. He holds that the slaves are property, and that Mr. Lincoln's proclamation was as distinct a violation of private rights as one from the Duke of Wellington would have been, had he, "as a war measure, decreed that henceforth the descent of land in France should be regulated by the common law of England." That argument can appear even reasonable only to one who believes that the position of slaves is only that of cattle, that they are not, as even Southerners say, at once persons and chattels. If they are persons at all, then a proclamation pro- mising them freedom as a reward for assistance is as just as a pro- clamation promising to particular classes protection. Nor would any one who believed slavery to be anything short of a positive good make such a statement as this :—The proclamation "means that a population of about five million white men, many of them of the highest spirit and courage, are to be deprived of all that makes life valuable ; they are to be driven to the woods like wild beasts, deprived of their homes, ,their property, their political privileges ;" the truth being that the actual slaveowners are not three hundred thousand in number, and that emancipation would enrich the remainder by abolishing the ruinous competition of unpaid labour. On the political part of the question, however, the writer is more just than has been usual among us, and his style has a lucidity and exhaustiveness too often absent from political papers in magazines. The second political contribution on "England and her Colonies" is also exceedingly good. It is an answer to Mr. Goldwin Smith from a man who believes that most of the old arguments for colonies are worn out, that they are by no means an unmixed good, and that Canada, in particular, ought to be told that the time of the majority has arrived, and the Canadian must shift for himself. He states the case against that colony with a force to which we have alluded in another place, but he would not surrender the colonies. He would simply com- pel those colonies which have reached the intermediate stage—a sovereign legislature without national independence, to re-arrange their relations, that is, in practice, to bear the expense of their own defence, looking only to England as the most trustworthy of allies, and to give up the protective duties which, strange to say, they all seem so ready to impose. There is a paper on the present state of Russia, which, though very badly put together, contains some highly valuable information, and is evidently written by one who has resided years in Russia. The budget, for example, is given in detail, for the first time, we think, in English, and reveals some very curious facts. The total revenue of the empire is cal- culated at 41,374,2481., of which nearly 8,000,000/. is raised from the serfs, and 18,000,000/. from the monopoly of the manu- facture of brandy. The expenditure is a little more than two millions more, of which 7,756,598/. goes to the debt, 1,000,000/. to the Court and dependents, 665,8711. to the Church, 15,225,111/. to the Army, 2,941,404/. to the Navy, and 3,818,000/. to Finance, 1,882,000/. to pensions, 1,304,0301. to public works, and only 578,101/. to instruction. The writer believes that the revenue might be greatly increased by a more capable Administration, particularly of the crown lands. There is another excellent paper in this number, "The Sketcher in the Ardennes ;" but the lighter matter is, as usual, somewhat poor. Fraser, with good stories, would be the best of the magazines ; as it is, unlike all others;it depends mainly upon its padding.

This will be a pleasant number to the readers of Blackwood, for Sir E. Bulwer Lytton announces that he has finished the essays "on life, literature, and manners," which have tried their patience so long. The last instalment is devoted to politics, and, notwithstanding some practical reflections, is nearly as inept as the lectures on manners. What is the use of publishing for the ten-thousandth time sentences like these ?—" As it is with a man, so it is with a State—that State will be the best in which liberty and order so, as it were, fuse into each other, that the conditions prescribed by order are not felt as restraints on liberty." There may be recondite wisdom in a dogma like the following ; but to us it reads very like an assertion which the writer himself, atttracted by its sound, had not taken the trouble to examine. "But a State has this advantage over a man, that while it is in robust health its mere exercise must, of necessity, be progress. If Science is always experimenting, if Art is always inventing, if Commerce is always exchanging, if looms are always at work, the State cannot fail to make progress." Rome was a State ; in Rome science was always experimenting, art always inventing, commerce always exchanging ; Rome could not fail to progress ; therefore the decadence of Rome is a fiction. Is that what a scholar wishes to teach us, or, if not, what is the meaning of the words ? Or are we to have an edition of Caxtoniana like a Leipsic edition of lEschylus, the gloss about twice the mass of the teat? The "Perpetual Curate" improves, and Mrs. Oliphant has struck out a really original idea, describing the effect of a clergyman's con- version to Rome from his wife's point of view. Her husband is determined to go over and to remain a priest, and his little silly wife consults her brother-in-law, in this capital burst of affectionate folly, good enough to have been uttered by Mrs. Nickleby when she was young :—

"'I think it will break ray heart ; people will be sure to say I have been to blame ; and how I am ever to hold up my head in society, and what is to be my name, and whether I am to be considered a widow— or worse, it feels like being divorced—as if one had done something wrong ; and I am sure I never did anything to deserve it ; but when your husband is a Romish priest,' cried the afflicted woman, pressing her handkerchief to her oyes, would just ask anybody what are you ? You can't be his wife, because he is not allowed to have any wife ; and you can't go back to your maiden name because of the children; and how can you have any place in society ? Oh! Frank, I think I shall go distracted,' said poor Louisa ; it will feel as if one had done something wicked, and been put out of the pale. How can I be called Mrs. Wentworth any more when my husband has left me ? And even if he is a priest, and can't have any wife, still he will be alive, and I shall not have the satisfaction of being a widow even. I am sure I don't know what I say,' she concluded with a fresh outburst ; for to be a widow would be a poor satisfaction, and I don't know I could ever, ever live without Gerald."

We rather suspect that Mrs. Oliphant is out in her ecclesiastical law, and that Rome will not ordain a married man, even if only married legally, but, perhaps, that difficulty is the very dens which is to deliver the family from the pitfall of conscience into which she has made them tumble.

A miter on gold and social politics, who believes that the world has entered on a cycle of universal prosperity,—not an uncommon idea when individuals feel themselves getting on,— adds a little item to our political statistics :-

Registered Electors. 1831. 1851.

England 619,213 874,191

Scotland 64,444 97,777

the increase being proportionately much greater than the in- crease of population, and occurring before the great gold dis- coveries. If they, therefore, should end in seriously lowering the value of money, as they ultimately must, considerable addition may be made to the suffrage without any direct legislative action—an addition, too, which will be the result of a sort of natural selection, the best workers feeling the change the first. A new story commences this month and promises to be very disagreeably clever, the characters always approaching those bounds of caricature which yet they do not pass.

The number of Monahan, though not improved by its usual tendency to instructiveness, is the best which has appeared for months. The "Letter of a Competition Wallah" is not quite so accurate as usual, and is therefore unusually readable. Thoughts which have a false relation to facts always seem to flow so easily. Mr. Trevelyan, ten years hence, will look back with amused astonishment to his picture of a civilian's career, perhaps the most unreal ever published, even by a civilian. He looks at his life from the outside, and thinks that his occupation is pleasing because his every act affects the happiness of thousands. So does the conduct of every member of the English Civil Service who is not doing mere clerk work ; but his labour seems to himself very monotonous for all that. The remarks on the absence of pecuniary care in India, of bigotry, and of any form of social compression are, however, true ; but then they are true of all careers, and not merely of the civilian's. Anglo-Indians in India are the freest of human beings; though at home they are always fancy- ing that their merits are not sufficiently recognized, which is true enough, only merit which is not available is always properly disregarded. Who cares for Jones's magnificent range of linguistic acquirements when the work wanted is help towards making pigs a little fatter. There is a curious specimen of science made popular in the article upon "Gold, its Chemistry and Mineralogy," stating nothing but results, and those in the baldest form, yet interesting from the number of facts it contains upon a subject of which all men are willing to hear ; and Mr. Hamerton's paper on a "Little French City," is valuable from a flavour of knowledge which does not attach to any one paragraph. We do trust that in a few more years "Vincenzo," the story of Macmillan, will disappear. It has power of a kind, but the characters are wonderfully lifeless, and the household distress caused by the Italianism of the husband and ultramontanism of the wife is, though true, a worry to read. The man is made a martyr when he is only a henpecked fool, whose difficulties arise simply from his inability to do his duty and let his wife talk on. Miss Rossetti has been asleep for once, and has contributed the only specimen of unmixed feebleness we ever saw from her pen. She can write poetry, audit is too bad to give us this jingle :—

" How comes it, Flora, that, whenever we Play cards together, you invariably, However the pack parts,

Still hold the Queen of Hearts ?

• • • It baffles me to puzzle out the clue, Which must be skill, or craft, or luck in you : Unless, indeed, it be Natural affinity."

"The Small House at Allington" sells the Cornhill, and well it may ; but we would warn Mr. Trollope against his latent ten- dency to caricature. Mr. Crosbie's subjection to the De Conveys—despite all his reverence for rank—is nearly im- possible, and the De Courcys themselves are too irredeemably hard. Women of a class can be as hard as steel, but they are apt, when governed by motives like those which rule in this family, to throw the regis of their own selfishness over those whom they once admit to be part of themselves. Lady Alexan- drine would be much more apt to peck her sister for oppressing Crosbie than to peck Crosbie herself, at all events just yet. Johnny Eames, too, is being just a little overdone. There is a very hopeful amount of audacity in the youngsters of this generation, which would prevent such a scrape as his from weighing so closely upon his heart. "Out of the World," just finished, we hope to notice in its completed form, only warning readers to study the most wonderful bit of sketching they are likely to see in a magazine, and the author against wasting powers as original as those of any novelist now alive in such half-completed work. She could create Caton, and has no more tight to outline him in that style, than a sculptor would have to sell a half-finished clay model as his completed work. It is a luxury to critics to see even faint indications of power so real; but then it is not by faint indications that artists obtain recognition, or the world the benefit of their gifts. The heavy article, called "A Letter to a Saturday Reviewer," is an essay on the often disputed point whether antecedent improbability ought ever to outweigh perfect evidence. The writer says it ought, on the ground that in deciding on human testimony to the truth of non-natural occur- rences, we are simply balancing conflicting improbabilities :— " The value of human testimony depends upon the assumption that it applies to the ordinary established state of things. Try to prove prodigies and miracles as you prove contracts or crimes, and you take it out of its depth, and apply it to purposes for which it was never intended. A Roman Catholic once asked a lady of my acquaintance what she should think if God Almighty told her that the lamp on the table was an armed man ? She replied, 'I should think I was going out of my wits.' The answer seemed to use perfectly true and conclusive. All our thoughts are bounded by a certain horizon, and founded upon certain tacit assumptions."

Of course they are, but that does not prove that this horizon is immoveable. Nothing can be more impossible than that a deadly disease should be cured without agency instantaneously. Thought is based upon the assumption that a deadly disease cannot be so cured. But if this letter-writer saw it cared, and then heard ten other men aver that they also saw it, those ten being first-class physicians, specially collected to expose the fraud, what would lie do then ? He must either do one of two things,—either believe the fact—whatever its cause—or reject testimony altogether, and believe, with many an Oriental and ono Christian sect, that the only valid testimony is internal conscious- ness. There is, indeed, one further alternative, and that is the one this thinker has adopted, viz., to doubt or disbelieve if testimony of any sort whatever have any force whatever, from the haze of facts which must float around every fact investigated, and prevent its true force from being seen. "Human knowledge can never get much beyond conjecture." Does lie conjecture that he is hungry, or that he will die, or that two plus two are four, or what amount of evidence would he ask to prove the general and average correctness of the multiplication table? This is of all faiths the dreariest ; for its corollary is the Hindoo doctrine that all is maya (illusion), and its only logical consequence is suicide.