THE MAGAZINES.

"WIVES and Daughters" in the Cornhill promises to be a

real addition to this year's list of readable novels. In the num- ber for last month there was a sketch of a child which we have seldom seen surpassed, and this month though the child has grown in the interval rather rapidly the story rolls on pleasantly, and we have a yeoman of a kind which most men familiar with the northern counties will recognize at once. Squire Huntley is alive, which is more than can be said of most characters in modern novels, and so is Mr. Gibson, the clever country doctor, with his quick ways and clear brain. There is a sense of repose about the narrative, a quiet, half-humorous mode of telling flys story chiefly through dialogue, which is pleasant in these days of sensational incidents and over-brilliant sayings. One reads without the necessity of watchfulness, and therefore without the temptation to exercise the novel-reader's highest privilege—the right of skipping at will. The padding, too, is better than usual, an article on the "Ethics of Friendship" being, thought discursive and slight, worth reading. The writer has a theory that society, particularly among intellectual men, tends towards coteries :—

" There is at present an obvious tendency among men of keen sensi- bilities and thoughtful character to limit themselves to a smaller circle, and to accord to the members who compose it a friendship of the most exclusive, intimate, and unreserved kind. Several reasons combine to bring this about, one of these perhaps being the cheap press, which gives instant and wide currency to any information, authentic or other- wise, about the sayings, doings, personal habits, and even dress and ap- pearance of any persons of mark ; and this custom frequently involves an unseasonable intrusion into the privacy of a man's life. Moreover, public opinion now moves collectively and in the mass; and in its haste and vehemence, its ignorance and impatience of any other voice or opinion than its own, it often amounts to a species of real tyranny. The natural resource of those who would withstand it therefore is to com- bine together, and seek in the approbation of the few a support against the condemnation of the many. This plan is especially attractive to those who are endowed with considerable powers of imagination and poetry, or who are of an original or sarcastic turn of mind, for such are sure to be either lightly appreciated or imperfectly understood."

The observation is, we believe, correct, but there is another reason for the change. General society, like everything else now, moves too fast, and the tendency of men who can think as well as speak is to get out of the current and into some pleasant eddy at the side, where they can enjoy conversation without an exertion which fatigues them almost as much as their work. The wish to be natural, too, to be oneself, to say what one thinks instead of eternally repeating formulas, grows with the growth of toleration, and inclines men to cultivate only the few who can appreciate and comprehend without elaborate explana- tion. Englishmen can rarely manage general conversation. The writer complains bitterly of their habit of interruption, which he says increases ; but talk to be good should be quick, and not one Englishman in a hundred ever is quick. The French speaker is not interrupted because he is sure to have done in a few seconds; but sit quiet and the Englishman will give you sentences which unroll ideas at the rate of one to the quarter of an hour. Human patience cannot stand it, and revenges itself by a habit—in itself bad enough—of frequent interruption. There exists, too, in these days when society hears everything so quickly and opinion is so unsettled a difficulty which is very well stated here :—" There would be much more liberty of thought and speech, and a more thorough and loyal exchange of ideas, if we were quite sure that what we said or confessed would never face

us again to-shame us publicly ; strangely disguised indeed, and

bearing the mark of much manipulation, but still originally our own, and therefore not to be wholly disavowed, however the sense or intention of the words once used has been altered or distorted."

It is becoming a bore not to speak out, and people will not speak out at the risk of hearing their opinions requoted in places

where they themselves are either not known or not understood. There is too much of this habit of repetition even among genuine friends, and nothing can be so fatal to the interchange of thought. Every man has his esoteric creed whether in re- ligion, or politics, or literature, a creed he shows to his friends but not to the world, which in its habitual irritation with novelty or crotchettiness would only misunderstand him. Half the men now considered to hold "odd opinions" gain their annoying reputation simply from this bad habit, a habit fostered excessively by club life. The only place where the true rule seems to be observed is the House of Commons, where a man within the limits of sincerity is not considered bound to express on the floor the precise ideas which he ventilates in the tea-room. The paper on "German Professors" is very thin, con- taining little more than the superficial facts known to every man who knows anything of the matter at all, and this paragraph, which is probably new to most of our readers:— " Some of the universities have property of their own in addition, from endowments or other sources, and this is supplemented by the State, but even then the State has the distribution. For instance, the University of Munich has property of its own, derived partly from what was settled on it at the time of the suppression of Bavarian monasteries, amounting to more than 300,000/, the interest of which defrays almost 8,000/ of the yearly expenses of the university, leaving only some 3,000/. to be furnished by the State. The University of Heidelberg, which is one of the oldest in Germany, has no property of its own, and draws rather more than 11,000/. from the Government of Baden. The Uni- versity of Bonn has about 15,000/. from the State, and some 4,000/. of its own, and the salaries of professors in that university (there are, I be- lieve, about ninety) amount to 9,000/. a year. This would give an average of 1001. each, if both the figures are correct ; but I am not quite certain of the number of professors. Prussia has the reputation of paying its professors better than other German States, and it is said that the student's fees are more regular than in South Germany."

Macmillan has little except the ".Son of the Soil," and a paper by Professor Max Muller op the "Language and Poetry of Schleswig- Holstein." Its drift is in this wise :—The people of the Duchies bear much the relation to the people of Germany which the Lancashire folk bear to Englishmen. They speak a dialect which is not a patois but is the old Low German which the High German is superseding, but which is a perfect not a corrupted tongue. The people attached to all old things cling to their old dialect, and Klaus Groth, a local poet, has written in it songs which the Professor considers equal to those of Burns. The specimens given scarcely inspire us with so high an idea of their author, but this is poetry, and unlike the rest of the translations contains some melody too. It is on the buried town of Basum or Biken, supposed to have been swallowed by the sea :— " OLD Buscrst.

"Old Biisen sank into the waves ; The sea has made full many graves ; The flood came near and washed around, Until the rock to dust was ground.

No stone remained, no belfry steep ; They sank into the waters deep.

There was no beast, there was no hound ; They all were carried to the ground.

And all that lived and laughed around The sea now holds in gloom profound.

At times, when low the water falls, The sailor sees the broken walls ; The church tow'r peeps from out the sand, Like to the finger of a hand.

Then hears one low the church bells ringing, Then hears one low the sexton singing ; A chant is carried by the gust,— ' Give earth to earth, and dust to dust.'"

Blackwood is unusually good, but we must confine ourselves to one paper, a letter on the subject which Englishmen of all political subjects understand the least, the character, history, and objects of Prince Couza, Hospodar of the United Principa- lities. Couza was a colonel in the Moldavian Militia, when the people, or rather a few managers, resolved to unite the Princi- palities. They wished to elect one of the Ghika family, but with the over-subtlety of Roumans, put forward Couza's name in the certainty that the Porte would reject him. The Porte did not, and the colonel found himself master of both Principalities.

"The first impression which the countenance of Prince Couza makes upon the mind of the stranger is that it is an extretnly low-bred one. The next, that he must have a conscience concealed in some part of his Person, for he never ventures to look you in the face. The next, that he has put on his best clothes for your especial benefit, and doee not feel at all comfortable in them. The next, that you would not care to travel alone with them much by night in the more lonely part of his dominions if you bad bills to any large amount about you. The next, that both by day and night, with boon companions, he would be extremely good corn pany, and ready for any mischief which might be proposed. Then, as you go on talking to him, you find that he is by no means a fool, and that though his policy is shortsighted and unpatriotic, still ho has a very de- finite plan of action, and one sufficiently well adapted to the race he governs. 'Set a thief to catch a thief' is a proverb which finds its practical application in these countries, where it would need an 'expert' like the Prince to plunder successfully the gang of Daco-lioumains of which he is chief. This is really why he is so unpopular. In this land of sharpers there is no getting round his Highness ; therefore they crave for some foreign sprig of royalty who would be a nice pigeon, and allow everybody to feather their nests at his expense. Now, though Couza would discard from his councils any man who refused to peculate, upon the principle that the 'official band' would be demoralized by the intrusion of one honest man, yet he limits their plunder, and takes more than the lion's share for himself. Then by constantly changing them he prevents any one of them becoming too rich and independent. Thus since 1858, Prince Couza has changed the entire personnel of his Cabinet twenty times."

By this policy be for three years contrived to avoid presenting a budget, and at last when the game could be played no longer he struck a successful coup d'etat. Framing a constitution which grants to the peasantry universal suffrage but fixes a high qualification in towns, which makes Ministers irresponsible and deprives the Chamber of its control over the budget, he called on the population to accept it by yes or no, and with the aid of the police and army kept all dissentients away from the polls. There

was no aristocracy to resist him. "It is a great mistake to suppose that all the landed property in Wallachia is in the hands of the boyards. Out of a population of two millions and a half; thirty thousand are landed proprietors, of whom only two thousand are boyards; but there are not above thirty families of grand boy- ards, and of these only nineteen are above thirty years old, so that practically the country is without an aristocracy. In Mol- davia the principal families are equally mushroom and inter- penetrated with a Fanariote element that does not improve the tone of the political morality of the community." Couza was therefore declared despotic, or as M. de Persig,ny calls it, "inde- pendent." It remained to conciliate Constantinople, where the Porte was furious and the Ambassadors of the Powers formally condemned the new constitution. "Alexander John," however, was equal to his position. Undeterred by threats of poison, he proceeded to Constantinople, gained over the Sultan, bought the priests who were raging at the sequestration of convent lands, conciliated the Ambassadors, and returned with a conces- sion from the Sultan of full autonomy to the Principalities

in all internal affairs. Armed with this acknowledgment and despotic master of the Principalities, Prince Couza hopes to make himself master of all Roumania, from Transylvania to the Balkan, and if he can ally himself with the Hungarians he may in the next European convulsion attain his end. °He is evidently a man of very great ability, astute, unprincipled, and daring, and if the Roumans should in the end recognize these qualities he will have at his disposal some eight or nine millions of people whom the writer in Blackwood calls cowards, but who are pro- bably just as brave as a people in whom the sense of honour has not grown up can be expected to be. The writer of these letters

is, we should add, a determined friend of Turkey, and all friends of Turkey now think it their cue to abuse the populations which Turkish misrule has so deeply corrupted.

The best paper in Fraser, which is full of everything except readable stories, is the "Philosophy of the Poor-laws," in which Miss Cobbe explains the reforms her experience of the Poor-law induces her to desire. Her radical idea is that the Poor-law system neglects or offends against the principle of division of labour, the guardians undertaking duties so various that they clash pro-

vokingly and injuriously with one another.

"Every large workhouse combines the following institutions :—

"1. A workhouse proper, or place of labour for able-bodied paupers —males.-2. Ditto for females.-3. A temporary asylum, or casual ward, for pauper travellers—males. 4. Ditto for females.-5. A hospi- tal for the sick, curable and incurable—males.-8. Ditto for females.- 7. An asylum for aged and infirm males.-8. Ditto for females.-9. A blind asylum for males.-10. Ditto for females.-11. A deaf and dumb asylum for males.-12. Ditto for females.-13. A lunatic asylum- males.-14. Ditto for females.-15. An asylum for idiots and epileptics —males.-16. Ditto for females.-17. A boys' school.-18. A girls' school-19. An infant school-20. A nursery for infants.-21. A lying-in-hospital.-22. A Penitentiary (Black ward)."

The principle of good management would be to send all the sick to the great hospitals, all the idiots to asylums, all the children to vast schools, and leave the union a place of refuge

only for the old and for temporary misfortune. Unfortunately this is impossible, and Miss Cobbe would as an alternative remove the children, so striking at the root of hereditary pauperism, re- organize the workhouse hospitals on the plan of the voluntary hospitals, and introduce paid labour for all the able-bodied. Her objects are good and defended with a curious wealth of illus- tration, but on the whole we adhere to our own proposal as

simpler and more practicable. It is to place a gentleman, clergy- man or doctor, at the head of every union-house, and leave him

subject to the control of the guardians to bring its internal management into thoroughly good order. If in addition to this we can make the schools effective for producing habits of industry and thrift, we shall have done nearly as much as is con-

sistent with the primary principle that a workhouss is a place which it is right for the poor heartily to dread and detest.