THE MAGAZINES.

BLACKWOOD has two articles this month on the far East ; but though readable they are not of the strong political interest possessed by the first two upon China. "Sensation Diplomacy in Japan" records the facts of our connection with that singu- lar Government very succinctly ; but arrives at nothing. The writer has a half idea that we ought not to retire, if only for the shock such an exodus would give to our relations with China ; but be does not suggest the course to be pursued. He allows, indeed, that force of some kind must be employed, and points out that to subdue the Mikado would probably be to subdue Japan, and that the seat of the Mikado is only thirty miles from the sea ; but he does not advise invasion, or any preferable plan. He simply objects, with true British instinct, to give way because the Japanese have broken the treaty, and abuses the feudal nobility as the only class heartily hostile to the foreigner. The paper on "Spirit Writing in China" is much more interesting. It is a most remarkable account of the form in which spirit- rapping has existed in China for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, and is better worth reading than most of Mr. Home's recollections. The process adopted is to cut an apricot twig with certain ceremonies, intended "to console the tree for its loss," and then, "The twig is cut into the shape of a Chinese pen, and ono end is inserted at right angles into the middle, not the end, of a piece of bamboo, about a foot long and an inch thick, so that were this bamboo laid upon a man's palms turned upwards, the twig might hang down and bo moved over a piece of paper. In a temple, a schoolhouse, or an ancestral hall, chairs are then set apart for the spirit to be summoned, and for tho god or saint of the temple or village under whose power the summoned spirit is supposed to be wandering. Ono table is covered with flowers, cakes, wine, and tea for the refreshment and delectation .of the supernatural visitors, while another is covered with fine sand, in order that the spirit may there write its intimations. In order to add to the solemnity of the seene,proceedings are not commenced till after dark, and the spectators are expected to attend fasting, in full dress, and in a proper frame of mind."

The two italicized sentences explain the nzodus operandi, and provide for the occasional failures. Supplications are then written on red or gold tissue paper, the paper is burnt, the smokw thereof is wafted to the spirit, and he announces his presence by writing with the twig on the sand the word "arrived." The guests are then formally introduced to the ghost, who is next asked as to his family and age, and under what dynasty he lived, and then the serious business commences. The paper with the question is burned, and the apricot twig writes the answer on the sand, usually in verse. The séance lasts till midnight, when the ghost requests permission to depart. The writer does not appear to have been present at one of these audiences, but derived his information from Mr. Winues, a missionary who resides alone among the people, which is disappointing. It would have been so interesting to know whether a Chinese spirit could speak or write English, and whether he would indulge in the bad grammar and spelling common among American spirits. A Chinese spirit who should talk to Shakespeare in the next world, and take down from his lips an additional scene, say to Macbeth, would give a pretty decisive proof of his existence in some world not ruled by competitive Mandarins. It is to be noted that the Chinese, less gross than the American spiritualist, has really devised a quasi ethereal mode of communicating with the spirits. The notion of the incense arising from burnt thoughts communicating their essence to a spirit's perception, is at least more poetical than that of writing one's wants on a bit of semi-transparent paper for the spirit to read. That article redeems this number of

Blackwood," which is otherwise somewhat dull, the " Inexhaus- tible Capital" being a very o-dinary review of Story's "Reba di Roma ;" Spedding's "Life of Bacon," an able, but depreciatory sketch of the great thinker; and "Caxtoniana" hopelessly unread- able. "Mrs. Clifford's Marriage " is readable, and we wish it were not, for up to its last page it promises always to be interesting, and then ends without being anything of the sort. The writer had apparently an excellent plot in his head, a man who marries a wealthy widow being gradually tempted by opportunity to oust her children, and then thought better of it, and brought his tele to an abrupt conclusion. He may possibly comprehend Tom Summerhayes, but no reader will.

Fraser is .unequal this month. "My Wanderings in West Africa," by a F. R. G. S., is a record of curious travel among a people often spoken of among Europeans, but little known to them ; and the account of Benin, its king, with his naked guard, and its horrible customs, bloodthirsty as those of Dahomey, is well worth reading, especially to those who love horrors, or are interested in ascertaining the depths to which

human nature can descend. Here are two little hints as to the state of society in Guinea:—" The night passed quietly enough. Okala had sent all but his old wives out of the house ; and at Benin there is a law that only the king must supply matrimony. He generally provides the stranger with one of his daughters, whom he reckons by tallies,' and he charges a right royal price On our return Siwatye kicked up a something which suspiciously resembled a man's eye. A deep splotch of blood a little further on explained matters ; it was nothing so harmless as 'purring,' to use a Lancashire word. I had been reading a silly yellow-cover novel, in which a villager seeing some dead body upon his path, with an exclamation of terror, dropped his tools and fled back to rouse his neighbours with his tale of horror.' What would that villager have done with himself during a day's promenade at Benin ? And more victims were hourly expected." Civilization, with a bayonet in her hand, would not be out of place in Benin ; but the writer, who does not seem afflicted with many pre- judices, makes this remarkable admission :—" The effect of a missionary (Mr. West) residing at Kumasi, the capital of.Ashanti, has been to make the sacrifices secret. The same is the case at Abbeokuta. Dahomey and Benin would doubtless in time adopt the plan, if similar influences were brought to bear upon them." Secret murder is in itself rather more degrading than the open atrocity, but in cases like this secrecy implies shame, and as shame is an annoying sentiment, even to savages, the number of murders would probably decrease. The execution of one of these monarchs would, however, improve matters more speedily, and, one cannot help feeling, more satis- factorily. For the rest the number is dull. "Late Laurels" may be a good tale by and bye ; but it is only moderate at present, interest centring chiefly in a bitter kind of Beauty who rejects everybody ; and Mr. Ruskin is really unbearable on "Political Economy," the more so, for the occasional beauty and even wis- dom of his thoughts. It would be difficult to write in language more splendid a truth deeper than that contained in this sen- tence :—

" It is the fashion at present to talk of the 'failure of republi- can institutions in America,' when there has never yet been in America any such thing as an institution, but only defiance of institution ; neither any such thing as a res-publica, but only a multitudinous res-privata ; every man for himself. It is not republi- canism which fails now in America ; it is your model science of poli- tical economy, brought to its perfect practice. There you may see com- petition, and the law of demand and supply' (especially in paper), in beautiful and unhindered operation. Lust of wealth, and trust in it; vulgar faith in magnitude and multitude, instead of nobleness ; besides that faith natural to backwoodsmen,—'1ucum ligna,'—perpetual self- contemplation, issuing in passionate vanity ; total ignorance of the finer and higher arts, and of all that they teach and bestow ; and the discontent of energetic minds unoccupied, frantic with hope of uncom- prehended change, and progress they know not whither But I see not, in any of our talk of them, justice enough done to their erratic strength of purpose, nor any estimate taken of the strength of endurance of domestic sorrow, in what their women and children suppose a righteous cause. And out of that endurance and suffering, its own fruit will be born with time."

What on earth does a man who can write those sentences mean by an assertion like this?—" But this great law rules all the wild design of the weaving ; that success (while society is guided by laws of competition) signifies always so much victory over your neighbour as to obtain the direction of his work, and to take the profits of it. This is the real source of all great riches. No man can become largely rich by his personal toil." John Smith has a brain. He sees his neighbours spinning each for himself and getting bare bread out of their labour. He invents a machine, induces them to work it, doubles their profits and his own. How has he " taken " their profits ?—for, be it under- stood, Mr. Ruskin uses "take" in the bad sense, and writes always on the theory that society ought to be based on the prin- ciple of benevolence rather than of competition. His only excep- tion to that rule is in the case of convicts, who are to do all the dangerous and body-destroying work, digging for coals, for example. An excellent but rather too discursive paper on "Notables," i.e., on the men who are thought notable by limited societies, or so think themselves, contains this story, which, if it be an invention, speaks well for -the writer's sense of humour, and, if true, ought to live :—" We have a more kindly feeling toward these notables than a stout old gentleman of the Turveydrop school, who was one day airing himself at the door of his club in Pall Mall. A meek-looking man walked demurely up to him, and, with a sickly smile, offered him a tract. He started back, 88 if it had been the fang of a serpent, and angrily exclaimed, How dare you, sir ? Are you

aware that I am the cousin of a bishop?" The passionate dia- tribe against the North called "American Literature and the Civil War," is not worth a reply, and we only notice it to quote Longfellow's half forgotten but terribly fulfilled prediction:—

"There is a poor, blind Samson in the land,

Shorn of his strength, and bound in bars of steel, Who may in some grim revel raise his hand, And shake the pillars of this commonweal, Till the vast temple of our liberties

A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies."

The paper on Indian tenure styled "Mr. Laing's Mission to the East," is able, though overstrained. The writer argues that Sir B. Peacocke's decision, which affirms the right of the tenant- in-chief to raise the rental on the sub-tenants, till the proportion it bears to the total produce is equal to the proportion it bore at the perpetual settlement, is unjust, and contends that the legisla- ture must interfere to limit the landlords' extortions. A "law of the maximum" for rent is a very dangerous expedient to suggest in these days, more especially when it must be passed with the specific intention of overriding the decision of a court constituted like the Supreme Court of Calcutta, and before the tenantry have attempted or threatened to abandon their land rather than pay the rent. The object ot politicians should be to reconcile the claims of the native and the settler, who, if India is to be rich,

must live and work together, not, as this writer does, to aggravate their differences by representing all the encroachments as on one side. The European never attempted to raise his rents till the native refused either to fulfil, or to refund, or to compromise, his indigo contracts.

The paper of the Cornhill this month is the "Run through the Southern States," by an English officer, which, like most of the original papers published during the war, is strongly Southern in feeling. He believes that reunion is impossible, the hatred between the two communities being too intense for them ever again to administer the same government. Conquest is equally improbable, the whole population being earnestly engaged in the war, and the planter frequently enlisting as a private in the troop or company raised by himself. The "English officer," however, was not greatly struck with the perfection of Southern discipline. The men fight well on the defensive ; but the officers complain of a want of military spirit, of imperfect subordination, and of a habit of wastefulness most annoying when powder and rations are becoming somewhat scarce. Everywhere the traveller found the traces of the blockade, gold at 230 premium, goods of all kinds extravagantly high, and food risen, though the price of a day's keep at an hotel is still only a pound to-day. The very rails on the railroads are being worn out with incessant use, and it will be nearly impos- sible to replace them until the blockade is broken. A paper on " Corpulence " is full of curious „information which will not be very satisfactory to people ashamed of their growing size. It records, however, the fact that there are drugs still believed capable of reducing flesh with- out injuring health—namely, luaus vesiculosus and bromide

of ammonium. In both cases, however, further experi- ments are required before the medical profession will place implicit confidence in these new remedies. As to diet, on which most obese persons rely, the only food which will not fatten is lean meat and biscuit ; but it is by no means certain that a spare diet does not in such cases seriously injure the health. The nervous centres are starved. Strong muscular exercise is, of course, beneficial, but it does not always reduce corpulence, a tramp having been known who, though hallstarved and miserably poor, attained "the large circumference of five feet two inches." No remedy, in fact, can be trusted except, perhaps, one which the observer does not mention, and which is too dangerous. Let any man, weary of his own corpulence, have his sleep broken every two hours, and in a month he will have lost more flesh than in six months of careful training or starvation.

Macmillan has three excellent papers, a story of Danish life, as good as one of Miss Bremer's early stories ; a suggestion by Mr. Hare "for a local government for the metropolis ;" and "Marginalia of Lord Macaulay." Macaulay was accustomed, it would seem, to cover his books with notes ; they have been sold, and Dr. James Hamilton publishes a few which have fallen into his hands. They are generally notes of parallel passages ; but are sometimes lengthy. This passage, for instance, is redolent of Macaulay. It is a note on the close of Vol. L of Warburton's "Divine Lega- tion :"—" Undigested reading, squandered ingenuity, odds and ends of contradictory systems, glimpses of truth lost in the moment in which they are caught, disingenuousness beyond all

example in controversy ; coarseness, insolence, and self-conceit; that is the true inventory of what I have found in the first' volume of 'The Divine Legation.'" The following, too, is interesting, as revealing Macaulay's very decided opinion upon a much vexed point :—" For I do not call the opinion that a future state was unknown to the Jews either a paradox or Warburton's. It is as plain a truth as that the Jews lived at Jerusalem, and has merely been obscured by vulgar superstition. And it had been maintained by many eminent men before Warburton." It is,

of course, to the mass of the people that he refers, and not to the cultivated class, who, when not avowed doubters, held to some view of a future state which latterly often glided into the Asiatic notion of the transmigration of souls—an idea which, like purgatory, was invented in order to reconcile the justice of God, with the apparently irresistible inclination of man to do evil. There is an account, too, in this number of Servia, which though dry, is worthy attention. Few persons in England are aware that Servia is twice the size of Belgium, and possesses a population of 1,105,645 souls, of whom every male bears arms and is subjected to military discipline. The regular army consists of some 5,000 men, excessively over officered ; but Servia can at a day's notice send 58,000 good troops into the field, and defend her independ- ence with 150,009. The Government is composed of a liniaz, or hereditary prince, whose wife is just now in England ; a

senate of seventeen, appointed by the prince, and among whom is the author of this paper ; and a National Assembly, elected by all Servians of full age who pay taxes. Serfage has been abolished, but the peasantry retain their lands, and pauperism, the scourge of the West, is unknown in Servia.

"Everywhere town and country change in aspect. New roads have been opened, or are in course of execution ; several lines of railway are proposed ; a double service of steam navigation has been established on the Danube and the Save ; the telegraphic network, which already counts seventeen stations, will be completely finished before the end. of the present year ; the mines of Maidan-Peck, conceded to a French company, are, at present, in full operation, and promise to dower the country with new industries. The navigation of the Danube and the Save, as well as the working of a coal-mine on the banks of the Danube, has been recently ceded to an English company, which has been guaranteed five per cent. interest. The entire country, under the active impulsion of the Prince and his ministers, is roused from its sluggishness, and hastens with ardour in the ways of progress."