'dill MAGAZINES.

Tin Magazines are dull this month, or rather they appear so in pre- sence of the vivid interests and strong passions produced by the events occurring every day. Only one contributes any new informa- tion on the topic of the hour, the American " difficulty." This, is Blackwood, which has a paper on the means of defending Canada, and of throwing troops into the provinces, valuable for its local knowledge. The writer's decision is, that the St. Lawrence is too dangerous in winter to be a fitting route for troops, which the entrance to St. John involves the risk of shipwreck through the fogs which overhang the Bay of Fundy. The alternative is to land the troops at Halifax in a beautiful harbour always open and always safe, march them to Windsor, cross the Bay of Fundy to St. John, and then march them across New Brunswick to the St. Lawrence, at Eiviere du Loup, whence passable roads extend to Montreal, while from Montreal to all other important points the railway runs within British territory. Use is made of the occasion to press Parliament to grant aid for a great railway along the river St. John, from Halifax to the St. Lawrence, cutting, as it were, right through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. There is already a railroad part of the way, and to complete the communication a Britishtee is required of

120,0001. a year. To meet this sum the trir guarantee have voted 60,0001. a year, we should save 25,0001. year now paid to the United States, and 25,0001. a year on the Cunard line, and probably receive a grant for the carriage of the United States mails. The guarantee would, therefore, be infinitesimal, while as a further security the Colonial Legislatures will make over to England ten miles of ter- ritory on each side of the line, sufficient of itself, as the railway at- tracts population, to reimburse the capital expended. This article is accompanied by an intelligible map of Canada, a very scarce article in England. Those sold are all old and generally bad, being either so minute that it is impossible to judge of distances, or, like the Ordnance map, too large for habitual use. The latter, which costs thirty shillings, gives only the course of the St. Lawrence, while the reader wants a sketch of the entire group of colonies, including the course of that river.—The remainder of the number is not very in- teresting, except the "Doctor'sFamily," which is concluded, and forms a most piquant and original little tale of that subdued sort to which lady novelists have accustomed us. The heroine, a little Australian girl, who comes to England and plays Providence to a loutish brother-in-law, his selfish and mean wife, and ill brought-up family, is really new, and charmingly drawn, with those light touches which are only possible when the author has an absolute insight into the character he is attempting to depict.—There is in "American Convul- sions" the usual strong writing against American institutions, some- times ludicrously prejudiced. The call on Europe, for example, to in- terrupt the work of the stone fleet is based on ignorance. If the Ameri- can Government reallyintended to fillup the harbours ofCharleston and Savannah, no condemnation would be too strong for their wickedness, but that evil design exists only in the brains of the New York editors.

i The object of the stone fleet is to fill up the minor channels of en- trance, leaving only one to be guarded by the blockading squadron. The following, however, on the effeet of pure democracy on tlie cha- racter of the Executive contains a truth too often forgotten. We are all apt to forget that the American President is elected by universal suffrage as well as the House of Representatives, and that it is by the rulers whom they produce that representative institutions must be judged:

"To what country shall we look for hereditary princes less fit to wield the destinies of nations than the obscure and common-place man whose decrees now stand in the place of public law in the North ? It may be said that at least he is the choice of the nation. But was he chosen by the intelligence of the nation ? Or to take lower ground, does he represent the material interests and responsibilities of the nation? Not at all ; he is

the choice of a numerical majority of a people who have derived the principal accessions to their numbers from the scum of Europe. Every four years the constitution is in travail—all mankind are invited, or rather commanded, to watch the interesting event—all is convulsion—the throes of the mountain are prodigious, and the latest result is—Mr Abraham Lincoln. The great achievement in self-government of this vaunted demo- cracy, which we have been so loudly and arrogantly called on to admire, is, to drag from his proper obscurity an ex-rail-splitter and country attorney, and to place what it calls its liberties at his august disposal. No country furnishes so many examples as England of great men who have risen from humble beginnings. But it would have been inpossible for him, or any of his Cabinet, to have emerged, under British institutions, from the medio- crity to which nature had condemned them, and from which pure democracy alone was capable of rescuing them. Are the best Americans willing to accept Mr. Abraham Lincoln and Mr. W. H. Seward as their best men ? If not, can they substitute better men ? If they cannot, what other proof is needed of the inefficacy of their boasted institutions?" —The paper on "Turner" is very poor, as indeed have been almost all papers about him. The writers all miss the great problem, fail to explain how a man sunk in avarice and innately vulgar, with no noble impulses, and no tastes higher than a bottle of gin and some dirty drab, could have thought out those glorious pictures. What sort of a mind was his, who, betaking himself to Chelsea for the enjoyment of a low booze, could, in the midst of it, roll out half-drunk to gaze with half-inspired eyes on the tints and forms which the clouds were displaying in some approaching storm ? It is not this or that character in Turner, but the coexistence of such opposite characters in him, which is so wonderful.—Perhaps the article best worth reading in the number is one on the "Poor and their Puhilc Schools," a masterly and exhaustive defence of the Revised Code, better even than Dr. Vaughan's pamphlet. _Fraser has not one political article, for the one entitled "The Close of 1861" is historical rather than political, and though written with ability, would better befit an Annual Register than a monthly magazine. A new story, with the far-fetched title " Thalatta Thalatta !"—(whyshould an Englishman affect Greek exclamations ?) —promises well, and A. K. H. B. puts in a clever but somewhat tedious defence of social propriety, and deference to opinion. The following sentence nearly sums up his opinion : "The human being who resists the world's judgment in these little matters, shows, not strength, but weakness. Where principle is involved, it is noble to swing yourlegs, but not otherwise. But doubtless you have remarked that it is a common thing to find great obstinacy in petty con- cerns in a man who has no real firmness. You will find people who are squeezable and facile in the great affairs of life, and in their larger opinions have not a mind of their own, but adopt the opinion of the last person they heard express one ; yet who persistently stick to some little absurd or bad habit which they have often been entreated to leave off, whirl} annoys their friends, and makes them ridiculous. You will find a man whom you might turn round with a straw in his belief on any question political, moral, or literary, but who, having taken up the ground that once one is three, would go to the stake rather than give into the world's way of thinking on that point." It is true enough all that, but John Foster's notion that decision of character was an acquired faculty, something to be gained by in- cessantly deciding for oneself on small matters, is at least as trne. Mr. Mill's argument, too, that we should encourage eccentricity as. helping to destroy the stereotyped conformity which is the worst ten- dency of civilization, and as aiding to sanction experiments in new modes of life, strikes us as both nobler and more practical than. Mr. Boyd's. But best of all is the advice which lies at the root of the protests so strongly put forward by the thinkers who are nicknamed muscular Christians : to live your own life subject to God's law and not man's ; if your disposition leads you to conform in small things, conform, and if not, differ, in either case acting as well as speaking the truth and not affecting anything. The man who dares not go out without gloves if he wants to, is just as low as, but not lower than, the man who always goes barehanded in the hope that his singularity will be remarked. There need be no fear of too many diversities. The infinite majority of men never think for themselves, but follow a leader, like a flock of sheep.—A writer on " The Marriage Law of the Empire" endeavours to suggest a plan for remedying the incon- veniences of the Scotch and Irish marriage laws, but it does not seem very practical. He would confine the Scotch law to Scotchmen, and make "all Scotch contracts void unless sustained by a legal decree pronounced within two months after the date of their occur- rence.', In Ireland. he would "have a civil functionary of some kind empowered to provide a form of notice, resembling banns and. licenses in England, without which no marriage could be had, except in the cases allowed in this country; this notice should be followed by a uniform certificate permitting the celebration of the union; the rite should be performed in recognized .places of worship, or, if required, at a registrar's office, the registrar being, if possible, present; the attendance of witnesses, and a regular registry, should in all cases be strictly enjoined; and in exchange for the loss of some privileges, the clergy of all the Churches of Ireland should be encouraged by every means to give a religious sanction to the contract, without regard to sectarian distinctions." In other words, he would annul the Scotch civil law on marriage, and the Irish religious system, thus irritating the lawyers of one country and the priesthood of the other to the last degree, in order' to secure three systems instead of uniformity. It would be easier and simpler to introduce registration at once, and make the contract civil and only the ceremony religious, but the matter had much bet- ter be let alone. Both Scotch and Irish can judge very well for themselves what they like best in the way of a marriage law, and the cases in which their system interferes with the general welfare are very few. Neither has been in the least conducive to immorality, and as to secrecy, there is no ceremonial more utterly secret than a marriage performed by banns in a great London church, where a hundred couples are "proclaimed" every week.—The editor gives an interesting biography of Santa Teresa, the founder of the sisterhood which bears her name, and the account supports Macaulay's idea that she was the Catholic prototype of the Protestant Countess of Huntingdon, but was, by the wisdom of the Papacy, kept within the Church. She professed and, it is most probable, believed, that she saw visions, and had personal communion with the Saviour, but was nevertheless an able and determined religious leader. She was appointed to reign over a very dissolute congregation, and declined; but she appealed for guidance, and for the safety of a beloved brother, to Christ : "'What would I not do, 0 Lord,' I said, were I to see a brother of yours in such peril. No pains would be too great to bear, no task too dif- ficult to undertake for your brother." My daughter, my daughter,' the Lord replied to me, the nuns of the Incarnation are my sisters, and you turn away from them. Go take the rule over them. Obey me. It will be less hard than you suppose. "

But the woman who wrote that wrote also this account of the nuns whom, in obedience to this command, she took in charge:

"It is amusing (she writes) to see what torments the sisters propose sometimes to inflict on themselves. Enthusiasm prompts them to under- take extraordinary austerities, which last, perhaps, two days, and then the devil suggests that they are hurting their health, and that they must leave off; that not only they cannot go on with the excess, but that discipline of the mildest kind is bad for them, even the poor little rules of the order. Silence, one would think, could do us no harm ; but silence gives us a headache ; and when our head aches, we cannot go to chapel, though that, too, would not kill us. We cannot go the first day because we have our headache ; the second day, because we bad our headache; the next and all future days for fear we should have our headache again. We propose all manner of imaginary severities, which we do not execute. Gradually we persuade ourselves that we need none of them, and that all we want is a dispensation.' "

There was wisdom in that heated brain, and we do not wonder that the nun, with her weak frame, and fainting-fits, and morbid imagina- tion, and instinct for government, restored the religions life of the Spanish orders. Her bad digestion, which made her see visions, did not impair either her judgment or her fervour, any more than the tendency to epilepsy which made litahomed a dreamer impaired his.

The Cornhill falls, we think, into the error of making all its papers a little too slight. Readers expect variety in a magazine, but dis- quisitions which appear but once a month should be a little more exhaustive than those of a weekly newspaper. The little paper, for example, on the "Fairy Land of Science," is admirable, with its half hints of the ultimate termination of all natural forces in some grand, and as yet invisible, unity, but it is so slight as to read rather like the reverie than the thoughts of the able man who wrote it. The subject demands shadow, but this paragraph, beautiful as its meaning may be, is surely too shadowy for the pages in which it appears :

"But is it merely to an unfathomable mystery that we are led, when there dawns on us the conviction that there is a deeper existence in nature than that which we perceive :—a profound Unity unreached by that natural apprehension to which the varying forms are all ? Truly the problem appears dark enough ; we seem to peer into a gulf, black from mere fathomless vacuity. But it is not so. Gazing into nature beyond the region to which our sense can carry us, we do not gaze upon vacuity, but on an existence, real, however dimly illuminated. The mystery which science encounters arises not from the cutting off of light, but from the pouring in of more; from the looming into view of that which was unper- ceived before. May we not compare our experience in this respect with the effect produced by the dim light of the commencing dawn ? The dark- ness of the night derives a certain clearness from its own excess. Where everything is hidden, mystery is not. But as the gradual light comes feebly on, a feeling of vague mystery creeps over us ; indistinct outlines elude the baffled sight, and objects half-perceived assuming distorted forms, fantastic visions throng upon the eye. Yet let the day advance, and the mystery its dawn created, its completeness soon dispels. May it not be thus with that unknown reality in nature which science bids us recognize? Our advancing insight makes us conscious of a mystery at first, and even yet it is but struggling with the mists of night.• But why should it not bear unlooked-for revelations in its train ?"

—The article on "Liberalism" is exposed to the same objection. The writer's object, unless we mistake it, is to urge Liberals to adopt a positive as well as a negative creed. He repudiates the cowardly notion so rapidly spreading among us that we may get rid of our responsibility for difficult work by leaving it to do itself; that we ought to get off because the steed is unruly; that, for example, we should cut India adrift because she is hard to govern. But, agreeing most heartily with that principle, sentences like this still seem to us but vague expressions of a great political truth :

"It ought to be an elementary and universally acknowledged truth that the whole nation will be disgraced and stultified if the changes which have been and will be made in its constitution do not make our history even more glorious, our institutions more fruitful and venerable, our list of great names and great achievements richer, and our national character graver, stronger, and nobler than it has ever been before."

Elementary truths must have a good deal more of the concrete about them than that sentence has. Even the vague command of the nine- teenth century, "Make civilization prevail," is more intelligible than that. The truth is, for practical politics, dogmas should not take too wide a range, and for this generation the Whig formula, "Civil and religions liberty all over the world," contains masses of unapplied, and indeed, unappreciated truth. When that dogma is fairly worn out, it will be time to look for a broader one, if it be indeed discover- able. The same objection applies to the new tale "To Esther," which is begun and concluded this month. It is well told and worth telling, but its force consists in an analysis of emotions which the writer

leaves us to think out for ourselves. Thinking is tiresome when applied to magazine stories, and the narrator who relates how his betrothed told him she loved another man, and how he went home quietly after it, will leave on half his readers an impression that a common-place individual has told a commonplace' story, instead of one of the most .passionate outbursts of feeling which, like a gen- tleman's anger, is only restrained in its expression.—" Philip" advances rapidly, and we would recommend those who think Mr. Thackeray wearing out, to read his account in this number of a quarrel and a reconciliation between two old officers and their woman- kind, and then ask themselves if they know a writer who could have so told the story without introducing a word or sentiment which we do not feel absolutely certain to have come from those particular mouths under those particular circumstances. It is carelessness, not feebleness, Mr. Thackeray has to avoid. The man has succeeded by force of genuine right to succeed, till, like many a great painter, he will not be at the trouble to avoid repeating himself. "Dinner down the River" is, perhaps, the best of the sketches Mr. Doyle has con- tributed to the Cornhill, but the series has not been in his best manner. The drawing is as good as of old, but the subjects are worn out, and the humour faded. We have seen all these half-drunken figures before, and there was more hearty fun and good artistic work in"Brown, Jones, and Robinson" (we do not mean the rubbish on which Mr. Trollope is wasting the capacity which can at the very same moment produce "Orley Farm"), than in a portfolio of these cartoons.

We have little to say of Macmillan, for the number contains little. There is " Ravenshoe," in which Henry Kingsley seems to be developing, in the description of Lord Welter and Adelaide, a power one would not have thought to belong to the man who wrote the first volume of Geoffery Hamlyn, and which one day, when he will think out a work artistically from the beginning, and adopt a machinery less intolerable than the priestly machinations employed here, may place him in the front rank of our few enduring novelists. " Tom Brown" also contributes one of those racy genial stories, which all sound minds love and appreciate from his pen without knowing critically why, unless it be that the realism of his stories contrives to appeal to the imagination as realism has no proper business to do, but there is little else in the magazine, for the padding is below the average. The poem on the death of Vans Agnew and Anderson, called, for some occult reason, "Britain's Earnest Money," is poor, very poor, and the writer has missed the most poetic scene in the story, the march of the conquering army up the breach bearing the bodies of the slain Englishmen. One does not expect either to find much of this sort of thing in Macmillan :

" Yet, the great heavens are always here: Above the glimmer of the Thames One sees their purple hemisphere Still writ with old heraldic flames; " Still heaving, soaring, toward the noon Of night, while we below sit mute, And feel as in some vast balloon When all the earth is parachute."

Very sick, that is, we should think. What in the name of common sense does this metaphor mean ?—

" That is the hour ! along the floors Of life it speaks the very din And thunder of the dungeon doors That shut another captive in."

What are the floors of life ? Why are they uncarpeted, that they, of all possible sections of life, should make a din when the great bell of St. Paul's shuts some undiscoverable dungeon doors ?—We must not pass over wholly, however, a fine appeal in Macmillan for a new and practical charity, a country hospital for convalescent children. The street children of London, when sick, are most of them received into hospitals,where they are admirably treated, but they must of course make room for new patients, and it is in the convalescent stage that they suffer most.. The crowded alley soon undoes all the well-ma- naged hospital has effected. To meet this form of misery a child's convalescent hospital has been established at Mitcham, said by the writer to be admirably managed. He does not, however, describe it, its means, or its prospects, but simply bids the inquisitive go and see—excellent advice for the reader, and perhaps not unpalatable to the laziness of the writer, who ought to have done the work he tells the reader to do.

Two new publications have been issued this month, of some merit.

One, called Bey's Hibernian Sixpenny Magazine, is remarkable for very fresh stories, and for verses as good as Irish verses seem always to be. The Irish have a genius for song-writing, and wretched prints like the Nation frequently publish songs of considerable force and

i beauty. The other is the Industrial Record, a magazine started to explain and enforce co-operative ideas. It is well done, in a mode- rate but very decided spirit, and marked with many flashes of clear sense and right feeling.