THE MAGAZINES.

THE " Remarks about South Africa by a South African," in the Fortnightly Review, are not very instructive. The writer is evidently either a Dutch Colonist or an Englishman who

has been captured by the Dutch, and his object is to disabuse his readers of the idea that South Africa will ever be British. The Dutch element, he says, will not be swallowed up, the Dutch Republics will remain independent, the Dutch popula- tion will increase, the two races will be fused, and the result will be a South African people, with Britain retaining only the coast-line. He gives, however, no figures ; does not deny the English immigration into the Dutch Republics ; does not count the new population sure to follow a new discovery of gold, a population which cannot be Dutch, because Holland is not big enough to supply it ; and, in fact, does not assign any reason whatever why the absorbing power of the Anglo- Saxott, so marked everywhere else, should not operate in South Africa. Fusion may, of course, occur, as it did in New York, and a separate people may be born, as it was in America ; but the evidence that the new people will not be essentially English is not forthcoming.—Mr. E. B. Lenin draws another painful picture of the sufferings of the six millions of Jews in Russia, the Government, with the entire acquiescence of the people, subjecting them to an unrelenting persecution in the hope of their quitting their faith, which the majority refuse to do. They are huddled together in a few pro- vinces, debarred from almost all occupations, and incessantly plundered by the officials, against whom they can defend themselves only by bribery. Mr. Lanin always appears to exag- gerate, but in this instance he is confirmed by all authorities in an unbroken stream. He does not, however, in the least explain the motive of the Government, which pro- tects Mahommedans, and is not, as he fully admits, actuated by race-hatred. How happens it, then, that the Czars never feel the usual impulse of despots to protect the lowest class in

the community, one, too, which is unresisting to a fault ?— Miss Menie Muriel Dowie sends to the Fortnightly the paper on the Carpathians which excited such enthusiasm when read before the British Association. There is not a great deal in

it, but its writer is adventurous, contemptuous of conventions, and possessed of a certain genius for describing, not places, but people. She enables her reader to see, for instance, that the Ruthenians must be, in their mode of living, very like the Scotch Highlanders in the beginning of this century, though with a much greater readiness to work hard. They are usually good-looking ; eat potatoes and mushrooms ; let their women dress in a night-shirt and nothing else, except two coloured aprons, one before and one behind ; " do not know the difference between a nice thing and a nasty thing ; serve you no politenesses ; and are unaware if they do anything dis- gusting." They are much given to jewellery and skin-diseases, and are altogether, if this account may be trusted, one of the least civilised of European populations. Miss Dowie, however, liked them and trusted them, and they seem to have invariably

treated her well. She does not, however, advise an imme- diate rush of tourists, admitting, what we should entirely believe, that she "was really very uncomfortable according toWestern notions."—The editor of the Review has obtained a new story from Count Tolstoi, intended to embody some of his peculiar ideas on the right relation of the sexes, which will

not, we fancy, greatly attract English readers. Like most men who have plunged into the subject, he has got it on the brain, is always unpleasant, and as his real thought is that natural appetite is as evil as lust, is not nutritive.—The account of " The American Tariff War" is instructive as to the effect of Protection on the American farmer, but ends with a plan for punishing the United States which, to us at least, seems almost incredibly foolish :-

" This is our scheme : A duty to be laid on all corn, dairy- produce, beef, and other food-stuffs which are imported from the United States. The capital raised by such duties not to be absorbed in the revenue of the country, but to form a Retaliation Fund. Out of this Retaliation Fund an Import Bounty to be paid on all similar food-stuffs imported from our Colonies or any country receiving British goods free of duty. A higher bounty to be paid to free-trading Colonies than to protected Colonies."

Cannot the authors see that if American food still came, the Americans would suffer nothing; and if it did not come, there would be no Retaliation Fund; while in both cases we should make our own food dear? Moreover, if their plan succeeded,

our trade with America would be killed. It is because America must take something in return for her wheat export that her Tariff will either ruin her farmers, or fail in checking the import of European goods.—Mr. Saintsbury sends a most interesting critique of Count A. Hamilton's works, of which only the Memoirs of the Count de Grammont is really known in England, and quotes for us, from Zen4yde, a marvellous picture of the Court of St. Germain, where everybody hated his neigh- bour, and, though the palace swarmed with priests, gallantry was the only distraction.

Canon Scott Holland contributes to the Contemporary Review a sketch of Dr. Liddon which it is most pleasant to read, because it brings out one side of his subject with such sharp definiteness. What impressed the Canon most in his friend, more than his inflexible convictions or than his humour, was his quality of distinction. Canon Scott Holland regrets very deeply his friend's persistent refusal to conduct Retreats, for which he thinks him to have been peculiarly fitted ; but it is more than probable that the great preacher knew himself best, and knew that he could effect far more as an individual adviser.—The basis of Sir T. Farrer's able criticism of Mr. Goschen's finance is that he has dealt a fatal blow to Sir S. Northcote's scheme for paying off debt by calculating the interest on the Debt permanently at £28,000,000. The balance between the real liability for dividends and its nominal amount, constituted a sinking fund which the nation hardly perceived, but which year by year automatically reduced the burden. Mr. Goschen's Budget of 1887 reduced the amount to £26,000,000, and was hampered by his policy of making large grants from State receipts in aid of local taxes. He again reduced it in 1889 to £25,000,000, and was, Sir T. Farrer thinks, both times in the wrong. He ought to have maintained the old figure by keeping the Income-tax at 8d., and even to have added to it the whole amount saved by the great operation of con- version. Mr. Goschen's course, Sir T. Farrer thinks, was not heroic. It must be remembered, however, that Mr. Goschen in three years paid off £23,300,000 of debt, and that he had to consider the extreme unpopularity a retention of the Income-tax at a high figure in a period of great depression would have produced.—Sir Morel Mackenzie's paper on " The Use and Abuse of Hospitals " is well worth reading, dealing as it does with the waste of hospital money on patients who could very well pay ; but his plan of investi- gating every case, and of depriving out-patients of political rights for seven years, stands little chance of acceptance.

Opinion will not allow the setting-up of a new property qualification, or suffer a sick man to be left uncured because he greatly values his political status. He is a good voter for that very reason.—" Vernon Lee" begins a novel with a social purpose not yet revealed, and Mr. A. Taylor Innes contributes a most interesting paper on "Hypno- tism and Crime." He admits to the full that hypnotism may be used by an unscrupulous operator in order to provoke his patients to crime, but is entirely opposed to restrictive legislation, on the ground of the mass of important facts which investigators outside the medical profession may discover. That is, we think, an insufficient argument, as we stop other experiments—in the case of vivisection, for instance—because they produce bad moral results, even though their continuance might help to gratify intelligent curiosity. By-the-way, Mr.

Taylor Innes, whose good faith no one will doubt, declares that he himself witnessed an experiment the result of which is to us almost incredible :—

" I was in a little town in the North of Scotland during the college vacation of 1851. The hall was filled with some two hundred people of both sexes and of every age, but all known to each other from childhood. The only stranger was the mesmerist, H. E. Lewis, a graduate of Edinburgh and a pupil of Professor Gregory there. Before be had been in the hall an hour he brought out all the ordinary phenomena. That is, he showed that a large proportion of those present were quite easily put into a state between sleeping and waking; in which every suggestion made to them was accepted as real by the imagination and senses, so as for the time absolutely to control the will. But on this Saturday night he went farther. Among the sensitive part of the audience was a young lad, named J. M. He was not only in perfect health, but, with his brilliant complexion and golden hair, a model of the Apollo type of youth. All the more astonishing was the con- trast when Lewis, after making other suggestions which were instantly obeyed, put a staff into the young fellow's hand and whispered to him that he was an old man. He turned from Apollo into Tithonus before our eyes, the very muscles of his cheeks

falling in, and the hue of age overspreading his face as he tottered amid the wondering crowd."

Grant the fullest ascendency of one mind over another, and still the doubt remains whether the mind of the subject,

however controlled, could produce physical charges so decided. It is almost like saying that a man could will his hair to be temporarily grey.—Mr. H. A. Kennedy's paper on " The Possibilities of Naval Warfare," is slight, but it starts a. curious question. Will human nerve bear the possibilities of destruction inherent in our ironclads, which may sink as the ` Captain' did, like so many iron boxes, and our huge guns, which are sure to explode after the ninetieth round, and lose some portion of their safety with every discharge. We should say human courage would face any chance, however weighty, but not a certainty of destruction, and that, consequently, ironclads will be manned and the big guns fired ; but there is some evidence on the other side. It is certain, we believe, that the effect of modern shells on men in wooden ships makes the use of those ships impossible. The men will not fight, and the future may reveal other causes of panic as disastrous.

The October number of the Nineteenth Century contains no very striking contribution, but an unusual number of in- teresting papers. The most attractive, perhaps, at the present moment is Mr. Wilfrid Ward's on Cardinal Newman. Mr.

Ward, after an able survey of the Cardinal's intellectual habitudes, brings out strongly the definiteness of the position which, after his conversion, he thought was the one reserved to him, or at least the only one which was for him possible to attain. It was that of St. Philip Neri, who in the sixteenth century—in an age, that is, when the world and the Church were utterly at variance—seated himself in Rome to become the adviser and inspirer of all who sought guidance towards a higher life. That was Cardinal Newman's position in the Oratory at Birmingham, though he used the pen as his in- strument rather than conversation. This clearness of view as to his function in life must have greatly helped the Cardinal to the acquisition of influence, and have prevented that dis- sipation of energy from which many men nearly as great as he have so grievously suffered. So also must the quiet humour with which he often baffled men who sought to engage him in controversies on subjects or at times he considered incon- venient :—

" One can fancy the fate—there are stories on record as to the fate—of the pompous man who went to talk to him of contro- versy, as one great controversialist to another. One specimen of the class comes with notes, and books, and points for discussion on problems of education, but finds the Cardinal so absorbed with news about the barley crop' in Norfolk, that no other subject seems to interest him. Another presses him for a refutation of one of Mr. Gladstone's arguments against the Vatican decrees, but only succeeds in eliciting the reply that Mr. Gladstone is an old Oxford acquaintance, and has been very kind to him. Or, if the subject is insisted on, the conversation suddenly passes—his visitor knows not how—to the oaks of Hawarden and the exercise of cutting down trees. A third visitor finds himself engaged in liming in a discussion as to the number of stoppages in the 1.30

train as contrasted with the 3.40, and has unexpectedly to employ his conversational talent in explaining his cross-country route, and the lines by which he came. And then there is the Oxford story of Newman's guest who introduces the origin of evil' at dinner, and at once produces a dissertation—full of exact knowledge, and apparently delivered with earnest interest—as to the different ways of treating hot-house grapes, and the history of the particular grapes on the table before him."

Another most interesting paper is Mr. Rees's reply to Mr. Malabari on the question of Hindoo marriages. In it Mr. Rees, whose experience, we should remark, is chiefly of the Madras Presidency, has piled up authority on authority to show,—first, that Hindoo opinion is definitively and strongly in favour of early man-iage, as ordered in the Smritis, the sacred writings which have superseded the Vedas, and as essential to the family life ; secondly, that it does not work any social evil, Hindoo women being both happy and attached to their husbands ; and thirdly, that it does not injure the race, the immense majority of women joining their husbands when they are fifteen, and therefore competent not only to be mothers, but to manage their households. He entirely deprecates legislative interference, as does a greater authority, Sir Madhava Row, a Hindoo statesman and man of learning who is also a man of the world. Sir Madhava says :-

" My deep conviction is that the existing system of the Hindus, which is an extremely ancient one, and which the Hindus love in the highest conceivable degree, is the product of the longest experience in the world, and is the best adapted to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number, by which I mean

the greatest happiness of the greatest number of men and also the greatest happiness of the greatest number of women. I say this not merely as a Hindu, but as a philosopher !"

—Curiously enough, Mr. Hamilton Aide, in a paper on " Sicily in 1890," describes the condition of women as one of Oriental seclusion. The Sicilians cannot believe that the sexes can associate innocently, and prohibit an engaged couple from ever being alone together, even for five minutes, and separate male and female servantsby a jealous etiquette. No girl can go out alone, and this rule, contrary to the custom in Asia, is observed even by the working poor, whose daughters are always escorted in going to and from their place of employment. The husband, too, is autocratic in his own house, the women, overborne by an irresistible opinion, seldom retaining the courage even for an argument. The East is more than reproduced for them, for in the East the wife often rules as absolutely as in Enrope Sir H. A. Blake, Governor of Jamaica, pleads the cause of his island as a splendid health-resort, where the consumptive can reside in a soft yet healthy climate, not hotter than that of South England in summer. He says the Negroes have taken to agriculture with industry, are exceedingly comfortable, support their own clergy and schools, and will develop most extensive trades in fruit and vegetables. He thinks that the sugar-cane could still be cultivated with success if only the factories were concentrated, instead of being scattered over the estates, and believes that a young emigrant with £5,000 might live in the island in the utmost comfort, purchasing a house and estate ready- made. The great want seems to be roads, especially in the hills, and we are not altogether contented with the pro- mise that they will be made. Cannot the Colony borrow sufficient to secure this indispensable improvement in com- munication ? At present the hills can only be reached by riding along shelves in their sides, often only 2 ft. broad, with precipices below them of 2,000 ft. sheer.—The Bishop of Carlisle thinks that the argument against Darwinism to be drawn from the perfection of the bee-cell, has not yet been answered. The bee builds its cell more perfectly than it need, and, moreover, does not transmit the instinct for such building, the builders being only the nurses, and the new bees the progeny of the queen and the drones who do not build. An improvement must have occurred to a whole swarm simul- taneously, which is improbable, more especially as the swarm was not driven by necessity. The humble-bee has not made the improvements, and lives on quite contentedly.--We are not greatly interested in any of the three labour articles, Mr. Reginald Brett's in particular striking us as both thin and trite, a mere question why labourers do not develop leaders who would give them ideals ; but a statement by Mr. Champion should be noted. As we understand him, it was determined during the dock strike to throw a train containing " black- legs " off a steep embankment. We can scarcely believe that even the most violent of the dockers contemplated wholesale murder, but it is their advocate who says it.