THE MAGAZINES.

Trtx, Magazines are not specially bright this month; they rarely are in August ; but each of those we have time to read contains at least one good paper ; and after all, as the publisher said, "Hew much genius am I expected to provide for half-a-crown ?" Black- wood, for instance, is a little dull, at least we are rather bored by its piece de re'sistance, the financial condition of France, full as it is of information ; but the purchaser who is disposed to grumble either has not read "The Maid of Sker," or does not appreciate literature of the most perfect kind. If he has not read it, we advise him to begin, to get through it slowly, and then see if, among other things, he has a perfect conception of Davy Llewellyn, a conception such as he seldom attains of any of his most fimiliar acquaintance. If ho has not, if he has not added another character to his gallery and enjoyed himself exceedingly for half an hour, let him betake himself to the Statistical Society's journal, for humour of the beet kind, the humour that never laughs out, but smiles pityingly with the faintest sub-trace of contempt, is outside his appreciation. We have not seen anything so good as the garrulous, self-righteous, conceited, unprincipled, efficient, and kindly Davy Llewellyn for a long while, any spechneu of literary vivisection so keen, yet so entirely untouched with malice or dislike. The man who can steal a wrecked boat, thank God for her, and in perfect sincerity describe himself as hiding her oars "lest some vile wrecker should make off with her feloniously," is a new and delicious type of character, and will, we trust, be thoroughly worked out. What would Davy Llewellyn do under a temptation against which his creed had fortified him, as it evidently had not against wrecking? The letter, too, from Brigadier-General Adye is well worth study, though the Artillery chief only endorses the plan for forming an army originally proposed by Lord Sandhurst, universal training for one year in the Militia, with permission to all who have passed that term to volunteer into the Line. That would give us an Army, and a drilled people too, and make the country at least as safe and strong as we should like to see it ; but will Brigadier Adye just tell us how to make that pass through Parliament? We do not believe there are ten educated men in the country who have not accepted that plan, or three who believe that it would be possible, except under threat of invasion, to get it through the House of Commons.

Fraser is dull, too; but there is a paper on "Future Naval Battles" which will be interesting to all who care about the defences of the country. The writer believes firmly in the torpedo as a weapon of offence, and believes that, armed with it, a little gunboat might destroy a very great ship. He believes for the present that Captain Harvey's torpedo is the best, and gives us this short description of it, too short to be very intelligible to laymen :—

"Captain F. Harvey, R.N., has directed his attention to perfecting a

form of towing torpedo, proposed many years ago by his uncle, Captain John Harvey, R.N. He has succeeded in producing a small torpedo which diverges at an angle of 45', at is distance of from fifty to two hundred yards, when towed at high speed, and is exploded by collision -with the opposing vessel. Exceedingly simple in its construction and manipulation, the towing torpedo yet requires great skill and experience to insure that the explosion shall be effected against a submerged por- tion of the hostile ship ; but it is probable that, by a suitable increase of the 76 lb. gun-cotton charge, the destructive force may be made effec- tivo. when the contact takes place at the surface of the water, oven against armour-plating. Should explosion at the surface be made to suffice, no special skill would then be required in applying the towing torpedo, and any seaman accustomed to the ordinary handling of a ship would be able to use it effectually. Moreover, the high speed which is now deemed essential to its successful application would be of less consequence, and the area of its employment be proportionately enlarged."

No less than five vessels were thus destroyed during the American war by torpedoes affixed to outriggers, and used offensively, and it is evident that the invention is susceptible of vast improvement, though we cannot get over our impression that the next great instrument of naval warfare will be a method of throwing barrels of nitroglycerine to explode on percussion downward. There is a power of destruction at sea latent in that nasty stuff which the devil will contrive to utilize somehow and some day. The re- maining papers in Fraser are all but one too heavy even for us, who desire padding in magazines ; and the one on " Paris just before the End," though light enough and readable, seems, so fast does the world move, oat of date.

Macmillan is an average number as to its serious articles— though if the story called " Marie " be fiction, its author has ex- quisite power of giving readers pain, but "A Week in the West" promises excellent things. A gossipy book about America is much to be desired, the place makes men so didactic. A traveller who tells an inquisitive bagman, wearying to know his trade, that he "travels in beetles," is sure to be an amusing com- panion, and Continental tourists will be delighted with this ex-

planation of that fearsome phenomenon, an American lady's luggage :

"Just then the hotel omnibus drove up, laden with tourists and those vast, Iron-bound, round-topped receptacles for wardrobes, which acorn- patty American ladles on their wanderings. I have remarked that the old English passion for solidity breaks out in this direction of trunks amongst their descendants in the Now World more than in any other. Indeed, I scarcely know where else to look for it. Yankee notions in general may be makeshifts for the day, but Yankee trunks are built for posterity. Amongst so practical a folk the reason is not far to seek. In no country in Christendom, or, indeed, in those parts of heathendom with which I am familiar, is1l manner of unoffonding lugguage used so atrociously as in America. A perfect system of despatch and delivery is supplemented by a brutality of treatment in transit which would try the constitution of the toughest bull's hide bound with brass (like Roderick Chu's shield). I speak feelingly on the subject."

Mau must do something for posterity, and the Yankee builds trunks, and the European, as he meets them on omnibuses, or in hotel passages, or worst of all, in the gangways of steamers, fer- vently wishes that they were shipped all safe to their ultimate destination. Mr. Albert Dicey's paper on the development of Common Law is interesting and original, but we should rather demur to his notion of the influence of fees in inducing the Judges of old days to stretch their methods and powers of affording remedies for wrongs. French judges were paid by fees too, and built up no system like ours in its appli- cability to any conceivable case ; while the tendency of fees in

Spain lea been to make judges delay decisions: We suspect that

a national characteristic, a passion for doing justice without departing from old forms, had much to do with it, just as

it had with the extraordinary and almost unintelligible

readiness of English barristers and civilians to administer Hindoo and Mohammedan law. The French, Dutch, and Danes in India superseded both at once, but the Englishman was

quite content to stretch the old formula until he could meet the new fact. Two books, now rarely used or seen, Marshman's Guide to the Regulations and Beaztfort's Digest of Criminal Law, illustrate,

perhaps, more perfectly than any works in existence the English- man's method of making any rules, so that they be but radically

just, suit any circumstances. The Anglo-Indians actually con- trived to develop a commercial law out of the Koran, a feat at least equal to anything that Darwin has suggested. Mr. Trollope's new story, "The Eustace Diamonds," goes on well in the Fortnightly, his Becky Sharpe fighting hard for her

treasures, but the paper of the month is that on "Prohibitory' Legislation in the United States." The writer, Mr. Justin M'Carthy, declares as the result of his personal observation that prohibitory legislation, both in Maine and Massachusetts, has failed, that you can get liquor when you like and where you like, in spite of the law. The law is strict, opinion among the

respectable classes is stricter, and a clear majority is in favour of repression ; but the system breaks down in presence of the crave and the profits it brings, pro- fits which enable the rum-sellers to demoralize the police. This is of course complete evidence as to the failure of the Maine system, but though no friends of total prohibition, we must demur to the deduction that because this system fails so must every other. To say that a teetotal Government backed by a teetotal majority could not put drinking down, is to make a large draft upon our belief in the force of artificial desires. There may be difficulties created by geography in some places, but it is surely not true that drinking could not be stopped, say in the Isle of Man, by severe fines upon every man who sold a glass of grog, fines with a mean- ing in them, say fines of two years' income, with five years' im- prisonment as the alternative in the case of men of straw. It would be utter tyranny, but it would not only extin- guish drinking, but in five years beget a conviction that the swallowing, say of beer, was a highly immoral act. Mr. McCarthy gives no evidence on the other point on which the world wants some, namely the tendency of teetotalism to develop the practice of opium-eating, and we presume from the absence of reference to it that it has not been observed in America. It has, we fear, in Lin- colnshire, and even in Mecca, where it is held to be at least as immoral as ruin-drinking. How odd it is, by the way, that gluttony, which struck our fathers as such a vice, should have disappeared from the catalogue of the deadly sins, the only instance we know of in ethics of such a change of feeling. There are plenty of gluttons left, but people condemn them as fools ignorant of the power of the fiend dyspepsia rather than as sinners.

There is a paper by Matthew Browne in St. Pauls which will give amateur journalists information, and is exceediugly readable besides, but which contains, as we think, a mistake. Mr. Browne says the best way for a beginner is to study. the kind of contribu- tion which is accepted, and in one way that is true. It may enable a man with more brains than experience to avoid mistakes, and reduce himself down to the level of intelligible writers; but it is not what he means, namely, the quickest practical way of get- ting employment. That is without doubt to get up some subject, the more out-of-the-way the better, and get an order to write on that. Ordered work is always carefully considered work, because the proprietor has to pay for it ; and if well done, the favour is reckoned one received, not given, and the next proposition is pretty sure of a favourable hearing. That is a "practical" wrinkle worth, we think, more than most discussions on " aspirants," and very much at their service. The Miss Austen of our day—Miss Austen with brighter wit, and deeper humour, and wider knowledge—reviews in Cornhill the Miss Austen of our mothers, and naturally does it with insight and affectionateness ; but for the average reader, the paper of the month is the one absurdly named " Commie Julio," a biography,