THE MAGAZINES.

DECEMBER is not a good month for the magazines, though it is possible to pick out some papers well worth reading. They are fewest for once in the Nineteenth Century, which is a distinctly uninteresting number. The place of honour is given to Mr. Sidney Low, who contends with energy and acumen for the view we have so often maintained, that Mr. Cleveland, by his interference between Great Britain and Venezuela, has assumed a Protectorate for the United States over all Spanish and Portuguese America, that this will involve a great increase to the American Army and Navy, and that Europe will in the end resist the monopoly of the vast spaces of fertile land between the Union and Tierra del Fuego to the thin and unimproving populations which now possess them. The only omission in Mr. Low's paper is the want of any reference to the dispute between Napoleon III. and the American Government as to the creation of an Empire in Mexico. In reality the right to protect all Spanish America was asserted and maintained by the Union on that occasion, although, owing to the fact that the frontiers of the Union march with those of Mexico, the new dogma was not so instantaneously recognised. This time all Europe perceives the truth, and all Europe is displeased with it, though owing to the temporary unpopularity of Great Britain no remonstrance has been audible except in the graver section of the French and German Press.—Lord Brassey wishes to in- crease the number of British seamen in the mercantile Navy, and of Reserve men in the Royal Navy, by providing a year's naval drill for boys who intend to live by a seafaring occupa- tion, with a bonus for each boy of £10. The boy would be received at seventeen, would be sent back to the mercantile marine, and would be thenceforward drilled for one month in every three years on a man-of-war. His view, which can only be properly criticised by experts, is that under this scheme the tendency to employ foreigners instead of British seamen would be obviated. Our own impression, we confess, is that it would not, and that unless the conditions of life in the mercantile marine can be improved, that marine must cease in the end to be the grand feeder of the British Navy. The merchant sailors want better pay, better food, and a discipline more closely approximating in its regularity to that of a man-of-war. Lord Brassey is strongly of opinion that a Naval Reserve, amounting for the present to five thousand men, could be raised in the Colonies. That is true, and we should like to add, at the risk of some unpopularity, that we should not distrust the services of picked, drilled, and well- treated lascars so completely as it is now the fashion to do. They are not cowards by nature, as they show whenever they enlist in pirate ships. The courage is too often bullied out of them.—The Rev. Harry Jones pleads strongly for the Christian obligation of temperance as against the total abstainer, but we do not see that he has thrown any fresh light upon the subject. The facts on that side may be summed up in two sentences. Christ taught temperance, not total abstinence, and the races which have not only conquered, but moralised, the world have without an ex- ception used alcohol in some form, to add to their strength or their enjoyment of life.—We take from Mr. Archer P. Crouch's account of "The World Beneath the Ocean" the

following paragraph, which sums up pretty nearly all we know about ocean depths and the total mass of water on the planet :— "When the Atlantic first came to be sounded in a scientific manner in the course of the Challenger' expedition, the result, after the great depths previously reported, was generally felt to be disappointing. Sir C. Wyville Thomson, indeed, who was chief of the scientific staff, subsequently described that ocean, with its average of 2,000 fathoms, as a 'thin shell of water.' When, however, it is remembered that over large areas the depth is at least 2,500 fathoms, or 15,000 ft.—the height of Mont Blanc —and that in one place a sounding gave 4,561 fathoms, or 27,36G ft. —only 2,000 ft. less than Mount Everest, the highest point in the world—his expression appears decidedly misleading. The sea level may, in fact, be taken as the relief equator of the globe, almost equidistant from the highest land elevation and the lowest depths of the sea. But while the average height of the land is only 1,000 ft., the average depth of the water is 13,000 ft. Hence an enormous disproportion exists between the mass of land above sea level and the volume of water beneath it. Taking the area of the sea in comparison to the land as 21 to 1, and multiplying by thirteen, the number of times by which it exceeds it in depth, we find that the total volume of ocean water is thirty-six times the volume of the land above sea level."

The great ocean basins are, so far as scientific exploration has shown, quite permanent. If they were not, nothing would be stable, for an upheaval of 500 ft. would submerge fourteen million square miles of the land, while a subsidence of the same

amount would add to existing continents and islands ten mil- lion square miles, about nine times the area of Europe west of the Vistula.—Professor R. K. Douglas, while drawing a shock- ing picture of the official corruption of China, tells ua facts which will, we believe, be new to most of our readers. One is that each Viceroy is expected to support his enormous staff, from his secretary down to the lowest clerk, out of his own salary, which is impossible, and is the only valid excuse for a moderate amount of corruption. Another is that the more competent a Mandarin is the more he avoids Pekin, as a place more dangerous and less profitable than the provinces, the result being that the Emperor is usually surrounded by inferior men. (Was not this the case also in Imperial Rome ?) And the third is that the real struggle for power in Pekin lies between the Emperor's old tutor, Weng, who is supported by the Emperor himself, and Li Hung Chang, who is the favourite of the Dowager-Empress. Professor Douglas evidently expects nothing from Chinese reforms ; but he

does not explain, indeed nobody explains, the oddest of all Chinese facts. How does it happen, amidst the uni- versal corruption, and while the highest officials are constantly robbed and threatened, that the Censors fre- quently tell the truth with unsparing directness ? What protects them when they write to the Emperor, and publish in the Gazette that Li and his brother have become millionaires by sheer corruption ?—The remaining papers do not interest us, unless it be a statement by Mr. Shaylor (of Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.) that the discounts granted by publishers to distributors have been increasing for years, and that they are only supposed to have touched bottom at last. That is important, for it can hardly be doubted that this system tends to keep up the price of books, and therefore to diminish their circulation. We suppose the excessive com- petition benefits the public, but it may be doubted if it benefits literature. Successful authors of fiction get a great deal, but the authors of valuable works—unless, indeed, they record explorations—receive comparatively little.

We obtain no pleasure or instruction from M. Male Reclus's " Progress of Mankind" in the Contemporary Review,—the eloquent sentences are so vague. The most definite thoughts in it are that the Socialist geographer believes that man's increase in knowledge develops his intel- ligence, which may be true, though Aristotle was probably abler than most graduates, but that there is a general retro-

gression in physique, Negroes, Red Indians, Malaya, and Polynesians frequently surpassing Europeans in grace of figure :—" There is certainly, on this side, a general retro- gression, the result of our being shut up in houses, and of our absurd costume, which prevents cutaneous transpiration, the action of the light and the air upon the skin, and the free development of the members of the body, often cramped and twisted, and even crippled and maimed, by shoes and corsets." M. Reclus, however, has hopes, for the Alpine explorers now rival the Swiss guides, and many men are going back to the study of Nature, while there is a decided increase of the democratic sentiment of brotherliness. That is true enough,

but it is also true that there is a decided increase of the democratic but unbrotherly sentiment of suspicion. If not, why is the white world, in Europe at least, living under arms ? The editor of the Contemporary Review is right enough in pub- lishing anything a man like Elisee Reclus has to say, but we do wish he would hint to such contributors that he wants a little bread to all that treacle.—" Life at Yildiz" does not tell us anything except that the Sultan is very timid, which was known before, and that the household of Yildiz Kiosk is enormous and most costly. One would not have expected fifty "librarians," but the word " kitabji," literally " book- fellows," includes everybody from what we call a librarian to the clerk kept to dust the manuscripts. The following may interest our readers :— " The Commander of the Faithful ' is at present fifty-four years of age. He is of middling stature, rather under than over the average, and of weakly constitution. His countenance has no marked expression ; it is of the Circassian type from the mother's side, but bearing the marks of degeneration. The eyes are haggard, the forehead insignificant and narrow, the eyebrows very thick, forming two great arcs, which coalesce. The large nose dominates the whole physiognomy, and is slightly inclined to one side at the lower extremity. The mouth is large, the lips thick. The Sultan wears his beard long, and care has sprinkled his hair and beard with silver within the last few years. It is a family tradition among the heirs of Osman to speak in a loud voice. Abdul Hamid's utterance is strident and im- perious. It is the voice of a master addressing those whom he regards as his slaves."

Most Asiatics when at ease speak exceedingly loud.—" The

Happy Family" is a bitter, imaginary sketch of the late Liberal Cabinet, the point of which is that Lord Rosebery and Sir William Harcourt never address each other, the latter

always speaking to Lord Kimberley. The sketch is clever and suggestive of that "correspondence " which people say, in defiance of all probabilities, is to come out before Parlia- ment meets. It will not come out, we fancy, even if it exists, while the Queen lives, and the makers of imaginary dialogues have, therefore, for a time a free hand.—The idea of Mr. H.

W. Wolff in his paper on " Oar Savings Banks " is that the managers should be allowed to invest outside Consols. There will be great debates on that subject one day, but at present we do not quite see how, if that relaxation is made, absolute safety is to be obtained. Mr. Wolff would also found local workmen's banks, apparently with considerable latitude in the use of their money, and says that they succeed elsewhere. He has, we believe, the support of Sir J. Lubbock for this project, but it is a risky one. We entirely agree, however, that as the rate of interest declines the whole question of Savings- banks must be very thoroughly examined.

We have mentioned the best article in the National Review

Mr. Bailey's on South Africa, elsewhere ; but there is an interesting defence of Governor Altgeld of Illinois by the

editor of the Chicago Dial. li-e maintains that Mr. Altgeld is a good lawyer and no anarchist, though he takes a possibly extreme view of " State Rights." Mr. Altgeld is a rich lawyer, having made a fortune by land-jobbing, and to the editor of the Dial he seems quite a heroic figure. The essayist affirms that in pardoning certain anarchists Mr. Altgeld was in the right because the men were not fairly con- victed, but he adduces no proof of this statement other than an assertion that among them were men who were not present at the bomb-throwing. One part of his case, that the abuse of the Governor was of the most brutal kind, he makes out corn- pletely.—Miss E. L. Watson writes a solid and much-needed warning about the training of modern nurses. That training, she says, should not begin till they are twenty-three, and she tells this almost incredible story :—" I have known some small hospitals and nursing homes take girls to train as young as seventeen, and, in one instance, I remember a girl who had been sent for a splint in a great hurry stopped on the way to play with a kitten, and forgot all about what she was sent for ! "

Blackwood's Magazine is very good this month. Mr. W.

G. Steevens gives by far the most interesting account we have yet seen of the Presidential election in the United States, ending in a gloomy prophecy that if the States cannot purify themselves of the corrupt influences now rampant in them, they will yet be the scene of an industrial war such as the world has not yet beheld,—a war which will be all the more sanguinary because the fighters will take different sides in every city and village. Mr. Steevens is anti-Bryanite like our-

SPIV( Y. but like ourselves he believes that the strength of that party arose in great part from discontent caused by the

misuse of capital.—There is a very detailed account of the Secret Societies of China, of which the most formidable is a seditious society known as the " White Lily," a descendant of the old Hung Society, which dethroned the successors of Jenghiz Khan.—Mr. W. B. Harris also sends an eerie story, which, though ghastly, is not horrible, and the idea of which, so far as we know, is absolutely original. We will not reveal it, but Mr. Harris has a singular power of giving extra effect to his weird conceptions by making his figures ordinary persons, situated, except in regard to the secret, very much like other people, or at least other people in the outskirts of a tropical colony.

In the Fortnightly Review Mr. E. J. Dillon tries to explain Prince Bismarck's irritation at the situation of his own country. His view is summed up in these words :— " The `wire' between Berlin and St. Petersburg is broken, and irreparably broken, for the sake of the Triple Alliance, and England ; yet the Triple Alliance is certainly not stronger, and is probably weaker than ever before ; Germany's relations with Great Britain have come to depend upon passing accidents or popular whims rather than on State considerations ; France, whose isolation spelt peace, is become the leading Power in Europe. and has changed Germany's staunchest friend into a presumptive enemy ; Germany's colonial dreams are further from realisation than ever before, and she has forfeited the com- manding position in Europe which Bismarck had conferred upon her by the waving of his magician's wand."

Prince Bismarck seeks, therefore, to divide Russia and France, and to isolate England, to whom he attributes the breaking

of the wire. We should dispute the accuracy of part of Mr. Dillon's sketch, but it is well worth study by all who are in- terested in a drama which we shall none of us understand for at least ten years.—Mr. H. W. Wilson, under cover of an argument about arbitration, brings a heavy indict- ment against the United States, which he implies will always accept arbitration, will go to war rather than not enforce an award in its own favour, but will hesitate to carry out an award

if the decision is against itself. We admit the justice of the opinion, which it has in its favour the hesitation to pay the Behring Sea claims ; but we hope better things for the future, and in any case the effort to carry on a quarrel as we should a suit at law is one which it is meritorious to

.make.—The best article of this number, that by "Emeritus " upon Lord Rosebery, is discussed elsewhere, and for the rest we have been most interested in Mr. F. H. Hardy's account of the American election. He reveals the curious fact

that Mr. Bryan and his doctrines were most popular in districts baying moat American-born citizens, and he at- tributes this to the strong belief of all Americans in the power of law to settle any question, even, for instance, to give to silver an artificial value. He believes that the Presidential campaign has almost dissipated this illusion, and has, moreover, compelled little owners of property to understand that their interests and those of the larger capitalists are identical. It has brought all classes of the Republic to the polls, and has " startled the sluggard into a new conception of his duties as a citizen." It was this

awakening of the people which gave Mr. McKinley twenty times

the majority which seated Mr. Cleveland.—We read with little interest Karl Blind's argument that Turkey ought to be left undivided, but transferred to the guidance of "Young Turkey," because we do not believe that Young Turkey has any effective political power. It relies on a Parliamentary machinery, which the real fighting Ottomans will not suffer to work, and which is, moreover, radically at variance with the whole genius and drift of Mahommedanism. Except in a few small divisions of Arabia, Mahommedans in all countries and of all sects have always left absolute power to an individual who claims, as Mandi, Khalif, Sultan, or Shah, to be the Vice- gerent of God.