SOME MAGAZINES.

Tax Nineteenth Century is readable, though amidst the crowd of contributions we notice nothing of unusual im- portance. Mr. Matthew Arnold finishes and does not improve his monograph on Isaiah, descending in this second part to the style of the modern commentator who is so anxious about authorship, and interpolations, and dates. That is useful work in its way, but not the work we expect of Mr. Arnold, who in doing it is forced to rely on second-hand knowledge, and can gain no aid from his peculiar genius. When he tells us that the source of the tragic impressiveness of these prophecies is the ground-tone of inexorableness which pervades them, we listen impressed, for the uriter is a great critic of poetry, and his opinion on such a point is of itself evidence ; but when he discourses of Lowth's emenda- tions and the proper divisions of Isaiah, we tarn un- satisfied to the Hebraists, and ask if they have no sense of intrusion into their kingdom. We hope, when Mr. Arnold publishes this essay by itself, he will give us a little more criticism and a little less dissertation, and, above all, include in his volume Isaiah printed as it should be according to his theory. Earl Cowper, in spite of the jerky and as it were lazy style in which it pleases him to express himself, gives us, in "Desultory Reflections of a Whig," a paper of some real value, if only from its author's point of view. He evidently cares little for abstract ideas, and tries questions by the test of political expediency. Upon that ground he maintains that the Whigs are right as yet in adhering to the Radicals, who, so far, are not encouraging Revolution by their innovations, but by removing grievances rendering the Revolution less probable. He quotes the Irish Land Act as a wise measure, because a measure dic- tated by political necessity, and utterly rejects the notion that it will be a precedent. There is nothing very new in what he says, but it is interesting, because he is no Radical, has no wish except to govern well, and brings everything to the test of a rather hard common-sense. He sees as yet no sign of Revolutionary passion in Great Britain. Sir Julian Goldsmid is as coldly sensible in discussing the "Questions of the Day in India," which he has recently visited. He is entirely in favour of Lord Ripon's ideas of local self-govern- ment, which, as he shows, have already succeeded in the Central Provinces under Mr. Morris, but he holds Mr. Ilbert's Bill for increasing the authority of native magistrates over Europeans

uncalled for. The privilege of the Europeans should be swept away when all are made equal before the law, not now, when a thousand natives in Calcutta alone are ex- empt from the obligation to give evidence in the ordinary way. They can require to be examined at home by a special commission. To take away their right would raise -an insurrection ; and why take away that of the Europeans, of which, till the question was raised, the majority of the people were unconscious? Sir Julian's impression of the administration of India as now conducted is, on the whole, most favourable ; though, like every other visitor, he lays too much stress on the material improvements we have introduced. They are very great, but we doubt whether new roads, or even new cultivations, have ever much conciliated a people, and the experience of the Mutiny showed that our even-handed justice had impressed the Indians much more than our material improvements. They asked their new rulers to continue "the English laws," not the English engineering works, which, after all, hardly rival their own. Mr. Fronde, in his two papers on "An Unsolved Historical Riddle," has been rather wasting his time, the riddle being only whether Philip II. of Spain murdered a troublesome subject, or ordered him to be secretly executed for reasons of State. The latter appears to be the truth, but the point was hardly worth clearing up. The puzzle to us is not that, but why a man like Philip, who had outraged so many peoples and families, remained so safe from the dagger of the assassin. Mr. E. Kay Robinson's queer speculation on "The Man of the Future" we have noticed elsewhere, and need here only call attention to Mr. S. Smith's paper on "Social Reform." The Member for Liverpool is one of those who believe that the mass of poverty and suffering in our great cities constitutes a terrible social danger, and who have a definite plan for mitigating it. His notion—and his immense experience gives him a right to speak— is, that we must attack the evil at its source, deal with the million and a quarter of nearly destitute children, who ought to 'be wards of the State, enforce parental obligations much more rigidly, and commence a vast, steady, State-aided system of transferring such children to the Colonies. The plan does not commend itself to us, except as one of several, but the thought at the bottom of it does. It is in the improve- ment of the children that the chance lies, and to seize it we must give up one or two of our notions of exclu- sive parental responsibility. After all, the whole community, if it can only do it, has as much right to see that the child has a chance of a career as to see that he is kept alive and taught the rudiments of learning. The American States are already adopting this principle, and are sanctioning laws under which destitute or degraded children are rescued by force, and turned into decent citizens ; and in Liverpool, private per- sons, among whom Mr. Smith is not the least eminent, are working out the same idea. They have saved, Mr. Smith says, 1,200 children already, all of whom would have become criminals or paupers.

The most interesting paper in the Contemporary is Mrs. Oliphant's account of Mrs. Carlyle, touched on elsewhere this week in our columns; and the most brilliant "The Responsibilities of Unbelief," by "Vernon Lee." If this name really conceals, as is rumoured, a very young lady, we venture to predict that we shall soon see another female novelist of the first rank. The slightness and accuracy of the touches with which the charac- ter of Rheinhardt, the Voltairian of her dialogue, are made manifest are really extraordinary. Her object is to show that in teaching others, and especially their children, the responsibility of unbelievers is as great as that of Christians. They have no right to conceal the light they think they have obtained, in order to secure easier lives for their children, or to avoid distressing their wives. This is sound enough, provided the unbeliever unbelieves as sincerely and certainly as the believer believes ; but the attrac- tion of the article is the brilliant cynicism of Rheinhardt, who prefers Catholicism to Protestantism because dissidents from Catholicism give up the supernatural, while Protestants only surrender such beliefs as seem to them to endanger faith by too great a demand upon credulity. "The Reformation," remarks Rheinhardt, incidentally, "was a piece of intellectual socialism. It consisted in dividing truth so that each man might have a little scrap of it for himself, and in preventing all increase by abolishing all large intellectual capital." Sir William Palmer de- scribes clearly the part taken by himself in the early history of the "Oxford Movement," a part greater than this generation recollects, and adds one more testimony to the wonderful in- fluence of Cardinal Newman,—a testimony the more remarkable because he strongly disagreed with Mr. Newman's desire that each man who desired to forward the movement should do it in his own way. Sir W. Palmer hungered for more corporate action.

Mr. Baxter writes on "The Business of the House of Commons" a paper principally remarkable for his advocacy of a stronger Closure, and his belief that a reduction in the number of the House would be directly beneficial. We shall, perhaps, hear more of that last idea before the discussion ceases. Mr. Haweis sends a sympathetic sketch of the late J. R. Green, the historian, asserting his strong Liberalism in matters of belief ; and Sir Arthur Gordon a most interesting account of the self-governing system of the native Fijians, now carried on through District Councils, Provincial Councils, and a Chief Council, which, after debate, recommends measures to the Governor. Most of these re- commendations have become law, and Sir Arthur bears emphatic testimony to the excellent working of the whole system, espe- cially through the complete ventilation of native grievances.

Great care was taken, whenever the native suggestion was in itself reasonable, not to supersede it by a better one, it being found that the natives were more hearty in carrying out their own plan, a point which constitutionalists too often forget. The following speech by an hereditary chief will show that oratorical ability is not wanting in Fiji. The question was, who was liable to replant the trees ? Roko Tui Baa rose, and said :—

" Do you think they will send us yams and bananas and sugar- canes from England ? Is the Government to plant our trees for us ? If we are men we have to live ; we have hands; our fathers planted and we too must plant, and our children after us. In many parts where there was formerly much water, there is none to-day. It is because the timber is cut down the land is bare and the water dry. We listen to the idle words of every stray white man who says that this and the other is not done in the white man's land. But if we make inquiry, we find that after all it is much the same here as there ; that the man who is industrious in the white man's land becomes wealthy, and the slothful does not. I hear some say, Who ever heard of planting forest trees ?' I have heard of it. I have seen it done. I know of trees that have been preserved for years. Many will say, 'What folly ! do these trees bear fruit ?' Well! what about your house ? Is that built of fruit or of wood ?"

Mr. O'Donnell's article on " Fenianism " contains little that is new, except his account of the hope entertained in Ireland in 1865 that the Irish soldiers trained in the American war would land in the island, and set it free. This plan seems to have been seriously entertained, but the soldiers did not come, and the movement failed. Mr. O'Donnell complains bitterly of the sentences of penal servitude passed upon the Fenian leaders, as cruel, and it certainly seems to be true that the old system of honourable execution for treason by the axe left less bitter memories than the modern system of penal servitude.

Lord Randolph Churchill, in the Fortnightly Review, under the title of "Elijah's Mantle," continues his bitter attacks upon Sir Stafford Northcote, whom he considers wanting in force of character, genius, and courage. He maintains that the tactics of Opposition, as illustrated by Mr. Disraeli, may be summed up thus:—" Take office only when it snits you, but put the Government in a minority whenever you decently can,"—principle being obviously of no importance. Lord Randolph is strongly in favour of a Premier in the Lords, declaring, with refreshing frankness, that "the nucleus of the Tory Party is in the House of Lords," and that everything which exalts that body will strengthen the party. This is especially the case when the party is in a minority in the Commons; at such times the lead in the Lords is everything, and the leader there is only unwisely hampered by a co-ordinate leader in the Commons. As permanent power resides in the Commons, and a leader fit for office must be found there, Lord Randolph Churchill's ideas will hardly meet with general acceptance. The number contains two excellent biographical sketches, one on Mr. Green, describing mainly his earnest work in East London; and another on Mr. H. J. S. Smith, intended to describe his un- equalled rank as a mathematician, a rank of which his most intimate friends scarcely knew. He never spoke of his re- searches, and they were far better known on the Continent than at home. This story has an intellectual interest :—

" Only three months before his death, referring to the opinion (ex- pressed by a speaker at the Balfour Memorial Meeting at Cambridge) that a man's most original ideas came to him before he was thirty, he said that in his own case he was certain that not only had his power of seeing and understanding things uninterruptedly increased all through his life, but that his thoughts and ideas and 'invention'

had undergone a corresponding progression and development. A glance through his note-books affords striking evidence of this, for the later entries are especially rich in suggestions for future researches, and in 'guesses' a what the results may be found to be."

The controversy is as old as man, and we suspect that every individual would give a separate answer, and also that there is a radical confusion in many minds between energy and insight.

The mind loses its capacity for effort long before it loses its power of perceiving, even if it ever does, while in health, lose it at all. The old in particular " understand " the proportions of things to each other far better than the young do. Professor Jebb puts in an able plea for a British School of Classical Studies to be established in Athens, and to be in most respects a consulate for travelling students, with a director, who would act as consul, direct studies, and give assistance, a library and a house. He thinks the school could be established for E18,000, and is sanguine that such a sum could be raised by subscription. So are we, or double the money, provided Mr. Jebb will show

some tangible quid pro quo, in the shape, let us say, of annual reports on Greek archmology, from the director. The sub-

cribers will want to see something, such as the subscribers to the different Palestinian funds do see. Without that, he must trust to individual liberality; but there ought to be a cultivated millionaire or two in England ready to do the work. Mr. Auberon Herbert's second paper, "A Politician in Trouble about his Soul," grows a little tedious. After all, he is only asking at great length the old question whether leaders derive their ideas from themselves, or from those they lead, the answer to which is,—from both, in proportions that no mind can discern, because the mixture must be to a large extent unconscious. A man may be perfectly sincere, yet convinced of the wisdom of a course originally suggested to him by observation of the public mind. Father Matthew would probably never have moved, had he not become aware through observation of a craving desire in his particular public for "help agin the dhrink;" yet he was a leader, and a sincere one, too. The remaining papers, on explo- sives, by Colonel Majendie, on the "Political Condition of Italy," and on "Local Government in Counties," are all very instruc- tive, and perhaps a little dull. The Italian writer, however, forwards some valuable statistics of the new Chamber, from which it appears that the Government has a fairly steady majority, and that when supported by the Right, which is now only a collection of eminent individualities, it can count on 400 Members in a House of 614.

The grand temptation of modern Tories, the craving desire to

attack Mr. Gladstone personally, has been too strong for the National Review, and under the title "The Prime Minister's

Dilemma," Mr. Austin indulges in a kind of prolonged "yak" He declares Mr. Gladstone incapable of fortitude in adversity. In the view of this historian, he gave up the lead of the Liberal

Party in 1875 out of mortification, in 1876 he "snatched at power with gratuitous eagerness," and in 1883 he desires, "in a

situation of bewilderment bordering on despair," to retire again, but cannot, because to do so would be discreditable.

Mr. Austin contrasts this conduct with the "sweet patience" of Lord Beaconsfield in 1880, who utterly refused to believe that the Liberal victory was due to bribery, and attributed it to vituperation and the general distress in the country. Lord Beaconsfield had patience in plenty, but to attribute a grand defeat at the polls to abuse is hardly an illustration of it. Usually, when a man attributes his losses to "vituperation," he is raging with secret anger. We need not add that Mr. Gladstone's Administration, in Mr. Austin's judgment, has been a failure from beginning to end; or that under it the Queen "has been degraded into a Suzerain," a wonderful climax of humiliation. The article contains an anecdote or two of Lord Beaconsfield of some interest, but as a specimen of political swearing it is not effective. Lord Pembroke sends a thought- ful paper on "Liberty and Socialism," in which he denies that any " principle " can be found which will regulate the degree of State interference permissible in a well-organised society. Life, he believes, has become too complex, and he traces much of the present hesitation in the national temper to the new per- ception of that complexity,— a remark showing much in- sight. Lord Pembroke contends that the degree of State interference must be regulated by a comparison of expedi- encies, and points out with really crushing effect that the doctrine of negative regulation or "absolute freedom, limited enly by the like freedom for all," would be fatal.to the law of marriage :—" It is the clearest case of positive regulation ; and it is not aimed directly at the securing of freedom. The State does not content itself with enforcing such contracts as men and women are pleased to make. It prescribes the contract. I think we have a right to ask those who tell us this is an in- fallible practical rule, whether they are prepared to adhere to it in this instance." This is much the best paper in the magazine, which for the rest contains nothing striking, unless it be "John lodge's" notion of the Essex dialect.

The older magazines present nothing for remark, except the stories, which are in all cases good ; as is also, in Longman's, Mr. Stevenson's "Treasure of Franchard." That is full of originality.