SOME OF THE MAGAZINES.

THE Fortnightly is full of good though not very interesting papers, the beat of them, perhaps, being that on "Free Schools," by Sir Charles Dilke, whose argument, however, seems to us defective in its main hypothesis, the idea that education is rather public duty than a private one. We should affirm, on the con-

trary, that the duty is primarily a private one ; that the great function of the State in the matter was to bring home the duty to the family, and that it is only to enforce this duty, and supple- ment existing resources for fulfilling it, that the State should intervene. Establish free schools, and you take away from the parent the sense that the self -sacrifice involved in the payment is one of his duties, and substitute for it the notion that it is no duty of his, but of society's, to see his children as well educated as he can. Besides, what is the practical use of free education, except to throw on the State a great burden which ought to be borne by individuals, and to destroy all existing schools in favour of schools which may be better, but are very likely to be worse ? The fee is not objected to in England, but is in fact liked, as is every other demand, which moderate in itself, fairly and broadly marks the distinction between the poor and the pauperised. Sir C. Dilke's list of the countries which have introduced it is no doubt a long one, but the circumstances in all differ greatly from those in England :—

In Denmark and Norway—two countries that stand pre-eminent in education matters—the schools are, and long have been, free. In America, the four States of the Union which once had a system of pay- ment of foes have abandoned it ; and in the whole of that vast country education is now free. In the canton of Zurich—the most prosperous of the Swiss Cantons; in the colony of Queensland, with splendid results, and now in Victoria ; in Chili, and even in Hawaii, education is free. Prussia, by article twenty-four of her now Constitution, is said by M. de Laveloye to have decided upon the freedom of her schools, though this is possibly a mistake. Italy, Spain, and Portugal have all of them voted the freedom of the schools. In Austria and France, where school fees are taken, there is no compulsion, and education stands very low; and only the countries that can now be quoted against free schools, as countries where education is general, and advancing in spite of the payment of fees being maintained, are Sweden, part of North Germany, and part of Switzerland."

In all Catholic countries the freedom from fees is part of the standing warfare between the people and the clergy, and in Nor- way it is a result of the extreme thriftiness of the people, which renders it easier to obtain money by a tax than by a demand which might be evaded. In England, with its long-established Poor Relief system, the grand results of a totally unnecessary change would be a lowering of the notion of parental duty, and the passing of the whole population through a kind of educational mill, in which all schools would be alike and alit education similar. There is a severe criticism of Mr. Greg's new edition of his" Creed of Christendom," in which Mr. F. W. Newman attacks him for entertaining too little belief in God, and too much in Christ, to be consistent with his own method of argument. In Mr. Newman's eyes, Mr. Greg admits so much against the New Testament, that it is absurd for him to keep on hammering out of it a new guide for life. We do not care to review a review, but we may quote this curious passage, in which Mr. Newman speaks in his own person :— " The second great doctrine, renewed life hereafter,' is' with Mr. Greg, not 'almost certain,' but only a solemn Hope.' I trust it will not be deemed egotistic to expound candidly the state of my own mind on this topic ; for it is only by general frankness that we can learn import- ant facts which enter the argument. We have, of course, better right to speak each of himself than of others. If I thought my case peculiar, it would not be worth while to obtrude it ; but it may be, that on inquiry, it will be found very common. A future life is not to me 'a solemn Hope,' but only a reverential Augury and edifying Speculation. Hope implies Desire, and Desire here is very feeble. Mr. Greg seems to assume on the contrary, that all mankind earnestly long for a heavenly life after death, and therefore have invented bad arguments to establish it. To me it appears that there is very little desire, whether among professed Christians or others; that either poetical fancy or moral speculation, or both together, originated the conception, alike among barbarians and among more civilised men In each case per- sonal desire has little to do with it. The superficial fancy or the intel- lect is its seat, and no emotion is excited until artificial alarm is wrought up by definite pictorial representations of Tartarean torments, especially under priestly teaching. Now as to myself. While I believed the doctrine on the authority of the Christian Scriptures,—and even when I seemed to be on the point of death, so as to give directions con- cerning my burial (more than forty years ago)—I had scarcely the feeblest desire for the heaven to which I supposed myself going. (I have no doubt that Mr. Greg justly explains this when he writes, If we cannot conceive the felicities of heaven, how can we desire them ? And now I have become distinctly aware that such belief as alone I have in a future life is purely intellectual."

We should say that passage is as emphatic a statement of the exact contrary of the truth as it would be well possible to find. Intellectual persons have from time to time convinced themselves that a future state is improbable, though the ultimate mystery of life there can be no greater than that of life here ; but the instinc- tive desire of men is to keep on living after death, and living happily. If not, why is not suicide nearly universal among the ill-placed or unhappy classes—among, for example, French convicts? Is the motive for living all dread, without any admixture of hope? We have spoken separately of Ur. Fitzjames Stephen's able paper in the Contemporary on "Parliamentary Government," and also of Mr. Knight's elaborate . and thoughtful essay on "Prayer." Mr. Alfred Wallace, F.R.S., writes a short paper on the" Limitation of State Functions in the Administration of Justice," which seems to us very crude and not half considered. With its general principle that the wishes of the dead should not be paramount when the living find out that those wishes are mischievous, and would in all probability be no longer cherished by the testators if they were still alive,—we not only agree, but believe that hardly any sensible man now seriously differs. But when Mr. Wallace proposes that the Law should no longer recognise trusts at all after the death of the testator, should in fact render it perfectly legal for a trustee to apply to his own selfish uses what was left him for the benefit of others, we are startled. Who would leave property at all in trust for any beneficent purpose to any but the most intimate friends—and even those, after all, might not survive the testator— under such a state of the law ? We fear that Mr. Wallace's sugges- tion would put a complete end to all disinterested provision for future generations. Mr. Capes contributes a meagre article on John Stuart Mill's "Autobiography," with a good deal of which we agree, but from which we infer that Mr. Capes has not studied Mill very closely, and does not understand the psychological difference between Utilitarianism and any system of "natural" ethics at all. Dr. Carpenter writes a very interesting paper on the "Psychology of Belief," which, however, does not go down to the ultimate question of how 'belief' is first formed in the mind at all. What Dr. Carpenter does illustrate very elaborately and acutely is the vast importance of the preparedness of the previous state of mind of the believer, in rendering belief easy or difficult of acccess. But Dr. Carpenter does not explain on what it is that belief, even in the best-prepared mind, ultimately founds itself. Some pyschologists assert that belief is a weed which springs up in a prepared soil without even a particle of apparent evidence, and that only those beliefs survive which do not come into rude collision with every-day fact,—in other words, that all the fancies which are not refuted by facts survive in us as beliefs,—that belief is the residual phenomenon left behind after an education in disbelief. We do not accept this doctrine, nor do we suppose that Dr. Carpenter does, but we should have been glad to have had his view on a theory which is, in some respects, akin to the doctrine of his paper. We have also a paper from the author of "Orion," containing some not very striking letters of the late Mrs. Browning to himself; and lastly, we have Mr. Gladstone's very clever and very courteous letter to the Contemporary in relation to Mr. Herbert Spencer's recent paper, disavowing any wish to condemn the doctrine of Evolution, which the Prime Minister admits that he has not clearly grasped, but explaining that what he did intend to deny was the inference, so often deduced from it, that it renders the hypothesis of a God needless and superfluous. The number is full of interest.

Fraser is thoroughly readable this month. The bad side of Mr. Mill is described once more with a vigour, not to say virul- ence, which will attract all whose minds are not made up about him ; and Mr. Baring-Gould annihilates another saint, St. Nicolas of Trani, with an enthusiasm quite creditable to his zeal, if not to his charity ; while Mr. Jeff cries, the Times' correspondent, sends a curious paper on "The Future of Farming," which he thinks will by degrees become manageable only on the gigantic scale:- "We may, then, look to a time when farming will become a commercial speculation, and will be carried on by large joint-stock concerns. issuing shares of ten, fifteen, or fifty pounds each, and occupying from 'three to ten thousand acres. Such companies would, perhaps, purchase the en- tire sewage of an adjacent town. Their buildings, their streets of cattle- stalls, would be placed on a slope sheltered from the north-east, but near the highest spot on the estate, so as to distribute manure and water from their reservoirs by the power of gravitation. A stationary steam-engine would crush their cake and pulp their roots, pump their water, perhaps even shear their sheep. They would employ butchers and others, a whole staff, to kill and cut up bullocks in pieces suitable for the London market, transmitting their meat straight to the sales- man without the intervention of the dealer."

They would cover the country with immense fields, abolish hedges and ditches, use machinery on a great scale, and perhaps try successful experiments in making the crops come quicker,—the last, we suspect, though Mr. Jefferies is a practical farmer, *rather a dreamy suggestion, in this island of ours, where, when all has been done that can be done, farming will remain an occupation profitable chiefly in its pleasantness. The most inter- esting paper to us, however, is one on Spain, written from a point of view too hostile to the Bourbons, but hopeful, though not san- guine. Recent events, the writer thinks, have killed out loyalty to Kings in Spain, and also faith in the possibility of a Federal

Republic. There remain the democratic Unitarian Republic, to which Castelar has in fact, though not in theory, adhered ; and utter ruin, apparently through a protracted anarchy of the Mexican kind. The writer appears to believe that Castelar, who is far more furious in talk than action, may be the man to succeed, but he evidently considers the President as much as the Bourbon ham- pered by financial difficulties. He agrees with us that the first necessity of order in Spain is agrarian reform, but points out that already since the days of Ferdinand the number of proprietors has been multiplied by four, most of them purchasers of national or ecclesiastical domain.

The late Lord Lytton in the Parisians puts into the mouth of one of his personages an anecdote of the Comte de Chambord, of which we are reminded by one of the articles in Blackwood. The Count and a friend are said to have been talking of France, re- garding that country as in danger of shipwreck (the time was previous to the war), and the Count remarked that "all wrecks come to the shore," symbolising himself by that odd, inverted metaphor. The view is a strange one, shores not being con- spicuous for affording safety to wrecks, and a lifeboat being more the thing for the situation ; one's impulse was to regard the story as apocryphal, neither true nor well-found. But the circumstances under which the scheme for the restora- tion of the French Monarchy collapsed, and the conduct of the Comte de Chambord, furnish an illustration of the anecdote which renders its authenticity very probable, to say the least of it. This is a brief way of putting the argument of ttie writer in Blackwood, who, accepting the Count's own metaphor employed in his letter to M. do Chesnelong, bitterly condemns the 'pilot' who refused to goon board the ship. There is a good deal of truth and some smartness in this article, which is dated from Paris, but which, in its abusive bits, has the ring of that railing voice which scolds Mr. Gladstone in season and out of season, all the year round. Thus, "nothing that M. 'fhiers can do will henceforth cause surprise," and " Bonapartists, however in- different they may be to dirty weapons," are utterances which have the fine, familiar, taken-for-granted tone about them, and it comes out still more strongly when the writer dwells upon the severe blow which the Count has dealt to Conser- vatism, in his capacity as "the first Conservative in Europe," and the great discouragement resulting from it. The Count, he supposes, has never realised what Radicalism is, and what is the future state to which he has left France to drift ; he has never grasped the full horror of such a truth as that "the people is beginning to claim power as an inherent and permanent right." The contemptuous singular form is characteristic and comic. After a tremendous scolding for the pilot who did not weather the storm, comes a doleful declaration that "Legitimacy is destroyed ; Conservatism is frightened, and seeks shelter behind the illusory prolongation of the Marshal's powers ; Radicalism is shouting more violently than ever ; the Empire is coming, with its hand stretched out, to its'people.' fhese are the results which the retreat of the Comte de Chambord has produced in France." Then we have the application to ourselves, which is very dreadful indeed. It really is a great shame for the Comte de Chambord, and our descendants will remember it against him, "when the Conser- vatism of the future has ceased to defend kings against the people, and is using its utmost strength to defend the people against iteelf,"—in a word, in the time of the Kilkenny cats. A learned article by Mr. W. W. Story summarises all the in- formation and suggestions extant respecting the works of Phidias, and uses them in support of the writer's assertion that there is no proof that Phidias was the author of the sculpture of the Parthenon. He reasons the point closely and keenly, and even maintains that it is exceedingly doubtful whether Phidias ever made any statues in marble at all. The article is comprehensive and laborious, but it is heavy reading. Not so No. 1 of a series on "International Vanities," devoted to "Ceremonial." This is delightful reading, full of quaint bits of information, good stories, and pleasant humour. A passage on Maritime Ceremonial is specially remarkable. Here is the best of the stories :— " An illustrious Portuguese held a conversation in those times (Philip IIL) with a blue-blooded Castilian. The former began by speaking to the Spaniard as your Excellency ; the latter replied your Courtesy. Then the Portuguese, imagining that his first phrase was incorrect, politely said your Courtesy ; to which the other immediately answered your Excellency. Thereupon the Lusitanian, vexed and puzzled, asked the Iberian for an explanation, and was coolly told (it appears they were speaking French), Tous le s titres me sent egaux,

pourvn n'y sit rien d'egal entre vous et mei.' "

Macmillan is liberal of good things. We do not care about an article upon "The Religion of Goethe," because it is vague and wordy, and because we believe that Goethe, not so much in spite of hie genius as in consequence of its peculiar type, was his own God ; and because a portion of the "Message which Goethe brought to the world" as formulated by the writer is not a very good one. This is it : "Do what thou hut to do with all thy might ; but be calm, be patient, and never be dismayed. Look at Nature, listen to her, follow her, obey her; do thine own part, and the end will be that in the Salvation of the all thou will find thine own." Mr. Schwartz asks, "Is this Christianity or not ?" The latter part of it is neither Christianity nor common-sense. "Crime, Criminals, Punishment," is a remarkable paper, to which we can merely direct attention, It contains many weighty considerations, and some novel suggestions which deserve careful consideration; but it is written in jerky, uncomfortable sentences, like a French feuilleton. "Charity Electioneering" is also an excellent, practical article, in which a large and complex subject is dealt with clearly and con- vincingly, in a fashion which we hope will effectually rouse public attention and secure reform, by making it clear that unfortunate people who have undergone in person or vicariously through their friends the hardships, miseries, and humiliations of the canvassing system, are liable to have the fruit of their labours and sufferings taken from them, at the last moment, by the manipulation of the elections which takes place at the half-yearly pollings at the London Tavern, with the knowledge and sanction of the managing committees. The writer brings such practical knowledge of his 'subject to his task, that there is no appeal from his opinion and no disputing his conclusions. The sketches of "Spanish Life and Character in the Interior, during the Summer of 1873," are continued with all the vigour and picturesqueness of the first. Anything more melancholy than the description of a burial- ground in Spain, with which the present sketch closes, we have never read. Mr. Black brings his beautiful, his almost perfect -story to a conclusion this month. It ends happily in complete reconciliation, and Sheila remains the peerless creature she has been from the firat,—true woman, though, no sneaking, self- -deprecating, happily impossible Griselda, though loving and forgiving in a noble sort of way. The closing scenes are faultless, but nothing will ever convince us that Mr. Black had not a hankering after a tragic ending, did not indeed intend to drown Lavender, and was not either won from his purpose by his own compassion for Sheila, with whom he is desperately in love, as may be proved by his impatience with Frank, and his scant courtesy towards the only other woman in his story, or else by his Highland dread of Lavender's ghost. In these concluding pages, there is a mingling of humour of the raciest with pathos most true, simple, and dignified,—of which the author of "A Princess of Thule" has proved himself capable before now, but has never exhibited so fully.

This is an admirable number of the Cordill. Every paper in it, always excepting its objectionable fiction, is upon an interesting 'subject, and written up to its full demands. "Historical Photo- graphs of Old Rome" is charming enough to induce even young ladies to read archseology, and will be found especially soothing by persona who object to have their earliest beliefs and associations violently torn up by the roots, for the photographs prove an identity of engineering ideas between Alba Longs and Rome when its foundations were laid, and make out the tradition which asserts that Romulus came of the family ruling at Alba Longa. "Ladies as Elementary Schoolmistresses" is a paper which ought to be circulated widely among the people who are trying to help women and the women who are trying to help themselves. It is most able, sympathetic, and convincing, and will, we hope, save many from a cruel misdirection of effort. The reasoning is good throughout ; we have space for only the concluding clincher :—

" The work of an elementary teacher makes heavy demands on the legs, the lungs, and the power of attention. For something like five hours 'a day she must be standing or moving about, using her voice almost con- tinuously, and having her eyes in all places at once. A pupil-teacher has been acclimatised to this kind of life from the time she was thirteen, but to a lady who enters upon it without preparation it must at first be exceedingly trying, and she may find to her cost that she has altogether miscalculated her powers of endurance, and that years of study and preparation have been thrown away, from the want of physical strength, without which neither energy nor intellect can avail the teacher any- thing."

"Parisian Journalists of To-day" is a most amusing, plain- spoken article, bristling with piquant personalities which are in excellent harmony with its theme. We especially recommend the sketches of M. Edmond About, M. Emile de Girardin, and M. Louis Veuillot ; but all are delightfully vivid, and bits of the paper are as pungent as " Rabagas." Everything we can want to know about the Ashantees will be found in an article devoted to our present enemies, in which leniency to them, after they have been thoroughly beaten, is advocated by the writer, on the score that their extermination would inaugurate a state of things more horrible than could be conceived, because, though long prosperity and unlimited rum have demoralised them, they alone of all the Gold Coast tribes have shown heroic characteristics and a capacity to govern. Mr. Locker contributes to this number a delicate little poem, in the form of a lament over the growing inaccessi- bility of his Muse, which, however, we may with the better reason decline to accept as an augury of diminished productiveness, that a still more delicate little poem of his appears to-day in our own columns.

Mrs. Cowden Clarke contributes to the Gentleman's Magazine some unpublished letters of Charles Lamb, not very remarkable, but pleasant and genial. He writes, in 1829, to Mr. Cowden Clarke, apropos of his " Astran " :—" I read nothing else—it has turned my brain—I go about with a switch turned up at the end for a crook, and lambs being too old, the butcher tells me, my cat follows me in a green riband. Becky and her cousin are getting pastoral dresses, and then we four shall go about Arca- dianizing." Nothing else in the Gentleman calls for notice.

Temple Bar is remarkably entertaining. Three biographical essays in one number would tax the reader's patience, but that they are all clever ; the best, indeed the beat thing of the kind we have met for a long time, is that on "Dick Steele." The "London Juvenal" is terse, clever, and savage.