THE MAGAZINES.

Tan number of the Fortnightly Review for March ie an unusually good one,—that is to say, there is hardly an essay in it which in one way or another will not repay careful reading. We do not, it is true, quite understand the object of the " Open Letter to Mr. Balfour," which is a remarkably well-written panegyric, followed by advice to avoid the " aloofness " which at present divides the leaders of the Unionists from the body of their followers :—" Unless the leaders make special efforts to know their followers and to associate with them, there will be wanting that harmony and enthusiasm which characterised party loyalty in the old days." That is the old American's advice to his candidate, " Mix and liquor," and we are not absolutely sure as to its soundness. Liking may come from " mixing," but does the disposition to follow come Certainly Lord Beaconsfield was followed, and of all men he "mixed " the least, dying as he did without a personal intimate, unless it were Lord Rowton, who was his private secretary. The paper, however, is suggestive, as is that of "Diplomaticus " upon Lord Salisbury, which is an effort by a Liberal diplomatist to show that Lord Salisbury has never swerved in his policy on the Eastern question, which has always been to induce Russia to join us in coercing Turkey to adopt such reforms as might preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. That view of his policy compli- ments Lord Salisbury's sagacity as to means at the expense of his sagacity as to ends. Alliance with Russia is the way to secure a peaceful force to which Turkey must bow, but a demand for reforms is a demand for the impossible. You cannot carve upon rotten wood. No reforms could be more ample on paper than those secured for Crete, bat they proved utterly worthless. Our own impression is that Lord Salis- bury perceives that quite clearly, and that he ultimately looks to the partition of Turkey, but wishes to secure it without paying the terrible price of a general European war. The reader, however, will gain much instruction from reading one after the other the extracts from Lord Salisbury's speeches. —He may read in the same connection the really ex- haustive paper on Turkish finance, which shows past question that the annual deficit of the Empire amounts to £4 000,000, that the nominal Floating Debt must be £50,000,000, and that, even supposing much of this is paper promises not expected to be fulfilled, this Debt cannot be less than £27,000,000, a sum equal, when the revenues of the States are compared, to an English Floating Debt of more than £100,000,000, and if the taxing powers of the Empire are considered, to many times that amount. The article requires only one addition to be perfect,—viz., an explanation of the Turkish methods of borrowing money. What is the security offered which can induce any bank or syndicate of bankers to lend the Sultan seven millions sterling F—Ouida's paper on "The Genius of D'Annunzio," the Italian Zola, though disagreeable, displays much knowledge and some insight. He is filthier even than his rival, but he has poetry in him, and a fierce Byronic scorn of the masses of humanity which gives him in our day an original standpoint. To judge by the extracts given, his real belief is that most can be done by great patrician races, and that nothing can be hoped from the vile multitudes. We have no sympathy with his view, but at least it is free from the modern adoration of that new idol with mouth of brass and feet of clay, "the People."—There is a quite terrible paper on China by Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the Chinese doctor who was recently kidnapped by the Embassy. He describes China as completely honey- combed in every grade of her officials by a pecuniary corruption which knows no limit and no remorse, and leaves on our mind an impression of complete despair. If all men are infected with this contagion, and the people, who see it, bear with it, where is a reason for hope to be found save in some new impulse, a religious change, for instance, of which there is nowhere any sign ? If the people moved, there is no force left in the rotten official fabric to restrain them, but they never do move. What saves the Mandarins from being lynched wholesale except a secret feeling of the people that their conduct is natural, and that a new set would be as bad as the old P—Mr. Bailey's sketch of " Gibbon the Man " is in- teresting from its good nature. He is the only recent com- mentator on Gibbon's Life who has been able to keep out of his comments a flavour of contempt This is due apparently to a feeling in Mr. Bailey which we rather admire—it is in

our day so exceedingly unusuaL He has a genuine pleasure in Gibbon's serene equable contentment, which appeared in him even as a boy, and remained with him through life. It sprang, we imagine, partly from his career, which was singularly free from the usual causes of unhappiness, partly from his preoccu- pation through life with intellectual interests, but mainly from a consciousness, which never quitted him, that his mind was equal to the great tasks he set before it. He never seems to have felt one of those spasms of self-disgust which spoil the happiness, and probably develop the powers, of men whose intellectual nerves are more Fensitive to the contrast between the work achieved and the ideal with which work was com- menced.—We are sick to death of Mr. Rhodes. Those who are not may read Mr. E. Dicey's commentary upon his speeches.

There is a curious paper in the Contemporary Review upon English millionaires. Between 1887 and 1896 thirty-two persons died whose personal estates were estimated for pro-

bate at an average of one and a half millions each. Of these only four were Peers,—Lord Wolverton (Glyn's Bank), the Duke of Cleveland (Durham coals), the Dake of Sutherland (Staffordshire minerals), and the Earl of Derby (house pro. perty in Liverpool and its suburbs). Nine millionaires were baronets, all traders except one, Sir R. Wallace, who derived his fortune from the vast property of the Hertford Seymours. The richest of these was Sir A. Barclay Walker, the Warring- ton brewer (23,000,000), and the next richest Sir Charles Booth, the gin distiller (22,000,000). Of untitled hereditary landowners there were but two—Mr. Andrew Montague, of Ingmanthorpe, and Mr. Christopher Talbot—and the latter owed most of his wealth to the minerals on his large Welsh estate. No manufacturer of anything to eat has left a million, and only three manufacturers of textiles,—Peter Ryland, once a packman, Mr. G. H. Strutt, of Belper, and Mr. S.

Fielden, of Todmorden, the richest of them being the first- named. Two chemical manufacturer were millionaires, two machinists, seven financiers, one contractor—Mr. H. A.

Brassey, of Preston Hall—and one newsagent, who was also Leader of the House of Commons, who left nearly two millions, far the greatest fortune ever made by any trader in literature, though that of Mr. Nelson, the Edinburgh publisher, and that of Mr. G. W. Petter (Cassell's) exceeded half a million. No lawyer left anything like a million, and, curiously enough, only one man—Sir W. Miller—who is officially described as a "merchant" There is no Anglo- Indian in the list, and the South African men who have recently beaten the record in fortunes have not yet had time to die. Perhaps, indeed, they have no intention of doing so ; certainly their acts occasionally suggest the doubt. The list serves to show that it is " business " which now produces money ; but it must not be for- gotten that the vast wealth of some landlords—e.g., the Duke of Devonshire—and of the owners of cities—e.g., the Duke of Westminister—is never recorded among the estates sworn for probate.—The admirable paper by the Rev. J. Mackenzie upon " The Chartered Company in South Africa" is discussed elsewhere ; but the only other paper which will greatly interest the general reader is Mr. R. Donald's on " Life in a French Commune," the best sketch of French agricultural life, from the appreciative point of view, that we have recently seen. To make it complete, however, he should have stated the drawbacks with the same directness and picturesqueness of detail. We wish, for example, he had said a little more on the results of the French system of boarding out all waifs, castaways, &c., until they are thirteen. He tells us they are fed as well as the peasants' children; but do they really grow up peasants P This, for instance, does not strike one as entirely satisfactory :-

" The State pays the peasant to keep these children until they are twelve, after which the employer must feed them and also pay a little for their labour. After thirteen they become hired servants. Many of the children are required to herd the cattle and the geese. There are no fences. Fences would be expensive to erect, and they would likewise occupy land which could be more profitably utilised in growing crops. So it is found cheaper to employ children—especially when the children are of an age that the State pays for their maintenance."

Are the boarded-out children taught like the others, or how do they find time for supplying the want of fences P—Mr. Balfour seems to irritate Thaaticals like Mr. Herbert Paul to ea almost unintelligible degree. The following sentences contain the substance or core of his paper on " The House of Commons and its Leader" :— " The House of Commons has been successfully led, from the days of Sir Robert Walpole to our own, by men of very different character, training, purposes, and pursuits. It has been led by brilliant men of genius, like Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli ; by consummate masters of public affairs, like Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone; by spirited debaters, like Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell ; by plain men of busi- ness, like Lord Althorp and Mr. Smith. But it has never before been led by a philosopher, and the experiment seems likely to end in failure. Upon the value of Mr. Balfour's philosophical attain- ments it would be beyond my scope and my powers to speak. Voltaire said, with his deplorable flippancy, that when a man talked about what he did not understand to those who did not

understand him, that was metaphysics. He may have been wrong. There are those who regard the First Lord of the Treasury as the second founder of the Christian religion. They may be right. What the ordinary man expects from a philosopher is superiority to vulgar prejudice, an exemption from the bias of sect or party,

a refusal to worship the idols of the cave, the tribe, or the market

place. If I might give a concrete instance of what I mean, I should cite the speeches, the too few speeches, which Mr. Lecky

has delivered in the House of Commons. Is it desirable, is it even conceivable, that the head of a great political party in a great debating assembly should deal with the topics of the day in this serenely detached frame of mind ? "

Does Mr. Paul at heart prefer a partisan, or is he merely annoyed because Mr. Balfour can see, and shows that he can see, beyond the House of Commons view of his subject P We suspect that to the regular Member of Parliament nothing is more offensive than a little detachment ; but then nothing is more essential to a statesman. The inner object of the article, we may mention, is to argue that Sir Michael Hicks- Beach would make a better Leader of the House. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach is a strong man, much stronger than he was supposed to be, but we doubt if his qualities adapt him to be an ideal Leader of the House. He does not see the other side at all.

We can see nothing original in M. de Pressense's paper on Crete in the Nineteenth Century except his remarkable illustration of what may prove to be the condition of Turkey. He is foreign editor of the Temps, but his view seems to us as uncertain as that of every foreign editor in England, and, we greatly fear, of every Foreign Minister in Europe. Every- body, in fact, who looks at the East just now feels a little blind. The illustration mentioned is the following:- "To-day it seems verily as if the morbid fancy of Edgar Poe had anticipated the present state of things in the East. In one of the most gruesome of his stories, The Case of Mr. Valdemar, the American poet paints a dreadful experience. A dying man has been put to sleep by magnetism. He remains for whole weeks in this kind of trance between death and life. Suddenly the experi- menter is minded to recall him to his normal waking condition. For what occurred, it is impossible that any human being could have been prepared. As I rapidly made the passes among ejaculations of " Dead ! Dead !" absolutely bursting from the tongue and not from the lips of the sufferer, his whole frame at once, within the space of a single minute, or even less, shrunk, crumbled, absolutely rotted away beneath my hands. Upon the bed, before the whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome—of detestable putrescence.' Di matiora piis! Let us hope we may be good Europeans without experiencing such dreadful consequences of our own diplomacy ! "

—There is not much, either, in Sir Julius Vogers idea that the meeting of Colonial Premiers which is arranged for the Queen's commemoration in June may be productive of great results. Of course it may, but it also may not Sir Julius gives us, however, a remarkable table, which enables every one to see at a glance the progress of the Empire :—

THE YEAR 1840 CONTRASTED WITH 1895.

• The returns for the East ladles for 1090.

The numbers in South Africa have been increased since this was drawn to nearly eight millions of blacks, and we may add,

1895 1840

Camas, teaseling Newfound- land.. .. .. .. ..

South Africa .. .. ..

West In .. .. ..

Other colonies, exclusive of Yalta. Gibraltar. and Meng ladle the mean between lak

Coca-

Population mar°. !It.venue 2.200 9.200,000 1.000.000 9,000.000 12.100.000

12.312,000440,015,8 137,000,000 906009

106.312.000 483.943.713 143.933.000

Cora- l:nen.

Revenue 7 307,000 00,371.000 0.452,000 1.844,000

4.102,000 42.366.060

03.:87.000

600 000 600.000 200.000 700,000 7,700.000 400.000

.100.0004 2,400.000

21.950,090 22.300.000 42.000.000 24.701.00 1,600600 200,000 140.000 900,000' 2.170.000 5.100,000 ..07.000.000

we fancy, eleven millions more for recent conquests upon the West Coast, Ashantee, Benin, Dori% and Nigeria generally.

—Mr. J. D. Rees thinks the Government in India is success- fully fighting the Famine, which is tree except in the Central Provinces, but gives no general estimate of the losses we shall incur; and Mr. Melina de Villiers really wearies us. We cannot have been quite so unfair in our "advance north of the Orange River," as he says, and his paper, though full of knowledge, only makes us long to read the other side. —The most thonghful paper in the number is the Duke of Argyll's on evolution, which is really a carefully expressed hint, supported by much evidence, that actual creation, the introduction of forms which are new and not derived from anything, may still be going on. That creation must have occurred once the Duke, of course, assumes to be proved, stating the argument with unusual lucidity :- " If, therefore, we are to accept the hypothesis that all ver- tebrate animals, whether living or extinct, have been the offspring, by ordinary generation, of one single germ, originally created, then that original germ must have contained within itself certain innate properties of development along definite lines of growth, the issues of which have been forearranged and predetermined from the first. I have elsewhere shown how this conception permeates, involuntarily, all the language of descriptive science when specialists take it in hand to express and explain the facts of Biology to others. Huxley habitually uses the word plan' as applicable to the mechanism of all organic frames. This is a theory of creation,—by whatever other name men may choose to deceive themselves by calling it. It is a theory of development too, of course, but of a development of purpose. It is a theory of evolution also,—but of evolution in its relation to an involution first. Nothing can come out that has not first been put in."

—We have dealt elsewhere with Mrs. Frances Low's "How Poor Ladies Live," and most men will read with interest Mr.

Charles Whibley's plea for "The Limits of Biography." He -denies the right of the biographer to reveal secrets, intimates that the reader of them is chiefly moved by curiosity, and questions whether letters are always good evidence to character when coldly read by those for whom they were not intended. He would have men trust more to the acts of the men of action and the works of the men of literature. He is right in the main, but he does not allow quite enough for the natural thirst of men to know whether the great and the separate were in character like themselves. Something is gained, at least sometimes from studying Goethe, as well as from studying Hamlet.—The paper by Mr. Holt Hallett on China is full of knowledge, used to make facts clear, and his conclusion that we can do most for China by pressing her to open her trade is probably true :—" The more China is opened up to the trade of the world, the more interested will the non- aggressive nations of the world be in maintaining its in- dependence." Mr. Hallett thinks that the Russian Treaty with China will otherwise give the Czar a complete mastery in China, which we rather doubt. He allows nothing for the cassive resistance of the three hundred millions of mulish human beings.

We have not found anything in the National Review except Mr. Fairbndge's paper on " Rhodesia," which, as the opinion of an English Afnkander born and bred, is worth attention. Substantially Mr. Fairbridge thinks that to develop the South African Colonies quickly and well the Colonial Office should govern them politically, and confine the Chartered Companies to the work of developing them industrially. That is a modest compromise, and might work.