THE MAGAZINES.

THE "Symposium," in the Nineteenth Century, is, on the whole, a success. It is not a debate, still less a conversation, and tends every now and then to be a little tedious ; but still the editor has induced many men, all of eminence, to say briefly and very dis- tinctly what they think upon a very great subject, much agitated just now, "The Influence of a Decline of Religious Be- lief upon Morality." Upon such a subject, Sir James Stephen, Lord Selborne, Dr. Martineau, Mr. Frederic Harrison, the Dean of St. Paul's, the Duke of Argyll, and Professor Clifford have naturally very different things to say, but there is a very curious agreement among them, too. All have an idea that morality has a basis of its own, and all but one think it is profoundly affected by religion, and will therefore be profoundly affected by the absence of it. This is Sir James Stephen's original propo- sition, from which the argument starts, and it is reaffirmed by Lord Selborne, who even asserts that a moral sense profoundly be- lieved in is a religion, though an inarticulate and imperfect one,—a concession we doubt, unless " religion " can exist without belief in the supernatural ; by Dr. Martineau, who holds religion to be the coping-stone of morality, rather than its foundation, but still holds that the trembling of the coping-stone weakens the wall ; by Mr. Frederic Harrison, though he considers the " enthusiasm of humanity" equivalent to a religion ; by the Dean of St. Paul's, who considers religion one factor of morals and a wise sense of expediency the other, and cannot believe that one factor will produce the same result as two ; and by the Duke of Argyll, though his argument, and his alone, is that of a debater, and is a speech on Mr. Frederic Harrison's speech, rather than on the main topic. The only negative comes from Professor Clifford, who asserts that the belief in God is "a source of refined pleasure to him who can hold it," but maintains that "the foregoing of a refined and elevated pleasure, because it appears that we have no right to indulge in it, is not in itself, and cannot produce as its conse- quence, a decline of morality ;" and thinks the voice of con- science within us is only the articulate result of the stream of human experience. This general agreement among men so differ- ent is in itself of interest, increased to thinking men by the wide divergencies in the road by which they reach the goal, and to ordinary readers by the great " authority" of the majority of those who have spoken, and who have evidently tried hard to pack their true opinions into the small space of necessity allowed them. The " Symposium " is to be continued, and we hope before it is concluded we shall hear the argument of some one who holds that Revelation is the only foundation for the morality most properly so-called,—the morality dictated by no earthly fear or hope ; and by some one who holds that morality unjustified by religion, has already risen to a level beyond that of the morality sanctioned by any creed whatever. Those two ex- treme opinions still lack adequate expression. The " Symposium" is the feature of the number, and altogether beyond the usual level of Magazines ; and the rest of the contents, though all more or less good, present little calling for special remark. To our minds, the most interesting is the second paper on the Vatican Council, by Cardinal Manning, in which we notice, or fancy we notice, a tendency to assert that the universal Episcopate as- sembled in Council rather counsels the Holy See than uses the Holy See as its mouthpiece :- " We have already seen that there exists in the divine constitution of the Church no absolute necessity for the holding of Councils,—that the assembling of all Bishops in one place is an usage of prudence, the ex- pediency of which must be ultimately decided by the only authority which extends over all. No one but the Head of the whole Church can lay on the bishops of the whole Church the duty of coming together. An archbishop may convene his province, and a patriarch his region of provinces, but no local authority can convene the universal Episcopate. Therefore no one can constrain the Head of the Church to convoke a counciL It is an act of his own free-will, guided by reasons of prudence, in order to obtain counsel upon the needs of the whole Church. He may, as we have seen that Pius IX.. did, invite the fullest and widest counsel to ascertain beforehand what matters should be introduced or proposed for discussion ; and having done so, the self-evident dictates and the first instincts of prudence prescribe that the programme of subjects be fixed, precise, and limited. They can be limited by no authority except by that which is supreme."

Does not that paragraph intimate—we admit it does not pronounce —an opinion which even in Rome will be considered, in earthly parlance, just a little " strong ?" We thought a Council had self-derived faculties.

Certainly Mr. A. Taylor Innes would say so, for in his ex- tremely interesting paper on " The Coming Conclave," in the Contemporary, he points out that Councils have acted not only

without, but against the authority of the occupants of the Papal Chair :—

" The most famous instance of this is the election of Pope Martin V. by the Council of Constance—not by the ordinary Conclave of Cardinals. Two existing Popes claimed the chair as having been elected by the Sacred College in the usual way, John XXIII. and Gregory %J1, and the C?ristian world was miserably distracted between them. The Council compelled them both to abdicate, and though for four hundred years the exclusive right of the body of Cardinals had been respected, the Church now appealed to a higher law, and acted upon it in a way that has never since been challenged. The Council named, in addition to the College of Cardinale, thirty divines selected from its own mem- bers, five from each nation of Christendom ; and this new electoral body chose a Pope whom the Church at once received, and who has ever since been held in honour. The step was, no doubt, declared extra- ordinary, and one not to be usually followed, and it was taken at a crisis of trouble and distraction in the Church. But it is preciseiy this which makes it so suggestive as a precedent for the Conclave about to emerge." Mr. Taylor Innes—we think, without sufficient ground—intimates an opinion that at the next Conclave the Governments of Europe may interfere strongly in the election of the Pope to obtain guaran- tees from him that he will not attack such Governments. The answer to that supposition, which is, of course, coming as it does from Mr. Innes, supported by grave arguments, is that the Cardinals must know very well whether they will be interfered with or not, and they have decided to hold the election in Rome, in preference to any place such as Malta, where they would be beyond the reach of influence. This is, wo think, the most readable paper of a number which, though full of thought, is a little too gritty with science. Renan's elope on Spinoza tires us with its excessive praise, and was probably in- serted mainly to show that the magazine in no way rejected intel- lectual aid from unbelievers. Mr. Goldwin Smith, it is true, protests with great force and some exaggeration—for instance, when he speaks of Cromwell as " the greatest human force ever directed to a moral purpose," as if Cromwell had succeeded in founding anything—against Mr. Matthew Arnold's estimate of Falkland, and pleads the right of the Puritans to be considered gentlemen nearly as well as Charles Kingsley did ; and Mr. Bonamy Price preaches a most interesting sermon on " One per Cent.," that is, on the over-lavishness in all ways, in wage-giving, wage- wasting, and loan-lending, by which England, as he thinks, has brought about the present stagnation of trade. The Professor, however, evidently is very uncertain, like the rest of us, when the reaction will come, and his confidence in the recommence- ment of railway-building does not entirely convince us. Why

should it not recommence after a long lull, instead of a short one? The world will not end next week. By the way, is this para- graph quite sound ?

" There is one fact more, of great significance, which must not be omitted in this review of our late commercial history. Men of the mood of mind of the Unionist workmen are emphatically not savers. When wages are large, they do not, like the French peasant, turn a portion of them into saving, and thereby increase capital, and the pro- duction of wealth in the country. What they extort from employers they consume unproductively,—they destroy it in indulgences, and only too often in drink. This engenders a very marked distinction between exceptional wages and exceptional profits. The marked tendency of employers is to make themselves rich, to build up fortunes : but, really,

fortune means a machine for the constant production of wealth A heavy holding in railway stocks is the ownership of an instrument which enriches not the shareholder only, but the whole country, which calls into being a vast power of employing and rewarding labour. The mighty towns of England, the countless factories of her manufacturing regions, are all savings out of profits : how feeble are the productive instruments to which wages can point as the fruit of the labourers' thrift 1"

Where is the proof that the labourers do not save? Many of them do not, but a very great number do, and invest their savings not only in Savings-banks, but in Friendly Societies, Burial Clubs, and extraordinary quantities of useful furniture, which is bought of the best kind, because it can then be pawned. Nothing is more imperfect than the usual account of workmen's savings, omitting, as it does, all the savings they conceal, and all the savings they invest in house-property, furniture, and repayable loans to friends in business. Of Mr. Buchanan's poem, " Balder the Beautiful," we cannot speak confidently until the third part has appeared to clear up what is at present a most obscure thought. The charm of the poem hitherto has, we think, been confined to snatches of singularly perfect melody. Among the smaller notices

at the end is a curiously bold defence of liquor-drinking in mode- ration, as one of the few "simple and easy enjoyments left in life."

That does not meet the philanthropist's argument, who says that enjoyment is purchased by too great a temptation to the few; or the medical man's, who points out that the enjoyment is apt to diminish by use, unless the dose is strengthened,—but it is a side of the question which wants stating, nevertheless.

The most readable paper in the Fortnightly, on "Insects and Plants," by Sir John Lubbock, we have previously noticed in another form ; but the best is probably Mr. Goldwin Smith's, upon " The Political Destiny of Canada." He holds that the Dominion ought to be made independent, and that if independent, its destiny—that is, the aggregate impulsion of its commercial in- terests, its social habits, and its ambition—will lead it to merge itself in the North-American Republic, which will then nearly cover the continent. Mr. Goldwin Smith doubts the loyalty of Canada, except as a traditionary feeling among the Loyalists expelled from the Thirteen Provinces during the war, pointing out with some force that neither the French nor the Irish in Canada have any ancestral loyalty to the British Crown ; asserts that free-trade throughout the continent is vital to the Dominion, and maintains that there is a distinct divergence of political character between Canadians and English- men, while there is a distinctaffinity between Canadians and citizens of the United States. He rejects the notion of an Imperial Federa- tion, on the ground that even if acceptable to the mother-country,

it would not be acceptable to the Colonies, Canada caring even less about Australia than England does, and believes that the oppor- tunity for arousing a separate feeling of nationality in Canada has passed. The first step towards it would have been legislative union, but federation was chosen instead, and now the national pulsation is too feeble to be felt in all the provinces at once. It

is upon this point that Mr. Smith's essay needs a little amplifica- tion. We do perceive that his arguments for the independence of

Canada are strong, though, we think, answerable, but we do not perceive that he has advanced any, except the commercial advan- tage of free-trade, for merging herself in the United States. That argument by itself has always proved insufficient either to unite States or to keep them together when united, and we do not see why Canada should be more influenced by that single temptation than the South was, or than Mexico is. There must be some other temp- tation to so great a step, and Mr. Goldwin Smith has not stated it, or stated it only in the assertion that a great State has an

attractive force over a smaller one. Has it? Is Switzerland strongly attracted either by France or Germany, or is Brussels at all desirous of becoming part of France ? There is a very excellent sketch of Miss Martineau by Mr. G. A. Simcox, curiously free from both panegyric and depreciation ; and a most valuable paper by Mr. Stansfeld, a trans- lation of Mazzini's views upon the Eastern Question. He

held that ultimately, when justice was done, the Slavonic races

would form into f our groups, of which, one the Turkish Slavonians, would cluster around a revived Byzantium in Hellenic hands ; and he advised Italy, once reconstituted and free, to make friends with the Austrian Slavonians, the Roumanians, who are half- Italian, the Turkish Slavonians, and the Hellenes, and thus terminate the Austrian Empire, the Turkish Empire, and the European danger which is believed to exist from " Czarism :"— " The Empire of Austria is an administration, not a State ; but Turkey in Europe is a foreign encampment, standing alone amid popu- lations with whom it has no community of faith, tradition, tendencies, or action. The Turks have ne national agriculture, and no capacity for administration, which was formerly entirely absorbed by the Greeks, as it now is by the Armenians scattered along the shores of the Bos- phorus, and hostile to the Government they serve. Immobilised by Mahometan fatalism, surrounded and suffocated by the Christian popu- lations, stirred by the breath of Western liberty, the conquering race has not for a century past given birth to a single idea, a single indi- vidual discovery, or a single song ! It numbers less than two millions, and these are surrounded by thirteen or fourteen millions of European races—Slavonic, Hellenic, and Dac;an-Rouman--all of them thirsting for life, panting for insurrection. The one thing wanting to insure this, and to render it speedily victorious, is union between these three elements, who still regard each other with jealousy, in memory of former wars and reciprocal oppression."

The work will probably be done by the Czars, just as the work in Italy was done by the Kings of Piedmont ; but it will be done, though the prophet who saw the goal was blind to the name of the winning charioteer.

The Cornhill is a little dull, in spite of its editor's admirable though much too late criticism of Charles Kingsley, from which we must extract one paragraph, as the most accurate estimate we have ever seen of Charles Kingsley's specialty as an observer of nature: "Few people, it is probable, ever had greater faculties of enjoyment than Kingsley. His delight in a fine landscape resembled (though the phrase seems humiliating) the delight of an epicure in an exquisite vintage. It had the intensity and absorbing power of a sensual appe- tite. He enjoyed the sight of the Atlantic rollers relieved against a purple stretch of heather as the conventional alderman enjoys turtle- soup. He gave himself up to the pure emotion as a luxuriant nature abandons itself to physical gratification. His was not the contemplative mood of the greater poets of nature, but an intense spasm of sympathy which rather excluded all further reflection. Such a temperament implies equal powers of appreciation for many other kinds of beauty, though his love of fine scenery has perhaps left the strongest mark upon his books. He was abnormally sensitive to those pleasures which are on the border-line between the sensuous and the intellectual."

That is true, though it should have been added that he could derive and impart the same pleasure through the imagination alone. He had never seen a tropical scene when he wrote "West- ward, Ho." We suppose it is our fault that we cannot enjoy, indeed, can hardly read, "The Rationale of Mythology,", and Can see in " The Levelling Power of Rain " only a very hazy statement of what everybody knew before, but there is informa- tion in the paper on ".Quiet Marriages." There can be no doubt, as the writer says, that marriage by banns as now practised does admit of clandestine marriages. The applicants need make no

declarations whatever, whether, if minors, as to their parents" consent, or if adults, as to their own degree of relationship :-

" No affidavit or declaration can be demanded from them as to their majority, as to the fact that consent has been obtained if either of them be a minor, or as to the existence of lawful impediment to their union.. Their names, their dwellings, and the length of their residence therein having been given, the clergyman can without further questioning publish the banns of marriage. He may, indeed, if he please, delay publication for seven days, and use the delay for purposes of inquiry. But this is permissive only, not obligatory upon him."

The number of clandestine marriages is probably considerable, and it is matter of common talk that in many London churches the publication of banns is an empty form. Nobody can hear the names called, and nobody would know them if he did. The best remedy of three suggested seems a very simple one,—that the application for banns should be in the form of a declaration as to all necessary particulars, which declaration should be con- sidered an oath, involving the signer who testified falsely in the- penalties of perjury.

Macmillan has even less than the Cornhill, except a somewhat

technical but apparently important paper on " Military Reform." Mrs. Oliphant continues her story of " Young Musgrave," but it drags a little as she gathers the threads together ; and the descrip- tions of the children, perfect as they are, become a little tedious, appearing, as they will not appear when collected in a book, to. come over and over again ; and nothing else in the number really attracts us, except, perhaps, Mr. Palgrave's sketch of Robert Herrick, the "last of the Elizabethans," the "sweet and gracious" poet of whose life we know as little as of Shakspeare's, but whose verse has so charmed Englishmen for two centuries, and whom Mr. Palgrave places positively at the head of all lyric poets between Henry V. and a century ago :—

" No one else among lyrists, within the period defined, has suchnn- failing freshness: so much variety within the sphereprescribed to .him- self ; such closeness to nature, whether in description or in feeling; such easy fitness in language; melody so unforced and delightful.

Here is no overstrain, no spasmodic cry, no wire-drawn analysis or sensational rhetoric, no music without sense, no mere second-hand literary inspiration, no mannered archaism ; above all, no sickly sweetness, no subtle, unhealthy affectation. Throughout his work, whether when it is strong, or in the less worthy portions, sanity, sincerity, simplicity, lucidity, are everywhere the characteristics of Herrick; in these, not in his pretty Pagan masquerade, he shows the note,—the only genuine note,—of Hellenic descent."

Mr. Palgrave should have illustrated his criticism. It is disappoint- ing even to irritation to read such a judgment, and not to see the verses which, in the critic's judgment, warrant such high praise.

Fraser wants new blood. It is full of excellent papers on, sub- jects which ought to be of interest, treated in a manner to which no exception can be taken, but it lacks the first quality 'of a magazine, definite attractiveness. There is nothing in it we par- ticularly want to read, and nothing which when read we are specially anxious to remember. There is entertainment in the account of the popular songs of Tuscany, though we may not praise the grace of the translations, of which these two lines, the refrain of a Pisan peasant's song, is a fair specimen 0 biondina, come la va,

Souza la vela la barca non vs.!"

u My fair-haired beauty, how with thee? say : Without the sail, the boat may not make way I " And there is value, we imagine, in the account of 'the desperate effort of the railviay companies to buy up the Northern canals, for the sake of the coal traffic, and in the sug- gestion that the railways are probably blundering, carrying coal almost at a loss to their shareholders, which if carried by water would raise the canal dividends to 10 and 15 per cent, while by the second method the cost to the consumer would be diminished half-a-crown per ton. The writer, however, does not give space to his work, and the reader, unless specially acquainted with the subject, has not only to take his calculations as accurate, but to assume that his data are all correct, before he allows himself to Le convinced. He evidently knows his subject thoroughly, but if he is to convince the public, and direct attention and capital to water-traffic, as he evidently desires, he must give his views in a more diffuse and therefore more attractive form. With his first practical suggestion, that the railway companies should be compelled to furnish fuller information about their canal traffic and the coal traffic generally, we most cordially agree. We must find the same fault with the account of "The Bedaween of -the Arabian Desert," a paper full of knowledge, but not of informa- tion available to men not previously well informed. Much of it is as useless as a dictionary would be in a character the reader did not know, and the whole is more like a catalogue raisonne of tribes visited by the writer, apparently on expeditions to pur-

chase horses, than an account of the Bedaween. In an article called an " Apology for the Competitive System," an examination of the extent to which " cramming " is and is not possible, there occurs a curiously important note, which we quote, merely in the hope of giving it further circulation. The fact it states seems in- credible, but the story is quite in consonance with the habits of the men who govern us and who, as Mr. Disraeli says, " know only one language and never open a book "

As it is impossible to foresee where a British army may be called upon to act, it might certainly be an improvement to make various other modern languages besides French and German admissible at ex- aminations for entrance into the military service. Wherever an army lands, the presence of a few officers well acquainted with the language of the country would seem most advantageous. But so little do such considerations weigh with some of our military-administrators, that a scheme has been recommended by a committee of officers of standing, and is announced to be under consideration at the War Office, for officering the service known until lately as the Control mainly by the promotion of quartermasters and non-commissioned officers. In other words, the duties of collecting and paying for provisions and forage, of hiring or purchasing carte, waggons, and baggage animals, of dealing with and managing native drivers, and small contractors of all kinds, in a country where the English language is unknown, is proposed to be placed in the hands of a body of gallant and deserving men, who, with scarcely an exception, will understand no syllable of any language excepting English."

The writer might add—" And who, with the natural irritability of ignorance, are sure to ill-treat the natives, whom otherwise the English habit of prompt and regular payment would conciliate."

We notice the most important paper in Blackwood elsewhere, but there is also a most interesting account of " Crete," a paper thoroughly creditable to the impartiality of its conductors, for it is a terrible indictment of Turkish rule. We must extract from it two paragraphs, which contain in themselves nearly the whole politics of the island:— "Wherever we went in the country—whether on the hill-tops among the villages, or in the plain among the olive-groves, however beautiful the land through which we rode—a sense of silence and of desolation oppressed a& Everywhere are the ruins of farms; • the 'villages are thinly peopled ; one hears no murmur of voices, no laughter or shouts of children. The few peasants who are seen wander about listlessly, like- ghosts among deserted halls.. Insensibly the silent Elysian fields present themselves before our mind. For the waves of strife and battle that have passed over this beauteous isle have swept away the flower of all its manhood, and the remnant that is left is watched and held in check by armed men. For nearly seven centuries Crete has been ruled by force, always striving to exchange its existing government for 'another." "We have the vessel almost to ourselves. One fellow-passenger, a young Cretan Greek, walks with us on the deck awhile under the clear stars, and pours out to us his hopes end. aspirations. He is a medical student, passing through his, course at • the medical school and hospital of Athens, and is going for his vacation to his dear native isle. Greek he is, and proud to be called Greek ; and we have early won his heart by repeating, as we speak of the still night, some lines of that lovely chorus in the Alkestis to 'Night, sleep-giver to much-suffering mortals.' But like all men mountain-born, he has the true heimweh, the longing for home scenery and air. Athens, with all its magic associations, has not for him thezharm of home. It is of Crete, not of Athens, that he longs to speak. He tells us of the longing of his island-race for liberty, and says it is to England that they look for help. When will the day come when England will cease to uphold the Turk ? and why does she herself, generous beyond stint to Greece, support the Moslem in' holding provinces and islands more Greek than those she had herself given up to the- Hellenes? Why, he asks, does England force Greece to look towards Russia, a nation whose aims are purely selfish, a trait- orous child of- the Greek Church? And so he pours out his tale of woes, and•then bursts forth, Better that England should herself take Crete, and that it should never again join Greece, than that it should lie prostrate under- the heel of the Sultan.' He has read in the news- papers at Athens articles translated from English journals, saying England was likely to take Egypt and Crete, and let Turkey be broken up. Is it true ? He knows she has bought the Suez Canal; perhaps she will buy Crete."

Three millions judiciously offered would buy Crete, and the island-in two years could-take the debt upon its own shoulders, and in twenty pay it off from the profits of its revived trade in Cretan wine; the Malvoisie of our ancestors, the Malmsey of our grandfathers, and which still exists in Crete :—" What shall we say of the wine, that• Malavese wine which our host had treated so lightly that he had been giving it to his servants to drink ? Of a pale amber colour, dry and clean on the palate, with the purity of..the purest. Montilla, and a bouquet exclusively its own, it was nectar for the gods. And no wonder, for it came from the very cradle of the finest Malmsey vines, and was ripened to perfection by the.climate."