The Century. THIS magazine begins with an article executed in the Century's usual excellent style, of picturesque New York. The Pennells continue their paper on "Gipsy Land." Mr. Stopford Brooke gives us a somewhat belated paper upon "Impressions of Browning and his Art," admirably illustrated with one of Mrs. Myers's portraits of the poet. Mr. Brooke maintains that the best work of the poet, by which he will always live, is not in his intellectual analysis or in his preaching, or in his difficult thinkings, but in the simple sensuous, passionate things which he wrote out of the fulness of his heart. By far the greater space is given to stories. The Rev. Washington Gladden, however, has a paper upon the "Problem of Poverty," in which he gives the result of his inquiries in London. He makes eight recommendations. The growth of pauperism, he thinks, if not of poverty, is due in part to the decay of family affection and independence of character. His eight suggestions are as follows (1) abolish garret masters; (2) help the poorest workers to combine; (3) train the children; (4) organise and humanise the helpers; (5) combine public and private agencies; (6) abolish official outdoor relief; (7) reform and reinforce municipal government; and (8) summon the philanthropic landlord to the rescue. Archibald Forbes has a good gossipy article on "War Correspondence as a Fine Art." Harper. Harper's Christmas Number has blossomed out into a new cover printed in silver and bluc. The first article is devoted to China, which is noticed elsewhere. Another feature of the magazine is a complete play entitled “Giles Corey, Yeoman," by Mary E. Wilkins. The scene of the play is laid in Salem during the witch-hunting times. Mr. Theodore Child has an interesting paper, well iliustrated, upon Types of the Virgin. We have pictures of the Virgin by Bellini, Lippi, Botticelli, Mantegna, Perugino, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Memling. Mr. Aldrich's long poem upon Nourmadee is noticed elsewhere. The chief feature of the Christmas number, howver, is "Le Réveillon," a Christmas tale by Ferdinand Fabre. Another feature is the reproduction of some drawings of Thackeray as illustrations of the ballad of Lord Bateman. Scribner. A VERY excellent paper by W. H. Low on "Mural Paintings in the Pantheon and Hôtel de Ville of Paris," it is to be hoped will tend to lead cities throughout the English-speaking world to emulate the good work done by France in making their history as plain as France has made hers in monuments, and on the walls of her great buildings. G. W. Cable describes "A West Indian Slave Insurrection." The number is chiefly devoted to fiction and art, although Archibald Forbes describes the "Triumphant Entry into Berlin" in 1871, and there is a good deal of poetry. The artistic papers include an account of the "Norwegian Painters," and "The Nude in Art," by W. H. Low and Kenyon Cox. There is also another article on the "Decoration of the Exhibition in Chicago." The Antipodean. THIS is an Australian annual, the object of which is to form a literary link between the mother country and her children in Australasia. It is admirably got up, and it is a very creditable production indeed. The Countess of Jersey writes a preface, and its contributors include Sir Henry Parkes, Sir Samuel Griffith, and most of the leading poets and journalists in Australasia. It is excellently illustrated with portraits of views of scenery, and fancy sketches. The article on the Antipodean Girl is interesting. The Australian girl, it seems, is at the zenith of her beauty from fourteen to seventeen years old. Her first season over, she loses her freshness, and the tendency at present is to a certain unmodulated rowdiness. Reading, excepting of the lightest, is not her taste. She is bright, pretty, and piquant; thoroughly good-tempered, excepting with her tongue-a rather important exception. On the whole, the Antipodean gives a brighter picture of the variety of Australian life than any other publication that I have recently come across. The Australasian Review of Reviews. THE AUSTRALASIAN REVIEW OF REVIEWS seems to be finding its feet. The October number which has just reached me is a great advance upon those which preceded it. No fewer than eighty-nine competitive designs for a new cover for the Australasian edition have been sent in from all the colonies. My editor says this proves how vigorous is the artistic instinct which beats in the Australian blood. I shall look with interest to see how they deal with the tail of their kangaroo. I am rather in a difficulty in quoting from the Australasian edition, because what I publish in the English edition finds its way to Australia. I hope, however, that my readers at the Antipodes will forgive the duplication of a page or two. The third article on the " Great Australian Dailies" is devoted to the Sydney Daily Telegraph. This is the youngest of the great Australian papers and has achieved a phenomenal success in a very short time. The article on the "Religious Census of Australia" will be found noticed in another column. United Service Magazine. THE December number of this magazine has a very interesting article which might be pillaged with advantage by all penny papers, entitled, The Amenities of War," by Major Arthur Griffiths. It is crammed full of anecdotes of civility and courtesy of opponents even in the midst of throat-cutting. A naval officer gives a pleasant sketch of service in the Bights of West Africa. His description of Fernando Po is very pleasant. Richard Price, under the somewhat tall title of "The Triumph of the 23rd," describes the march of the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers through North Wales. Major Clarke discusses the question of defence raised between Australia and the Empire, and Dr. Parke continues his brightly written reminiscences of Africa. Blackwood's Magazine. 66 Blackwool opens with a pleasant paper on a Bird'seye View of the Riviera." A Tory writer discourses on "The Long Parliament and Dr. Gardiner,” from the point of view of one who thinks that the Civil War, with all its cruelty and atrocities, was the direct result of the Puritanic outburst. The "Son of the Marshes" has another of his excellent papers, which have established him as the successor of Richard Jefferies, entitled "Alders and Reeds." There is a brightly-written, interesting paper concerning the lives of privateers' men, pirates, and other adventurers of the sea, under the title of By-ways to Fortune." There are several carefully-written reviews of current literature. The political article is devoted to the election in America. Constable and Sir Walter Scott. A WRITER, signing himself E. R., in Temple Bar, vindicates Constable, the publisher, from the disparaging estimation of him put in circulation by Lockhart, Scott's biographer. He describes the business relations between Scott and Constable, and sums up as follows:— Lockhart summarises his character thus:-"Vain to excess, proud at the same time, haughty, arrogant, presumptuous, despotic-he had still, perhaps, a heart." It would be more generous, and probably nearer the truth, to say that he was a man whom prolonged success in a great many daring commercial ventures had naturally (for such is human character) made too trustful of friends and fate; who had raised himself from obscurity to be the companion of very great men, familiarity with whom may have caused him to hold his head a little too high; who did as much as any man up to this day has done to secure worthy payment for worthy literary work; and who first conceived the extent of the populace's need of books; who in his buisness dealings of all sorts was uniformly liberal, and in his private life proved himself possessed of a large heart; and who-in the midst of a useful career which, if unchecked by failure on the part of his business correspondents, might have given even more brilliant evidence of his long-sighted liberality of policy, than his early prosperity did was swept away by monetary panic that no sagacity could have foreseen. The fact that Scott was swept away also in this panic should be laid to the blame of Scott himself. Scott helped to make Constable a bankrupt, after Constable had saved Scott from bankruptcy. The Boyishness of Russell Lowell. THERE is a very charming paper by Mr. W. J. Stillman in the Atlantic Monthly, entitled "A Few of Lowell's Letters." Mr. Stillman seems to have been on terms of exceeding friendship with Mr. Lowell some nearly forty years ago, and some of the letters which he reproduces from his wallet give a very pleasant picture of the American poet. One of his reminiscences relates to a period immediately before the war, when he speaks as follows of Mr. Lowell's overflowing spirits:— In those days the boy was still riotous in Lowell, and until the war came, with its heart-breaking for him and his, and he entered into the larger sphere of public affairs, the escapades of his overflowing and junvenile vitality were irrepressible. In the Adirondacks he cast off all dignity, was one of the best and most devoted shots with the rifle, but proposed to introduce, by regulation, archery for our deer-hunting. He was the life of the company, always running over with fun and contrivance of merriment. I remember once, coming home from Boston with those members of the Saturday Club who lived in Cambridge, Agassiz, Howe, Holmes, Lowell, and others, that in the midst of a grave discussion between Agassiz and himself upon the authority of the Scriptures, Lowell, passing through the exit from the college grounds, vaulted suddenly on one of the great stone columns, clapped his hands to his sides, gave a lusty cockcrow, and hopped down again to pursue the argument, insisting on the admission of the Psalms amongst the inspired books. Nothing human was foreign to his sympathies. I loved him as David loved Jonathan. At the present time Keely is concentrating his efforts on the perfecting of his mechanical conditions to that point where, according to his theories, he will be able to establish, on the "Ninths," a sympathetic affinity with pure polar negative attraction minus magnetism. In his own opinion he has so nearly gained the summit, or completion of his system, as to feel that he holds the key to the infinitely tenuous conditions which lie before him to be conquered, before he can gain control of the group of depolar discs that he is now working upon. Twenty-six groups are completed, and when the twenty-seventh group is under equal control, he expects to have established a circuit of vibratory force for running machinery both for aerial navigation and for terrestrial use. If this result be obtained, Keely will then be in a position to give his system to science, and to demonstrate the outflow of the Infinite mind as sympathetically associated with matter visible and invisible. In commercial use he asserts that when the motion has been once set up, in any of his machines, it will continue until the material is worn out. Woman in Music. "RUBINSTEIN'S slur on the musical capacity of woman," says a writer in the Boston Leader of November, "is true and false at the same time": No woman has become a great composer; but this is due, not to her incapacity, but to her lack of opportunity. Until very recently, woman has been excluded from the field of art, while man has had hundreds of years to develop his intellect and emotions in an art direction. Now, practice not only improves, but it develops capacity-opportunity makes while it advances the musician. What chance had woman of becoming a composer, say, in the time of Palestrina? What was her social position? what her art cultivation ? If she could have written, would she have been allowed to write? and what favourable elements were in her past history that would urge her to write? For countless generations, through all pre-historic times, through all historical times, up past the Middle Ages, man has been the master, woman the slave. He has not allowed her to cultivate herself up to the height of her mental and emotional capacities; he has stood in the way of nature in so doing; and he has cultivated woman down to the low level whereon she could be a useful servant to him. In recent times woman has been allowed more liberty; but how can it be expected that she could do in a few years what it has taken man centuries to perform? Compared with the degradations of a long past, what could she accomplish in the short space of half a century? In some things woman can neither wish nor hope to be man's equal; in other things, given equal time, she can and will be his equal. Music is one of these. It is the most emotional and the most spiritual of all the arts; and in it woman will not only sing her love duet and her cradle song, but express all the emotions of her nature. There has been a Mrs. Somerville in science; there has been a George Eliot in literature; there has been a Mrs. Browning in poetry; there has been an Angelica Kaufmann and a Rosa Bonheur in painting; and is it reasonable to claim that in music-the one art most fitted for her she shall not be represented? Truly, when she sings her cradle song, will be over the birth of her liberty-when the last link of her chain has fallen from her, and she stands free to develop her art-capacity according to the full bent of her nature. ONE of the most out-of-the-way articles seen for a good while is the Rev. John Morris's paper on "Dancing in Churches." Choir boys at Seville, in the church, dance before the Blessed Sacrament five days in the year. The habit of dancing in church prevails also in the little town of Echternach, and this year no fewer than 14,000 persons took part in the dance. POETRY IN THE PERIODICALS. JOAQUIN MILLER has a poem in the Arena for November, dedicated to "The Unknown God," the close of which somewhat resembles Lowell's poem. A priest comes to a dying man, who replies to him as follows: "Good priest, good priest, your God is where? I cannot read your books, I read I hear Him through the thunders talk, Found in each poppy's cup of gold; IN Harper's Magazine there is a long poem entitled "Nourmadee," by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. The following is a description of "Nourmadee," who seemed a thing of Paradise: O Shape of blended fire and snow! Each clime to her some spell had lent- Her scarf was as the cloudy fleece The moon draws round its loveliness, The more in being seen the less. And as she moved, and seemed to float- A string of sequins at her throat Went clink and clink against her breast. But set a mole, a golden dot, THE poetry in Lippincott is somewhat above the average this month. Gertrude Morton's "Love, Come to Me" is pretty and sweet. Florence Earl Coates's "Be Thou my Guide" is good. There is another poem called the "Autonomy of Dreams." The last two verses are as follows: Dreams dream themselves. Dear Mother Nature, yearning Over a lover she has laid to rest, Whispers a tale so sweet that, on returning To conscious life, all dreams to him are blest. Dreams dream themselves. Yet, when the heart is breaking, And darkness falls upon us like a pall, We almost hope there will be no awaking,-That endless, dreamless sleep will cover all! THE Duchess of Sutherland, in Blackwood for December, writes a brief poem, dedicated "to those who mourn their dead in the wreck of the Bokhara, Roumania, and Scotch Express." It begins, "Peace! Still thy sobbing." The conclusion is as follows: Look up! thy darlings live! for while they part MR. W. H. MALLOCK is allowed the first place in the Fortnightly with a rhyming letter, entitled "The Souls," addressed to Miss Margot Tennant. The following three verses are samples of Mr. Mallock's poetry:— You discuss Aristotle and Mill; on the issue Of creeds and of systems your brains are employed. But for us, they are merely the rags of a tissue Once woven to shelter Man's eyes from the void. You keep talking of faith, and devotion, and purity; The Heavens at the end; but it looms on our sight IN the Cosmopolitan for December, Bliss Carman has a long and very beautiful poem entitled "The Yule Guest," which describes how Yanna" of the sea-gray eyes, and harvest yellow hair," sat up in Yule Tide mourning her absent lover, for whose return she was waiting. Her lover has been wrecked, and at Yule Tide he returns. The following verses give a specimen of the poem :— "O Garvin! bonny Garvin!" She murmurs in her dream, And smiles a moment in her sleep To hear the white gulls scream. 66 Then with the storm foreboding A CHRISTMAS STORY OF THE CHICAGO EXHIBITION. YROM the Old World to the New. A Christmas Our Christmas The Story of the Chicago Exhibition." Number was issued at the beginning of the month. It may be at least said of this Christmas Number that it is an entirely unique publication. There is usually a deadly sameness about Christmas numbers. Looking over the mass of Christmas literature which accumulates at the end of every year, it might, for the most part, be reproduced year after year without an anachronism. series which appeared this year might as well have been published three or four years ago, and those which were printed six years ago would do just as well to-day. It may at least be claimed for our Christmas Number that it is up to date, and could no more have been produced twelve months ago than to-day's newspaper could have been printed last week. I cannot say whether it will commend itself to my readers, but its novelty and audacity ought to be a passport to their favourable consideration. The following extract from the preface will enable our readers to understand the drift of the story:— In telling the story of the voyage of a party of English tourists from Liverpool to Chicago, the writer has endeavoured to combine two somewhat incongruous elements-the love-story of the Christmas annual and the information of a guide-book. Side by side with these, in the main features of From the Old World to the New," are incorporated two other elements, viz., a more or less dramatic representation of conclusions arrived at after twelve months' experimental study of psychical phenomena; and an exposition of the immense political possibilities that are latent in this World's Fair. To deal in a Christmas number with such practical questions as the price of tickets and the choice of hotels, and at the same time to discuss the existence of the soul after death and the prospective assumption by America of the leadership of the English-speaking race, without sacrificing the human interest of a simple story of true love, is an undertaking which might well daunt the most practised story-teller. It was necessary, therefore, to intrust the task to one who had the audacity of the novice who always believes that he can do impossibilities in his first story. Speaking critically, as editor, of the result of this bold attempt, I may at least hazard the remark that this Christmas story deserves the compliment paid by a Scotchman to the first number of THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS: It is like a haggisthere's a good deal of confused feeding in it." One chapter of the book stands out beyond all the rest, and will probably be the one which will excite most controversy. It purports to be an account of communications from the other side of the grave, communicated by means of automatic handwriting. In introducing this chapter I have appended the following foot-note: The narrative in this chapter is not a story, it is a fact. That is to say, the communications professing to be written by the disembodied spirit of Robert Julia, were actually written automatically under similar circumstances to those described in these pages by the hand of a writer who was unaware of what his pen was writing, and who did not know the persons correctly named, or the circumstances accurately referred to by the intelligence which guided his pen. Names and places of course have been altered, and whereas in the story the communications are represented as having been written by the spirit of a man through the hand of a woman, they were in reality written by the hand of a man under the alleged control of a woman. Whatever explanation may be offered, I am prepared to vouch absolutely for the truth of the following statements: 1. That the communications were written by the pen of one whose good faith cannot be impugned, and who was quite unaware of what his hand was about to write when he took up his pen. 4. That the intelligence frequently refers to names, places, and incidents, in the past and present of which the person whose hand holds the pen has no knowledge. All this is true. In token whereof I am willing to submit all the evidence, and the chief witnesses to the examination of the Psychical Research Society. I know of my own knowledge that the facts are as stated.-ED. In conclusion, I have only to say that the number is copiously illustrated, not merely with photographs of the World's Fair and of places of interest seen and visited on the way, but also with a considerable number of illustrations specially drawn by two promising young artists, Mr. Twidle and Miss Ethel Sykes, to both of whom I wish to express my indebtedness and my best wishes for their future success. The frontispiece, reproduced on the opposite page, is Mr. Twidle's. The picture of the other heroine is by Miss Sykes. The first edition, I may add, was exhausted before any actual deliveries could be made to the trade. A second edition, with useful information about the railway systems of America, is being printed, and will be on sale before this December number of the Review is published. THE CHRISTMAS NUMBERS. THE literary features of this year's Christmas numbers are not very novel. The Illustrated London News is, perhaps, the best, with a weird story of the supernatural by Mr. Grant Allen, and stories by Mr. F. R. Stockton, Mr. Barry Pain, and Mrs. Molesworth. Black and White has an excellent number, the first page of which contains a picture-story by René Bull, printed in colours. The stories are by Mr. Bret Harte, Mr. Eden Phillpotts, E. Nesbit, Oswald Barron, and other writers. All the pictures in the Graphic are printed in colours and are very successful. The stories, all of them excellent, are by Mr. J. M. Barrie, Mr. Grant Allen, and Mr. Henry James. Messrs. Cassell's Annual, Yule Tide, strikes out a new line with a story," The New Babylon; or, the Dream, the Demolition, and the New Democracy," profusely illustrated in black and white and in colours, by Mr. Harry Furniss. The Gentleman's Annual contains "The Loudwater Tragedy," by T. W. Speight; and the Christmas numbers of Good Words and Sunday Magazine contain long illustrated stories by Mr. Gilbert Parker and Mrs. L. T. Meade respectively. The World is made up of profusely illustrated stories, and contains a large black and white plate, by Mr. Alfred Bryan, of a garden party at Marlborough House, with likenesses of nearly three hundred personages well known in Society. Truth contains the usual political medley, illustrated by Mr. F. C. Gould. The Queen's best feature is a series of articles by well-known women on how they made a start in life. Sylvia's Home Journal has a series of sketches of Women Workers in Many Fields, with portraits. The Gentlewoman's chief literary feature is "A Story of Seven Christmas Eves," by seven well-known writers. May's Winter Annual is chiefly notable for Mr. May's excellent comic sketches, but it also contains a number of short stories by well-known writers, the best of which is Dr. Conan Doyle's "Jelland's Voyage." The Lady's Pictorial has a long story by Mrs. W. K. Clifford, "A Wild Proxy," illustrated by Mr. Maurice Greiffenhagen. Phil |