The Sun.
London, England, 1871-01-04 00:00:00

THE MAGAZINES.

Blackwood.—There is a kindly notice enough in Maga
of Sir Henry Bulwer's Life of Lord Palmerston, praise
and blame being as cunningly mingled by the reviewer as
the "mordant" mustard and the "softening" potato, the
soothing oil and the stinging vinegar are blent into one
appetizing whole by a clever salad mixer. A new serial
story begins with the new year. It is entitled " Fair to
See," and, this once at any rate, bears no sign about it
indicative of its coining from the hand of Mrs. Oliphant.
A genial, affectionate tribute is offered to one of the
Blackwood "set"—George Moir—recently deceased. There
vre some highly spiced • lines headed " This morning's
Times in Chambers," that would be all the better if they
Lad not, here and there, a flavour of vulgarity.

Fraser.—More than one of the contributions to Regina
for January—three, at least, of the nine—appear to us
dreadfully out of date. F. W. Newman, in the first of
them, undertakes to explain " The Causes of the Crimean
War." Then, again, there is an account of " The Loss
of H.M.S. Captain," of which, by this time, we have heard
and read almost enough. Closing the whole number there
is a paper on "Scotland in the Sixteenth Century" not
in the nineteenth, but the sixteenth ! Dr. Dionysius
Diamond, however, completes his record of " The Tempta-
tion of the Reverend Stephen Holdfast," so that we have
some cause after all for thankfulness.
Macmillan.—That favourite of more than Cantabs—
llacmillan—is chiefly delightful this month by reason of
its containing the most charming of all the memorial
articles that have yet appeared on Charles Dickens, the
paper, here, being strictly anonymous (we have 'ourselves
not the faintest conjecture who wrote it), and conveying
to the reader a most vivid idea of the charm of those
famous private theatricals at Tavistock House, in the
course cf which Mr. Dickens shewed his wonderful power
as an actor. Mr. Scott Russell in this number begins a
clever, dashing account of a recent visit paid by him to
Paris and Versailles.

Cornhill.—Although there is an able memorial chapter
on the Spanish hero " Zamalacarreguy," and three
carryingani-
anuds away Asia Minor,
n imagination
the
charm
Wales,
Imraenteicde,eNoleitwrilsmotuiothns
and interest of the Cornhill still continue to be divided
between the two narrators of the companion, or rather
contrasting, serial storks now pursuing their course in its
pages—" Lord Kilgoblin" and " Harry Richmond." The
former promises to be one of the brightest, raciest, and
most interesting of all the bright, racy, and interesting
Irish stories of Charles Lever. The delineation of the
characters pourtrayed in Lord Kilgoblin .is in his very
happiest style:—Joe Atlee, for example, and Dick
Kearney, and Cecil Walpole, and Major Lockwood, being
discriminated, quite as admirably as Kate or Nina, the rival
heroines of the tale. " Harry Richmond" is full of wit and
brilliancy, but has about it a dash of extravagance render-
ing it wholly unreal—the living bronze statue, for instance,
and all that about the Princess Ottilia and the Margra-
vine. But the delineation of the character of Harry's
father, Augustus Fitz-George Frederick William Rich-
mond Guelph Roy, is admirable, and has about it a suave
and yet intolerable fascination.

The Gentleman's.—R. H. Horne, whom we are glad to
welcome back among his literary confreres, leads off the
Gentleman's with an agreeable fragment of autobiography.
Percy Fitzgerald sketches Calais, the Countess Bothmei
" Kaulbach," and Clark Russell " Tyburnia." Six more
chapters bring Sutherland Edward's story evidently very
nearly to its conclusion.