The Sun.
London, England, 1866-11-03 00:00:00

THE MAGAZINES.

BLACKWOOD.—" Nina Balatka" is continued a
some length, and the story of this fair maiden o:

Prague seems likely to be a very eventful one. She
is indeed in a real dilemma, and all parties turn
against her. The scene where the rival Rebecca is
induced to come to see her is a very striking one,
and effectively described. The incident of the lost deed

is also very ingeniously put in, and will, doubt--
less, turn out essentially to be the point on
which the story turns. "Cornelius O'Dowd" again
appears with his stores of wit and wisdom to bestow abun-
dantly upon his friends. This time he chooses as subjects
for dissertation the Lost Cable, Bribers and Bribery, Dig-
nity Balls, and Profitable Vice. in the first he says that
the quality for which Englishmen are most distinguished

is perseverance, and the " spirit of no surrender to fortune
gives the peculiar tone and temper to th• national mind ;
the very best traits of Englishmen are those which are de-
veloped under difficulties." " Historical Portraits" is an
interesting article, which affords a good deal of informa-
tion on this attractive topic, that has lately called forth so
much attention; and no reader of taste and refinement will
egret the time spent in the company of this writer while
ho walks through a gallery crowded with the illustrious
dead. After a careful analysis of tho portraits lately on
view at Kensington, it is said that their chronological
sequel will appear next year, and " the noble
earl now at the head of her Majesty's Govern-
ment has power to give to the project of which
he was the originator its complete fulfilment." In
speaking of this effort, the noble Earl emphatically re-
marked that, looking at the various things connected with
. _

it, there " never had been in this country, or any other, a
contemporaneous exhibition of portraits so calculated to
excite the interest of the artist and the student of history."
" Sir Brook Fosbrooko " is concluded in this number, and

in a very satisfactory style, when wo take all things into
consideration. It is quite a relief to find the Sewells sent
to deserved banishment, and the excellent Lendricks re-
stored to their old place in society. Of the Chief, as he is
called, wo may safely say that his brightest moments are
the best ones hero recorded, and the old hero of the tale
appears to full advantage as the beneficent spirit who
showers honours and affluence on the unfortunate but
meritorious sufferers, and deals destruction to their ruth-
less persecutors. Lucy is a sweet, gentle creature, and
forms a striking contrast to the meretricious splendour of
the other heroine of the tale, the bold and reckless Mrs.
Sewell. "Scraps of Versa from a Tourist's Journal" is a
very effective sketch. Some of the passages seem to con-
tain a double meaning, and to foreshadow life in its ap-
parent brilliancy but hidden misery—
" Acre bloomed the frail and momentary flower,
And one step off, behind the summer grass,
There lay the eternal glacier.
It is the man we call eternal hero,
And not the flower."
"Celestial flute and Rebellion" is an elaborate sketch
that will no doubt be welcome to many, as it may open
their eyes to some things they do not comprehend in the
Chinese Empire, and on the strange doings ever and anon
enacting there. " Three Presidents of the United States"
is a paper that is certain to meet with due notice, and we
may mention at once the noticeable part here recorded
that the greatest difficulties have attended the Union
while the Presidential office was held by men "of hum-
ble origin, defective education, and unpolished manners."
Andrew Johnson was glad to do the meaner work about
a farm for mere subsistence. Abraham Lincoln was a
boatman and splitter of logs; and Andrew Johnson was
a journeyman tailor in a third-rate country town." In
dwelling upon the groat issues now impending, it is truly
affirmed that it is time the North should yield a little, and
that such will be its duty, but that if the present confusion
lasts much longer order will be submerged in riot and dis-
order, and America, from Maine to Texas, will become as
dangerous an abode for a man who prizes his safety as the
vicinity of a powder magazine when there is lightning in
the atmosphere. Tho political article is called " What
should the Ministers do ?" and it is written in a very ap-
propriate strain throughout. Very correct is the observa-
tion that any Government would be most unwise which
decided to begin next session by a Reform Bill.
Some pertinent remarks are made upon the clamorous
crusade now carried on by Mr. Bright, and it is amusing
to road the description given of some of his manoeuvres.
He has so embarrassed his former allies that they have
deemed it expedient at the crisis to put the sea between
them and him, and hence the Eternal City is to wit-
ness a cluster of former Cabinet Ministers. Last session
Mr. Bright declared that he had dictated terms to her Ma-
jesty's Ministers, but this farce can never bo repeated under
any circumstances whatever ; and the writer of this essay
very truly says that after what has lately occurred on the
line whichbetween
him
M r .
and
Bright
theg
rhaseatL
taken,ibe it is impossible that
r a l
party any further
pretence at cordiality should be maintained. A summary
is given of our past doings, which is more correct than
complimentary, and it is affirmed that the present Govern-
ment are not hampered by pledges. " Mr. Disraeli offered
a measure to the House of Commons, eight years ago,
which it has become fashionable among Liberal members
now to commend,though they then rejected it," but he is not
now called upon to repeat the attempt, and at any rate for
next session may let it alone. " His role, and the role of
his colleagues, is the correction of practical abuses which
have grown till they are become intolerable. There may
be a better opportunity arise in the future, and meanwhile
there is enough, and more than enough, to do in repairing,
the orrOrs of those who wasted precious time in their per-
sistent efforts to keep their places."

FRASER.—The opening article in Fraser is en-
titled " Why we want-a Reform Bill," and dis-
cusses the question at full length. But, in truth,
if we are to accept the writer's delineation of Eng-
lish affairs, Reform is altogether a uzeless task, and
nothing can cure the evils complained of but a whole-
sale submersion, such as was once flippantly proposed for
a kindred country. Everything is as bad as it can be, and
the governing classes are mainly responsible for it. A
wholesale change must take place in the administration of
the country. We must copy the Prussians in matters of
education and in the extension of the franchise, and Ame-
rica in sundry other points. We must be prepared for great
suffering from the Fenians and serious danger in India,
and a "ruinous schism" in the heart of England itself.
Having incurred odium from nearly all the nations in the
world, and being mainly dependent on foreign supplies f or
our food, the best thing we can do is to shorten sail, to
husband our resource; conciliate offended friends, and
make no new enemies. If, in addition to this programme,
we withdraw our Mediterranean fleet, leaving only one
ship at Malta, cede Gibraltar to Spain on easy terms, with-
draw our embassies and appoint consuls in their place,
abandon
applying the money saved to reduce the national debt, we
shall be more wisely.
Wov e
ei wonder
(to which
ngrand climax to these somewhat inconvenient and startling
changes, the writer did not recommend that we should
altogether doing
the task of se
wo are manifestly unequal), and put ourselves under
the Hut protection of Louis Napoleon and Count
Bismarck, who appear to be less troubled by nerv-
ous anticipations. " The Memoirs and Corre-
spondence of Field-Marshal Viscount Combermere"
furnish the subject of a readable article, which sums up the
newest and most striking portions of the volumes. Hein-
rich Hein, the German poet and thinker, supplies another
memorial article full of interest, of instruction, of warning.
Miss Frances Power Cobbe contributes a very sensible and
well-written paper on "The Conventional Laws of Society,"
showing that most of them are founded on a sound basis,
and as such deserve to be respected. Those which are artifi-
cial and false,
crime
n 0 t o
ot
reviceobs e
irsavu
observed,
abhsutt
andht eo
low,cboen
dv
nee
nn
omt iuoannuca
eod rl distinctionbnyall mhonest
o an d
t
be
et swe
aer
nev between
straightforward people. " Could the pharisaic horror of
crime and exposed vice but be transferred for a yea: or two
to lofty vice and
Tice cloaked in the garb of decorum,
self
that, as a

more would be achieved for the regeneration of society
than by any laws invented by Puritan legislators." So
speaks Miss Cobbo vary justly, but we have some progress
to make first. "The Provision Trade of Ireland" gives some
curious particulars of the pork trade of the sister country.
Tho annual value of the pigs, alive and dead, exported
from Ireland is estimated at £4,000, 000 sterling, of which
one-fourth is shipped from Waterford. Prominent among
the remaining contents is a story possessing the rare merit
of coming to an immediate conclusion. It is entitled " A
Lost Man," and though somewhat spun out, is vigorous
and original, though we must warn romantic readers with-
out the least vestige of sentiment.
MACMILLAN.—AIthough there are several other
very attractive papers in the new number of Mac-
millan for November—such, for example, as the
sprightly and vivacious fragment of verse leading
off the whole contents under the title of " The
Ladies' Parliament"—to say nothing of the two
popular serial stories which are still appearing hero from
month to month from the hands of Henry Kingsley and the
lion. Mrs. Norton—we turn at once by preference to the
seventh contribuiton—another of Mr. G. Grove's charming
and masterly analyses of ono among the peerless gems of
poetry, for the production of which the world is indebted
to the genius of Alfred Tennyson. "Tears, Idle Tears,"
is the jewel (happily for us more than "five words long")
"that on the stretched forefinger of time sparkle for ever"
—selected this time by the most subtle appreciator of the
Laureate as a theme for a very exquisite commentary.
Better than any words of ours in regard to it will be a quo-
tation from the paper itself. Take, therefore, the follow-
ing, by way of illustration, of Mr. Grove's mastery of the
inner meaning of the poem as a whole :
" The key-note is clearly and beautifully struck in the
first stanza. Nothing moves the spirit of man so profoundly
as some of the appearances of nature ; more profoundly,
because it is often impossible to explain why it should be
so. The vague but intense yearning, the feeling of vast-
ness and longing, which possess ono at the sight of certain
aspects of the sunset, has been felt by almost every one. It
is a mere commonplace, but a commonplace that is unex-
plainable, and which is a stronger evidence, to those who
feel it, of the immortality of the soul than all the demon-
strations of natural theology. So it is, too, with the awe
excited in the mind by the starry heavens in all their clear-
ness and immensity ; by the rare and most touching spec-
tacle of the waning moon ; or by the ascent of the dawn, in
the hush and chill of daybreak. The same kind of feeling,
only more personal, and less vast, and coloured rather by
wild passionate human regret, is apt to seize the mind in
autumn, in viewing some scene of sweet peaceful beauty,
like the "happy autumn fields" of this poem. The feeling
may be duo in part to the universal spectacle of things
passing away—corn ripe and cut, leaves gradually "red-
dening to the fall," all things drawing slowly but surely
to their appointed end. The very look of the clouds in
the autumn afternoons, so round and calm and still, so
ethereal in their tints, so unutterly soft and mellow in their
lights and shadows, contributes to the general impression
of rest and peace. But the real ground of the melancholy
which autumn inspires is something deeper, some instinct
of which we know only the effect, and cannot even conjec-
ture the working, and which, from that very vagueness,
stirs the spirit more deeply than any more definite cause
would do.

" lloweverthis may be, certain it is that, at such moments,
the transitoriness of life and all around will suddenly im-
press itself on the mind. The key-note of "some divine
despair" in the heart is touched. Persons and incidents,
fraught with unutterable recollections, and worth all the
world to one—a dead child, a lost love, a sudden look, a
parting, a difference, a reconciliation—present themselves
with peculiar power. It is, perhaps, long since we had to
do with them, but they come back as " fresh" as it were
yesterday ; they fill the mind as if present, in all their
sweetness and familiar tender dearness, and the pang of
absence, and the maddening sense of the utter irrecover-
ableness of the past rushes in after them with a " wild re-
gret," and the tears, the "idle tears"—not idle in themselves,
but idle only because " we know not what they mean"—
" rise from the depths" of our " divine despair"—"
because so utterly beyond all human reason or knowledge,
and gather, smarting, in the eyes of the gazer."
The commentary, however, should be road in its entirety,
or not at all, and we therefore heartily commend it to all
the truer lovers of the Laureate's muse for their examina-
tion at length in Macmillan. It makes us long more
earnestly than ever for the detailed analysis by George
Grove of that matchless " In Memoriam," which is still, to
our thinking, the magnum opus of Alfred Tennyson.

TEMPLE BAR.—"Lady Adelaide's Oath" is now
becoming very exciting, and it is evidently fast
approaching a conclusion. The part about Mike
and the poaching business is too much spun out,
and thereby the effect is spoiled in a great mea-
sure. The character of Lady Adelaide is very well
described in its meanness and selfishness. Her early crime
deteriorated her mind, and she goes on from bad to worse,
uhtil she would not have recognised the portrait of herself
had she seen it at the outset. Tiffie is a good illustration
of low cunning, and her acts and devices are very well de-
scribed. Ali awkward day of reckoning is, in all probabi-
lity, at hand for many persons in this story. Lord Dacre,
with his title and lands, which aro not his ; Mr. Lester,
with his children's money unlawfully given to the second
wife, who had ousted them from their rights ; and, above
all, Lady Adelaide herself, who had begun her career by
deceit, tried to reinstate herself by perjury, and finally de-
scended to every low act and disgraceful trickery, in order
that she might attain her unworthy ends. "Archie Lovell"
is also eventful in this instalment, and she fulfils her inten-
tion of going up to town, in order to be present at the trial.
The description of her attendance as witness is not given
in this number, but some Recounts are furnished of the
opening scenes of the trial, which are sure to attract atten-
tion. Although not at all an interesting heroine, in the
most comprehensive sense of the word, there is much to
awake notice in a character like Archie's, full of impulsive-
ness and enthusiasm, that had never been directed to its
end, or rendered available for other purposes than that of
leading her into trouble and difficulties. " Come to Grief
in the Shires" is a curious tale, that is told in an ingeni-
ous manner, and with a great deal of animation in the de-
scription. Roger Ditton is quite a relief, in his down-
right manner, after all the absurdities which are displayed
by others in their attempts to be what they aro not. The
conduct of Mrs. Plaskett is most unwise, and furnishes an
impressive warning to those who cast prudence to the
winds in their wild efforts at mixing in the circles of rank
and fashion. Table Talk in a Whisper" is a ludicrous
and yet satirical sketch of some of the follies of society.
P. may serve to instruct those whose greatest terror in life
is to offend the Mrs. Grundys of their race. Some true, if
not very flattering, remarks aro made as to the style of
those who persist in having their dinners in a grand style
to the destruction of all comfort. " Shoeburyness" con-
tains some wise hints on the want of care that has been
exhibited in various directions; and it is said emphati-
cally, in conclusion, that "England's supremacy must still
be maintained on the waters, if her future history is to bo
commensurate with her past." " Adrift in the Antarctic
Ocean" is the first chapter of some exciting adventures, that
are well told, and are calculated to inspire interest in the mind
of the reader. There is an article on a French Watering
Place, and an account of "Seaford and its Prawns." Two
poetical contributions complete the number ; one is called
"Animus," and it is in rather a heavy style; the other is
a Requiem, "Stone Cold," and is very sad and mournful.