The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-07 00:00:00

LITERA7'URE.

Macmillan's Magazine. Edited by David Masson.
No. 1. Macmillan and Co.
The appearance of a new competitor in the world
of serials is always a matter of some interest to the
general public. It is not, however, always possible
to form a fair estimate of the ability and character
of the:new miscellany from its opening number. The
inevitable difficulties attending the commencement
may frequently interfere with the opening parts. Still
a promise of ability and success may generally be
discovered if it exists, and such a promise may
I readily be discerned in this introductory number.
It opens with a general survey of "Politics of the
Present, Foreign and Domestic," by the Editor.
There is nothing very striking in this article, not-
withstanding its comprehensive title, and it ex-
presses few decided opinions. It takes a rapid
glance over the general questions of the day at
home and abroad. It is followed by the first
instalment of a new tale, " Tom Brown at Oxford,"
which will probably be the most attractive feature in
the magazine to many of the readers of that hero's
scholastic experiences. It describes his first impres-
sions of the college and college life ; it narrates his first
ambitious attempt in a solitary skiff, and the dire-
ful results thereof; also, it gives some account of
his friends and associates. An essay on " Paper,
Pen, and Ink " is well worthy of perusal, though
the subject is capable of further extension. The
following brief extracts give some idea of the
writer's style and treatment of the topic :
"A friend has described to me the speechless amazement
with which a wild Arab chief of the desert watched, in a tent
near Cairo, the development of the photograph of the Great
Sphinx. When in the faint light, the glass taken, as it
seemed, unchanged from the camera, and subjected there-
after to a simple baptism, began to reveal line by line the
well-known features of the mysterious sculpture, the Arab
turned to my informant, and, pointing to the photographer,
exclaimed, He is the eldest son of Satan 1'
" With the Arab's wonder we should profoundly sympa-
thise, although it is not from the hands of the Prince of.
Darkness that we will take the pencil of light. It speaks
for itself as one of the choicest gifts of God reserved for us
in these latter days. With this feeling I have found my-
self in a dream of the night, among the spirits of the great
dead in the silent land, myself clothed in flesh and blood,
a visitant for the briefest space from this upper world.
There could be no speech between us ; but to their longing
looks for information regarding that world from which
they had come, and to which they could not return, me-
thought I replied by laying before the pale conclave the
shadowy photographs which were in my hands. And the
ancient Egyptian se,* that the Pyramids would waste no
more ; and. the Greek was consoled that the ruin of his
temples could proceed no further, and know that at
length a Prometheus had come, who with the very fire of
heaven had made each marble form immortal ; and the
Italian painter ceased to sigh at the fading of his frescoes;
and the mediaeval architect mourned no longer over his
cathedral falling before those fierce Iconoclasts, the light-
ning and the north wind, the snow and the rain ; and the
ancient Christian who, in the scriptorium of his convent,
centuries ago, had reverently copied, letter by letter, every
jot and tittle of the venerable Evangel before him, felt that
the days of faithful copying had come back again—nay,
were exceeded in faithfulness—and realised that to the end
of time his labour might not prove in vain. And over all
the spiritual faces a gleam of shadowy sunshine passed, as
I awoke and beheld it was a dream."
"Any coloured liquid, however, will suffice for ink ; any
flower-juice, any dye-stuff, the blood from any vein, a multi-
tude of chemical compounds. They are not equally good,
but any one is sufficiently so for an emergency ; and if the
paper and pen are secured, the ink is certain to be forth-
coming. But whatever its material quality be, how little
this strikes us when our hearts are stirred, and the words
we have written stand before us, no longer thoughts which
we can recall, but each a spirit-child with an independent
life of its own, proclaiming •'Litera scripta manet.', The
functions of the paper and pen in producing this result are'
forgotten. We feel as if we directly thought out the words
we see. The ink in which they stand is not charcoal, or
galls and iron, but the very anger, or sorrow, or gladness
we felt, fixed on the paper for ever.
"Think of a queen's first signature of a death-warrant,
where tears tried to blanch the fatal blackness of the doom-
ing ink 1 Of a traitor's adhesion to a deed of rebellion,
written in gull ; of a forger's trembling imitation of another's
writing, where each letter took the shape of the gallows ; of
a lover's passionate proposal written in fire ; of a proud girl's
refusal written in ice; of a mother's dying expostulation
with a wayward son written in her heart's blood; of an in-
dignant father's disinheriting curse on his first-born, black
with the lost colour of the grey hairs which shall go down
in sorrow to the grave—think of these, and of all the other
impassioned writings to which every hour gives birth, and
what a strangely potent, Protean thing, a drop of ink
grows to be. All over the world it is distilling at the
behest of men. Here a despairing prisoner is writing with
a rusty nail his dying confession of faith on his damp dun-
geon wall. There an anxious lover is deceiving all but his
bride, with an ink which only she knows how to render visi-
ble. Beleaguered soldiers in Indian forts are confiding to
the perilous secrecy of a .e water or innocent milk their own
lives and the fortunes of their country. Shipwrecked sailors,
about to be engulfed in mid ocean, are consigning to a
floating bottle the faint re aci I-memorandum of the spot Where '
they will swiftly go down into the jaws of death. Everywhere '
happy pairs, dear hu*bauds aad wives, affectiouto brothers