and will not let you enjoy the society of her daughter uninterrupted, you might resort to a little harmless strategy, and whenever your stated evenings for calling are broken in on that way, ask the young lady to take a walk with you, or go to a place of amusement. She can then excuse herself to her friends without a breach of etiquette, and you can enjoy your tête-à-tête undisturbed.'

The photographs of lady correspondents which are received by the editors of most of these journals are apparently very numerous, and, if we may believe their description of them, all ravishingly beautiful. It is no wonder they receive many applications of the following nature:

'CLYDE, a rising young doctor, twenty-two, fair, with a nice house and servants, being tired of bachelor life, wishes to receive the carte-de-visite of a dark, fascinating young lady, of from seventeen to twenty years of age; no money essential, but good birth indispensable. She must be fond of music and children, and very loving and affectionate.'

Another doctor,

Twenty-nine, of a loving and amiable disposition, and who has at present an income of 120l. a-year, is desirous to make an immediate engagement with a lady about his own age, who must be possessed of a little money, so that by their united efforts he may soon become a member of a lucrative and honourable profession.'

How the united efforts' of two young people, however enthusiastic, can make a man an M.D. or an M.R.C.S. (except that love conquers all things) is more than one can understand. The last advertisement I shall quote affects me nearly, for it is from an eminent member of my own profession :

'ALEXIS, a popular author in the prime of life, of an affectionate disposition, and fond of home, and the extent and pressing nature of whose work have prevented him from mixing much in society, would be glad to correspond with a young lady not above thirty. She must be of a pleasing appearance, amiable, intelligent and domestic.'

If it is with the readers of penny fiction that Alexis has established his popularity, I would like to know how he did it, and who he is. To discover this last is, however, an impossibility. These novelists all write anonymously, nor do their works ever appear before the public in another guise. There is sometimes a melancholy pretence to the contrary put forth in the Answers to Correspondents.' 'PHOENIX,' for example, is informed that The story about which he inquires will not be published in book form at the time he mentions.' But the fact is it will never be so published at all. It has been written, like all its congeners, for the unknown millions and for no one else.

Some years ago, in a certain great literary organ, it was stated of

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one of these penny journals (which has not forgotten to advertise the eulogy) that its novels are equal to the best works of fiction to be got at the circulating libraries.' The critic who so expressed himself must have done so in a moment of hilarity which I trust was not produced by liquor; for the best works of fiction to be got at the circulating libraries' obviously include those of George Eliot, Trollope, Reade, Black and Blackmore, while the novels I am discussing are inferior to the worst. They are as crude and ineffective in their pictures of domestic life as they are deficient in dramatic incident; they are vapid, they are dull. Indeed, the total absence of humour, and even of the least attempt at it, is most remarkable. There is now and then a description of the playing of some practical joke, such as tying two Chinamen's tails together, the effect of the relation of which is melancholy in the extreme, but there is no approach to fun in the whole penny library. And yet it attracts, it is calculated, four millions of readers—a fact which makes my mouth water like that of Tantalus.

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When Mr. Wilkie Collins wrote of the Unknown Public it is clear he was still hopeful of them. He thought it a question of time' only. The largest audience,' he says, for periodical literature in this age of periodicals must obey the universal law of progress, and sooner or later learn to discriminate. When that period comes the readers who rank by millions will be the readers who give the widest reputations, who return the richest rewards, and who will therefore command the services of the best writers of their time.' This prophecy has, curiously enough, been fulfilled in a different direction from that anticipated by him who uttered it. The penny papers-that is, the provincial penny newspapers-do now, under the syndicate system, command the services of our most eminent novel writers; but Penny Fiction proper-that is to say, the fiction published in the penny literary journals-is just where it was a quarter of a century ago.

With the opportunity of comparison afforded to its readers one would say this would be impossible, but as a matter of fact, the opportunity is not offered. The readers of Penny Fiction do not read newspapers; political events do not interest them, nor even social events, unless they are of the class described in the Police News, which, I remark-and the fact is not without significance-does not need to add fiction to its varied attractions.

But who, it will be asked, are the public who don't read newspapers, and whose mental calibre is such that they require to be told by a correspondence editor that any number over the two thousand will certainly be in the three thousand'?

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I believe, though the vendors of the commodity in question profess to be unable to give any information on the matter, that the majority are female domestic servants.

As to what attracts them in their favourite literature, that is a much more knotty question. My own theory is that, just as Mr. Tupper achieved his immense popularity by never going over the heads of his readers, and showing that poetry was, after all, not such a difficult thing to be understood, so, I think, the writers of Penny Fiction, in clothing very conventional thoughts in rather high-faluting English, have found the secret of success. Each reader says to himself (or herself), That is my thought, which I would have myself expressed in those identical words, if I had only known how.'

JAMES PAYN.

THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER.

THE interchange of ideas between writers and readers of all nationalities effected in the present day by increased facilities of communication, and the new light thrown on the religons of the East by the editing and translating of their sacred books, make a change of attitude towards non-Christian systems unavoidable. Until recently it was customary to regard every religion of the world, except Judaism and Christianity, as unworthy of scientific investigation. Any Christian who ventured to assert that any human being had benefited by his faith in any of the doctrines of a non-Christian religion, or that elements of truth might possibly underlie such doctrines, was at once suspected of disloyalty to his own faith. Furthermore, all Asiatic systems which appeared to be specially saturated with polytheism and idolatry were stigmatised by a special application of such opprobrious epithets as heathenism and paganism. They were not mere silly delusions. They were the outcome of man's diseased imagination, stimulated by the promptings of the evil one himself. All who believed in them were sinners. As to their so-called sacred books, they were held up to reprobation and derision. The writers of them were guilty of far greater sin than those who believed in them. And any Christian who attempted to examine them reverently and impartially on their best side, or from the point of view of those who accepted their inspiration, was guilty of almost as great a sin. Even unidolatrous Muhammadanism was denounced in equally strong languagethough its stern iconoclasm and its admitted points of contact with Judaism and Christianity saved it from the ignominy of consignment to the general limbo of the more despised and neglected heathen systems.

No Christian thinker, in fact, suspected—or, at least, confessed to suspecting-what the science of religion is now demonstrating: that all false systems result from perversions or exaggerations of true ideas; that the principal non-Christian religions of the worldBrahmanism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Muhammadanism— could not possibly have held their ground with such tenacity, nor acquired such real power over the mind, unless they had attempted with some success to solve problems which have from time immemorial

perplexed the human intellect and burdened the human heart; that all the religions of the world have some common platform on which they may meet on friendly terms; and that Christianity itself is but the perfect concentration and embodiment of eternal truth scattered in fragments through other systems-the perfect expression of all the religious cravings and aspirations of the human race since man was first created.

Perhaps few more remarkable facts have been revealed by the critical examination of non-Christian systems than the highly spiritual character of the ancient creed which it is usual to call the religion of Zoroaster. Only within the last few years has the progress of Iranian studies made it possible to gain an insight into the true meaning of the text of the Avesta popularly known as the Zend Avesta—which is to Zoroastrianism what the Veda is to Brahmanism. The knowledge thus obtained has made it clear that contemporaneously with Judaism an unidolatrous and monotheistic form of religion, containing a high moral code and many points of resemblance to Judaism itself, was developed by at least one branch of the Aryan race.

Nor does the certainty of this fact rest on the testimony of the Zoroastrian scriptures only. It is attested by numerous allusions in the writings of Greek and Latin authors. We know that the Father of history himself, writing about 450 years before the Christian era, said of the Persians that it is not customary among them to make idols, to build temples and erect altars; they even upbraid with folly those who do.' The reason of this Herodotus declares to be that the Persians do not believe the gods to be like men, as the Hellenes do, but that they identify the whole celestial circle with the Supreme Being.

We know, too, that Cyrus the Great, who must have been a Zoroastrian, evinced great sympathy with the Jews; and was styled by Isaiah the righteous one' (ch. xli. 2), 'the Shepherd of the Lord' (ch. xliv. 28), the Lord's Anointed' (ch. xlv. 1), who was commissioned to perform all God's pleasure' and carry out His decrees in regard to the rebuilding of the temple, and the restoration of the chosen people to their native land.1

It will be my aim in the present paper to give a brief description -based on the most recent researches of the various phases of the Zoroastrian religion from its earliest rise in Central Asia to its latest development among the Pārsīs of India.

Unfortunately, the whole subject, full as it is of importance and interest, is also fraught with extreme difficulty.

1 In Ezra i. 2-4, Cyrus is represented as acknowledging Jehovah to be the God. But Canon Rawlinson has shown in a late number of the Contemporary Review that if the interpretation of a recently discovered inscription is to be relied on, Cyrus was not the monotheist and iconoclast he is generally represented to have been, but simply a time-server and syncretist.