There was one, a negro slave, whose dark glittering eye fascinated

his fellows, and whose wondrous powers of speech drew them, despite

themselves, into the conspiracy. But he planned no murders, designed no

house-burnings; to those who, under solemn pledge of secrecy, joined

him, he propounded a single idea. It was this. If we, the negroes, who

are as five to one, compared to the white men, refuse to work any more

until freedom is given, we shall have it. There will be some resistance,

and a few of us will be killed; but that we must expect. This, in

substance, was the ground taken by Sharpe, who, as a slave, had

always been a favorite both with his master and others. This was the

commencement of the great insurrection. Its leader had not counted upon

the excitable spirit of the slaves when once aroused. Holding as sacred

the property of his master, he believed his followers would do the same,

until the light of burning barns and out-houses revealed the mischief

which had begun to work. Yet, in the sanguinary struggle which followed,

it is to be remembered that the excesses which were committed, the

wanton waste of life, were on the part of the white residents, who meted

out vengeance with an unsparing hand,--not on the part of the negroes.

One effect of this uprising of the slaves was, in England, to deepen the

impression of the evils of the system under which they were held. If the

mere discussion of Slavery were fraught with such terrible consequences,

how could safety ever consist with the thing itself? By discussion they

had but exercised their own rights as Englishmen. Of what use to them

was Magna Charta, if they must seal their lips in silence when a public

abuse required to be corrected, a gigantic wrong to be righted? Must

they give up the ocean and the land to the dominion of the slave-owner

and slave-trader, hushing the word of remonstrance, lest it should lead

to war and bloodshed? No; they would not do this. The thing itself which

had caused these commotions must perish.

Here was a decided gain for the friends of the slave in Parliament.

Mr. Buxton, in alluding to the fearful aspect of the times, asks the

pertinent question, "How is the Government prepared to act in case of a

general insurrection among the slaves?" We give the closing paragraphs

of his speech at this crisis.

"I will refer the House to the sentiments of Mr. Jefferson, the

President of the United States. Mr. Jefferson was himself a slave-owner,

and full of the prejudices of slave-owners; yet he left this memorable

memorial to his country: 'I do, indeed, tremble for my country when I

remember that God is just, and that His justice may not sleep forever. A

revolution is among possible events; the Almighty has no attribute which

would side with us in such a struggle.'

"This is the point which weighs most heavily with me. The Almighty has

no attribute that will side with us in such a struggle. A war with an

overwhelming physical force, a war with a climate fatal to the European

constitution, a war in which the heart of the people of England would

lean toward the enemy: it is hazarding all these terrible evils; but all

are light and trivial, compared with the conviction I feel that in such

a warfare it is not possible to ask nor can we expect the countenance of

Heaven."

While events tended to bring the whole system of Slavery into odium, the

leaders of the Abolition party were themselves changing their ground.

They had begun with the hope of mitigating the hardships of the slave's

lot,--to place him upon the line of progression, and so ultimately to

fit him for freedom. But they had found themselves occupying a false

position. Slowly they came to the conclusion that for the slave little

could be accomplished in the way of improvement, so long as he remained

a slave. The complete extinction of the system was now the object aimed

at. At a crowded Anti-Slavery meeting held in May, 1830, Mr. Wilberforce

presided. The first resolution, moved by Mr. Buxton, was this,--"That no

proper or practicable means be left unattempted for effecting, at the

earliest period, the entire abolition of Slavery throughout the British

dominions." At a meeting held in Edinburgh similar language was used by

Lord Jeffrey. Said Dr. Andrew Thomson, one of the most influential of

the Scottish clergy,--"We ought to tell the legislature, plainly and

strongly, that no man has a right to property in man,--that there

are eight hundred thousand individuals sighing in bondage, under the

intolerable evils of West Indian Slavery, who have as good a right to be

free as we ourselves have,--that they ought to be free, and that they

_must_ be made free!"

Another element at this time wrought in favor of the Abolitionists. Of

the missionaries who had suffered persecution in the Colonies, numbers

had returned to England. These religious teachers, while plying their

vocation in the West Indies, had acted in obedience to the instructions

received from the societies which employed them. Necessarily, while in a

slave country, they had been silent upon the subject of Slavery. But in

truth they liked the institution as little as Mr. Buxton himself. Once

in England, the seal of silence melted from their lips. Everywhere

in public and in private they made known the evils and cruelties of

Slavery. Some of these persons had been examined by Parliamentary

committees, and being acquitted of every suspicion of mis-statement,

their testimony received this additional sanction. The tale of wrong

which they revealed was not told in vain. Each returned missionary

exerted an influence upon the religious body which he represented. The

aggregate of this influence was great.

If, in the latter stages of the Emancipation effort, the backwardness of

the Administration was an evil omen, making final success a difficult

achievement, this was balanced by reform in Parliament. At the recent

elections, anti-slavery sentiments in the candidate were in some

quarters requisite to success. A story is told of a gentleman who had

spent some time canvassing and found abundant evidence of this. At an

obscure village he had been hailed with the question, whether he was

trying to get into the Lords or Commons. "But," added the simple

questioners, "whichever you do get into, you must vote for the poor

slaves."

To the aid of the Emancipation leaders there came now a new element, a

power so strong that it required no small share of skill to hold it in,

that it might work no evil in contributing to the desired end.

Since the commencement of efforts for the slave a considerable period

had passed. These efforts extended, in fact, over nearly half a century.

During that time, pamphlet after pamphlet and volume after volume had

set forth the evils and abominations of Slavery, forcing the subject

upon the public attention. The leaven had worked slowly, and for a

portion of the time in comparative silence; but the work was done. The

British people were aroused. The great heart of the nation was beating

in response to the appeals for justice and right which were made in

their ears. The world can scarce furnish a parallel to this spectacle of

moral sublimity. It was the voice of a people, calling, in tones that

must be heard, for justice and freedom,--and that not for themselves,

but for a distant, a defenceless race.

The publication of a circular inviting Anti-Slavery delegates to London,

a movement made by the leaders of the cause, in its results took the

most enthusiastic by surprise. More than three hundred appeared in

answer to the call. Mr. Buxton met them in Exeter Hall. With a rampant

freedom of opinion, there was little prospect of harmony of action being

attained, however desirable it might be. Through the influence of Mr.

Buxton and his coadjutors, these men of conflicting theories were

brought into such a degree of harmonious action that an address was

drawn up embodying their sentiments and laid before Lord Althorp, at

that time the head of the Administration. The strong outside pressure of

the nation at large upon the Government was evident. The strength of the

Emancipationists in Parliament, also, had been carefully estimated, and

success could no longer be doubted.

The fourteenth of May, 1833, witnessed an animated debate in the House.

While the advocates of Emancipation desired for the negro unconditional

freedom, they found the measure fettered by the proposal of Mr. Stanley,

the Colonial Secretary, that he be placed for a number of years in a

state of apprenticeship. Twelve years of this restricted freedom was,

by the influence of Mr. Buxton, reduced to seven, and the sum of twenty

millions of pounds sterling being granted to the slave-owners, the bill

for the abolition of Negro Slavery passed the House of Commons. With

some delay it went through the Upper House, and on the 28th of August,

receiving the royal assent, it became a law. The apprenticeship system

was but short-lived, its evil-working leading to its abolition in its

fourth year.

* * * * *

It has been often said, with how much of truth it is not our purpose

here to inquire, that in this country the mention of the evils of

Slavery is and must be fraught with most evil consequences. Yet the

agitation of this subject, whether for good or evil, in the United

States, is intimately connected with the whole movement in England. In

the earlier stages of the measures directed against the trade, a hearty

response was awakened here; nor could the subsequent act of emancipation

fail to produce an impression everywhere, and most of all among

ourselves. United to the English nation by strong affinities, one with

them in language and literature, yet cleaving still to the institution

which England had so energetically striven to destroy, could it be

otherwise than that such a movement on her part should awaken an eager

interest among us? Could such an event as the release from slavery

of eight hundred thousand negroes in the British Colonies pass by

unnoticed? To suppose this is preposterous. It is not too much to say,

that the effect of British emancipation was, at the time it took place,

to give in certain portions of the United States an increased degree of

life to the anti-slavery sentiment. No words could have been uttered,

which, reaching the shores of America, would have been half so emphatic

as this one act of the British nation. Among the causes which have

nourished and strengthened the anti-slavery sentiment among us this, has

its place. Verily, if England gave us the poison, she has not been slow

to proffer to us the antidote.

* * * * *

Concerning the actual fruits of Emancipation, it may be asked, What have

they been? The world looked on inquiringly as to how the enfranchised

negroes would demean themselves. One fact has never been disputed. This

momentous change in the social state of near a million of people took

place without a single act of violence on the part of the liberated

slaves. Neither did the measure carry violence in its train. So far the

act was successful. But that all which the friends of Emancipation hoped

for has been attained, no one will assert. When, however, we hear of the

financial ruin of the Islands, as a consequence of that measure, it may

be well to inquire into their condition previous to its taking place.

That the West India Colonies were trembling on the brink of ruin at the

close of the last century is evident from their repeated petitions

to the mother country to take some measures to save them from utter

bankruptcy. This can hardly be laid to the extinction of Slavery, for

both Slavery and the Slave-Trade were at that time in the height of

successful operation.

Again, if the West Indian negro is not to-day all that might be wished,

or even all that, under the influence of freedom, he had been expected

to become, there may possibly be a complication of causes which has

prevented his elevation. He has been allowed instruction, indeed, to

some extent; the continued labors of those who contended for his freedom

have secured to him the schoolmaster and the missionary. But this is not

enough. Has he been taught the use of improved methods of agriculture,

the application of machinery to the production of required results? Has

he been encouraged to works of skill, to manufacturing arts even of the

ruder kind? Has he not rather been subjected to the same policy which,

before the Revolution, discountenanced manufactures among ourselves,

and has caused the fabrics of the East Indies to be disused, and the

factories of Ireland to stand still?

These questions need not be pursued. Yet, amid the conflicting voices of

the evil days upon which we are fallen, now and then we hear lifted up a

plea for Emancipation, an entreaty for the removal of the accursed thing

which has plunged the happiest nation upon earth into the direst of

calamities.

Of the causes which have affected the success of Emancipation in the

case before us, it may be remarked, that, so far as their action has

been pernicious, they would operate among ourselves less than in any

colony of Great Britain, abundantly less than in the West Indies. The

greater variety of employments with which the Maryland or Kentucky negro

is familiar, his more frequent proficiency in mechanical pursuits,

combined with other circumstances, render him decidedly a more eligible

subject for freedom than the negro of Jamaica.

The changes which may issue in this country from the present commotions

it were vain to predict. It may not, however, be unwise, in considering,

as we have done, an achievement nobly conceived and generously

accomplished, to examine carefully into the causes which may have

rendered it otherwise than completely successful in its results.

* * * * *

UNION AND LIBERTY.

Flag of the heroes who left us their glory,

Borne through their battle-fields' thunder and flame,

Blazoned in song and illumined in story,

Wave o'er us all who inherit their fame!

Up with our banner bright,

Sprinkled with starry light,

Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,

While through the sounding sky

Loud rings the Nation's cry,--

UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE!

Light of our firmament, guide of our Nation,

Pride of her children, and honored afar,

Let the wide beams of thy full constellation

Scatter each cloud that would darken a star!

Up with our banner bright, etc.

Empire unsceptred! what foe shall assail thee,

Bearing the standard of Liberty's van?

Think not the God of thy fathers shall fail thee,

Striving with men for the birthright of man!

Up with our banner bright, etc.

Yet if, by madness and treachery blighted,

Dawns the dark hour when the sword thou must draw,

Then, with the arms of thy millions united,

Smite the bold traitors to Freedom and Law!

Up with our banner bright, etc.

Lord of the Universe! shield us and guide us,

Trusting Thee always, through shadow and sun!

Thou, hast united us: who shall divide us?

Keep us, O, keep us, the MANY IN ONE!

Up with our banner bright,

Sprinkled with starry light,

Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,

While through the sounding sky

Loud rings the Nation's cry,--

UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE!

* * * * *

HOW TO ROUGH IT.

"Life has few things better than this," said Dr. Johnson, on feeling

himself settled in a coach, and rolling along the road. We cannot agree

with the great man. Times have changed since the Doctor and Mr. Boswell

travelled for pleasure; and we much prefer an expedition to Moosehead,

or a tramp in the Adirondack, to being boxed up in a four-wheeled ark

and made "comfortable," according to the Doctor's idea of felicity.

Francis Galton, Explorer, and Secretary to the Royal Geographical

Society, we thank you sincerely for teaching us how to travel! Few

persons know the important secrets of how to walk, how to run, how to

ride, how to cook, how to defend, how to ford rivers, how to make rafts,

how to fish, how to hunt, in short, how to do the essential things that

every traveller, soldier, sportsman, emigrant, and missionary should

be conversant with. The world is full of deserts, prairies, bushes,

jungles, swamps, rivers, and oceans. How to "get round" the dangers of

the land and the sea in the best possible way, how to shift and contrive

so as to come out all right, are secrets well worth knowing, and Mr.

Galton has found the key. In this brief article we shall frequently

avail ourselves of the information he imparts, confident that in these

war-days his wise directions are better than fine gold to a man who is

obliged to rough it over the world, no matter where his feet may wander,

his horse may travel, or his boat may sail.

Wherewithal shall a man be clothed? We begin at the beginning with

flannel always. Experience has taught us that flannel next the skin is

indispensable for health to a traveller, and the sick- and dead-lists

always include largely the names of those who neglect this material.

Cotton stands Number Two on the list, and linen nowhere. Only last

summer jolly Tom Bowers got his _quietus_ for the season by getting hot

and wet and cold in one of his splendid Paris linen shirts, and now he

wears calico ones whenever he wishes to "appear proper" at Nahant or

Newport.

"The hotter the ground the thicker your socks," was the advice of an old

traveller who once went a thirty-days' tramp at our side through the

Alp country in summer. We have seen many a city bumpkin start for a

White-Mountain walk in the thinnest of cotton foot-coverings, but we

never knew one to try them a second time.

Stout shoes are preferable to boots always, and a wise traveller never

omits to grease well his leather before and during his journey. Don't

forget to put a pair of old slippers into your knapsack. After a hard

day's toil, they are like magic, under foot. Let us remind the traveller

whose feet are tender at starting that a capital remedy for blistered

feet is to rub them at night with spirits mixed with tallow dropped

from a candle. An old friend of ours thought it a good plan to soap the

inside of the stocking before setting out, and we have seen him break a

raw egg into his shoes before putting them on, saying it softened the

leather and made him "all right" for the day.

Touching coat, waistcoat, and trousers, there can be but one choice.

Coarse tweed does the best business on a small capital. Cheap and

strong, we have always found it the most "paying" article in our

travelling-wardrobe. Avoid that tailor-hem so common at the bottom

of your pantaloons which retains water and does no good to anybody.

Waistcoats would be counted as superfluous, were it not for the

convenience of the pockets they carry. Take along an old dressing-gown,

if you want solid comfort in camp or elsewhere after sunset.

Gordon Cumming recommends a wide-awake hat, and he is good authority on

that head. A man "_clothed_ in his right mind" is a noble object; but

six persons out of every ten who start on a journey wear the wrong

apparel. The writer of these pages has seen four individuals at once

standing up to their middles in a trout-stream, all adorned with black

silk tiles, newly imported from the Rue St. Honoré. It was a sight to

make Daniel Boone and Izaak Walton smile in their celestial abodes.

A light water-proof outside-coat and a thick pea-jacket are a proper

span for a roving trip. Don't forget that a couple of good blankets also

go a long way toward a traveller's paradise.

We will not presume that an immortal being at this stage of the

nineteenth century would make the mistake, when he had occasion to tuck

up his shirt-sleeves, of turning them outwards, so that every five

minutes they would be tumbling down with a crash of anathemas from the

wearer. The supposition that any sane son of Adam would tuck up his

sleeves inside out involves a suspicion, to say the least, that his wits

had been overrated by doting relatives.

"Grease and dirt are the savage's wearing-apparel," says the Swedish

proverb. No comment is necessary in speaking with a Christian on this

point, for cold water is one of civilization's closest allies. Avoid the

bath, and the genius of disease and crime stalks in. "Cleanliness is

next to godliness," remember.

In packing your knapsack, keep in mind that sixteen or twenty pounds are

weight enough, till, by practice, you can get pluck and energy into your

back to increase that amount.

_Roughing it_ has various meanings, and the phrase is oftentimes

ludicrously mistaken by many individuals. A friend with whom we once

travelled thought he was roughing it daily for the space of three

weeks, because he was obliged to lunch on _cold_ chicken and _un-iced_

Champagne, and when it rained he was forced to seek shelter inside very

inelegant hotels on the road. To rough it, in the best sense of that

term, is to lie down every night with the ground for a mattress, a

bundle of fagots for a pillow, and the stars for a coverlet. To sleep in

a tent is semi-luxury, and tainted with too much effeminacy to suit the

ardor of a first-rate "Rough." Parkyns, Taylor, Gumming, Fremont, and

Kane have told us how much superior are two trunks of trees, rolled

together for a bed, under the open sky, to that soft heating apparatus

called a bed in the best chamber. Every man to his taste,--of course,

but there come occasions in life when a man must look about him and

arrange for himself, _somehow_. The traveller who has never slept in the

woods has missed an enjoyable sensation. A clump of trees makes a

fine leafy post-bedstead, and to awake in the morning amid a grove of

sheltering nodding oaks is lung-inspiring. It was the good thought of a

wanderer to say, "The forest is the poor man's jacket." Napoleon had a

high opinion of the bivouac style of life, and on the score of health

gave it the preference over tent-sleeping. Free circulation is a great

blessing, albeit we think its eulogy rather strongly expressed by the

Walden-Pondist, when he says, "I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have

it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather

ride on earth in an ox-cart with a free circulation, than go to heaven

in the fancy car of an excursion-train, and breathe a _malaria_ all the

way." The only objection to out-door slumber is dampness; but it is easy

to protect one's self in wet weather from the unhealthy ground by boughs

or India-rubber blankets.

One of the great precautions requisite for a tramp is to provide against

thirst. Want of water overtakes the traveller sometimes in the most

annoying manner, and it is well to know how to fight off the dry fiend.

Sir James Alexander cautions all who rough it to drink well before

starting in the morning, and drink nothing all day till the halt,--and

to keep the lips shut as much as possible. Another good authority

recommends a pebble or leaf to be held in the mouth. Habit, however,

does much in this case as in every other, and we have known a man, who

had been accustomed at home to drink at every meal four tumblers of

water, by force of will bring his necessity down to a pint of liquid per

day, during a long tramp through the forest. One of the many excellent

things which Plutarch tells of Socrates is this noteworthy incident of

his power of abstinence. He says, whenever Socrates returned from any

exercise, though he might be extremely dry, he refrained nevertheless

from drinking till he had thrown away the first bucket of water he had

drawn, that he might exercise himself to patience, and accustom his

appetite to wait the leisure of reason.

From water to fire is a natural transition. How to get a blaze just when

you want it puzzles the will sometimes hugely. Every traveller should

provide himself with a good handy steel, proper flint, and unfailing

tinder, because lucifers are liable to many accidents. Pliny recommended

the wood of mulberry, bay-laurel, and ivy, as good material to be rubbed

together in order to procure a fire; but Pliny is behind the times, and

must not be trusted to make rules for General McLellan's boys. Of course

no one would omit to take lucifers on a tramp; but steel, flint, and

tinder are three warm friends that in an emergency will always come up

to the strike. To find firewood is a knack, and it ought to be well

cultivated. Don't despise bits of dry moss, fine grass, and slips of

bark, if you come across them. Twenty fires are failures in the open air

for one that succeeds, unless the operator knows his business. A novice

will use matches, wood, wind, time, and violent language enough to burn

down a city, and never get any satisfaction out of all the expenditure;

while a knowing hand will, out of the stump of an old, half-rotten tree,

bring you such magnificent, permanent heat, that your heart and your

tea-kettle will sing together for joy over it. In making a fire, depend

upon it, there is something more than _luck_,--there is always talent

in it. We once saw Charles Lever (Harry Lorrequer's father) build up a

towering blaze in a woody nook out of just nothing but what he scraped

up from the ground, and his rare ability. You remember Mr. Opie the

painter's answer to a student who asked him what he mixed his colors

with. "Brains, Sir," was the artist's prompt, gruff, and right reply. It

takes brains to make a fire in a rainy night out in the woods; but it

can be done,--if you only know how to begin. We have seen a hearth made

of logs on a deep snow sending out a cheerful glow, while the rain

dripped and froze all about the merry party assembled.

A traveller ought to be a good swimmer. There are plenty of watery

crossings to be got over, and often there are no means at hand but what

Nature has provided in legs and arms. But one of the easiest things in

the world to make is a raft. Inflatable India-rubber boats also are now

used in every climate, and a full-sized one weighs only forty pounds.

General Fremont and Dr. Livingstone have tested their excellent

qualities, and commend them as capable of standing a wonderful amount

of wear and tear. But a boat can be made out of almost anything, if one

have the skill to put it together. A party of sailors whose boat had

been stolen put out to sea and were eighteen hours afloat in a crazy

craft made out of a large basket woven with boughs such as they could

pick up, and covered with their canvas tent, the inside being plastered

with clay to keep out as much of the water as possible.

In fording streams, it is well, if the water be deep and swift, to carry

heavy stones in the hands, in order to resist being borne away by the

current. Fords should not be deeper than three feet for men, or four

feet for horses.

Among the small conveniences, a good strong pocket-knife, a small "hard

chisel," and a file should not be forgotten. A great deal of real work

can be done with very few tools. One of Colt's rifles is a companion

which should be specially cared for, and a water-proof cover should

always be taken to protect the lock during showers. There is one rule

among hunters which ought always to be remembered, namely,--"Look at

the gun, but never let the gun look at you, or at your companions."

Travellers are always more or less exposed to the careless handling of

fire-arms, and numerous accidents occur by carrying the piece with the

cock down on the nipple. Three-fourths of all the gun accidents are

owing to this cause; for a blow on the back of the cock is almost sure

to explode the cap, while a gun at half-cock is comparatively safe.

Don't carry too many eatables on your expeditions. Dr. Kane says his

party learned to modify and reduce their travelling-gear, and found that

in direct proportion to its simplicity and to their apparent privation

of articles of supposed necessity were their actual comfort and

practical efficiency. Step by step, as long as their Arctic service

continued, they went on reducing their sledging-outfit, until they at

last came to the Esquimaux ultimatum of simplicity,--_raw meat and a fur

bag_. Salt and pepper are needful condiments. Nearly all the rest are

out of place on a roughing expedition. Among the most portable kinds of

solid food are pemmican, jerked meat, wheat flour, barley, peas, cheese,

and biscuit. Salt meat is a disappointing dish, and apt to be sadly

uncertain. Somebody once said that water had tasted of sinners ever

since the flood, and salted meat sometimes has a taint full as vivid.

Twenty-eight ounces of real nutriment _per diem_ for a man in rough

work as a traveller will be all that he requires; if he perform severe

tramping, thirty ounces.

The French say, _C'est la soupe qui fait le soldat_, and we have always

found on a tramping expedition nothing so life-restoring after fatigue

and hunger as the portable soup now so easily obtained at places where

prepared food is put up for travellers' uses. Spirituous liquors are no

help in roughing it. On the contrary, they invite sunstroke, and various

other unpleasant visitors incident to the life of a traveller. Habitual

brandy-drinkers give out sooner than cold-water men, and we have seen

fainting red noses by the score succumb to the weather, when boys

addicted to water would crow like chanticleer through a long storm of

sleet and snow on the freezing Alps.

It is not well to lose your way; but in case this unpleasant luck befall

you, set _systematically_ to work to find it. Throw terror to the idiots

who always flutter and flounder, and so go wrong inevitably. Galton the

Plucky says,--and he has as much cool wisdom to impart as a traveller

needs,--when you make the unlively discovery that you are lost, ask

yourself the three following questions:--

1. What is the least distance that I can with certainty specify, within

which the path, the river, the sea-shore, etc., that I wish to regain,

lies?

2. What is the direction, in a vague, general way, in which the path or

river runs, or the sea-coast tends?

3. When I last left the path, etc., did I turn to the left or to the

right?

As regards the first, calculate deliberately how long you have been

riding or walking, and at what pace, since you left your party; subtract

for stoppages and well-recollected zigzags; allow a mile and a half per

hour as the pace when you have been loitering on foot, and three and a

half when you have been walking fast. Occasional running makes an almost

inappreciable difference. A man is always much nearer the lost path than

he is inclined to fear.

As regards the second, if you recollect the third, and also know the

course of the path within eight points of the compass, (or one-fourth

of the whole horizon,) it is a great gain; or even if you know your

direction within twelve points, or one-third of the whole horizon, that

knowledge is worth something. Don't hurry, if you get bewildered. Stop

and think. Then arrange matters, and you are safe. When Napoleon was

once caught in a fog, while riding with his staff across a shallow arm

of the Gulf of Suez, he _thought_, as usual. His way was utterly lost,

and going forward he found himself in deeper water. So he ordered his

staff to ride from him in radiating lines in all directions, and such

of them as should find shallow water to shout out. If Napoleon had been

alone on that occasion, he would have set his five wits to the task of

finding the right way, and he would have found it.

Finally, cheerfulness in large doses is the best medicine one can take

along in his out-door tramps. We once had the good-luck to hear old

Christopher North try his lungs in the open air in Scotland. Such

laughter and such hill-shaking merry-heartedness we may never listen to

again among the Lochs, but the lesson of the hour (how it rained that

black night!) is stamped for life upon our remembrance. "Clap your back

against the cliff," he shouted, "and never mind the deluge!" Rest,

glorious Christopher, under the turf you trod with such a gallant

bearing! Few mortals knew how to rough it like you!

* * * * *

SELF-POSSESSION vs. PREPOSSESSION.

Timoleon, a man prosperous in all his undertakings, was wont to ascribe

his successes to good-luck; but that he did not mean to give credit to

any blind Goddess of Fortune is evident from his having built an altar

to a certain divine something which he called Automatia, signifying

Spontaneousness, or a happy promptitude in following the dictates of his

own genius. The Liberator of Sicily, to be sure, did not live in an age

of newspapers, and was not liable at every turn to have his elbow jogged

by Public Opinion; but it is plain that his notion of a man fit to lead

was, that he should be one who never waited to seize Opportunity from

behind, and who knew that events become the masters of him who is slow

to make them his servants.

Thus far nothing has been more remarkable in the history of our civil

war than that its signal opportunities have failed to produce on either

side any leader who has proved himself to be gifted with this happy

faculty. Even our statesmen seem not to have felt the kindling

inspiration of a great occasion. The country is going through a

trial more crucial, if possible, than that of the Revolution; but no

state-paper has thus far appeared, comparable in anything but quantity

to the documents of our heroic period. Even Mr. Seward seems to have

laid aside his splendid art of generalization, or to have found out the

danger of those specious boomerangs of eloquence, which, launched from

the platform with the most graceful curves of rhetoric, come back not

seldom to deal an untimely blow to him who sets them flying. The people

begin to show signs of impatience that the curtain should be so slow to

rise and show them the great actor in our national tragedy. They are so

used to having a gigantic bubble of notoriety blown for them in a week

by the newspapers, though it burst in a day or two, leaving but a drop

of muddy suds behind it, that they have almost learned to think the

making of a great character as simple a matter as that of a great

reputation. Bewildered as they have been with a mob of statesmen,

generals, orators, poets, and what not, all of them the foremost of this

or any other age, they seem to expect a truly great man on equally easy

terms with these cheap miracles of the press,--grown as rapidly, to be

forgotten as soon, as the prize cauliflower of a county show. We have

improvised an army; we have conjured a navy out of nothing so rapidly

that pines the jay screamed in last summer may be even now listening for

the hum of the hostile shot from Sumter; why not give another rub at our

Aladdin's lamp and improvise a genius and a hero?

This is, perhaps, very natural, but it is nevertheless unreasonable.

Heroes and geniuses are never to be had ready-made, nor was a tolerable

specimen of either ever produced at six months' notice. Dearly do

nations pay for such secular births; still more dearly for their

training. They are commonly rather the slow result than the conscious

cause of revolutions in thought or polity. It is no imputation on

democratic forms of government, it is the unexampled prosperity of

nearly half a century that is in fault, if a sudden and unforewarned

danger finds us without a leader, whether civil or military, whom the

people are willing to trust implicitly, and who can in some sense

control events by the prestige of a great name. Carlyle and others have

for years been laying to the charge of representative and parliamentary

government the same evils whose germ certain British critics, as

ignorant of our national character as of our geography, are so kindly

ready to find in our democracy. Mr. Stuart Mill, in his essay on

"Liberty," has convinced us that even the tyranny of Public Opinion is

not, as we had hastily supposed, a peculiarly American institution, but

is to the full as stringent and as fertile of commonplace in intellect

and character under a limited as under a universal system of suffrage.

The truth is, that it is not in our institutions, but in our history,

that we are to look for the causes of much that is superficially

distasteful and sometimes unpleasantly disappointing in our national

habits,--we would not too hastily say in our national character. Our

most incorrigible blackguards, and the class of voters who are at the

mercy of venal politicians, have had their training, such as it is,

under forms of government and amid a social order very unlike ours.

Disgust at the general dirtiness and corruption of our politics, we are

told, keeps all our leading men out of public life. This appears to us,

we confess, a rather shallow misconception. Our politics are no dirtier

or more corrupt than those of our neighbors. The famous _Quam parvâ

sapientiâ regitur mundus_ was not said in scorn by the minister of a

republic, but in sober sadness by one whose dealings had been lifelong

with the courts and statesmen of princes. The real disgust lies in the

selfish passions that are called into play by the strife of party and

the small ambitions of public men, and not in any mere coarseness in the

expression of them. We are not an elegant people: rather less so, on the

whole, even in the aristocratic South than in the democratic North. In

this past year of our Lord eighteen hundred sixty-one, we have no doubt,

and we shudder to think of it, that by far the larger proportion of

our fellow-citizens shovelled their green-peas into their mouths with

uncanonical knife-blades, just as Sir Philip Sidney did in a darker age,

when yet the "Times" and the silver fork were not. Nay, let us make a

clean breast of all these horrors at once, it is probably true that

myriads of fair salmon were contaminated with the brutal touch of

steel in scenes of unhallowed family-festival. The only mitigating

circumstance is that such luxuries are within the reach of ten Americans

where one European sees them any nearer than through the windows of the

victualler. No, we must yield the point. We are not an elegant people,

least of all in our politics; but we do not believe it is this which

keeps our first-rate men out of political life, or that it is the result

of our democratic system.

It has been our good-fortune hitherto that our annals have been of that

happy kind which write themselves on the face of a continent and in the

general well-being of a people, rather than in those more striking and

commonly more disastrous events which attract the historian. We have

been busy, thriving, and consequently, except to some few thoughtful

people like De Tocqueville, profoundly uninteresting. We have been

housekeeping; and why does the novelist always make his bow to the hero

and heroine at the church-door, unless because he knows, that, if they

are well off, nothing more is to be made of them? Prosperity is the

forcing-house of mediocrity; and if we have ceased to produce great men,

it is because we have not, since we became a nation, been forced to pay

the terrible price at which alone they can be bought. Great men are

excellent things for a nation to have had; but a normal condition that

should give a constant succession of them would be the most wretched

possible for the mass of mankind. We have had and still have honest and

capable men in public life, brave and able officers in our army and

navy; but there has been nothing either in our civil or military history

for many years to develop any latent qualities of greatness that may

have been in them. It is only first-rate events that call for and mould

first-rate characters. If there has been less stimulus for the more

showy and striking kinds of ambition, if the rewards of a public career

have been less brilliant than in other countries, yet we have shown,

(and this is a legitimate result of democracy,) perhaps beyond the

measure of other nations, that plebeian genius for the useful which has

been chiefly demanded by our circumstances, and which does more than war

or state-craft to increase the well-being and therefore the true glory

of nations. Few great soldiers or great ministers have done so much for

their country as Whitney's cotton-gin and McCormick's reaper have done

for ours. We do not believe that our country has degenerated under

democracy, but our position as a people has been such as to turn our

energy, capacity, and accomplishment into prosaic channels. Physicians

call certain remedies, to be administered only in desperate cases,

_heroic_, and Providence reserves heroes for similar crises in the body

politic. They are not sent but in times of agony and peril. If we have

lacked the thing, it is because we have lacked the occasion for it.

And even where truly splendid qualities have been displayed, as by our

sailors in the War of 1812, and by our soldiers in Mexico, they have

been either on so small a scale as to means, or on a scene so remote

from European interests, that they have failed of anything like

cosmopolitan appreciation. Our great actors have been confined to what,

so far as Europe is concerned, has been a provincial theatre; and an

obscure stage is often as fatal to fame as the want of a poet.

But meanwhile has not this been very much the case with our critics

themselves? Leading British statesmen may be more accomplished scholars

than ours, Parliament may be more elegantly bored than Congress; but we

have a rooted conviction that commonplace thought and shallow principles

do not change their nature, even though disguised in the English of

Addison himself. Mr. Gladstone knows vastly more Greek than Mr. Chase,

but we may be allowed to doubt if he have shown himself an abler

finance-minister. Since the beginning of the present century it is safe

to say that England has produced no statesmen whom her own historians

will pronounce to be more than second- or third-rate men. The Crimean

War found her, if her own journalists were to be believed, without a

single great captain whether on land or sea, with incompetence in every

department, civil and military, and driven to every shift, even to

foreign enlistment and subsidy, to put on foot an army of a hundred

thousand men. What an opportunity for sermonizing on the failure of

representative government! In that war England lost much of her old

prestige in the eyes of the world, and felt that she had lost it. But

nothing would have been more unphilosophical than to have assumed that

England was degenerate or decrepit. It was only that her training had

been for so long exclusively mechanical and peaceful. The terrible, but

glorious, experience of the Indian Rebellion showed that Englishmen

still possessed in as full measure as ever those noble characteristics

on which they justly pride themselves, and of which a nation of kindred

blood would be the last to deny them the praise. When the heroic

qualities found their occasion, they were not wanting.

We do not say this as unduly sensitive to the unfriendly, often

insulting and always unwise, criticisms of a large proportion of the

press and the public men of England. In ordinary times we could afford

to receive them with a good-natured smile. The zeal of certain new

converts to Adam Smith in behalf of the free-trade principles whose

cross they have assumed, their hatred and contempt for all heretics to

what is their doxy and therefore according to Dean Swift orthodoxy, and

the _naïve_ unconsciousness with which they measure and weigh the

moral qualities of other nations by the yards of cotton or tons of

manufactured iron which they consume for the benefit of Manchester and

Sheffield, are certainly as comic as anything in Aristophanes. The

madness of the philosopher who deemed himself personally answerable for

the obliquity of the ecliptic has more than its match in the sense of

responsibility shown by British journalists for the good conduct of the

rest of mankind. All other kingdoms, potentates, and powers would seem

to be minors or lunatics, and they the divinely appointed guardians

under bonds to see that their unhappy wards do no harm to themselves or

others. We confess, that, in reading the "Times," we have been sometimes

unable to suppress a feeling of humorous pity for the young man who

_does_ the leading articles, and who finds himself, fresh from Oxford

or Cambridge and the writing of Latin verses, called suddenly to the

autocracy of the Universe. We must pardon a little to the _imperii

novitas_, to the necessity of having universal misinformation always on

tap in his inkstand. He summons emperors, kings, ministers, even whole

nations, to the inexorable blackboard. His is the great normal school of

philosophy, statesmanship, political economy, taste, and deportment. He

must help Cavour to a knowledge of Italy, teach Napoleon to appreciate

the peculiarities of French character, interpret the American

Constitution for Mr. Lincoln. He holds himself directly accountable to

heaven and earth, alike for the right solution of the Papal Question

and for the costume of his countrymen in foreign parts. Theology or

trousers, he is infallible in both. Gregory the Seventh's wildest

dream of a universal popedom is more than fulfilled in him. He is the

unapproachable model of quack advertisers. He pats Italy on the head and

cries, "Study constitutional government as exemplified in England, and

try Mechi's razor-strops." For France he prescribes a reduction of army

and navy, and an increased demand for Manchester prints. America he

warns against military despotism, advises a tonic of English iron, and a

compress of British cotton, as sovereign against internal rupture. What

a weight for the shoulders of our poor Johannes Factotum! He is the

_commissionnaire_ of mankind, their guide, philosopher, and friend,

ready with a disinterested opinion in matters of art or _virtù_, and

eager to furnish anything, from a counterfeit Buddhist idol to a

poisoned pickle, for a commission, varying according to circumstances.

But whatever one may think of the wisdom or the disinterestedness of the

organs of English commercial sentiment, it cannot be denied that it is

of great importance to us that the public opinion of England should be

enlightened in regard to our affairs. It would be idle to complain that

her policy is selfish; for the policy of nations is always so. It would

be foolish to forget that the sympathy of the British people has always

declared itself, sooner or later, in favor of free institutions, and of

a manly and upright policy toward other nations, or that this sympathy

has been on the whole more outspoken and enduring among Englishmen

than in any other nation of the Old World. We may justly complain that

England should see no difference between a rebel confederacy and a

nation to which she was bound by treaties and with which she had so long

been on terms of amity gradually ripening to friendship. But do not

let us be so childish as to wish for the suppression of the "Times

Correspondent," a shrewd, practised, and, for a foreigner, singularly

accurate observer, to whom we are indebted for the only authentic

intelligence from Secessia since the outbreak of the Rebellion, and

whose strictures, (however we may smile at his speculations,) if rightly

taken, may do us infinite service. Did he tell us anything about the

shameful rout of Bull Run which could not have been predicted beforehand

of raw troops, or which, indeed, General Scott himself had not

foreboded? That was not an especially American disgrace. Every

nationality under heaven was represented there, and an alarm among the

workmen on the Plains of Shinar that the foundations of the Tower

of Babel were settling could not have set in motion a more polyglot

_stampede_. The way to blot out Bull Run is as our brave Massachusetts

and Pennsylvania men did at Ball's Bluff, with their own blood, poured

only too lavishly. To our minds, the finest and most characteristic

piece of English literature, more inspiring even than Henry's speech

to his soldiers on the eve of Agincourt, is Nelson's signal, "England

expects every man to do his duty." When we have risen to that level and

are content to stand there, with no thought of self, but only of our

country and what we owe her, we need wince at no hostile sneer nor dread

any foreign combination. Granted that we have been a little boyish and

braggart, as was perhaps not unnatural in a nation hardly out of its

teens, our present trial is likely to make men of us, and to leave us,

like our British cousins, content with the pleasing consciousness

that we are the supreme of creation and under no necessity of forever

proclaiming it. Our present experience, also, of the unsoundness of

English judgment and the narrowness of English views concerning our

policy and character may have the good result of making our independence

in matters of thought and criticism as complete as our political

emancipation.

Those who have watched the tendencies of opinion among educated

Englishmen during the last ten or fifteen years could hardly be

surprised, that, when the question was presented to them as being

between aristocratic and democratic ideas, between a race of gentlemen

and a mob of shopkeepers and snobs, they should have been inclined to

sympathize with the South. There have been unmistakable symptoms of

a reaction in England, since 1848 especially, against liberalism in

politics and in favor of things as they are. We are not to wonder that

Englishmen did not stop to examine too closely the escutcheon and

pedigree of this self-patented nobility. With one or two not very

striking exceptions, like Lord Fairfax and Washington, (who was of kin

to one of the few British peers that have enjoyed the distinction of

being hanged,) the entire population of America is descended from the

middle and lower classes in the old countries. The difference has been,

that the man at the South who raised cotton and sold it has gradually

grown to consider himself a superior being by comparison with his own

negroes, while the man at the North who raised potatoes and sold them

has been content with the old Saxon notion that he was as good as his

neighbors. The descendant of the Huguenot tradesman or artisan, if in

Boston, builds Faneuil Hall or founds Bowdoin College; if in Charleston,

he deals in negroes and persuades himself that he is sprung from the

loins of Baldwin, King of Jerusalem. The mass of the population at the

South is more intensely democratic, so far as white men are concerned,

than the same class at the North.

There is a little inconsistency in the English oracles in this respect;

for, while they cannot conceal a kind of sympathy with the Southern

Rebels in what is supposed to be their war upon democratic institutions,

they tell us that they would heartily espouse our cause, if we would but

proclaim a crusade against Slavery. Suppose the Squires of England had

got up a rebellion because societies had been formed for the abolition

of the Corn-Laws; which would the "Times" have gone for putting down

first, the rebellion or the laws? England professes not to be able to

understand the principles of this wicked, this unholy war, as she calls

it. Yet she was not so slow to understand the necessity of putting down

the Irish Insurrection of 1848, or the Indian Rebellion ten years later.

She thinks it impossible for the Government of the United States to

subdue and hold provinces so vast as the Cotton States of America; yet

she neither foreboded nor as yet has found any impracticability in

renewing and retaining her hold on the vaster provinces of British

India,--provinces inhabited, all of them, by races alien in blood,

religion, and manners, and many by a population greatly exceeding that

of our Southern States, brave, warlike, and, to some extent, trained in

European tactics. To have abandoned India would have been to surrender

the greatness of England. English writers and speakers, in discussing

our affairs, overlook wholly the fact that a rebellion may be crushed by

anything except force of arms. Among a people of the same lineage and

the same language, but yesterday contented under the same Constitution,

and in an age when a victory in the stock-market is of more consequence

than successes in the field, political and economical necessities may be

safely reckoned on as slow, but effective, allies of the old order of

things. The people of this country are too much used to sudden and

seemingly unaccountable political revolutions not to be able to forfeit

their consistency without any loss of self-respect; and the rapidity

with which the Southern Rebellion was forced up to its present

formidable proportions, mainly by party management, is not unlikely to

find its parallel in suddenness of collapse. But whether this prove to

be the fact or not, nay, even if the reëstablishment of the Union had

been hopeless from the first, a government which should have abandoned

its capital, which should have flinched from the first and plainest duty

of self-preservation, which should have admitted by a cowardly surrender

that force was law, that treason was constitutional, and fraud

honorable, would have deserved and received the contempt of all

civilized nations, of England among the first.

There is no such profound and universal alienation, still less such an

antagonism in political theory, between the people of the Northern and

Southern parts of the Union, as some English journals would infer from

the foolish talk of a few conceited persons in South Carolina and

Virginia. There is no question between landholders on the one side and

manufacturers and merchants on the other. The bulk of the population,

North and South, are holders of land, while the average size of the

holdings of land under cultivation is probably greater in the Free than

in the Slave States. The largest single estate in the country is, we

believe, in Illinois. Generalizations are commonly unsafe in proportion

as they are tempting; and this, together with its pretty twin-brother

about Cavaliers and Roundheads, would seem to have been hatched from the

same egg and in the same mare's-nest. If we should take the statements

of Dr. Cullen and Mr. Smith O'Brien for our premises, instead of the

manifest facts of the case, our conclusion in regard to Ireland would

be an anachronism which no Englishman would allow to be within half

a century of the actual condition of things. And yet could the Irish

revolutionists of thirteen years ago have had the advantage of a

ministry like that of Mr. Buchanan,--had every Irish officer and soldier

been false to his honor and his allegiance,--had Ireland been supplied

and England stripped of arms and munitions of war by the connivance

of the Government,--the riot of 1848 might have become a rebellion as

formidable as our own in everything but territorial proportions. Equally

untrue is the theory that our Tariff is the moving cause of Southern

discontent. Louisiana certainly would hardly urge this as the reason of

her secession; and if the Rebel States could succeed in establishing

their independence, they would find more difficulty in raising a

national revenue by direct taxes than the North, and would be driven

probably to a tariff more stringent than that of the present United

States. If we are to generalize at all, it must be on broader and

safer grounds. Prejudices and class-interests may occasion temporary

disturbances in the current of human affairs, but they do not

permanently change the course of the channel. That is governed by

natural and lasting causes, and commerce, in spite of Southern

Commercial Conventions, will no more flow up-hill than water. It is

possible, we will not say probable, that our present difficulties may

result to the advantage both of England and America: to England, by

giving her a real hold upon India as the source of her cotton-supply,

and to America by making the North the best customer for the staple of

the South.

We believe the immediate cause of the Southern Rebellion to be something

far deeper than any social prejudice or political theory on the part of

slaveholders, or any general apprehension of danger to their peculiar

property. That cause is a moral one, and is to be found in the

recklessness, the conceit, the sophistry, the selfishness, which are

necessarily engendered by Slavery itself. A generation of men educated

to justify a crime against the Law of Nature because it is profitable,

will hardly be restrained long by any merely political obligation, when

they have been persuaded to see their advantage in the breach of it. Why

not, then, at once lay the axe to the root of the mischief? Why did not

England attack Irish Catholicism in 1848? Why does not Louis Napoleon

settle the Papal Question with a stroke of his pen? Because the action

of a constitutional government is limited by constitutional obligations.

Because every government, even if despotic, must be guided by policy

rather than abstract right or reason. Because, in our own case, so much

pains have been taken to persuade the people of some peculiar sanctity

in human property, and to teach them the duty of yielding their moral

instincts to their duty as citizens, that even the Free States are by no

means ripe for a crusade. The single and simple duty of the Government

is to put down resistance to its legitimate authority; it meddles,

and can meddle, with no claim of right except the monstrous one of

rebellion. An absolute ruler in advance of his people has been more

than once obliged to abandon his reforms to save his throne; a popular

government which should put itself in the same position might endanger

not only its own hold upon power, (a minor consideration,) but, in such

a crisis as ours, the very frame of society itself. We must admit

that the administration of Mr. Lincoln has sometimes seemed to us

over-cautious; that, while it has not scrupled, and wisely has not

scrupled, to go behind the letter of the law to its spirit, in dealing

with open abettors of treason in the Free States, because they were

perverting private right to public wrong, it has been as scrupulous of

meddling with a rebel's legal right in man, though that man were being

used for a weapon or a tool against itself, as if to touch it were

anathema. The divinity, which is only a hedge about a king, becomes a

wall of triple brass about a slaveholder.

But while we should prefer a more daring, or at least a more definite

policy on the part of the Government, we do not think the time has come

for turning the war into a crusade. The example of saints, martyrs,

and heroes, who could disregard consequences because the consequences

concerned only themselves and their own life, is for the private man,

and not for the statesman who is responsible for the complex life of the

commonwealth. To carry on a war we must have money, to get money we must

have the confidence of the money-holders, who would not advance a dollar

on a pledge of the finest sentiments in the world. There is something

instructive in the fate of that mob of enthusiasts who followed the

banner of Walter the Penniless, a name of evil omen. It saves trouble to

say that we must fight the Devil with fire; though, when the Devil is

incarnate in human beings, that policy has never been very successful

at Smithfield or elsewhere. But in trying the fiery cure of a servile

insurrection, we should run the risk of converting the whole white

population of the South into devils of the most desperate sort, with

whom any kind of reconciliation, even truce, would be impossible.

We hope and believe that the end of this war will see the snake of

Slavery scotched, if not killed. Events move,--slowly, to be sure, but

they move,--and the thought of the people moves with them unconsciously

to fulfil the purposes of God. Government can do little, perhaps, in

controlling them; but it has no right to the power it holds, if it has

not the insight and the courage to make use of them at the right moment.

If the supreme question should arise of submitting to rebellion or of

crushing it in a common ruin with the wrong that engendered it, we

believe neither the Government nor the people would falter. The time for

answering that question may be nearer than we dream; but meanwhile

we would not hasten what would at best be a terrible necessity, and

justifiable only as such. We believe this war is to prepare the way for

the extinction of Slavery by the action of economical causes, and we

should prefer that solution to one of fire and blood. Already the system

has received a death-blow in Maryland and Missouri. In Western Virginia

it is practically extinct. If the war is carried on with vigor, it

may become so before long in East Tennessee. Texas should be taken

possession of and held at any cost, and a territory capable of supplying

the world with cotton to any conceivable amount thrown open to free

labor.

However regarded, this war into which we have been driven is, in fact, a

war against Slavery. But emancipation is not and could not be the object

of the war. It will be time enough to consider the question as one of

military necessity when our armies advance. To proclaim freedom from the

banks of the Potomac to an unarmed, subject, and dispirited race, when

the whole white population is in arms, would be as futile as impolitic.

Till we can equip our own army, it is idle to talk of arming the slaves;

and to incite them to insurrection without arms, and without the

certainty of support at first and protection afterward, would be merely

sacrificing them to no good end. It is true, the war may lack the ardent

stimulus that would for a time be imparted to it by a direct and obvious

moral purpose. But we doubt whether the impulse thus gained would hold

out long against the immense practical obstacles with which it would be

confronted and the chill of disappointment which is sure to follow an

attempt to realize ideal good by material means. Nor would our gain in

this respect more than compensate for the strength which would be added

to the rebels by despair. It is a question we have hardly the heart to

discuss, where our wishes, our hopes, almost our faith in God, are on

one side, our understanding and experience on the other.

Nor are we among those who would censure the Government for undue

leniency. If democracy has made us a good-natured people, it is a strong

argument in its favor, and we need have no fear that the evil passions

of men will ever be buried beyond hope of resurrection. We would not

have this war end without signal and bitter retribution, and especially

for all who have been guilty of deliberate treachery; for that is a kind

of baseness that should be extirpated at any cost. If, in moments of

impatience, we have wished for something like the rough kingship

of Jackson, cooler judgment has convinced us that the strength of

democratic institutions will be more triumphantly vindicated by success

under an honest Chief Magistrate of average capacity than under a man

exceptional, whether by force of character or contempt of precedent.

Is this, then, to be a commonplace war, a prosaic and peddling quarrel

about Cotton? Shall there be nothing to enlist enthusiasm or kindle

fanaticism? Are we to have no Cause like that for which our English

republican ancestors died so gladly on the field, with such dignity

on the scaffold?--no Cause that shall give us a hero, who knows but a

Cromwell? To our minds, though it may be obscure to Englishmen who look

on Lancashire as the centre of the universe, no army was ever enlisted

for a nobler service than ours. Not only is it national life and a

foremost place among nations that is at stake, but the vital principle

of Law itself, the august foundation on which the very possibility of

government, above all of self-government, rests as in the hollow of

God's own hand. If democracy shall prove itself capable of having

raised twenty millions of people to a level of thought where they can

appreciate this cardinal truth, and can believe no sacrifice too great

for its defence and establishment, then democracy will have vindicated

itself beyond all chance of future cavil. Here, we think, is a Cause the

experience of whose vicissitudes and the grandeur of whose triumph

will be able to give us heroes and statesmen. The Slave-Power must be

humbled, must be punished,--so humbled and so punished as to be a

warning forever; but Slavery is an evil transient in its cause and its

consequences, compared with those which would result from unsettling the

faith of a nation in its own manhood, and setting a whole generation of

men hopelessly adrift in the formless void of anarchy.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Armies of Europe: Comprising Descriptions in Detail of the Military

Systems of England, France, Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Sardinia,

adapting their Advantages to all Arms of the United States Service; and

embodying the Report of Observations in Europe during the Crimean War,

as Military Commissioner from the United Stales Government in 1855-56_.

By GEORGE B. McCLELLAN, Major-General U.S. Army. Originally published

under the Direction of the War Department, by Order of Congress.

Illustrated with a Fine Steel Portrait and Several Hundred Engravings.

Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co. 8vo.

It is an interesting study to examine into the causes or motives which

have produced military books of the higher order; for we are thus

vouchsafed an insight into the writer's genius, and an intelligence of

the circumstances amidst which he wrote, and of which he was often an

important controller. The Archduke Charles wrote his "Grundsätze der

Strategie," etc., as a vindication of his splendid movements in 1796,

against the French armies of the Rhine and the Sambre-et-Meuse; and

it has remained at once a monument to his achievements and a standard

text-book in military science. Marmont, the Marshal Duke of Ragusa,

collecting the principles of the art of war from "long and frequent

conversations with Napoleon, twenty campaigns, and more than half a

century of experience," has given us, in his "Esprit des Institutions

Militaires," a condensed view of his own military life, as complete, if

not as pleasantly diffuse, as his large volumes of "Mémoires." Jomini,

from an extended experience, and a study of the genius of Napoleon,

which his Russian position could never induce him to undervalue,

has produced those standard works which must always remain the

treasure-houses of military knowledge. We admire veracity, but let no

soldier confess that he has not read the "Vie Politique et Militaire,"

and the "Précis de l'Art de la Guerre." But, in all these cases, the

_litera scripta_ has been but the closing act,--the signing of the name

to History's bead-roll of passing greatness,--the _testamentum_ of the

old soldier whose _personalty_ is worth bequeathing to the world.

The work before us, although of great value and present importance, is

of a very different character; as a glance at the circumstances

which produced it will show. It has, however, we would fondly hope,

anticipated for its youthful author a greater success.

In 1855, Mr. Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, sent a military

commission to Europe, composed of Major Delafield of the Engineers,

Major Mordecai of the Ordnance, and Captain McClellan, just promoted

from a Lieutenancy of Engineers to a Captaincy in the Cavalry. Major

Delafield was charged with the special subject of Engineering; Major

Mordecai with Ordnance and Gunnery; and to Captain McClellan was

assigned the duty of a general report upon the Organization of Armies,

with a special hearing upon the formation of Infantry and Cavalry. Each

of these gentlemen has written a book, and that of McClellan, originally

published as a Report to the Secretary of War,--in unmanageable quarto,

and at a more unmanageable price,--is now issued, in the volume before

us, with the very appropriate title, "The Armies of Europe," and in a

convenient form for the eye and the purse.

Whatever of technical value the other reports may have,--and they

are, we doubt not, excellent,--McClellan's is the only one of popular

interest, the only one of rounded proportions and general importance;

and if it also contain much addressed to the professional soldier, it

must be remembered that the country is now being educated up to the

intelligent perusal of such books.

Travelling in all the principal countries of Europe,--Montesquieu's

assertion is now verified, that "only great nations can have large

armies,"--the commission met everywhere proper facilities for

observation. McClellan made full notes upon the spot, procured all the

books of Tactics, Regulations, Military Laws, etc., and provided himself

with such models of arms, equipments, saddles, bridles, tents, etc.,

as were easily transported. Operations of a difficult and laborious

character, such as carrying horses on shipboard, are fully demonstrated

with diagrams. Marches, manoeuvres, detachments, battles, are fully

disclosed. Such investigations, when the French, Italian, or German

language was the medium, were comparatively easy; but in order to give a

proper comparative view, he was obliged also to study Russian, which he

did successfully; by this means he has given us a masterly summary

of the Russian system, with its immense battalions, its thousands of

military schools, and its Cossack skirmishers, of wonderful endurance

and formidable fierceness.

The volume is a complete description in detail of the principal armies,

and of wider scope than would be expected; for, while the author has

been very full upon the special topics assigned him, which did not

include the duties of Engineers and Engineer Troops, it is easy to see

everywhere that these latter would intrude themselves with the siren

charms of a first love, and nothing but the record could dissolve the

spell. Indeed, he urgently recommends to the Government the organization

of Engineer troops, specifying their equipments, points of instruction,

and duties. In this department, his description of Military Bridges is

of great value. Incident to the faithful descriptions contained in the

Report, and by far the most valuable feature of the work, we would

specify his comments upon all that he saw. They are manly and bold, but

_raisonnés_ and just. They give token of that originality of thought

which we call genius. The opening chapter on the Crimean War is the only

fair critique of that gallant, but mismanaged campaign we remember to

have seen. The author's object is to exhibit the movements of both

Allies and Russians

"As truth will paint them, and as bards will

not."

When MeClellan's work first appeared, the "Athenaeum" took up spear

and shield; but, _selon conseil_, McClellan declined to reply, and the

champion fought the air, without injuring the record.

A prime interest attaches to this work, because, unconsciously, the

author has given us, in advance, his repertory of instruments and

principles. From the written word we may anticipate the brilliant

achievement, while in every case the action may be tested by a reference

to the recorded principle.

The retirement of Scott places McClellan in a position where he will

have neither partner nor censor in his plans and movements. The graceful

and appropriate manner in which the old veteran leaves the field, which

age and infirmity will no longer allow him to command, is but a fitting

prelude to the military rule of one upon whose brow the dew of youth

still rests, and who brings to his responsible task the highest

qualities, combined with a veneration for the noble virtues and an

emulation of the magnanimous career of his predecessor, at once

honorable and inspiring.

_Spare Hours_. By JOHN BROWN, M.D., Author of "Rab and his Friends."

Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.

It has not yet been satisfactorily explained why doctors are such shrewd

and genial men, and, when they appear in the literary field, such

charming writers. This is one of the curious problems of the day, and

undoubtedly holds its own answer in solution, but has not yet seen fit

to make an observable precipitate. Perhaps this is because the times are

stirring, and the facts cannot settle. A delightful exhibition is made

of something extremely good to take, which we swallow unscrupulously:

in other words, we can only guess how many scruples, and of what, this

blessed medicine for the mind contains. As it is eminently fit for every

American to have an hypothesis upon every subject, we might now, with

proper recklessness, rush into print with a few unhesitating suggestions

upon this singular phenomenon of doctors gifted and graceful with the

pen.

We observe, at any rate, that it is something independent of climate and

locality, and not at all endemic. Otherwise it might be true that the

restless and inquisitive climate of the Atlantic coast, which wears the

ordinary Yankee to leanness, and "establishes a raw" upon the nervous

system, does soften to acuteness, mobility, and racy corrugation in the

breast of its natural ally, the Doctor. For autocratic tempers are bland

towards each other, and murderous characteristics can mutually impart

something homologous to the refining interchange of beautiful souls.

Therefore we do not yet know how much our climate is indebted to our

doctors. It may be suspected that they understand each other, as the

quack and the fool do, whose interests are identical.

But this will not account for the literary talent of the doctors. For

they write books in England and Scotland, in France and temperate

Germany, in every latitude and _with_ a good deal; they are, however,

defective in longitude, which is remarkable, when we consider how they

will protract their cases. With their pens they are prompt, clean,

humane in the matter of ink, their first intention almost always

successful, their thought expelled by natural cerebral contraction

without stimulus, (we speak of ergot, but of "old rye" we know nothing,)

their passion running to its crisis in the minimum of time, and their

affections altogether pleasanter than anything of the kind they accuse

us of having, as well as less lingering. But with their pills--well, we

all know how our ills are nursed by medicine. Is it a relief that their

precept is less tedious than their practice? It is good policy for us,

perhaps, if our minds are to be under treatment from their books,--and

it grows plainer every day that no person of mind can well escape from

them,--that our bodies should continue subject to their boluses. Thus

we may die daily, but our incorporeal part is better acclimated in the

invisible world of truths and realities.

No,--the doctors owe nothing to climate or race. The intelligent ones

are everywhere broad, acute, tender, and religious. They uniformly see

what is natural and what is morbid, what is fact and what is fancy, what

is cutaneous and what is vital, in men and women. They stand on unreal,

conventional terms with nothing. They know healthy from inflamed

tissues, and run down, grab, and give one dexterous fatal shake to a

tissue of lies. One of Dr. Brown's terriers is not more swift, exact,

and uncompromising after vermin. This excellent sense for unvarnished

realities has been attributed by some to their habit of visiting so many

interiors--of men and of their houses--whose swell-fronts are pervious

to the sincerity of pain. We never see a doctor's chaise anchored at a

door but we imagine the doctor taking in freight up-stairs. In these

days he is beginning to receive more than he gives. Let no sarcastic

person allude to doctors' fees. We mean that the physician, whose

humanity and intelligence are broad diplomas, on presenting which the

doors of hearts and houses open with a welcome, enters into the choicest

field of his education and research, where his tender observation walks

the wards of thought, feeling, and motive, to amass the facts of health

and suffering, to be refined at the true drama of pathos, to be ennobled

by the spectacle of fair and lofty spiritual traits, to be advised of

the weaknesses which he learns to touch lightly with his caustic, while

his knowing and friendly look deprecates all excess of pain. It is a

school of shrewdness, gentleness, and faith.

But a rich subject is here, altogether too wide for a book-notice, and

worthy of deliberate, but enthusiastic treatment. Dr. John Brown of

Edinburgh has consulted his own interior, and frequented those of

his diocese, to some purpose. The pieces in this volume, which the

publishers have selected from the two volumes of "Horae Subsecivae,"

omitting the more professional papers, are full of humor, tenderness,

and common sense. They betray only occasionally, in a technical way,

that the author is a disciple, as well as admirer, of Sydenham, and his

own countryman, Cullen. But they overflow with the best specifics of the

healing art, shrewdness, independence, nice observation; they have a

woman's kindness and a man's sturdiness. They honor human nature not the

less because the writer knows how to manage it, to raise a smile at its

absurdities, to rally, pique, and guide it into health and good-humor.

He is very clever with the edge-tools in his surgeon's-case; he whips

you out an excrescence before you are quite aware that he meditated

an operation, and you find that he had chloroformed you with a shrewd

writer's best anaesthetic, a humorous and genial temper.

There is a great deal of nice writing here. Happy words come at a call

and occupy their inevitable places. Now and then a Scotch word, with a

real terrier phiz and the best qualities of "black and tan," gives the

page a local flavor which we should not like to miss. But the writing

is not provincial. There is Scotch character everywhere: the keenness,

intensity, reverence, shaggy humor, sly fun, and just a touch of the

intolerance. The somewhat literal regard for Scripture, the awe, and the

unquestioning, childlike way of being religious, with the independence

of Kirk and Sessions and National Establishments, all belong to the best

intelligence of Edinburgh. But the literary felicity, the scholarship,

the various reading, the cultivated appreciation of books, men, and

systems, while they make us admire--as a good many bright volumes

printed in Edinburgh have done before--the mental power and refinement

which that most picturesque of Northern cities nourishes, do still

belong to the great commonwealth of letters, remind us not of wynds and

closes, and run away from the littleness of time and place.

If the reader would understand the difference between the sentimental

and the pathetic treatment of a subject, let him see in "Rab and his

Friends" how the pen of Dr. Brown follows the essential lines of that

most pure and tender of all stories. In doing so he has given us a new

creation in Ailie Noble. Not a line can be effectively added to that

ideal narrative of a true history, not a word can be pushed from its

place. The whole treatment is at once delicate, incisive, tender,

reserved, and dramatic. And after reading it,--with or without tears,

according to your capacity for dogged resistance to a distended

lachrymal duct,--you will be conscious of bearing away a sweet and

subduing impression, like that which a rare friend can sometimes give,

which lingers many days.

Let nobody omit to read the "Letter to John Cairns, D.D.," because he

does not care for J.C. or know who he is. It contains some reminiscences

by Dr. Brown of his father, a noted clergyman, of whose life and

character Dr. Cairns had prepared a memoir. In this, and in the Essay

upon Dr. Chalmers, Dr. Brown shows his capacity to observe and

portray human moods and characteristics. There are his usual literary

excellences, brought to the service of a keen and faithfully reporting

eye, and his fine humane qualities, his tenderness, reverence, and

humor.

This volume is one of the best ventures of the literary year.

_Cecil Dreeme_. By THEODORE WINTHROP. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.

In the death of Major Winthrop, at the promising commencement of his

military career, the nation lost one of its purest, noblest, and most

capable spirits. His industry, sagacity, and intrepidity all rested on a

firm basis of fixed principle and deep enthusiasm; and had he lived, we

have little doubt that both his moral and practical power would have

been felt among the palpable forces of the country. In the articles he

contributed to this magazine, describing his brief military experience,

every reader must have recognized the singular brightness of his mind

and the singular joyousness of his courage. Powers which, in meditation,

worked at the bidding of pensive or melancholy sentiments, seemed to

be braced by action into unwonted healthiness and hilarity; and had he

survived the experience of the present war, there can be little doubt

that his intellect and imagination would, by contact with events, have

been developed to their full capacity, and found expression in literary

works of remarkable power.

"Cecil Dreeme" is one of several novels he wrote before the war broke

out, and it conveys a striking impression of his genius and disposition.

The utmost sensitiveness and delicacy of moral sense were combined in

him with a rough delight in all the manifestations of manly strength;

and these two tendencies of his nature are fitly embodied and

exquisitely harmonized in the characters of Cecil Dreeme and Robert

Byng. They are opposites which by their very nature are necessarily

attracted to each other. The obstacle to their mental and moral union

is found in a third person, Densdeth, in whom manly strength and genius

have been corrupted by selfishness and sensuality into the worst form

of spiritual evil. This person is simply abhorred by Cecil, while Byng

finds in him something which tempts appetite, piques curiosity, develops

sensuous feeling, and provokes pride, as well as something which excites

moral disgust and loathing. Byng's distrustful love for Emma Denman

admirably represents this stage of his moral experience.

Densdeth is undoubtedly the central character of the book. It proves

its creator to be a true spiritual as well as physical descendant of

President Edwards; and not even his ancestor has shown more vividly the

"exceeding sinfulness of sin." Densdeth is one of those evil natures

in whom delight in evil pleasures has subsided into a delight in evil

itself, and a desire to communicate it to others. He has the diabolical

power of calling out the latent evil in all natures with whom his own

comes in contact, and he corrupts, not so much by example, as by a

direct communication of the corrupt spiritual life of his individual

being. He is an accomplished devil, wearing the guise of a New-York man

of fashion and fortune,--a devil such as tempts every person thrown into

the vortex of our daily commonplace life. Every pure sentiment, noble

aspiration, and manly instinct, every natural affection, gentle feeling,

and religious principle, is tainted by his contaminating companionship.

He infuses a subtle skepticism of the reality of goodness by the mere

magnetism of his evil presence. Persons who have been guarded against

the usual contrivances by which the conventional Devil works his wonders

find themselves impotent before the fascinations of Densdeth. They

follow while they detest him, and are at once his victims and his

accomplices. In those whose goodness, like that of Cecil Dreeme, is

founded on purity of sentiment and strength of principle, he excites

unmitigated abhorrence and strenuous opposition; but on all those whose

excellence is "respectable" rather than vital, who are good by the

felicity of their circumstances rather than the force of their

conscience, he exercises a fascination almost irresistible. To

everybody, indeed, who has in him any latent evil not overbalanced by

the habitual performance of positive duties, Densdeth's companionship

is morally blighting. The character, fearful in its way as the

Mephistopheles of Goethe, is represented with considerable artistic

skill.

Though the most really prominent person in the drama, he is, in the

representation, kept in the background,--a cynical, sneering, brilliant

demi-devil, who appears only when some plot against innocence is

beginning its wiles or approaching its consummation.

The incidents of the novel occur in some of the best-known localities

of New York. Nobody can mistake Chuzzlewit Hotel and Chrysalis College.

Every traveller has put up at the first and visited some literary

or artistic friend at the second. Indeed, Winthrop seems to have

deliberately chosen the localities of his story with the special

purpose of showing that passions almost as terrible as those which are

celebrated in the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles may rage in the

ordinary lodging-houses of New York. He has succeeded in throwing an

atmosphere of mystery over places which are essentially commonplace;

and he has done it by the intensity with which he has conceived and

represented the internal thoughts, struggles, and emotions of the men

and women by whom these edifices of brick and stone are inhabited.

Though a clear narrator, when the story required clear narration,

Winthrop perfectly understood the art of narrating by implication and

allusion. He paints distinctly and minutely, not omitting a single

detail, when the occasion demands such faithful representation of real

facts and localities; but he has also the power of flashing his meaning

by suggestive hints which the most labored description and explication

could not make more effective. He makes the mind of the reader work

sympathetically with his own in building up the idea he seeks to convey.

Crimes which are nameless are mutually understood by this refined

communion between author and reader. The mystery of the plot is not

directly explained, but each party seems to bring, as in private

conversation, his individual sagacity to bear upon the right

interpretation.

The style of the book is admirable. It is brief almost to abruptness.

The words are few, and are crammed with all the meaning they can hold.

There is not a page which does not show that the writer is an economist

of expression, and desirous of conveying his matter with the slightest

possible expenditure of ink. Charles Reade himself does not condense

with a more fretful impatience of all circumlocution and a profounder

reliance on the absolute import of single words.

We might easily refer to particular scenes from this book, illustrative

of the author's descriptive and representative powers. Among many which

might be noticed, we will allude to only two,--that in which Cecil is

revived from his "sleep of death," and that in the opera-house, where

Byng is apprised of the guilt of Emma Denman. Nobody can read either

without feeling that in the disastrous fight of Great Bethel we lost a

great novelist as well as a chivalrous soldier and a noble man.

* * * * *

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS

RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

The Gypsy's Prophecy. A Tale of Real Life. By Mrs. Emma D.E.N.

Southworth. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 455.

$1.25.

The Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. Illustrated from

Drawings by F.O.C. Darley and John Gilbert. Great Expectations. 2 vols.

New York. James G. Gregory. 16mo. pp. 336, 334. $1.50.

The Silver Cord. A Novel. By Shirley Brooks. With Illustrations by John

Tenniel. New York. Harper & Brothers. 8vo. pp. 268. $1.00.

Astoria; or, Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains. By

Washington Irving. Author's Revised Edition. New York. G.P. Putnam. 8vo.

pp. viii., 519. $1.50.

Revised Regulations for the Army of the United States, 1861. With a Full

Index. By Authority of the War Department. Philadelphia. J.B. Lippincott

& Co. 8vo. pp. 559. $2.00.

Manual of Internal Rules and Regulations for Men-of-War. By Captain U.P.

Levy, U.S.N., late Flag-Officer commanding United States Naval Forces in

the Mediterranean; Originator of the Abolition of Corporal Punishment in

the United States Navy. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 18mo. pp. 70. 30 cts.

The Rejected Stone: or, Insurrection _vs._ Resurrection in America. By a

Native of Virginia. Boston. Walker, Wise, & Co. 16mo. pp. 132. 50 cts.

Sermons preached in the Chapel of Harvard College. By James Walker, D.D.

Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 12mo. pp. vi., 397. $1.50.

Lady Maud, the Wonder of Kingswood Chase; or, Earl Gower; or, The

Secret Marriage. By Pierce Egan. Only Complete and Unabridged Edition.

Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 8vo. pp. 365. $1.25.

The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and

Lord High Chancellor of England. Collected and edited by James Spedding,

M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge; Robert Leslie Ellis, M.A.,

late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; and Douglas Denon Heath,

Barrister-at-Law, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Vol. II.

Boston. Brown & Taggard. 12mo. pp. 503. $1.50.

Cecil Dreeme. By Theodore Winthrop. With a Biographical Introduction by

George William Curtis. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. 360. $1.00.

Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada. From the Manuscripts of Fray

Antonio Agapida. By Washington Irving. Author's Revised Edition. New

York. G.P. Putnam. 12mo. pp. 548. $1.50.

Woman's Rights under the Law. In Three Lectures, delivered in Boston,

January, 1861. By Caroline H. Dall, Author of "Woman's Right to Labor,"

"Historical Pictures Retouched," etc., etc. Boston. Walker, Wise, & Co.

16mo. pp. xx., 165. 50 cts.

Eugénie Grandet; or, The Miser's Daughter. From the French of Honoré de

Balzac. Translated by O.W. Wight and F.B. Goodrich. New York. Rudd &

Carleton. 12mo. pp. 309. $1.00.

Record of an Obscure Man. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. 216. 75

cts.

Essays. By the late George Brimley, M.A., Librarian of Trinity College,

Cambridge. With an Introduction by R.H. Stoddard. New York. Rudd &

Carleton. 12mo. pp. 409. $1.25.

The Cloister and the Hearth; or, Maid, Wife, and Widow. A Matter-of-Fact

Romance. By Charles Reade. New York. Rudd & Carleton. 8vo. pp. 256.

$1.00.

The Last Travels of Ida Pfeiffer: Inclusive of a Visit to Madagascar.

With an Autobiographical Introduction. Translated by H.W. Dulcken. New

York. Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 281. $1.25.

Patriotic and Heroic Eloquence: A Book for the Patriot, Statesman, and

Student. New York. J.G. Gregory. 12mo. pp. 264. 75 cts.

Great Expectations. By Charles Dickens. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson &

Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp. 108. 25 cts.

Deep-Sea Soundings and Explorations of the Bottom: or, The Ultimate

Analysis of Human Knowledge. By A.B. Johnson. Printed for Private

Distribution. 16mo. pp. 78.

The Armies of Europe: Comprising Descriptions in Detail of the Military

Systems of England, France, Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Sardinia,

adapting their Advantages to all Arms of the United States Service; and

embodying the Report of Observations in Europe during the Crimean War,

as Military Commissioner from the United States Government in 1835-56.

By George B. McClellan, Major-General United States Army. Originally

published under the Direction of the War Department, by Order of

Congress. Illustrated with Several Hundred Engravings. Philadelphia,

J.B. Lippincott & Co. 8vo. pp. 499. $3.00.

Tales of a Grandfather. History of Scotland. By Sir Walter Scott, Bart.

With Notes. In Six Volumes. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. Vols. I. and

II. pp. xii., 301; vi., 301. per vol. 75 cts.

The Okavango River. A Narrative of Travel, Exploration, and Adventure.

By Charles John Andersson. With Maps and Illustrations. New York. Harper

& Brothers. 8vo. pp. 414. $2.00.