FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[G]"Much has been said of the advantages of a West Point education. If it is supposed to include any extensive reading of military works, the mistake is great. Four years, commencing commonly at sixteen, a large part of which is devoted to mathematics and their kindred sciences, gives little time for such reading. The possession of a thorough knowledge of elementary mathematics is common also to many civilians. The two real advantages are: first, habits acquired in early life, which give an appreciation of discipline as to its essentials, the importance of its minutiae, a faith in its effects, and an acquaintance with the wordmust; second, the study of those parts of the science of arms which constitute its ABC a like early period. This study resembles the ABC of the primer. A revolting drudgery to many minds, it is best gone through with before life is fairly entered upon. When begun later, it will likely be more or less shirked, and the want of a thorough basis will give a superficial character to after-practice. Were the cadets to enter at twenty-five, their military education would lose one half its value."—Essay on "The Discipline and Care of Troops," from "Army and Navy Journal," Oct. 22, 1864.[H]"If a militia is indispensable, service should be required from a sufficient number of citizens, and should not be accepted from volunteers, with the exception only of corps of cavalry and light artillery,—branches of the service entailing greater expense, and involving greater sacrifice of time."—Colonel Henry Lee, Jr."To make it [the militia] efficient, only two things are wanting; first, there must be no exempts for any cause other than moral imbecility, as lunacy and idiotism; for all physical defects should only excuse the person from personal service by paying a fixed equivalent: second, those who did not come under either of the above causes should personally do duty."—Adjutant-General Dearborn of Massachusetts."The full age of twenty-one years has been assumed by the Board as the best period for the commencement of service in the ranks of the militia. It will be perceived that the scheme of enrolment proposed rendered any other limitation as to age, than that just stated, unnecessary; it being probable that the minimum quota would be obtained in any State, without going higher than the ages of thirty or twenty-nine, and in some of the States not higher than twenty-six or twenty-five, even with the present population."—Major-General Winfield Scott, U. S. A., Report of Board of Officers, 1826."In general, the military laws of the Cantons ... do not permit substitutes."—General Dufour, Commander-in-chief of the Swiss Army.[I]"The militia, as it is now organized, is a mere school of titles, where honors are conferred more from a sense of the qualification of the individuals,"—Governor Cole of Illinois."The first measure to be adopted by the State governments against incompetency is the appointment of a board of officers of character and experience, such as may be found in every State at the present time, to examine rigidly every officer elect, and pronounce upon his fitness for the position: their decision to be final."—Colonel Henry Lee, Jr.[J]"Without discipline firmly administered, and regulations founded on a just appreciation of the difficulties and ends of a soldier's life, a militia organization only tends to give a false idea of the duties of a soldier, and is totally useless for the purposes of war or police.... During the periods of drill, the English militia man is placed on almost the same footing as the regular soldier; and insubordination and disorder, mutiny and desertion, are repressed and chastised by penalties and punishments, not only of extreme severity, but involving the deepest disgrace."—Brigadier-General De Peyster, Report to the Governor of New York on Municipal Military Systems of Europe, 1851.[K]"The Board, in the plan of organization, proposes an Adjutant-General, without rank, for the whole militia of the United States. The importance of such an officer, attached to the War Department, it is believed, could not be too highly estimated."—Major-General Winfield Scott.

[G]"Much has been said of the advantages of a West Point education. If it is supposed to include any extensive reading of military works, the mistake is great. Four years, commencing commonly at sixteen, a large part of which is devoted to mathematics and their kindred sciences, gives little time for such reading. The possession of a thorough knowledge of elementary mathematics is common also to many civilians. The two real advantages are: first, habits acquired in early life, which give an appreciation of discipline as to its essentials, the importance of its minutiae, a faith in its effects, and an acquaintance with the wordmust; second, the study of those parts of the science of arms which constitute its ABC a like early period. This study resembles the ABC of the primer. A revolting drudgery to many minds, it is best gone through with before life is fairly entered upon. When begun later, it will likely be more or less shirked, and the want of a thorough basis will give a superficial character to after-practice. Were the cadets to enter at twenty-five, their military education would lose one half its value."—Essay on "The Discipline and Care of Troops," from "Army and Navy Journal," Oct. 22, 1864.

[H]"If a militia is indispensable, service should be required from a sufficient number of citizens, and should not be accepted from volunteers, with the exception only of corps of cavalry and light artillery,—branches of the service entailing greater expense, and involving greater sacrifice of time."—Colonel Henry Lee, Jr."To make it [the militia] efficient, only two things are wanting; first, there must be no exempts for any cause other than moral imbecility, as lunacy and idiotism; for all physical defects should only excuse the person from personal service by paying a fixed equivalent: second, those who did not come under either of the above causes should personally do duty."—Adjutant-General Dearborn of Massachusetts."The full age of twenty-one years has been assumed by the Board as the best period for the commencement of service in the ranks of the militia. It will be perceived that the scheme of enrolment proposed rendered any other limitation as to age, than that just stated, unnecessary; it being probable that the minimum quota would be obtained in any State, without going higher than the ages of thirty or twenty-nine, and in some of the States not higher than twenty-six or twenty-five, even with the present population."—Major-General Winfield Scott, U. S. A., Report of Board of Officers, 1826."In general, the military laws of the Cantons ... do not permit substitutes."—General Dufour, Commander-in-chief of the Swiss Army.

"To make it [the militia] efficient, only two things are wanting; first, there must be no exempts for any cause other than moral imbecility, as lunacy and idiotism; for all physical defects should only excuse the person from personal service by paying a fixed equivalent: second, those who did not come under either of the above causes should personally do duty."—Adjutant-General Dearborn of Massachusetts.

"The full age of twenty-one years has been assumed by the Board as the best period for the commencement of service in the ranks of the militia. It will be perceived that the scheme of enrolment proposed rendered any other limitation as to age, than that just stated, unnecessary; it being probable that the minimum quota would be obtained in any State, without going higher than the ages of thirty or twenty-nine, and in some of the States not higher than twenty-six or twenty-five, even with the present population."—Major-General Winfield Scott, U. S. A., Report of Board of Officers, 1826.

"In general, the military laws of the Cantons ... do not permit substitutes."—General Dufour, Commander-in-chief of the Swiss Army.

[I]"The militia, as it is now organized, is a mere school of titles, where honors are conferred more from a sense of the qualification of the individuals,"—Governor Cole of Illinois."The first measure to be adopted by the State governments against incompetency is the appointment of a board of officers of character and experience, such as may be found in every State at the present time, to examine rigidly every officer elect, and pronounce upon his fitness for the position: their decision to be final."—Colonel Henry Lee, Jr.

[I]"The militia, as it is now organized, is a mere school of titles, where honors are conferred more from a sense of the qualification of the individuals,"—Governor Cole of Illinois.

"The first measure to be adopted by the State governments against incompetency is the appointment of a board of officers of character and experience, such as may be found in every State at the present time, to examine rigidly every officer elect, and pronounce upon his fitness for the position: their decision to be final."—Colonel Henry Lee, Jr.

[J]"Without discipline firmly administered, and regulations founded on a just appreciation of the difficulties and ends of a soldier's life, a militia organization only tends to give a false idea of the duties of a soldier, and is totally useless for the purposes of war or police.... During the periods of drill, the English militia man is placed on almost the same footing as the regular soldier; and insubordination and disorder, mutiny and desertion, are repressed and chastised by penalties and punishments, not only of extreme severity, but involving the deepest disgrace."—Brigadier-General De Peyster, Report to the Governor of New York on Municipal Military Systems of Europe, 1851.

[K]"The Board, in the plan of organization, proposes an Adjutant-General, without rank, for the whole militia of the United States. The importance of such an officer, attached to the War Department, it is believed, could not be too highly estimated."—Major-General Winfield Scott.

What I saw on the West Coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands.ByH. Willis Baxley, M. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

Charles Lamb describes his old friend, George Dyer, as purchasing a bulky volume of blank verse solely on the ground that there must be some good things in an epic of six thousand lines. On the same principle, there may be assumed to be some good sentences in this octavo of six hundred pages,—although, if so, they must lurk in some paragraph which we have unluckily missed in the reading. In the spirit of the book, however, there is a certain frankness which is a frequent merit in that class of ex-Secessionists to which this Baltimore physician apparently belongs. And as their graceful little improprieties in Virginia and elsewhere are daily making new converts to negro suffrage, so this book, by its guileless exhibition of the whole inner man of one of Mr. Buchanan's office-holders, may help to avert the resurrection of the class whom he represents.

Dr. Baxley claims to have been sent in the year 1860 to the west coast of America, as Special Commissioner of the United States. What he ought to have done in that capacity is not stated; what he did is plain. He sailed along the continent upon a bubble of pro-slavery prejudice, and brought home his aërial ship intact, while all similar bubbles had burst during his absence. The book, therefore, takes us back to the good old times. Every allusion to Slavery reminds our Commissioner of joys now departed. Every glimpse of a black man in the melancholy misery of freedom recalls to him those happy scientific reveries contributed to anthropological lore by Messrs. Nott and Gliddon. He admires each dusky figure in the direct ratio of its nudity, and every added rag of civilized clothing seems to him so much subtracted from the proprieties of life. Of course a colored soldier is the climax of aggravation to his grief; and it does not even relieve his feelings, if the uniform-coat has no buttons.

The author mentions the war only towards the close of the book, and of course attributes it solely to Northern fanaticism. This fanaticism he evidently supposes to have been led on by the fierce, ungovernable Muse of Professor Longfellow; for, in quoting from the "Arsenal at Springfield," that poem is described as "sung by one whose harp was then attuned to melodious measures, but whose now 'discordant noises jarrest [sic] the celestial harmonies' of his younger days." (Page 618.) This rather bewildering introduction of the second person singular places our voyager at disadvantage, by irresistibly suggesting that far more entertaining traveller, Artemas Ward.

The book might at least give some novel facts about the working of the missionary system in the South Sea Islands,—inasmuch as a wrathful and foolish observer will often spy out single facts which a more moderate partisan would omit,—but that he unfortunately takes the whole thing for granted and observes nothing. It has been more than suspected that there is a little bigotry mingled with our missionary system; but Dr. Baxley adds nothing to our knowledge on this point, preferring to rest his case on the general proposition, that there was also some degree of bigotry among the Puritan ancestors of these same missionaries two centuries ago. This fact will hardly be questioned, but it is a poor substitute for a little information as to contemporary matters.

In favorable moments, the style of this book has the glow, the affluence, and the fine vein of poetical quotation, that may be found in our most eloquent real-estate advertisements. At other times there is a tendency to ponderous and polysyllabic phrases, tempting the unwary critic to characterize them in words as long. Thus, on the voyage: "The more pretentious passengers, the upper-ten of the cabin, are wonderfully characterized by quantitative propensity, while the omnivorous nature of man is illustrated by them still more strikingly.... The art of gastronomy is clearly in the ascendant.... Vegetables in season and out of season, the hebdomadal occupants of the ship's hold, some, doubtless, the forestallers' residuum, withered, wilted, and decaying;... pickles, pastry, puddings, and pecan, duly decorated with those dernier resorts of the dinner-table, almonds, raisins, and filberts, which generally prove alike first in the order of morbid causation, and first in that of retroversive result." (p. 20.)

For sea-sickness the author advises "resort to the ship's surgeon," which seems a sort of pill at second hand; but he further counsels that "a person's customary dose of laudanum, morphine, chlorodine, or prussic acid may be resorted to." This is really unsafe, considering the suicidal propensities usually found among sea-sick people; and it would be safer, perhaps, to recommend to thosein extremisthe perusal of this book, as a milder narcotic.

Life and Times of Marcus Tullius Cicero.ByWilliam Forsyth, M. A., Q. C., Author of "History of Trial by Jury," etc. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

Mr. Forsyth was induced to write this work by the belief that the time had come when another Life of Cicero than Middleton's famous work might be acceptable to the public. We are glad that such is his belief; for we cannot have too many books on the last days of the Roman Republic, if they are written by competent men,—and there can be no doubt as to Mr. Forsyth's competency to write on those memorable times. But we do not think that his work, pleasing and useful as it is, will exclude that of Middleton from libraries that are collected for use rather than show. Middleton's book may be, as it has been called, "a lying legend in honor of St. Tully"; but it is an able work for all that, and does honor to the eighteenth century. It has many faults, yet it shows an amount of ability that we do not often find in the historical works of our time. It was written when Roman history was but little understood, when men gravely spoke of the Rumelian legend, and ranked it as an historical fact with the crossing of the Rubicon by Cæsar. The dullest graduate of to-day knows much about Rome that would have astonished Conyers Middleton, precisely as the dullest of our soldiers knows much about war that would have astonished Napoleon; but the graduate is as much beneath Middleton as the soldier is beneath Napoleon. We must test Middleton's Cicero by the literary standard of Middleton's age; and thus tested, no one qualified to give an opinion on the subject can hesitate to say that it is a production of great excellence. Were Middleton now living, he would have written a far better work on Cicero and his Times than Mr. Forsyth has written; but we cannot say, much as we admire Mr. Forsyth's work, that we believe that he, had he lived a hundred and twenty years ago, would have written a better work than Middleton's. To the man who can afford time for the reading of but one of those Lives, we should say, "Read Mr. Forsyth's,"—for it is by far the more accurate, and therefore the more useful, life of the great Roman orator. But Mr. Forsyth excels Dr. Middleton in accuracy for pretty much the same reason that he can make the journey to Rome in less than half the time it required Middleton to make it. The labors of others have cleared the way for historians as well as for travellers; and to praise historians for their superior accuracy would be about as sagacious as it would be to praise travellers for their superior speed. We feel grateful to the writers of former times, and we hold it to be the duty of all to do those writers justice, even if their books should cease to be authorities. Who would think contemptuously of Newton because he never saw a steamship?

Mr. Forsyth aims to give his readers some account of Cicero's private and domestic life, and in this respect his book has a positive superiority to Middleton's. It is agreeable to read of thevie privéeof great men, and it is especially so in the case of such a man as Cicero, who belonged to a people long since extinct, and who was himself "the bright, consummate flower" of a civilization which exists only in books, or in monuments, or in ruins,—a civilization of which it has wisely been said, that it is the better for the world that it can never know it again, "for it was rotten at the core, though most glorious in the complexion." But, when all has been said of Cicero's private life that can be said of it, we find ourselves going back to Cicero the statesman, the orator, and the actor in some of the mightiest movements that ever have shaken the world, and which continue to color our own private lives at the end of almost two thousand years. If you would write a book on Roman life and society, as such things were in the last century of the Republic, Catulus, or any other member of the class ofoptimates, would serve your purpose as well as Cicero. Men of the same station live very much alike as to essentials. But no Roman can be named who matches Cicero in some most important respects as a public man,—as consul, as proconsul, as orator, as philosopher, as statesman, and as mere politician. His history, therefore, is the history of Rome through many eventful years;and when he is murdered, we feel that the curtain really has dropped because the great Republican drama is at an end. That sad scene is the last scene of the fifth act of a tragedy that had been in course of performance through five centuries. We cannot separate such a man from his times. His private life is as nothing in comparison with his public life. Private life belongs to comedy, and Cicero's history is a tragedy, from first to last; and in reading any biography of him that is prepared, we feel that we are reading Roman history,—and that is written only in blood.

The part that Cicero had in the Roman Revolution, in that long procession of events which terminated in the establishment of the Empire, if not a lofty one, was nevertheless such as to render his history painfully interesting. We see a man who was far above his his contemporaries in moral excellence, and who sought to live well, tried by circumstances beyond human strength. Cicero lived a century too early, or a century too late. He would have been at his ease as the contemporary and friend of Paulus Æmilius, but it was not in his nature to be on fair terms with such men as Cæsar and Pompeius, much less with Antonius. Had he lived a century later, he might have been a calm philosopher and scholar under the Imperial system. He was, of all men that ever lived, of equal eminence for ability, the least adapted for a revolutionary age; and yet it was his fortune to live in the time of the greatest of all revolutions, and in its very focus, and to be a prominent actor therein. It was as if Fortune had had a spite against his house, and had concentrated all her vengeance on his head, by way of rendering vain the most various and splendid talents that ever were bestowed upon mortal man. Had Cicero's sense borne any proportion to his intellectual powers, had he been endowed with a just portion of that tact which is a more useful thing than genius in a world where they win sixpences, he would have retired from public life on his return from exile. But something very like vanity forbade that. He had been too great to be able to imitate the sensible course of his friend, "the voluptuous, but august Lucullus." He would keep the field which he had won, and in which his part had been so brilliant; and the result was, that he never knew a happy hour. But his miseries made him immortal. Who would have cared for him, had he passed the last dozen years of his life at his Formian villa? The remark of Montesquieu, that that people are happy whose annals are tiresome, is strictly true; but we do not care to read those annals, while those periods in which men were unhappy concentrate the attention of both writers and readers. In Rome's revolutionary age men were as happy as they are in times of pestilence; and Cicero was the greatest sufferer of them all, because he was possessed of a sensitiveness that no other Roman ever knew. It is his history, quite as much as that of either Pompeius or Cæsar, that gives a biographical character to the history of the Republic's closing days, and renders its study so fascinating, and this without reference to his private life, some passages of which have a rather ludicrous air,—his marrying a young wife, for example, after divorcing an old one.

Mr. Forsyth tells Cicero's public life, without neglecting his promise in other respects. He, like other English writers on Rome, possesses a great advantage over Germans, his superiors in mere learning, perhaps, inasmuch as he is familiar with affairs, and English political life is a constant commentary on Roman political life. Without subscribing to all his conclusions, we can commend his volumes to those who would be assisted to an understanding of that splendid struggle in which the Roman aristocracy went down, but not without inflicting such wounds on their foes as rendered despotism an absolute necessity.

Social Statics; or the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness specified, and the First of them developed.ByHerbert Spencer. With a Notice of the Author, and a Steel Portrait New York: D. Appleton & Co.

The American publication of the miscellaneous works of Mr. Spencer terminates with this volume. We learn from the preface that it is not in all respects a literal expression of the author's present views. While he adheres to the leading principles set forth fourteen years ago, he is not prepared to abide by all the detailed applications of them. We are heartily glad to chronicle this acknowledgment. Full of immediate and practical value beyond any other work of Mr. Spencer, "Social Statics" contains passages which seem shot by a mutinous logic-power towards some dark aphelion, whither the best instruments at our command fail to follow them. We hazardthe conjecture, that the remarks about the rights of children and the wrong of property in land must receive essential modification in order to convey to the average reader a distinct conception of the mature thought of Mr. Spencer upon these complex themes. But of the general worth of this book, and of its special application to the needs of great masses of our countrymen, we emphasize our conviction. The calm deductions of reason are brought to enforce the distinctive American doctrines in which the loyal citizen has sentimental belief. Few characters will not feel strengthened by the study of this very acute investigation of duty in social relations. The task is not prematurely undertaken. The means of exact observation have marvellously increased. There is everywhere apparent a demand for the clear and wealthy mind that shall absorb the seemingly conflicting phenomena and express the unity of law which connects them. The leading idea upon which Mr. Spencer's system is based is that of the systematic character of the Divine rule. He sees throughout the worlds of mind and matter continual proofs of the progressive development which has lately come to be expressed by the single word "evolution." Man is not the degenerate descendant of demigods and heroes, but a promising child subjected to a system of education of exhaustive excellence. The circumstances about him are cruel only to be kind. He gradually yields to their pressure, and is fashioned to higher power and a sweeter life. More than any other merely philosophical writer, it seems to us that Mr. Spencer assists the important work of the religionist. He demandsfaithsufficient to follow out a principle with unflinching perseverance. He creates an absorbing interest in human welfare, showing how all real personal advantage is united with the advantage of all.

There have been various attempts to give Mr. Spencer's writings a doubtful fame with the American people. Some of these have been very ingenious; others have had the first merit of sincerity, and nothing else. No grand doctrine can be so expressed as to render impossible anad captandumcontradiction from some point or side. A sturdy catechizing in the interest of some popular dogma will generally give the casuist an apparent advantage over the seeker of knowledge for itself alone. It is likewise in the power of a tolerable metaphysician to set traps and dig pitfalls all over the ultimate grounds of any man's belief. There are apparently crushing arguments against the assertor of any conceivable religious creed, as well as against him who would base his faith where the shifting currents of theological opinion cannot prevail against it. The being of God Mr. Spencer holds to be a truth forever vindicated in the consciousness of man: His nature is to finite beings inscrutable. The latter clause of this statement may be sustained by a very curious syllogistic scaffolding, and it may be assailed by reasoning which is to us wholly satisfactory.Cui bono?Let the philosopher dream out his logical ladder to the Infinite, and never fear but the heart of humanity will supply the angels ascending and descending thereupon. We certainly do not accept Mr. Spencer as an exhaustive expounder of the physics or metaphysics of creation. But the great body of his doctrines are not affected by our private fancies abouta prioritruths or the conditions of thought. He shows the transcendent reality of the moral claim upon man. He emphasizes the great truth, not always apparent in the prescriptions of soul-saving orthodoxy, that disinterestedness is the primary condition of human virtue. It is not pretended that a fervid religious organization can find satisfaction in Mr. Spencer. It must work by other methods. It must conquer problems which science is unable to solve. But, in these doubting, inquiring days upon which we have fallen, no truly good man can afford to contemn a scientist who shows how securely the foundations of religion are laid, and reverently stops at secondary causes without attempting to deify them. And at this present day such a work is clearly demanded. It is, indeed, possible that the old Giants Pope and Pagan may not have rallied since the Bedford tinker bore witness to their depressed estate. Their successor, Giant Transcendentalist, whom Hawthorne encountered in his railroad ride to the Celestial City, may have been delivered over to Mr. Frothingham to be tormented according to his deserts. But a lusty member of the terrible brotherhood is still at large. His name is Giant Indifference. Excerpts (perhaps perverted) from Bentham and Comte, chapters (perchance misinterpreted) from Thackeray's novels, are his sacred canons. He reports himself to have been created by subtle questions touching the historical evidence of the Scriptures, by various intellectual perplexities which the philosophers have brought to light, and byall the tares and brambles of society upon which the cynic has directed his microscope. While muttering formularies in which he has no vital belief, he contrives to make audible a ghastly whisper, that money, popular reputation, political power, and the sensual gratifications which these may command, are alone worth getting off the sofa to realize. Against this monstrous foe to all faithful pilgrimages Mr. Herbert Spencer is a very able combatant. In "Social Statics," especially, he meets the adversary on his own ground. The moral sense is triumphantly rescued from the assaults of Paley and Bentham, and is declared capable of generating a fundamental intuition which may be expanded into a scientific morality. If any are pale at the discovery that "our little systems have their day and cease to be," let them know that an honest seeking will ever furnish material for their renewal with life adapted to man's changing wants. It is not difficult to criticize various portions of Mr. Spencer's belief, or to offer weighty objections to certain applications of his principles; but we doubt if any living man, accepting the limitations of the natural philosopher, has the balance of mind to write more intelligently upon the highest subjects,—to furnish more that is true and elevating, and less that is questionable. We believe that most readers of "Social Statics" will feel an increased sense of personal responsibility, and a new realization of what is well enough expressed in ecclesiastical phrase as "the exceeding sinfulness of sin." And so believing, we do not hesitate to commend it to the American public.

Reason in Religion.ByFrederic Henry Hedge. Boston: Walker, Fuller, & Co.

The various essays which are brought together under this title discuss questions of theology, and the opinions which mankind hold upon the most interesting philosophical and spiritual themes. The author's aim is, to state as fairly as he can conflicting views, and to propound his own solution. In this labor Dr. Hedge appears to represent that condition of Unitarian thinking which prefers a rational to a traditional ground of authority in matters pertaining to the spiritual life, and strives to interpret and accommodate the sacred history without forsaking it.

It would not be possible, within the limits of a book notice, to treat fitly all the questions which are raised by these highly suggestive essays. Dr. Hedge's clear and chiselled statements cut all the jesses of our thoughts, and they rise unhooded into his still air. Providence, Prayer, Free-Will, and Retribution, Evil, Immortality, and Faith,—such themes stock this volume, and they are all treated in a way to command the attention of the reader, to bid him ponder, to contribute glad assent, or to pay the equally flattering tribute of awakened criticism. The style is simple, and comprehensible at a glance: the pen has gathered no superfluities upon its journeys into these remote domains, no scholastic terms cling to it, no ambitious rhetoric. It is never heated, but it is never dull: the cool and equable flow brings down thought enough from scholarly and well-spent years to exhilarate and satisfy. The temper is perfect in which opinions, most discordant to the writer's fine intelligence are set forth; all his hostility to them appears in the justness of his comprehension. So that it would be difficult to find a volume that contains a greater number of impartial and exhaustive statements of creeds, dogmas, and tendencies of thinking. And where they cannot win agreement, they extort respect.

The essay upon "The Regent God" is a fine specimen of intellectual defining the combination with a gentle, tender self-forgetfulness, as if Dr. Hedge would fain feel all the gifts of the mind and heart absorbed in the Infinite Presence. Perhaps the essay upon "The Cause of Reason the Cause of Faith" contains the most vigor; it is a favorite subject, set forth with great freedom of movement, and with more illustration than Dr. Hedge usually indulges. How refreshing is the boldness with which he claims the word Rationalism for the service of Religion! Elsewhere there are rich sentences in respect of illustration. What a finished metaphor on page 371! where, in allusion to the belief of the earliest Christians that some might fall asleep in Christ, but only to be caught up with him at his coming, he says,—"Their sun of life might decline, but only as the sun of the Arctic midsummer skirts an horizon where evening and morning club their splendors to furnish an unbroken day. In their horizon there was no dissolution of the continuity of life."

But we have as little space to devote to admiration as to dissent. We might show cause for our opinion that Religion appears, in this volume, to be too closely confined toaspiration, to just thinking, and a sense of human dependence; in vindicating Reason against Tradition, through all the judicious and thorough discussion of various doctrines, the author waives, or perhaps only postpones, his opportunity to identify Religion with the divineness of all knowable and appreciable things. The most enlightened worship is only one spiritual act or gesture. The broadest and most limpid thinking is but the morning freshness to a day full of God's necessities, who works at our morals, our politics, our society, our science, and our art. Religion is the recognition and acceptance of all knowable phenomena of human life; in these man finds his God, God reveals himself to man. We hope to find that the last essay, upon the "Moral Ideal," is prelusive to another effort in this direction.

A Treatise on Ordnance and Armor: embracing Descriptions, Discussions, and Professional Opinions concerning the Material, Fabrication, Requirements, Capabilities, and Endurance of European and American Guns, for Naval, Sea-Coast, and Iron-Clad Warfare, and their Rifling, Projectiles, and Breech-Loading. Also, Results of Experiments against Armor, from Official Records. With an Appendix, referring to Gun-Cotton, Hooped Guns, etc. By Alexander L. Holley, B.P. With Four Hundred and Ninety-Three Illustrations. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 8vo. pp. xlviii., 900. $10.00.

A View of the Evidences of Christianity. In Three Parts. By William Paley, M.A., Archdeacon of Carlisle. With Annotations by William Whately, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin. New York. James Miller. 8vo. pp. viii., 407. $3.00.

Comparative Geography. By Carl Ritter, late Professor of Geography in the University of Berlin. Translated for the Use of Schools and Colleges, by William L. Gage. Philadelphia. J.B. Lippincott & Co. 16mo. pp. 220. $1.25.

History of the Romans under the Empire. By Charles Merivale, B.D., late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. From the Fourth London Edition. With a Copious Analytical Index, Vol. VII. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 569. $2.50.

Religious Duty. By Frances Power Cobbe. Boston. William V. Spencer. 12mo. pp. viii., 326. $1.75.

The Watchmaker. By Beatrice Reynolds. Philadelphia. T. B. Peterson & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 300. $2.00.

Life of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. From the German of W. A. Lampadius. With Supplementary Sketches, by Julius Benedict, Henry F. Chorley, Ludwig Rellstab, Bayard Taylor, R. S. Willis, and J. S. Dwight. Edited and translated by William Leonhard Gage. New York. Frederick Leypoldt. 16mo. pp. 271. $1.75.

Woodward's Country Homes. By George E. and F. W. Woodward, Architects. New York. G. E. & F. W. Woodward. 16mo. pp. 166. $1.50.

Lorrimer Littlegood. By Frank E. Smedley, Author of "Frank Fairlegh," &c. Philadelphia. T. B. Peterson & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 322. $2.00.

The Thinking Bayonet. By James K. Hosmer, Author of "The Color Guard." Boston. Walker, Fuller, & Co. 12mo. pp. 326. $1.75.

Virginia, and other Poems. By John Henry Vosburg. New York. James Miller. 18mo. pp. 180. $1.00.

Silent Struggles. By Mrs. Ann S. Stephens. Philadelphia. T. B. Peterson & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 460. $2.00.

Husbands and Homes. By Marion Harland. New York. Sheldon & Co. 12mo. pp. 390. $1.75.

Frank, the Young Naturalist. By H. C. Castlemon. Cincinnati. R. W. Carroll & Co. 16mo. pp. 252. $1.25.

Frank on a Gun-Boat. By H. C. Castlemon. Cincinnati. R. W. Carroll & Co. 16mo, pp. 205. $1.25.

Life and Military Career of Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman. By Rev. P.C. Headley. New York. W. H. Appleton. 16mo. pp. 368. $1.50.

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