of "Friends in Council." It is very gracefully written. It has a style as pure, as simple, as impressionable as the tragedy. And its contents are so unexpected, the story is told with such an air of reality, the home of Edward Colvil is set forth so charmingly, that you wish the book was longer. It is the minute finish which tells in works like this. Here you have plenty of touches which betray the artist no less than the poet. The main object of the narrative is to show that the black race are not the worthless beings we so often see in "Dixie," but men of mark and influence often in their own country, and endowed with the same high faculties as the Caucasian race. It delicately, gracefully pleads what the tragedy also aims to prove the superiority of those who have not been branded in soul and body with the stamp of slavery. Notice, in the "Record of an Obscure Man," the favorite tendency to make thoughtful, literary men consumptives a convenient way of disposing of them. Notice, too, in all of these volumes, how many separate pictures are exceedingly well done. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, in the drama, the conversation between Stanley and Hermann about Helen, the description of a thunder-storm by Mrs. Stanley, the death-bed of Stanley, the interview between Woodford and Dorcas, Woodford's soliloquy, the picture of a New England home, the parting of Herbert and Helen, the womanly carriage of Alice, and the songs interspersed between the scenes, are each perfect in their way. The repose, the absence of effort, of all desire to be sententious, is admirable. It is less affected by the prevailing school in literature than any recent work we are acquainted with. What this work may do toward putting down Slavery in this country, we leave to an abler pen. But it cannot fail to do much good in many circles where books of a different character would be repulsive. It will win its way on its own intrinsic merits; but the theme is not less exciting than the treatment is skilful. Hence it will make an impression precisely where this impression is most needed. It is a hopeful sign of the times, when a work of high ability and of the purest character aims to set forth the evils of a system which the largest army in the world is indirectly engaged in destroying. It shows, in its way, how, in the providence of God, many things are com ing to an open issue at the present day. These volumes will do much in foreign literary circles also toward provoking jealousy of our high mental culture. It is a ripe, hearty production, and as such, must command attention from intelligent people everywhere. ARTICLE V. THE TWO CITIES. On the dusky shores of evening, stretched in shining peace it lies, City built of clouds and sunshine wonder of the western skies! While I watch, and long for pinions thitherward to take my flight, Slowly the aërial city fades and vanishes from sight. Ruby dome, and silver temple, circling wall of amethyst, Darkness gathers eastward, westward; stronger waxeth my desire, Reaching through celestial spaces, glittering as with rain of fire, To the City set with jasper, having twelve foundations fair, Twelve in number are its gateways-numbered by the Seer of old Every gate a pearl most lustrous; and its streets are paved with gold. In the midst, in dazzling whiteness, lightens the Eternal Throne; From it flows the Living Water round it gleams an emerald zone. Luscious fruits, and balmy odors, healing leaves, and cooling shade, Either side the Life-tree sheddeth, by sweet storms of music swayed. O thou grand, untempled City, seen by John in visions bright, Filled forever and forever by the shining light of Him Who redeemed the world, and sitteth throned between the Seraphim! Through thy lovely gates the nations of the saved in triumph stream, Chanting praise above all praises love of love their holy theme! They no more shall thirst, or hunger; they no more with heat shall faint; Christ for tears will give them gladness-blissful rest for sore com plaint. Blessed they who do His bidding! cries the Angel, day and night; They shall find abundant entrance they shall walk with Him in white! ARTICLE VI. THE SOUTHERN INSURRECTION: ITS ELEMENTS AND ASPECTS. It is difficult for contemporary observers correctly to interpret important social changes. These require to be looked at through a more colorless light than the atmosphere which first surrounds them furnishes. The arena on which they are wrought out has too much of the dust and smoke of a battlefield, figuratively and perhaps literally, for steady and accurate vision. We were amused lately on reading an advertisement by a popular and prolific clerico-historical author, in one of our weekly papers, for material out of which to construct the record of our present conflict with southern rebellion. It would doubtless be easy to string together immeasurable columns of reëdited news-letters from more or less reliable sources, and, interspersing these with illustrative wood-cuts, call it a history of the North American Civil War. It might fulfil the bookseller's contract which produced it, and have a run if cleverly done. But we remember that only just now the stories of our own separation from the mother-country, and of the earlier Dutch struggle for independence, are getting a relation in a way to satisfy careful and inquisitive readers. Fifty years hence, possibly the same service may be as intelligently rendered to the interior history of these two great years in our annals, which are not only drawing on us the close regard of the entire world, but (far more serious to think of) are turning the whole direction of our national life to other issues than any of us conjectured a very short time ago. We say this, not to depreciate any thoughtful discussion of passing events; we purpose to essay this very thing as our limits shall allow. But we wish to record our confession at the outset, that the objects which we fain would accurately measure move through the mist rather as ill-proportioned human shadows than as well shapen and behaving men. So do we judge it is with those of the review-fraternity who have recently spread upon their pages their speculations and vaticinations upon this shifting, many-sided topic. We have read most of these deliverances with interest and instruction. Following in their train, we shall not probably agree entirely with any one of them. Yet, we are farthest from expecting to strike out any new idea on the much handled questions involved. Our ambition is modest. We shall accomplish its aim if succeeding to cull out and recompose such thoughts already put forth upon our public affairs as we deem to be true and timely. Less than two years have converted us from a hard-working, money-making people into the most military nation of existing Christendom. Not far from a hundred battles have been fought between sections of the land which number on their musterrolls a million and a half of men under arms. Our own force thus marshalled must be largely over one half that number. Our thoughts have learned to flow in a channel red with blood. Our literature has taken on the same sanguinary hue. The toga has given place to arms. We are settling down to the fact that our country, in almost any event, must put itself upon a military footing as a permanent status. The piping days of a palmy, industrial prosperity, we fear, are over for many years to come. We are fighting on a gigantic scale, at the cost of not far from a thousand and a half millions of dollars already expended, a formidable fraction of which stands charged to the public account as a rapidly increasing debt. But no one is concerned about it, nor thinks a moment of staying the outlay, or stanching the stream of death. Quiet villagers come together in town-meeting, and without debate freely vote themselves into a loan of ten and twenty thousand dollars to pay the bounties of men who will volunteer into the army, and, when it is done, go home wondering what they would have said if some mad clairvoyant, a few years ago, had foretold any such looseness of the purse-strings. Nobody now would second the rhymer: "I hate the drum's discordant sound, Parading round, and round, and round." It is music to the dullest heart as it stirs our sons, and brothers, and husbands to the great consecration of the hour. These are the tokens and tide-marks of the revolution which is heaving the depths of thought, feeling, action, in this northern zone to the bottom. We see it, know it; but no one realizes it, or can, in any degree commensurate with its stupendous significance. A deluge is floating us, like another vessel of gopherwood, on the surface of new seas, and above the tops of all the old mountains. And God, in a wonderfully solemn sense, has shut us in. Our southern neighbors are yet more thoroughly and universally aroused. With thirty years the start of us in their purpose and plans of political revolt and national dismemberment, they have at length plunged into the torrent with no thought but of the other shore. They have disembarked upon the coast of secession, and burned their ships behind them. While we have put some vigor and devotion into the work of their subjugation, they have put all of their energy and heart into the assertion of their separate existence. While we have set our hand to the plough, and spent months of our time in looking back, they have forsaken houses and lands, wives and children, pleasures and profits, almost en masse, to do this one. thing of sustaining, with the worst of spirit and measures, the worst cause for which civilized men ever girded on the sword. They have been no imitators of the doughty chiefs of “ Sleepy |