Good Thoughts in Bad Times, and Other Papers. By THOMAS FULLER, D.D. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

There certainly never was a greater piece of publishing felicity, in its seasonableness, than this entire reprint. The "Thoughts" are as good, for whatever is bad or trying in our times, as they were hundreds of years ago; so that one might almost suspect the title of the book for an invention, and consider many a passage in it to be new matter, only—after the fashion of some who, in essay or story, try to reproduce the ancients—skilfully put in the manner of the old preacher. To all who would have religious comfort in the distractions of present events we especially recommend this incomparable divine's truly devout and thoughtful pages. None of our authors have succeeded so well in providing for our own wants. The sea of our political agitations might become smooth under the well-beaten oil which he pours out. The divisions made by the sword to-day would heal with the use of his prescriptions. Human nature never grows old; and America, in her Civil War, is the former England over again now.

Sticklers for a style of conventional dignity and smooth decorum may think to despatch Fuller's claims by denominating him a quaint writer. This would be what is vulgarly called a snap-judgment indeed. His quaintness never runs into superficial conceit, but embodies always a deep and comprehensive wisdom. He insinuates truth with a friendly indirectness, and banters us out of our folly with a foreign instance. Plutarch or Montaigne is not more happy in historical parallels, for personal reflection and sober application to actual duty. Never was fancy more alert in the service of piety. His imagination is as luminous as Sir Thomas Browne's, and, if less peculiar and original in its combinations, rises into identity with more child-like and lofty worship. Ever ready to fall on his knees, there is in his adoration no touch of cant, or of that other-worldliness which Coleridge complains of as interfering with the pressing affairs and obligations of the present. No pen ever drew a firmer boundary between sentiment and sentimentality. But never was shrewd knowledge of this world so humane, keen observation so kind, wit so tender, and humor so sanctified, united with resolution by all means to teach and save mankind so invariably strong.

While so much of our religious literature is a weak appeal to shallow feeling and a gross affront to reason, it is refreshing to meet with an author who helps us to obey the great precept of the Master, and put mind and strength, as well as heart and soul, into our love of God. Indeed, this precious treatise, or assemblage of little treatises, so rational without form of logic, so convenient to be read for a moment or all day long, and so harmonious in its diverse headings, should be everywhere circulated as a larger sort of religious tract. We hear of exhortations impressed in letters on little loaves for the soldiers to eat. We wish every military man or civilian, intelligent enough for the relish, could have Fuller's sentences to feed on, as, beyond all rhetoric, bread of life.

So let a welcome go to the old worthy, our hearts' brother, as he seems to rise out of his two-centuries' grave. At a time when Satan appears again to have been let loose for a season, and we know the power of evil, described in the Apocalypse, in the fearful headway made by the rebellious conspiracy of his servants, carried to such a point of success, that statesmen, and scholars, and preachers, even of so-called liberal views, on the farther shore, bow to it the knee, while the frowning cannon at every point shows how remote the Millennium still is,—thanks for the counsels, fit to our need, of a writer still fresh, while the main host of his contemporaries are long since obsolete, with dead volumes for their tombs. How many precious quotations from his leaves we might make, but that we prefer to invite a perusal of the whole!

We add to our criticism no drawbacks, as we like to give to transcendent merit unstinted praise, and have really no exceptions in mind, could we presume in such a case to express any. Looking on the features of Fuller's portrait, which makes the frontispiece of his work as here reproduced for us, we note a weight of prudence strangely blending with a buoyancy of prayer, well corresponding to the inseparable sagacity and ecstasy of his words, teaching us the consistency of immortal aspiration with an infallible good-sense,—a lesson never more important to be learned than now. To be an executive mystic, an energetic saint, is the very ideal of human excellence; and to go forward in the name of the Divinity is the meaning of the book we have here passed in review.

Speeches, Lectures, and Letters. By WENDELL PHILLIPS. Boston: James Redpath.

In vigor, in point, in command of language and felicity of phrase, in affluence and aptness of illustration, in barbed keenness and cling of sarcasm, in terror of invective, in moral weight and momentum, in copiousness and quality of thought, in aggressive boldness of statement, finally in equality to all audiences and readiness for all occasions, Wendell Phillips is certainly the first orator in America,—and that we esteem much the same as saying that he is first among those whose vernacular is the English tongue. That no speeches are made of equal value with his, that he has an intellectual superiority to all competitors in the forum, we do not assert; but his preeminence in pure oratorical genius may now be considered as established and unquestionable. Ajax has the strength, perhaps more than the strength, of Achilles; but Achilles adds to vigor of arm incomparable swiftness of foot. The mastiff is stout, brave, trusty, intelligent, but the hound outruns him; and this greyhound of modern oratory, deep-chested, light-limbed, supple, elastic, elegant, powerful, must be accredited with his own special superiorities. Or taking a cue from the tales of chivalry, we might say that he is the Sir Launcelot of the platform, in all but Sir Launcelot's sin; and woe to the knight against whom in full career he levels his lance!

And yet one is half ashamed to praise his gifts, so superbly does he himself cast those gifts behind him. He is not trying to be eloquent: he is trying to get a grand piece of justice done in the world. No engineer building a bridge, no ship-master in a storm at sea, was ever more simply intent on substantive results. It is not any "Oration for the Crown" that he stands here pronouncing: it is service, not distinction, at which he aims, and he will be crowned only in the gladness of a redeemed race. The story of his life is a tale of romance; he makes real the legends of chivalry. He might have sat at meat with Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, and looked with equal unabashed eyes into theirs; and a thousand years hence, some skeptic, reading the history of these days, will smile a light disdain, and say, "Very well for fiction; but real men are selfish beings, and serve themselves always to the sweetest and biggest loaf they can find."

We praise his gifts and his nobility, not always his opinions. He was once the apostle of a doctrine of disunion; he fervently believes in enforcing "total abstinence" by statute; he is the strenuous advocate of woman-suffrage. We have stood by the Union always; we have some faith in pure wine, notwithstanding the Maine Law; and believing that women have a right to vote, we believe also that they have a higher right to be excused from voting. We are unwilling to consume their delicate fitnesses in this rude labor. It is not economical. We do not believe in using silk for ships' top-sails, or China porcelain for wash-tubs. There are tasks for American women—tasks, we mean, of a social and public, not alone of a domestic nature—which only women can rightly perform, while their accomplishment was never more needed than here.

Mr. Phillips is no "faultless painter." He is given to snap-judgments. The minor element of considerateness should be more liberally present. He forgets that fast driving is not suitable to crowded streets; and through the densest thoroughfares the hoofs of his flying charger go ringing over the pavements, to the alarm of many and the damage of some. Softly, Bucephalus! A little gentle ambling through these social complications might sometimes be well.

Again, while he has the utmost of moral stability and constancy, and also great firmness of intellectual adhesion to main principles, there is in him a certain minor changefulness. He pours out a powerful light, but it flickers. Momentary partialities sway him,—to be balanced, indeed, by subsequent partialities, for his broad nature will not be permanently one-sided; but meantime his authority suffers. Mood, occasion, the latest event, govern overmuch the color of his statement; so that an unsympathetic auditor—and every partiality, by the law of the world, must push some one out of the ring of sympathy—may honestly deem him unfair, even wilfully unfair.

Finally, he relies too much upon sarcasm and personal invective as agents. He has a theory on this matter; and we feel sure that it is erroneous. Not that invective is to be forbidden. Not that personal criticism is always out of place, or always useless. We are among the "all men" whom Thoreau declared to be "enamored of the beauty of plain speech." We ask no man in public or private life to wear a satin glove upon his tongue. We believe, too, in the "noble wrath" of Tasso's heroes, When the heart must burn, let the words be fire. It is just where personal invective begins to be used as matter of theory and system that it begins to be used amiss. Let the rule be to spare it, if it can be spared, and to use it only under the strictest compelling of moral indignation. And were not Mr. Phillips among the most genial and sunny of human beings, really incapable of any malign passion, he would fool the reactive sting of this invective in his own bosom, and so become fearful of indulging it.

Still it must be said that he has the genius and function of a critic. He is the censor of our statesmanship. He is the pruner of our politics. Let his censure be broad and deliberate, that it may be weighty; let his pruning be with care and kindness, that it may be with benefit.

Systems of Military Bridges in Use by the United States Army, those adopted by the Great European Powers, and such as are employed in British India. With Directions for the Preservation, Destruction, and Reestablishment of Bridges. By Brigadier-General GEORGE W. CULLUM, Lieutenant-Colonel, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, Chief of Staff of the General-in-Chief, etc., etc. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

A nation can hardly achieve military success without paying special heed to its material of war. It is the explicit duty of a nation's constituted guardians assiduously to apply all the resources of science and art, of theory and practice, of experience and invention, of judgment and genius, to the systematic production of the best military apparatus. Ordnance and ordnance stores, arms and equipments, commissary and quartermaster supplies, the means of transportation, fortifications and engineer-trains, navies and naval appliances,—these are the material elements of military strength, which decide the fate of nations. If in these we are behind the age, our delinquency must be atoned by disaster and wasted lives. Civilization conquers barbarism chiefly by its superior skill in the construction and use of the material instruments of warfare. Courage and conduct are certainly important factors in all legitimate successes; but they must work through material means, and are emphasized or nullified by the skill or rudeness exhibited in the device and fabrication of those means. The great contest now in progress has taught us afresh the potency of those material agencies through which patriotic zeal must act, and we shall hereafter lack all good excuse for not having the very best attainable system of producing, preserving, providing, and using whatever implements, supplies, and muniments our future may demand.

As an aid in this direction, we welcome the truly valuable book which General Cullum has now supplied on one of the Special brandies of military materiel. We owe him thanks for his treatise on military bridges, which was nearly as much needed as though we had not already the works of Sir Howard Douglas, Drien, Haillot, and Meurdra, and the chapters on bridges by Laisne and Duane. General Cullum's work has more precision and is more available for practical guidance than any other. The absolute thoroughness with which the India-rubber pontoon system is described by him gives a basis for appreciating the other systems described in outline.

It is hardly too much to say that we owe to General Cullum more than to any other person the development in our service of systematic instruction in pontoniering. Before the Mexican War, Cullum and Halleck had ably argued the necessity of organizing engineer troops to be specially instructed as sappers, miners, and pontoniers. In an article on "Army Organization," in the "Democratic Review," were cited a striking series of instances in which bridge-trains or their lack had decided the issue of grand operations. The history of Napoleon's campaigns abounds in proofs of their necessity, and the testimony of the Great Captain was most emphatic on this point. His Placentia and Beresina crossings are specially instructive. The well-sustained argument of the article on "Army Organization" was a most effective aid to General Totten's efforts as Chief Engineer to secure the organization of our first engineer company. This company proved to be the well-timed and successful school in which our pontoon-drill grew up and became available for use in the present war. There are now four regular companies and several volunteer regiments of engineer troops, whose services are too highly valued to be hereafter ignored.

In 1846, General Taylor reported, that, after the victories of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, a pontoon-train would have enabled him to cross the Rio Grande "on the evening of the battle," take Matamoras "with all the artillery and stores of the enemy and a great number of prisoners,—in short, to destroy entirely the Mexican army." This striking evidence of the necessity of bridge-equipages as part of the material of army-trains coincided with the organization of the first engineer company, and led to the preparation of pontoon-trains for General Taylor and General Scott. General (then Captain) Cullum "had the almost exclusive supervision, devising, building, and preparing for service" of these trains, and of that used for instruction at West Point. To him is chiefly due the formation of the system of military bridges with India-rubber pontoons, which was most fully described and illustrated in the original memoir from which the volume now just published has grown. He subsequently, as Professor of Practical Engineering at the Military Academy, aided in developing and perfecting the pontoon-drill,—a department in which G.W. Smith, McClellan, and Duane ably and successfully labored.

We suppose that all profound and sincere students of military operations are agreed in accepting bridge-trains and skilled pontoniers as among the necessities of grand armies. In proportion as the campaigns which an army is to make are to be conducted on theatres intersected by rivers will be the importance of its bridge-service. Our own country, abounding in rivers of the grandest proportions, will need to be always ready for applying the highest skill and the best bridge-equipage in facilitating such movements as may prove necessary. We accept this as an indispensable part of our organized system of war-materiel. Were other evidences lacking, the experiences of the Chickahominy, Rappahannock, Potomac, and Tennessee will perpetually enforce the argument. The generation which has fought the Battle of Fredericksburg, and which has witnessed Lee's narrow escape near Williamsport, is sufficiently instructed not to question the saving virtues and mobilizing influences of bridge-trains.

The chief essentials in a military bridge-system are lightness, facility of transportation, ease of manoeuvre in bridge-formation, stability, security, and economy. It necessarily makes heavy demands for transportation; and on this account bridge-trains have frequently been left behind, when their retention would have proved of the utmost importance. Their true use is to facilitate campaign-movements; and while they should be taken only when there is a reasonable prospect of their being real facilites, they should not be left behind when any such prospect exists. It was in response to the demand for easy transportation that the system for India-rubber pontoons was elaborated. Single supporting cylinders of rubber-coated canvas were first experimentally used in 1836 by Captain John F. Lane, United States army, on the Tallapoosa and Chattahoochee Rivers in Alabama. The service-pontoon, as arranged by General Cullum, is composed of three connected cylinders of rubber-coated canvas, each having three compartments. On these pontoons, when inflated, the bridge-table is built, lashed, and anchored. This bridge has remarkable portability, but it has also serious defects. The oxidation of the sulphur in vulcanized rubber produces sulphuric acid in sufficient amount to impair the strength of the canvas-fibres, thus causing eventual decay, rendering it prudent to renew the pontoons after a year's campaigning. The pontoons are required to be air-tight, and are temporarily made partially useless by punctures, bullet-holes, rents and chafings, although they are easily repaired. Hence this bridge, despite its portability, is hardly equal to all the requirements of service, though it was the main dependence in Banks's operations in Louisiana, and was successfully used in Grant's Mississippi campaign.

General Cullum briefly describes the various bridge-systems employed in the different services of the world, including the galvanized iron boat system, the Blanchard metal cylinder system, the Russian and Fowke's systems of canvas stretched over frames, the Birigo system, the French bateau system, the various trestle systems, and many others. The French wooden bateau is the pontoon chiefly used in our service, and it is specially commended by its thoroughly proved efficiency, and by its utility as an independent boat. Its great weight and the consequent difficulty of its transportation are the great drawbacks, and to this cause may well be ascribed much of the fatal delay before the Fredericksburg crossing.

It is a hopeless problem to devise any bridge-equipage which shall overcome all serious objections. All that should be expected is to reduce the faults to a practical minimum, while meeting the general wants of the service in a satisfactory manner. The lack of mobility in any bridge-train which can be pronounced always trustworthy may, perhaps, compel the adoption, in addition to the bateau-train, of a light equipage for use in quick movements. This will, however, create complication, which is nearly as objectionable here as in the calibre of guns. Thus it is that any solution may prove not exactly the best one for the particular cases which may arise under it. All that should be demanded is, that, by the application of sound judgment to the data which experience and invention afford, our probable wants may be as well met as practicable. Some system we must have; and, on the one hand, zeal for mobility, commendable as it is, must not be permitted to invite grand disasters through failures of the pontoons to do their allotted work; while, on the other hand, a morbid desire to insure absolutely trustworthy solidity of construction must be restrained from imposing needless burdens, which may habitually make our crossings Fredericksburg affairs. Between these extremes lies the right road. American skill has hardly exhausted its resources on this problem. The suspension-bridge train, a description of which General Meigs has published, is deserving of consideration for many cases in campaigns. General Haupt's remarkable railroad-bridges thrown over the Rappahannock River and Potomac Creek, the latter in nine working-days, were structures of such striking and judicious boldness as to justify most hopeful anticipations from the designer's expected treatise on bridge-building. Our national eminence in the art of building wooden trussed and suspension bridges is proof enough that whatever can be done to improve on the military bridge-trains of Europe may be expected at our hands. We shall not lack inventiveness; let us be as careful not to lack judgment, and by all means to be fair and honest in seeking for the best system. When the experience of this war can be generalized, a more positive pontoon-system will be exacted for our service. It is fortunate that this matter is in good hands. While hoping that the close of the present war may, for a long time, end the reign of Mars, it behooves us never again to be caught napping when the Republic is assailed.

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FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: The phrase is General Taylor's. When Santa Ana brought up his immense army at Buena Vista, he sent a flag of truce to invite Taylor to surrender. "Tell him to go to hell," said old Rough-and-Ready. "Bliss, put that into Spanish." "Perfect Bliss," as this accomplished officer, too early lost, was called, interpreted liberally, replying to the flag, in exquisite Castilian, "Say to General Santa Ana, that, if he wants us, he must come and take us." And this is the answer which has gone into history.]

[Footnote B: After Sheridan had made his maiden speech in the House, of Commons, he went to the gallery where Whitbread was sitting and asked the latter's opinion of his effort.

"It will never do, Sheridan; you had better give it up."

"Never, by G——d!" replied Sheridan; "it is in me, and it shall come out."]

[Footnote C: Dagneaux's is the most expensive restaurant of the Latin Quarter.]

[Footnote D: These are characters in the novel, portraits from real life. Murger drew himself, and told his own history, when he sketched Rodolphe.]

[Footnote E: He was urged to rent a room in Paris as his lodgings when he came to town.]

[Footnote F: Travels through the Middle Settlements of North America in 1759-60. By Rev. Andrew Burnaby.]

[Footnote G: History of the Netherlands, Vol. I. p. 182.]

[Footnote H: "During the winter, the temperature at the surface of the glacier sinks a great many degrees below 32 deg. Fahrenheit, and this low temperature penetrates, though at a gradually decreasing rate, into the interior of the mass. The glacier becomes fissured in consequence of the contraction resulting from this cooling process. The cracks remain open at first, and contribute to lower the temperature of the glacier by favoring the introduction of the cold air from without; but in the spring, when the rays of the sun raise the temperature of the snow covering the glacier, they first bring it back to 32 deg. Fahrenheit, and presently produce water at 32 deg., which falls into the chilled and fissured mass of the glacier. There this water is instantly frozen, releasing heat which tends to bring back the glacier to the temperature of 32 deg.; and this process continues till the entire mass of the cooled glacier returns to the temperature of 32 deg.."]

[Footnote I: For the evidence of this statement I must, however, refer to my work on Glaciers, already so often quoted in this article, where it may be found with all the necessary details.]

[Footnote J: Hon. H.M. Rice, Ex-Senator from Minnesota.]

THE END