Yet, after all, the work is historical as well as scientific. And there is in it such a mingling of great questions of philanthropy with mere questions of grooving, and black soldiers jostle so inextricably with black guns, that the common reader and the mere student of human nature will find an interest in the book, as well as that intelligent lady of our acquaintance, who, having heard of the brilliant ornithology of the tropics, was eager to read about the hundred-pound "Parrotts" of South Carolina.

As to the guns, the contributions of this superbly illustrated volume are of the very greatest value. Nothing in print equals it, except Mr. Holley's recent great treatise, some of whose tables are here also employed by permission. Here we find the most authentic statements, both as to the work done by the large rifled guns, and as to that trick of bursting which is their gravest weakness. But for this, the heavy ordnance of Parrott would be a magnificent success. And when we consider that six two-hundred pounders and seventeen one-hundred pounders were burst during the siege of Charleston, as recorded in this volume,—that five one-hundred pounders are said to have been burst in a single week on Morris Island at a later period, and that Admiral Porter reports six similar instances during the first attack on Fort Fisher,—it was certainly worth while in the publisher of this work, with his usual liberality, to devote a long series of admirable plates, prepared under the direction of Captain Mordecai, to the details of these dangerous fractures.

It is generally admitted that the smaller "Parrott" guns, including the thirty pounders, approach very near perfection. The large calibres have precisely the same merits, as respects range, accuracy, and simplicity of construction and manipulation. This their work against Fort Sumter shows. But the deficiency of endurance belongs to the large guns alone; since the smaller, after an immense amount of service, have shown no sort of weakness. Yet, if the principle be correct, on which the latter are strengthened, there seems no reason why the same degree of endurance may not yet be secured for the larger. It is simply a mechanical problem, whose solution cannot be far off.

The guns have burst both longitudinally and laterally, and in quite a variety of position and service. General Turner's suggestion, that an important secondary cause of bursting is the presence of sand within the bore, among the ever-blowing sand-hills of the Sea Islands, seems justified by the fact that in the naval service the accidents have been far less frequent,—a thing in all respects fortunate, by the way, as such explosions on board ship involve far greater sacrifice of life than on land. Another secondary cause is the premature explosion of shell within the bore, a defect which should be also remediable. Indeed, the "Parrott" shell were at first notoriously defective, often bursting too soon or not at all, and thus losing much of their usefulness; though this defect has now been, in a great degree, remedied. The discussion of the whole subject in this book seems reasonable and unprejudiced, and a letter from the maker of the guns, at the end, gives with equal candor his side of the question.

General Gillmore's narrative of his military operations is exceedingly interesting, and generally clear and simple. The descent upon Morris Island from Folly Island was undoubtedly one of the most skilful achievements of the war. Under the superintendence of Brigadier-General Vogdes, forty-seven pieces of artillery, with two hundred rounds of ammunition for each gun, and provided with suitable parapets, splinter-proof shelters, and magazines, were placed in position, by night, within speaking distance of the enemy's pickets, and within view of their observatories. And yet all this immense piece of work was done with such profound secrecy, that, when the first shot from these batteries fell among the enemy, it astounded them as if it had come from the planet Jupiter. At the time, this brilliant success was merged in the greater prospective brilliancy of the expected results. Now that the results have failed to follow, we can perhaps do more justice to the remarkable skill displayed in the preliminary movements.

So far as this report is concerned, General Gillmore shows no disposition to do injustice to other officers. In reprinting the daily correspondence with Admiral Dahlgren it might have been better to omit or explain some hasty expressions of censure,—as where a young naval lieutenant is charged (on page 333) with defeating an important measure by acting without orders, though the fact was, that the officer was not under General Gillmore's orders at all, and simply followed the instructions of his immediate commander. But in dealing with officers of higher rank he is more discreet, and his implied criticisms on Admiral Dahlgren are not so severe as might have been expected. They are not nearly so sharp as those which were constantly heard, during the siege, from the officers of the navy; and the Admiral's telegraphic note on page 327, "My chief pilot informs me a gale is coming on, and I am coming into the creek," was the source of very unpardonable levity on board some of the gun-boats.

In the few passages relating to the colored troops, in the main report, the author shows evident pains in the statement, with rather unsatisfactory results. The style suggests rather the adroitness of the politician than the frankness of the soldier. This is the case, for instance, in his narrative of the unsuccessful assault upon Fort Wagner, where he uses language which would convey the impression, to nine readers out of ten, that it was somehow a reproach to the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts that it was thrown into disorder, and that this disorder checked the progress of the rest. Of course this was so,—because it led the charge. It is not usual to say, in preparing a very brief narrative of some railway collision, that the leading car "was thrown into a state of great disorder, which reacted unfavorably upon, and delayed the progress of, those which followed." Yet it is hardly less absurd to say it of the leading battalion in a night attack on a fortress almost impregnable. The leading car takes the brunt of the shock precisely because it is in that position, and so does the leading regiment. How well the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts bore the test is recognized by its being apparently included in the final admission, that "the behavior of the troops, under the circumstances, was unexceptionable." But a fractional share in a line and a half of rather chilly praise is hardly an equivalent for three lines of implied individual censure. Had Brigadier-General Strong lived to tell the story of that night, it would have been stated less diplomatically than by Major-General Gillmore.

The report of Major Brooks on the working qualities of the colored troops is far more discriminating and more valuable, as are the appended statements of Captain Walker and Lieutenant Farrand. Major Brooks, as chief of engineering, sent circulars to six different officers who had superintended fatigue parties in the trenches, covering inquiries on five points relating to efficiency and courage. The report may be found at page 259 of the book, constituting Appendix XIX. (misprinted XIV.) to the Journal of Major Brooks.

The statement is probably as fair as the facts in the compiler's possession could make it; yet it is seriously vitiated by the scantiness of those facts. In answer to one question, for example, we are told that "all agree that the colored troops recruited from Free States are superior to those recruited from Slave States." But only two regiments of the latter class appear to have come under Major Brooks's observation at all. One of these was a perfectly raw regiment, which had never had a day's drill when it was placed in the trenches, but which was kept constantly at work there, although an order had been issued forbidding white recruits from being so employed. The other was a regiment composed chiefly of South Carolina conscripts, enlisted in utter disregard of pledges previously given, and of course unwilling soldiers. It was absurd to institute a comparison between these troops and a regiment so well trained and officered as the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts. Longer experience has shown that there is no great choice between the Northern and Southern negro, as military material; and the preferences of an officer will usually depend upon which he has been accustomed to command. Many, certainly, are firm in the conviction that the freed slave makes the best soldier.

In other points the report carries with it some of the needful corrections, at least for a careful reader. For instance, Major Brooks's general summary is, that "the black is more timorous than the white, but is in a corresponding degree more docile and obedient, hence more completely under the control of his commander, and much more influenced by his example." But when we read on the previous page that the white soldiers were allowed to take their arms into the trenches, and that the black soldiers were not, it makes the whole comparison nearly worthless. It is notorious that the presence or absence of manhood in the bravest soldier often seems to be determined by the mere fact that he has a gun in his hand; and had the object been to annihilate all vestige of military pride in the colored troops, it could not have been better planned than by this and other distinctions maintained during a large part of the siege of Charleston. That, while smarting under the double deprivation both of a soldier's duty and of a soldier's pay, they should have so behaved as to merit a report so favorable as that of Major Brooks, is one of the greatest triumphs they have yet achieved. This volume contains the record of what they did. The story of what they underwent is yet to be told; for even of his two famous "orders" General Gillmore judiciously makes no mention here.

Thus mingled, in this superb work, are the points of strength and weakness. It remains only to add that the typographical and artistic execution is an honor to our literature, and adds to the laurels previously won in the same department by the publisher. Where all else is so admirable, it seems a pity to have to lament the absence of an index. The division of the work among several different authors makes this defect peculiarly inconvenient.

General Todleben's History of the Defence of Sebastopol, 1854-5. A Review. By WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

It does not yet appear whether our great civil war will leave behind it materials for debate as acrimonious as that which has gathered round the affair in the Crimea. If General Butler and Admiral Porter live and thrive, there seems a fair chance that it may. In that case it will be interesting to read how General Todleben, in a parallel case, substitutes the Russian bear for the monkey in the fable, pats each combatant on the shoulder, and presents each with a shell, while extracting for himself the oyster.

Mr. Russell's "Review" is rather a paraphrase and a condensation,—the original work of the Russian General being too costly even for the English market. The task of the English editor is done with his usual spirit, and with all the more zest from an evident enjoyment of finding Mr. Kinglake in the wrong. Between his sympathies as a Briton and his sympathies as a literary man there is sometimes a struggle. But we Americans can do more justice to Mr. Russell than in those days of national innocence when we knew not Mackay and Gallenga and Sala; and it must be admitted that the tone of the present book is manly and impartial.

Kinglake's description of the Battle of the Alma will always remain as one of the masterpieces of literature in its way; but it is noticeable that Todleben entirely ignores some of the historian's most dramatic effects, and also knocks away much of his underpinning by demolishing the reputation of General Kiriakoff, his favorite Russian witness. Kinglake says that Eupatoria was occupied by a small body of English troops, and tells a good story about it: Todleben declares that the Allies occupied it with more than three thousand men and eight field-guns. Kinglake represents Lord Raglan as forcing the French officers, with great difficulty, to disembark the troops at a spot of his own selection: Todleben gives to Canrobert and Martinprey the whole credit of the final choice and of all the arrangements. And so on.

On the side of the Russians, the most interesting points brought out by Todleben are their fearful disadvantage as regarded the armament of the infantry, (these being decimated by the rifles of the Allies long before the Russians were near enough to use their smooth-bores,) and the popular enthusiasm inspired by the war in Russia. "The Czar was aided by the spontaneous contributions of his people. Great supplies were forwarded by private individuals of all that an army could need." "From all parts of the empire persons sent lint, bandages, etc., by post to the army." These are phrases which bring us back to the daily experience of our own vaster struggle.

As respects the Allies, Todleben uniformly credits the French army with more of every military quality than the English, save personal courage alone. From the commanding general to the lowest private, every technical detail of duty seems to have been better done by the French. At the height of the siege, it became "a war of sorties" on the part of the Russians, and Todleben says,—"Apropos of those sorties, it is indispensable to make the remark here, that the French guarded their trenches with much more vigilance, and defended them with incomparably more tenacity, than the English. It frequently happened that our volunteers approached the English trenches without being perceived, and without even firing a single shot, and found the soldiers of the guard sitting in the trench in the most perfect security, far from their firelocks, which were stacked in piles. With the French, matters were quite different. They were always on the qui vive, so that it rarely happened we were able to get near them without having been remarked, and without having to receive beforehand a sharp fire of musketry."

This, however, as Russell remarks, was when the English army was at its lowest condition of neglect; but that simply transfers the indictment to another count. And it is interesting to observe, that Russell's claim for the English army and Todleben's claim for the Russian army come at last to about the same point, namely, that the individual soldier is in each case tough and resolute to the last degree. But this is only the beginning of the merits of the French array, which to individual courage superadds all that organization can attain.

As to the poor Turks, they are dismissed with much the same epitaph which might long since have been written for our colored troops, if some of our Department commanders had been suffered to have their way:—"As to the Turks, the Allies despised them, and the English used them as beasts of burden; in short, they lost three hundred men a day, till they almost perished out, and the remains of their army were sent away."

In view of the grander issues of our own pending contest, with its vaster scale of munitions and of men, one cannot always feel the due interest in successive pages about battles like "Little Inkermann," where the total of Russian killed and wounded comprised twenty-five officers and two hundred and forty-five men. But it is not numbers which make a contest memorable. Even the mere contemplation of the Crimean War had an appreciable influence on the military training of the American people; and the clear narratives of Todleben, written "in his usual elaborate engineering way, in which every word is used like a gabion," form a good sequel to that unconscious instruction.

Vanity Fair. A Novel without a Hero. By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. With Illustrations by the Author. New York: Harper & Brothers. 3 vols. 12mo.

In the novels of Thackeray, essay is so much mixed up with narrative, and comment with characterization, that they can hardly be thoroughly appreciated in poor editions. The temptation to skip is almost irresistible, when wisdom can be purchased only at the expense of eyesight. We are therefore glad to welcome the commencement of a new edition of his writings, over whose pages the reader can linger at his pleasure, and quietly enjoy subtilties of humor and observation which in previous perusals he overlooked. The present volumes, published by the Harpers, are among the most tasteful and comely products of the Cambridge University Press. Printed in large type on tinted paper, elegantly bound in green cloth, and with a fac-simile of the author's autograph on the cover, every copy has the appearance of being a presentation copy. No English edition of "Vanity Fair" is equal to this American one in respect either to convenience of form or beauty of mechanical execution. The illustrations are numerous, well engraved, and embody the writer's own conceptions of his scenes and characters, and are often deliciously humorous.

"Vanity Fair," though it does not include the whole extent of Thackeray's genius, is the most vigorous exhibition of its leading characteristics. In freshness of feeling, elasticity of movement, and unity of aim, it is favorably distinguished from its successors, which too often give the impression of being composed of successive accumulations of incidents and persons, that drift into the story on no principle of artistic selection and combination. The style, while it has the raciness of individual peculiarity and the careless ease of familiar gossip, is as clear, pure, and flexible as if its sentences had been subjected to repeated revision, and every pebble which obstructed its lucid and limpid flow had been laboriously removed. The characterization is almost perfect of its kind. Becky Sharp, the Marquis of Steyne, Sir Pitt Crawley and the whole Crawley family, Amelia, the Osbornes, Major Dobbin, not to mention others, are as well known to most cultivated people as their most intimate acquaintances in the Vanity Fair of the actual world. It has always seemed to us that Mr. Osborne, the father of George, a representation of the most hateful phase of English character, is one of the most vividly true and life-like of all the delineations in the book, and more of a typical personage than even Becky or the Marquis of Steyne. Thackeray's theory of characterization proceeds generally on the assumption that the acts of men and women are directed not by principle, but by instincts, selfish or amiable,—that toleration for human weakness is possible only by lowering the standard of human capacity and obligation,—and that the preliminary condition of an accurate knowledge of human character is distrust of ideals and repudiation of patterns. This view is narrow, and by no means covers all the facts of history and human life, but what relative truth it has is splendidly illustrated in "Vanity Fair." There is not a person in the book who excites the reader's respect, and not one who fails to excite his interest. The morbid quickness of the author's perceptions of the selfish element, even in his few amiable characters, is a constant source of surprise. The novel not only has no hero, but implies the non-existence of heroism. Yet the fascination of the book is indisputable, and it is due to a variety of causes besides its mere exhibition of the worldly side of life. Among these, the perfect intellectual honesty of the writer, the sad or satirical sincerity with which he gives in his evidence against human nature, is the most prominent. With all his lightness of manner, he is essentially a witness under oath, and testifies only to what he is confident he knows. Perhaps this quality, rare not only in novel-writing, but in all writing, would not compensate for the limitation of his perceptions and the repulsiveness of much that he perceives, were it not for the peculiar charm of his representation. It is here that the individuality of the man appears, and it presents a combination of sentiments and powers more original perhaps than the matter of his works. Take from "Vanity Fair" that special element of interest which comes from Thackeray's own nature, and it would lose the greater portion of its fascination. It is not so much what is done, as the way in which it is done, that surprises and delights; and the manner is always inimitable, even when the matter is common.

Seaside and Fireside Fairies. Translated from the German of George Blum and Louis Wahl. By A. L. WISTAR. Philadelphia: Ashmead & Evans.

These pretty fairy stories peep at us out of German-land through a pleasant, clear translation, and they remind us how easily the supernatural and loves to dwell in airborn castles. The beautiful instinct of reverence common to child-life is readily taken advantage of by writers for the young; but where in England we find in stories some angel-mother who discovers the treachery of her governess and teaches her own children, or a rotund uncle who tips the boys, providentially, as it seems, in Germany the protectors of children possess no nearer abode than the land of Fairy, and their presence is as rare as that of the Indian "Vanishers." Perhaps, even among American children, the tales which approximate more nearly to their experience hold the strongest attractive power; yet, in the wide range of the commingled races of the United States, there must be many children who long for stories of that dear Dream-land familiar to their thoughts, and to whom these stories would be a happy era in childhood's experience.



RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS.

Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, in February, March, April, and May, 1863. By Max Mueller, Fellow of All-Souls College, Oxford; Correspondent de l'Institut de France. Second Series. With Thirty-One Illustrations. New York. C. Scribner. 12mo. pp. 622. $3.00.

Meditations on the Essence of Christianity, and on the Religious Questions of the Day. By M. Guizot. Translated from the French, under the Superintendence of the Author. New York. C. Scribner. 12mo. pp. 356. $1.75.

The Beautiful Widow. By Mrs. Percy B. Shelley. Philadelphia. T. B. Peterson & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 244. $2.00.

The Differential Calculus: with Unusual and Particular Analysis of its Elementary Principles, and Copious Illustrations of its Practical Application. By John Spare, A. M., M. D. Boston. Bradley, Dayton, & Co. 12mo. pp. xx., 244. $2.00.

Vest-Pocket Lexicon. An English Dictionary of all except Familiar Words; including the Principal Scientific and Technical Terms, and Foreign Moneys, Weights, and Measures. By Jabez Jenkins. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott & Co. 18mo. pp. 563. 62 cts.

The American Conflict. A History of the Great Rebellion. By Horace Greeley. Volume One. Hartford. O. D. Case & Co, 8vo. pp. 648. $5.00.

THE END