Hines and Grenfell spring to their feet, and grasp the hand of the Texan. He is a godsend,—sent to do what no man of them is brave enough to do,—lead the attack on the front gateway of the prison. So they affirm, with great oaths, as they sit down, spread out the map, and explain to him the plan of operations.

Two hundred Rebel refugees from Canada, they say, and a hundred "Butternuts" from Fayette and Christian Counties, have already arrived; many more from Kentucky and Missouri are coming; and by Tuesday they expect that a thousand or twelve hundred desperate men, armed to the teeth, will be in Chicago. Taking advantage of the excitement of election-night, they propose, with this force, to attack the camp and prison. It will be divided into five parties. One squad, under Grenfell, will be held in reserve a few hundred yards from the main body, and will guard the large number of guns already provided to arm the prisoners. Another—command of which is offered to the Texan—will assault the front gateway, and engage the attention of the eight hundred troops quartered in Garrison Square. The work of this squad will be dangerous, for it will encounter a force four times its strength, well armed and supplied with artillery; but it will be speedily relieved by the other divisions. Those, under Marmaduke, Colonel Robert Anderson of Kentucky, and Brigadier-General Charles Walsh of Chicago, Commander of the American Knights, will simultaneously assail three sides of Prison Square, break down the fence, liberate the prisoners, and, taking the garrison in rear, compel a general surrender. This accomplished, small parties will be dispatched to cut the telegraph-wires and seize the railway-stations; while the main body, reinforced by the eight thousand and more prisoners, will march into the city and rendezvous in Court-House Square, which will be the base of further operations.

The first blow struck, the insurgents, will be joined by the five thousand Illini, (American Knights,) and, seizing the arms of the city,—six brass field-pieces and eight hundred Springfield muskets,—and the arms and ammunition stored in private warehouses, will begin the work of destruction. The banks will be robbed, the stores gutted, the houses of loyal men plundered, and the railway-stations, grain-elevators, and other public buildings burned to the ground. To facilitate this latter design, the water-plugs have been marked, and a force detailed to set the water running. In brief, the war will be brought home to the North; Chicago will be dealt with like a city taken by assault, given over to the torch, the sword, and the brutal lust of a drunken soldiery. On it will be wreaked all the havoc, the agony, and the desolation which three years of war have heaped upon the South; and its upgoing flames will be the torch that shall light a score of other cities to the same destruction!

It was a diabolical plan, conceived far down in hell amid the thick blackness, and brought up by the arch-fiend himself, who sat there, toying with the hideous thing, and with his cloven foot beating a merry tune on the death's-head and cross-bones under the table.

As he concludes, Hines turns to the new comer,—

"Well, my boy, what do you say? Will you take the post of honor and of danger?"

The Texan draws a long breath, and then, through his barred teeth, blurts out,—

"I will!"

On those two words hang thousands of lives, millions of money!

"You are a trump!" shouts Grenfell, springing to his feet "Give us your hand upon it!"

A general hand-shaking follows, and during it, Hines and another man announce that their time is up:—

"It is nearly twelve. Fielding and I never stay in this d——d town after midnight. You are fools, or you wouldn't."

Suddenly, as these words are uttered, a slouched hat, listening at the keyhole, pops up, moves softly through the hall, and steals down the stairway. Half an hour later the Texan opens the private door of the Richmond House, looks cautiously around for a moment, and then stalks on towards the heart of the city. The moon is down, the lamps burn dimly, but after him glide the shadows.

In a room at the Tremont House, not far from this time, the Commandant is walking and waiting, when the door opens, and a man enters. His face is flushed, his teeth are clenched, his eyes flashing. He is stirred to the depths of his being. Can he be the Texan?

"What is the matter?" asks the Commandant.

The other sits down, and, as if only talking to himself, tells him. One hour has swept away the fallacies of his lifetime. He sees the Rebellion as it is,—the outbreak and outworking of that spirit which makes hell horrible. Hitherto, that night, he has acted from love, not duty. Now he bows only to the All-Right and the All-Beautiful, and in his heart is that psalm of work, sung by one of old, and by all true men since the dawn of creation: "Here am I, Lord! Send me!"

The first gray of morning is streaking the east, when he goes forth to find a hiding-place. The sun is not up, and the early light comes dimly through the misty clouds, but about him still hang the long, dark shadows. This is a world of shadows. Only in the atmosphere which soon inclosed him is there no night and no shadow.

Soon the Texan's escape is known at the camp, and a great hue-and-cry follows. Handbills are got out, a reward is offered, and by that Sunday noon his name is on every street-corner. Squads of soldiers and police ransack the city and invade every Rebel asylum. Strange things are brought to light, and strange gentry dragged out of dark closets; but nowhere is found the Texan. The search is well done, for the pursuers are in dead earnest; and, Captain Hines, if you don't trust him now, you are a fool, with all your astuteness!

So the day wears away and the night cometh. Just at dark a man enters the private door of the Tremont House, and goes up to a room where the Commandant is waiting. He sports a light rattan, wears a stove-pipe hat, a Sunday suit, and is shaven and shorn like unto Samson. What is the Commandant doing with such a dandy? Soon the gas is lighted; and lo, it is the Texan! But who in creation would know him? The plot, he says, thickens. More "Butternuts" have arrived, and the deed will be done on Tuesday night, as sure as Christmas is coming. He has seen his men,—two hundred, picked, and every one clamoring for pickings. Hines, who carries the bag, is to give him ten thousand greenbacks, to stop their mouths and stuff their pockets, at nine in the morning.

"And to-morrow night we'll have them, sure! And, how say you, give you shackles and a dungeon?" asks the Commandant, his mouth wreathing with grim wrinkles.

"Anything you like. Anything to blot out my record of treason."

He has learned the words,—they are on his heart, not to be razed out forever.

When he is gone, up and down the room goes the Commandant, as is his fashion. He is playing a desperate game. The stake is awful. He holds the ace of trumps,—but shall he risk the game upon it? At half past eight he sits down and writes a dispatch to his General. In it he says:—

"My force is, as you know, too weak and much overworked,—only eight hundred men, all told, to guard between eight and nine thousand prisoners. I am certainly not justified in waiting to take risks, and mean to arrest these officers, if possible, before morning."

The dispatch goes off, but still the Commandant is undecided. If he strikes to-night, Hines may escape, for the fox has a hole out of town, and may keep under cover till morning. He is the king-devil, and much the Commandant wants to cage him. Besides, he holds the bag, and the Texan will go out of prison a penniless man among strangers. Those ten thousand greenbacks are lawful prize, and should be the country's dower with the maiden. But are not republics grateful? Did not one give a mansion to General McClellan? Ah, Captain Hines, that was lucky for you, for, beyond a doubt, it saved your bacon!

The Commandant goes back to camp, sends for the police, and gets his blue-coats ready. At two o'clock they swoop to the prey, and before daybreak a hundred birds are in the talons of the eagle. Such another haul of buzzards and night-hawks never was made since Gabriel caged the Devil and the dark angels.[F]

At the Richmond House Grenfell was taken in bed with the Texan. They were clapped into irons, and driven off to the prison together. A fortnight later, the Texan, relating these details to a stranger, while the Commandant was sitting by at his desk writing, said,—

"Words cannot describe my relief when those handcuffs were put upon us. At times before, the sense of responsibility almost overpowered me. Then I felt like a man who has just come into a fortune. The wonder to me now is, how the Colonel could have trusted so much to a Rebel."

"Trusted!" echoed the Commandant, looking up from his writing. "I had faith in you; I thought you wouldn't betray me; but I trusted your own life in your own hands, that was all. Too much was at stake to do more. Your every step was shadowed, from the moment you left this camp till you came back to it in irons. Two detectives were constantly at your back, sworn to take your life, if you wavered for half a second."

"Is that true?" asked the Texan in a musing way, but without moving a muscle. "I didn't know it, but I felt it in the air!"

In the room at the Richmond House, on the table around which were discussed their hellish plans, was found a slip of paper, and on it, in pencil, was scrawled the following:—

"COLONEL,—You must leave this house to-night. Go to the Briggs House.

"J. FIELDING."



Fielding was the assumed name of the Rebel who burrowed with Hines out of town, where not even his fellow-fiends could find him. Did the old fox scent the danger? Beyond a doubt he did. Another day, and the Texan's life might have been forfeit. Another day, and the camp might have been sprung upon a little too suddenly! So the Commandant was none too soon; and who that reads this can doubt that through it all he was led and guided by the good Providence that guards his country?

But what said Chicago, when it awoke in the morning? Let one of its own organs answer.

"A shiver of genuine horror passed over Chicago yesterday. Thousands of citizens, who awoke to the peril hanging over their property and their heads in the form of a stupendous foray upon the city from Camp Douglas, led by Rebel officers in disguise and Rebel guerrillas without disguise, and concocted by home Copperheads, whose houses had been converted into Rebel arsenals, were appalled as though an earthquake had opened at their feet.... Who can picture the horrors to follow the letting loose of nine thousand Rebel prisoners upon a sleeping city, all unconscious of the coming avalanche? With arms and ammunition stored at convenient locations, with confederates distributed here and there, ready for the signal of conflagration, the horrors of the scene could scarcely be paralleled in savage history. One hour of such a catastrophe would destroy the creations of a quarter of a century, and expose the homes of nearly two hundred thousand souls to every conceivable form of desecration."[G]

But the men of Chicago not only talked, they acted. They went to the polls and voted for the Union; and so told the world what honest Illinois thought of treason.

More arrests were made, more arms taken, but the great blow was struck and the great work over. Its head gone, the Conspiracy was dead, and it only remained to lay out its lifeless trunk for the burial. Yet, even as it lay in death, men shuddered to look on the hideous thing out of which had gone so many devils.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] See Fremantle's "Three Months in the Southern States," p. 148.

[E] Detective's description.

[F] Since the foregoing was written the Commandant's official report has been published. In reference to these arrests, he says, in a dispatch to General Cook, dated Camp Douglas, Nov. 7, 4 o'clock, A. M.:—

"Have made during the night the following arrests of Rebel officers, escaped prisoners of war, and citizens in connection with them:—

"Morgan's Adjutant-General, Colonel G. St. Leger Grenfell, in company with J. T. Shanks, [the Texan,] an escaped prisoner of war, at Richmond House; Colonel Vincent Marmaduke, brother of General Marmaduke; Brigadier-General Charles Walsh, of the 'Sons of Liberty'; Captain Cantrill, of Morgan's command; Charles Traverse (Butternut). Cantrill and Traverse arrested in Walsh's house, in which were found two cart-loads of large size revolvers, loaded and capped, two hundred stands of muskets loaded, and ammunition. Also seized two boxes of guns concealed in a room in the city. Also arrested Buck Morris, Treasurer of 'Sons of Liberty,' having complete proof of his assisting Shanks to escape, and plotting to release prisoners at this camp.

"Most of these Rebel officers were in this city on the same errand in August last, their plan being to raise an insurrection and release prisoners of war at this camp. There are many strangers and suspicious persons in the city, believed to be guerrillas and Rebel soldiers. Their plan was to attack the camp on election-night. All prisoners arrested are in camp. Captain Nelson and A. C. Coventry, of the police, rendered very efficient service.

"B. J. SWEET, Col. Com."

In relation to the general operations I have detailed, the Commandant in this Report writes as follows:—

"Adopting measures which proved effective to detect the presence and identify the persons of the officers and leaders and ascertain their plans, it was manifest that they had the means of gathering a force considerably larger than the little garrison then guarding between eight and nine thousand prisoners of war at Camp Douglas, and that, taking advantage of the excitement and the large number of persons who would ordinarily fill the streets on election-night, they intended to make a night attack on and surprise this camp, release and arm the prisoners of war, cut the telegraph-wires, burn the railroad-depots, seize the banks and stores containing arms and ammunition, take possession of the city, and commence a campaign for the release of other prisoners of war in the States of Illinois and Indiana, thus organizing an army to effect and give success to the general uprising so long contemplated by the 'Sons of Liberty.'"

[G] Chicago Tribune, Nov. 8, 1864.



REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

1. The Hillyars and the Burtons. A Tale of Two Families. By HENRY KINGSLEY. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

2. Christian's Mistake. By the Author of "John Halifax." New York: Harper & Brothers.

3. Uncle Silas. A Tale of Bartram-Haugh. By J. S. LE FANU. New York: Harper & Brothers.

While the American popularity of Charles Kingsley has been rather declining, the credit of his brother Henry has been gradually rising. Those who have complained of something rather shallow and sketchy in some of his former books will find far more solid and faithful work in this. Indeed, he undertakes rather more than he can carry through, and the capacious plot, well handled at first, gets into some confusion and ends in a rather feeble result. To deal with two large families, distributing part of each in England and part in Australia, to interlink them in the most complicated way in all genealogical and topographical relations, demands a structural genius like that of Eugene Sue; and though Mr. Kingsley grapples stoutly with the load, he staggers under it. His descriptions of scenery are as vivid as his brother's, and he exhibits far less arrogance and no theology. There are in the book single scenes of great power, and there has never, perhaps, been a more vivid portraiture of lower-middle-class life in England, or of the manner in which it has been galvanized into a semi-American development in Australia. The results of that expatriation upon more cultivated classes, however, appear such as we should be sorry to call even demi-semi-American. Fancy discovering in California a young lady in book-muslin, the daughter of cultivated parents, who remarks under excitement,—"Well, if this don't bang wattle-gum, I wish I may be buried in the bush in a sheet of bark! Why, I feel all over centipedes and copper-lizards!" Still, there may be some confusion in the dialects used in the book, as there is hardly a person in it, patrician or plebeian, on either side of the equator, who does not address everybody else as "old man" or "old girl," whenever the occasion calls for tenderness. It may be very expressive, but it implies a slight monotony in the language of British emotion.

There is rather a want of central unity to the book, but, so far as it has a main thread, it seems to be the self-devotion of a sister who prefers her brother to her lover. This furnishes a pleasant change from the recent favorite theme of ladies who prefer their lovers to their husbands.

To this latter class of novels, based on what may be called the centrifugal forces of wedlock, "Christian's Mistake" perhaps belongs. Its clear and practised style is refreshing, after the comparative crudeness of some other recent treatises on the same theme; the characters are human, not wooden, and the whole treatment healthful and noble.

"Uncle Silas" is the climax of the sensational, and goes as far beyond Mrs. Wood as she beyond Miss Braddon, or she beyond reason and comfortable daylight reading.

The Life and Times of Sir William Johnson, Bart. By WILLIAM L. STONE. Albany: J. Munsell.

We well remember the interest with which, more than twenty years ago, we heard that Mr. William L. Stone was preparing a life of Sir William Johnson. His collection of material was very large, comprising several thousands of original letters, besides a great mass of other papers. He had written, however, but a small part of his work, when death put a period to his labors, and the documents which he had gathered with such enthusiastic industry seemed destined to remain a crude mass of undigested material. We think it fortunate for all students of American history, that a son, bearing his name and inheriting in the fullest measure his capacity for the work, has undertaken its completion, partly from affection and a sense of duty, and partly, it is evident, from a natural aptitude.

In the whole range of American history no other personage appears so remarkable in character and so important in influence, and at the same time so little known to general readers, as Sir William Johnson. The reason is, that his great powers were exercised on a theatre which, though vast and wellnigh boundless, was exterior to the familiar field of political action. Yet on the single influence of this man depended at times the prosperity and growth of all the British American colonies. Could France have won his influence in her behalf, England could not have broken that rival power in America without an exhausting expenditure of men and treasure, and without leaders of a different stamp from the blockheads with whom she long continued to paralyze her Cisatlantic armies. At the darkest crisis of the last French War, the influence of Johnson alone saved the English colonies from the miseries which would have ensued from the enmity of the powerful confederacy of the Six Nations; and for many years after, in his capacity of Superintendent of Indian Affairs, he continued to exercise an unparalleled power over the tribes of the interior, soothing their jealousies, composing their quarrels, and protecting them with equal justice, benevolence, and ability from the fraud and outrage of encroaching whites.

Johnson settled on the Mohawk in his youth, and immediately fell into relations with his savage neighbors. He was accustomed to join their sports and assume their dress; and it is an evidence of the native force and dignity of his character, that, in thus taking a course which commonly provoked their contempt, he gained their affection, without diminishing their respect and admiration. He gained a military reputation—not unqualified—by the Battle of Lake George, in 1755, where he commanded the British force; and he won brighter laurels by the capture of Fort Niagara in 1759. His true fame rests, however, on his civic achievements,—on the tact, energy, and judgment, the humanity and breadth of views, with which he managed the important interest placed in his hands. It would be hard to say whether the Indians or the Colonists profited most by his influence; for while with a fearless adroitness he overthrew the schemes of hungry speculators, he averted from peaceful settlers many a peril of whose existence, perhaps, they were unaware. He gave peace to the borders, and sweetened, as far as lay in the power of man, that bitter cup which had fallen to the lot of the wretched races of the forest.

Mr. Stone's book covers a period extending from a few years before the French War of 1745 to the death of Johnson in 1774. In accordance with its title, it is largely occupied with the "times" as well as with the "life" of its subject. In fact, it is a history of the period, relating with considerable detail contemporary events with which Johnson was connected only indirectly. This detracts from its character as a work of purely original research, to which, as far as regards the personal history of its subject, it is preeminently entitled.

Johnson's vast correspondence relates chiefly to matters of public interest, and supplies comparatively few of those details of private life which give liveliness to pictures of scenes and character. The book, in respect to execution, is perhaps necessarily unequal. The first seven chapters were written by the father of Mr. Stone, who endeavored to continue the work on its original plan. The attempt, always difficult, to carry out a design conceived in the mind of another, seems at the outset to have somewhat hampered the author; but as he proceeds with his work, his excellent qualification for it becomes more and more apparent. He is thorough and faithful in the use of his great store of material, and clear, vigorous, and often picturesque in his narrative. The period with which he deals is one of the most interesting and most important in American history, and the treatment is worthy of the theme. The hackneyed phrase, so often meaningless, is in the case of this book emphatically true,—that no library of American history can be said to be complete without it.

1. The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living. By JEREMY TAYLOR, D. D. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

2. The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying. By JEREMY TAYLOR, D. D. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

The beautiful meditations of Jeremy Taylor, written in the intervals of the great English civil war, seem appropriate enough amidst these closing days of our own contest. While the English language remains, his delicious sentences will find readers and lovers; and the endless variety of choice learning with which his pages are gemmed would make them always delightful, were his own part valueless.

This copiousness of allusion makes no small work for his American editor, since even the latest English editions leave much to be supplied. It is an enormous undertaking to verify and complete all these manifold citations, and yet the present editor has been content with nothing less. Editors so conscientious are not easily to be found; and it is to the honor of Little, Brown & Company that they habitually secure such services, and thus make their reprints almost as creditable to our literature as if they were original works.

History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America. By ABEL STEVENS, LL. D., Author of "The History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century called Methodism," etc. Volumes I. and II. New York: Carleton & Porter.

The history of a religions denomination is in itself a matter of no small importance. Taken in connection with other ecclesiastical bodies as a portion of the data in estimating the national development, it is still more valuable. In the churches inhere almost exclusively the sources of influence available for the moral culture of the people. The pulpit, the pastorate, and the various other ecclesiastical appliances are potent in effects which cannot be produced by other causes. The higher educational institutions are under the direction of the religious bodies; while our common schools, though properly excluding sectarian influence, are yet indirectly and not improperly affected by the religious character of the community. Not only does the man who undertakes to write history, while ignoring the religious element, give us an incompetent and false representation, but no one can become a respectable student of history who does not carefully consider the religious development of society as proceeding under the guidance of the several denominational bodies.

Up to about the period of the Revolution the principal religious establishments in this country were the Puritans, occupying practically the whole field in New England, the Presbyterians preponderating in the Middle Colonies, and the Episcopalians in the South. There were other elements, as the Quakers and the Baptists. The former, though not without a considerable influence in shaping the national character, were less marked in their effect. The latter, though already an important body and destined to become still more so, and though in fervor and aggressiveness subsequently approximating the Methodists, were as yet so little distinct from the Puritans that we may regard them as substantially one with the latter.

Presbyterianism and Episcopalianism were then, as they have been ever since, conservative in their character and tendencies. Puritanism was radical in its views and sentiments, yet lacking that diffusive propagandist power inhering in conventional bodies. Methodism, coming in, supplied this lack, and at the same time appealed to vast masses which had not before been reached by religious influences. An argument might be found here, were any needed, in support of the voluntary system of religious establishments, as more perfectly adapting themselves to the various wants and peculiarities of the different classes of people. Suggestions also arise concerning the equilibrium so necessary in a free government, for the proper settlement of moral, social, and political questions,—an equilibrium between the conservative and progressive tendencies, which is far more likely to be attained when left free from any direction by the state.

The present year completes a full century since the first Methodist societies were formed in this country. The name of a church was not assumed till some years later. It had been about thirty years since the commencement of the remarkable religious movement in England, under the Wesleys and Whitefield. It was introduced here by some Irish immigrants of German ancestry. Missionaries were very soon sent over from England, and in no long time native preachers were raised up. The time was propitious and the field promising for the success of the simple, cheap, and every way available appliances of the new religious agency. The rapidly increasing and widely scattering population could not be adequately supplied by any of the ecclesiastical bodies which operated only through settled pastorates. These new propagandists, confined to no locality, but going everywhere with their off-hand discourse, their eagerness "to preach the word" to congregations of any size, of any character, and in any place, with their rude, but vigorous style of oratory, and direct, outspoken address, attracted and affected whole communities to an extraordinary degree. It is true, they were not always treated with much deference, and sometimes they were the objects of abuse and violence, in which their lives were imperilled. But still they pursued their way through the wilderness, seeking the lost sheep. An anecdote illustrates the persistency of this class of preachers, and also the grim humor with which, in spite of themselves, they sometimes invested their rather startling announcements. In those early days there was one Richmond Nolley, a preacher in the new Southern country. He was a man of great zeal, energy, and courage, and omitted no opportunity of doing good to persons of any color or condition in whatever obscure corner he could find them. On one occasion, while travelling, he came upon a fresh wagon-track, and following it, he discovered an emigrant family, who had just reached the spot where they intended to make their home. The man, who was putting out his team, saw at once by the bearing and costume of the stranger what his calling was, and exclaimed,—

"What! another Methodist preacher! I quit Virginia to get out of the way of them, and went to a new settlement in Georgia, where I thought I should be quite beyond their reach; but they got my wife and daughter into the church. Then, in this late purchase, Choctaw Corner, I found a piece of good land, and was sure I should have some peace of the preachers; but here is one before my wagon is unloaded."

"My friend," said Nolley, "if you go to heaven, you'll find Methodist preachers there; and if to hell, I'm afraid you'll find some there; and you see how it is in this world. So you had better make terms with us and be at peace."

Dr. Stevens, who has acquired some celebrity by his excellent history of the Wesleyan movement in England, has displayed in the present volume the same marked abilities which made his previous work so popular. There is not only evidence of laborious and conscientious diligence in gathering up, sometimes from almost inaccessible sources, the requisite materials, but the skill displayed in their arrangement and treatment, so as to make the narrative an absorbingly attractive one, is eminently praiseworthy. As a history, the work is not only creditable in a denominational and ecclesiastical point of view, but it is a valuable contribution to our national literature.

Much of this success doubtless may be attributable to the nature of the subject; for it is not easy to conceive of any movement, and especially a religious one, in which the melodramatic, mingled here and there with both the tragic and comic, forms so large a natural element. There was a new country, a rude society, daring adventures, great perils, marvellous escapes, terrible hardships, the stern, harsh realities of pioneer life, grand and unexpected successes, all which, seen from the distance of the present, have a romantic coloring, and produce an exhilarating effect. Any ordinary ability would have made a readable story out of such materials; but to make a history worthy of the name required the hand of a master.

There is something, perhaps, rather fanciful in the coincidence or parallel which the author would make out between the enterprise of John Wesley and that of James Watt. Yet it is not devoid of interest. While the one, toiling in poverty and obscurity, was preparing an invention which should incalculably multiply industrial productiveness and give a mightier impulse to modern civilization than any other material element, the other, incurring the opprobrium of his ecclesiastical order, and regarded as a reprehensible agitator and fanatic, was inaugurating a movement which should prove one of the most extraordinary and far-reaching of any in modern times; and both these agencies—the one employing a mighty material force in the interest of society, the other setting in operation vast moral energies for the uplifting of the masses—were to have their grandest results in the New World.

Dr. Stevens is especially happy in his sketches of character; only, possibly, in indulging too much his inclination for this sort of writing, he repeats himself, and in the recurrence of pet phrases wearies the reader. Yet some of these are very good. The description of Francis Asburey, the "Pioneer Bishop," is one not often excelled. He was one of the early missionaries sent over by Wesley, and became the great leader in the work and the principal organizer of the ecclesiastical machinery. He was the first bishop ordained in the country,—and a very unique and remarkable bishop he was. There was for him no splendid palace, no magnificent cathedral, no princely income. His salary was sixty-four dollars a year, his diocese a whole continent, to visit which he must find his way without roads, through almost illimitable woods, over nearly inaccessible mountains, floundering through swamps, wading or swimming vast rivers, scorched by hot suns, bitten by winter frosts, drenched with pitiless rains, smothered by driving snows, and often in divers dangers of death. His travelling equipage was not a chariot and four, but saddlebags and one. Often sick and suffering, he seldom allowed himself to be detained from his appointments. He went wherever he sent his preachers, and shared with them all the toils and privations incident to the work. He annually made the tour of the States, travelling never less than five thousand, and often more than six thousand, miles a year. He usually preached once every day, and three times on Sunday. A man, of course, of little literary culture, yet he possessed great good sense, a genial spirit, and large ability as an organizer. To him more than other men the denomination owes its early efficiency and extraordinary success.

The two volumes before us embrace a period of scarcely twenty-five years,—the period, as the author terms it, of the "Planting and Training" of the church. Several other volumes will be required to complete the history. But the future volumes can hardly be of so much general interest as these already published.

Arctic Researches and Life among the Esquimaux; being the Narrative of an Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin in the Years 1860, 1861, and 1862. By CHARLES FRANCIS HALL. With Maps and One Hundred Illustrations. New York: Harper and Brothers.

This book, with the Preface written on board the bark Monticello, June 30, 1864, when the writer was again bound for the Arctic regions, is in some respects the most remarkable account yet rendered to us of life and experiences near the North Pole. The purpose of the undertaking was to find something yet more satisfactory with regard to the fate of the hundred and five men who accompanied Sir John Franklin. Mr. Hall was convinced that life among the Esquimaux was possible, and that in no other way could trustworthy information be obtained from them. His indomitable spirit in pursuing this object is beyond praise. He could not be daunted. The result of this three-years' sojourn was the discovery of relics of the Frobisher expedition, by which the possibility of discovering news, at least, of the men of Franklin's expedition was made clear. The unfortunate loss of his expedition-boat made the journey to Boothia and King William's Land impossible; but Mr. Hall's prolonged existence during nearly three years among the "Innuits" determined his immediate departure again for those regions as soon as he could return and be properly fitted out for a second trip from the "States."

In this naive history we learn to look at life from the Esquimaux point of view. Mr. Hall's sympathetic nature fitted him for this difficult task; and having accomplished it well, he is enabled, by his vivid descriptions, to invite the reader to see what he saw, and to sit by the "Innuit" fireside. We must confess, however, it is looking at the world from a very blubber-y point of view; but since it is in the cause of science and humanity, we rise from the reading, which is extremely interesting, with a high respect for Mr. Hall and renewed faith in the result of his undertaking.

In so short a space there is no room for extracts, yet without them we can give little idea of the simple, picturesque character of the narrative. Mr. Hall took the Innuits by the hand as brothers, not as savages, and the result is large because of his wisdom.

1. La Fiera. Commedia in Cinque Atti. Di ALBERTO NOTA. Con Note Inglesi. Boston: De Vries, Ibarra e Compagnia.

2. La Rosa dell' Alpi. Novella di FRANCESCO DALL' ONGARO. Con Note Inglesi. Boston: De Vries, Ibarra e Compagnia.

The author of an agreeable article in the "North American Review," entitled "Recent Italian Comedy," says that the plays of Alberto Nota are no longer acted or reprinted. The American press straightway refutes him by a neat edition of the comedy of "The Fair," with notes for English readers. It is an entertaining little production, in spite of the above critic, having rather effective incidents and situations, and easy, if not brilliant, dialogue. The plot may be described as being French, and the moral as English; that is, the jealous wife outwits the faithless husband, instead of the opposite result.

The "Collection De Vries" also introduces to us the more familiar and contemporary name of Dall' Ongaro, to whom the critics attribute more dramatic genius than is conceded to any other living poet of Italy. The story of "La Rosa dell' Alpi" is simply and beautifully written, and paints the innocent career of a poor servant—maiden with something of the grace of George Sand.

It will be a good thing for students to read these specimens of easy colloquial Italian; so that they need not, when they visit the beloved-land, do their shopping exclusively in Dantean phrases, as Mrs. Siddons shopped in Shakspeare.

A Treatise on Ordnance and Armor, with an Appendix relating to Gun-Cotton, Hooped Guns, etc. By ALEXANDER L. HOLLEY, B. P. New York: Van Nostrand.

King James I. is reported to have said of iron armor, that it was an excellent thing: one could get no harm, in it, nor do any. Yet armor has had but a brief respite from service; banished temporarily from human backs, it is being restored for more wholesale service: it is extended over ships and fortifications, and so thickened as to resist shot and shell. The very title of this book marks the progress in the history of war. Hereafter ordnance and armor are two correlatives, never to be considered apart. The progress in offensive and defensive improvements keeps the balance of fighting humanity pretty nearly even thus far; as in the development of a young lobster the claws and cuirass grow simultaneously.

Will ships or guns prove the stronger at last? No one can foresee. A single fifteen-inch ball from the Monitor Weehawken disabled the iron-clad Atlanta at three hundred yards, where eleven-inch balls had fallen powerless from the armor. A similar missile shattered the sides of the Tennessee, penetrating five inches of iron and two feet of oak, against which all other shot had failed. What can resist such balls? A mere pile of sand can resist them, if there are spades enough to carve it into a fort; but as sand cannot be carved into a ship, we must resort to new devices there. The larger the ship, the greater the danger; so suppose we try making it smaller. Let us concentrate our ordnance and our armor: put thicker plating on our Monitor of eight hundred tons than the Warrior of six thousand can support, and place near the centre of motion of the little vessel two heavier guns than the weighty one can carry in broadside out upon her capacious ribs. This game of giants is growing formidable; and with such a concentration of skill and power, the fate of nations may be determined by a single blow.

Other novel questions come up, as we carry our researches farther. Try your strength by throwing a small cannon-ball at a thin board-partition; you will find that the missile will split or crush the board, but not penetrate it. Fire a bullet at the same target, and it will penetrate, but neither crush nor split. Balance a plank on its edge, so that a pistol-ball thrown from the hand will knock it down; you may yet riddle it through and through by the same balls from a revolver, and leave it standing. Bring this commonplace fact to bear upon the question, how to destroy an iron-clad; shall we destroy it by punching holes through it, or by splitting and crushing? It is a difficult problem, and many pages of Mr. Holley's book are devoted to the discussion of the light-shot and the heavy-shot systems.

For these problems, and such as these, we need a new military literature, embodying the vast results which a few years of foreign experiment and home experience have furnished. We need a scientific treatise on the whole subject of ordnance, regarding, for instance, the strains of different charges and projectiles in large and small bores, and the work done by projectiles and by cannon-metals having different properties, under statical and sudden strains. This want Mr. Holley's book does not undertake to fill, being in its structure somewhat diffuse, and, as it were, of unequal expansion: the object being rather to furnish the maximum of material for a systematic treatise, than to write the treatise itself.

It has therefore the inestimable merits, and also some of the defects, of a pioneer compilation. On many subordinate points, the details are multiplied almost to weariness, while on some points more important there are hardly any details at all. But this is simply because the author could obtain the one class of facts and not the other. It is a faithful registration, and the only one, of a vast multitude of experiments and observations, which were absolutely inaccessible in any other form. It is said to cause much wonder in England how its English facts and statistics were obtained at all; and it is certain that Mr. Holley must have used his opportunities of personal observation in a manner worthy of the curiosity attributed to his race. We have in this book the substantial results of the vast and costly English experiments; while the more momentous results of our own practice, so familiar to us, seem still unfamiliar across the water. This gives our nation a great advantage, and renders it impossible to produce, at present, in Europe, a work so encyclopaedic as this. It is not merely the best book, but the only book, on the theme it treats: there is no other account of the structure and results of modern standard ordnance. That it is the work of a civil engineer, and not of a military or naval man, gives it an additional interest; and the author may have owed to his position some foreign opportunities which would have been refused to an officer. The book is printed in the usual superb style of Van Nostrand, and is in all respects an honor to the literature of the country.

Historical View of the American Revolution. By GEORGE WASHINGTON GREENE. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

Either of the two objects which Mr. Greene aimed to accomplish in preparing the materials of this volume demanded on his part the possession of large historical knowledge, and the best abilities for its judicious use. The contents of the volume were made to do service, first, as a series of twelve lectures before the Lowell Institute, addressed to a large and mixed audience, possessing generally a high average of intelligence, and exhibiting, by their voluntary presence, an interest on which a lecturer may largely rely. The second object of the author, in the present publication of his Lectures, was to contribute to the best form of our popular literature a volume which may be regarded either as introductory to, or as a substitute for, an extended course of reading on its subject-matter, according to the leisure and capacity of those who may possess themselves of it. We must congratulate alike the lecturer and the author for very marked success in the adaptation of his materials and in the treatment of his subject so as to answer equally well the wants of good listeners and of sympathetic readers.

The great perplexity of a lecturer, who has given him an hour on twelve evenings, two in a week, for dealing before a mixed audience with such a subject as the American War of Independence, must be in deciding for himself, without consultation with his hearers, how much previous knowledge he may take for granted in them. He cannot name his authorities, much less quote them to any great extent. On some vexed points the simple fact that sharp and dividing issues of controverted opinions have been agitated about them must virtually compel him almost to pass them wholly by, seeing that he cannot adequately discuss them, and that any brief and positive utterance upon them would seem to be lacking in judicial fairness. The exigencies and temptations of a lecture-room are also sadly provocative of that rhetorical bombast and exaggeration which, having been so lavishly and offensively indulged on our Fourth of July and other commemorative occasions in the supposed interests of popular patriotism, have brought our whole national literature under a reproach hardly deserved. Mr. Greene, from his long residence abroad, has heard and known too much of this reproach to have risked getting even under the shadow of it.

We believe it is a well-established fact, that both in oral and in literary dealings with historical subjects, the more thorough and comprehensive the knowledge possessed by any one who proposes to instruct others, the more concisely as well as the more correctly will he present his matter. He knows how to adjust the proportions of interest in his main and incidental themes. By this test we should judge Mr. Greene to be most faithfully conversant with his subject, and to have had his knowledge stored up in his mind, uncommunicated, long enough to have well digested and assimilated it. The admirable division of his theme for treatment under twelve distinct, though closely related topics, shows something better than ingenuity, or a skilful arrangement of a bill of fare for twelve entertainments. These topics are,—The Causes of the Revolution; Its Phases; The Congress; Congress and the State Governments; Finances of the Revolution; Its Diplomacy; Its Army; Its Campaigns; The Foreign Element of the Revolution; Its Martyrs; Its Literature, in Prose; and in Poetry. An Appendix gives us a Chronological Outline of Historical Events; Statistical Tables; and an Address of Officers of the Southern Army to General Greene.

For completeness' sake, we could have wished that the author, if not the lecturer, might have indulged himself, and pleased and instructed his readers, by presenting under one more topic, or under a miscellaneous category, the resources of the American Colonies at the date of the Revolution, what they had besides land and water; the characteristics of the diverse elements of the population; the manufacturing interests, which had begun to be ingeniously and effectively pursued here, notwithstanding the repressive hostility of England to their introduction; and the distinctive qualities of our farmers, sea-men, professional men, and village politicians. But it is ungracious to ask for more than there is in this compact and most admirable volume. It is written with a severely good taste, in a spirit of candor and generosity, with stern fidelity to truth in relating things honorable and humiliating; and it will surely excite to wide and diligent reading those who through its pages make their first acquaintance with its subject. There are in it many finely drawn and artistic portraits of men of mark, especially of Franklin, Lafayette, Steuben, James Otis, and Josiah Quincy. In no single volume can foreign readers find what is here told so fully, so simply, and so well.

Lectures on the Science of Language. By MAX MUeLLER, M. A. Second Series. New York: Charles Scribner.

Voltaire defined Etymology as a science where vowels signify nothing and consonants very little. This is so far true that even the wisest books on Language affect one, after all, like a series of brilliant puns. More important merits than this must, no doubt, be attributed to Max Mueller; but, after all, so wayward is he and so whimsical, such a lover of paradox and of digression, that he must perpetually exasperate that sedate race of men whom Philology is supposed to have peculiarly chosen for its own. In this second series of Lectures, especially, "we have been at a great feast of languages, and have stolen the scraps."

Beginning the volume mildly with a demure introduction, we suddenly are over head and ears in "dialectic regeneration," which seems like theology, only that it introduces us to a mild baby-talk in that wonderful language, the Annamitic, where the sentence "ba ba ba ba" means, "Three ladies gave a box on the ear to the favorite of the prince." Then comes Bishop Wilkins's "universal language," then a discussion of Locke, then the theory of harmonics, and then many pages of anatomical plates. Then phonetic changes; followed by a chapter on "Grimm's Law," which would give work enough for a lifetime. We next plunge into botany, and have a whole chapter on the "words for fir, oak, and beech," which shows that the author, like our own Mr. Marsh, has studied the literal roots as well as the symbolic. Later, we come to astronomy, whence one of our author's favorite theories conducts us into the Greek mythology, to which two whole lectures are given. Then comes another chapter, tracing the "myths of the dawn" still farther back toward the dim origin of the Aryan race; and the book closes with a chapter on Modern Mythology, of which some twenty pages are given to an exhaustive treatise, anatomical and historical, on the Barnacle Goose. This brings us round handsomely to Locke and Sir William Hamilton once more, and there leaves us.

What change has come over the accomplished and eloquent man who was wisely transplanted to England to teach us Anglo-Saxons what scholarship meant, and who made his first series of Lectures a model of clever and effective statement? He congratulates himself, in the introduction to this volume, on having left out all that was merely elementary. This is true in respect to philology, perhaps, but he has certainly contrived to introduce the elements of a great many other sciences. No matter; he stated in the first volume all the principal points with which his reputation is identified; and it is very entertaining, though somewhat unexpected, to find the new one filled with all manner of spicy prolusions—mingled with a few delusions—from his commonplace book. Certainly the learning of these Lectures is unequalled, even by his former exhibitions in that line; and our Cisatlantic standard of attainment seems rather scanty beside this vast affluence.

There is also a certain wayward, heroic, Ruskin-like self-contradiction about Mueller, which one learns rather to enjoy. He claims that "all phonetic corruption proceeds from degeneracy," and yet has presently to shield himself behind the paradoxical proverb, that "lazy people take the most trouble," and so the corrupted vocables are often harder to speak. He says repeatedly that "sound etymology has nothing to do with sound"; yet he approves phonography, holding that spelling signifies even less than sound,—which is contrary to the usual opinion of philologists. Nevertheless his book is "full of the seeds of things"; no one else could have written it, and no one can afford not to read it.

THE END