that it dares even to oppose itself, with a distinct confession of its base purposes, against the only free, beneficent, and hope-giving government in the world,—­from the triumph of such a system and over such a government there is not the shadow of a hope, but rather the widest possible field for dismal apprehension.  From this barbarism we have everything to fear; and the only way to successfully oppose it is through the movements of war.  Only through a triumph gained in the battle-field, and held decisive for all future time, can we, as a nation, make our way out of the fatal entanglements of this present time into the bright and glorious heritage of the future.

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REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

My Diary, North and South.  By W.H.  RUSSELL.  Boston:  T.O.H.P.  Burnham, pp. xxii., 602.

Plutarch, as a patriotic Boeotian, felt called on to write a tract concerning the malice of Herodotus in having told some unpleasant truths about the Thebans; and many of our countrymen have shown themselves as Boeotian, at least, if not as patriotic, in their diatribes against Mr. Russell, who is certainly very far from being an Herodotus, least of all in that winning simplicity of style which made him so dangerous in the eyes of Plutarch.  It was foolish to take Mr. Russell at his own valuation, to elevate a clever Irish reporter of the London “Times” into a representative of England; but it was still more foolish, in attacking him, to mistake violence for force, and sensible people will be apt to think that there must have been some truth in criticisms which were resented with such unreasoning clamor.  It is only too easy to force the growth of those national antipathies which ripen the seeds of danger and calamity to mankind; for there are few minds that are not capacious enough for a prejudice, and it has sometimes seemed as if, in our hasty resentment of the littlenesses of Englishmen, we were in danger of forgetting the greatness of England.  A nation risks nothing in being underrated; the real peril is in underrating and misunderstanding a rival who may at any moment become an antagonist,—­who will almost certainly become such, if we do our best to help him in it.  Especially in judging the qualities of a people, we should be careful to take our measure by the highest, and not the lowest, types it has shown itself capable of producing.  In moments of alarm, danger, or suffering, a nation is apt to relapse into that intellectual and moral condition of Mob from which it has slowly struggled upward; and this is especially true in an age of newspapers, where Cleon finds his way to every breakfast-table.  It is her mob side that England has been showing us lately; but this should not blind us to the fact that in the long run the character of a nation tends more and more to assimilate itself to that ideal typified in its wisest thinkers and best citizens.  In the