By the representations of Secessionists encountered in the Free States, as well as from disloyal newspapers which the “Lincoln despotism” never sought to suppress, Mr. Dicey was convinced that the sole purpose of the Rebellion was to get possession of the vast regions which lie west of the Mississippi, wherein to establish Slave States and Territories.  “The North,” he declares, “is fighting against, the South is fighting for, the power of extending slavery across the American continent; and if this was all that could be said, it is clear on which side must be the sympathies of any one who really and honestly believes that slavery is an evil and a sin.”  But it is not here that Mr. Dicey rests the case of the North as appealing to the Christian sentiment of the world.  He shows that the inexorable logic of facts must work the overthrow of slavery where it now exists.  The suppression of the slave-trade, the recognition of Hayti, abolition in the District of Columbia, and finally the Proclamation of January have one tendency and can have but one result.  We state these views as one more confirmation of the fact, that, whether agreeable to us or not, the sympathies of liberal men in Europe are to be had on the sole ground that ours is an anti-slavery war.

Mr. Dicey’s predilections lead him to make a generous, although discriminating, estimate of those men who, in time past, have endeavored to serve their country by leaving the level commonplaces of respectable citizenship.  It is no slight praise to say that his chapter upon the New-England Abolitionists is clear and just.  Their points of disagreement with the Republican party are stated with no common accuracy.  Careful sentences give the precise position of Garrison and his adherents:  the intrinsic essence of the movement of these reformers is divested of the subordinate and trivial facts so often put forward to misrepresent it.  Although Mr. Dicey endeavors not to commit himself upon the vital differences in the agitation of anti-slavery sentiments by the Abolitionists and by the Republican party, it is very evident that he inclines to the belief that the former, in their advocacy of disunion, acted not from a perverse and fanatical philosophy, but from the logical compulsions of a critical understanding, stimulated by an intense conviction of the national sin.

We have dwelt thus upon Mr. Dicey’s views of the war, and of the great moral question with which it is connected, because these portions of his volumes are most pertinent to us, as well as creditable to him.  His sketches of public characters are good common-sense grasps at them, which generally get their externals, and occasionally something more.  The description of the President is forcible, though a little too graphic for perfect courtesy.  Caleb Cushing impresses the traveller as one of the ablest of our public men, and Wendell Phillips as by far the most eloquent speaker he ever heard.  General Butler, however, is not to Mr. Dicey’s taste.  Indeed,