westerly breeze was blowing from the Executive Mansion. These indications were more salutary to Ellsworth than any medicine. We were talking one night of coming probabilities, and I spoke of the doubt so widely existing as to the loyalty of the people. He rejoined, earnestly, "I can only speak for myself. You know I have a great work to do, to which my life is pledged; I am the only earthly stay of my parents; there is a young woman whose happiness I regard as dearer than my own: yet I could ask no better death than to fall next week before Sumter. I am not better than other men. You will find that patriotism is not dead, even if it sleeps."

Sumter fell, and the sleeping awoke. The spirit of Ellsworth, cramped by a few weeks' intercourse with politicians, sprang up full-statured in the Northern gale. He cut at once the meshes of red tape that had hampered and held him, threw up his commission, and started for New York without orders, without assistance, without authority, but with the consciousness that the President would sustain him. The rest the world knows. I will be brief in recalling it.

In an incredibly short space of time he enlisted and organized a regiment, eleven hundred strong, of the best fighting material that ever went to war. He divided it, according to an idea of his own, into groups of four comrades each, for the campaign. He exercised a personal supervision over the most important and the most trivial minutiae of the regimental business. The quick sympathy of the public still followed him. He became the idol of the Bowery and the pet of the Avenue. Yet not one instant did he waste in recreation or lionizing. Indulgent to all others, he was merciless to himself. He worked day and night, like an incarnation of Energy. When he arrived with his men in Washington, he was thin, hoarse, flushed, but entirely contented and happy, because busy and useful.

Of the bright enthusiasm and the quenchless industry of the next few

weeks what need to speak? Every day, by his unceasing tail and care, by his vigor, alertness, activity, by his generosity, and by his relentless rigor when duty commanded, he grew into the hearts of his robust and manly followers, until every man in the regiment feared him as a Colonel should be feared, and loved him as a brother should be loved.

On the night of the twenty-third of May, he called his men together, and made a brief, stirring speech to them, announcing their orders to advance on Alexandria. "Now, boys, go to bed, and wake up at two o'clock for a sail and a skirmish." When the camp was silent, he began to work. He wrote many hours, arranging the business of the regiment. He finished his labor as the midnight stars were crossing the zenith. As he sat in his tent by the shore, it seems as if the mystical gales from the near eternity must have breathed for a moment over his soul, freighted with the odor of amaranths and asphodels. For he wrote two strange letters: one to her who mourns him faithful in death; one to his parents. There is nothing braver or more pathetic. With the prophetic instinct of love, he assumed the office of consoler for the stroke that impended.

In the dewy light of the early dawn he occupied the first rebel town. With his own hand he tore down the first rebel flag. He added to the glories of that morning the seal of his blood.

The poor wretch who stumbled upon an immortality of infamy by murdering him died at the same instant. The two stand in the light of that event-clearly revealed-types of the two systems in conflict to-day: the one, brave, refined, courtly, generous, tender, and true; the other, not lacking in brute courage, reckless, besotted, ignorant, and cruel.

Let the two systems, Freedom and Slavery, stand thus typified forever, in the red light of that dawn, as on a Mount of Transfiguration. I believe that may solve the dark mystery why Ellsworth died.

Chambers's Encyclopædia: A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge for the People; on the Basis of the Latest Edition of the German Conversations-Lexicon. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. Vols. I. and II.

AN Encyclopædia is both a luxury and a necessity. Few readers now collect a library, however scant, without including one of some sort. Many of them, even in the absence of all other books, of themselves constitute a complete library. The Britannica, Edinburgh, Metropolitana, English, Penny, London, Oxford, and that of Rees, are most elaborate works, extending respectively to about a score of heavy volumes, averaging eight or nine hundred pages each. Such publications must necessarily be expensive. They are, moreover, to be regarded rather as a collection of exhaustive treatises,-great prominence being given to the physical and mathematical sciences, and to general history. For instance, in the Britannica, the publication of the eighth edition of which is just completed, the length of some of the articles is as follows: Astronomy, 155 quarto pages; Chemistry, 88; Electricity, 104; Hydrodynamics, 119; Optics, 176; Mammalia, 120; Ichthyology, 151; Entomology, 265; Britain, 300; England, 136; France, 284. Each one of these papers is equal to a large octavo volume; some of them would occupy several volumes; and the entire work, containing a collection of such articles, can be regarded in no other light than as an attempted exhibition of the sum of human knowledge, commending itself, of course, to professional and highly educated minds, but far transcending, in extent and costliness, the requirements and the means of the great class of general read

basis, of the present publication, there being engrafted upon it new contributions from leading authors of this and other countries, together with such extensive improvements, revisals, rewritings, additions, and modifications throughout, as to constitute a substantially new work, exhibiting in combination the results of the best labors of the German, English, and American mind. In the departments of statistics, geography, history, and science, the articles are all within readable limits, accurate, and up to the times; while in the biographical and literary articles there is a freshness and originality of criticism, and a vivacity of style, seldom met with in this class of publications.

The peculiar merit of this Encyclopædia is its convenient adaptedness to popular use. The subjects treated of are broken up and distributed alphabetically under their proper heads, so as to facilitate reference. We are thus furnished with a dictionary of facts and events, where we may readily find whatever properly appertains to any particular point, without being compelled to explore an entire treatise. This, by the way, makes it a sort of hand-book even for those who possess the more voluminous works. As a necessary result of such a method of treatment, it will be found, upon an actual count and comparison, to contain more separate titles than any other Encyclopædia ever published. Although the articles are generally brief, it must not be supposed that they are meagre, for they will be found to present a clear and comprehensive view of the existing information upon the particular topic, with a mastery which arises only from familiarity. Montesquieu said that Tacitus abridged all because he knew all; and no reader can peruse a number of this Encyclopædia without being convinced that the success in preparing the perspicuous abridgments it contains is due to thorough knowledge. Its excellence is not confined, however, to the letter-press; for we are furnished with a series of colored maps, embodying the results of the most recent explorations, and also with a profusion of admirable woodcuts, illustrating

the subject wherever pictorial exposition may aid the verbal. It will be recollected that no other Encyclopædia published in this country has the advantage of illustrations.

The character of Messrs. William and Robert Chambers of itself gives ample assurance that the work is prepared and executed in a superior manner; but when we superadd to this the fact that they have spared no labor or expense, but have devoted to it all the resources of their experience, enterprise, and skill, in order to make the work, in all its departments, their crowning contribution to the cause of knowledge, we are the more ready to believe that it actually is all that it claims to be. The American edition by J. B. Lippincott & Co., of Philadelphia, is published in numbers simultaneously with the Edinburgh and London edition, and in an unexceptionable style of typography. Its low price brings it within the reach of almost every reader. Indeed, when we consider the size of the volumes, the number of illustrations and maps, the mechanical execution, and the compensation to the writers, we are at a loss to conceive how it can be profitably furnished at so cheap a rate.

The Recreations of a Country Parson. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 12mo.

THE essays of which this volume is made up were originally contributed to "Fraser's Magazine." The "Recreations" they record are therefore those of an English, and not an American “Parson"; but there is nothing in them which a parson of any church or denomination would feel inclined to repudiate, on the score either of their fineness of mental perception or healthiness of moral sense. The author tells us, that, in writing these essays, he has not been rapt away into heroic times and distant scenes, but has written of daily work and worry amid daily work and worry and herein lies the charm of his discourses. He has one of those sensible, elastic, cheerful natures whose ideal qualiA any description, which was set apart for religious purposes, or dedicated to some Deity. In the English language we can make these distinctions intelligible only by the use of adjectives. A for

duties of common life in order to exalt the claims of a kind of spiritualized sensuality and poetic self-importance, he instinctively avoids. The thirteen shrewd, suggestive, and practical essays which compose the present volume are transcripts of his own experience and meditations, and teem with facts and observations such as might be expected from the clear insight of a man who has mingled with his fellow-men, and who is curiously critical of the non-romantic phenomena of their daily life. The essays on the Art of Putting Things, on Petty Malignity and Petty Trickery, on Tidiness, on Nervous Fears, on Hurry and Leisure, on Work and Play, on Dulness, and on Growing Old, are full of fresh and delicate perceptions of the ordinary facts of human experience. His best and brightest remarks surprise us with the unexpectedness of homely common sense, as flashed on a world of organized illusions. The entire absence of rhetoric in the author's mode of "putting things" adds to its effectiveness. He attempts to reveal the common, -one of the rarest of revelations; and shows what heroic qualities are needed to overcome the superficial circumstances of our life, and transmute them into occasions for that humble, obscure heroism which God alone apprehends and rewards. The freedom of the writer from all the stereotyped phraseology of sanctity in doing this work, and his innocent sympathy with everything cheerful, pleasurable, and lovable in Nature and human nature, only add to the power of his teachings. These "Recreations" of the "Parson" will, to the generality of readers, produce more beneficent results than could have been produced, had he given us his most carefully prepared sermons,-for they connect religion with life. Nobody can read the volume without feeling the moral and religious purpose which underlies its graceful and genial exhibition of human character and manners. The common objection to clergymen is, that they are ignorant of the world. No sagacious reader of the present book can doubt that this parson, at least, is an exception to the general rule; of a landscapklsdotermore of the world torical description, to produce le it a special able effects: humble objects, indee the most consonant with Nature's sublime aspects, because they manifest no seem

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1914

not confined, however, to the letter-press; for we are furnished with a series of colored maps, embodying the results of the most recent explorations, and also with a profusion of admirable woodcuts, illustrating

THE subject of Trees cannot be exhausted by treating them as individuals or species, even with a full enumeration of their details. Some trees possess but little interest, except as they are grouped in assemblages of greater or less extent. A solitary Fir or Spruce, for example, when standing in an inclosure or by the roadside, is a stiff and disagreeable object; but a deep forest of Firs is not surpassed in grandeur by one of any other species. These trees must be assembled in extensive groups to affect us agreeably; while the Elm, the Oak, and other wide-spreading trees, are grand objects of sight, when standing alone, or in any other situation.

I will not detain the reader with a prolix account of the classification of trees in assemblages, but simply glance at a few points. The Romans used four different words to express these distinctions. When they spoke of a wood with reference to its timber, they used the word silva; saltus was a collection of wild-wood in the mountains; nemus, a smaller collection, partaking of cultivation, and answering to our ideas of a grove; lucus was a wood, of any description, which was set apart for religious purposes, or dedicated to some Deity. In the English language we can make these distinctions intelligible only by the use of adjectives. A for

Groves, fragments of forest, and inferior groups only are particularly interesting in landscape. An unbroken forest of wide extent makes but a dreary picture and an unattractive journey, on account of its gloomy uniformity. Hence the primitive state of the earth, before it was modified by human hands, must have been sadly wanting in those romantic features that render a scene the most attractive. Nature must be combined with Art, however simple and rude, and associated with human life, to become deeply affecting to the imagination. But it is not necessary that the artificial objects of a landscape should be of a grand historical description, to produce these agreeable effects: humble objects, indeed, are the most consonant with Nature's sublime aspects, because they manifest no seem