But for any danger that may happen to literature, no one need give himself the smallest concern. Literature was made for man, not man for literature. Whatever ministers to human needs has a right to live. Whatever innocently amuses, comforts, instructs, strengthens, has its justification in its work. There is no divine right in the twelve books of the epic which does not equally inhere in the Poet's Corner of the village newspaper. The ponderous volume whose immortality consists in lying in state "in every gentleman's library," may have less influence in building up a noble manhood than the vigorous leader in Tuesday's paper, which nobody reads on Wednesday. The book which solaces the weary mother while rocking the cradle, or from which the household drudge catches a page of sunshine or sympathy while standing over the cooking-range, waiting for the milk to boil, the book in which the day-laborer finds an assurance of human brotherhood, or the humble mourner a glimpse of the silver lining of his cloud, does just as high a service and makes just as good an excuse for being, as the "standard work" whose name is on the tongue of every would-be critic, and whose contents are perhaps mastered by a hundred scholars in a hundred generations. The ennobling of man is a better thing than the ennobling of literature. The ennobling of man, first or last, is the ennobling of literature. The process may be hidden, but the result is sure. The streams

run underground, but they mingle. No good thing is cast into the river of humanity but it shall rise again, in some far-off fountain of song or saga. The book which leaves its mark on the human soul, helping to fashion it for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, or to deform it into a haunt for devils, is the immortal book, whether its name go securely down the centuries or pass away with spring's first violets.

HEN any patriotic person groans under the pressure of the war, he may find his account in reading such a book as Fanny Kemble's Journal of her Plantation Life in Georgia, or in looking at certain well-authenticated photographs of the backs of negro slaves who have come into our lines, photographs taken and exhibited for the purpose of giving infallible proofs of the tender mercies of slavery as seen in welt and scar. The book can scarcely be called pleasant summer reading, and as specimens of art the pictures may not compare favorably with the "Heart of the Andes," or Bierstadt's "Rocky Mountains "; but as a specific for heart-sickness contracted by hope of victory long deferred, I know nothing better. The war for which three months seemed an age, has dragged its slow length along three years and more. Good people there are, lovers of their country, but lovers also of quiet, haters of strife

and bloodshed, weary with waiting for the grand "movement " which is to crush rebellion, and bring back to us the dear placidity of old days; people who desire their country's honor to be defended, her integrity preserved, and her slaves emancipated, but who long with an irrepressible longing for the time which shall stay the effusion of blood, are sometimes tempted to say within themselves, "Where is the promise of his coming?" But when we read and see such portrayals of the abominations of slavery, when we remember that these unspeakable outrages have been endured by millions of people, not for three years, but for a time that can be reckoned by generations, endured without the hope that ever so patient endurance, or ever so heroic valor, should lighten the burden or avert the future woe, endured without seeing in any quarter the dawn of a release; thinking of this, we should reckon the sufferings of this present war not worthy to be compared with those under which the African race has so long groaned, being burdened. All the pangs of parting, all the torture of wounds, all the agonies of death, every bitter measure which has been meted out to us, would not balance the physical pain, the mental woe, which we have dealt to the slave; nor have we anything to offset the spiritual degradation to which we have confined, if not reduced him. We, too, have the great content of being free agents; he only bent to an inexorable necessity.

In the natural sequence of events, which is but another name for Divine law, slavery and the war stand to each other in the relation of cause to effect. There may be for both a deeper cause, but this is the immediate connection. Now since there is for nations no redemption, no atonement, but only the natural law, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe; until we have suffered, in mind, body, and estate, as much as the negro race has suffered at our hands, we have no reason to think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is trying us, as though some strange thing happened unto us. Nay, as under the Hebrew law, ordained of God, for the stolen ox five oxen should be restored, and four sheep for a sheep; since the prophet of old time was not commanded to speak comfortably unto Jerusalem that her warfare was accomplished, until she had received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins; since in Apocalyptic vision the voice from heaven cried, "In the cup which she hath filled, fill to her double," we have, at least, indication that we may not look for deliverance till the shame and sorrow of the subject race have been twice and thrice poured out upon our own heads. I do not say that it will be so with us, that this is the invariable Divine mode of procedure; but that it is the only thing we have a right to expect, and that if peace comes before we have drunk the dregs of the