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.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

Chambers’s Encyclopaedia:  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 Encyclopaedia 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 Kees, 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 readers.  For the wants of this latter class a different sort of work is desirable, which shall be cheaper in price, less exhaustive in its method, and more diversified in its range.  In these particulars the Germans seem to have hit upon the happy medium in their famous “Conversations-Lexicon,” which has passed through a great many editions, and been translated into the principal languages of Europe.  This is taken as the type, and in some respects as