“Tears may be ours, but proud, for those who win
  Death’s royal purple in the enemy’s lines: 
  Peace, too, brings tears; and ’mid the battle-din,
  The wiser ear some text of God divines;
  For the sheathed blade may rust with darker sin.

  “God, give us peace!—­not such as lulls to sleep,
  But sword on thigh, and brow with purpose knit! 
  And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep,
  Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit,
  And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap!”

  So said I, with clenched hands and passionate pain,
  Thinking of dear ones by Potomac’s side: 
  Again the loon laughed, mocking; and again
  The echoes bayed far down the night, and died,
  While waking I recalled my wandering brain.

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

Sermons preached in the Chapel of Harvard College. By JAMES WALKER, D.D.  Boston:  Ticknor & Fields. 12mo.

The great reputation which Dr. Walker has long enjoyed, as one of the most impressive pulpit orators of the country, will suffer little diminution by the publication of these specimens of his rare powers of statement, argument, and illustration.  To the general reader, they are, to be sure, deprived of the fascination of his voice and manner; but as the peculiarities of his elocution have their source in the peculiarities of his mental and moral organization, it will be found that the style and structure of these printed sermons suggest the mule of their delivery, which is simply the emphatic utterance of emphatic thought.  The Italicized words, with which the volume abounds, palpably mark the results of thinking, and arrest attention because they are not less emphasized by the intellect than by the type.  In reflecting Dr. Walker’s mind, the work at the same time reflects his manner.

Every reader of these sermons will be struck by their thorough reasonableness,—­a reasonableness which does not exclude, but includes, the deepest and warmest religious sensibility.  Moral and religious feeling pervades every statement; but the feeling is still confined within a flexible framework of argument, which, while it enlarges with every access of emotion, is always an outlying boundary of thought, beyond which passion does not pass.  Light continually asserts itself as more comprehensive in its reach than heat; and the noblest spiritual instincts and impulses are never allowed unchecked expression as sentiments, but have to submit to the restraints imposed by principles.  Even in the remarkable sermon entitled, “The Heart more than the Head,” it will be found that it is the head which legitimates the action of the heart.  The sentiments are exalted above the intellect by a process purely intellectual, and the inferiority of the reason is shown to be a principle essentially reasonable.  Thus, throughout the volume, the author’s mental insight into