In the death of Major Winthrop, at the promising commencement of his military career, the nation lost one of its purest, noblest, and most capable spirits.  His industry, sagacity, and intrepidity all rested on a firm basis of fixed principle and deep enthusiasm; and had he lived, we have little doubt that both his moral and practical power would have been felt among the palpable forces of the country.  In the articles he contributed to this magazine, describing his brief military experience, every reader must have recognized the singular brightness of his mind and the singular joyousness of his courage.  Powers which, in meditation, worked at the bidding of pensive or melancholy sentiments, seemed to be braced by action into unwonted healthiness and hilarity; and had he survived the experience of the present war, there can be little doubt that his intellect and imagination would, by contact with events, have been developed to their full capacity, and found expression in literary works of remarkable power.

“Cecil Dreeme” is one of several novels he wrote before the war broke out, and it conveys a striking impression of his genius and disposition.  The utmost sensitiveness and delicacy of moral sense were combined in him with a rough delight in all the manifestations of manly strength; and these two tendencies of his nature are fitly embodied and exquisitely harmonized in the characters of Cecil Dreeme and Robert Byng.  They are opposites which by their very nature are necessarily attracted to each other.  The obstacle to their mental and moral union is found in a third person, Densdeth, in whom manly strength and genius have been corrupted by selfishness and sensuality into the worst form of spiritual evil.  This person is simply abhorred by Cecil, while Byng finds in him something which tempts appetite, piques curiosity, develops sensuous feeling, and provokes pride, as well as something which excites moral disgust and loathing.  Byng’s distrustful love for Emma Denman admirably represents this stage of his moral experience.

Densdeth is undoubtedly the central character of the book.  It proves its creator to be a true spiritual as well as physical descendant of President Edwards; and not even his ancestor has shown more vividly the “exceeding sinfulness of sin.”  Densdeth is one of those evil natures in whom delight in evil pleasures has subsided into a delight in evil itself, and a desire to communicate it to others.  He has the diabolical power of calling out the latent evil in all natures with whom his own comes in contact, and he corrupts, not so much by example, as by a direct communication of the corrupt spiritual life of his individual being.  He is an accomplished devil, wearing the guise of a New-York man of fashion and fortune,—­a devil such as tempts every person thrown into the vortex of our daily commonplace life.  Every pure sentiment, noble aspiration, and manly instinct, every natural affection, gentle feeling,