blossoms into pert vulgarity.  But instances of perverted license increase our obligation to Mrs. Child, Mrs. Stowe and to others whose eloquence is only in deeds.  Of such as these, and of her whom we may now associate with them, it is not impossible some unborn historian may write, that in certain great perils of American liberty, when the best men could only offer rhetoric, women came forward with demonstration.  Yet, after all, our deepest indebtedness to the present series of volumes seems to be this:  they bear gentle testimony to what the wise ever believed, that the delicacy of spirit we love to characterize by the dear word “womanly” is not inconsistent with varied and exact information, independent opinion, and the insights of genius.

Finally, we venture to mention, what has been in the minds of many New-England readers, that these books are indissolubly associated with a young life offered in the nation’s great necessity.  At the time when the first of the series was made public, a shudder ran through our homes, as a regiment, rich in historic names, stood face to face with death.  Among the fallen was the only son of her whose writings have been given us.  Let us think without bitterness of the sacrifice of one influenced and formed by the rare nature we find in these poems.  What better result of culture than to dissipate intellectual mists and uncertainties, and to fix the grasp firmly upon some great practical good?  There is nothing wasted in one who lived long enough to show that the refinement acquired and inherited was of the noble kind which could prefer the roughest action for humanity to elegant allurements of gratified taste.  The best gift of scholarship is the power it gives a man to descend with all the force of his acquired position, and come into effective union with the world of facts.  For it is the crucial test of brave qualities that they are truer and more practical for being filtered through libraries.  In reading the “Theages” of Plato we feel a certain respect for the young seeker of wisdom whose only wish is to associate with Socrates; and there is a certain admiration for the father, Demodocus, who joyfully resigns his son, if the teacher will admit him to his friendship and impart all that he can.  But it is a higher result of a higher order of society, when a young man with aptitude to follow science and assimilate knowledge sees in the most perilous service of civilization a rarer illumination of mind and heart.  In the great scheme of things, where all grades of human worthiness are shown for the benefit of man, this costly instruction shall not fail of fruit.  And so the deepest moral that comes to us from the “Tragedy of Errors” seems a prophetic memorial of the soldier for constitutional liberty with whom it will be long connected.  The wealth of life—­so we read the final meaning of these verses—­is in its discipline; and the graceful dreams of the poet, and the quickened intellect of the scholar, are but humble instruments for the helping of mankind.