the yeomanry of the Republic.  This man, the ruler of a friendly people, British journalists have proclaimed guilty of crimes to which the records of the darkest despotisms can scarcely furnish a parallel.  The precious blood of Ellsworth was taken by the “Saturday Review” as the text of such disgraceful banter as we trust few bar-keepers in America would bestow upon a bully killed in a pot-house fray.  General Butler, for a verbal infelicity in an order of imperative necessity and wholesome effect, has been befouled by language which no careful historian would apply to Tiberius or Louis XV.  But enough of this.  We should be glad to believe that these utterers of false witness were boorish men, in dark and desperate ignorance of the true bearing of our current affairs.  We are unable so to believe.

It is a relief to turn to that small company of Englishmen who have extended brother-hands to us in the day of our necessity.  No world-homage of literary admiration is worth the personal emotion with which they are recognized in America as representatives of that Old England which has place in the affection and gratitude of every cultivated man among us.  They have done us justice, when contempt for justice alone was popular, and a cynical skepticism seemed the only retreat from blatant abuse.  Cairnes, Mill, Ellison, and others whom we need not name,—­for the sake of such men let us still think of England in generous temper.  Their sympathies have been with us through this terrible arbitrament of arms; they were with us in that solemn close of the old year, when the destiny of our dumb four millions weighed upon the night.  These men have told us that the principle for which we contend is sound and worthy:  they may also tell us that we have made occasional mistakes in reducing the principle to practice; and of this we are painfully conscious.  It is well for us to forego that reckless bravado of unexampled prosperity once so offensive to foreign ears.  Yet the best thing we ever had to boast of has been with us in the storm.  According to the admirable observation of Niebuhr,—­“Liberty exists where public opinion can constrain Government to fulfil its duties, and where, on the other side, in times of popular infatuation, the Government can maintain a wise course in spite of public opinion.”  This liberty has been preserved to us through all the turbulence of war.  Like some divine element, it has mingled in the convulsion of human passion, and already prophesies the day when the service of man to man, as of man to God, shall be rendered in perfect freedom.

A Treatise on Military Law and the Practice of Courts-Martial.  By CAPTAIN S.V.  BENET, Ordnance Department, U.S.  Army, late Assistant Professor of Ethics, Law, etc., Military Academy, West Point.  Mew York:  D. Van Nostrand.