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represented by Thad. Stevens. Served in Congress till 1831, when he was appointed by Jackson' Minister to Russia. His early course in Congress was with the Federal party, but favoring a tariff for revenue, with incidental protection only, opposing foreign alliances and the acquisition of Cuba by any European power except Spain. He succecded Daniel Webster as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and on returning from St. Petersburg in 1833 was elected to the United States Senate. He sustained Jackson, and as early as 1835 became a champion of slavery by taking the position that Congress had no jurisdiction over the question of slavery in the territories or elsewhere. By President Pierce he was appointed Minister to England, took a famous part in the Ostend conference, and returning to the United States in 1856, was nominated by the Cincinnati Convention for President. He was elected by a minority of the popular vote over Fremont and Fillmore, and thus obtained the high position adequate to the display of his personal weakness, which formed one of the dramatic clements in the disgraceful period that preceded the great rebellion. His administration during the organization of the rebellion is summed up in the single strict-constructionist sophism, that while the States had no power to secede the Government had no power to prevent them. He published a work in defence of his administration, but his plea, like his client, was of mediocre ability. He was a man well adapted to be great in little things, and consequently little in great things.

-William Lloyd Garrison has been made the recipient of a national testimonial of $33,000, by voluntary contribution of his countrymen, as a tribute for his services in behalf of emancipation. A proposition has also been started among the colored men of the South to raise a similar testimonial of $35,000 by contributions not exceeding one cent each by the freedmen, to be presented to General Howard in recognition of his services to their race at the head of the Freedmen's Bureau.

-The letter of General Grant of May 29th, accepting the Republican nomination at Chicago, is a model of brevity and point. It declares that the proceedings of the Convention were marked by moderation and wisdom, that he endorses their resolutions, that it is impolitic to lay down in advance any administrative policy to be pursued, right or wrong, but that he shall always respect the will of the people, and endeavor

to afford protection and peace to all, and to administer the laws with economy.

-As the present session of Congress draws to its close, the most important questions before it have been those relating to revenue and the finances. Down to the month of June Congress had adopted no revenue policy, save to relieve our domestic industry from a share of its burdens by striking off about $70,000,000 of taxes, mainly from our manufactures. Mr. Schenck, for the Committee of Ways and Means, had reduced the tax laws to one elaborate act, which included some important novelties, and contemplated a reduction of the tax on whiskey and tobacco to such rates as Congress should deem it practicable to collect. The chief feature of Schenck's bill was the increased power of removing and appointing his subordinates, and organizing his department, which the bill placed in the hands of the Revenue Commissioner. It proposed to give this officer sole power over and responsibility for the revenue department, instead of dividing the power as at present between him and the President and Secretary of the Treasury. It authorized him to appoint and remove all collectors, assessors, and supervisors of the revenue, to change the revenue districts, and to enforce discipline. These features in the bill were defeated, and as the result a distinct bill has been reported combining only such features of Mr. Schenck's bill as relate to the taxes on distilled spirits and tobacco.

-The Currency act passed by the Senate on June 17th, provides that it shall be a misdemeanor to pay any public officer for making deposits of public moneys in any National bank, and that currency may be issued to banks in States having less than $5 per head of National Bank currency, provided that it be withdrawn from the banks of those States having more currency than the quota allowed by the National Banking law.

-The nomination of General George B. McClellan as Minister to England having been reported adversely by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the President, on June 12th, nominated Senator Reverdy Johnson for that office. The high esteem in which he is held by his brother Senators is indicated by the fact that though politically opposed to nearly three fourths of the members of that body, they immediately and unanimously confirmed the nomination, without waiting even to refer it to a committee. The Senate will lose one of its ablest and

most influential members, and the mission near the Court of St. James will be filled by one whose great abilities as a lawyer leave no room to doubt his success as a diplomatist.

-The Chinese Embassy, of which Mr. Burlingame is chief, were received on June 5th by the President, and subsequently by the Senate and House; and by the citizens of New York at a public dinner. In his speeches on these occasions Minister Burlingame stated as the object of his mission the cultivation of relations of international independence and equality between the Chinese empire and the Western nations, in supersession of the policy of force and intimidation heretofore so frequently pursued by the Western nations toward the Orientals.

-Senator Sherman presented a report and bill in favor of unifying our specie currency with that of France, by reducing the standard of our American dollar to the five francs (94 cents) of France. Senator Morgan presented a report opposing the policy as tending from unity rather than toward it, until Great Britain and other nations shall first adopt the French standards.

-At the session of the U. S. Circuit Court at Richmond before Chief-Justice Chase on June 3d, the trial of Jefferson Davis, by stipulation of the District Attorney and counsel, was postponed to the fourth Monday of November.

-On June 29th the House of Representatives, on motion of Mr. Cobb (Republican), of Wisconsin, passed a resolution instructing the Committee of Ways and Means, to report a bill taxing the interest on the national bonds 10 per cent. per annum, to be deducted at the time of payment. This inchoate act of national infidelity and repudiation received 92 ayes to 55 noes. The ayes were 31 Dem. and 61 Rep.; the noes 2 Dem. and 53 Rep. If such treachery could be consummated in the Senate, it would strike the most disastrous blow yet given to the national credit.

-Heber C. Kimball, the second officer of the Mormon Church and regular successor, had he survived, to Brigham Young, died at Salt Lake City, June 22d, in the 67th year of his age. He became a Mormon in 1832, contemporaneously with Brigham Young, was the first Mormon missionary to England, and has for many years, with Brigham Young and David C. Wells, formed the first Presidency or Supreme Triumvirate of the Church.

-The Schützenfest or third annual festival of the American Shooting Society, held at New York, by its magnitude and success evinces the growing taste for physical and athletic sports which is being impressed in part by our German population upon American social life. It began June 27th with an official reception of 'delegations or Schützenbunds from all parts of the Union, at the Germania Assembly Rooms, an address by Mayor Hoffman, and presentation of banners. On Monday June 29th a grand parade and excursion to Jones's Wood, Gen. Franz Sigel acting as marshal. The shooting then continued each day, with distribution of prizes, music, dancing, wrestling, fencing, foot-racing, ropewalking, balloon ascensions, and other athletic sports until July 6th, when the official distribution of prizes closed the fest. An immense assemblage not only of Germans but Americans testified the popularity of this novel feature in American life.

-The growing success and favor which attend the costly amusement of yachting are proofs of the increasing wealth and leisure of our people, and their gradual tendency toward those more expensive and artistic pleasures which mark the culminating periods in the lives of individuals, nations, and races. The New York Yacht Club, founded in 1844, now numbers 400 members and 41 vessels, of which 28 are schooners, 12 sloops and 1 steamer. Its victories in the European races entitle it to rank as the champion of the seas. It has recently purchased one of the most elegant private residences which characterize the suburbs of New York, as a club-house. Pretty, quaint architecture, capacious grounds with drives, coach-house, trees, shrubbery, gardens, and flowers, adorn the exterior of the new headquarters of the club at Clifton, Staten Island, while the interior is furnished with much taste and a view to comfort and elegance. The 21st annual regatta occured June 18th and 19th, and was won by S. T. Lorillard's yacht Magic. The regatta of the Brooklyn and Columbian Yacht Clubs also attracted interest, though of a more local character.

-The National Democratic Convention met at the city of New York on the 4th day of July. On the 6th, Horatio Seymour was elected permanent President, with one VicePresident and one Secretary from cach State. The President was escorted to his chair by Ex-Gov. Bigler, of Penn., and Wade Hampton, of S. C. The resolutions declare,

That the Democratic party, reposing trust in the intelligence and justice of the people, and

standing upon the Constitution, recognizing slavery and secession as settled by the war or voluntary action of the Southern States, and the agitation thereof never to be renewed; do demand,

First. The immediate restoration of all the Southern States. (Cheers.)

Second. Amnesty for all political offences; the right of suffrage in all the States to be controlled by the people thereof.

Third.--The payment of the public debt, where the obligations do not expressly state on their face, or the law under which they were issued does not provide payment in coin, should be paid in the lawful money of the United States.

Fourth.-Equal taxation of all property, including Government bonds. (Cheers.)

Fifth.-One currency for the Government and people, laborer and office-holder, pensioner and soldier, producer and bondholder. (Great cheers.)

Sixth.-Economy in administration, reduction in the Army and Navy, abolition of the Freedmen's Bureau (cheers), and of the inquisitorial modes of collecting Revenue, and such reduction of tariffs and equal internal taxation as, without diminishing our Revenue, will afford incidental protection to American manufactures.

Seventh.-Subordination of military to the civil

power.

Eighth.-Demands equal rights and protection for native and adopted citizens against the doctrine of immutable allegiance; denounces the usurpation and tyranny of the Radical party in its violation of the pledge to conduct the war only for the preservation of the Union, whereas it has subjugated States, overthrown freedom of speech and of the press, established a system of espionage, disregarded the Habeas Corpus, converted the national capitol into a bastile, repealed the appellate and threatened to destroy the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and maligned the Chief Justice for his integrity and impartiality on the trial of the President.

On the first ballot the vote stood: English, 12; Hancock, 40; Pendleton, 104; Parker, 15; Church, 33; Packer, 26; Andrew Johnson, 52; Doolittle, 12; Hendricks, 2; Reverdy Johnson, 8; F. P. Blair, 10; Thos. Ewing, Jr., . Six ballots were taken on the 7th ult., but at the time our record closed, on the afternoon of the 8th, no choice had been effected.

LITERATURE.

The Life and Death of Jason, By Wм. MORRIS.-The Earthly Paradise, By Wм. MORRIS. (Roberts Bros.) It is about a year since Mr. Morris's first poem was published, and was heartily welcomed, especially by the English critics.

At the head of his eulogists was Algernon Charles Swinburne, who, like himself, had first appeared as a Greek storyteller, and who hailed the new poet as a second Chaucer. Without being convinced of the justice of all Mr. Swinburne's enthusiasm about his friend, an enthusiasm as highlycolored as his own poetry, it is nevertheless impossible to read Jason without very great pleasure. The exquisite simplicity of the style, the grace and easy flow of the lines, and tone of truthfulness and serious intent which pervade its beautiful descriptions, made us forget the want of grander thought, or more intense dramatic power. It was all that it seemed meant to be, a beautifully told story in verse, and therewith we were content. But it would not do to compare it with Atalanta in Calydon," for instance, except in faithfulness of local coloring. There is no such poetry in all "Jason" as we find in the choruses of "Atalanta;" no such dramatic presentation of character, no such power of imagination. But then Morris has none of the " sugary sensuality " of Swinburne, is equally free from his highest virtues and his gravest faults, from his strength and his weakness, from the daring of his genius, and the reckless extravagance of his color.

The chief characteristic of his poetry is its exquisite finish and its perfect purity and evenness of style. We look in vain through the three hundred pages of Jason for a dozen lines which shall linger in our memories when the charm of the sweetly-told story is at an end. There are none of those

"Jewels five-words-long

That on the stretched forefinger of all Time
Sparkle forever."

But in the "Earthly Paradise" we have more and better than we had hoped. It is rare, indeed, that a poet gives us a volume of seven hundred pages within a year of its predecessor, and still more rare that in that time should be so much improvement. The poem describes the adventures of a party of Norsemen in search of the Happy Isles. After long, fruitless wanderings, the remnant of the voyagers settle down among a peaceful western folk, to whom, upon occasions of solemn festival, they relate the stories of their early lives, stories learned in their distant homes, of many lands and peoples. We have here twelve tales in verse, for six months of the year, the others being promised to follow very shortly. The introduction is very beau tiful, particularly the first verse:

"Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming Death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Not for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day."

He cannot paint for you, either, a figure or a landscape with a single felicitous touch, as can our master-artist Tennyson; his poetry is never in the least subjective, nor can he give you a strongly-marked character with a touch of his pen, like Browning, for his people are all gray-eyed, and generally goldenhaired, and might be as well described as a king, a shepherd, a priest, a goddess, a fay, as by any names he chooses to give them. But why should we quarrel with a harp because it is not a violin? The notes of his instrument may be few, but they are exceedingly sweet. Though his pictures are composed of few colors, and the "brown bee" as inevitably appears in them as the stars and the sea in Alexander Smith's, they are none the less full of tenderness and truth. Of the twelve tales contained in this volume, six are from Grecian history and the others legends of various times and countries. The finest poem of all, for interest of subject, dignity of treatment, and flashes of real poetic fire, is the Love of Alcestis. In this lovely tale we are told how Admetus, assisted by Apollo, who serves him as a herdsman, wins to wife the daughter of King Pelias, and how Alcestis, when her husband's time comes to die, saves his life by giving her own in his stead. In the course of this poem occurs perhaps the finest passage in the whole book, the farewell and departure of Apollo. The god, in a speech of exquisite beauty and dignity, bids adieu to the earth,

"This handful, that within its little girth

Holds that which moves you so, O men that die;" and after promising Admetus assistance in his last extremity,

"He ceased, but ere the golden tongue was still
An odorous mist had stolen up the hill,
And to Admetus first the god grew dim,
And then was but a lovely voice to him,
And then at last the sun had sunk to rest,
And a fresh wind blew lightly from the west
Over the hill-top, and no soul was there;
But the sad dying autumn field-flowers fair,
Rustled dry leaves about the windy place,
Where even now had been the god-like face,
And in their midst the brass-bound quiver lay."

Could there be any thing in the way of simple narrative lovelier than this picture? We e seem to stand among the "sad dying autumn field-flowers fair" and gaze with Admetus at the vanishing divinity, till the last ray of the celestial brightness has departed, and we turn to see only a "gray-haired shepherd driving down" the woolly sheep that must learn now to obey the voice of mortal herdsman. Throughout this poem we

find more frequent traces of the finer gold of poetry; the diction rises continually to a higher level than in some of the tales, in which there seems little absolute necessity for the poetic form. We might go through all the Son of Croesus, for instance, or the Watching of the Falcon, without finding any such lines as these:

"the night

Grew dreamy with a shadowy sweet delight." "Her lovely shadow even now did pass

Along the changeless fields, oft looking back,
As though it yet had thought of some great lack."
"But Time, who slays so many a memory,
Brought hers to light, the short-lived loving
Queen;

And her fair soul, as scent of flowers unseen,
Sweetened the turmoil of long centuries."

After Alcestis, in order of excellence, comes perhaps the Cupid and Psyche. A greater genius would probably have given us more of the spiritual aspects of the fable, but we will not quarrel with our poet, who has told us the old, old story in his sweetest words. He has not succeeded perhaps in preserving the interest up to the end, but is this altogether his fault, or is it partly the result of that idiosyncrasy of human nature which leads us to love the best "the songs that make us grieve." The picture of Psyche wandering through the world after she has lost her love, is most beautifully drawn.

"Like a thin dream she passed the clattering town," is one of Mr. Morris's felicities of expression.

And above all, and through all the grace and simplicity of the narrative, the music of the flowing verse, the vividness of the lightly sketched pictures, is the exquisite purity of thought, which pervades the book like an atmosphere. It is lovely with the perfume of a beautiful soul and a sweet imagination. Its tender moonlight effects, its dreamy music, soothe us to sleepy peace. It is a book preeminently for lovers and lazy people; a book to carry into the country and read under a tree, with a little brook keeping time to the flowing lines; a book to loiter and dream over, not to analyze and criticise.

"What should we do? Thou wouldst not have ns wake

From out the arms of this rare happy dream,
And wish to leave the murmur of the stream,
The rustling boughs, the twitter of the birds,
And all the thousand peaceful happy words?"

Hurd and Houghton have published an excellent sketch of the Official Life of Governor Andrew. It is written by Albert G. Brown,

who was the Governor's private secretary and most intimate friend, and came to his task with a sufficiency of preparation that would have justified a more elaborate account of the departed statesman. That Mr. Brown preferred to give us only this sketch is less to be regretted, as a full biography is in course of preparation by Mr. Edwin P. Whipple, who will bring to it every needed qualification. The dedication of the present work to General Grant, with Andrew's endorsement of him beneath, suggests the proverb about killing two birds with one stone. It will no doubt make the book more useful as a campaign document, but it would be as well if we could have been permitted to regard it as a grateful souvenir with no ulterior aim.

In speaking of this sketch as excellent, we must not be understood to praise its author for any original contribution to our knowledge of the Governor's character. He has strung together gracefully enough the main facts in History, has given a pleasant enough account of his habits of work and some of his personal traits, and for the rest has drawn largely upon sketches that have already found their way into the public eye. But the original matter and the selections are woven neatly together, and make a whole that will serve us very well until Whipple's larger work admits us to a more complete appreciation of the man, his character, and work. We gather from this book that John A. Andrew was about as sturdy a growth of American manhood as has been seen in these last days. He seems to have been absolutely without fear. He did what he thought was right, no matter what others might think. He had a great big heart, as several of these stories amply show, an active brain, an indomitable will, an industry that never tired. He was a man after Dr. Johnson's own heart, for he was "a good hater." He was perfectly frank and generous and sincere; not a man to be trifled with or thwarted, and yet a man to be most deeply reverenced and loved. Nothing in this book will recall him so vividly as the fine photograph of him that faces the title-page. How different from Lincoln's lean and haggard face! Yet, next to Lincoln, and Stanton perhaps, the weight of our great struggle was heaviest upon him.

EVERY reader of the present day, whose childhood was nourished with the rare intel. lectual banquet which, some thirty years ago, fed the youthful mind in the popular writings of Maria Edgeworth, will hail the promise of

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a comprehensive personal memoir of the author, enriched by a series of her private correspondence. This tribute to her memory has been deferred beyond the usual period of these posthumous attentions to so distinguished a reputation. Miss Edgeworth died nearly twenty years ago, at a very advanced age; and her illustrious friends and companions in letters, who gave such glory to the opening nineteenth century, have been so long gathered to their repose, that their biographers even seem, in our recollection, to be invested with a distant and classic interest. In some notable instances, as with Scott and Byron, the biographers have followed their heroes to the land of shadows. We are under the impression that this apparent neglect in the case of Miss Edgeworth has been due to her expressed wishes on the subject, forbidding her papers to be used for a work of the kind. She may have been led to this check on her successors by her observation of the careless or injudicious employment of such materials; by an innate modesty, shrinking from revelations to the public of her personal history; or, perhaps, more than all, by the pain which she must have experienced at the untoward reception by the critics of the memoirs of her father, which, left unfinished by him as an autobiography, she had completed and published after his death. Be that as it may, silence with regard to her life has been, up to the present tine, religiously preserved by her family; nor is the seal yet broken, at least so far as the public is concerned, though the curiosity of that omnivorous body has been already partially gratified. If you would keep anything quiet, tell it to nobody; certainly, do not print it. The family of Miss Edgeworth, or certain of her successors in possession of her manuscripts, have, it appears, recently privately printed"not published "-a "Memoir, with a Selection of her Letters," the Memoir being written by Miss Edgeworth's step-mother, the fourth and last wife of Robert Lovell Edgeworth, and edited by her surviving children. It is a book of abundant materials, extending to three volumes. A copy of this has fallen into the hands of an Edinburgh Reviewer, who treats his readers to copious extracts, with an intelligent and respectful commentary on the whole. In entering upon this work, while he admits that it is "doubtful" whether the rich materials of private correspondence, spirited descriptions, curious anecdotes, and sound remarks on things and people," to which he bas privileged access,

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