In dealing with events creditable to his own courage and gallantry, Colonel Gilmore has the unsparing frankness of Major Gahagan, and it must be allowed that there is a remarkable likeness in all the adventures of these remarkable men. It is true that Colonel Gilmore does not fire upon a file of twenty elephants so as to cut away all their trunks by a single shot; but he does kill eleven Yankees by the discharge of a cannon which he touches off with a live coal held between his thumb and finger. Being made prisoner, he is quite as defiant and outrageous as the Guj-puti under similar circumstances: at one time he can scarcely restrain himself from throwing into the sea the insolent captain of a Federal gunboat; at another time, when handcuffed by order of General Sheridan, he spends an hour in cursing his captors. The red-hair of the Lord of the White Elephants waved his followers to victory; Colonel Gilmore's "hat, with the long black plume upon it," is the signal of triumph to his marauders. Both, finally, are loved by the ladies, and are alike extravagant in their devotion to the sex. Colonel Gilmore, indeed, withholds no touch that can go to make him the hero of a dime novel; and there is not a more picturesque and dashing character in literature outside of the adventures of Claude Duval. Everywhere we behold him waving his steel (as he calls his sword); he wheels before our dazzled eyes like a meteor; he charges, and the foe fly like sheep before him. And no sooner is he come into town from killing a score or two of Yankees, than the ladies—who are all good Union women and have just taken the oath of allegiance—crowd to kiss and caress him; or, as he puts it in his own vivid language, he receives "a kiss from more than one pair of ruby lips, and gives many a hearty hug and kiss in return." In his wild way, he takes a pleasure in evoking the tender solicitude of the ladies for his safety,—eats a dish of strawberries in a house upon which the Yankees are charging to capture him, and remains for some minutes after the strawberries are eaten, while the ladies, proffering him his arms, are "dancing about, and positively screaming with excitement." At another time, when the bullets of the enemy are hissing about his ears, he puts on a pretty girl's slipper for her. "Such," he remarks, with a pensive air, "are some of the few happy scenes that brighten a soldier's life."
Colonel Gilmore, who has the diffidence of Major Gahagan, has also the engaging artlessness which lends so great a charm to the personal narrative of Mr. Barry Lyndon. He does not reserve from the reader's knowledge such of his exploits as stealing the chaplain's whiskey, and drinking the peach-brandy of the simple old woman who supposed she was offering it to General Lee. "Place him where you may," says Colonel Gilmore, "and under no matter what adverse circumstances, you can always distinguish a gentleman." He has a great deal of fine feeling, and can scarcely restrain his tears at the burning of Chambersburg, after setting it on fire. Desiring a memento of a brother officer, he takes a small piece of the dead man's skull. It has been supposed that civilized soldiers, however brave and resolute, scarcely exulted in the remembrance of the lives they had taken; and it is thought to be one of the merciful features of modern warfare, that in the vast majority of cases the slayer and the slain are unknown to each other. Colonel Gilmore has none of the false tenderness which shrinks from a knowledge of homicide. On the contrary, he is careful to know when he has killed a man; and he recounts, with an exactness revolting to feebler nerves, the circumstances and the methods by which he put this or that enemy to death.
We think we could hardly admire Colonel Gilmore if he had been of our side during the war, and had done to the Rebels the things he professes to have done to us. As it is, we trust he will forgive us, if we confess that we have not read his narrative with a tranquil stomach, and that we think it will impress his Northern readers as the history of a brigand who had the good luck to be also a traitor.
RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS.
The Structure of Animal Life. Six Lectures delivered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in January and February, 1862. By Louis Agassiz, Professor of Zoölogy and Geology in the Lawrence Scientific School. New York. C. Scribner & Co. 8vo. pp. viii., 128. $2.50.
History of the Life and Times of James Madison. By William C. Rives. Vol. II. Boston. Little, Brown, & Co. 8vo. pp. xxii., 657. $3.50.
The Physiology of Man; designed to represent the Existing State of Physiological Science, as applied to the Functions of the Human Body. By Austin Flint, Jr., M. D., Professor of Physiology and Microscopy in the Bellevue Medical College, N. Y., and in the Long Island College Hospital; Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, etc. Introduction; the Blood; Circulation; Respiration. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. 502, $4.50.
Poems. By Annie E. Clarke. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott & Co. 16mo. pp. 146. $1.00.
The Living Forces of the Universe. The Temple and the Worshippers. By George W. Thompson. Philadelphia. Howard Challen. 12mo. pp. xxiv., 358. $1.75.