The first volume is occupied principally by the archbishop's various letters and speeches on the School Question; his letters to David Hale, Mayor Harper, and Colonel Stone: Letters on the Importance of being in Communion with the Catholic Church; Kirwan Unmasked; and a number of miscellaneous lectures and sermons. The second contains a number of letters, sermons, etc., on the Temporal Power of the Pope; various lectures; over thirty miscellaneous sermons; the Church Property Controversy with Senator Brooks and others; and a great deal of miscellaneous matter, including the archbishop's speeches at banquets etc., during his last visit to Europe. Bishop Bayley's admirable lecture on [{283}] the Life and Times of Archbishop Hughes is given in full, by way of introduction to the second volume.
Mr. Kehoe's collection is the most important contribution to the history of the Church in the United States that has been made for many a year. Archbishop Hughes not only played an important part in the ecclesiastical history of his time and country, but he may be said without much exaggeration to have made that history. His writings are destined to hold a permanent place in American Catholic literature by the side of those of Bishop England, while from their subjects, as well as the comparatively cheap form in which they are now presented to us, they will no doubt be more popular than those of the illustrious Bishop of Charleston.
CAPE COD. By Henry D. Thoreau. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1865. 12mo., pp. 253.
This is a readable book, notwithstanding some of its critics have put it down as "dry." The keen observations, and quaint remarks sprinkled all over its pages, keep its reader in good humor chapter after chapter until the book is read. Thoreau's books are healthy, and deserve to be read, especially by our young men.
This is true of the general tone of his writings. Occasionally, however, there is a slight vein of skepticism running through them. But he has less of this than his contemporaries. Thoreau had deep religious feeling, but he found no expression for it in the religious denominations around him. Had he lived in the fifth century he would have been a father of the desert. As it is, he gives you the natural side of life and things exclusively, but with freshness and originality.
The sturdy integrity of the man, the fixed determination of seeing life and things with his own eyes, and his resolve to have his own say about them, is what characterizes all his writings, and what makes them valuable where popular opinion sways.
As a sample of his talent for description, read the following pen-drawing of a wrecker:
"We soon met one of these wreckers,—a regular Cape Cod man, with a bleached and weather-beaten face, within whose wrinkles I distinguished no particular feature. It was like an old sail endowed with life—a hanging cliff of weather-beaten flesh—like one of the clay boulders which occurred in that sand-bank. He had on a hat which had seen salt water, and a coat of many pieces and colors, though it was mainly the color of the beach, as if it had been sanded. His variegated back—for his coat had many patches, even between the shoulders—was a rich study to us, when we had passed him and looked around. It might have been dishonorable for him to have so many scars behind, it is true, if he had not had many more, and more serious ones, in front. He looked as if he sometimes saw a doughnut, but never descended to comfort; too grave to laugh, too tough to cry; as in different as a clam,—like a sea-clam with hat on, and legs, that was out walking the strand. He may have been one of the Pilgrims—Peregrine White, at least—who has kept on the back side of the Cape and let the centuries go by. He was looking for wrecks, old logs, water-logged and covered with barnacles, or bits of boards and joists—even chips, which he drew out of reach of the tides and stacked up to dry. When the log was too large to carry far, he cut it up where the last wave had left it, or, rolling it a few feet, appropriated it by sticking two sticks into the ground crosswise above it. Some rotten trunk, which in Maine encumbers the ground, and is, perchance, thrown into the water on purpose, is here thus carefully picked up, split and dried, and husbanded. Before winter the wrecker painfully carries these things up the bank on his shoulders by a long diagonal slanting path made with a hoe in the sand, if there is no hollow at hand. You may see his hooked pike-staff always lying on the bank, ready for use. He is the true monarch of the beach, whose 'right there is none to dispute,' and he is as much identified with it as a beach bird."
THE STORY OF THE GREAT MARCH.
From the Diary of a Staff Officer. By Brevet Major George Ward Nichols, Aid-de-camp to General Sherman. With a Map and Illustrations. 12mo., pp. 394. New York: Harper Brothers.
The advance of General Sherman, with 70,000 men, through the heart of the seceded states, will ever be memorable in the annals of American history as the greatest achievement of modern times. From the time of his departure from Atlanta, Ga., until the purpose on which he started was accomplished in the surrender of Gen. Johnston, near Raleigh, N.C., his [{284}] movements attracted the attention, and called forth the criticism, of unmilitary as well as military men in Europe and America. Many were the prophecies uttered of his total failure, but the able captain who conceived the plan and to whose care it was intrusted, carried the expedition successfully through. Of this march most of our readers have read more or less, in the daily papers. These statements have oftentimes been very incorrect and vague, from the excitement and hurry of the correspondents in getting them up. The handsome volume before us, however, is a clear and concise narrative of that great march, noted down from day to day by a member of General Sherman's staff. The author in this sketch gives us a true narrative of the entire march, and account of the interview between Sherman and Johnston. His style is plain and unaffected, but occasionally a little inflated. This, however, is pardonable, for he is very brief, and brevity, the poet says, "is the soul of wit." He wastes but few words in "saying his say," and has evidently taken much pains in getting his statements in as small space as possible. The book is embellished with a fine map of the march, and several appropriate wood-cuts. It also contains General Sherman's official reports of the campaign, and statement before the Congressional committee on the conduct of the war—valuable documents in themselves. We copy the following extracts from the chapter personal to General Sherman: