A juvenile work with an extremely awkward title; 'Line upon Line' having been a collection of Bible stories, adapted to the capacity of children, of which book the present volume is a continuation. While we credit the author for the best intentions, we must, however, suggest that it would have been better in every instance had the original text been given as well as the paraphrase, unless, indeed, it be assumed that the Bible is unfit for children to read, or above their comprehension.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] A South Carolina Protest againt Slavery. New York: G.P. Putnam. 1861.
[10] Historical Notes on the Employment of Negroes in the American Army of the Revolution. By George H. Moore. New York: Charles T. Evans. Vide also The Continental Monthly, May, p. 324, vol. i.
EDITOR'S TABLE.
Another month of these most eventful times has passed by with mingled good and evil fortune, and we still find 'that great mystery, the American Republic,' strong and in good hope, careering in headlong speed, with accelerated motion, adown the great torrent of history. It is natural enough—yet it is still most unreasonable—that there should be so many who believe that every eddy and whirl should be its death-struggle or its final dart into the deep calm sea of safety. With every battle lost or won there are thousands who despair or exult—forgetting that, come what may, the cause of human progress is never backward, and that we might as soon hope to recall the middle ages as build up into prosperity the 'patriarchal' old slave South.
Every rebel's slave is free. Free on paper, if you will—theoretically free; but is that nothing? How many years will slavery, or the Southern system in its integrity, exist side by side with a rapidly growing free country no longer recognizing the existence of 'the institution?' How many months, in fact, when we shall have and hold—as we are absolutely determined to do—the whole west bank of the Mississippi and the confederate ports; which, by the way, should have all been secured at the outset at any cost? Let us win or lose in the field, we shall still, thanks to our fleet, hem them in. And will not that, with mere waiting, prove a complete victory? Whatever financial crises may be before the North, it will ever possess, in spite of the most terrible sufferings, its enormous recuperative power, and its old ability for hard work. But how is the exhausted, ruined South to arise, save through Northern aid? Will its poor whites labor in factories? They are expected to form a permanent standing army. The negroes? The day of slavery is passing away rapidly. Let the South gain battles, if it will—they are only defeats in disguise; and in the long run it will be found that God willed this war to be long and bitter, that by it the last stronghold of the wrongs of man might be the more thoroughly exhausted.