profound and logical. There are things in this universe
deeper and higher, more solid even, than the English Constitution. If
that is the perfection of human wisdom and a sufficing object of faith
and worship for our cousins over the water, on the other hand God's
dealing with this chosen people is preparing them to conceive of a
perfection of divine wisdom, of a constitution in the framing of which
man's wit had no share, and which shall yet be supreme, as it is
continually more or less plainly influential in the government of the
world. We may need even sterner teaching than any we have yet had, but
we have faith that the lesson will be learned at last.

If the assertion which we alluded to at the outset were true, if we,
more than others, are apt to forget; the past in the present, the work
of Mr. Moore[6] would do much in helping us to recover what we have
lost. Had its execution been as complete as its plan was excellent, it
would have left nothing to be desired. Its want of order may be charged
upon the necessity of monthly publication; but there are other defects
which this will hardly excuse. The editor seems to have become
gradually helpless before the mass of material that heaped itself about
him, and to have shovelled from sheer despair of selection. In the
documentary part he is sufficiently, sometimes even depressingly full,
and he has preserved a great deal of fugitive poetry from both sides,
much of it spirited, and some of it vigorously original;[7] but he has
frequently neglected to give his authorities. His extracts from the
newspapers of the day, especially from Southern and foreign ones, are
provokingly few, and his department of "incidents and rumors," the true
mirror of the time, inadequate both in quantity and quality. In spite
of these defects, however, there is enough to recall vividly the
features of the time at any marked period during the war, to renew the
phases of feeling, to trace the slowly gathering current of opinion,
and to see a definite purpose gradually orbing itself out of the chaos
of plans and motives, hopes, fears, enthusiasms, and despondencies. We
do not propose to review the book,--we might, indeed, almost as well
undertake to review the works of Father Time himself,--but, relying
chiefly on its help in piecing out our materials, shall try to freshen
the memory of certain facts and experiences worth bearing in mind
either for example or warning.

[6] _The Rebellion Rec