e admired in their day.
Principal among these results was the novel now before us. And this book
is really a tolerable imitation of Walter Scott. The feverish spirit of
modern France craved, indeed, stronger ingredients than the Wizard of
the North was wont to gather, and the _Hunchback_ is accordingly
'sensational.' It has in fact been called extravagant--yes, forced and
unnatural. Even ordinary readers were apt to say as much of it. We well
remember meeting many years ago in a well-thumbed circulating-library
copy of the _Hunchback of Notre Dame_ the following doggerel on the last
page:

'In Paris when to the Greve you go,
Pray do not grieve if VICTOR HUGO
Should there be hanging by a rope,
Without the blessing of the Pope,
Or that of any human creature
On him who libels human nature.'

Yet we counsel all who would be well-informed in literature--as well as
the far greater number of those who read only for entertainment, to get
this work. It is exciting--full of strange, quaint picturing of the
Middle Ages, has vivid characters, and is full of life. Among the series
of books with fewer faults, but, alas! with far fewer excellencies,
which are daily printed, there is, after all, seldom one so well worth
reading as _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

At last we are wide awake. At last the nation has found out its
strength, and determined, despite doughface objections and impediments
to every proposal of every kind, to push the war with energy, so that
the foe _shall_ be overwhelmed. Six hundred thousand men, as we write,
will soon swell the ranks of the Federal army, and if six hundred
thousand more are needed they can be had. For the North is arming in
real earnest, thank God! and when it rises in _all_ its force, who shall
withstand it? It is a thing to remember with pride, that the
proclamation calling for the second three hundred thousand by draft, was
received with the same joy as though we had heard of a great victory.

Government has not gone to work one day too soon. From a rebellion, the
present cause of strife has at length assumed the proportion of equal
war. The South has cast its _whole_ population, all its means, all its
energy, heart and soul, life and future, on one desperate game; while we
with every advantage have let out our strength little by little, so as
to hurt the enemy as little as possible. Doughface democracy among us
has squalled as if receiving deadly