commonplaces of respectable
citizenship. It is no slight praise to say that his chapter upon the
New-England Abolitionists is clear and just. Their points of
disagreement with the Republican party are stated with no common
accuracy. Careful sentences give the precise position of Garrison and
his adherents: the intrinsic essence of the movement of these reformers
is divested of the subordinate and trivial facts so often put forward to
misrepresent it. Although Mr. Dicey endeavors not to commit himself upon
the vital differences in the agitation of anti-slavery sentiments by the
Abolitionists and by the Republican party, it is very evident that he
inclines to the belief that the former, in their advocacy of disunion,
acted not from a perverse and fanatical philosophy, but from the logical
compulsions of a critical understanding, stimulated by an intense
conviction of the national sin.

We have dwelt thus upon Mr. Dicey's views of the war, and of the great
moral question with which it is connected, because these portions of his
volumes are most pertinent to us, as well as creditable to him. His
sketches of public characters are good common-sense grasps at them,
which generally get their externals, and occasionally something more.
The description of the President is forcible, though a little too
graphic for perfect courtesy. Caleb Cushing impresses the traveller as
one of the ablest of our public men, and Wendell Phillips as by far the
most eloquent speaker he ever heard. General Butler, however, is not to
Mr. Dicey's taste. Indeed, he is hardly behind the "Saturday Review" in
the terrible epithets he bestows upon the man who he acknowledges "was
associated with the grandest triumph of the Federal arms, and by some
means or other preserved New Orleans to the Union with but little cost
of either men or money." It is rather late to renew discussion about the
notorious order relating to the women of the subjected city. But Mr.
Dicey chooses to express his belief in an infamous intention of General
Butler at the time of its issue,--though he declares that "the strictest
care was taken lest the order should be abused," and that the "Southern
ladies [?] were grossly insulting in their behavior to the Union
soldiers, using _language and gestures_ which, in a city occupied by
troops of any other nation, would have subjected them, _without orders_,
to the coarsest retaliation." To which we have only to reply, that
General Butler may