has not voluntarily borne arms against the
United States, or given aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to
persons engaged in armed hostility thereto, or sought or accepted or
attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever under any
authority, or pretended authority, in hostility to the United
States."[30] This oath will be a bar against the return to _National
office_ of any who have taken part with the Rebels. It shuts out in
advance the whole criminal gang. But these same persons, rejected by the
National Government, are left free to hold office in the States. And
here is another motive to further action by Congress. The oath, is well
as far as it goes; more must be done in the same spirit.

But enough. The case is clear. Behold the Rebel States in arms against
that paternal government to which, as the supreme condition of their
constitutional existence, they owe duty and love; and behold all
legitimate powers, executive, legislative, and judicial, in these
States, abandoned and vacated. _It only remains that Congress should
enter and assume the proper jurisdiction._ If we are not ready to
exclaim with Burke, speaking of Revolutionary France, "It is but an
empty space on the political map," we may at least adopt the response
hurled back by Mirabeau, that this empty space is a volcano red with
flames and overflowing with lava-floods. But whether we deal with it as
"empty space" or as "volcano," the jurisdiction, civil and military,
centres in Congress, to be employed for the happiness, welfare, and
renown of the American people,--changing Slavery into Freedom, and
present chaos into a Cosmos of perpetual beauty and power.

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Thoughts of the Emperor M. Aurelius Antoninus._ Translated by
GEORGE LONG. London: Bell & Daldy.

Dulness is usually reckoned the prescriptive right of kings; at least,
they are supposed to be officially incapable of literary eminence. And
yet it is a curious fact, that, of those idiomatic works which
literature will not "let die," of those marked productions which survive
by their individuality, three, at least, bear the impress of royal
names.

Devotion has found, in the contributions of three thousand years, no
utterance so fit as the lyrics of a Hebrew king; satiety has breathed no
sigh so profound as "The Words of the Preacher, the Son of David, King
of Jerusalem"[31]; and the wisdom of the