the example of courage through simple and
perfect faith is enforced without cant or sentimentality.

The history of the great Christian aspect of our war cannot be too
minutely written nor too often read. There is some danger, now the
occasion of mercy is past, that we may forget how wonderfully complete
the organization of the Sanitary Commission was, and how unfailingly it
gave to the wounded and disabled of our hosts all the succor that human
foresight could afford,--how, beginning with the establishment of depots
convenient for the requisitions of the surgeons, it came to send out its
own corps of nurses and watchers, until its lines of mercy were
stretched everywhere almost in sight of the lines of battle, and its
healing began almost at the hour the hurt was given. Mr. Reed devotes a
chapter to this history, in which he briefly and clearly describes the
practical operation of the system of national charity, accrediting to
Mr. Frank B. Fay the organization of the auxiliary corps, and speaking
with just praise of its members who perished in the service, or clung to
it, till, overtaken by contagion or malaria, they returned home to die.
The subject is dealt with very frankly; and Mr. Reed, while striving to
keep in view the consoling and self-recompensing character of their
work, does not conceal that, though they were rewarded by patience and
thankfulness in far the greater number of cases, their charities were
sometimes met by disheartening selfishness and ingratitude. But they
bore up under all, and gave the world such an illustration of practical
Christianity as it had never seen before.

Mr. Reed's little book is so earnestly and unambitiously written, that
its graphic power may escape notice. Yet it is full of picturesque
touches; and in the line of rapidly succeeding anecdote there is nothing
of repetition.

_A History of the Gypsies: with Specimens of the Gypsy Language._ By
WALTER SIMPSON. Edited, with Preface, Introduction, and Notes, and a
Disquisition on the Past, Present, and Future of Gypsydom, by JAMES
SIMPSON. New York: M. Doolady.

The history of the Gypsies, according to the editor of the present work,
is best presented in a series of desultory anecdotes which relate
chiefly to the Egyptian usages of murder, pocket-picking, and
horse-stealing, and the behavior of the rogues when they come to be
hanged for their crimes. Incidentally, a good deal of interesting
character is developed, and both a