a hap-hazard way we have stumbled,
into the most momentous acts. A government that still repudiates a duty
so simple as the payment of arrears due under its own written pledges to
the South Carolina soldiers can hardly shelter itself behind the plea of
any complicated difficulties in its problem. Let us hope that the
freedmen, on their part, will be led by some guidance better than our
example: that they will not neglect their duties as their rights have
been neglected, and not wrong others as they have been wronged.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Autobiography, Correspondence, etc., of Lyman Beecher, D. D._
Edited by CHARLES BEECHER. With Illustrations. In Two Volumes.
New York. Harper & Brothers.

Reading this life of Dr. Beecher is like walking over an ancient
battle-field, silent and grass-grown, but ridged with graves, and
showing still by its conformation the disposition of the troops which
once struggled there in deadly contest,--and while we linger, lo! the
graves are graves no more. The dry bones come together,--sinew and flesh
form upon them,--the skin covers them about,--the breath enters into
them,--they live and stand upon their feet, an exceeding great and
mighty army. Drums beat, swords flash, and the war of the Titans rages
again around us.

The life of Dr. Beecher is closely inwoven with the ecclesiastical
history of New England. Ecclesiastical, like civil history, is chiefly a
military record; and through both these volumes a sound of battle is in
the land, and of great destruction. We who have fallen on comparatively
quiet days can hardly conceive the intensity and violence of the
excitement that glowed at our theological centres, and flamed out even
to their circumferences, when the great Unitarian controversy was at its
height,--when Park-Street Church alone of the Boston churches stood firm
in the ancient faith, and her site was popularly christened "Hell-Fire
Corner,"--when, later, the Hanover-Street Church was known as "Beecher's
Stone Jug" and the firemen refused to play upon the flames that were
destroying it. There were giants on the earth in those days, and they
wrestled in giant fashion.

All this conflict Dr. Beecher saw, and a large part of it he was. In
Connecticut he had drawn his sword against intemperance, "Toleration,"
and other forms of what he considered evil, and had been recognized as a
mighty man of valor in his generation; but it was in this Unitar