eral Banks's Order No. 38, issued March 22,
providing for a board of education, and a tax upon property to establish
schools for black and for white children. We have no fears that such
results will be slow, if the enfranchised peasantry, one million or four
million, have the right to work on their own land, or to accept the
highest wage that offers,--if they find they are not arbitrarily removed
from their old homes,--and if the protection of those homes is, in the
first instance, intrusted to themselves.

These are the first-fruits of freedom for them. For us they are the
legitimate use of victory. It only remains that we shall mildly, but
firmly, instruct all officers of the Government that it is time for some
policy to be adopted which shall involve such uses of victory. The
country will be encouraged, the moment it sees that the freedmen are
finding their proper places in the new civilization. The country expects
its rulers not to wait for chapters of accidents or for volunteer boards
to work out such policy, but themselves to provide the system of
administration, and the intelligent men who shall promptly and skilfully
avail themselves of every victory.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_History of the Romans under the Empire._ By CHARLES MERIVALE,
B. D., late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. From the Fourth
London Edition. With a Copious Analytical Index. New York: D. Appleton &
Co. 8vo. Vols. I. & II.

People of the last century had a very easy time with their Roman
history, and any gentleman could pick up enough of it "in course of his
morning's reading" to answer the demands of a lifetime. Men read and
believed. They had no more doubt of the existence of Romulus and Remus
than of the existence of Fairfax and Cromwell. As to the story of those
dropped children being nursed by a she-wolf, had it not been established
that wolves did sometimes suckle humanity's young? and why should it be
supposed that no lupine nursery had ever existed at the foot of the
Palatine Hill? After swallowing the wolf-story, everything else was
easy; and the history of the Roman Kings was as gravely received as the
history of the Roman Emperors. The Brutus who upset the Tarquins was as
much an historical character as the Brutus who assassinated Caesar and
killed himself. Tullia had lived and sinned, just like Messallina. The
Horatii were of flesh and blood, like the Triumvirs. So was it with
regard to the Empire. The s