als, plundering the Treasury, and betraying the country at whose crib they had fattened; but mankind would forgive them for not acquiring these accomplishments of modern treason. As a race, they may be less vigorous and thrifty than the Saxon, but they are more social, docile, and affectionate, fulfilling the theory which Channing held in relation to them, if advanced to freedom and civilization.

If in the progress of the war they should be called to bear arms, there need be no reasonable apprehension that they would exhibit the ferocity of savage races. Unlike such, they have been subordinated to civilized life. They are by nature a religious people. They have received an education in the Christian faith from devout teachers of their own and of the dominant race. Some have been taught (let us believe it) by the precepts of Christian masters, and some by the children of those masters, repeating the lessons of the Sabbath-school. The slaveholders assure us that they have all been well treated. If that be so, they have no wrongs to avenge. Associated with our army, they would conform to the stronger and more disciplined race. Nor is this view disproved by servile insurrections. In those cases, the insurgents, without arms, without allies, without discipline, but throwing themselves against society, against government, against everything, saw no other escape than to devastate and destroy without mercy in order to get a foothold. If they exterminated, it was because extermination was threatened against them.

In the Revolution, in the army at Cambridge, from the beginning to the close of the war, against the protests of South Carolina by the voice of Edward Rutledge, but with the express sanction of Washington,-ever just, ever grateful for patriotism, whencesoever it came,—the negroes fought in the ranks with the white men, and they never dishonored the patriot cause. So also at the defence of New Orleans they received from General Jackson a noble tribute to their fidelity and soldierlike bearing. Weighing the question historically and reflectively, and anticipating the capture of Richmond and New Orleans, there need be more serious apprehension of the conduct of some of our own troops recruited in large cities than of a regiment of contrabands officered and disciplined by white men.

But as events travel faster than laws or proclamations, already in this war with Rebellion the two races have served together. The same breastworks have been built by their common toil. True and valiant, they stood side by side in the din of cannonade, and they shared as comrades in the victory of Hatteras. History will not fail to record that on the 28th day of August, 1861, when the Rebel forts were bombarded by the Federal army and navy, under the command of Major-General Butler and Commodore Stringham, fourteen negroes, lately Virginia slaves, now contraband of war, faithfully and without panic worked the after-gun of the upper deck of the Minnesota, and hailed with a victor's pride the Stars and Stripes as they again wayed on the soil of the Carolinas.

Sermons preached in the Chapel of Harvard College. By JAMES WALKER, D. D. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 12mo.

THE great reputation which Dr. Walker has long enjoyed, as one of the most impressive pulpit orators of the country, will suffer little diminution by the publication of these specimens of his rare powers of statement, argument, and illustration. To the general reader, they are, to be sure, deprived of the fascination of his voice and manner; but as the peculiarities of his elocution have their source in the peculiar

ities of his mental and moral organization, it will be found that the style and structure of these printed sermons suggest the mode of their delivery, which is simply the emphatic utterance of emphatic thought. The Italicized words, with which the volume abounds, palpably mark the results of thinking, and arrest attention because they are not less emphasized by the intellect than by the type. In reflecting Dr. Walker's mind, the work at the same time reflects his manner.

Every reader of these sermons will be struck by their thorough reasonableness,―

a reasonableness which does not exclude, but includes, the deepest and warmest religious sensibility. Moral and religious feeling pervades every statement; but the feeling is still confined within a flexible framework of argument, which, while it enlarges with every access of emotion, is always an outlying boundary of thought, beyond which passion does not pass. Light continually asserts itself as more comprehensive in its reach than heat; and the noblest spiritual instincts and impulses are never allowed unchecked expression as sentiments, but have to submit to the restraints imposed by principles. Even in the remarkable sermon entitled, "The Heart more than the Head," it will be found that it is the head which legitimates the action of the heart. The sentiments are exalted above the intellect by a process purely intellectual, and the inferiority of the reason is shown to be a principle essentially reasonable. Thus, throughout the volume, the author's mental insight into the complex phenomena of our spiritual nature is always accompanied by a mental oversight of its actual and possible aberrations. A sound, large, "roundabout" common sense, keen, eager, vigilant, sagacious, encompasses all the emotional elements of his thought. He has a subtile sense of mystery, but he is not a mystic. The most marvellous workings of the Divine Spirit he apprehends under the conditions of Law, and even in the raptures of devotion he never forgets the relation of cause and effect.

The style of these sermons is what might be expected from the character of the mind it expresses. If Dr. Walker were not a thinker, it is plain that he could never have been a rhetorician. He has no power at all as a writer, if writing be considered an accomplishment which can be separated from earnest thinking. Words are, with him, the mere instruments for the expression of things; and he hits on felicitous words only under that impatient stress of thought which demands exact expression for definite ideas. All his words, simple as they are, are therefore fairly earned, and he gives to them a force and significance which they do not bear in the dictionary. The mind of the writer is felt beating and burning beneath his phraseology, stamping every word with the image of a thought. Largeness of intellect, acute

discrimination, clear and explicit statement, masterly arrangement of matter, an unmistakable performance of the real business of expression,-these qualities make every reader of the sermons conscious that a mind of great vigor, breadth, and pungency is brought into direct contact with his own. The almost ostentatious absence of "fine writing" only increases the effect of the plain and sinewy words.

If we pass from the form to the substance of Dr. Walker's teachings, we shall find that his sermons are especially characterized by practical wisdom. A scholar, a moralist, a metaphysician, a theologian, learned in all the lore and trained in the best methods of the schools, he is distinguished from most scholars by his broad grasp of every-day life. It is this quality which has given him his wide influence as a preacher, and this is a prominent charm of his printed sermons. He brings principles to the test of facts, and connects thoughts with things. The conscience which can easily elude the threats, the monitions, and the appeals of ordinary sermonizers, finds itself mastered by his mingled fervor, logic, and practical knowledge. Every sermon in the present volume is good for use, and furnishes both inducements and aids to the formation of manly Christian character. There is much, of course, to lift the depressed and inspire the weak; but the great peculiarity of the discourses is the resolute energy with which they grapple with the worldliness and sin of the proud and the strong.

The Monks of the West, from St. Benedict to St. Bernard. By the COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT, Member of the French Academy. Authorized Translation. Volumes I. and II. Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons. 1861. 8vo. pp. xii. and 515, 549.

THESE Volumes form the first instalment of a work in which one of the great lights of the Romish Church in our day proposes to recount the glories of Western Monasticism, and to narrate the lives of some of the remarkable men who successively passed from the cloister to the Papal throne, or in positions scarcely less