endo_.' Boston: Ticknor and
Fields.

The most remarkable work which the war has called out is beyond question
the _Rejected Stone_. Wild, vigorous, earnest, even to suffering, honest
as truth itself, quaint, humorous, pathetic, and startlingly eccentric.
Those who read it at once decided that a new writer had arisen among us,
and one destined to make no mean mark in the destinies of his country.
The reader who will refer to our first number will find what we said of
it in all sincerity, since the author was then to us unknown. He is--it
is almost needless to inform the reader--a thorough-going abolitionist,
yet one who, while looking more intently at the welfare of the black
than we care to do in the present imbroglio, still appreciates and urges
Emancipation, or freeing the black, in its relation to the welfare of
the white man. Mr. Conway is not, however, a man who speaks ignorantly
on this subject. A Virginian born and bred, brought up in the very heart
of the institution, he studied it at home in all its relations, and
found out its evils by experience. A thoroughly honest man, too
clear-headed and far too intelligent to be rated as a fanatic; too
familiar with his subject to be at all disregarded, he claims close
attention in many ways, those of wit and eloquence not being by any
means the least. In the work before us, he insists that there is a
golden hour at hand, a title borrowed from the quaint advertisement, of
'Lost a golden hour set with sixty diamond minutes'--which if not
grasped at by the strong, daring hand will see our great national
opportunity lost forever. We are not such disbelievers in fate as to
imagine that this golden hour ever can be inevitably lost. If the cause
of freedom rolls slowly, it is because even in free soil there are too
many Conservative pebbles. Still we agree with Conway as to his estimate
of the great mass of cowardice, irresolution, and folly which react on
our administration. If the word 'Emancipationist,'--meaning thereby one
who looks to the welfare of the _white_ man rather than the negro--be
substituted for 'Abolitionist' in the following, our more intelligent
readers will probably agree with Mr. Conway exactly:

'If this country is to be saved, the Abolitionists are to save it;
and though they seem few in numbers, they are not by a thousandth
so few as were the Christians when JESUS suffered, or Protestants
when Luther spoke. There is need only t