ual comforts are all well enough in their place, but they do not
take batteries and redoubts. McClellan is the pet of his soldiers, Grant
the pride of his. McClellan cares for their bodies, Grant for their
fame. McClellan kills by kindness, Grant by courage.

This battle-book for boys will hold no unimportant place in the
war-library of the times. Its style is usually as limpid as the
camp-brooks by which much of it was written. In the heat of the contest
it becomes a succession of short, sharp sentences, as if the musketry
rang in the writer's brain and moulded and winged his thoughts. It is
calm in the midst of its intensity, and thus happily illustrates by its
popularity that self-control of the nation so well expressed by
Hawthorne,--that our movements are as cool and collected, if as noisy,
as that of a thousand gentlemen in a hall quietly rising at the same
moment from their chairs. The battle-grounds of Vicksburg,
Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Chattanooga, all of which he saw, or by
subsequent study of the field has made his own, and descriptions of
which are promised in a companion-volume, will find no truer nor
worthier chronicler.

_A Compendious History of English Literature, and of the English
Language, from the Norman Conquest. With Numerous Specimens._ By GEORGE
L. CRAIK, LL.D., Professor of History and of English Literature in
Queen's College, Belfast. 2 vols. 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner.

This is a thorough and an exhaustive work, having for its subject that
which must be of perpetual and increasing interest to all those
colonists who, in different parts of the world, are founding nations
which shall inherit the imperial language, and therefore will be
entitled to claim a share in the literary glories of the mother-land.
Professor Craik is favorably known as the author of works that depend
chiefly upon industry for their worth; and this elaborate production
must add to the esteem in which his learned labors have long been held
in many quarters. He has left no portion of his subject untouched, but
affords to his readers a full and lucid account of every part of it,
according to the materials that are at the command of scholars. If
defective on any points, it is owing to the want of authorities. His
survey of English literature includes not only all writers of the first
class, but all who can be regarded as of any considerable distinction;
and he has noticed many names which have no pretension to