er Hamilton._" Hon. GEORGE SHEA. Hurd & Houghton. $1.00.

"_Harriet Martineau's Autobiography._" Two volumes. M. W. CHAPMAN. J.
R. Osgood & Co. $6.00

NEBULAE.

--WE have not yet entered into rivalry with Mexico; and although to
those who looked upon our politics during the last two months from the
outside only, we have doubtless seemed to be tending toward anarchy,
revolution, and pronunciamentos, we were really in no such danger.
Teutonic blood and the English language (Anglo-Saxons and Germans are
both Teutonic) seem to carry with them a certain steadiness and
capacity of common-sense perception which are preventives of great
political folly; and although it is not the habit of our politicians to
speak very respectfully of each other from the opposite sides of a
political canvass, and the conduct of our Representatives at Washington
is not always quite so admirable and exemplary as it might be, we do
not, in French phrase, "descend into the streets," or raise barricades,
or fly at each other's throats unless we mean real revolutionary
business. Even then we are apt to go decorously, if not solemnly, about
our work, and talk about "the course of human events" and "a decent
respect for the opinions of mankind"; we at least did so once, and
notwithstanding the great changes that have taken place in our
political and social condition, it may be safely assumed that we should
do so again. Frothy talk at Washington gives occasion for leading
articles which are not always less frothy, and for sensation headings
that gladden the eyes of newsboys. The desperate political game played
at Washington for the Presidency has had a very bad effect upon our
reputation, and has increased the very political demoralization of
which it was an outward sign; but it is safe to say that when the most
furious politicians there talked revolution they did not "mean
business." Both parties stood before the world in a not very admirable
light. On the one hand, the Democrats digged a pit and fell into it
themselves. The Electoral Commission was their own contrivance; and
when they were moved to wrath and denunciation by the decisions against
their case, they only showed that they formed the Commission in the
supposed certainty that it would decide in their favor. They did not
want a tribunal of arbitration, but a decision under the forms of
arbitration. On the other hand, the Republicans appeared with changed
front on the subject of Stat