for the
expansion of this transatlantic Africa. Where the black race is now
settled it will stay, but it must be confined within its present limits.

We do not look upon the simple secession of the Slave States, or of
any one of them, as dangerous, so far as the extension of slavery is
concerned,--rather, on the contrary, as likely to end the great debate
by securing all unoccupied territory to the North, to freedom, and to
the white races. It is only, if an attempt should be made, for the sake
of what is miscalled peace, and for the sake of the Union, to conciliate
the misguided and unfortunate people of the South by compromise or
concession, that we fear the consequences.

The responsibility under which we are to act is not for our own moral
convictions alone, but also for the happiness of all future times. There
is no room for concession, no space for compromise, in the settlement of
the question of the prevalence of the black or of the white race on this
continent,--in other words, the prevalence of liberty and Christianity
and all their attendant blessings, or that of ignorance and barbarism
with their train. "We will decide this question," says Mr. Fisher, whose
words were written before the necessity for decision was so distinctly
presented as at present, "we will decide it, if we can, as a united
people; but if we cannot, if cotton and slavery and the negro have
already weakened our Southern brethren by their spells and enchantments,
so that the South cannot decide according to the traditions and impulses
of our race, then we of the North will still decide it, as by right we
may,--by right of reason, of race, and of law."

_The Conduct of Life_. By R.W. EMERSON Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.
pp. 288.

It is a singular fact, that Mr. Emerson is the most steadily attractive
lecturer in America. Into that somewhat cold-waterish region adventurers
of the sensation kind come down now and then with a splash, to become
disregarded King Logs before the next season. But Mr. Emerson always
draws. A lecturer now for something like a quarter of a century, one
of the pioneers of the lecturing system, the charm of his voice, his
manner, and his matter has never lost its power over his earlier
hearers, and continually winds new ones in its enchanting meshes. What
they do not fully understand they take on trust, and listen, saying to
themselves, as the old poet of Sir Philip Sidney,--

"A sweet, attractive, kind of g