e
so keen and so covert that it always took, but never gave, and then
complimented him home in so masterly a manner that he was lured into the
fond belief that he had found a disciple. A mind so capacious and so
reticent is always an enigma to near observers. Hence it is that the
transcendently great may be more truly known to after-ages than to
any contemporary. By the patient research and profound insight of Mr.
Carlyle, Frederick the Great is thus rising into clear and perennial
light. What deserts of dust he wrought in, and what a jungle of false
growths he had to clear away, Dryasdust and Smelfungus mournfully hint
and indignantly moralize,--under such significant names does this new
Rhadamanthus reveal the real sins of mankind, and deliver them over to
the judgment of their peers. Frederick, indeed, is among them, but not
of them. The way in which he is made to come forth from the mountains of
smoke and cinders remaining of his times is absolutely marvellous. As
some mighty and mysterious necromancer quickens the morbid imagination
to supernatural sight, and for a brief moment reveals through rolling
mist and portentous cloud the perfect likeness of the one longed for
by the rapt gazer, so Frederick is restored in this biography for
the perpetual consolation and admiration of all coming heroes. In
comprehension and judgment of the actions and hearts of men, and in
vividness of writing, not that which shook the soul of Belshazzar in the
midst of his revellers was more powerful, or more sure of approval and
fulfilment. It is not only one of the greatest of histories and of
biographies, but nothing in literature, from any other pen, bears any
likeness to it. It is truly a solitary work,--the effort of a vast and
lonely nature to find a meet companion among the departed.

1. _The Rejected Stone; or, Insurrection vs. Resurrection in America._
By a Native of Virginia. Second Edition. Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co.
1862.

2. _The Golden Hour._ By MONCURE D. CONWAY, Author of "The Rejected
Stone." _Impera parendo._ Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862.

Seldom have political writings found such accomplices in events as
these, whose final criticism appears in the great Proclamation of the
President. Two campaigns have been the bloody partisans of this earnest
pen: the impending one will cheerfully undertake its final vindication.
Not because these two little books stand sole and preeminent, the
isolated prophecies of an all bu