ercy of
the court that condemned her before him, and the shrieks of her agonized
daughter ringing in his ears.

Be all that as it may, Andrew Johnson, cutting loose from Congress and
the moneyed class, took the executive government into his own hands.
Few of us realize what a tremendous power is this government of ours.
The framers of it made it so, to guard against the people in whose
behalf it was created. The politicians in Congress saw this, and sought
to free themselves of Johnson through impeachment. They charged him with
selecting his cabinet. The charge was absurd, and failed; and while
Johnson, with little dignity and less success, went on fighting
politicians, Secretary McCulloch used the power given him to contract
our currency, restore our credit, and put the country once more on the
road to honest trade and its high prosperity.

No one, however, must open Hugh McCulloch's book with any hope of
finding therein a history of this financial crisis and his part in the
restoration to honor we enjoyed. The author is a modest man, and leaves
to others the truth and the praise the truth awards him.

There is a more serious objection to the work, and that comes of Mr.
McCulloch's marked ignorance of men. While clear-sighted and profound in
his knowledge of great economic subjects, he scarcely knows one man from
another, save as they are labelled and described by popular expression.
It is amusing to run over his list of prominent men and see under each,
if not an official pedestal, one given by social verdict. With the
conservatism of his temperament in his judgment of men, he seldom
departs from the recorded estimate of the public. The most ludicrous
instance of this is his history of Grant and his summing up of the man's
supposed character. It is the political fiction and newspaper lie of the
day.

From this we can turn to the views of a statesman on finance, the
tariff, and on reconstruction with not only pleasure but profit. So far
we have three great historical characters to record as financiers:
Hamilton because of his luck, Chase for his blunders, and McCulloch for
his ability.

RECENT NOVELS.--The great stream that swells day by day in the form of
prose fiction is simply appalling. It is not only the genius of to-day
that has seized on this vehicle of thought and feeling, but the amateur
pen-driver plunges in without hesitation. Every male citizen of these
United States is born to hold office and edit