ve either; but
Lillie differs from him so widely as to scream with joy when she hears
of Bull Run. Naturally she cannot fall in love with Mr. Colburne, the
young New Boston lawyer, who goes into the war conscientiously for his
country's sake, and resolved for his own to make himself worthy and
lovable in Lillie's blue eyes by destroying and desolating all that she
holds dear. It requires her marriage with Colonel Carter--a Virginia
gentleman, a good-natured drunkard and _roue_ and soldier of fortune on
our side--to make her see Colburne's worth, as it requires some
comparative study of New Orleans and New Boston, on her return to her
own city, to make her love the North. Bereft of her husband by his own
wicked weakness, and then widowed, she can at last wisely love and marry
Colburne; and, cured of Secession by experiencing on her father's
account the treatment received by Unionists in New Orleans, her
conversion to loyalty is a question of time duly settled before the
story ends.

We sketch the plot without compunction, for these people of Mr. De
Forrest's are so unlike characters in novels as to be like people in
life, and none will wish the less to see them because he knows the
outline of their history. Not only is the plot good and very well
managed, but there is scarcely a feebly painted character or scene in
the book. As to the style, it is so praiseworthy that we will not
specifically censure occasional defects,--for the most part, slight
turgidities notable chiefly from their contrast to the prevailing
simplicity of the narrative.

Our war has not only left us the burden of a tremendous national debt,
but has laid upon our literature a charge under which it has hitherto
staggered very lamely. Every author who deals in fiction feels it to be
his duty to contribute towards the payment of the accumulated interest
in the events of the war, by relating his work to them; and the heroes
of young-lady writers in the magazines have been everywhere fighting the
late campaigns over again, as young ladies would have fought them. We do
not say that this is not well, but we suspect that Mr. De Forrest is the
first to treat the war really and artistically. His campaigns do not try
the reader's constitution, his battles are not bores. His soldiers are
the soldiers we actually know,--the green wood of the volunteers, the
warped stuff of men torn from civilization and cast suddenly into the
barbarism of camps, the hard, dry, to