we find no
PURPOSE, corresponding to the expectations excited. We have every
variety of miserable wretch imaginable paraded before us, without a hint
of any means of curing their social disease. 'There is a hammer for
tearing down, but no trowel for building up,' beyond a little empty talk
on the benefits to be derived from education. The truth is that Victor
Hugo writes, like too many of his nation, simply for sensation and
effect. The fault to be found with this series is, that, like Jack
Sheppard, it degrades the taste and blunts the feelings--in a word, it
vulgarizes, and is as improper reading for the young, so far as _effect_
is concerned, as the most immoral production extant. Vulgarity is the
open doorway to vice, and, philosophize as we may, sketches of thieves
and vagabonds, _gamins_, prostitutes and liars are vulgar and unfit
reading for youthful minds, if not for any minds whatever.

ABEL DRAKE'S WIFE. By JOHN SAUNDERS. New York: Harper & Brothers.

The reader is well aware that this work has attained a great
popularity--we may add that it has deserved it, being a work of marked
originality; one of characters and feelings which will even bear at
sundry times reperusal: as good a character as can be given to a novel,
and a far better one than we are disposed to award to the majority of
those which we meet. It is, we should say, in justice to the progressive
powers of the author, far superior to his earlier productions.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

In the noble Message of President LINCOLN, there are two paragraphs
which should be committed to memory and constantly recalled by every
man:

'Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and
this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No
personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of
us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down into
honor or dishonor to the highest generation.

'We say 'we are for the Union!' The world will not forget that we
say this. We know how to save this Union. _The world knows we know
how to save it._ We--even we here--hold the power and bear the
responsibility!'

'We cannot escape history.' And this is true, not only of the Congress
and of the Administration, but of all men who at the present day are
raised one fraction above the veriest obscurity and completest
nothing-ism. You, reader, and series of those whom