streets with a bouquet of rosebuds on my bayonet. I found a note among
them afterward, more fragrant than they.

When our regiment left Boston, it went from Battery Wharf. I went on
board the Merrimac. Kate could not pass the lines, and stationed herself
in a vessel opposite, where we could look at each other. I aimed a
rosebud at her; it fell into the green water, and floated away. The
second and third were more successful. She pressed one to her lips and
threw it back again; the other she kept. Afterward, with the practical
forethought which forms a part of her character, she bought out an apple
woman, and stormed me with apples. The vessel left the wharf, and I
looked back with eyes fast growing dim, and watched the figure on the
dock, bravely waving her white handkerchief as long as I could see.

Well, it is hard for a man to leave home and friends, and all that he
holds dear; but I do not regret it, though I have to rough it now. I am
writing now beside a bivouac made of poles and cornstalks. My desk is a
rude bench. I have just finished my dinner of salt junk and potatoes. On
my feet is that pair of stockings. Profanity and almost every vice
abounds; there are temptations all around me, but pure lips have
promised to pray for me, and I feel that I shall be shielded and
guarded, and kept uncontaminated, true to my 'north star,' which shines
so brightly to me--true to my country and my God.

LITERARY NOTICES.

SORDELLO, STRAFFORD, CHRISTMAS EVE, AND EASTER DAY. By ROBERT
BROWNING. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

The contents of this volume, though now first presented to the American
public, are not the latest of the author's writings. It completes,
however, Messrs. Ticknor & Fields' reprint of his poetical works. His
growing popularity calls for the present publication. We would fain
number ourselves among the admirers of the husband of Elizabeth Barrett;
the man loved by this truly great poetess, to whom she addressed the
refined and imaginative tenderness of the 'Portuguese Sonnets?' of whom
she writes:

'Or from Browning some 'Pomegranate,' which, if cut deep down the
middle, shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.'

Before the man so loved and honored, we repeat, we would fain bow in
reverence. But it may not be; we cannot receive him as a _true_ poet--as
in any poetic quality the peer of his matchless wife. We hear much of
his subtile psychology--we deem it psychological