is command,
Mr. Sanborn has shown admirable taste and judgment, and, without seeming
to be a eulogist, has contented himself with allowing his hero to speak
for himself, or rather to plead his own case. Viewing the case as a
whole, with its back-ground of antecedent history, no fair-minded person
can longer regard John Brown as either an adventurer or as a madman. He
was by nature, however, enthusiastic; he believed that he had a mission
in this world to fulfil, and that, the freedom of the slaves. This
mission he cherished uppermost in his mind, for its accomplishment he
labored and suffered incessantly, and for it he died. He lacked one
quality,--discretion. His pioneer life in New York, his thrilling
adventures in Kansas, where he fought slavery so fiercely that he saved
that state from being branded with the curse, his unwise but
conscientiously-conceived and carefully planned attack on Harper's
Ferry, his capture, trial and death, as told in Mr. Sanborn's pages make
up the warp and woof of a story, which surpasses in interest anything of
the nature of a biography that has been published for many a day. John
Brown has been dead a full quarter of a century; the object of his
ambition has been accomplished, but by other hands and brains; the
prophetic visions of his stalwart mind have been more than fulfilled.
History will do him justice, even if the book now before us has not
already done so, as we think.

Immediately after the execution, the body of the martyr was borne to
North Elba, N.Y., and, on the 8th of November, 1859, it was laid away to
rest. Mr. Sanborn gives only the briefest account of these last
services, and omits, for some unaccountable reason, to furnish even an
extract from that pathetic and pointed address, which came from Wendell
Phillips, while standing by the open grave. If Mr. Phillips ever spoke
more beautifully than he did, on that memorable day, we have never known
it. We sincerely hope that, in a future edition, Mr. Sanborn may be led
to insert the address in the pages where they so properly belong.

[Footnote 6: The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas,
and Martyr of Virginia. Edited by F.B. Sanborn, Boston: Roberts Bros.
Price, $3.00]

* * * * *

The theme of Prof. Hosmer's narrative[7] was born in Boston. Sept 27,
1722, and graduated at Harvard in 1740, and studied law. He was not a
lawyer and neither did he make his mark as a merchant alt