and the flank movement was prevented. Thus
the cavalry added another dearly earned laurel to its chaplet of
honor--_dearly earned_, because many of their bravest champions fell
upon that bloody field.

* * * * *

"Thus ended the battle of Gettysburg--the bloody turning-point of the
rebellion--the bloody baptism of the redeemed republic. Nearly twenty
thousand men from the Union ranks had been killed and wounded, and a
larger number of the rebels, making the enormous aggregate of at least
forty thousand, whose blood was shed to fertilize the Tree of Liberty."

The following peroration to the glowing account of the battle of
Pittsburg Landing, we quote as an illustration of the vein of poetry
that pervades his writings:

"Thus another field of renown was added to the list, so rapidly
increased during these years; where valor won deathless laurels, and
principle was reckoned weighter than life.

"Peacefully the Tennessee flows between its banks onward to the ocean,
nor tells aught of the bloody struggle on its shore. Quietly the golden
grain ripens in the sun, and the red furrow of war is supplanted by the
plowshares of peace. To the child born within the shadow of this
battle-field, who listens wonderingly to a recital of the deeds of this
day, the heroes of Shiloh will, mayhap, appear like the dim phantoms of
a dream, shadowy and unreal, but the results they helped to bring about
are the tissue of a people's life; the dust he treads is the sacred soil
from which sprang the flowers of freedom, and the institutions for which
these men died, make his roof safe over his head."

We conclude our extracts from the volume with a part of the chapter on
"The Surrender." The story is told without flourish of trumpets, and in
a manner to give no offense to the vanquished, while its strict and
impartial adherence to truth must recommend it to all readers:

"The last act in the great drama of the war took place without dramatic
accessory. There was no startling tableau, with the chief actors grouped
in effective attitudes, surrounded by their attendants. No spreading
tree lent its romance to the occasion, as some artists have fondly
supposed.

"A plain farm-house between the lines was selected by General Lee for
the surrender, and the ceremony of that act was short and simple. The
noble victor did not complete the humiliation of the brave vanquished by
any triumphal display or blare of trumpets