h, on our side. The Proclamation, therefore, even if
it could be proved that it had not led to the liberation of one slave,
has been of immense service to us, and the President deserves the thanks
of every loyal American for having issued it. He threw a shell into the
foreign Secession camp, the explosion of which was fatal to that
"cordial understanding" that was to have operated for our annihilation.

* * * * *

Such was the year of the Proclamation, and its history is marvellous in
our eyes. It stands in striking contrast to the other years of the war,
both of which closed badly for us, and left the impression that the
enemy's case was a good one, speaking militarily. Our improved condition
should be attributed to the true cause. When, in the Parliament of 1601,
Mr. Speaker Croke said that the kingdom of England "had been defended by
the mighty arm of the Queen," Elizabeth exclaimed from the throne, "No,
Mr. Speaker, but rather by the mighty hand of God!" So with us. We have
been saved "by the mighty hand of God." Neither "malice domestic" nor
"foreign levy" has prevailed at our expense. Whether we had the right to
expect Heaven's aid, we cannot undertake to say; but we know that we
should not have deserved it, had we continued to link the nation's cause
to that of oppression, and had we shed blood and expended gold in order
to restore the system of slavery and the sway of slaveholders.

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, Minister of the
Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston_. By JOHN WEISS.
In Two Volumes. 8vo. London.

Such a life of Theodore Parker as Mr. Parton has written of Andrew
Jackson would be accepted as an American classic. For such a life,
however, it is manifestly unreasonable to look. Not until the present
generation has passed away, not until the perilous questions which vex
men's souls to-day shall rest forever, could any competent biographer
regard the "iconoclast of the Music Hall" as a subject for complacent
literary speculation or calm judicial discourse. For us, this life of
Parker must be interpreted by one of the family. He shall best use these
precious letters and journals who is spiritually related to their
writer, if not bound to him by the feebler tie of blood. And assuming
the necessity of a partisan, or, as it might more gently be expressed,
wholly sympathetic