freed
slave makes the best soldier.

In other points the report carries with it some of the needful
corrections, at least for a careful reader. For instance, Major Brooks's
general summary is, that "the black is more timorous than the white, but
is in a corresponding degree more docile and obedient, hence more
completely under the control of his commander, and much more influenced
by his example." But when we read on the previous page that the white
soldiers were allowed to take their arms into the trenches, and that the
black soldiers were not, it makes the whole comparison nearly worthless.
It is notorious that the presence or absence of manhood in the bravest
soldier often seems to be determined by the mere fact that he has a gun
in his hand; and had the object been to annihilate all vestige of
military pride in the colored troops, it could not have been better
planned than by this and other distinctions maintained during a large
part of the siege of Charleston. That, while smarting under the double
deprivation both of a soldier's duty and of a soldier's pay, they should
have so behaved as to merit a report so favorable as that of Major
Brooks, is one of the greatest triumphs they have yet achieved. This
volume contains the record of what they did. The story of what they
underwent is yet to be told; for even of his two famous "orders" General
Gillmore judiciously makes no mention here.

Thus mingled, in this superb work, are the points of strength and
weakness. It remains only to add that the typographical and artistic
execution is an honor to our literature, and adds to the laurels
previously won in the same department by the publisher. Where all else
is so admirable, it seems a pity to have to lament the absence of an
index. The division of the work among several different authors makes
this defect peculiarly inconvenient.

_General Todleben's History of the Defence of Sebastopol,
1854-5._ A Review. By WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL. New York: D. Van
Nostrand.

It does not yet appear whether our great civil war will leave behind it
materials for debate as acrimonious as that which has gathered round the
affair in the Crimea. If General Butler and Admiral Porter live and
thrive, there seems a fair chance that it may. In that case it will be
interesting to read how General Todleben, in a parallel case,
substitutes the Russian bear for the monkey in the fable, pats each
combatant on the shoulder, and pr