republics need to know in detail. It is, indeed, a manual of instruction
for any young republic. He describes minutely the proceedings of the
trial of Mr. Lincoln's assassins, evidently with the intention of
showing to his countrymen the mode of conducting such proceedings to
secure the ends of justice; and he often dwells upon the habitual regard
of the majesty of Law evinced by our people in great emergencies, such
as at the first election and at the re-election of Mr. Lincoln, when the
whole nation stood breathless, as it were, and reverentially waited for
that _vox populi_, which is theoretically _vox Dei_ in a republic, but
which, alas! does not always prove so. If all parts of the Republic were
intelligently educated, it would doubtless be so without fail; but
demagogues will always flourish and rule where there is ignorance and
superstition, and the schoolmaster has not been abroad yet in the whole
length and breadth of our land. Sarmiento never loses an opportunity of
dwelling with power and eloquence, when addressing his countrymen, as he
has often done upon this subject, on the advantages of a diffused
knowledge among the people. Indeed, if all that he has written and
said--even that portion of it which is recorded in the Buenos Ayres
Common School Annals--could be collected, it would make a noble volume
for all Spanish lands,--except, indeed, Old Spain, where there is not
light enough to read it by.

_Richard Cobden, the Apostle of Free Trade: his Political Career and
Public Services._ A Biography. By JOHN MCGILCHRIST, Author of "The Life
of Lord Dundonald." etc. New York: Harper & Brothers.

This unassuming volume, of small size and plain covers, is strictly what
it pretends to be, a simple biography, and therefore, apart from its
subject, it is a book to be commended. We do not see the author on every
page, we are not forced to stop and listen to his reflections, nor to
long digressions into history, too commonly the fault in contemporaneous
biography of political men. The writer kindly remembers that the
reader's ignorance or knowledge does not rest upon his conscience.
Therefore we find in the little book what we wish, the story of Richard
Cobden, "the international man"; and it is a noble life-history, of
which no American should be ignorant.

His success in business, remarkable as it was, is a greater source of
wonder and admiration in England than in America, where the rapid
accumulation of a for