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Report on General Literature. 



and laying bare, in all its deformity, the now unquestioned 

 iniquity of the scheme. To Americans, an additional in- 

 terest is given to the work, in watching the ingenuity with 

 which the author pleads and proves his case and yet evades 

 responsibility or arrest — giving, in all their nakedness, 

 the damning facts, and yet never assisting the conclusions 

 of the reader by any comment or hypothesis of his own — 

 and in a few places somewhat mystifying us as to the 

 nature of the subtle distinction which has often prompted 

 the suppression of facts and the subtitution therefor of 

 lines of innocent asterisks, while, in other portions, facts of 

 seemingly more dangerous character are boldly set forth. 



In reviewing the published histories of the year, we can 

 hardly fail to be impressed with one circumstance — the 

 increasing disposition in historical writers to deal with 

 principles rather than with mere naked arrays of fact, 

 to look to the philosophy of history, rather than to any 

 bare skeleton of dry events. The time has been when the 

 whole history of a nation was considered amply told, as 

 long as a record was made of its battles and sieges ; but 

 now, the world wants something more than this, and calls 

 for a better insight into motives, conclusions and material 

 progress. It is beginning to be understood, at last, that 

 half of the dry details of events, which hitherto we learned 

 as one would learn a mathematical table, are only the mere 

 ceaseless pulse-beats in a nation's life ; and that the true 

 science of history consists in a cautious consideration of 

 the development of certain inner impulses of the national 

 mind, depending, often, upon problems of race and language 

 and leading to results of which siege and battle, instead of 

 being the controlling powers, are merely the outward 

 manifestations. In the matter of the late Franco-Prussian 

 war, this new method of history was abundantly expressed. 

 Correspondents of journals, it is true, furnished, as was 

 their duty and purpose, elaborate accounts of the actions 



