We will only add, that to reach such an end, more precise definitions of contraband, of blockade, and of attempts to break it than now exist, would need to enter into the law of nations.

The opinions of private persons, albeit they hide under the mask of the anonymous reviewer who is conceived of as the organ of some unknown body, are of small account. It may be allowed to us, however, to say that the opinions here expressed, touching the duty of neutrals in aid of general justice, have been long entertained by us. We are willing to confess, however, that we have been strengthened in our views by what has happened during the present war. The English are now neutrals; we do not blame their merchants for acts which our own did not commit in like circumstances, as in the contests between Spain and her colonies; nor do we blame them for any peculiarly sinful cupidity beyond that of sinners in the United States; nor do we blame their courts for decisions in favor of questionable neutral trade which our courts have not often sanctioned. But we are taught the immense resources of modern commerce, and its fearful power to prolong a war which would have been quenched long ago but for such help; and it seems to us as if this war was mainly indebted for its tenacity and exhausting power to neutrals and not to belligerents. The principal war power now is a neutral adhering to the rules of rigid neutrality. Are the rules right? Ought not the law of nations to be reformed? Does not general justice require more protection?

6. We mention, in closing this Article, one more kind of aid which nations can give to general justice: we refer to assistance rendered by the State itself to foreign nations or governments. We refer not to interference in order to preserve the balance of power, which may be dictated by mere self-preservation, but to cases of extreme oppression by a government on religious or political grounds, and to cases where a weaker nation is treated with great injustice by a stronger. Such interference is authorized in extreme cases, and will amount sometimes to taking part in war. It may be offered,

or even obtruded. As for the extremity of the case, of course no rules can be laid down, any more than in a case where a private person defends another in the street from a drunken or malignant assault. Interference of this kind is more disinterested than any other; it is also more rarely called for, and its rarity prevents it from setting a dangerous precedent. The Greeks may be rescued from Turkish oppression by force, but so righteous an occasion for interference may not occur again for ages.

ARTICLE VIII-A NEW WORK BY THE AUTHOR OF THORNDALE.

Gravenhurst: or Thoughts on Good and Evil. By WILLIAM SMITH, Author of "Thorndale," etc. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London. 1862. Post 8vo. pp. 356.

SOME of the American readers of "Thorndale" may not know that the author has followed it by another work, in somewhat the same vein or direction of thought. There is this striking difference between the two-that the one exhibits the Conflict of opinions, without attempting to adjust the strife, while the other seeks to bring these opinions to Harmony. The first describes with boldness and freshness the various types of opinion on the most momentous themes which agitate the minds of the thinking men of these times, leaving the reader to his own resources in deciding which should prevail-furnishing, at the most, only some tentative efforts, outlines, or preliminary studies, which might aid in a right decision. The second furnishes us with a scheme of doctrine which is positively enounced as the last word of the author, uttered after much reading and thought. The style and manner of the two volumes are appropriate to the contents of each. The first is more dramatic and exciting; the second is more calm and judicial. There are in both the same attractive features of style and imagery. Both abound in passages of elaborate, yet natural description. There breathes in both the same genial and tender human sympathies, tempered with calm and considerate reflection. In both, there are abstract propositions and reasonings, and also animated and well sustained conversations, conducted by a few personages who are clearly conceived and successfully individualized.

The scene is at Gravenhurst, a retired English village, in the description of which the author displays those remarkably graphic powers which make his pictures of landscape to stand forth from the written page, drawn in outlines so sharp and yet

so delicate, and invested with colors so soft and yet so glowing, that you can almost behold the scene with the bodily eye. The principal characters are these-Mansfield, a retired East Indian General; Ada Newcome, his niece; and Sanford, who personates the author. To these personages of the conversations, are now and then introduced the vicar of Gravenhurst, who represents the moderate and not unphilosophical defender of Christianity, as somewhat modified by modern thinking, and not refusing to give an account of itself to earnest inquirers after the truth.

We cannot deny our readers the pleasure of perusing the following passage:

"Let me stop to observe that if there are moody reasoners who think it fit to express nothing but commiseration for the lives of men battered in the business and rascality of the world, even these will confess that there is something to ad. mire, and a theme for gratulation, in some fair European girl or woman on whom has been showered wealth, beauty, and intelligence. When I see, for instance, a young English girl, full of grace and full of energy withal, dismount from her favorite horse, which she does not quit without a fond and grateful patting of the neck, and follow her in imagination into her cheerful drawing-room, more or less elegantly furnished, supplied with books of a thoughtful character, which are really read, and perhaps with instruments of music that are skillfully played upon, I think I have before me one of the most highly-finished, certainly one of the most significant, products of our civilization. I suppose that a learned jurist or a profound divine would cite themselves, or cite each other, as loftier examples of humanity—as higher types of European culture. I must be permitted to de mur. I grant, indeed, that either of them may be a shade wiser than the English damsel of nineteen, and many shades more learned; but it is a newer wonder in the world that there should be many damsels of nineteen intelligent and wise, than that there should be learned lawyers and deep divines. And when I think that the mental cultivation has not disturbed one natural grace or one maidenly virtue-when I think of the blooming health and exquisite play of every limb and feature-the vivid emotions, the keen perception of the beautiful in nature, of the generous in character, that distinguish my English girl-I must pronounce her altogether the far higher creation. Yes, a greater boast of the age than all its chancellors, and even all its bishops!

"Such a charming English girl, you would have said, was Ada Newcome. There came, however, one bitterness in her lot, which marred the picture I have to draw.

It is now some years ago,
She passed me (I was on

"I call to mind the first time I saw Ada Newcome. but I remember it as vividly as if it were yesterday. the way to her house) sitting upon her horse. A more light and graceful figure, or a better rider, I thought I had never beheld. The slight figure sat balanced so perfectly, and swayed so harmoniously with every movement of the high-spirited

yet gentle-hearted animal, that you looked on with unalloyed pleasure, and without one moment's anxiety for her safety. If her fleet Arabian should give himself to the winds, you felt she would be as safe as if she were one of the winds herself. I see her rein up that proud Arabian; I see her dismount at her own door; she caresses the beautiful creature, who bends down his head to meet the caressing hand. I perceive his eye brightens as he feels that the eye of his mistress is on him. It rests on him with something of a tender gratitude, and there is some unspoken sadness mingling with her fond caress. She leaves the horse, and proceeds to walk up the wide cld-fashioned staircase of the ancient family house she inhabits. But what is this? What change has come over my beauti. ful picture? Can it be the same figure which I saw a moment ago, light and buoyant as the air, that I now see dragging itself slowly and painfully up those stairs-one hand, sometimes both, clinging to the banisters for aid? Ada is lame the result, I believe, of some early accident--hopelessly lame. Well might she love that horse! Seated on his back, she flew-no bird of the air more graceful; descended to the earth, one limping and disabled limb mars all. At each slow step the fair figure drops sideways--is broken-sinks and rises, as if each step were a fall and a recovery. The balance is recovered, to be directly lost again. She advances up the stairs as children do, putting always the same foot foremost, and bringing the other up to it. And when the stairs are accomplished, the level surface that remains to be traversed makes the plunging, broken gait still more conspicuous; our lily threatens to snap at every instant." pp.

45-49.

The book is made up of an Introduction, in which the author describes his scene, introduces his personages, announces his themes, and proposes his method. This is followed by Part I. The Exposition: in five chapters, under the following titlesPain and Painful Emotion; Too much Evil; Moral Evil; Remediable Evils, or Man Progressive; The Irremediable. Part II. Conversations: consists of familiar discussions between the dramatis persona, with the following titles or mottoes: Inequality of Happiness; Crime and its Punishment; The Rationale of Punishment; The Rainbow, or Suffering an Element in our Highest Forms of Mental Life; The Development of Human Society inseparable from Contest and Division; Explanatory Hints on Several Topics; The Whole is One.

It will be surmised, at once, from these titles, that the author has grappled with some of the toughest subjects of human speculation, and has ventured, in his way, to give a Theodicy or a vindication of the ways of God to man in the permission of physical and moral evil.