The course of development of the United States was forced into two opposite directions by
slavery. The whole intellectual and social life of the people, therefore, bore a two fold char-
acter, in which opposite qualities not only were to be found side by side, but which, despite
their two-foldness, had grown into one whole. More than one generation will have to sink
into the grave before the American people, regenerated in the baptism of blood of the civil
war, will have cast out of them all that was introduced into the national character by the
"peculiar institution."
If the intergrowth of two such different epochs and kinds
of civilization remained an enigma even to those who, under the irresistible pressure of actual
circumstances, were obliged to work out, from opposite sides, the solution which fate deter-
mined for it, why should not the understanding of it be infinitely more difficult for those to
whom slavery, like the rack, was simply an historical fact?-HISTORY OF THE UNITED
STATES, BY H. VON HOLST.
Herman Grimm, in his Life of Goethe, says that "confusion always arises when memory
unaided is called to judge past events." In another chapter, Grimm finds that Goethe's mem-
ory is at fault, and says: "So little could even a man like Goethe, who faithfully recorded all
his experiences, give an exact account of the past."
TOPEKA, KANSAS:
T. DWIGHT THACHER, KANSAS PUBLISHING HOUSE.