The foregoing paragraph, taken from a special letter to the New York Tribune, seems to touch so closely and reveal so clearly the spirit of the sad event that has been for many days the theme of the whole nation, that we thought it worth while to repeat it in the MONTHLY. The facts are known to our readers; the reflections growing out of them and the lessons to be derived therefrom are numerous enough and not all pleasant by any means. It is useless now, as regards the past, to repeat the old saw, "I told you so." But the whole Indian policy of the government, from the❘ day President Grant selected the Quakers to civilize the savages, and all through the Indian Bureauocracy down to the present hour, deserves to be denounced in the most unmeasured terms. It was a silly and invidious distinction to suppose that the Quakers could do this work better than the Presbyterians or Methodists, and it now looks to all minds, as it did to many at the time, as more of a burlesque than anything else to suppose that any religious sect or all the sects together could really take the place of a few welltrained regiments of cavalry. But we reap what we sow. The idea of selling the Indians rifles and ammunition to make money out of them and then expect to stop their bullets by a Quaker hat and a Bible or two!

Further, while furnishing the Indian with weapons of war, we have, to save or make money again, been starving, depleting and stripping our own army; hence it has come about that Custer, the brave General (and if injudicious, let it pass) with his little band of brave followers have been shot to death, not by Indian skill and treachery, or valor, but by | American bullets and United States economy. Let the dead past bury its dead, if you please. No amount of carping can bring their corpses back to life again. But henceforth let the Government lock up its Indian bureaus and leave missionary work to the church. In all its dealings with the Natives, as with all men, let it be as just as it has the power to be at the hour; for it does seem to be a truth of nature that some people cannot be as just as others, and that certain seasons of the ages are more favorable than others for the manifestation of justice, that shining light of heaven. But twaddle and whiskey, plus the supplying of the savages with American rifles, will neither conquer, convert nor save them, and the sooner we have done with it the better. We fully accept and try ourselves to live by the rule, "As far as it is possible, live peaceably with all men;" but we do not see that it involves this other gospel-Give firearms to savages and then coax and provoke them to shoot you down like dogs. But Sheridan has got his appropriation at last the key to the stable-door after the horse is stolen-and all the Custers are not yet dead. It is not a vindictive war of extermination that we are preaching. We have already in too many instances treated the Indians shamefully, thinking we were hoeing our own row all the time; but even gardening tools cut both ways now and then. There is but one just and true course open to our government in this matter; that is to grant the Indians a reservation or reservations large enough for their needs, and let the grant be kept inviolate, no matter how tempting the soil or the gold therein; sell them no more whiskey or rifles, buy from them all articles in these lines that we have already sold them and that are in their possession to-day; then buy nothing more from them

and sell them nothing more. Take it for granted that Zer won't be civilized-at least not by post-traders-tben ist ... = live it out and fight it out among themselves with the ro weapons and in their own way and time. Let the church send as many missionaries among them as choose to gy this way a few souls of savages may be save for the rey world, and a good many scalps of white men kept c ) 25 comfortable during the balance of their terrestrial ye And if this won't work, colonize them, by all me 16; an: they wont colonize, or civilize, or reservationize, there is 12 one thing to do, and the sooner the better-dragony Rodman guns and latest rifles plentifully, and go to wa Napoleonizing them until the land is clear of savages of t'. class, and the whole country open to the railroads, and gosa mining, and the general industry of the age.

The Play of Hamlet without Hamlet, at Last.Doubtless there are more things in heaven and earl that are dreamed of in our or any known philosophy extant, ami this thing of playing a comedy or tragedy without the hero! been hinted at for centuries, and what age could have te more appropriate than this for its fulfilment? Do we r : send messages without messengers, and ride withouth west Is it not an age of wonders, of oddities? Still even n. the days, it would seem strange to have say the nineteen aute dredth anniversary of Catholicism without the Pope an, the priesthood, and think of England getting up a Centennial without its Queen! But we are a new pe.le and string, and so it happened that we really arranged and e our Centennial celebration without the aid and partic of the President of the United States. Previous to the Centennial Fourth nobody seemed to think the loss w», 1 be a serious one, and, speaking absolutely, it was not; bat we are not in times to speak absolutely. The phil qlen tell us that all things are relative. Even the United Sentes is not a rock, or a man's head, or an idea, or a nation, a alone by itself in an independent universe. It, too, ta relative, and touches the whole world at all points of it, and so it happened that after the day and the ceremonies whe the editors got their night-caps off and looked the gh 4 square in the face, it was found to be a somewhat sen monster, and the proverbial segar, social and jovial as it seems, could not make the gentleman appear right or natural at all. But the President is not a Pope, or a King, after all The nation and the government of it are of the people mi belong to them, and this Centennial celebration wit, e the inspiration of the White House is not perhaps more u... ̧£ than the theory on which the nation was built and is n.v being run. Those heavy morning and evening party la at aries of this and other cities that have acted as apologises tr the President have only helped to make him and there 6155 more ridiculous than ever; and, as far as this work has been serious at all, have aggravated the national sore. For, aier all, it can be called by no better name. It was assy 3 affair for the nation as for President Grant, that the m to whom twenty millions of people gave the crecht of surg their country eight years ago and honored him accur was not, on the hundredth birthday of the nation, of suf, opt importance to make his presence an absolute and present necessity. We do not know all the facts, and do not hant

him. If he had come he might have been expected to play second fiddle to the lead of smaller men; and, in the long ran, his presence in such light would have been worse than his absence. Let us take it pleasantly as an accidental, perhaps providential, illustration of the elasticity of American Institutions. At all events, it proves beyond cavil what Wendell Phillips once said in the grandest speech we ever heard him utter, this, viz.: "The nation needs no man."

Table Talk-There is not much of it in these days, and the little we hear, or hear of is so tinged with business or turbid with whiskey and wine as to have lost its flavor and power as a mental enjoyment and recreation. The trade mark has invaded the teapot and supplanted its æsthetics with advertising. Our modern cups and dishes and frying pans even, have become instruments to help us on toward the almighty dollar, and no longer true symbols of real suppers of the gods. Now and then some stray soul of the past in a body claimed by the nineteenth century, crosses our path, drops in at our meal just as the knives and forks are ready for business, and at once the potatoes telegraph their recognition, the roast beef steams its welcome to the new guest, all the viands smile at the sudden thought that once again they are to be eaten as a veritable delight, and soon the whole atmosphere and tone of the dining-room cease to be that of a mere restaurant or gobbling shop; and instead of the clatter of porcelain and clashing of steel and shuffle and bustle of black and white, not waiters but gougers, as of carnage and a general row, we have a new feast of reason and flow of soul. The very spoons catch and rejingle the tones, a new light fills all faces, all minds. The finest thoughts are poured forth like water, and skip and sparkle like mountain dew-drops in the sun. The pulpit and platform cannot together compare with the supper-table as an inspiring place for splendid talk would we only drop our bustle and bombast, be simple and true with each other and aim to give and take freely the brightest things that come to us at these favored hours.

Turks and Christians.-Although the struggle at present going on in Turkey is not, strictly speaking, a religious war, yet religious sympathies and prejudices have entered largely into it in the minds of the combatants themselves, and are now to a great degree shaping the sympathies of all nations and people interested in the struggle. According to the thinking of many, the Turk never should have got into Europe at all, and must get himself converted or get out of

It is quite

christendom at the earliest practicable moment. possible, however, that the bit of ground he occupies, valuable as it is on account of its geographical position, might have been a greater bone of contention without him than with him, and that after all, as the fifth or sixth wheel of the European coach, he has done more to preserve than disturb the peace of Europe during the last two hundred years. The recent abdication and death of the Sultan and the incoming reign of a younger man, with expectations and pretensions of reform, have all tended to arouse American sympathies on the side of Turkey, but really as between the Servians and their would-be rulers or oppressors, our sympathies would, it would seem, naturally range themselves on the side of the revolting province. Speaking, however, in the broadest sense, it is a question not between Turkey and Servia at all but a question as to the future peace of perhaps all the European nations. As long as the Turk is master and stays, he holds a sort of balance of power, and each nation must in a sense respect him, but with the Ottoman gone, we see nothing to prevent a European war of vaster dimensions and horrors than has for many years taxed and wasted the energies of man.

Ministers of State and Extradition. We may perhaps have to admit that the positions taken by Secretary Fish in his correspondence in the Winslow case were really untenable; that Earl Derby and the English government stood on the real basis of the actual treaty now in existence, and the proper basis of any extradition treaty to be hereafter made; that each nation is an asylum for the fugitive until criminality is proven, and that a person surrendered on a treaty of extradition shall be tried only on the offence for which he has been surrendered. The strange part of it all is that so important a matter should have had any doubt attaching to it from the first, that our Secretary of State and the Government generally should have ever misunderstood the treaty, and that if it were capable of the two constructions put upon it by Earl Derby and Mr. Fish nobody saw it at the time, and that it was not long ago amended so as to be clear and clean. The London Times, which for a while favored the American interpretation, at last swung around and read the parchment according to the light of British wisdom. And now, after letting Winslow go, because we would not negotiate a new treaty or amendment to the old one, we shall probably make a new treaty after all, and so at least be in time for the absconding and forging rascals that may hereafter try to get away.

Revolutionary Reminiscences of Camden County, Originally part of "Old Gloucester," State of New Jersey. By JOHN CLEMENT.

This little pamphlet of reminiscences contains many valuable facts of the revolutionary times, and Mr. Clement seems to have entered heartily into the spirit of his undertaking. It seems that the New Jersey delegates which met in Burlington two days before the Declaration of IndepenVOL. VII.-10

dence was made in Philadelphia, declared that the king derived whatever authority he had from the people, but probably the Jersey delegates had talked the matter over with Jefferson and others, still it shows that they were fully ready for the deeds that have since brought so much noise and glory into the world. The following relation is capital as showing the power of Washington's personal dignity of

manner.

During the residence of General Washington in Philadel phia, as President of the United States, he frequently crossed the river to enjoy the pure air of the country. On one occasion he passed over on horseback, the ice being strong enough for wagons and sleds, and rode along the old Cooper | ferry road leading towards Burlington, where he met a resident of Camden who knew him. They recognized each other, and near by was a Dutchman, a Hessian deserter, who said, "I tink I have seen your face before, vat ish your name?" The General drew up his horse and replied, "My name is George Washington." Half frightened out of his wits the poor Dutchman exclaimed: "Oh, mine Gott, I vish I was unter te ice. I vish I vas unter te ice. Oh, mine Gott!" The General assured him no harm was done and started away with a smile upon his countenance.

The Father's Story of Charley Ross, the Kidnapped Child: containing a full and complete account of the Abduction of Charles Brewster Ross from the home of his Parents in Germantown, with the Pursuit of the Abduc tors and their Tragic Death; the various incidents connected with the Search for the lost boy, the Discovery of other Lost Children, etc., etc. With fac-similes of Letters from the Abductors. The whole carefully prepared from his owu Notes and Memoranda, and from information obtained from the Detective Police and others engaged in the Search; with Portraits of Charley and his brother Walter, and of other Boys mistaken for Charley; Views of his Parents' Home, etc., etc., etc. By CHRISTIAN K. Ross, of Germantown, (Philadelphia). John E. Potter &Co., Publishers, 617 Sansom Street, Philadelphia. Mr. Ross's story of the loss and then the vain efforts to recover his child is the necessary outgrowth and expression of the sympathies of the entire American people, and really promises to be the sensation of the season in the line of new books. It is written with simplicity, directness and clearness. It is fortunate that Mr. Ross could not find a capable and willing person to write this story. He himself was the only man fitted, by the circumstances of the case, to touch and describe so delicate a subject. For though the whole community here and elsewhere have felt and still feel deeply the loss of the child and are aroused to bitterest thoughts when they think of the hard-heartedness that stole the boy and the blundering detectiveism that has failed to return him up to this hour, yet no one person can possibly have felt or be able to feel all the conditions really necessary in order to a calm and wise word on the subject. It was right that all the stray letters and evidences should be brought thus into the, convenient form of a book, and even yet the testimony may be evolved that will discover the child.

History of the Public Schools of Washington D. C. From August 1805, to August 1875. By SAMUEL YORK AT LEE.

This pamphlet of thirty-five pages contains an immense amount of valuable information relating to the subject of which it treats. It traces the relationship of the municipal government and various corporate bodies of the district to the public schools, and supplies abundant statistical matter that will be of permanent usefulness.

Sketches of the State of Michigan. By S. BM CRACKEN.

The writer was evidently fond of his task. In a peeke of 136 pages, we find a pretty accurate account of the natural structure and resources of the state, and a very it record of its historical developement in all directions, st tics abound, and a fine map of Michigan adds interest mi clearness to the text.

How to get Rich in Califórnia. McMorris & Gav Publishers, 713 Sansom Street, Philadelphia.

This is a pamphlet of 137 pages, compiled apparently i-the purpose of supplying the necessary facts to those ametias persons who are trying to get through this world as ex and richly as possible, and adventurous folks generally, find many things to interest them in its pages.

Mr. Henry Howorth, of London, has for a long time been engaged on an important work, "A History of the Mongols," the first volume of which is now about being på lished. It will treat of the Mongols proper and the K muks. Another volume will deal with such of the Tur tribes as are governed by descendants of the Mongol ce queror. This work will really be the first continuous hist of the race which has to so great an extent moulded the s tory of Asia during the last eight hundred years, and we of special value to the students of world history, in all la

Another work of a kindred nature, and timely enough ↑ these days, is “Syria and Egypt under the last Five Sultans ' of Turkey, by the late English Consul-General Borer I will be edited by his son, who for a long time was a resides in Asiatic Turkey with his father, and will be published r London by Samuel Tinsley.

It would be altogether too hot to attempt anything of the kind in this latitude, but the London Athenaun of Jov 1, seriously devotes well on to five solid columns to show that Viscount Amberley's recent work, “ An Analysis of Religoc Belief," published by Trubner & Co., is not so reverent as i ought to be or as exhaustive as it might be, ani ventures të assert that the worthy Lord condemns the methods of hi own book; and the Athenæum seems to held the opini which we should incline to ourselves, that true religion wi continue to prosper notwithstanding the erudite opport of such men as Buckle, Amberley and others.

English literature, already rich in treasures of every 100% has recently received a most valuable addition, “The 6graphical Distribution of Animals" (London: Miem," & Co.), from the pen of Alfred Russel Wallace. Mr Wa• will long be remembered as the person who discoverel lit upon the so-called law of Natural Selection, saa neously with Mr. Darwin, but very magnanimeus'v drew from the honors in favor of Darwin. The sec the present work, especially in view of the assumed die nance of the law of evolution, is one of keen and ur interest; though Mr. Wallace does not in t. in touch upon the question of the geographical distr'ation d man. The labor on the work must have bees imense The style and manner of it are lucid, straightforward, an very taking.

SUBJECT.

Governeur Morris... Robert Morris...

William White, Chaplain................... George Read..

WRITER.

Many of those called were not present, but their manuscripts were presented, having been forwarded to the chairman of the committee.

The ceremonies commenced with prayer by the Rev. William White Bronson. A commodious platform had been erected on the south side of the State-House, and after the business of receiving the papers had been completed, the committee and the authors passed out of Independence Hall upon this platform. The beautiful shady "Independence Square" was already full to repletion of people, citizens of Philadelphia freely interspersed with visitors from all sections of our vast land, and not a few from foreign climes. We have not space to notice the sweet music, vocal and instrumental, and other admirably arranged and executed details of the ceremonies.

The distinguished President of the Historical Soory a Pennsylvania, John William Wallace, had been firingy chosen to preside, and he was introduced in a neat larke speech by the Mayor of Philadelphia, William S. Stokley Mr. Wallace's speech upon assuming the duties of the r was well-timed, and we should be happy to find space for a report of it were it at all possible. A Centennial Hyar le our noble Whittier, music by John K. Paine, was wohl e rendered, and then William V. McKean delivered an addre which we shall hope to insert in full in our September MONTHLY; the whole address was so excellent that it wal not be right to attempt to give an abstract of it. C addresses were also delivered by the Hon. Leverett Sabo stall, of Massachusetts, Governor Henry Lippitt, Rhest Island, the Hon. Benjamin Harris Brewster, of Philadelphia, and Mr. Frank P. Stevens, of Maryland. These were in terspersed with patriotic songs and charming instrumental music, so that the entire ceremonies of the 1st of July were worthy of the occasion and enjoyable in every detail Whittier's Hymn is so sweet and yet so grand in its o that we feel obliged to insert it:

Our fathers' God! from out whose hand
The centuries fall, like grains of sand,
We meet to-day, united, free,

And loyal to our land and Thee,
To thank Thee for the era done,
And trust Thee for the opening one.

Here, where of old by Thy design,
The fathers spake that word of Thine,
Whose echo is the glad refrain
Of rended bolt and falling chain,
To grace our festal time from all
The zones of earth our guests we call.

Be with us while the New World greets
The Old World thronging all its streets,
Unveiling all the triumphs won

By art or toil beneath the sun;
And unto common good ordain
The rivalship of hand and brain.
Thou who hast here in concord furled
The war-flags of a gathered world,
Beneath our western skies fulfil

The Orient's mission of good-will;
And, freighted with Love's golden fleece,
Send back the Argonauts of peace.

For art and labor met in truce,
For beauty made the bride of use,
We thank Thee, while withal we crave
The austere virtues, strong to save;
The honor, proof to place or gold;
The manhood, never bought or sold.
Oh! make Thou us through centuries long
In peace secure, in justice strong;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of Thy righteous law,
And, cast in some diviner mould,

Let the new cycle shame the old.