The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-25 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Six Months in the Federal States. By Edward
Dicey. 2 vols. Macmillan and Co.

It is not simply that these two most attractive
volumes comprise within them the collected corres-
pondence (carefully revised) which was contributed
during his sojourn in America by Mr. Dicey to
Macnitllan's Magazine au d the Spectator newspaper.
It is much more than that mere revisal and accu-
mulation of the bit by bit information sent at un-
certain intervals by a special correspondent to a
popular monthly, or to a popular weekly
periodical. The work is, in fact, an ex-
pansion of those communications on the one
hand to Macmillan, and on the other to the
Spectator. Viewed as such, they are especially
interesting to us, as distinct indications enough that
the labours of intelligent, and gifted, and conscienti-
ous men like Mr. Dicey and Dr. Russell—their
labours, that is to say, as Special Coirespondents—
are in no way so ephemeral as might be supposed
, by superficial observers. Their correspondence, in
point of fact, furnish the raw materials of History
Their scattered communications would repay any
search that might be made after them in the broad-
sheets of the newspapers in which one or
the other series might have originally made
their appearance. But, happily, for future
Prescotts and Macaulays, the Captain Pens who
have gone out " taking notes," like that canny,
" chiel" of yore, Captain Grose, have them-
selves grouped together their piecemeal produc-
tions, have sorted them, re-arranged them, revised
them, expanded than, numbered them in chapters,
and portioned those chapters out again in volumes
octavo—so that, out of a straggling, scrambling
Correspondence there emerges something at last
bearing about it the appearance of a sub-
stantive contribution to our literature.
Dr. Russell having thus told us in two
entertaining volumes, as much as he himself
had to tell us, about "North and South"—Mr.
Dicey now, in his turn, recounts in two other
volumes, quite as entertaining in their way, though
altogether of a very different character indeed, all
about his " Six Months " Stay in " The Federal
States." When we have said, as we may at once
say, even here at starting, that the work is worthy
both in its tone and in its style (viewing it at once
as a literary composition and as a political survey),
that it is worthy upon the whole of Cavour's bio-
grapher, we have already pronounced a panegyric
upon it. It is a commendation however to which it
is unquestionably entitled. Mr. Dicey is no mere
bookmaker. He sets out with a comical ex-
pression of his horror of that most tedious
of all possible exemplars of book-making—the Diary
Proper, or Matter-of-fact Journal-keeping. " I
own," he says, "to me, the perusal of any other
person's diary is singularly uninteresting." Surely
that is what Shakspere had in his " mind's eye,
Horatio,"—when he coupled with. " suckling fools"
the "chronicling of small beer." Upon the very
same page of vol. 1, speaking of your Diary Proper
—"I always wonder," he writes, "when I think of
it, what conceivable satisfaction a fellow passenger
[while crossing the Atlantic with Mr. Dicey,
keeping a careful log (this fellow passenger)
of the vessel's progress] what conceivable
satisfaction he expected to derive hereafter
from the knowledge that, on one day during
that weary, dreary blank which a sea voyage forms
in human life, we were in longitude 42 degrees 15
minutes, and the next in longitude 46 degrees 38
minutes." Nothing of this kind will the reader of
these two alternatively instructive and amusing
volumes, find himself wearied with, while turning
over their leaves. Twaddle is a thing abhorrent to
the soul of the writer. Often enough we find ourselves
at variance with him in the conclusions he arrives
at. But always—even when differing the most
widely—we respect the earnest thinker in Mr. Dicey,
we are conscious that it is no mere fianeur who has
been sauntering down Broad way for our advantage;
one scanning the men and things, the events
and prospects of America in this dread period of
her history, either through the spy-glass of my
Lord Dundreary, or through the half closed eye-lids
of Sir Charles Coldstream. Of the quality of the man,
both as a writer and as an observer we will forth with,
however, and without any further preamble, afford
our readers a sufficiently striking specimen. Here,
then, culled from pages 220-221 of Vol. 1., is I%lr
Dicey's vivid portraiture of