The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-03-30

 guns and bombs belch their deadly missiles, and ones. The strife is on for prolonged season that hath many hArvests of bitterness and anguish.
 "There were Gays the chroncler) two thousand, four hundred engagements of sufficient importance to be officially named" An average of six hundred pitched battles and skrmishes in each year of the dismal four! Where else such record, in modern or even ancient times Marathon may not pale before Waterloo but how tame Is either when sized with Charlottesville or Gettysburg The Comte De Paris Gin his "History de la Guerre Civile en AmeriqueO devotes as much space to this latter re- nowned conflict as Rossiter Johnson does to all the battles of those terrible forty eight months Yet brief he uniformly is this same Rosster Johnson neglects no momentous strategy nor deed of war like merit He makes himself, as far as possible, mpassionate spectator of events that altered the policies and destinies of all civilized nations He sees and sdmires George Brinton Mcclellan, the young and eminently capable engineer, notes his timidity exposes his disastrous indecison and tears the veil from his inglorious peninsula campaigns. at was not General Mcclellan, alone, that was in false position when his army was sstride the Chickahominy (says MT. Johnson) but the admin istration and the people of the loyal states as we'll" His chief adversary In the field (Robert Edmund Lee) is referred to as "a commander who could think" and his famous gray located, God fearing lieutenant (Stonewall Jackson) one "who threw the most uncertainty into the game by his rapid movements and unexpected appearances" Tn another place, our brisk reportorial historian calls Mcclellan "a gigantic adjutant"
 We are bluntly informed that the topography of Virginia is favorable to an army menacing Wash ington and unfavorable to one menacing Rich- mond." Grant, perhaps found 1t so but he did considerably more than menacing. The commander who could think was at length opposed by one who acted as quickly as he thought
 | MT. Johnsons sixteenth chapter embodies "Gettysburg" the summer vale of woe unutterable; the field of fifty thousand brothers slain. On that field crumbled 6 cause branded ignoble, but most heroically represented. Our historian has few words to waste. He closes his most lurid mar rative with these we'll balanced syllables "As Americans we may all be proud to say that far as manly courage could go it Cthe southern cause) died with dignity if not with resignation" | would fail to give Mr. Johnson his deserved measure of applause, if with these mere glimpses at his quality, the reviewers pen were suddenly dropped.
 As writer, he is vigorous, truthful and remark ably free of prejudice or untenable assertion. His vision is not obscured by "a patched-up peace" He hesitates not, at the end of his volume to call "spades" by the homely, pastoral name they will always have on farms, in gardens, or at hardware stores. He lauds the magnanimity of the national government and catalogues the least worthy recipients of mercy, fellowship and forgiveness He mourns (with his fascinated reader and all mankind) over Lincoln's cruel death in the very hour of contrite thanksgiving. He re- relates the conspiracy the assassination and the foul reproach of "Good Friday" night, twenty four years ago and, finally, he tells that ''it Is poor business pacing the moudered ramparts, counting the silent guns marking the deserted battle fields and deco rating the grassy graves, unless we can learn from 1t all some nobler lesson than to destroy"
 Such is Rossiter Johnson's best "Short History"