Sanguinary conflicts have since taken place,--bayonet-charges, desperate encounters with varying success and reverse,--but the record of the month has closed. There, face to face, cannon fronting cannon, with less than two hundred feet between, are the two armies on the 31st of May, at midnight. Without losing a train of supplies, cutting loose from one base after another,--from Washington, Belle Plain, and Port Royal successively,--establishing new depots at pleasure, General Grant has moved from the Rappahannock to the Chickahominy, against the utmost efforts of General Lee to turn him back. General Grant believes that the military power of the Rebels must be broken before the Rebellion can be crushed. Continued hammering produces abrasion at last, in the toughest iron. Break the iron pillars, and the edifice tumbles. There is a manifest weakening of the Rebel army. Longstreet's veterans have lost their fire; and since the Battles of the Wilderness, the Rebel troops have had no heart for a bayonet-charge. The line of advance taken by General Grant turned the Rebels from Washington. The country over which the two armies marched is a desolation. There is no subsistence remaining. The railroads are destroyed. Lee has no longer the power to invade the North. On the other hand, General Grant can swing upon the James and isolate the Rebel army from direct connection with the South. That accomplished, and, sooner or later,--with Hunter in the Shenandoah, with Union cavalry sweeping down to Wilmington, Weldon, and Danville, and up to the Blue Ridge, cutting railroads, burning bridges, destroying supplies of ammunition and provisions,--the question with Lee must be, not one of earthworks and cannon and powder and ball, but of subsistence. Plainly, the day is approaching when the Army of the Potomac, unfortunate at times in the past, derided, ridiculed, but now triumphant through unparalleled hardship, endurance, courage, persistency, will plant its banners on the defences of Richmond, crumble the Rebel army beyond the possibility of future cohesion, and, in conjunction with the forces in other departments, crush out the last vestige of the Rebellion. REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES. _The American Conflict_: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-64. By HORACE GREELEY. Vol. I. 8vo. pp. 648. Hartford: O. D. Case & Co.