The lingering caste-institutions in the Free States,--as the exclusive street-cars of Philadelphia, the separate schools of New York, the special gallery reserved for colored people in Boston theatres,--must inevitably pass away with the institution which they merely reflect. The perfect acquiescence with which abolition of these things is regarded, so soon as it takes effect, shows how little they are really sustained by public opinion. These are local matters, mere corollaries, and will settle themselves. They are not upheld by any conviction, and scarcely even by prejudice, but by an impression in each citizen's mind that there is some other citizen who is not prepared for the change. When it comes to the point, it is found that everybody is perfectly prepared, and that the objections were merely traditional. Who has ever heard of so much as a petition to restore any of the unjust distinctions which have thus been successively outgrown? But in our vast national dealings with the freedmen, we still drift from experiment to experiment, and adopt no settled purpose. Did this proceed from the difficulty of wise solution, in so vast a problem, one could blame it the less. But thus far the greatest want has been, not of wisdom, but of fidelity,--not of constructive statesmanship, but rather of pains to discern and of honesty to observe the humbler path of daily justice. When we consider that the order which laid the basis for the whole colored army--the "Instructions" of the Secretary of War to Brigadier-General Saxton, dated August 25, 1862--was so carelessly regarded by the War Department that it was not even placed on file, but a copy had to be supplied, the year following, by the officer to whom it was issued, it is obvious in what a hap-hazard way we have stumbled, into the most momentous acts. A government that still repudiates a duty so simple as the payment of arrears due under its own written pledges to the South Carolina soldiers can hardly shelter itself behind the plea of any complicated difficulties in its problem. Let us hope that the freedmen, on their part, will be led by some guidance better than our example: that they will not neglect their duties as their rights have been neglected, and not wrong others as they have been wronged. REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES. _Autobiography, Correspondence, etc., of Lyman Beecher, D. D._ Edited by CHARLES BEECHER. With Illustrations. In Two Volumes. New York. Harper & Brothers.