Hence the timeliness and importance of the volume under notice. An attentive perusal of these pages will afford ground for some critical estimate of the man in whose hands so much power is lodged, and whose use of power so great issues depend. The biographical sketch, though somewhat vague, and marked by occasional inaccuracies, affords some tolerable notion of the experience he has passed through; and the speeches, though covering but few years, exhibit that portion of his opinions which is most related to existing problems. We find here the image of a very honest, patriotic man, vigorous in mind, resolute in will, definite in character, and bearing deeply the impress of a special and marked experience. Of his honesty, to begin with, there can be no doubt. His administration may be mistaken, but it will not be corrupt. And to feel assured of so much is very healthful. But an honest man, in his position, _must_ be patriotic,--must be looking to the welfare of the country, rather than casting about to make bargains for his private advantage; and we gather from this book, that, if any meditate buying or bribing the President, they will learn a lesson in due time. He may come to coincide with them, but it will be by their acquiescence in his judgment, not by his acceptance of their proffers. It is when we come to inspect his intellectual position, to consider the quality of his honest convictions, as determined chiefly by his peculiar experience, that the real question opens. Mr. Johnson was a Southern "poor white." He became the ornament, then the champion of his class; rescued it from political subjection in Tennessee, and, in his own election to the Governor's chair, and then to the United States Senate, gave it a first feast of supremacy. In this long struggle, the peculiar opinion and sentiment of his class--that is, of its best portion--became with him, though in an enlarged form, impassioned convictions, deeply incorporated with his character, and held with somewhat of religious fervor. In the first speech contained in the present collection, dating so lately as 1858, he is found still resting upon this experience. His sympathy is wholly with the simpler forms of country life, with mechanics and small landholders, "the middle class," as he calls them. He hates cities; he cannot help showing some mild jealousy of the commercial and manufacturing interest; literature and science he does not wish to undervalue, but his whole heart is with the class who live a well-to-do, honest life, by manual labor in their own shops or on their own acres. Like his class, he dislikes the cotton lords, but likes Slavery, and has no faith in the negro; it has not occurred to him to think of the negro as a man, and he wished that every white man in the country had a slave to do his "menial" labor.