In connection with it, we commend the review in the _Westminster_ already referred to. It is pleasant to realize that we have friends among enemies. Let us hope that when brighter days come, our Government and our people will not be unmindful of those who defended us in the days of darkness and dole. We owe a great debt of gratitude to such men as Professor Cairnes, and must not be slack in paying it. LES MISERABLES. No. IV. _St. Denis._ By VICTOR HUGO. New York: Carleton. A great improvement on the preceding miserable trio, yet still far from fulfilling the extravagant assertions as to its merit with which the press has been deluged. We see in this novel, historic pictures, not without accuracy, details of life which are true enough, and, we might add, familiar enough, from a thousand _feuilletons_, but we find no PURPOSE, corresponding to the expectations excited. We have every variety of miserable wretch imaginable paraded before us, without a hint of any means of curing their social disease. 'There is a hammer for tearing down, but no trowel for building up,' beyond a little empty talk on the benefits to be derived from education. The truth is that Victor Hugo writes, like too many of his nation, simply for sensation and effect. The fault to be found with this series is, that, like Jack Sheppard, it degrades the taste and blunts the feelings--in a word, it vulgarizes, and is as improper reading for the young, so far as _effect_ is concerned, as the most immoral production extant. Vulgarity is the open doorway to vice, and, philosophize as we may, sketches of thieves and vagabonds, _gamins_, prostitutes and liars are vulgar and unfit reading for youthful minds, if not for any minds whatever. ABEL DRAKE'S WIFE. By JOHN SAUNDERS. New York: Harper & Brothers. The reader is well aware that this work has attained a great popularity--we may add that it has deserved it, being a work of marked originality; one of characters and feelings which will even bear at sundry times reperusal: as good a character as can be given to a novel, and a far better one than we are disposed to award to the majority of those which we meet. It is, we should say, in justice to the progressive powers of the author, far superior to his earlier productions. EDITOR'S TABLE. In the noble Message of President LINCOLN, there are two paragraphs which should be committed to memory and constantly recalled by every man: 'Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down into honor or dishonor to the highest generation.