Universality of soul, in the sense above adverted to, distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon race as the best government-builders of the world. England, by her subordination of the sectional to the national, by her reverence for organic law and national unity, has survived the fiercest shocks of her civil convulsions, and built upon their ruins a more perfect and enduring fabric of government. In Southern latitudes, where the temperament grows mercurial, and the emotional nature predominates, as in France and the Italian States, governments seem founded on _volcanic strata_, liable to frequent and radical eruptions. In the hot Huguenot blood of South Carolina was kindled the first fatal spark that now threatens to set our entire Union in a blaze of ruin. The Christian draws nearer to the angels as he forgets self in the love of God and his kind; and that nation is the most prosperous, happy, and powerful that subordinates all selfish local interests, all sectional antagonisms, to the higher law of national unity and brotherhood, that holds 'the hallowed hopes of a national patriotism' as ever paramount to the misguided ambition of a vulgar, low-bred provincialism. LITERARY NOTICES. GALA DAYS. By GAIL HAMILTON, Author of 'Country Living and Country Thinking.' Ticknor & Fields, Boston. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York. Who will not welcome another book from the pen of Gail Hamilton, nor name a 'gala day' indeed the one devoted to a perusal of these pleasant pages? As Americans, we are very proud of Gail Hamilton. We regard her books as blessings to the community. We know of no familiar essays comparable to hers; we prefer them greatly to those of Elia. Everything she touches assumes a sudden interest, no matter how trivial in itself it may be. She pours sunshine over the pettiest details of every-day life. We have known and felt all she tells us, lived it as life, and instantaneously recognize it as truth; but who before has ever recorded it for us--nay, who could do it for us, save this gifted woman, who accepts all with a spirit so brave and true? How acute her analysis of character! Every house has its own Halicarnassus. He is a typal man, as is shown in the fact that husbands, brothers, sons, and lovers are constantly called 'Halicarnassus' by the ladies most closely associated with them. Halicarnassus--tantalizing and antagonistic, slow to work and ready to jeer, the plague and pest of the home hearth, but at the same time its pride and joy, true and helpful in all real emergencies, though full of irritating taunts and desperate indolence. Such books keep our spirits up in these days of national calamity and domestic losses. Their charm is indescribable. Their style is sharp and brusque, but telling of wide culture; keen, but tender; clear as mountain brook, but varied and full as a river. Gail Hamilton will write of the daily trifles of which life is made, then boldly grapple with the highest truths; she mounts