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VIVID, MOVING, SYMPATHETIC HUMOROUS.A Diary from Dixie.By MARY BOYKIN CHESNUT. Being her Diary fromNovember, 1861, to August, 1865. Edited by Isabella D.Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary. Illustrated. 8vo. OrnamentalCloth, $2.50 net; postage additional.Mrs. Chesnut was the most brilliant woman that the Southhas ever produced, and the charm of her writing is such as tomake all Southerners proud and all Northerners envious. She wasthe wife of James Chesnut, Jr.,who was United States Senatorfrom South Carolina from 1859 to 1861, and acted as an aid toPresident Jefferson Davis, and was subsequently a Brigadier-Generalin the Confederate Army. Thus it was that she was intimatelyacquainted with all the foremost men in the Southern cause." In this diary is preserved the most moving and vivid record of the SouthernConfederacy of which we have any knowledge. It is a piece of socialhistory of inestimable value. It interprets to posterity the spirit in which theSoutherners entered upon and struggled through the war that ruined them.It paints poignantly but with simplicity the wreck of that old world which hadso much about it that was beautiful and noble as well as evil. Students ofAmerican life have often smiled, and with reason, at the stilted and extravagantfashion in which the Southern woman had been described south of Masonand Dixon's line the unconscious self-revelations of Mary Chesnut explain,if they do not justify, such extravagance. For here, we cannot but believe,is a creature of a fine type, a 'very woman,' a very Beatrice, frank, impetuous,loving, full of sympathy, full of humor. Like her prototype, she had prejudices,and she knew little of the Northern people she criticised so severely ;but there is less bitterness in these pages than we might have expected. Perhapsthe editors have seen to that. However this may be they have donenothing to injure the writer's own nervous, unconventional style a stylebreathing character and temperament as the flower breathes fragrance."New York Tribune,"It is written straight from the heart, and with a natural grace of stylethat no amount of polishing could have imparted." Chicago Record-Herald."The editors are to be congratulated ; it is not every day that one comeson such material as this long-hidden diary." Louisville Evening Post." It is a book that would have delighted Charles Lamb."Houston Chronicle.D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.