TRAJAN: A Novel. By HENRY F. KEENAN. New York: Cassell & Company, Limited. This is not, as the title would seem to indicate, an historical romance commemorating the famous emperor whose column stands in Rome. The Trajan who gives his name to this work is Trajan Gray, so named by his father, an Irish professor of history, who was an enthusiastic admirer of Gibbon. Gray, the elder, moves to New York, where Trajan was born. There he spent his early life, went to school, became proof-reader in a great American publishing house, made the acquaintance of an eminent American artist, who induced him to study drawing and painting, served in the Civil War, was for a time a journalist, resumed the study of art, and at the opening of the story is in pursuit of his profession in Paris. This long story of six hundred and forty odd pages is chiefly devoted to tracing his inward and outward history from the time when, in consequence of having been disappointed in love, he is about to drown himself in the Seine, till his comfortable establishment with a lovely wife and beautiful child on the banks of the Hudson. We start on this journey with Trajan alone; but one person after another joins the procession until the cavalcade becomes larger than that which moves through the verse of Chaucer in the famous pilgrimage to Canterbury. In fact, the number of characters becomes so bewildering that it is a good exercise of the memory to keep track of them. Americans, the inheritors of wealth and cultivation, and Americans who have become suddenly and enormously rich in mining, loud and ungrammatical Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, the Emperor Napoleon III. and Eugénie, Kaiser Wilhelm and Bismarck, Gambetta and the leaders of the Commune, all have a place somewhere in these pages. Paris and Parisian life at the close of the Empire are more or less incidentally described; château life at Meaux, and life on shipboard, are portrayed, and a slight touch of New York and London. There is an immense amount of incident, public and private, ending with a powerful and vivid description of the terror and flight of the Empress Eugénie, and the awful horrors of Paris in the days of the Commune. In all this Trajan takes an honorable and exciting part, and shows a prodigious amount of resource, skill, patience, courage, and unselfishness, which at the close of the book amounts to almost an apotheosis. The extent of Trajan's development is measured by the fact that he who at the beginning of the history was about to throw away his life as absolutely ruined, becomes at the end the brave and self-forgetful savior of others. Side by side with his fortunes proceed those of Theo. Theo is Miss Carnot, of French extraction; in the earlier part of her life resident in New York, at the time of the story in Paris, whither her family have gone upon the loss of their fortune in America. Theo is a near relative of our old friend Becky Sharp. She is small, of neat figure, handsome face, and with a greenish tint in her eyes. She sets herself first of all to redeem the fallen state of the family, which she does by her shrewdness and business ability in the most triumphant manner. Like Becky, she is far-seeing, cool, clear-headed, quick, full of resources, audacious, and entirely unembarrassed by honor, truth, or principle. She is the evil genius of the story, and in her career, of course, sacrifices everybody else to her own advancement. Among them is Trajan Gray, whom she comes as near loving as such a heartless creature can, and who, upon the discovery of her perfidy, is about to make away with himself as we have before mentioned. Theo does more or less damage to everybody till the close of the book, when her most diabolical schemes are happily frustrated. Finally she marries a French prince of the blood royal. She is kept prominent throughout the story, and is evidently a favorite with the author. Elliot Arden, an American resident in Paris, is the person who finds Trajan in the extremity of his despair, becomes deeply interested in him and strongly attached to him, introduces him to his mother, Mrs. Arden, a lovely woman, his sister Edith, a beautiful and charming girl, and his aunt, Mrs. Briscoe, and his cousin Bella, Mrs. Briscoe's daughter. These are all delightful people, with whom we are glad to spend much time. Elliot is a gentleman, cultivated, refined, impulsive, generous, and unspoiled by the possession of wealth and the enjoyment of leisure. He is a thoroughly good fellow, but without the reserved strength of character and the balance of Trajan. Edith Arden, whom we love from the outset, becomes the wife of Trajan, and we are glad she gets so good a husband. Elliot, after being fooled by Theo in the most abominable manner, marries his cousin Bella, This is an ambitious novel, shows wide reading, and keen study of life and character. While there is an abundance of exciting action, there is considerable psychological study as well. The conversations are bright and witty, and have much quick repartee, and the book has much literary allusion and many shrewd observations on men and things. The plot is elaborate and involved, and draws many people within its long tentacula. The style is ornate, full, and rhythmical. We observe a number of incomplete sentences, and such preterites as "pled" for pleaded, and "quit" for quitted. The whole book is much disfigured by liberal sprinklings of French words, and of all literary sins a Frenchified English is one of the most unpardonable. Mr. Keenan can write so well that he ought to leave that mongrel style to inferior authors. Trajan is a strong story; its events and characters are full of interest, and we advise those who have not read it to give themselves that pleasure as soon as possible. W. C. M. SERVICE LITERATURE. TO THE EDITOR OF THE "UNITED SERVICE MAGAZINE:" SIR,-With your permission, I desire to correct some inaccuracies which have crept into Colonel Brackett's account of the battle of Nashville, in the October number of THE UNITED SERVICE. He says, "The brigade of negro soldiers, under Colonel Charles R. Thompson, had been brought to a high state of efficiency at Chattanooga, where they were drilled and prepared for action during the summer." . . . "When Nashville was threatened, they were brought in and told they were expected to do their whole duty in the defense of the city. On the 16th the brigade lost twenty-five per cent. of its strength in thirty minutes, on the slope of Overton's Hill, and proved itself worthy of every confidence. They took part in the last grand charge, and chased everything before them, thus insuring the approbation of their commander," etc., etc. Colonel Thompson did have a brigade of colored troops there, and they did excellent fighting, and lost heavily. But the brigade was not that organized at Chattanooga, nor was it the only organization of colored soldiers there, nor the only one that did anything. Colonel Thompson's troops had been organized at and about Nashville, and, prior to Hood's advance northward, had performed duty in Nashville, at Johnsonville, and other points on the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad, from which line they were withdrawn to take part in the operations about and in the city. Morgan's brigade, known as "Second Colored Brigade, Army of the Cumberland," and under the command of Colonel Thomas I. Morgan, Fourteenth U.S. Colored Infantry, and consisting at first of the Fourteenth (Colonel Morgan), Sixteenth (Colonel Gaw), and Forty-fourth (Colonel Lewis Johnson), had been stationed at Chattanooga, and was brought from that place to share in the fortunes of the campaign. The Fourteenth and Forty-fourth had already shown of what stuff they were made, and did not need to be "told they were expected to do their whole duty." Colonel Gaw had never desired to take his regiment into the field, preferring that it should do fatigue duty in garrison; and at the very last moment he succeeded in getting it withdrawn from the brigade and assigned to duty with the pontoon-train. Its place was well filled by the Seventeenth (Colonel Shafter, now colonel First Infantry U.S. A.), a magnificent body of men, and, in addition, two companies of the Eighteenth Colored Infantry (organized in Missouri, and just transferred to the department of the Cumberland), under Major Joy, were added to the brigade. It was this brigade, with a "Provisional" brigade of white troops, under Colonel Grosvener, of Ohio, which made the first attack on Hood's right, early in the morning of the 15th, and suffered terribly, the colored company of the Seventeenth being almost annihilated. As they drove the extreme right of the rebel line from its position on the east side of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, and pressed on down the gentle slope toward the deep rocky "cut" south of the Rains House, they found themselves face to face with a four-gun battery,-which, owing to the "cut," they could not reach,-as well as a flank fire from a redoubt on their right, and left over one hundred men and half a score of officers where they had stood to show that negro soldiers would fight when given the opportunity. They were finally withdrawn, but did some desultory skirmishing during the day, and kept it up long after dark, firing at the flash of the enemy's guns. During a portion of the 16th they supported Osborn's Twentieth Indiana, Aleshire's Eighteenth Ohio, and a section of Chicago Board of Trade batteries, on the extreme left of the Union line, and were thus employed when Thompson's brigade, Twelfth Colored (Colonel Thompson's regiment), Thirteenth (Colonel Hotsenpiller's), and One Hundred and Tenth (Colonel Massey's) charged the first time on Overton's Hill. Though it failed, it was a splendid thing, and the killed and wounded it left on the field proved it, even if such a judge as General Thomas had not borne testimony to it. Colonel Brackett also says, "From this time forward it was well understood that colored men were able and anxious to fight for the Union cause, and could render valuable service. They gained much commendation for their deeds of valor on this occasion, and the Southerners themselves were taught a lesson in regard to them which they never forgot. It was useless afterwards to say that they would not fight." In behalf of the colored soldiers, I wish to thank Colonel Brackett for his words of commendation, but the fact that the colored soldiers would fight was already known to both friend and foe. At Dalton, Georgia, August 15, 1864, the steadiness of the Fourteenth in its first action had caused a staff-officer to report to his superior, "General, you needn't have any fears about the niggers; they're having a dress-parade over there under fire." Again, a month later, at Pulaski, where two regiments checked a pursuit by Forrest's cavalry, which had driven the Federal troops nearly a whole day; at Decatur, Alabama, October 27, 1864, where three hundred and fifty-five men and officers of the Fourteenth charged and captured the Twelfth Louisiana Battery in the face of a brigade of rebel infantry, losing about twenty per cent. of its strength before it was driven out by three times its number; and a few days previous, at Dalton, Georgia, when the rank and file of the Forty-fourth chose to attempt to cut their way out through more than ten times their number; rather than surrender, but were prevented by their officers, the colored man had vindicated his right to be called a soldier, and Nashville was more culminative than imitative in his record. Already white troops had asked to be brigaded with colored ones, and had manned their works to greet them with cheers returning from battle, and General Thomas's commendation did but set the official seal to a fact already fully known, though but hardly acknowledged. HENRY ROMEYN, Captain Fifth U. S. Infantry, late Captain Fourteenth U. S. Colored Infantry. CROSBY'S VITALIZED PHOS-PHITES Is a standard preparation with all physicians who treat mental or nervous disorders. It is used with benefit in all forms of nervous derangement, in mental overwork, in forgetfulness, in sleeplessness, and loss of energy. By specially feeding the nerves it adds greatly to the beauty of young persons, as it gives clear, bright eyes and color to the lips; it insures sound teeth, glossy hair, handsome nails, and smooth, fine skin, so that these become an inheritance for later years. 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