endeavor to controvert or disprove the conclusions which are so unpleasing to them. Though a confutation of our article has been repeatedly announced, it has not yet appeared; and a very faint denial of one or two of the statements made in it is the nearest approach to a fulfilment of this pledge. The testimony now given shows what even these denials are worth; and if it answers no other purpose, it may prevent the repetition of any such mountebank show as that of the late "Hungarian reception," as it was called, at New York. Ardent republican feeling is a sentiment which with great difficulty brooks restraint; but some care ought to be taken that the future manifestations if it should, at least, be consistent with the reputation of our countrymen for dignity and

common sense.

ART. XI.-CRITICAL NOTICES.

1. Representative Men; Seven Lectures. By R. W. EMERSON. Boston Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1850. 12mo. pp. 285. C.

No American, perhaps we may add no English, reader needs to be told who and what Mr. Emerson is. In poetry and in prose, by spoken discourse and by written books, he has stamped his personality too deeply to be effaced upon the literature and speculations of the age. Some things he has published will live as long as the language itself; but much of his verse, constructed upon whims rather than under the influence of the spirit of poetry, will die out among the short-lived oddities of the day. Much of his prose, too, the product of imitation, unconscious perhaps, of vicious foreign models, can scarcely be expected to survive the charm which hangs about his person and lingers in the magic tones of his voice.

Mr. Emerson is a great writer, and an honest and independent thinker, on the whole. He is not, however, what one of the idolaters has lately called him, a Phœbus Apollo, descended from Olympus with hurtling arrows and the silver twanging bow. He is neither the god of the lyre, nor will his shafts deal death among the host of those who fail to reverence his priest, though Emerson, too, Phœbus-like, has often "ked in darkness like the Night." This conversion of a m god is a dangerous attempt to app' persons and things of the pres

Tree into a Pagan

ic principle to iple of the

school of historical skepticism has been trying his hand at turning Mr. Emerson into a myth. We object to the proceeding altogether, not knowing where it will end, and whose turn will come next. Homer, Lycurgus, Solon, and other nebulous spots in the sky of antiquity, have already been resolved, and now Mr. Emerson is undergoing the same process. That great realist, Mr. Weller, Senior, hit the nail on the head and struck out the true principle for such cases. "Wot I like in that 'ere style of writing," said he, after listening to his son Sam's walentine, "is that there aint no callin' names in it, no Wenusses, nor nothin' o' that kind; wot 's the good o' callin' a young 'ooman a Wenus or a angel, Sammy?

The present volume is marked strongly both by the excellences and defects of Mr. Emerson's other writings. His style is often musical, clear, and brilliant; words are selected with so rare a felicity that they have the shine of diamonds, and they cut their meaning on the reader's mind as the diamond's edge leaves its trace deep and sharp on the surface of glass. But by and by, we fall upon a passage which either conveys no distinct sense, or in which some very common-place thought is made to sound with the clangor of a braying trumpet. Quaintness of thought and expression is his easily besetting sin; and here lies the secret of his sympathy with Carlyle, that highly gifted master of oddity and affectation. As a writer, Mr. Emerson is every way Carlyle's superior, would he but let the Carlylese dialect alone. He has more imagination, more refinement and subtlety of thought, more taste in style, more exquisite sense of rhythm. Perhaps his range of intellectual vision is not so broad. He has not the learning of Carlyle, nor the abundant humor, which sometimes reconciles us even to absurdity. But Mr. Emerson has a more delicate wit, a wit often quite irresistible by its unexpected turns, and the sudden introduction of effective contrasts. Carlyle has an extraordinary abundance of words, a store of epithets, good, bad, and indifferent, by which the reader is often flooded; Emerson is more temperate and artistic. And yet we catch him, every now and then, mimicking the Scotchman, as if Carlyle were the master, and Emerson the pupil. He imitates Carlyle's affectation of odd and quaint expressions; he imitates him in the structure of his sentences; he imitates him in borrowing from the Germans a transcendental coloring, and in putting on an air of indifference to all positive opinions, an assumption of even-handed impartiality towards all religious systems. The trick of grotesque illustration by common or vulgar objects, he has caught from the Platonic Socrates. But setting aside these imitations and affectations, there hovers over much of his writing a peculiar and original charm, drawn from no source but the delicate and beautiful mind of the author himself.

knew but little of Socrates, but was tempted by the salient points of his ludicrous exterior, to bring him, with all the ingenuity of the richest comic genius the world has ever seen, upon the Athenian stage for the entertainment of an audience, who, so that they were amused, cared for little else. With these preliminary "monitions to the reader," we commend the passage to which we refer, as a pleasant piece of whimsical exaggeration.

Compare either of the Gospels with the Life of Mahomet, as it is candidly set forth by Washington Irving, and good taste, if not religious sensibility, should prevent a writer from putting the two names together. There are some, however, who are foolish enough to think that such outrages are proof of independence, and who see nothing in the alliteration of " Jesus or Judas but a fine illustration of superiority to the prejudices of the world around them.

We have merely touched upon a striking peculiarity of Mr. Emerson, in a religious point of view-his apparent indifference to positive religious belief, as shown by his manner of classing all beliefs together. When Christ and Socrates are spoken of in the same breath, we wonder that the military exploits, the exclusive love of Athens, the neglect of domestic duties, the humor, the drollery, and the drinking bouts of the latter do not rise in strange contrast with the universality that embraced Jew and Gentile alike in the arms of divine love, the sad and gentle earnestness to which a jest would be a profanation, and the awful authority that went with our Lord as from on high, compelling the hearers of his word to cry out that "never man spake like this man." And more still do we wonder, when Mahomet and the Saviour are classed together as religious geniuses and reformers, that those who so contemplate them do not feel the shocking incongruity of placing the serene, self-denying, and spotless life of the one even if we regard him as but a man — his pure and peaceful teachings, which stopped not at outward acts, but pierced to the root of wickedness in the heart, side by side with the worldly ambition, the violence, the imposture, the shedding of blood, the fierce and exclusive bigotry, and the insatiable licentiousness of the other.

2. Old Portraits and Modern Sketches. By JOHN G. WHITTIER. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1850. 12mo. pp. 304.

WE have read this little volume of Mr. Whittier's with great pleasure and instruction. It consists of a series of biographical sketches, several of which were originally published in the

National Era at Washington. There are ten in all, and each of the characters here commemorated was distinguished either by commanding services rendered to the public, or by the possession of high qualities of character, which entitled him to be held in honor among men. The literary execution of the sketches is excellent. Mr. Whittier is well known as a vigorous poet, a philanthropist, somewhat belligerent for a Quaker, one who thinks boldly, and dares to say what he thinks.

In all these biographies, except the last, we can discern the link of sympathy which binds them to Mr. Whittier's heart. Honest John Bunyan, the persecuted tinker, who wrote the book most read in English next the Bible; Thomas Ellwood, the Quaker friend and reader to Milton, and the suggester of the Paradise Regained; James Nayler, the innocent fanatic who stood in the pillory, was branded, whipped, imprisoned, had his tongue bored with hot iron, and died at last, meek, forgiving, and repentant; Andrew Marvell, also a friend of Milton, a republican, a member of Parliament, poor, but deaf to the siren blandishments of power, a witty controversialist and a beautiful poet; John Roberts, whose sturdy sense and homely wit beat down the pride of priests and bishops; Richard Baxter, who argued for toleration to himself, but refused it to others, who vehemently defended the celibacy of the clergy, and wedded a beautiful woman, having protested he would die a bachelor because he did not think he should live to be married; - these are the old portraits, which Mr. Whittier's pencil has so skilfully and vigorously drawn. The other names here celebrated are Samuel Hopkins, the well-known theologian; William Leggett, a political writer of uncommon powers, who died a few years since; N. P. Rogers, an anti-slavery editor, scarcely heard of beyond his peculiar circle of readers and friends, but whose writings, judging from the specimens Mr. Whittier has offered us, give proof of a gentle character, a poetic eye for the beauties of nature, and a pleasant humor qualities which should have sent his name and influence far beyond the narrow boundaries of a sect or party; and the last is Robert Dinsmore, the least interesting of them all, though not without strong characteristic traits,—a sturdy son of one of the Irish Presbyterians of Scotch descent, who emigrated to the New World, and settled in the neighborhood of the Merrimack at the beginning of the last century. Dinsmore seems to have combined the racy flavors of the three nationalities to which he belonged; and he is indeed an odd figure in the gallery of portraits that Mr. Whittier has here arranged before us.

The six men, who are here brought forward as representative characters, are Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakspeare, Napoleon, and Goethe. At first sight, the choice appears a little whimsical, as to some, at least, of the members of this representative body. The number is certainly small, and the names are select enough an oligarchy which we suspect the republic of letters would be slow to submit to. We see, with regard to two or three of them, the personal sympathies of the author, as in Montaigne and Swedenborg. In the delineation of the characters of these six representatives, we find much knowledge, frequent brilliancy of expression, followed by intense darkness, and flashes of thought that shoot up like streams of fire from volcanoes in the night. But on the whole, they are rather attempts to set forth qualities of character than to represent characters. The effect is, in every case, fragmentary. They are like the studies of an artist, who has painted portions of his picture on separate bits of canvas, and then, instead of combining them into a great and harmonious whole by working them together under the inspiration of a general idea, stitches the sundered members as chance may arrange them. We do not, therefore, rise from the study of any one of them with an idea of it as an organic whole. There is no method, no unity of effect, though there are separate and inimitable felicities of execution. To borrow another figure, the ingredients are not poured together and moulded at a single casting.

There is also a tone of exaggeration in the exhibition of each man's peculiar qualities. The true position of these individual representatives in the intellectual history of the world is not correctly given; at least, so it seems to us. For instance, though one can hardly overstate the genius of Plato, understanding by that word the sum total of his natural and acquired gifts, yet the first sentence of the lecture on Plato is a monstrous piece of overdone assertion."Among books," says Emerson, "Plato only is entitled to Omar's fanatical compliment to the Koran, when he said, Burn the libraries, for their value is in this book.' And again, "Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought."

Part of this vivid rhetoric is perhaps due to the exigencies of the lecture form. One is always tempted, while addressing a popular audience, to heighten the truth for the sake of deepening the effect. But making all proper deductions from the statements on this ground, is the residue correct and sound? To say nothing of great modern thinkers, who have mastered regions of thought which Plato never dreamed of, - did Plato include his immediate successor, Aristotle ? Surely not. With a genius more profound than Plato's, with a bright imagination though not so vivid, with a comprehensiveness of positive knowledge, com