“ He has learned not only how to see, but what to see, and how best to represent what he sees. A teacher of the most advanced students of Art and Nature, he offers himself now as a teacher of beginners; and this little book of his contains a course of instruction admirably adapted not only to teach drawing, but also to teach the object and end for which it is worth while to learn to draw. ”

“ Suppose they were brought together to share the comforts (cold comforts they would be) of life, to pass days together, to meet every morning at breakfast; with what a ludicrous sense of relief, at the close of this purgatorial period, would not the unhappy novelists have fled from these deserted heroes and heroines, and the precious proprieties of their romance, to the very driest and mustiest of human bores,--gratefully rejoicing that the world was not filled with such creatures as they themselves had set before it as _ideals_! ”

“ The reader who contrives to preserve his calmness amid this storm of words cannot but be vexed that rhetoric so efficient should frequently be combined with notions so narrow, with bigotry so besotted, with religious principles so materialized; that the man who is loudly proclaimed as the greatest living orator of the pulpit should have so little of that Christian spirit which refines when it inflames, which exalts, enlarges, and purifies the natures it moves. ”

“ There are volumes which have the old age of Plato, rich with gathering experience, meditation, and wisdom, which seem to have sucked color and ripeness from the genial autumns of all the select intelligences that have steeped them in the sunshine of their love and appreciation;--these quaint freaks of russet tell of Montaigne ”

“ Novelists recognize that Nature is a better romance-maker than the fancy, and the public is learning that men and women are better than heroes and heroines, not only to live with, but also to read of. ”

“ Ripley is an accomplished man of letters, familiar with the whole field of literature and philosophy, gifted with a mental aptitude equally for facts and ideas, a fanatic for no particular branch of knowledge, but with a genial appreciation of each, and endowed with a largeness and catholicity of mind which eminently fit him to mould the multitudinous materials of a work like the present into the form of a prescribed plan. ”

“ An edition of an English author ought to be intelligible to English readers, and, if the editor do not make it so, he wrongs the old poet, for two centuries lapt in lead, to whose works he undertakes to play the gentleman-usher. A play written in our own tongue should not be as tough to us as Aeschylus to a ten-years' graduate, nor do we wish to be reduced to the level of a chimpanzee, and forced to gnaw our way through a thick shell of misprints and mispointings only to find (as is generally the case with Marston) a rancid kernel of meaning after all. ”

“ Indeed, the incapacity of our preacher to discern, or mentally to reproduce, a religious character differing in creed from his own, makes him the most amusingly intolerant of Popes, not because he is malignant, but because he is Spurgeon. ”

“ The usual delightful liberality of English collectors in opening their galleries to the public on certain days would make such a volume something more than a mere tantalizing exposition of treasures that could not be seen, and would render it, to all lovers of Art, an indispensable companion in England. We may add that this liberality might be imitated with advantage by the directors of some collections in which the public have a greater claim. ”

“ The impression left upon the mind of the reader is, that his powers showed themselves suddenly in full splendor, and that at a single bound he placed himself at the head of the dramatic composers of his age. This was not true of Hasse, Mozart, Gluck, Cherubini, Weber, in dramatic composition; nor of Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, in other branches of the musical art. However great a man's genius may be, he must live and learn. To attain the highest excellence, long continued study is necessary; and Handel, as we believe, was no exception to the general law. ”

“ If it were unreasonable to demand of every one who assumes to edit one of our early poets the critical acumen, the genial sense, the illimitable reading, the philological scholarship, which in combination would alone make the ideal editor, it is not presumptuous to expect some one of these qualifications singly, and we have the right to insist upon patience and accuracy, which are within the reach of every one, and without which all the others are wellnigh vain. ”

“ The work which we here notice is intended for uneducated American engineers, of whom there are unfortunately too many. The rapidity with which our railroads have been built, and the experimental character of this new branch of engineering, have obliged us to resort to such native ability and mother wit as our people could afford. The great body of our railroad engineers have had no training but the experience they have blundered through; and even our railroad financiers are men more distinguished for courage and energy than for experimental skill. ”

“ It is not often, however, even yet, that we find a writer wholly unembarrassed by and in revolt against the old theory of the necessity of perfection in some one at least of the characters of his story. "Neither Luther nor John Bunyan," says the author of this book, "would have satisfied the modern demand for an ideal hero, who believes nothing but what is true, feels nothing but what is excellent, and does nothing but what is graceful." ”

“ It is not necessary for you to read the wittiest or the most suggestive books; it is better, in general, to hear what is already known and may be simply said.... Certainly at present, and perhaps through all your life, your teachers are wisest when they make you content in quiet virtue, and that literature and art are best for you which point out, in common life and familiar things, the objects for hopeful Labor and for humble love. ”

“ It is vastly easier to invent a consistent character than to represent an inconsistent one;--a hero is easier to make (so all historians have found) than a man.
Suppose, however, novelists could be placed in a society made up of their favorite characters,--forced into real, lifelike intercourse with them;--Richardson, for instance, with his Harriet Byron or Clarissa, attended by Sir Charles; Miss Burney with Lord Orville and Evelina; Miss Edgeworth with Caroline Percy, and that marvellous hero, Count Altenburg; Scott with the automatons that he called Waverley and Flora McIvor. ”

“ They forget, in their fanaticism for antiquity, that the dust of never so many centuries is impotent to transform a curiosity into a gem, that only good books absorb tone-mellowness from age, and that a baptismal register which proves a patriarchal longevity (if existence be life) cannot make mediocrity anything but a bore, or garrulous commonplace entertaining. ”

“ In conclusion, we think that the impression which an examination of the present volume, considered as a whole, leaves on the mind is, that the editors have generally succeeded in making it both comprehensive and compact,--comprehensive without being superficial, and compact without being dry and dull. As a book for the desultory reader, it will be found full of interest and attractiveness, while it is abundantly capable of bearing severer tests than any to which the desultory reader will be likely to subject it. ”

“ Railroad engineering and management have united almost every branch of mechanical and financial science, and have developed several new and peculiar arts; so that the successful construction, equipment, and management of a railroad require a rare combination of accomplishments. Managers hitherto have been too little acquainted with their business to settle many questions of economy, but they are now beginning to look upon their enterprises with cooler judgments. ”

“ His is a nature which is welcomed everywhere, because it is at home everywhere. The mere power and variety of his imagination cannot account for his influence; for the same power and variety might have been directed by a discontented and misanthropic spirit, or have obeyed the impulses of selfish and sensual passions, and thus conveyed a bitter or impure view of human nature and human life. ”

“ Their object and aim seem to be rather to illustrate and embody the historical facts in the flesh and blood of tangible reality, than merely to amuse by transforming history into a material for poetical entertainment. ”

“ The interest he rouses is not of that absorbing nature which exhausts from its very intensity, but is of that genial kind which continuously holds the pleased attention while the story is in progress, and remains in the mind as a delightful memory after the story is finished. ”

“ Spurgeon's system. He wishes his opponents to be converted, not condemned. He very properly feels, that, with his ideas of the Divine Government, he would be the basest of criminals, if he spared himself, or spared either entreaty or denunciation, in the great work of saving souls. He throws himself with such passionate earnestness into his business, that his sermons boil over with the excitement of his feelings. ”

“ Ruskin, in his Preface, "that my pupils may learn to love Nature, than teach the looking at Nature that they may learn to draw." And no one can study Mr. Ruskin's book without gaining a profounder sense of the infinite beauty and variety of Nature, and of the unfathomable stores of her freely lavished riches,--or without acquiring clearer perceptions of this beauty, and of its relations to the Divine government and order of the world. ”

“ He has the rapidity and eagerness of mind that the champagny atmosphere of our northern hills gives to those who are stout enough not to be wilted by our hot summers. For briskness, thriftiness, energy, and alacrity, it is hard to find his match. He has made a book of travels, and will make a hundred, unless somebody finds him a place at home where he will have an indefinite number of labors-of-Hercules to keep him busy,--or unless some African prince cuts his head off, or he happens to call upon the Battas about their Thanksgiving-time. ”

“ That portion of the public who read bad novels cannot be reached by criticism; but if they could only be reached by Scott, they would quickly discover and resent the swindle of which they have so long been the victims. ”

“ Offor says, that "they faithfully delineate the state of public opinion two hundred years ago, the most striking feature being an implicit faith in the power of the [in-] visible world to hold visible intercourse with man:--not the angels to bless poor erring mortals, but of demons imparting power to witches and warlocks to injure, terrify and destroy,"--a sentence which we defy any witch or warlock, though he were Michael Scott himself, to parse with the astutest demonic aid. ”

“ If he had learning or largeness of mind, he would probably lose the greater portion of his power. He gets his hearers into a corner, limits the range of their vision to the doctrine he is expounding, refuses to listen to any excuses or palliations, and then screams out to them, "Believe or be damned!" In his own mind he is sure they will be damned, if they do not believe. So far as regards his influence over those minds whose religious emotions are strong, but whose religious principles are weak, every limitation of his mind is an increase of his force. ”

“ Yet there is still so much that is superficially striking in the volume, such a waste of imagery and emotion, and so many occasional lines and epithets of real power and beauty, that we close the volume with some vexation and pain at our inability to award it the praise which many readers will think it deserves. ”

“ A clear and comprehensive vision, a wide knowledge and careful study of human nature, free and generous sympathies are united in him with a penetrative imagination which vivifies the life of past times, with a reverence for truth which excludes prejudice and prepossession, and with a profoundly religious spirit. ”

“ Besides, each reader is apt to have a pet interest in certain persons, events, topics, beliefs, which stand in his own mind for universal knowledge, and he is naturally vexed to find how their importance dwindles when they appear in relation to the whole of nature and human life. In respect to Biography, especially in a Cyclopaedia which admits lives of the living as well as the dead, and to whose biographical department a great variety of authors contribute, there is an inherent difficulty of preserving the proper gradation of reputations. ”

“ The biography of a great creative artist must in great measure consist of a history of his works; and the great value of the book before us arises from the searching examination to which M. Schoelcher has subjected the several collections of Handel's manuscripts which are preserved in England, one of which, in some respects the most valuable, has fallen into his own possession. ”

“ Mr. Halliwell has appended notes to his edition, and among them are some which correct misprints, and therefore seem to imply that he considers that service as belonging properly to the editorial function. We are obliged, then, to give up our theory that his intention was to make every reader an editor, and to suppose that he wished rather to show how disgracefully a book might be edited and yet receive the commendation of professional critics who read with the ends of their fingers. If this were his intention, Marston himself never published so biting a satire. ”