sufficient recompense. The quality of mind which struggles out of the
easy-going electicism which at present contents the majority of
cultivated men, and achieves a position where our poor half-truths
combine in a grand organic whole, is beyond the reach of human
congratulation. And the results of such conscientious and arduous
striving we are bound to receive with respect. To the disciples of Mr.
Frothingham we shall doubtless seem to have uttered some superficial
commonplaces about his creed, and have displayed our total inability to
penetrate to its true profundities. They will probably say that his
theory can tolerate no partial statement, and that the attempts of the
uninitiated can compass nothing but caricature and burlesque. We
cordially give them the advantage of this supposed stricture, and as
cordially refer all earnest inquirers to this first instalment of the
heroic work. We say _heroic_, and would abate the adjective of no jot of
meaning. It requires the stuff of which heroes are made to promulgate a
religious idea so unadapted to the conscious demands of any order or
condition of men. A few persons of redundant leisure, touched with the
restlessness in belief which is characteristic of the time, may thread
the mazes of "Absolute Science" until they awaken the desirable
perception of it coherency and strength. We know that there is
somewhere a flock awaiting the leadership of any vigorous mind which
does not doubt its mission, and mocks at all question and compromise.
Especially is it the duty of those who feel that they have attained the
necessary condition of "transcendental imbecility" to test the enormous
pretension of a doctrine of whose reception they alone are capable.
Whether Mr. Frothingham's book is wise and satisfying, they only can
tell us. It is our humbler duty to declare that we have found it
decidedly interesting, and perfectly harmless. The old charge of
corrupting youth cannot be preferred against this newest of
philosophers. For as error is dangerous only in proportion to its
plausibility, the risk encountered by the reader is infinitesimal.

_Looking toward Sunset._ By L. MARIA CHILD. Boston: Ticknor &
Fields.

For forty years it has been the good fortune of Mrs. Child to achieve a
series of separate literary successes, whose accumulated value justly
gives her a high claim to gratitude. Every one of her chief works has
been a separate venture in some new field, always dari