ent of English literature. He has
certainly been a very stupid or a very careless one. Indications are not
wanting that his proper seat is on both horns of the dilemma.

When he leaves other writers and has recourse to his own pen, matters
are but indifferently mended. The slovenliness of his style is
extraordinary. "Ought a gentleman," he quotes from Thackeray, "to be a
loyal son, a true husband, an honest father? Ought his life to be
decent, his bills to be paid, his tastes to be high and elegant, his
aims in life to be noble?" "Yes," responds the astute essayist, "he
should be all these, and somewhat more; and these all men can be, and
women, too." What is the English of this gibberish? "In Miss Thackeray's
excellent novel, the 'Story of Elizabeth,' there is a somewhat new point
in such books." He tells us that General Bluecher "had his
disappointments, no doubt, but turned them, like the oyster does the
speck of sand which annoys it, to a pearl,"--that in every state people
may be cheerful; "the lambs skip, birds sing and fly _joyously_, puppies
play, kittens are _full_ of _joyance_, the whole air _full_ of careering
and _rejoicing_ insects, _that every_where the good outbalances the bad,
and _that every_ evil _that there is_ has its compensating balm." And in
face of such slop-work he dares to speak of having "formed his style"!

And, stranger still, a book which indulges in these pranks has gone to a
third edition in the land of Addison and Macaulay! Moreover, our copy
belongs to this veritable third edition, whose preface informs us that
"the Essays have undergone a careful revision." What must have been the
glories of the first edition?

The style is not more hopelessly muddled than the sentiment. The man's
skull seems to be undergoing a perpetual house-cleaning. His
intellectual furniture is always at sixes and sevens. It would be very
strange, if so wide a rover and so indefatigable a collector should
never by any chance come back with some valuable specimens for his
cabinet; but the few curiosities displayed as his own property have so
very awkward an air in his wilderness of common pebbles, that we have a
deep inward conviction that they are stolen, though the theft may be an
unconscious one. Moreover, if he ever lights on a genuine gem, he cannot
keep his hands off it, but paws it over and over till it is as
lustreless as its companions. He seems to have an organic inaptitude for
combination. He lays a fa