ughout,
that our tastes are appealed to and our judgments called forth with
great strength, that we pass continuously and rapidly, as we read, from
deep and genuine admiration to equally deep and genuine dissent and
disapprobation, that it allows us to combine a general but irresistible
sense of excellence growing upon us through the book with an
under-current of real and honest dislike and blame, then this book in a
great measure satisfies the condition of success. It is undeniable that
in what it shows us of Mr. Robertson there is much to admire, much to
sympathise with, much to touch us, a good deal to instruct us. He is
set before us, indeed, by the editor, as the ideal of all that a great
Christian teacher and spiritual guide, all that a brave and wise and
high-souled man, may be conceived to be. We cannot quite accept him as
an example of such rare and signal achievement; and the fault of the
book is the common one of warm-hearted biographers to wind their own
feelings and those of their readers too high about their subject; to
talk as if their hero's excellences were unknown till he appeared to
display them, and to make up for the imperfect impression resulting
from actual facts and qualities by insisting with overstrained emphasis
on a particular interpretation of them. The book would be more truthful
and more pleasing if the editor's connecting comments were more simply
written, and made less pretension to intensity and energy of language.
Yet with all drawbacks of what seem to us imperfect taste, an imperfect
standard of character, and an imperfect appreciation of what there is
in the world beyond a given circle of interests, the book does what a
biography ought to do--it shows us a remarkable man, and it gives us
the means of forming our own judgment about him. It is not a tame
panegyric or a fancy picture.

The main portion of the book consists of Mr. Robertson's own letters,
and his own accounts of himself; and we are allowed to see him, in a
great degree at least, as he really was. The editor draws a moral,
indeed, and tells us what we ought to think about what we see; but we
can use our own judgment about that. And, as so often happens in real
life, what we see both attracts and repels; it calls forth,
successively and in almost equal measure, warm sympathy and admiration,
and distinct and hearty disagreement. At least there is nothing of
commonplace--of what is commonplace yet in our generation; though t