and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce through? In our wild Seer,
shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist living on locusts and wild honey, there is
an untutored energy, a silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which,
except in the higher walks of Literature, must be rare. Many a deep
glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious
Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of Man. Wonderful it is with
what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion; sheers
down, were it furlongs deep; into the true centre of the matter; and there
not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home,
and buries it.--On the other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most
unequal writer breathing. Often after some such feat, he will play truant
for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and maundering
the merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep with eyes open, which indeed
he is.

Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and literature in most known
tongues, from _Sanchoniathon_ to _Dr. Lingard_, from your Oriental
_Shasters_, and _Talmuds_, and _Korans_, with Cassini's _Siamese fables_,
and Laplace's _Mecanique Celeste_, down to _Robinson Crusoe_ and the
_Belfast Town and Country Almanack_, are familiar to him,--we shall say
nothing: for unexampled as it is with us, to the Germans such universality
of study passes without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, but
natural, indispensable, and there of course. A man that devotes his life
to learning, shall he not be learned?

In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial capability, marred
too often by the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent want of
intercourse with the higher classes. Occasionally, as above hinted, we
find consummate vigor, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth
in fit burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame