consecutive form a great deal of that felicitous portrait-painting,
hit off in a few words, that pleasant anecdote, and cheerful wisdom,
which lie scattered about in books not now readily to be met with, and
which will be new and acceptable to the reading generation which has
sprung up within the last half-score years. Mr. Hunt almost disarms
criticism by the candid avowal that this performance was commenced
under circumstances which committed him to its execution, and he tells
us that it would have been abandoned at almost every step, had these
circumstances allowed. We are not sorry that circumstances did not
allow of its being abandoned, for the autobiography, altogether apart
from its stores of pleasant readable matter, is pervaded throughout by
a beautiful tone of charity and reconcilement which does honor to the
writer's heart, and proves that the discipline of life has exercised
on him its most chastening and benign influence:--

For he has learned
To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad, music of Humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.

The reader will find numerous striking exemplifications of this spirit
as he goes along with our author. From the serene heights of old age,
"the gray-haired boy whose heart can never grow old," ever and anon
regrets and rebukes some egotism or assumption, or petty irritation
of bygone years, and confesses that he can now cheerfully accept
the fortunes, good and bad, which have occurred to him, "with the
disposition to believe them the best that could have happened, whether
for the correction of what was wrong in him, or the improvement of