learned has reverted to the splendid optimist, whose adventurous
intellect left nothing unexplored and almost nothing unexplained.
Biographers and critics have discussed his theories,--some in the
interest of philosophy, and some in the interest of religion,--some
in the spirit of discipleship, and some in the spirit of opposition,--
but all with consenting and admiring attestation of the vast
erudition and intellectual prowess and unsurpassed capacity [1]
of the man.

[Footnote 1: The author of a notice of Leibnitz, more clever than
profound, in four numbers of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1852,
distinguishes between capacity and faculty. He gives his subject
credit for the former, but denies his claim to the latter of these
attributes. As if any manifestation of mind were more deserving of
that title than the power of intellectual concentration, to which
nothing that came within its focus was insoluble.]

A collection of all the works appertaining to Leibnitz, with all his
own writings, would make a respectable library. We have no room for
the titles of all, even of the more recent of these publications. We
content ourselves with naming the Biography, by G. G. Guhrauer, the
best that has yet appeared, called forth by the celebration, in 1846,
of the ducentesimal birthday of Leibnitz,--the latest edition of his
Philosophical Works, by Professor Erdmann of Halle--the publication
of his Correspondence with Arnauld, by Herr Grotefend, and of that
with the Landgrave Ernst von Hessen Rheinfels, by Chr. von Rommel,--
of his Historical Works, by the librarian Pertz of Berlin,--of the
Mathematical, by Gerhardt,--Ludwig Jeuerbach's elaborate dissertation,
"Darstellung, Entwickelung und Kritik der Leibnitzischen Philosophie,"--
Zimmermann's "Leibnitz u. Herbart's Monadologie,"--Schelling's