mixture that
ever mortal work betrayed of manifold blunder and great intellectual
power. The man thinks at times with the strength of a giant. Neither
does he fail, as we have already gathered, in the rebellious and
destructive propensities for which giants have been of old renowned.
Fable tells us how they could have no gods to reign over them, and how
they threatened to drive Jupiter himself from the skies. Our
intellectual representative of the race nourishes designs of equal
temerity. Like his earth-born predecessors, his rage, we may be sure,
will be equally vain. No thunder will be heard, neither will the hills
move to overwhelm him; but in due course of time he will lie down, and
be covered up with his own earth, and the heavens will be as bright and
stable as before, and still the abode of the same unassailable Power.

For the _style_ of M. Comte's work, it is not commendable. The
philosophical writers of his country are in general so distinguished for
excellence in this particular, their exposition of thought is so
remarkably felicitous, that a failure in a Frenchman in the mere art of
writing, appears almost as great an anomaly as any of the others which
characterize this production. During the earlier volumes, which are
occupied with a review of the recognized branches of science, the vices
of style are kept within bounds, but after he has entered on what is the
great subject of all his lucubrations, his social physics, they grow
distressingly conspicuous. The work extends to six volumes, some of them
of unusually large capacity; and by the time we arrive at the last and
the most bulky, the style, for its languor, its repetitions, its
prolixity, has become intolerable.

Of a work of this description, distinguished by such bold features,
remarkable for originality and subtlety, as well as for surprising
hardihood and eccentricity of thought, and bearing on its surface a
manner of exposition by no means attractive, we imagine that our readers
will not be indisposed to receive some notice. Its errors--supposing we
are capable of coping with them--are worthy of refutation. Moreover, as
we have hinted, the impression it conveys is, in relation to politics,
eminently Conservative; for, besides that he has exposed, with peculiar
vigour, the utter inadequacy of the movement, or liberal party, to
preside over the organization of society, there is nothing more
calculated to render us content with an _empirical_ condit