of others when he has
nothing but paradoxes with which to oppose their truisms. He has a trick
of adopting the manner and expressions of Carlyle, in speaking of
incidents and characters to which they are ludicrously inapplicable, and
becomes flurried and flippant on occasions where Carlyle would put into
the same words his whole scowling and scornful strength. He frequently
mistakes sympathy with suffering for insight into its causes, and an
eloquent statement of what he thinks desirable for an interpretation of
what really is. He has bright glimpses of truth, but they are due rather
to the freedom of his thinking than to its depth; and in the hurry and
impatient pressure of his impulses, he does not discriminate between his
ideas and his whims. He seems to be in a state of insurrection against
the limitations of his creed, his profession, and his own mind, and the
impression conveyed by his best passages is of splendid incompleteness.
It would be ungracious to notice these defects in a writer who possesses
so many excellences, were it not that he forces them upon the attention,
and in their expression is unjust to other thinkers. His intellectual
conceit finds its vent in intellectual sauciness, and is all the worse
from appearing to have its source in conceit of conscience and
benevolence.

In spite of these faults, however, Mr. Kingsley's reputation is not
greater than he deserves. He is one of the most sincere; truthful, and
courageous of writers, has no reserves or concealments, and pours out
his feelings and opinions exactly as they lie in his own heart and
brain. We at least feel assured that he has no imperfections which he
does not express, and that there is no disagreement between the book and
the man. He is commonly on the right side in the social and political
movements of the day, if he does not always give the right reasons for
his position. His love, both of Nature and human nature, is intense and
deep, and this gives a cordiality, freshness, and frankness to his
writings which more than compensate for their defects.

The present volume of his miscellanies contains not only his essays and
reviews, but his four lectures on "Alexandria and her Schools," and his
"Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers." Of the essays, those on "North
Devon" and "My Winter Garden" are the best specimens of his descriptive
power, and those on "Raleigh" and "England from Wolsey to Elizabeth," of
his talents and accomplishments as