SOURCE: N. U. S. Review of A New Spirit of the Age. Edited by R. H. Horne. The Westminster Review 41, no. 2 (1844): 357-87.

In the following excerpt, the critic examines Horne's works False Medium, Cosmo de Medici, and A New Spirit of the Age.

A title of large promise. Amidst all that is even now stirring all human things to their deepest depths, the announcement of a yet newer, spirit is pregnant with high interest. For it is, after all, the “spirit” which can alone give value to the material. The aspiring, the upward, and the onward, are all encircled in the term spirituality. It is synonymous with progress, with the growth of man from the savage state, with matted hair, projected muzzle, high cheekbones, and prominent eyes, up to the highest forms of human beauty; it is synonymous with the release of man from physical drudgery to mental...