’For myself, I confess with shame, and I know the reason is in myself, I can not for my life see any thing to admire in the writings of Mr. Carlyle.  His style of thought and language is to me insufferably irritating.  I tried to read Sartor Resartus, and could not do it.’

Almost in the same paragraph our Parson proclaims for all the world that ‘no man is a hero to his valet,’ and says that there are two or three living great men whom he would be sorry to see, since ’no human being can bear a too close inspection.’  ‘Here,’ he declares, ’is a sad circumstance in the lot of a very eminent man:  I mean such a man as Mr. Tennyson or Professor Longfellow.  As an elephant walks through a field, crushing the crop at every step, so do these men advance through life, smashing, every time they dine out, the enthusiastic fancies of several romantic young people.’

Is this just?  Is it true?  The Parson, be it observed, speaks not solely for ‘romantic young people,’ but for ‘you’ and for himself.  Had he read Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, he might there have learned that no man is a hero to his valet, not because he is not always great, but because that valet has a poor, flunkey, valet’s soul.  He who quotes such an aphorism as a truth, calls himself a valet.

But let the reader forget and forgive these drawbacks, which are rarely manifested, and bear in mind that our pleasantly gossiping, earnest, honest writer is, within his scope, one of the most delightful essayists in our English tongue.  A man need not be a far-reaching thinker and scholar to be kind, good, and true, manly and agreeable.  He may have his self-unsuspected limits and weaknesses, and yet do good service and be a delightful writer, cheering many a weary hour, and benefiting the world in many ways.  Such a writer is the Country Parson, and as such we commend him to all who are not as yet familiar with his essays.

CADET LIFE AT WEST-POINT.  By an Officer of the United States Army.  With a Descriptive Sketch of West-Point, by BENSON J. LOSSING.  Boston:  T.O.H.P.  Burnham. 1862.

The American public has long needed a work on West-Point, and we have here a very clever volume, by one who has retained with great accuracy in his memory its predominant characteristics, and repeated them in a very readable form.  Occasional stiffness and ‘mannerism’ are in it compensated for by many vivid pictures of cadet-life, and we can well imagine the interest with which every page will be perused by old graduates of the institution, and others familiar with its details.

We regret to say that, on the whole, the work has not left with us a pleasant impression of the system of instruction followed at West-Point.  There appear to be too many studies, too little time to master them, and too much stress laid on trifles.  Certainly a strictly military school must be different from others, and there can be no doubt that old officers know better than civilians how young men should be trained for the army.  But we cannot resist the impression that if this work be truthful, the author has, often unconsciously, shown that there is much room for reform at West-Point.