To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it is firmly believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely recommend the Work:  nay, who knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be true, as Teufelsdrockh maintains, that “within the most starched cravat there passes a windpipe and weasand, and under the thickliest embroidered waistcoat beats a heart,”—­the force of that rapt earnestness may be felt, and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce through?  In our wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist living on locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which, except in the higher walks of Literature, must be rare.  Many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of Man.  Wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion; sheers down, were it furlongs deep; into the true centre of the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home, and buries it.—­On the other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most unequal writer breathing.  Often after some such feat, he will play truant for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep with eyes open, which indeed he is.

Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and literature in most known tongues, from Sanchoniathon to Dr. Lingard, from your Oriental Shasters, and Talmuds, and Korans, with Cassini’s Siamese fables, and Laplace’s Mecanique Celeste, down to Robinson Crusoe and the Belfast Town and Country Almanack, are familiar to him,—­we shall say nothing:  for unexampled as it is with us, to the Germans such universality of study passes without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, and there of course.  A man that devotes his life to learning, shall he not be learned?

In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial capability, marred too often by the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent want of intercourse with the higher classes.  Occasionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigor, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and splendor from Jove’s head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude.  Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon, so often intervene!  On the whole, Professor Teufelsdrockh, is not a cultivated writer.  Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes,