The poor blunderer mouses among the sublime creations of the Old Masters, trying to acquire the elegant proficiency in art-knowledge, which he has a groping sort of comprehension is a proper thing for a traveled man to be able to display.  But what is the manner of his study?  And what is the progress he achieves?  To what extent does he familiarize himself with the great pictures of Italy, and what degree of appreciation does he arrive at?  Read: 

“When we see a monk going about with a lion and looking up into heaven, we know that that is St. Mark.  When we see a monk with a book and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to think of a word, we know that that is St. Matthew.  When we see a monk sitting on a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside him, and without other baggage, we know that that is St. Jerome.  Because we know that he always went flying light in the matter of baggage.  When we see other monks looking tranquilly up to heaven, but having no trade-mark, we always ask who those parties are.  We do this because we humbly wish to learn.”

He then enumerates the thousands and thousand of copies of these several pictures which he has seen, and adds with accustomed simplicity that he feels encouraged to believe that when he has seen “Some More” of each, and had a larger experience, he will eventually “begin to take an absorbing interest in them”—­the vulgar boor.

That we have shown this to be a remarkable book, we think no one will deny.  That is a pernicious book to place in the hands of the confiding and uniformed, we think we have also shown.  That the book is a deliberate and wicked creation of a diseased mind, is apparent upon every page.  Having placed our judgment thus upon record, let us close with what charity we can, by remarking that even in this volume there is some good to be found; for whenever the author talks of his own country and lets Europe alone, he never fails to make himself interesting, and not only interesting but instructive.  No one can read without benefit his occasional chapters and paragraphs, about life in the gold and silver mines of California and Nevada; about the Indians of the plains and deserts of the West, and their cannibalism; about the raising of vegetables in kegs of gunpowder by the aid of two or three teaspoons of guano; about the moving of small arms from place to place at night in wheelbarrows to avoid taxes; and about a sort of cows and mules in the Humboldt mines, that climb down chimneys and disturb the people at night.  These matters are not only new, but are well worth knowing.  It is a pity the author did not put in more of the same kind.  His book is well written and is exceedingly entertaining, and so it just barely escaped being quite valuable also.

(One month later)