when Mrs. Hominy fastened the cameo to her frontal bone and went to the sermon of Dr. Channing, when young Hawthorne chopped straw for the odious oxen at Brook Farm, and when a budding Booddha, called by his neighbors Thoreau, left mankind and proceeded to introvert himself by the borders of Walden Pond.  Mr. Alcott’s little diary gives us some of the best skimmings of that time of yeast.  There is Emerson-worship, Channing-worship, Margaret Fuller-worship and the pale cast of The Dial.  There is, besides, in another stratum that runs through the collection, a vein of very welcome investigation amongst old authors—­Plutarch’s charming letter of consolation to his wife on the death of their child; Crashaw’s “Verses on a Prayer-Book;” Evelyn’s letter on the origin of his Sylva; and many a jewel five-words-long filched from the authors whom modern taste votes slow and insupportable.  We mention these to give some idea of the spirit in which this work of marquetry is executed—­a work too fragmentary and incoherent to be easily describable except by its specimens.  And while culling fragments, we cannot forbear mentioning the curious records of Mr. Alcott’s “Conversations,” held now with Frederika Bremer, now with a band of large-browed Concord children, held forty years ago, and turning perpetually upon the deeper questions of metaphysics and religion; we will even indulge ourselves with a short extract from one of the “Conversations with Children,” reported verbatim by an apparently concealed auditress, and eliciting many a cunning bit of infantine wisdom, besides the following finer rhapsody, which Mr. Alcott succeeded in charming out of the lips of a boy six years of age: 

“Mr. Alcott! you know Mrs. Barbauld says in her hymns, everything is prayer; every action is prayer; all nature prays; the bird prays in singing; the tree prays in growing; men pray—­men can pray more; we feel; we have more, more than Nature; we can know, and do right:  Conscience prays; all our powers pray; action prays.  Once we said, here, that there was a Christ in the bottom of our spirits, when we try to be good.  Then we pray in Christ; and that is the whole!”

To think that the lips of this ingenuous and golden-mouthed lad may be now pouring out patriotism in Congress is rather sad; but the author’s own career tells us that there are some of the Chrysostoms of 1830 who have had the courage to keep quiet, and sweeten their own lives for family use.  Mr. Alcott betrays in every line the kindest, sanest and humanest spirit; and we wish he could feel how grateful some of us are for his example of a thinker who can keep quiet, and a writer who can show the power of reticence.

* * * * *

Thirty Years in the Harem; or, The Autobiography of Melek-Hanum, wife of H.H.  Kibrizli-Mehemet-Pasha.  New York:  Harper & Brothers.