Mr. Alger is a brave man.  He does not hesitate to grapple with the greatest thinkers, nor to measure the subtlest imaginations of all time.  In the opening chapter, for example, which is appropriately devoted to a consideration of theories of the soul’s origin, he lays hold of the boldest speculative imaginations to which the world has given birth, with no hesitating nor trembling hand.  Occasionally the reader may, perhaps, be more inclined to tremble for him than he for himself.  One remembers Goldsmith’s line,—­

  “The dog it was that died”;

but our author comes forth from the trial in ruddy health, and does not seem at all out of breath.  And all through the book he delivers his sentence like a man who has earned the right to speak.

And has he not earned it?  For some years Mr. Alger has been known to scholars and others as a most indefatigable and heroic worker.  This book justifies that reputation.  The amount of reading that has gone to it is almost portentous.  To us, who can hardly manage twelve books, big and little, in as many months, this mountainous reading furnishes matter for wonder.

Neither has this reading been chiefly a work of memorizing, nor has it been expended chiefly upon works of history commonly so called.  A product of man’s spiritual consciousness being under consideration, it is works of thought and imagination, rather than works of narration, which claim our author’s critical attention; and his reading has been reflective and deliberative, involving a judgment upon speculative more than upon historical data.  And it may fairly be said, though it be much to say, that he has shrunk from nothing which a perfect performance of his task required.  Whether we consider the formation or the expression of his judgments, it may still be affirmed that he has met his great theme fairly, and given to its exposition the utmost exercise of his powers and the unstinted devotion of his labor.

We can accordingly pass upon his work this rare commendation, that it is thoroughly honest.  This may, indeed, seem to many no very high approval.  But it is one of the very highest.  For we mean by it not merely that he has refrained from conscious misrepresentation of fact,—­that he has not lied, as Kingsley did about Hypatia in the novel wherein he borrowed, only to befoul, the name of that spotless woman, knowing all the while that his representation was contrary to the recorded facts of history.  To say so much only of this book would be not to attribute to it a positive merit, but only to acquit it of damning demerit.  But what we affirm is that Mr. Alger has fairly looked his facts in the face, and come to some understanding with himself about them.  When he speaks, therefore, it is about facts, about realities, not merely about words; and what he offers is the result of genuine processes of production which have gone on in his own mind.  If he speak of life, it is not life in the dictionary, but in the