universe.  If he profess to offer thoughts, he really gives the results of his thinking.  He does not cant; he does not merely recite verbal formulas; he does not play the part of attorney, first determining what to advocate, and then seeking plausible reasons:  everywhere one perceives that he has really brought his mind to bear upon facts, and so has come to real mental fruit.  And it is this verity, this reality and genuineness, to which we give the name of intellectual honesty.  It is a rare quality; and always the rarer in proportion to the depth of the matters treated of, on the one hand, and to their expression in customs and institutions, on the other.  Institutions are masks.  The thinker must have both earnestness and penetration, if he is to get behind them.  And just in proportion as any element of man’s spiritual consciousness has come to institutional expression, it is the easier to talk about it and the harder to think upon it,—­to talk about it without talking of it.  But our author has made the distinction, and to the extent of his power looks facts in the face.

Having come to an understanding with himself, he honestly tries, again, to come to an understanding with the reader.  He honestly imparts his mind.  We find the book in this respect worthy of especial admiration.

Mr. Alger always writes well when he is not overmuch trying to write well.  If he forbear to covet striking effect, his style has perspicuity, directness, and vigor,—­the essentials of all excellent writing,—­and to these adds verbal affluence and occasional felicity.  But if he be tempted of the Devil to become eloquent, and the father of all rhetorical evil strives hard to bring the soul of his style to perdition, then he begins to write badly.  Let him, since he is capable of heroic things, imitate Luther, and fling his ink-pot.  Even though it light upon the page, let him not be inconsolable, but remember that no blots are so bad as those made by ambitious inflation.  We have not that horror of “fine writing” which leads The Saturday Review and Company to such obstreperous exclamation, and can endure the worst that Americans are guilty of in this matter quite as well as that affectation of off-hand ease and nonchalance which enhances the native clumsiness of many among the later English writers, and, to our mind, mars extremely the poetry of Browning.  But if a writer has some propensity to rhetorical Babel-building, it were well for him to make an effort in the opposite direction, and try to build his sentences underground, like the houses of the Esquimaux.

Mr. Alger’s book has minor faults and major excellences.  But let him be content.  He has faithfully performed a great labor, and we give him cordial approval.  To a great theme he has brought great industry, a just appreciation, a fine spirit, and much of intellectual courage and activity.