Persian, and Coptic.  Of his proficiency in this Babel of tongues the evidence is not very conclusive.  Professor Willard is said to have applied to the young divinity-student for advice in some nice matters of Hebrew and Syriac.  Theology there can be no doubt that he thoroughly mastered.  After a brief season of itinerancy through Massachusetts pulpits, he is settled at West Roxbury.  And here begins that agony of doubt dismal and unprofitable to contemplate, when it is not redeemed by a manly ardor which searches on for attainable grounds of trust.  But in this young minister the faith of a little child cannot be superseded by the advents of geology and carnal criticism.  Some of the Biblical conceptions of the Deity may be found inadequate, but Nature and the human soul are full of His presence and glow with His inspirations.  Within the limits of capacity and obedience, every man and woman may receive direct nourishment from God.  At length the South-Boston sermon of 1841 separates the position of Theodore Parker from that of his Unitarian brethren.  After this, his life belongs to the public.  He is known of men as an assailant of respectable and sacred things, a bitter critic of political and social usages.  That these manifestations were but small portions of the total of his life, the public may now discern.

We can recall no published correspondence of the century which combines more excellent and diverse qualities than this with which Mr. Weiss has plentifully filled his pages.  Occasions for which the completest of Complete Letter-Writers has failed to provide are met by Mr. Parker with consummate discretion.  His letters are to Senators, Shakers, Professors, Doctors, Slaveholders, Abolitionists, morbid girls, and heroic women:  they are all equally rich in spontaneity, simplicity, and point.  Keen criticisms of noted men, speculations upon society, homely wisdom of the household, estimates of the arts, and consolations of religion, all packed in plain and precise English, seem to have been ever ready for delivery.  If Mr. Parker had not chosen the unpopularity of a great man, he could have had the abundant popularity of a clever one.  Let us see how he outlines the Seer of Stockholm for an inquiring correspondent:—­

“Swedenborg has had the fate to be worshipped as a half-god, on the one side; and on the other, to be despised and laughed at.  It seems to me that he was a man of genius, of wide learning, of deep and genuine piety But he had an abnormal, queer sort of mind, dreamy, dozy, clairvoyant, Andrew-Jackson-Davisy; and besides, he loved opium and strong coffee, and wrote under the influence of those drugs.  A wise man may get many nice bits out of him, and be the healthier for such eating; but if he swallows Swedenborg whole, as the fashion is with his followers,—­why, it lays hard in the stomach, and the man has a nightmare on him all his natural life, and talks about ‘the Word,’ and ‘the Spirit,’ ‘correspondences,’ ‘receivers.’  Yet the Swedenborgians have a calm and religious beauty in their lives which is much to be admired.”