The excellence of the book is not so much in its representations of the representative men who form its subjects, as in the representation of Mr. Emerson himself; and we doubt if, in all literature, there are revealed many individualities so peculiar, and so powerful in its peculiarity, as the individuality stamped upon every page of the present volume. We would not presume, in our limits, to attempt an analysis of an intellect so curiously complex as Mr. Emerson’s—with traits which strike us as a Parthian’s arrows, shot while he is flying, and which both provoke and defy the pursuit of criticism; but we will extract instead, a few of the beautiful and brilliant sentences which are inserted, like gems, in almost every lecture, and in each of which some sparkle of the writer’s quality appears. The lecture on Goethe is a perfect diamond necklace, shooting out light in every direction, with some flashes that illumine, for the instant, labyrinths of thought which darkness is considered to hold as exclusively her own. In speaking of the acting of Shakspeare’s plays, he translates into words an emotion which everyone has felt, but which we never dreamed could be perfectly expressed. “The recitation,” he says, “begins; one golden word leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry, _and sweetly torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes_.” Again, he remarks that Shakspeare is inconceivably wise; all other writers conceivably. “A good reader,” he says, “can, in a sort, _nestle into Plato’s brain_, and think from thence; but not into Shakspeare’s. _We are still out of doors._” Speaking of Montaigne’s use of language, he exclaims, “but these words, and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive.” Of Mr. Emerson’s peculiar wit the present volume is full of Examples. Thus he speaks of “the heaven of law, and the pismire of performance under it;” of Plato as having “clapped copyright on the world;” of the possibility, as regards marriage, of dividing the human race into two classes; “those who are out and want to get in, and those who are in and want to get out;” but quotation of small sentences is impertinent, where so many paragraphs are thoroughly pervaded with the quality.