In speaking of Plato’s mind, Mr. Emerson gives us some of his keenest and most characteristic sentences—sentences in which the thought seems to go in straight lines right at the mark, but to lack a comprehension of relations. In Plato, he says, “the freest abandonment is united with the precision of a geometer. His daring imagination gives him the more solid grasp of facts; as the birds of the highest flight have the strongest alar bones.” . . . “His strength,” he says, a few pages after, “is like the momentum of a falling planet; and his discretion, the return of its due and perfect curve.” Perhaps the best passage, however, in the lecture on Plato, is that in which he describes the divine delirium, in which the philosopher rises into the seer. “He believes that poetry, prophecy, and the high insight, are from a wisdom of which man is not master; that the gods never philosophize; but, by a celestial mania, these miracles are accomplished. Horsed on these winged steeds, he sweeps the dim regions, visits worlds which flesh cannot enter; he saw the souls in pain; he hears the doom of the judge; he beholds the penal metempsychosis; the Fates, with the rock and shears; _and hears the intoxicating hum of their spindle_.” Sentences, bright and beautiful as these, might be extracted from this volume to such an extent as to bring upon us an action for violating the copyright. For fineness of wit, imagination, observation, satire and sentiment, the book hardly has its equal in American literature; with its positive opinions we have little to do. With respect to these, it may be generally said, that Mr. Emerson is always beneath the surface, and never at the centre. * * * * * _The Seaside and the Fireside. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo._