These papers have many sins
to answer for. There is an abundance of superficialness, of
pedantry, of inflation, and of want of thought. It seems as if these
sanguine schemers rushed to the press with every notion that danced
before their brain, and clothed it in the most clumsily compounded
and terminated words, for want of time to find the right one. But
although these men sometimes use a swollen and vicious diction, yet
they write to ends which raise them out of the jurisdiction of
ordinary criticism. They speak to the conscience, and have that
superiority over the crowd of their contemporaries, which belongs to
men who entertain a good hope. Moreover, these pamphlets may well
engage the attention of the politician, as straws of no mean
significance to show the tendencies of the time.
Mr. Alcott's visit has brought us nearer to a class of
Englishmen, with whom we had already some slight but friendly
correspondence, who possess points of so much attraction for us, that
we shall proceed to give a short account both of what we already
knew, and what we have lately learned, concerning them.
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