Revised and illustrated by E. STABLER. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott &
Co. 1859. pp. x., 400.
2. _Ten Years of Preacher-Life_; Chapters from an Autobiography. By
WILLIAM HENRY MILBURN. New York: Derby & Jackson. 1859. pp. 363.
BENVENUTO CELLINI was right in his _dictum_ about autobiographies; and
so was Dr. Kitchener, in his about hares. First catch your perfectly
sincere and unconscious man. He is even more uncommon than a genius of
the first order. Most men dress themselves for their autobiographies,
as Machiavelli used to do for reading the classics, in their best
clothes; they receive us, as it were, in a parlor chilling and awkward
from its unfamiliarity with man, and keep us carefully away from the
kitchen-chimney-corner, where they would feel at home, and would not
look on a lapse into nature as the unpardonable sin. But what do we
want of a hospitality that makes strangers of us, or of confidences
that keep us at arm's-length? Better the tavern and the newspaper; for
in the one we can grumble, and from the other learn more of our
neighbors than we care to know.
Pages:
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394