We do not mean that any such cold abstraction
is consciously intended, but all that is said means this. It shadows
forth one of the greatest desires which convulse our age.
A most noble meaning is couched in the history of Albert, and though
the writer breaks down under such great attempts, and the religion and
philosophy of the book are clumsily embodied compared with its poesy
and rhetoric, yet great and still growing thoughts are expressed with
sufficient force to make the book a companion of rare value to one in
the same phase of mind.
Albert is the aristocratic democrat, such as Alfieri was; one who, in
his keen perception of beauty, shares the good of that culture which
ages have bestowed on the more fortunate classes, but in his large
heart loves and longs for the good of all men, as if he had himself
suffered in the lowest pits of human misery. He is all this and more
in his transmigration, real or fancied, of soul, through many forms of
heroic effort and bloody error; in his incompetency to act at the
present time, his need of long silences, of the company of the dead
and of fools, and eventually of a separation from all habitual ties,
is expressed a great idea, which is still only in the throes of birth,
yet the nature of whose life we begin to prognosticate with some
clearness.
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