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    The narrator of the romantic history loses himself in a forest , where he meets with a very aged philosopher or hermit , who , having first inspired the wanderer with due reverence for his wisdom , confesses himself to be Apollonius of Tyana , and relates the history of his marvellous life and supposed death . The

    available matter of that most dull book—the life of Apollonius by Philostratus—is wrought into a delightful tale , in which Apollonius is represented as an enthusiast turned into a p hilanthropicai impostor . He first endeavoured to revive Pythagoreanism , by honestly and simply teaching the sublime doctrines of the school . The world turned its back on him , but he would not , therefore , abandon the world . He set up the profession of a worker of miracles , but merely to serve

    mankind ; and ended his career by a pretended sacrifice of himself on a funeral pile , beneath which he secreted a vault . He then retired to a wilderness , that his continued life might remain a secret . The traveller heaping praises upon him for his virtuous labours , he is checked by the philosopher . Reserve your admiration , he says , for one who succeeded where I failed—all that I attempted was actually performed—and in our day too . You have

    probably never heard of him , for he lived in a remote corner of the empire , among the most odious and contemptible of people—the Jews . Then follows a eulogy upon the character of Jesus Christ , with no very favourable account of the disciples . But the eulogy lias not the powerful eloquence of the well-known passage in Rousseau ' s ' Profession de foi du Cure Savoyard / The progress of the new religion is exhibited . The efforts of the earliest enthusiasts , and the subsequent accession of interested fraud , are

    expatiated upon with W ieland ' s accustomed graceful difiuseness . The accumulated abuses of future ages , and the consequent necessity of a reformation , are all prophesied with like facility and address . This comparison between Apollonius and Jesus Christ was made at an early age of the Christian controversy ; and Wieltind did but modernize and adorn , as was his usual practice , a forgotten literary speculation . Tin- placid old man was through life unaffected by the reproaches of the religious public ; his integrity would have led him to discountenance such a misrepresentation of his object as his admirer has thought proper to advance .

    But we must close—the subject is unbounded . The less valuable matter forms no large proportion of the volumes , which , if they fail to excite interest , it will be only for the want of a prepared public . We hope that Mrs . Austin will proceed with uiiahatod zeal hi her adopted course : like all writers who commence ii ih \ v courso , she must , create a taste by which alone her labours can be adequately rewarded .

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    Characteristics of Goethe * 189

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  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 189, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/29/