Jacques Barzun on The Love Letters of Walter Bagehot (Soon at IWP Books):

Bagehot’s ability to make ideas live appears on every page he wrote. A student in an American business school once found in its library a slim volume entitled The Love Letters of Walter Bagehot. It proved to be, once more, the carrier of a double message: sprightly missives to the author’s fiancée interspersed with comments on the current state of certain firms and the stock exchange that would be sure to interest the fiancée’s father. Both recipients were doubtless entertained. Bagehot’s prose is rapid and enveloping, somewhat in the manner of Bernard Shaw; it leaves no uncertainties as it voices also what the opponent or the reader is no doubt thinking. It is humorous and sad, because Bagehot, though an expert in business and politics, never feels his mind-and-heart fulfilled by them. (From Dawn to Decadence)