Ὤσπερ γὰρ οἱ τὰ πεινῶντα θρέμματα θαλλὸν ἤ τινα καρπὸν προσείοντες ἄγουσι, οὺ ἐμοὶ λόγους οὔτω προτείνων ἐν βιβλίοις τήν τε Ἀττικὴν φαίνει περιάξειν ἅπασαν καὶ ὅποι ἂν ἄλλοσε βούλῃ.

“For as men lead hungry creatures by holding out a green bough or an apple, so you, it would seem, might lead me about all Attica and wherever else you please, by holding toward me discourses out of your books.”

The gift of the birthday was truly a “surprise.” There lay a more beautiful book than Aldus or Elzevir ever made, slipped into the house as carelessly as a roseleaf or a dandelion-down blown in at the window. Mr. Alcott’s note indicated a “friend,” without naming him or her. And when I came to read the text, that, too, was such a Persian superlative on the poor merits of the subject, that I had to shade my eyes as if to accept only a part of the meaning. I may shake your belief in my good sense, if I say I don’t know but I suffered more than I enjoyed; but I soon came to admire the lyrical tone of all this remarkable writing, inspired by the most generous sentiment, fortified, too, by the wish to convey the good-will of other friends who made him their spokesman. So I made a covenant with myself to join these friends in ignoring the infirm actuality, stoutly holding up the ideal outline of vithe poor man we were talking of. And now I have learned to look at the book with courage, and at least to thank the friends who jointly completed it, very heartily, for this rare and exquisite work of kindness. I have been twice tempted to send you some verses on this occasion, as they would be really more fit carriers of what I have to say; and perhaps I yet shall, though the rhyming fit seldom comes to me.

Mrs. Mary E. Stearns.

The publishers have here presented a book about Emerson, written by the one man who stood nearest to him of all men; one from whom he drew inspiration in generous measure, and to whom, in return, he discovered without reserve his inmost self. Such a book cannot fail to be an original and vital contribution to Emersoniana. Not to read it, is to miss a clear and searching exegesis of one whose name has been called the greatest in American literature. It is like a portrait of one of the old masters, painted by his own brush.

The introductory sonnet to Emerson is pitched in a lofty key, and condenses into fourteen pithy lines a statement of the author’s life-long debt of friendship—material and spiritual. The essay itself was written twenty-odd years ago, while Mr. Alcott was still in the full vigor of his intellect. It was privately printed, and presented to Emerson on his birthday. A limited edition was published for the first time in 1882, and readily sold. The revision and reading of the proof-sheets of this edition was the last literary viiiwork which Mr. Alcott did, previous to the stroke of paralysis which deprived him of the perfect control of his faculties, and kept him a prisoner in his room ever afterward. It was a work occupying several months, as the octogenarian’s visits to Boston were somewhat infrequent, and often including other business. Such moments as he could give were, of course, valuable; and the publishers, at whose suggestion the work was undertaken, would meet him, now in the topmost story of some lofty building, and now in some dim-lighted basement, where together they would go over the unfinished sheets,—time gliding by for the nonce, all unheeded.

So anxious was Mr. Alcott that his work on Emerson should some day be given to the world, that after his paralytic shock, when his memory had lost its grasp of many things, and among others, of his recent labors on his newly published book,—a copy of which he had not seen,—he still remembered his former earnest wish that it should be made public. And to one of his friends, who spent several hours with him each week, he remarked with much excitement, on two or three occasions, that his essay must be brought out at once; insisting that it should be published in the philosophical magazine which his friend edited. Finally a copy of the book was brought to him, greatly to his astonishment and delight. This is all the more touching an incident of his friendship for the great ixEmerson, when it is remembered that the latter more than once said that “it would be a pity if Alcott survived him, since he alone possessed the means of showing to the world what Alcott really was.”—(Cabot’s Memoir of Emerson, vol. i. p. 281.)

The book also contains Alcott’s “Ion: a Monody,”—read by him at the Concord School of Philosophy, and to which Mr. John Albee, in “The New-York Tribune,” paid the following high praise: “It continues for us that tender strain bequeathed by Moschus’s ‘Lament for Bion,’ Milton’s ‘Lycidas,’ and Shelley’s ‘Adonais;’ but it has a pathos and beauty all its own, ... faultless in tone and in art.”

Mr. Sanborn’s ode to Emerson, “The Poet’s Countersign,” also read at the Concord School, completes the volume, and makes a worthy addition to that lofty form of verse that has enriched the literatures of all ages, from Pindar to Tennyson.

Emerson’s House.

The ancients entertained noble notions of the poet. He was an enthusiast and a rhapsodist. His work was done in 2surprise and delight. And all good epic poets were thought to compose, not by choice, but by inspiration; and so, too, the good lyric poets drew, they tell us, “from fountains flowing with nectar, and gathered flowers from the gardens and glades of the Muses; they, like bees, being ever on the wing. For the poet was a thing light-winged and sacred, unable to compose until he became inspired, and the imagination was no longer under his control. For as long as he was in complete possession of it, he was unable to compose verses or to speak oracularly.” And hence all noble numbers were credited by them, not to the poet whom they knew, but to the Power working in and through 3him, and making him the most delighted of auditors whenever he chanted his verses, because he did not conceive them to be his. He was the Voice, the favored of the Nine. Hence the value they set upon discipline as the means of poetic divination. The poet, they conceived, must be most virtuous. It was essential to his accomplishment that he be chaste, that he be gentle, that he be noble in his generation, that his endowment be older than himself; that he descend from a race of pure souls,—bring centuries of culture in his descent among men, ideas of ages in his brain,—enabling him to conceive by instinct, and speak his experiences unconsciously, as a child 4opens his lips, in his most rapturous accents. Therefore, any pretence of ownership in the gift was esteemed an impiety. For a prayer, a song, a tender tone, a glance of the eye, all those magnetic attractions known to friendship, had a like ancestry; were ours personally, primarily, as we became worthy of being their organs.

Is it an egotism in us to claim for New England and for a contemporary of ours parts and antecedents like these? or shall such endowments, admirable always, and awakening enthusiasm, be the less prized when represented in a countryman of ours, and when we have so frequently partaken of the pleasure which his books, his 5lectures especially, excite? I allude, of course, to Emerson. A rhapsodist by genius, and the chief of his class, his utterances are ever a surprise as they are a delight to his audiences; select though these are, and not all unworthy of him.

Hear how Goethe describes him, where in his letters to Schiller, he calls the rhapsodist—

“A wise man, who, in calm thoughtfulness, shows what has happened; his discourse aiming less to excite than to calm his auditors, in order that they shall listen to him with contentment and long. He apportions the interest equally, because it is not in his power to balance a too lively impression. He grasps backwards 6and forwards at pleasure. He is followed, because he has only to do with the imagination, which of itself produces images, and up to a certain degree, it is indifferent what kind he calls up. He does not appear to his auditors, but recites, as it were behind a curtain; so there is a total abstraction from himself, and it seems to them as though they heard only the voice of the Muses.”

See our Ion standing there,—his audience, his manuscript, before him,—himself an auditor, as he reads, of the Genius sitting behind him, and to whom he defers, eagerly catching the words,—the words,—as if the accents were first reaching his ears too, and entrancing 7alike oracle and auditor. We admire the stately sense, the splendor of diction, and are surprised as we listen. Even his hesitancy between the delivery of his periods, his perilous passages from paragraph to paragraph of manuscript, we have almost learned to like, as if he were but sorting his keys meanwhile for opening his cabinets; the spring of locks following, himself seeming as eager as any of us to get sight of his specimens, as they come forth from their proper drawers; and we wait willingly till his gem is out glittering; admire the setting, too, scarcely less than the jewel itself. The magic minstrel and speaker! whose rhetoric, voiced as by organ-stops, delivers 8the sentiment from his breast in cadences peculiar to himself; now hurling it forth on the ear, echoing; then, as his mood and matter invite it, dying like

He works his miracles with it, as Hermes did, his voice conducting; the sense alike to eye and ear by its lyrical movement and refraining melody. So his compositions affect us, not as logic linked in syllogisms, but as voluntaries rather, or preludes, in which one is not tied to any design of air, but may vary his key or note at pleasure, as if improvised without 9any particular scope of argument; each period, each paragraph, being a perfect note in itself, however it may chance chime with its accompaniments in the piece; as a waltz of wandering stars, a dance of Hesperus with Orion. His rhetoric dazzles by circuits, contrasts, antitheses; Imagination, as in all sprightly minds, being his wand of power. He comes along his own paths, too, and always in his own fashion. What though he build his piers downwards from the firmament to the tumbling tides, and so throw his radiant span across the fissures of his argument, and himself pass over the frolic arches,—Ariel-wise,—is the skill less admirable, the masonry less secure 10for its singularity? So his books are best read as irregular writings, in which the sentiment is, by his enthusiasm, transfused throughout the piece, telling on the mind in cadences of a current under-song, and giving the impression of a connected whole—which it seldom is,—such is the rhapsodist’s cunning in its structure and delivery.

The highest compliment we can pay to the scholar is that of having edified and instructed us, we know not how, unless by the pleasure his words have given us. Conceive how much the Lyceum owes to his presence and teachings; how great the debt of many to him for their hour’s 11entertainment. His, if any one’s, let the institution pass into history,—since his art, more than another’s, has clothed it with beauty, and made it the place of popular resort, our purest organ of intellectual entertainment for New England and the Western cities. And, besides this, its immediate value to his auditors everywhere, it has been serviceable in ways they least suspect; most of his works, having had their first readings on its platform, were here fashioned and polished in good part, like Plutarch’s Morals, to become the more acceptable to readers of his published books.

And is not the omen auspicious, that just now, during these winter evenings, at 12the opening of this victorious year, his Sundays have come round again; the metropolis, eager, as of old, to hear his words. Does it matter what topic he touches? He adorns all with a severe sententious beauty, a freshness and sanction next to that of godliness, if not that in spirit and effect.

’Tis near thirty years since his first book, entitled “Nature,” was printed. Then followed volumes of Essays, Poems, Orations, Addresses and during all the intervening period down to the present, he has read 13briefs of his lectures through a wide range, from Canada to the Capitol; in most of the Free States; in the large cities, East and West, before large audiences; in the smallest towns and to the humblest companies. Such has been his appeal to the mind of his countrymen, such his acceptance by them. He has read lectures in the principal cities of England also. A poet, speaking to individuals as few others can speak, and to persons in their privileged moments, he must be heard as none others are. The more personal he is, the more prevailing, if not the more popular.

Because the poet, accosting the heart of man, speaks to him personally, he is one with all mankind. And if he speak 14eloquent words, these words must be cherished by mankind,—belonging as they do to the essence of man’s personality, and, partaking of the qualities of his Creator, they are of spiritual significance. While, in so far as he is individual only,—unlike any other man,—his verses address special aptitudes in separate persons; and he will belong, not to all times, but to one time only, and will pass away,—except to those who delight in that special manifestation of his gifts.

Now were Emerson less individual, according to our distinction, that is, more personal and national,—as American as America,—then were his influence so much the more diffusive, and he the Priest 15of the Faith earnest hearts are seeking. Not that religion is wanting here in New England; but that its seekers are, for the most part, too exclusive to seek it independent of some human leader,—religion being a personal oneness with the Person of Persons; a partaking of Him by putting off the individualism which distracts and separates man from man. Hence differing sects, persuasions, creeds, bibles, for separate peoples, prevail all over the earth; religions, being still many, not one and universal, not personal; similar only as yet in their differences. Still the religious sentiment, in binding all souls to the Personal One, makes the many partake of him in degrees lesser or greater. 16Thus far, the poets in largest measure; mankind receiving through them its purest revelations, they having been its inspired oracles and teachers from the beginning till now. The Sacred Books,—are not these Poems in spirit, if not in form? their authors inspired bards of divinity? Meant for all men in all ages and states, they appeal forever to the springing faiths of every age, and so are permanent and perennial, as the heart itself and its everlasting hopes.

See how the Christian Theism, for instance, has held itself high above most men’s heads till now; its tender truths above all cavil and debate by their transcendent purity and ideal beauty! how 17these truths still survive in all their freshness, keeping verdant the Founder’s memory! and shall to distant generations; churches, peoples, persons, a widening Christendom, flourishing or fading as they spring forth, or fall away from this living stem.

Now, am I saying that our poet is inspiring this fresher Faith? Certainly I mean to be so understood; he, the chiefest of its bards and heralds. Not spoken always, ’tis implied, nevertheless, in his teachings; defective, it is admitted, as colored 18by his temperament, which trenches on Personal Theism not a little by the stress he lays on Nature, on Fate; yet more nearly complementing the New England Puritanism than aught we have, and coming nearest to satisfying the aspirations of our time.

But it were the last thought of his, this conceiving himself the oracle of any Faith, the leader of any school, any sect of religionists. His genius is ethical, literary; he speaks to the moral sentiments through the imagination, insinuating the virtues so, as poets and moralists of his class are wont. The Sacred Class, the Priests, differ in this,—they address the moral sentiment directly, thus enforcing 19the sanctions of personal righteousness, and celebrating moral excellence in prophetic strain.

’Tis everything to have a true believer in the world, dealing with men and matters as if they were divine in idea and real in fact; meeting persons and events at a glance directly, not at a million removes, and so passing fair and fresh into life and literature, the delight and ornament of the race.

Pure literatures are personal inspirations, springing fresh from the Genius of a people. They are original; their first fruits being verses, essays, tales, biographies—productions as often of obscure as of illustrious persons. And such, so far as 20we have a literature, is ours. Of the rest, how much is foreign both in substance and style, and might have been produced elsewhere! His, I consider original and American; the earliest, purest our country has produced,—best answering the needs of the American mind. Consider how largely our letters have been enriched by his contributions. Consider, too, the change his views have wrought in our methods of thinking; how he has won over the bigot, the unbeliever, at least to tolerance and moderation, if not to acknowledgment, by his circumspection and candor of statement.

Am I extravagant in believing that our people are more indebted to his teachings than to any other person who has spoken or written on his themes during the last twenty years,—are more indebted than they know, becoming still more so? and that, as his thoughts pass into the brain of the coming generation, it will be seen that we have had at least one mind of home growth, if not independent of the old country? I consider his genius the measure and present expansion of the American mind. And it is plain that he 22is to be read and prized for years to come. Poet and moralist, he has beauty and truth for all men’s edification and delight. His works are studies. And any youth of free senses and fresh affections shall be spared years of tedious toil,—in which wisdom and fair learning are, for the most part, held at arm’s length, planet’s width, from his grasp,—by graduating from this college. His books are surcharged with vigorous thoughts, a sprightly wit. They abound in strong sense, happy humor, keen criticisms, subtile insights, noble morals, clothed in a chaste and manly diction, and fresh with the breath of health and progress.

We characterize and class him with the 23moralists who surprise us with an accidental wisdom, strokes of wit, felicities of phrase,—as Plutarch, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Antoninus, Saadi, Montaigne, Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Goethe, Coleridge,—with whose delightful essays, notwithstanding all the pleasure they give us, we still plead our disappointment at not having been admitted to the closer intimacy which these loyal leaves had with their owner’s mind before torn from his notebook; jealous, even, at not having been taken into his confidence in the editing itself.

We read, never as if he were the dogmatist, but a fair-speaking mind, frankly declaring his convictions, and committing 24these to our consideration, hoping we may have thought like things ourselves; oftenest, indeed, taking this for granted as he wrote. There is nothing of the spirit of proselyting, but the delightful deference ever to our free sense and right of opinion. He might take for his motto the sentiment of Henry More, where, speaking of himself, he says: “Exquisite disquisition begets diffidence; diffidence in knowledge, humility; humility, good manners and meek conversation. For my part, I desire no man to take anything I write or speak upon trust without canvassing, and would be thought rather to propound than to assert what I have here or elsewhere written or spoken. But 25continually to have expressed my diffidence in the very tractates and colloquies themselves, had been languid and ridiculous.”

Then he has chosen a proper time and manner for saying his good things; has spoken to almost every great interest as it rose. Nor has he let the good opportunities pass unheeded, or failed to make them for himself. He has taken discretion along as his constant attendant and ally; has shown how the gentlest temper ever deals the surest blows. His method is that of the sun against his rival for the cloak, and so he is free from any madness of those, who, forgetting the strength of the solar ray, go blustering against men’s 26prejudices, as if the wearers would run at once against these winds of opposition into their arms for shelter. What higher praise can we bestow on any one than to say of him, that he harbors another’s prejudices with a hospitality so cordial as to give him, for the time, the sympathy next best to, if, indeed, it be not edification in, charity itself? For what disturbs and distracts mankind more than the uncivil manners that cleave man from man? Yet for his amendment letters, love, Christianity, were all given!

How different is he in temper and manners from Carlyle, with whom he is popularly associated! but who, for the most part, is the polemic, the sophist, the 27scorner: whose books, opened anywhere, show him berating the wrong he sees, but seeing, shows never the means of removing. Ever the same melancholy advocacy of work to be done under the dread master; force of stroke, the right to rule and be ruled, ever the dismal burden. Doomsday books are all save his earliest—Rhadamanthus sitting and the arbiter. He rides his Leviathan as fiercely as did his countryman, Hobbes, and can be as truculent and abusive; the British Taurus, and a mad one. Were he not thus possessed and fearfully in earnest, we should take him for the harlequin he seems, nor see the sorrowing sadness playing off its load in this grotesque 28mirth, this scornful irony of his; he painting in spite of himself his portraits in the warmth of admiration, the fire of wrath, and giving mythology for history; all the while distorting the facts into grimace in his grim moods. Yet, what breadth of perspective, strength of outline! the realism how appalling, the egotism how enormous,—all history showing in the background of the one figure, Carlyle. Burns, Goethe, Richter, Mirabeau, Luther, Cromwell, Frederick,—all dashed from his flashing pen, heads of himself, alike in their unlikeness, prodigiously individual, willful, some of them monstrous; all Englishmen with their egregious prejudices and pride; no patience, 29no repose in any. He still brandishes his truncheon through his pages with an adroitness that renders it unsafe for any, save the few that wield weapons of celestial temper, to do battle against this Abaddon. Silenced he will not be; talking terribly against all talking but his own; agreeing, disagreeing, all the same; he, the Jove, permitting none, none to mount Olympus, till the god deigns silence and invites. Curious to see him, his chin aloft, the pent thunders rolling, lightnings darting from under the bold brows, words that tell of the wail within, accents not meant for music, yet made lyrical in the cadences of his Caledonian refrain; his mirth mad as Lear’s, his humor 30as willful as the wind’s. Not himself is approachable by himself even. And Emerson is the one only American deserving a moment’s consideration in his eyes. Him he honors and owns the better, giving him the precedence and the manners:

Of Emerson’s books I am not here designing to speak critically, but of his genius and personal influence rather. Yet, in passing, I may say, that his book of “Traits” deserves to be honored as one in which England, Old and New, may take honest pride, as being the liveliest 31portraiture of British genius and accomplishments,—a book, like Tacitus, to be quoted as a masterpiece of historical painting, and perpetuating the New Englander’s fame with that of his race. ’Tis a victory of eyes over hands, a triumph of ideas. Nor, in my judgment, has there been for some time any criticism of a people so characteristic and complete. It remains for him to do like justice to New England. Not a metaphysician, and rightly discarding any claims to systematic thinking; a poet in spirit, if not always in form; the consistent idealist, yet the realist none the less, he has illustrated the learning and thought of former times on the noblest themes, and 32come nearest of any to emancipating the mind of his own time from the errors and dreams of past ages.

There is a virtuous curiosity felt by readers of remarkable books to learn something more of their author’s literary tastes, habits and dispositions than these ordinarily furnish. Yet, to gratify this is a task as difficult as delicate, requiring a diffidency akin to that with which one 33would accost the author himself, and without which graceful armor it were impertinent for a friend even to undertake it. We may venture but a stroke or two here.

All men love the country who love mankind with a wholesome love, and have poetry and company in them. Our essayist makes good this preference. If city bred, he has been for the best part of his life a villager and countryman. Only a traveller at times professionally, he prefers home-keeping; is a student of the landscape; is no recluse misanthrope, but a lover of his neighborhood, of mankind, of rugged strength wherever found; liking plain persons, plain ways, plain clothes; 34prefers earnest people, hates egotists, shuns publicity, likes solitude, and knows its uses. He courts society as a spectacle not less than a pleasure, and so carries off the spoils. Delighting in the broadest views of men and things, he seeks all accessible displays of both for draping his thoughts and works. And how is his page produced? Is it imaginable that he conceives his piece as a whole, and then sits down to execute his task at a heat? Is not this imaginable rather, and the key to the comprehension of his works? Living for composition as few authors can, and holding company, studies, sleep, exercise, affairs, subservient to thought, his products are 35gathered as they ripen, and stored in his commonplaces; the contents transcribed at intervals, and classified. The order of ideas, of imagination, is observed in the arrangement, not that of logical sequence. You may begin at the last paragraph and read backwards. ’Tis Iris-built. Each period is self-poised; there may be a chasm of years between the opening passage and the last written, and there is endless time in the composition. Jewels all! separate stars. You may have them in a galaxy, if you like, or view them separate and apart. But every one knows that, if he take an essay or verses, however the writer may have pleased himself with the cunning workmanship, 36’tis all cloud-fashioned, and there is no pathway for any one else. Cross as you can, or not cross, it matters not; you may climb or leap, move in circles, turn somersaults;

like his swallow in Merlin. Dissolving views, projects, vistas open wide and far,—yet earth, sky, realities all, not illusions. Here is substance, sod, sun; much fair weather in the seer as in his leaves. The whole quarternion of the seasons, the sidereal year, has been poured into these periods. Afternoon walks furnished the perspectives, rounded and melodized them. These good things have all been 37talked and slept over, meditated standing and sitting, read and polished in the utterance, submitted to all various tests, and, so accepted, they pass into print. Light fancies, dreams, moods, refrains, were set on foot, and sent jaunting about the fields, along woodpaths, by Walden shores, by hill and brook-sides,—to come home and claim their rank and honors too in his pages. Composed of surrounding matters, populous with thoughts, brisk with images, these books are wholesome, homelike, and could have been written only in New England, in Concord, and by our poet.

I know of but one subtraction from the pleasure the reading of his books—shall I say his conversation?—gives me, his pains to be impersonal or discrete, as if he feared any the least intrusion of himself were an offence offered to self-respect the courtesy due to intercourse and authorship; thus depriving his page, his company, of attractions the great masters 41of both knew how to insinuate into their text and talk, without overstepping the bounds of social or literary decorum. What is more delightful than personal magnetism? ’Tis the charm of good fellowship as of good writing. To get and to give the largest measures of satisfaction, to fill ourselves with the nectar of select experiences, not without some intertinctures of egotism so charming in a companion, is what we seek in books of the class of his, as in their authors. We associate diffidence properly with learning, frankness with fellowship, and owe a certain blushing reverence to both. For though our companion be a bashful man,—and he is the worse if wanting this 42grace,—we yet wish him to be an enthusiast behind all reserves, and capable of abandonment sometimes in his books. I know how rare this genial humor is, this frankness of the blood, and how surpassing is the gift of good spirits, especially here in cold New England, where, for the most part,

And yet, under our east winds of reserve, there hides an obscure courtesy in the best natures, which neither temperament nor breeding can spoil. Sometimes manners the most distant are friendly foils for holding eager dispositions subject to 43the measure of right behavior. ’Tis not every New Englander that dares venture upon the frankness, the plain speaking, commended by the Greek poet.

Fortunate the visitor who is admitted of a morning for the high discourse, or permitted to join the poet in his afternoon walks to Walden, the Cliffs, or elsewhere,—hours likely to be remembered, as unlike any others in his calendar of experiences. I may say, for me they have 44made ideas possible, by hospitalities given to a fellowship so enjoyable. Shall I describe them as sallies oftenest into the cloud-lands, into scenes and intimacies ever new? none the less novel nor remote than when first experienced; colloquies, in favored moments, on themes, perchance

nor yet

as in Milton’s page;

Interviews, however, bringing their trail of perplexing thoughts, costing 45some days’ duties, several nights’ sleep oftentimes, to restore one to his place and poise for customary employment; half a dozen annually being full as many as the stoutest heads may well undertake without detriment.

Certainly safer not to venture without the sure credentials, unless one will have his pretensions pricked, his conceits reduced in their vague dimensions.

But to the modest, the ingenuous, the gifted, welcome! Nor can any bearing be more poetic and polite than his to all such, to youth and accomplished women 46especially. I may not intrude farther than to say, that, beyond any I have known, his is a faith approaching to superstition concerning admirable persons; the divinity of friendship come down from childhood, and surviving yet in memory if not in expectation; the rumor of excellence of any sort, being like the arrival of a new gift to mankind, and he the first to proffer his recognition and hope. His affection for conversation, for clubs, is a lively intimation of the religion of fellowship. He, shall we say? if any, must have taken the census of the admirable people of his time, numbering as many among his friends, perhaps, as most living Americans; while he is already recognized as 47the representative mind of his country, to whom distinguished foreigners are especially commended on visiting us.

Extraordinary persons may be forgiven some querulousness about their company, when we remember that ordinary people often complain of theirs. Impossible for such to comprehend the scholar’s code of civilities,—disposed as men are to hold all persons to their special standard. Yet dedicated to high labors, so much the more strict is the scholar with himself, as his hindrances are the less appreciable, and he has, besides, his own moods to humor.

Companionableness comes by nature. We meet magically, and pass with sounding manners; else we encounter repulses, strokes of fate; temperament telling against temperament, precipitating us into vortices from which the nimblest finds no escape. We pity the person who shows himself unequal to such occasions; the scholar, for example, whose intellect is so exacting, so precise, that he cannot meet his company otherwise than critically; cannot descend through the senses or the sentiments to that common level where intercourse is possible with men; 49but we pity him the more, who, from caprice or confusion, can meet through these only. Still worse the case of him who can meet men neither as sentimentalist nor idealist, or, rather not at all in a human way. Intellect interblends with sentiment in the companionable mind, and wit with humor. We detain the flowing tide at the cost of lapsing out of perception into memory, into the limbo of fools. Excellent people wonder why they cannot meet and converse. They cannot,—no—their wits have ebbed away, and left them helpless. Why, but because of hostile temperaments, different states of animation? The personal magnetism finds no conductor, when one 50is individual, and the other individual no less. Individuals repel; persons meet; and only as one’s personality is sufficiently overpowering to dissolve the other’s individualism, can the parties flow together and become one. But individuals have no power of this sort. They are two, not one, perhaps many. Prisoned within themselves by reason of their egotism, like animals, they stand aloof; are separate even when they touch; are solitary in any company, having no company in themselves. But the free personal mind meets all, is apprehended by all; by the least cultivated, the most gifted; magnetizes all; is the spell-binder, the liberator of every one. 51We speak of sympathies, antipathies, fascinations, fates, for this reason.

Here we have the key to literary composition, to eloquence, to fellowship. Let us apply it, for the moment, to Emerson’s genius. We forbear entering into the precincts of genesis, and complexions, wherein sleep the secrets of character and manners. Eloquent in trope and utterance when his vaulting intelligence frees itself for the instant, yet see his loaded eye, his volleyed period; jets of wit, sallies of sense, breaks, inconsequences, all betraying the pent personality from which his rare accomplishments have not yet liberated his gifts, nor given him unreservedly to the Muse and mankind.

52Take his own account of the matter.

Plutarch tells us that of old they were wont to call men Φῶτα, which imports light, not only for the vehement desire man has to know, but to communicate also. And the Platonists fancied that the gods, being above men, had something whereof man did not partake, pure 54intellect and knowledge, and thus kept on their way quietly. The beasts, being below men, had something whereof man had less, sense and growth, so they lived quietly in their way. While man had something in him whereof neither gods nor beasts had any trace, which gave him all the trouble, and made all the confusion in the world,—and that was egotism and opinion.

A finer discrimination of gifts might show that Genius ranges through this threefold dominion, partaking in turn of each essence and degree.

Was our poet planted so fast in intellect, so firmly rooted in the mind, so dazzled with light, yet so cleft withal by 55duplicity of gifts, that, thus forced to traverse the mid-world of contrast and contrariety, he was ever glancing forth from his coverts at life as reflected through his dividing prism,—resident never long in the tracts he surveyed, yet their persistent Muse nevertheless? And so, housed in the Mind, and thence sallying forth in quest of his game, whether of persons or things, he was the Mercury, the merchantman of ideas to his century. Nor was he left alone in life and thinking. Beside him stood his townsman,^[1] whose sylvan intelligence, fast rooted in sense and Nature, was yet armed with a sagacity, a subtlety and strength, that penetrated 56while divining the essences of the creatures and things he studied, and of which he seemed both Atlas and Head.

Forcible protestants against the materialism of their own, as of preceding times, these masterly Idealists substantiated beyond all question their right to the empires they swayed,—the rich estates of an original genius.

Emerson’s Summer House.

The Summer School of Philosophy, Concord, Mass.

65IX.

Mr. Alcott’s Study.

IV.

Bridge at Concord.

⁂ Note.—In order to insure the correct delivery of the actual works, or particular Editions specified in this List, the name of the Publishers should be distinctly given. These books can be had from any local bookseller; but should any difficulty be experienced in procuring them, Messrs. Cupples & Hurd will be happy to forward them direct, postage paid, on receipt of cheque, stamps, or Postal order for the amount, with a copy of their complete catalogue.

The first important work of an author familiar to American readers by his remarkable sketches to Scribner’s and other magazines.

A novel of singular power and beauty, great originality and rugged force. Born and bred on Cape Cod, the author, at the winter firesides of country people, very conservative of ancient English customs now gone, heard curious talk of kings, Puritan ministers, the war and precedent struggle of our Revolution, and touched a race of men and women now passed away. He also heard, chiefly from ancient women, the traditions of ghosts, witches and Indians, as they are preserved, and to a degree believed, by honest Christian folk, in the very teeth of modern progress. These things are embodied in this book.

A SUMMER CRUISE ON THE COAST OF NEW ENGLAND. By Robert Carter. With an Introduction by Rossiter Johnson. 12mo. Cloth, with Map. $1.50.

A new edition of one of the most fascinating of salt-water yarns, full of genial humor, vivid word-painting, accurate information, and practical “wrinkles.” A classic by reason of the esteem in which it is held by yachtsmen, and as a literary production equal to anything of the kind in the Anglo-Saxon tongue.

DAYLIGHT LAND. The experiences, incidents, and adventures, humorous and otherwise, which befell Judge John Doe, Tourist, of San Francisco; Mr. Cephas Pepperell, Capitalist, of Boston; Colonel Goffe, the Man from New Hampshire, and divers others, in their Parlor-Car Excursion over Prairie and Mountain; as recorded and set forth by W. H. H. Murray. Superbly illustrated with 150 cuts in various colors by the best artists.

Contents:—Introduction—The Meeting—A Breakfast—A Very Hopeful Man—The Big Nepigon Trout—The Man in the Velveteen Jacket—The Capitalist—Camp at Rush Lake—Big Game—A Strange Midnight Ride—Banff—Sunday among the Mountains—Nameless Mountains—The Great Glacier—The Hermit of Frazer Cañon—Fish and Fishing in British Columbia—Vancouver City—Parting at Victoria.

8vo. 350 pages. Unique paper covers, $2.50; half leather binding, $3.50.

Mr. Murray has chosen the north-western side of the continent for the scene of this book; a region of country which is little known by the average reader, but which in its scenery, its game, and its vast material and undeveloped resources, supplies the author with a subject which has not been trenched upon even by the magazines, and which he has treated in that lively and spirited manner for which he is especially gifted. The result is a volume full of novel information of the country, humorous and pathetic incidents, vivid descriptions of its magnificent scenery, shrewd forecasts of its future wealth and greatness when developed, illustrated and embellished with such lavishness and artistic elegance as has never before been attempted in any similar work in this country.

ADIRONDACK TALES. By W. H. H. Murray. Illustrated. 12mo. 300 pages. $1.25.

Containing John Norton’s Christmas—Henry Herbert’s Thanksgiving—A Strange Visitor—Lost in the Woods—A Jolly Camp—Was it Suicide?—The Gambler’s Death—The Old Beggar’s Dog—The Ball—Who was he?

Short stories in Mr. Murray’s best vein—humorous; pathetic; full of the spirit of the woods.

HOW DEACON TUBMAN AND PARSON WHITNEY KEPT NEW YEARS, and other Stories. By W. H. H. Murray. 16mo. Illustrated. $1.25.

A HEART REGAINED. By Carmen Sylva (Queen of Roumania). Translated by Mary A. Mitchell. Fcap. 8vo. Cloth. $1.00.

A charming story by this talented authoress, told in her vivid, picturesque manner, and showing how patient waiting attains to ultimate reward.

JOHN BROWN. By Hermann Von Holst, author of “Constitutional History of the United States,” &c., together with an introduction and appendix by Frank P. Stearns, a poem by Mr. Wason, and a letter describing John Brown’s grave. Illustrated. 16mo, gilt top. $1.50.

This book, the author of which is so well known by his “Constitutional History,” and by his biography of John C. Calhoun, cannot fail to be of interest to all students of American history, who appreciate a calm, impartial criticism of a man and an episode which have been universally and powerfully discussed.

MARGARET; and THE SINGER’S STORY. By Effie Douglass Putnam. Daintily bound in white, stamped in gold and color, gilt edges. 16mo. $1.25.

A collection of charming poems, many of which are familiar through the medium of the magazines and newspaper press, with some more ambitious flights, amply fulfilling the promise of the shorter efforts. Tender and pastoral, breathing the simple atmosphere of the fields and woods.

AROUND THE GOLDEN DEEP. A Romance of the Sierras. By A. P. Reeder. 500 pages. 12mo. Cloth. $1.50.

A novel of incident and adventure, depicting with a strong hand the virile life of the mine that gives its name to the story, and contrasting it with the more refined touches of society in the larger cities; well written and interesting.

SIGNOR I. By Salvatore Farina. Translated by the Baroness Langenau. 12mo. Cloth. $1.25.

A dainty story by an Italian author, recalling in the unique handling of its incidents, and in the development of its plot, the delicate charm of “Marjorie Daw.”

MIDNIGHT SUNBEAMS, OR BITS OF TRAVEL THROUGH THE LAND OF THE NORSEMAN. By Edwin Coolidge Kimball. On fine paper, foolscap 8vo, tastefully and strongly bound, with vignette. Cloth. $1.25.

Pronounced by Scandinavians to be accurate in its facts and descriptions, and of great interest to all who intend to travel in or have come from Norway or Sweden.

WOODNOTES IN THE GLOAMING. Poems and Translations by Mary Morgan. Square 16mo. Cloth, full gilt. $1.25.

A collection of poems and sonnets showing great talent, and valuable translations from Gautier, Heine, Uhland, Sully-Prudhomme, Gottschalk, Michael Angelo, and others. Also prose translations from the German, edited and prefaced by Max Müller.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Philosopher and Seer. An Estimate of his Character and Genius. By A. Bronson Alcott.

One hundred copies will be printed on larger and finer paper, 8vo, suitable for the insertion of extra illustrations. Bound in Roxburgh, gilt top. Price to Subscribers, $3.00.

A book about Emerson, written by the one man who stood nearest to him of all men. It is an original and vital contribution to Emersonia; like a portrait of one of the old masters painted by his own brush.

THE LIFE OF RAPHAEL as shown in his principal works. From the German of Herman Grimm, author of “The Life of Michael Angelo,” etc. With frontispiece, after Braun, of the recently discovered portrait, outlined by Raphael in chalk. Cr. 8vo. Cloth. $2.00.

ESSAYS ON LITERATURE. From the German of Herman Grimm, uniform with “The Life of Raphael.” New and enlarged edition carefully corrected. Cr. 8vo. Cloth. $2.00.

ANTIQUE VIEWS OF YE TOWNE OF BOSTON. By James H. Stark, Assisted by Dr. Samuel A. Green, Ex-Mayor of Boston, Librarian of the Massachusetts Historical Society; John Ward Dean, Librarian of the New England Historic Genealogical Society; and Judge Mellen Chamberlain, of the Public Library. An extensive and exhaustive work in 378 pages. Large quarto. Illustrated with nearly 200 full size reproductions of all known rare maps, old prints, etc. 1 vol. 4to. Cloth. $6.00.

BERMUDA GUIDE. A description of everything on or about the Bermuda Islands, concerning which the visitor or resident may desire information, including its history, inhabitants, climate, agriculture, geology, government, military and naval establishments. By James H. Stark. With Maps, Engravings and 16 photo-prints. 1 vol. 12mo, cloth, 157 pp. $2.00.

PAUL REVERE: Historical and Legendary. By Elbridge H. Goss. With reproductions of many of Revere’s engravings, etc.

A DIRECTORY OF THE CHARITABLE AND BENEFICENT ORGANIZATIONS OF BOSTON, ETC. Prepared for the Associated Charities. 1 vol., 196 pp. 16mo. Cloth, $1.00.

SOLOMON MAIMON: An Autobiography. Translated from the German, with Additions and Notes, by Prof. J. Clark Murray. 1 vol. Cr. 8vo. Cloth. 307 pp. $2.00.

A life which forms one of the most extraordinary biographies in the history of literature.

The London Spectator says: “Dr. Clark Murray has had the rare good fortune of first presenting this singularly vivid book in an English translation as pure and lively as if it were an original, and an original by a classic English writer.”

George Eliot, in “Daniel Deronda,” mentions it as “that wonderful bit of autobiography—the life of the Polish Jew, Solomon Maimon”; and Milman, in his “History of the Jews,” refers to it as a curious and rare book.

HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY. By Prof. J. Clark Murray, LL.D., Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy, M’Gill College, Montreal. Cr. 8vo. 2d edition, enlarged and improved. $1.75.

Clearly and simply written, with illustrations so well chosen that the dullest student can scarcely fail to take an interest in the subject.

Prof. Murray’s good fortune in bringing to light the “Maimon Memoirs,” together with the increasing popularity of his “Handbook of Psychology,” has attracted the attention of the intellectual world, giving him a position with the leaders of thought of the present age. His writings are at once original and suggestive.

AALESUND TO TETUAN. By Chas. R. Corning. A Volume of Travel. 12mo, 400 pp. Cloth. $2.00.

Table of Contents.—Portsmouth—Isle of Wight—Channel Islands—Normandy—Nice—Monte Carlo—Genoa—Naples and its Environments—Rome—Verona—Venice—Norway—Sweden—St. Petersburg—Moscow—Warsaw—Berlin—Up the Rhine—Barcelona—Valencia—Seville—Cadiz—Morocco—Gibraltar—Granada—Madrid and the Royal Wedding—Bull Fights—Escurial—Biarritz—Bordeaux—Paris.

TAPPY’S CHICKS: or, Links Between Nature and Human Nature. By Mrs. George Cupples. Illustrated. 16mo. Cloth. $1.25.

The tenderness and humor of this volume are simply exquisite.—E. P. Whipple.

The title is altogether too insignificant for so delightful and valuable a work.—Spectator (London).

It is not merely a work of talent, but has repeated strokes of undeniable genius.—George Macdonald.

THOMAS CARLYLE’S COUNSELS TO A LITERARY ASPIRANT (a Hitherto Unpublished Letter of 1842), and What Came of Them. With a brief estimate of the man. By James Hutchinson Stirling, LL. D. 12mo, boards, 50 cents.

Gives a side of the rugged old Scotchman which will be new to most readers. It shows that he was not always gruff and bearish, and that he could at times think of somebody besides himself. The letter is one which every young man who has a leaning towards literary work will read and ponder over.

SOCIAL LIFE AND LITERATURE FIFTY YEARS AGO. 16mo, cloth, white paper labels, gilt top. $1.00.

By a well-known litterateur. It will take a high place among the literature treating of the period. A quaint and delightful book, exquisitely printed in the Pickering style.

CIVILIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES. By Matthew Arnold. And Other Essays concerning America. 16mo, unique paper boards. 75 cents. Cloth, uncut, $1.25. The cloth binding matches the uniform edition of his collected works.

Comprises the critical essays, which created so much discussion, namely, “General Grant, an Estimate.” “A Word about America,” “A Word more about America,” and “Civilization in the United States.”

⁂ This collection gathers in the great critic’s last contributions to literature.

LEGENDS OF THE RHINE. From the German of Prof. Bernard. Translated by Fr. Arnold. Finely Illustrated. Small 4to. Cloth.

An admirable collection of the popular historical traditions of the Rhine, told with taste and picturesque simplicity.

A SELECTION FROM THE POEMS OF PUSHKIN. Translated, with Critical Notes and a Bibliography. By Ivan Panin, author of “Thoughts.” Foolscap 8vo. Unique binding. $2.00.

The first published translation by the brilliant young Russian, Ivan Panin, whose lectures in Boston on the literature of Russia, during the autumn of last year, attracted crowded houses.

WIT, WISDOM, AND PATHOS, from the prose of Heinrich Heine, with a few pieces from the “Book of Songs.” Selected and translated by J. Snodgrass. Second edition, thoroughly revised. Cr. 8vo, 338 pp. Cloth, $2.00.

“A treasure of almost priceless thought and criticism.”—Contemporary Review.