KALPH WALDO EMERSON, His Life, Writings, and 
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 Sold by Booksellers, or sent, post-paid, by 
 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., BOSTON. 
 
EMERSON 
 
 AT HOME AND ABROAD 
 
 BY 
 
 MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY 
 
 AUTHOR OF "Tim SACRED ANTHOLOGY," "THE WANDERING JEW, 
 "THOMAS CARLYLE," &c. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 
 
 1882. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1882, 
 BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 Electrotypedby Printed by 
 
 ADDISON C. GETCHELL. w> p> BROW / & CQ< 
 
TO 
 
 MltS. RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
 
 AND HER CHILDREN, 
 
 ELLEN, EDITH AND ED WARD, 
 
 WHO MADE KINDLY AND BEAUTIFUL 
 MY SECOND BIRTHPLACE. 
 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 A VIGIL 1 
 
 I. MAYFLOWERINGS 19 
 
 II. FORERUNNERS 28 
 
 in. THREE FATES 41 
 
 IV. A BOSTON BOY 47 
 
 V. STUDENT AND TEACHER 51 
 
 VI. APPROBATION 58 
 
 VII. DISAPPROBATION 67 
 
 VIII. A SEA-CHANGE 74 
 
 IX. A LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 81 
 
 X. THE WAIL OF THE CENTURY 90 
 
 XI. CULTURE 96 
 
 XII. EAGLE AND DOVE 127 
 
 XIII. DAILY BREAD 132 
 
 XIV. THE HOME 139 
 
 XV. NATURE 146 
 
 XVI. EVOLUTION 154 
 
 XVII. SURSUM CORDA 162 
 
 XVIII. THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD . . 167 
 
 XIX. SANGREAL 173 
 
 XX. BUILDING TABERNACLES 184 
 
 XXI. A Six YEARS DAY-DREAM 194 
 
 XXII. LESSONS FOR THE DAY 209 
 
 XXIII. CONCORDIA 229 
 
 XXIV. NATHANIEL AND SOPHIA HAWTHORNE . . 256 
 XXV. THOREAU 279 
 
 XXVI. " THE COMING MAN" 290 
 
 XXVII. THE PYTHON 299 
 
 XXVUI. EMERSON IN ENGLAND 316 
 
 XXIX. THE DIADEM OF DAYS 347 
 
 XXX. LETHE 378 
 
A VIGIL. 
 
 IT is the vigil of Emerson. To-morrow (May 25, 
 1882) he will be seventy-nine years of age. I can 
 not bear to write " lie would be." This clay, gazing on 
 a picture of Emerson s funeral, picking out from beneath 
 their grey hairs faces of some with whom I have sat at 
 his feet, there comes home to me the secret of that long 
 ing out of which were born myths of men that never died, 
 of Yami and Arthur, of Enoch and Saint John. The 
 love of a Madonna is in his own interpretation. " The 
 fable of the Wandering Jew is agreeable to men, because 
 they want more time and land in which to execute their 
 thoughts. But a higher poetic use must be made of the 
 legend. Take us as we are with our experience, and 
 transfer us to a new planet, and let us digest for its 
 inhabitants what we could of the wisdom of this. After 
 we have found our depth there, and assimilated what 
 we could of the wisdom of the new experience, transfer 
 us to a new scene. In each transfer we shall have ac 
 quired, by seeing them at a distance, a new mastery of 
 the old thoughts, in which we were too much immersed. 
 In short, all our intellectual action not promises, but 
 bestows a feeling of absolute existence. We are taken 
 out of time and breathe a purer air." 
 
 Such duration did Emerson devise ; but one source 
 
I A VIGIL. 
 
 . of the longing for immortality lie could not know so 
 fully as we who cannot leave his grave. It needed this 
 night to bring out the star of that hope. 
 
 "I send you," a friend writes, "a sprig from the 
 evergreen that bordered Emerson s jjrave as his coffin 
 was lowered into it this afternoon. I dropped a piece 
 in after the school-children had covered the coffin with 
 their tributes, and kept the rest, of which this is a 
 part." 
 
 Is this bit of evergreen, already dust, all the Amen 
 Nature can give to the faith of its greatest heart ? Ye 
 pines and oaks of Sleepy Hollow, awake ! Wrestle, as 
 Herakles for Alcestis, grapple with Death for your poet 
 and lover ! Search with every rootlet for the seed of 
 * that brain, and lift it again to upper air ! 
 
 Alas ! Nature has been faithless. He trusted her 
 April smiles and she chilled him with death ; and now 
 she seems to contradict his living word, drawing those 
 he taught to live in the present to find their paradise in 
 the past he made so beautiful. 
 
 But the ground laurel on his grave and the whisper 
 ing oaks and pines waving above it have sent abroad 
 their message to those who with him have walked that 
 sacred grove, saying, " What he has been to thee that 
 shalt thou tell. Into the grave of memory shalt thou 
 search and lift by what art thou canst every gracious 
 word he gave thee, every thought he inspired, and all 
 the beautiful life thou didst witness, to its resurrection 
 and life, that he may, through love, be as immortal as 
 a mortal can be." 
 
 Once, as I walked with John Stuart Mill alone, he 
 questioned me concerning Emerson and his influence on 
 
A VIGIL. 3 
 
 American youth. All I could tell him of Emerson was 
 what he had been to me. When my story was told he 
 said, " That is a thing to be written on a man s tomb." 
 Emerson has a tomb in many homes. He has one in 
 mine ; and the inscription on it is here recorded for my 
 fellow-pilgrims in life. 
 
 From this vigil beside the grave of Emerson, memory 
 passes over the time of a generation, and across long 
 stretches of sea and land, to a secret nook near my 
 Virginian home, to whose crystal fount and flowers my 
 eighteenth spring carried a wintry heart. Near that 
 wooded slope the Rappahannock spread silvery in the 
 sunshine, placid after its falls foam-white in the dis 
 tance, streaming past its margin of meadows to the 
 peaceful homes and spires of Fredericksburg. Fresh 
 from college, now from every career planned by parent 
 or friend I had recoiled : some indefinable impediment 
 barred each usual path : the last shadow settled around 
 me when the law-book was closed to be opened no more. 
 Utterly miserable, self-accused amid sorrowful faces, 
 with no outlook but to be a fettered master of slaves, I 
 was then wont to shun the world, with gun for apology, 
 and pass the hours in this retreat. So came I on a 
 day, and reclined on the grass, reading in a magazine 
 casually brought. The laugh and chatter of negroes 
 pushing their flat-boats loaded with grain, the song of 
 birds, the sound of church-bells across the river, all 
 smote upon a heart discordant with them, at discord 
 with itself. Nature had no meaning, life no promise 
 and no aim. Listlessly turning to the printed page, 
 one sentence caught my eye and held it ; one sentence 
 
4 A VIGIL. 
 
 quoted from Emerson, which changed my world and 
 me. 
 
 A sentence only ! I do not repeat it : it might not 
 bear to others what it bore to me : its searching subtle 
 revelation defies any analysis I can make of its words. 
 All I know is that it was the touch of flame I needed. 
 That day my gun was laid aside to be resumed no 
 more. But how crude I was ! The nearest mould into 
 which my new life could run was a Methodist itiner 
 ancy. A human aim had arisen ; souls were to be 
 saved ; and in that work must begin my small " Wan- 
 derjahre." My horse was got ready : my bible, filled 
 with maternal inscriptions holy as its texts, was taken 
 for compass in my wanderings ; I only longed to add 
 some book by Emerson. But the Index Expurga- 
 torius of slavery had excluded Northern books so long 
 and so well, that the bookseller in Fredericksburg 
 offered me "Emerson s Arithmetic," and denied the 
 existence of any other Emerson. For a long time I 
 had only my one sentence ; but how large it grew ! 
 
 My cousin and literary friend, John Moncure Daniel, 
 was editor of the "Richmond Examiner," in which 
 paper I was delighted by finding one day a long extract 
 from one of Emerson s Essays. About that time 
 Edgar A. Poe was lecturing at Richmond on Poetry, 
 and my cousin supplemented his selections by printing 
 Emerson s " Humble Bee." Poe had conceived a dis 
 like of Emerson, and the severest criticism upon him 
 self are his paragraphs about the man he most needed. 
 I remember that restless face and demon-driven figure, 
 and have felt that if he could only have appreciated 
 
A VIGIL. 5 
 
 the true teacher of his time, the career of that wan 
 derer might have been less tragical. 
 
 Soon after leaving home for the charge assigned me 
 by the Baltimore Methodist Conference, I obtained the 
 first series of Emerson s Essays, and presently his 
 other works. They were read, between my nineteenth 
 and twentieth birthdays, on horseback, while travelling 
 the roads and woods of a " circuit" in Maryland. I 
 preached seven times in the week, and in some cases 
 had to ride more than twenty miles to an appointment. 
 But with Emerson for companion, my horse, walking 
 the distance with reins on neck, arrived but too soon. 
 
 Presently the shadow cast by this light began to 
 travel beside me. Strange that I should have been so 
 long nearly a year unconscious of the abyss be 
 tween what I was thinking and what I was doing ! My 
 congregations grew ominously still ; elders shook their 
 heads, and were on more anxious seats than the 
 sinners ; so I grew perplexed. One Sunday a pious 
 lady awaited my descent from the pulpit and said, 
 Brother, you seemed to be preaching to us from 
 another world." Then I preached no more. 
 
 Having resigned my profession, I returned for a 
 brief time to Virginia : there I was lonely, but still 
 happy, though not able to see my way very far. At 
 this time I was thrilled by learning that a youth from 
 the North no doubt seeking health in our warmer 
 climate had died in our neighbourhood, and with his 
 last words begged that his love should be conveyed to 
 Emerson, "who," he said, "has done more for me 
 than any other on earth." This message I undertook 
 to forward, and did, but not at once, for I hoped to 
 
6 A VIGIL. 
 
 find out more about this wayfarer who had died so near 
 a comrade without knowing it. 
 
 Of course I had written to Emerson. I was nine 
 teen, alone with my new thoughts, and was seized 
 with a longing to realise my master s existence. So I 
 wrote my brief love-letter, and posted it with a feeling 
 that it was addressed to some impersonal spirit, dwell 
 ing in a spiritual realm harmoniously called Concord, 
 whom it would never reach. But joy! speedily 
 came the response, read in sweet secrecy then, and 
 how often since ! 
 
 " CONCORD, Mass., 13th November, 1851. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, I fear you will not be able, except at 
 some chance auction, to obtain any set of the Dial. 
 In fact, smaller editions were printed of the later and 
 latest numbers, which increases the difficulty. 
 
 " I am interested by your kind interest in my writ 
 ings, but you have not let me sufficiently into your 
 own habit of thought, to enable me to speak to it with 
 much precision. But I believe what interests both you 
 and me most of all things, and whether we know it or 
 not, is the morals of intellect ; in other words, that no 
 man is worth his room in the world who is not com 
 manded by a legitimate object of thought. The earth 
 is full of frivolous people, who are bending their whole 
 force and the force of nations on trifles, and these are 
 baptized with every grand and holy name, remaining, 
 of course, totally inadequate to occupy any mind ; 
 and so sceptics are made. A true soul will disdain to 
 be moved except by what natively commands it, though 
 it should go sad and solitary in search of its master a 
 
A VIGIL. * 
 
 thousand years. The few superior persons in each 
 community are so by their steadiness to reality and 
 their neglect of appearances. This is the euphrasy 
 and rue that purge the intellect and ensure insight. 
 Its full rewards are slow but sure ; and yet I think it 
 has its reward on the instant, inasmuch as simplicity 
 and grandeur are always better than dapperness. But 
 I will not spin out these saws farther, but hasten to 
 thank you for your frank and friendly letter, and to 
 wish you the best deliverance in that contest to which 
 every soul must go alone. Yours, in all good hope, 
 
 " R. W. EMEKSON." 
 
 Here I had my marching orders, and gradually com 
 prehended them. Struggles were necessary to cut my 
 self loose from Southern politics and from orthodoxy, 
 but they became light when I whispered to myself, 
 " Yours, in all good hope." My heart learned this 
 note, and sang it to me in many a night of loneliness 
 and poverty. 
 
 At last the day came when I stood at the door of 
 Emerson. I had entered the Divinity College at Cam 
 bridge, and carried a letter from one of his friends ; 
 but I was nervous, and it was some relief to hear he 
 was not at home. His little daughter and son, how 
 ever, brought me an invitation from Mrs. Emerson to 
 return soon, and meantime they took me on a beautiful 
 walk, a walk amid apple trees, where we sat and 
 told tales in a lovely Lost Bower. 
 
 I was taken to Emerson by his children and gave 
 him my note of introduction. He remembered, and 
 said, "Surely you are my Virginian correspondent/ 
 
A VIGIL. 
 
 With that he extended his hand and welcomed me with 
 a smile his smile, not to be lightly lost by one it has 
 wanned. For me, who never before had seen a great 
 man, who yet in my minority was cut off from every 
 relative and had alienated every early friend, this wel 
 coming word and smile was the break of a new day. 
 I could not answer. Many years after I read that one 
 in paradise was asked how he got there and replied, 
 " One day as Buddha passed by he smiled upon me." 
 
 Twenty-eight years later, on that spot where I first 
 met Emerson I parted from him to see him no more. 
 It was with the old grasp of hand, and with that smile 
 on his face to win which would at any time have meant 
 to me success. It is before me now, and shall not be 
 changed to a frown by any sentence in this little book. 
 
 It is the birthday of Emerson. This twenty-fifth of 
 May he is seventy-nine years of age. Or must I con 
 cede that he lives no more ! Here are letters before 
 me ; reports of words spoken at his house, in church, 
 at the grave. Here is a note written on the day before 
 his funeral. " The main street as well as that on which 
 he lived are to be draped with black, and a great crowd 
 of people is expected to-morrow. The Fitchburg rail 
 road will run special trains, contrary to the law against 
 Sunday travelling. We are doing our best to get what 
 may pass for wild flowers, namely, maple and willow 
 blossoms, to mingle with the pine and hemlock around 
 the pulpit." Another writes on the funeral day : " The 
 assembly of neighbours and friends thronged the church, 
 and the village, for the church could hold but part ; the 
 ten carloads of people that went up from Boston and 
 
A VIGIL. 9 
 
 elsewhere would alone have filled it." In that home 
 where he had lived forty-six years, his family gathered 
 around him, and with them the venerable Dr. Furness, 
 Emerson s friend in his college days, still dearer friend 
 by his lifelong faithfulness to every human cause. In 
 the church founded by his fathers, freed from their 
 creed by his larger thought, the Sage lay in state, 
 white-robed, while around him fell the first tears he 
 had ever caused to friend or neighbour. Above was a 
 canopy of pine boughs. His youth sang of the em 
 bowered home he was to find 
 
 u beneath the pines, 
 Where the evening star so holy shines." 
 
 When the evening star was near to its setting, for a 
 moment his mind wandered, and he asked to be taken 
 home. Then he beheld his grandchildren, blessed them 
 with his smile, and his words " Good boy ! " " Good 
 little girl ! " 
 
 Now again, carried from his own to the village home, 
 he was stretched beneath the pines, and life s evening 
 star rose before those tearful eyes around him to be a 
 morning star. On front of the pulpit was a harp made 
 of golden flowers. On the high wall was an open book, 
 formed of pinks, pansies, and white roses ; on its page, 
 written in flowers, the word u Finis." His aged friend, 
 Bronson Alcott, read touching lines. Valiant, large- 
 hearted Freeman Clarke he who surrendered his 
 pulpit rather than exclude Theodore Parker from it 
 said, "Our souls have been fed by him, and although 
 he has left his dust behind, his life does not die ; he 
 himself was the best argument for immortality." Then 
 
10 A VIGIL. 
 
 the grey hairs of Judge Hoar were bent over the face 
 of his beloved friend, companion of all his life, and his 
 voice, which had so often commanded a nation s atten 
 tion, now was broken with grief. " That lofty brow, 
 the home of all wise thoughts and noble aspirations ; 
 those lips of eloquent music ; that great soul, which 
 trusted in God, and never let go its hope of immor 
 tality ; that great heart, to which everything was wel 
 come that belonged to man; that hospitable nature, 
 loving and tender and generous, having no repulsion 
 or scorn for anything but meanness and baseness, 
 oh ! friend, brother, father, lover, teacher, inspirer, 
 guide, is there no more we can do now than to give 
 thee our hail and farewell ? " 
 
 Nothing more ! Through the village streets, which 
 his presence had made beautiful as pathways in Beulah 
 for the pilgrims with whom he walked, they now bore 
 his flower-laden body into the grove of primeval trees, 
 and upward to the higher ground where lay the bride 
 so early lost "Ellen in the South" and little 
 Waldo, enshrined in his Threnody, and Thoreau, and 
 Hawthorne ; thither they bore him. And there he 
 was laid. 
 
 The next day was May Day. That blithe day which 
 his Muse had celebrated dawned upon his grave. 
 What ear was left to hear the pine wind-harps of 
 Sleepy Hollow as he heard them ? The ear made fine 
 by grief. In many a solitude was heard that day 
 thomcs caught from his " May Day," from its JEolian 
 harp, by the boughs waving over Emerson s grave : 
 
 One musician is sure, 
 His wisdom will not fail; 
 
A VIGIL. 11 
 
 He has not tasted wine impure, 
 Nor bent to passion frail. 
 Age cannot cloud his memory, 
 Nor grief untune his voice, 
 Ranging down the ruled scale 
 From tone of joy to inward wail." 
 
 But here a heart-string breaks. I remember well the 
 days when Emerson began writing "May Day." He 
 told me that a single breath of spring fragrance coming 
 into his open window and blending with strains of his 
 ^Eolian harp had revived in him memories and reani 
 mated thoughts that had perished under turmoil of the 
 times. His voice of that happy day is audible in these 
 lines : 
 
 " Not long ago, at eventide, 
 It seemed so listening, at my side 
 A window rose, and, to say sooth, 
 I looked forth on the fields of youth : 
 I saw fair boys bestriding steeds, 
 I knew their forms in fancy weeds, 
 Long, long concealed by sundering fates, 
 Mates of my youth, yet not my mates, 
 Stronger and bolder far than I. 
 With grace, with genius, well attired, 
 And then as now from far admired. 
 Followed with love 
 They knew not of, 
 With passion cold and shy. 
 O joff. for what recoveries rare ! 
 Renewed, I breathe Elysian air, 
 See youth s glad mates in earliest bloom, 
 Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb ! 
 Or teach thou, Spring ! the grand recoil 
 Of life resurgent from the soil 
 Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil." 
 
 
12 A VIGIL. 
 
 Never were truer emblems than those flowers that 
 formed the harp and the book beside the dead body of 
 Emerson. Once, when he read from Swedenborg that 
 he had observed in heaven that whenever an angel 
 uttered a truth a twig held in his hand blossomed, it 
 occurred to me that I had observed the same thing in 
 Concord. 
 
 The grove where Emerson lies will spread far beyond 
 Concord. In the "Cincinnati Commercial," printed 
 the day after his death, I found this paragraph : "It 
 is a coincidence that on the day Ralph Waldo Emerson 
 died at his home in Concord, a large number of the 
 public-school children of Cincinnati, under the leader 
 ship of their superintendent, and in observance of a 
 forestry holiday, were planting an Author s Grove, one 
 of the most prominent objects of which is a group 
 named in honour of Emerson. The Emerson trees are 
 six in number, an elm, two oaks, and four rock-maples. 
 The boys of Hughes High School formed an inner 
 circle to finish their setting, and the girls of the same 
 school an outer circle. Thus arranged, they sang 
 national songs and gave appropriate recitations. As 
 they performed this worthy and poetic task, the world- 
 renowned philosopher whose name the group will bear 
 lay dying, and as evening came on he passed away. 
 Eden Park is likely to contain no more noted trees 
 than those planted for Emerson on the day he died." 
 
 No noble thing in nature that grows, and is strong 
 and beautiful, but may be fit emblem of Emerson, and 
 find its poetic interpretation in some page of his. 
 
A VIGIL. 13 
 
 "VVheri those Emerson maples in Eden Park are glowing 
 like embers, his thought will burn brighter : 
 
 " The scarlet maple-keys betray 
 What potent blood hath modest May ; 
 What fiery force the earth renews, 
 The wealth of forms, the flush of hues ; 
 Joy shed in rosy waves abroad 
 Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord." 
 
 And under shade of the Emerson oaks, the children 
 who planted them may teach their finest symbolism in 
 the words which he spoke thirty-nine years ago con 
 cerning the conserving and the reforming spirit: 
 4 Nature does not give the crown of its approbation, 
 beauty, to any action, or emblem, or actor, but one 
 which combines both these elements ; not to the rock 
 which resists the wave from age to age, nor to the wave 
 which lashes incessantly the rock ; but the superior 
 beauty is with the oak, which stands with its hundred 
 arms against the storms of a century, and grows every 
 year like a sapling." 
 
 Emerson personally planted the spiritual germs of 
 those trees set in Eden Park by the children of Cin 
 cinnati. Twenty-three years ago he visited us there, 
 and gave a course of lectures from my pulpit. Evening 
 after evening the church was filled with the families 
 which gave that city, the " Queen of the West," the 
 intellectual character it has preserved. There the best 
 chapters in "The Conduct of Life" were given, and 
 many a child there is this day more fortunate than 
 any wealth can ever make him, because of that visit 
 from the sower of new souls. Soon afterwards I 
 started there a monthly magazine, the "Dial." This 
 
14 A VIGIL. 
 
 effort to light our Western torch at the finest flame of our 
 East, announced in reproducing the title of the old 
 transcendental Quarterly, received sympathy from 
 Emerson, who contributed to it his essay on " Domestic 
 Life," " Quatrains," and "The Sacred Dance." All 
 these have since appeared in his works, the last-named 
 in " May Day," as the " Song of Seid Nimetollah of 
 Kuhistan." The Civil War put an end to that little 
 venture of mine, the "Dial," for we all had sterner 
 work to do ; but there are many homes in Cincinnati 
 where it carried a regenerating spirit in that matchless 
 essay on " Domestic Life." 
 
 What Emerson became to these distant homes in 
 which he was read, and to the hearts that cherished his 
 every thought, could never be comprehended by him 
 self. Here is an incident which might have given 
 Carlyle a paragraph on the unconsciousness of genius. 
 I have a letter from Emerson, which came with the 
 manuscript of " Domestic Life," in which he speaks 
 of another essay he had thought of sending, and 
 says : " Then I kept it to put into what will not ad 
 mit anything peaceably, my Religion chapter, which 
 has a very tender stomach, on which nothing will lie. 
 They say the ostrich hatches her egg by standing off, 
 and looking at it, and that is my present secret of 
 authorship. I long ago rolled up and addressed to you 
 an ancient MS. lecture called * Domestic Life, and 
 long ago, you may be sure, familiar to Lyceums, but 
 never printed, except in newspaper reports. But I 
 feared } T OU would feel bound to print it, though I 
 should have justified you if you had not printed a 
 
A VIGIL. 15 
 
 page." Reading these last words, remembering the 
 joy with which I sent forth the "Dial" (October, 
 1860) with that scripture of the sun, and the many 
 grateful responses that carne, I have reflected on the 
 number of Beauties that must be sleeping among 
 Emerson s manuscripts, hedged by the thorns of his 
 self-criticism. 
 
 It was to a home in Cincinnati, which he had helped 
 to make happy, that Emerson wrote the following 
 letter : 
 
 " CONCORD, Gth October, 1861. 
 
 " MY DEAR SlR AND MY DEAR LADY, 1 have yOUI 
 
 note, and give you joy of the happy event you announce 
 to me in the birth of your son. Who is rich or happy 
 but the parent of a son? Life is all preface until we 
 have children ; then it is deep and solid. You would 
 think me a child again if I should tell you how much 
 joy I have owed, and daily owe, to my children, and 
 you have already known the early chapters of this 
 experience in your own house. My best thanks are 
 due to you both for the great good-will you shew me 
 in thinking of my name for the boy. If there is room 
 for choice still, I hesitate a good deal at allowing a 
 rusty old name, eaten with Heaven knows how much 
 time and fate, to be flung hazardously on this new 
 adventurer in his snow-white robes. I have never 
 encountered such a risk out of my own house, and, for 
 the boy s sake, if there be time, must dissuade. But 
 I shall watch the career of this young American with 
 special interest, born as he is under stars and omens 
 so extraordinary, and opening the gates of a new and 
 
16 A VIGIL. 
 
 fairer age. With all hopes and all thanks, and with 
 affectionate sympathies from my wife. 
 
 "Yours ever, R. W. EMERSON." 
 
 " My wife declares that name or no name her spoon 
 shall go." 
 
 Alas ! this note and the silver cup that came with it, 
 are now memorials of a little grave in England. Could 
 we only have found something not only beloved and 
 beautiful, like the child, but imperishable, to name after 
 Emerson ! 
 
 I will follow the children of the Queen of the West, 
 who gave his name to their group of trees in Eden 
 Park. In my garden grows a sapling of the Glaston- 
 bury Thorn. It was sent me by a friend years ago, 
 that its famous habit of flowering at Christmas might 
 be proved beyond all doubts. Sure enough, at the close 
 of the last year this thorn clothed itself with green 
 leaves, and the blossoms peeped through their sheath. 
 Legend associated it with Joseph of Arimathea, who 
 wandered from the East eighteen centuries ago, whose 
 staff blossomed amid the snow on the vigil of Christ, 
 and so marked the site for Glastonbury Abbey. But 
 this descendant of it shall connect the deep sense of 
 its mythology, the budding rod of Aaron, the staff of 
 silent Christopher, which converted men by its fruits, 
 the thorn that canopied Patrick with blossoms, with 
 his name. Some day the wayfarers, seeing it flourish 
 ing in winter amid other trees denuded and black, 
 shall say, "Its legend is from the West. It was 
 
A VIGIL. 17 
 
 planted there and named by one who, amid his winter 
 of loneliness and doubt, was surprised by a spring 
 whose leaf never withered, whose blossoms mingled 
 with every snow ; a great teacher brought him this 
 fortune and happiness, and wherever he wandered in 
 the world he sought to plant some germ of his teacher s 
 wisdom, that hearts might suffer no blight in life s 
 winter, that faith might flourish amid decay of creeds, 
 and love know the secret of perpetual youth. This 
 is the Emerson tree ! " 
 
EMERSON" AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 T. 
 
 MAYFLOWEKINGS. 
 
 THERE is an incident in the life of the Plymouth Pil 
 grims too trifling to be included in the regular an 
 nals of those times. One morning Captain Miles Stan- 
 dish, and John Alden, and Priscilla, whose relations to 
 each other are well known to readers of Longfellow, were 
 walking through a field together. A light snow lay on 
 the ground, but Priscilla s eye perceived a little flower 
 peeping through it. "Stay, Captain Standish," she 
 said, but was too late to prevent his heavy boot from 
 treading on it. John Alden made haste to pick the 
 flower, which the maiden tenderly nursed. Standish 
 cast a vexed glance at Alden and said, "Puritan 
 soldiers have something else to look after besides 
 flowers." "Nay," rejoined Priscilla, "but we need 
 not trample down any beautiful gift of God s earth. 
 Look at it, Captain ; it is fragrant as well as pretty ; 
 and is it not a sturdy little soldier too, battling with 
 the snow? " The Captain strode on and was presently 
 leading another attack on the Indians ; but Priscilla 
 and John wandered about the fields and gathered many 
 of these blossoms, and found in them a still small voice 
 
20 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 of courage amid the bleakness of that wintry coast. 
 Such courage had led the pilgrims across the sea in the 
 season of snowstorms ; so Priscilla named the blossom 
 "Mayflower," after the ship on which they had voy 
 aged, and wore a spray of them at her breast when she 
 was married to John Alden. 
 
 Of this marriage came at last the sweet singer Long 
 fellow, who gathered in his song so many blooms 
 which rough captains of the world had trampled on. 
 But before the poet, who in Washington s headquarters 
 wrote the lyrics of peace and hymns of humanity, could 
 come, the "sweet and beautiful soul," as Emerson 
 described him, standing at his grave, in whose poetry 
 the Puritan and the Indian first found harmony, 
 many gentle maidens and lovers, from generation to 
 generation, must gather spiritual Mayflowers amid Cal- 
 vinistic snows. Cromwell once engaged passage for 
 New England, but never sailed ; yet, in a sense, his 
 tread was there for many a day, heavy on the May 
 flowers ; while Milton was there, too, gathering them 
 up tenderly as John Alden. 
 
 The modern pilgrim to Plymouth finds a beautiful 
 town beside the sea where floated that first ship, so 
 freighted with human destinies. The undulating hills 
 and the cliffs, girt about with their autumnal coat of 
 many colours, make fit scenery for the historic vision. 
 "But Plymouth Rock, I must first see that." A 
 friend guides me toward the water to a kind of wharf, 
 and then begins scraping the ground. Thinking he 
 must have dropped something, I ask, " What are you 
 looking for?" "I am trying to show you Plymouth 
 Rock," he remarks. Angels and ministers of grace 
 
M A YFLO WEEING S. 21 
 
 defend us ! clearing away the mud to show Plymouth 
 Rock ! Presently I do see something like a flagstone ; 
 but looking up, the breaking waves dashing high, seen 
 by the mind s eye from childhood, have sunk to a placid 
 pond, and the firm and rock-bound shore on which 
 they dashed has shrunk to a molehill. Dr. Channing 
 told Mrs. Hemans of the thousand voices he had heard 
 singing on Forefathers Day her famous hymn about 
 the breaking waves and rock-bound shore, and she 
 wept ; but she might have smiled through her tears 
 could she have seen that gentle beach, no rock visible, 
 where the pilgrims really landed. However, a stone 
 weighing perhaps a ton was removed from the spot to 
 the museum, and a graceful monument now stands in 
 its place. 
 
 The granite heart of the colony was the true Ply 
 mouth Rock. " These poor men," says Carlyle, 
 "driven out of their own country, and not able to 
 live in Holland, determined on settling in the New 
 World. Black, untamed forests are there, and wild 
 savage creatures, but not so cruel as a Star-Chamber 
 hangman. They clubbed their means together, hired 
 a ship the little ship Mayflower and made ready 
 to sail. Hah ! these men, I think, had a work. The 
 weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes a strong 
 thing if it be a true thing. Puritanism was only des 
 picable, laughable then ; but nobody can manage to 
 laugh at it now. It is one of the strongest things 
 under the sun at present." 
 
 Little by little Plymouth Rock crumbled away ; the 
 last fragment survived visibly only at the museum. 
 And meanwhile the sweet Mayflowers bloomed on. 
 
22 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 The hard dogmas grew to be stems of fragrant virtues. 
 When I stood in the first church of Plymouth, founded 
 by the Pilgrims on that old Puritan rock, these little 
 flowers were sacramental symbols for worshippers who 
 reverenced the teachings of Chanuing, Parker, and 
 Emerson. Contemporary Priscillas and Aldens had 
 taken me to gather them. Lilies of the valley cannot 
 surpass this little trailing arbutus (Epigea repens), 
 with its hyacinthine shape and delicate pink-faint flush. 
 I have seen Theodore Parker, in the course of a dis 
 course, lift up a bunch of these, which some gatherer 
 had affectionately laid on his pulpit-desk, and he gave 
 them fresh beauty and fragrance in using them as 
 symbols of certain sweet traits of New England char 
 acter that grew amid the frost of Calvinism, uncon 
 scious that he himself was an illustration of his thought. 
 Emerson, too, in early life, addressing the people of 
 Concord concerning their forefathers, said, " The little 
 flower which at this season stirs our wood and road 
 sides with its profuse blossoms might attract even eyes 
 as stern as theirs with its humble beauty." 
 
 But a second and more important pilgrimage lay be 
 tween Plymouth Rock and Theodore Parker at Lexing 
 ton, nursing the delicate flowers of his heart amid toil 
 and orthodoxy, and ere Emerson could be reached 
 farther on, the flower of New England history. 
 
 This year, 1882, on the 12th July, Benjamin Bulke- 
 ley fresh from Divinity College, Harvard University, 
 was settled as minister of Concord church. Concord 
 and its church were both founded by his ancestor and 
 Emerson s ancestor, the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, an Ox 
 onian of noble family, Rector of Odell, Bedfordshire, 
 
MAYFLOWEIUNGS. 23 
 
 who had been silenced by Archbishop Laud. In 1635 
 Peter Bulkeley, and some families with him, emigrated 
 and settled themselves at Musketaquid, which they 
 named Concord. John Eliot, the English " apostle to 
 the Indians," had made the red faces friendly. Bulke 
 ley had brought with him the large sum of six thousand 
 pounds, which he devoted to the welfare of those who 
 accompanied him. He gave a good library to Harvard 
 College. In that same year, 1635, also emigrated 
 Thomas Emerson, of an honourable family in Durham, 
 whose son married one of the Bulkeley family at Con 
 cord. 
 
 The marching of Peter Bulkeley and his friends to 
 the place where their descendants still reside was 
 through and into a wilderness. It is described by one 
 of their number as " a toyle of some dayes." " This 
 poore people, populate this howling desert, marching 
 manfully on, the Lord assisting, through the greatest 
 difficulties, and greater labours than any with such 
 weak means have done." There was " hard work for 
 many an honest gentleman." In 1835 Emerson was 
 invited to deliver an address on the occasion of the 
 200th anniversary of the settlement of Concord, and 
 in the course of it he gave a touching picture of the 
 little band of founders : 
 
 " They proceeded to build, under the shelter of the 
 hill that extends for a mile along the north side of 
 the Boston road, their first dwellings. The labours of 
 a new plantation were repaid by its excitements. I seem 
 to see them with their pious pastor addressing them 
 selves to the work of clearing the land. Natives of 
 another hemisphere, they beheld with curiosity all the 
 
24 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 pleasing features of the American forest. The land 
 scape before them was fair, if it was strange and rude. 
 The little flower, which at this season stirs our woods 
 and roadsides with its profuse blossoms, might attract 
 even eyes as stern as theirs with its humble beauty. 
 The useful pine lifted its cone into the frosty air. The 
 maple, which is already making the forest gay with its 
 autumn hues, reddened over those houseless men. 
 The majestic summits of Wachusett and Monadnoc, 
 towering in the horizon, invited the steps of adventure 
 westward. 
 
 As the season grew later they felt its inconve 
 niences. Many were forced to go barefoot and bareleg, 
 and some in time of frost and snow, yet were they 
 more healthy than now they are. The land was low 
 but healthy ; and if, in common with all the settle 
 ments, they found the air of America very cold, they 
 might say with Higginson, after his description of the 
 other elements, that 4 New England may boast of the 
 element of fire more than all the rest ; for all P^urope 
 is not able to afford to make so great fires as New Eng 
 land. A poor servant, that is to possess but fifty acres, 
 may afford to give more wood for fire, as good as the 
 world yields, than many noblemen in England. Many 
 were their wants, but more their privileges. The light 
 struggled in through windows of oiled paper, but they 
 read the word of God by it. They were fain to make 
 use of their knees for a table, but their limbs were 
 their own. Hard labour and spare diet they had, and 
 off wooden trenchers, but they had peace and freedom, 
 and the wailing of the tempest in the woods sounded 
 kindlier in their ear than tlu- .smooth voice of the pre- 
 
MAYFLOWEUINGS. 25 
 
 lates at home in England. There is no people, said 
 their pastor to his little flock of exiles, i but will strive 
 to excel in something. What can we excel in, if not in 
 holiness ? 
 
 When the war of the Revolution broke out, Concord 
 bore an important part. It contained at that time 
 about 1300 inhabitants, and no other place of its size 
 in America furnished so much aid to Washington. In 
 its records is this entry : " Since General Washington 
 at Cambridge is not able to give but $2.48 the cord for 
 wood for the army, it is voted that this town encourage 
 the inhabitants to supply the army by paying $2 per 
 cord over and above the General s price to such as 
 shall carry wood thither." They furnished hay to the 
 army in the same generous way, and when Boston was 
 suffering, they relieved its people with grain and money. 
 A provincial Congress was held at Concord in 1774. 
 During the year 1775-76, when Washington had his 
 headquarters at Cambridge, he used the Harvard build 
 ings for barracks, and the university was for the time 
 transferred to Concord. 
 
 In his address Emerson reviewed with just pride the 
 history of his town. It was fortunate and favoured, 
 he said, in having received so large an infusion of both 
 of the most important periods of the country the 
 Planting and the Revolutionary. Its true story would 
 exhibit a community almost exclusively agricultural, 
 distinguished by simplicity, contentment, love of jus 
 tice, and religious character. And yet " more sacred 
 influences have mingled here with the stream of human 
 life," he says ; the merit of its famous men " sheds a 
 perfume less sweet than do the sacrifices of private 
 
26 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 virtue." There are many old stories told in Concord 
 which justify the high character claimed for it by Em 
 erson. For instance, when, after their repulse at 
 Concord Bridge, some of the retreating British soldiers 
 fell wounded at various points along the road leading 
 toward Boston, they were taken into the homes of those 
 whom they had invaded and tenderly nursed. Some 
 of them recovered and remained through life in the 
 town, captives of this practical love of enemies. In 
 Hawthorne s posthumous tale, the conversation be 
 tween Septimius and Rose as they see the British sol 
 diers approaching, their horror at the thought of en 
 mity with such brave fellows, is conceived in the true 
 spirit of the Concordians of that day. 
 
 44 Here," said Emerson, " are no ridiculous laws, no 
 eavesdropping legislators, no hanging of witches, no 
 ghosts, no whipping of Quakers, no unnatural crimes. 
 The tone of the records rises with the dignity of the 
 event. These soiled and musty books are luminous 
 and electric within. The old town-clerks did not spell 
 very correctly, but they contrive to make pretty intel 
 ligible the will of a free and just community. Frugal 
 our fathers were, very frugal, though for the most part 
 they deal generously by their minister, and provide 
 well for the schools and the poor. If at any time, in 
 common with most of our towns, they have carried this 
 economy to the verge of a vice, it is to be remembered 
 that a town is, in many respects, a financial corpora 
 tion. They economise that they may sacrifice. They 
 stint and higgle in the price of a pew that they may 
 send two hundred soldiers to General Washington 
 to keep Great Britain at bay. For splendour there must 
 
MAYFLOWEELNGS. 27 
 
 somewhere be rigid economy. That the head of the 
 house may go brave, the members must go plainly 
 clad, and the town must save that the State may 
 spend." 
 
 The earnestness with which Emerson dwells upon 
 the details of the story reveals that therein lay the root 
 of his own character. And when, in the end, he 
 expressed the hope that " the little society of men who 
 now for a few years fish in this river, plough the fields 
 it washes, mow the grass, and reap the corn," might 
 be worthy of such ancestors and antecedents, we can 
 recognise, what his hearers of 1835 then could not, that 
 the young Harvard scholar was to repeat in a higher 
 plane the, heroism of his ancestor the Pastor 
 Bulkeley to lead a band from old theologic settle 
 ments, and make the wilderness bloom with nobler 
 thoughts and aims. 
 
28 EMEKSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 II. 
 
 FORERUNNERS. 
 
 OF the founder of Concord, Peter Bulkeley, a very 
 interesting account is given by Mr. W. Hale White 
 in the " Athenaeum " of May 13, 1882 : "He wrote 
 Latin verse with ease, and yet he was as fervent as 
 Bunyan in all matters touching the soul and the soul s 
 welfare. He loved his learning, and never forsook it, 
 but it was subdued into the service of a Divine Master. 
 His neighbours observed of him that whenever they 
 came into his company, no matter what the business 
 might be, he would let fall some holy, serious, divine, 
 and useful sentences on them ere they parted ; and it 
 is also recorded of him that, by a sort of winning 
 and yet prudent familiarity, he drew persons of all 
 ages to come and sit with him. There was a quarrel 
 in the church while he was minister over it, but he 
 healed it at last, and afterwards he told his friends 
 that he thereby came l n to know more of God ; 2. 
 to know more of himself; 3. to know more of men/ 
 His contemporaries seem to have been impressed with 
 his kindness to his servants, for it remains on record, 
 although the details of his life are so few. When they 
 had lived with him a number of years, it was his prac 
 tice to dismiss them, and bestow farms upon them. 
 
FORERUNNERS. 29 
 
 Thus he cast his bread both upon the waters and into 
 the earth, not expecting the return of this his charity 
 to a religious plantation until after many days. With 
 all his culture and gentleness, it is distinctly said of 
 him by Neal, in a chance notice of him in the 4 History 
 of New England, that he was a c thundering preacher. 
 In other words, although he had in him something of 
 the Essays, there was also in him something of the 
 temper which more than two centuries and a half after 
 wards re-appeared in the Voluntaries of one who felt 
 
 Only the fiery thread 
 Leading over heroic ground 
 Walled with mortal terror round. 
 
 " The Gospel Covenant, the only book Dr. Bulkeley 
 wrote, is a series of Puritan sermons on faith, justifica 
 tion, and the law. It is now almost unreadable, but I 
 remember a passage in it which is a prophecy of what 
 was to come. It is as follows : 
 
 " And hence, while the mind is possessed with 
 these things, because so great a businesse as making a 
 covenant of peace with the High God, and about so 
 great an affair as the life and salvation of our soule 
 cannot be transacted in a tumult, therefore, in the 
 fourth place, faith takes the soule aside and carries it 
 into some solitary place, that there it may be alone with 
 God, with whom it hath to doe. This business and 
 multitude of other occasions cannot be done together, 
 and therefore the soule must be alone, that it may the 
 more fully commune with itself, and utter itself fully 
 before the Lord. Thus the poor Church in the time of 
 her affliction, when the Lord seemed to hide himself from 
 
30 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 her, she sate alone, as she speakes Lament. 3, 28, 29, 
 and Jer. 15, 17, / sate atone because of thy plague : 
 The ivay of the Lord is prepared in the dexart, Esay 40. 
 3. When the Lord will come to the soule and draw it 
 into communion with himselfe, he will have his way 
 hereto prepared in the desart ; not in the throng of a 
 city, but in a solitary desart place, he will allure us 
 and draw us into the wildernesse from the company of 
 men, when he will speak to our heart, and when He 
 prepares our heart to speak unto Him." 
 
 Two centuries after the old pilgrim sailed to the 
 American wilderness with these thoughts and hopes, 
 his great descendant returned from a pilgrimage to 
 teachers in the Old World with such melodies as these 
 in his heart : 
 
 " Whoso walketh in solitude, 
 And inhabitcth the wood, 
 Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird, 
 Before the money-loving herd, 
 Into that forester shall pass 
 From these companions power and grace; 
 Clean shall he be, without, within, 
 From the old adhering sin." 
 
 Professor Tyler (Hist. American Literature, i. 218) 
 says of " The Gospel Covenant : " " The whole work 
 carries momentum with it. It gives the impression 
 of an athletic, patient, and orderly intellect. Every 
 advance along the page is made with the tread of 
 logical victory. No unsubdued enemies are left in 
 the rear. It is a monumental book. It stands for the 
 intellectual robustness of New England in the first age. 
 It is an honour to that community of pioneers, drudging 
 
FORERUNNERS. 31 
 
 in the woods of Concord, that these profound and 
 elaborate discourses could have been produced, and 
 endured among them." 
 
 Dr. Bulkeley, it is to be feared, was over-logical 
 when the "prophetess" Anne Hutchinson came to 
 New England with her transcendentalism about the 
 real presence of the Holy Spirit in true believers. He 
 was Moderator of the Boston Synod, which immoder 
 ately drove her away to Rhode Island, where the Nara- 
 gansett Indians permitted her to set up her community, 
 in which no one was accounted a delinquent for doc 
 trine. 
 
 Thomas Emerson emigrated from England to 
 America in 1G35. It may have been from York, 
 where a Ralph Emerson was knighted by Henry VIII. 
 (1535), or from Durham, where the mathematician of 
 that name lived, whose heraldic arms were the same 
 as those of the knight. The lions from this coat of 
 arms are still traceable upon the tomb of Nathaniel 
 (son of Thomas) Emerson at Ipswich, Massachusetts. 
 Thomas became a farmer and baker at Ipswich. He 
 was thrifty and made money. His will, dated May 31, 
 1653, distributes a large property among his family. 
 He gives to his "loving wife" Elizabeth the annual 
 rent of his farm and six head of cattle ; and if she 
 shall marry again, she is to have six pounds annually 
 (a considerable sum in that time and place), also " the 
 little feather-bed, and one bolster, and two pairs of 
 sheets, and two cows," and half the fruit of the 
 orchard. The loving wife is also appointed sole 
 executrix, while Lieutenant-Governor Symonds and 
 General Dennison are to be overseers of the estate. 
 
32 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 His son John, who married the Lieutenant-Governor s 
 daughter, went to Harvard College after his marriage, 
 and there graduated in 1656, having earned the money 
 to pay for his own education. He became minister at 
 Gloucester, Massachusetts, and from him descended 
 the anti-slavery orator, Wendell Phillips ; the most 
 eloquent American clergyman, Phillips Brooks ; and 
 the Hon. Alphonso Taft, sometime Attorney-General 
 of the United States, and now American Minister at 
 Vienna. 
 
 For James, a son in England, the will of Thomas 
 Emerson provides that he shall have forty pounds if he 
 shall come to America, or send a certificate of his being 
 alive within two years after his mother s death. The 
 house of Thomas is still standing at Ipswich, near 
 tk Labor-in-vain" Creek. His son Joseph, born in 
 England the year that the "Mayflower" sailed, 
 married Miss Woodmancy, and settled at Wells, Maine, 
 as a teacher. He was a distinguished citizen of that 
 place, and when the Massachusetts Commissioners went 
 to settle the rule of their colony over Maine, they were 
 received in his house. About fourteen years after 
 settling in Wells, Joseph became the preacher 
 there ; but under his ministry occurred a schism, the 
 cause of which is unexplained; and in 1667 we find 
 him preaching at Milton, Massachusetts. Meantime, 
 in 1665, he had married Elizabeth Bulkeley of Concord, 
 granddaughter of the founder of that town. In 1669 
 he became the minister of Mendon, in the same State. 
 This Joseph, the great-great-grandfather of Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson, ?was the first minister at Mendon, 
 and there is something notable in his contract with the 
 
FORERUNNERS. 33 
 
 people there. The township had been partitioned by 
 the settlers in estates of forty acres each. The minis 
 ter is to become an equal citizen by having also his 
 forty acres, on which they are to build him a house. 
 And it is contracted that if for any reason he should 
 be dismissed from or compelled to separate from the 
 church, this property was to continue his possession, 
 or, if he should die, belong to his family. There may 
 have been some reminiscence of experiences in Maine 
 which led to this carefulness, but there is also in it that 
 substantial relation with affairs which Lowell recog 
 nized in Joseph s great descendant 
 
 " A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range 
 Has Olympus for one pole, for t other the Exchange." 
 
 The Emersons were always as generous as they were 
 thrifty ; and, securing their independence as to means, 
 they returned more to their fellow-citizens than they 
 got. It was the rule in the family to distribute their 
 possessions equally between the members of their fam 
 ilies, and so no large Emerson fortune was accu 
 mulated. When Mendon was destroyed in King Phil 
 ip s war, the Rev. Joseph Emerson moved to Concord, 
 where he died in 1680. His son Edward became a 
 merchant at Charlestown, Boston. He was born in 
 1C 70, and in 1697 married Rebecca Waldo of Chelms- 
 ford, Massachusetts. This lady, a descendant of a 
 family of the Waldenses who had become London mer 
 chants, was some years older than her husband, and 
 outlived him, reaching a great age. His son Joseph, 
 minister at Maiden, Massachusetts, married Mary 
 Moody, daughter of a minister. They had ten chil- 
 
34 EMEHSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 dren, of whom two became ministers. Joseph, the 
 second child, became minister of Pepperell ; and the 
 ninth of the family, William, was pastor of Concord 
 when the Revolution began. 
 
 It is pleasant enough to believe that the vigorous 
 English stock which had given intellectual and moral 
 leaders to seven New England towns, and to several 
 their founders, was meanwhile represented in the 
 mother country by that William Emerson whose marble 
 effigy remains in St. Saviour s Church, Southwark, 
 and Thomas, his grandson, whose charitable bequest 
 (1G20) still brings comfort to twelve aged pensioners 
 in London. The epitaph on the tomb is, "Here 
 under lyeth the body of William Emerson, who lived 
 and died an honest man. He departed out of this 
 life the 27th of June anno 1575, in the year of his 
 age 92. Ut sym sic eris." The pensioners sit to 
 gether every Sunday in St. Saviour s, in seats marked 
 "Emerson s Pensioners," and after the morning service 
 receive from one of the wardens each their weekly 
 three-and-ninepence. With this same old church was 
 connected Mr. Harvard, who was a Governor of its 
 Grammar School, and father of the founder of Har 
 vard University. Lately I walked from St. Saviour s 
 to the old Emerson estate in the Borough, passing 
 along Park Road to Summer Street, and there found 
 Emerson Place and Emerson Terrace, the quietest spot 
 of that crowded region. All Boston names ! Yet the 
 helpful chaplain of St. Saviour s cannot find the family 
 arms of this benefactor, and one can only conjecture 
 that the recurrence of the names "William" and 
 " Thomas" and the name of the estate (" God s Prov- 
 
FORERUNNERS. 35 
 
 idence "), indicate a common origin with the American 
 family. 
 
 There is less reason to doubt that the Emersons who 
 gave America the first of that name also gave England 
 the famous Durham mathematician, William Emerson 
 (1701-82), whose arms were the same. When I men 
 tioned this to Emerson he said, u Then he must have 
 appropriated all my mathematics, for I can t multiply 
 7 by 12 with security." To which I returned a sen 
 tence spoken by him many years before The vine 
 which intoxicates the world is the most mathematical 
 of plants." Some characteristics of the Durham mathe 
 matician were certainly Emersonian ; notably his fond 
 ness for the solitude of his paternal estate, his severe in 
 dependence, and his exceeding care about the proof of 
 his books. Having walked all the way from Durham to 
 London, when he had a work in press, he revised every 
 sheet as it appeared, and could not endure an error. 
 He was suspected of familiarity w r ith the black art. 
 Carlyle told me the story of a poor woman whose hus 
 band had not returned from sea at the usual time, 
 and who went to consult William Emerson. He hap 
 pened to meet her at the door, and when with a 
 curtesy she asked where her man might be, "In hell," 
 was the old man s answer, emphasised by his door s 
 sharp slam. 
 
 Ralph Waldo was more courteous when he was sup 
 posed to be dealing in uncanny knowledge. 
 
 William Emerson, the grandfather of Ralph Waldo, 
 was the first with whom liberal religious ideas may be 
 clearly connected. It was at the end of a controversy 
 in Concord over the theology of Jonathan Edwards 
 
36 EMERSOlf AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 that the Arminians found themselves strong enough to 
 elect an opponent of extreme Calvinism, and as the 
 result William Emerson was chosen minister of the 
 church. There are, however, indications that the 
 Emersons had historically represented the vanguard 
 of the pilgrimage from Puritanism. William Emerson 
 was born in 1743, graduated at Harvard in 1761, set 
 tled over the Concord congregation in 17G4, and, hav 
 ing married in 17GG, built the famous Old Manse for 
 his residence, in 1767. He was chaplain of the Con 
 tinental Congress in the Revolution, and in that war 
 he did great service, arousing the people by his elo 
 quence and fine enthusiasm. He died of a fever caught 
 while accompanying the army in 1776. 
 
 The next minister at Concord was Dr. Ezra Ripley. 
 He married the widow and, so to say, the church - 
 of William Emerson, and occupied the Old Manse. 
 He lived long enough to be a bridge between the 
 Arminian and the Unitarian doctrine, with which last 
 the church became identified during his ministry. He 
 was especially remarkable for his personal and 
 patriarchal relations with every man, woman, and 
 child in Concord, and not one of them could be 
 afflicted without being prayed for by name. An anec 
 dote related by Dr. George Ellis shows that the old 
 man must have been a sort of "survival." "Dr. 
 Charming told me expressly always, in the public 
 prayer of the church, to recognise the afflicted. Af 
 flicted and sorrowing persons are always around us. 
 Make reference to them as tenderly as you wish, but 
 never specify any case/ was his advice. Very shortly 
 after I was settled it must have been forty years 
 
FORERUNNERS. 37 
 
 ago I went up to exchange with Barzillai Frost, who 
 was the colleague of the good and venerable Dr. 
 Ripley, who, of course, followed the old ways. He 
 was very marked for the quality of specific personal 
 references in his prayers. Some of you may remember 
 that Mr. Emerson, in paying his tribute to Dr. Ripley 
 after his death, spoke of that quality of individualising 
 in prayer. A man had died in his parish who did not 
 bear a very good name, but was a very strong man ; 
 and on two occasions he had been of service at fires, 
 and saved life or furniture. At the funeral Dr. Ripley 
 prayed, We thank thee, O Lord, that thy departed 
 servant was good at fires. I had an experience with 
 this Dr. Ripley. I went, as I say, to exchange with 
 Mr. Frost. It was a great breach of courtesy on my 
 part that I did not go to the home of the aged pastor 
 to attend him to meeting ; but I accompanied Mrs. 
 Frost, and got into the pulpit first. After a while I 
 heard the steps of the venerable man slipping along ; 
 and, as he got toward the stairs of the pulpit, he asked 
 aloud, Has the minister gone up yet? I stood up 
 and opened the door to welcome him in. He handed 
 me two notes. They had no names attached, but 
 referred to families in the congregation. I, of course, 
 knew nothing about them. I followed my rule in the 
 prayer of general reference. Dr. Ripley was hard of 
 hearing, and leaned up against me, with his hand 
 behind his ear, while I prayed, making me very uncom 
 fortable. The Amen was scarcely out of my mouth 
 before he said aloud, You said nothing about our 
 afflicted friends. I had to raise my voice to make him 
 hear, as I replied, I make it a rule not to make any 
 
38 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 special references in prayer. * It s a very poor rule, 
 and the sooner you change it the better ! he shouted 
 in answer. I told Mr. Frost that, so long as Dr. 
 Ripley lived, I must decline going into that pulpit 
 again." 
 
 4i He seemed," said Emerson of Dr. Ripley, who 
 died in 1841, "in his constitutional leaning to their 
 religion, one of the rearguard of the great camp 
 and army of the Puritans ; and now, when all the 
 platforms and customs of the church are losing their 
 hold in the affections of men, it was fit that he should 
 depart ; fit that, in the fall of laws, a loyal man should 
 die." 
 
 William Emerson, the father of Ralph Waldo, 
 was born in the Old Manse in 1769. He was six years 
 old when the shuddering family gazed upon the Con 
 cord fight beneath their windows. He was an only 
 son, and at eleven years of age, by his mother s 
 marriage with Dr. Ripley, came under the care of that 
 kindly old minister. The Old Manse was the seat of 
 a fine hospitality, and William was able to listen to the 
 best conversation. His career, which would probably 
 have added a shining name to American letters had he 
 not died prematurely, singularly coincides with that of 
 his son Ralph. He graduated at Harvard at seventeen 
 with a similar reputation for excellence in composition, 
 rhetoric, and classical studies. He taught school, 
 studied theology irregularly, and as a preacher made a 
 strong impression. He was the most liberal preacher 
 who had yet appeared in Boston, when he was installed 
 there over the First Church (1799), and devoted him 
 self to what was universal and ethical in Christianity. 
 
FORERUNNERS. 39 
 
 He is described as a blond, handsome man, graceful 
 and benignant, with a melodious voice, and in every 
 respect simple and scholarly. In a sketch of William 
 Tudor, in Duyckiuck s "Cyclopaedia of American Lit 
 erature," we have a remarkable anticipation of the time 
 of the Transcendental Club and the "Dial." This 
 journal, which bore the name of " The Monthly Anthol 
 ogy," was originally commenced in November, 1803, by 
 Mr. Phineas Adams, a graduate of Harvard, and at the 
 time teacher of a school in Boston. At the end of six 
 months it fell into the hands of the Rev. William 
 Emerson, who, joining a few friends with him, laid the 
 foundation of the " Anthology Club." The magazine 
 was then announced as edited "by a society of gentle 
 men." By the theory of the club every member was 
 to write for the " Anthology," but the rule was modi 
 fied, as usual, by the social necessities of the company, 
 and the journal was greatly indebted to outsiders for 
 its articles. The members, however, had the privilege 
 of paying its expenses, which in those days could 
 hardly have been expected to be met by the public. 
 In giving an account of this work subsequently, Mr. 
 Tudor remarks : " Whatever may have been the merit 
 of the Anthology, its authors would have been sadly 
 disappointed if they had looked for any other advan 
 tages to be derived from it than an occasional smile 
 from the public, the amusement of their task, and the 
 pleasure of their social meetings. The publication 
 never gave enough to pay the moderate expense of 
 their suppers, and through their whole career they 
 wrote and paid for the pleasure of writing." Whereon 
 we may reflect in the saying of one born in the 
 
40 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 same year as his father s "Anthology" " Sport is 
 the sign of health." The magazine enlisted the best 
 pens, John Quincy Adams, Charming, George Ticknor, 
 Richard II. Dana, Andrews Norton, and Bnckminster. 
 It died in 1811, when its editor died, his son, Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson, being then eight years old. 
 
THREE FATES. 41 
 
 m. 
 
 THREE FATES. 
 
 A FINE copy of the famous picture long ascribed 
 to Michael Angelo, the u Parcre," hung over 
 the fireplace in Emerson s study, a work of art mys 
 tically associated with him by his friends. Sometimes 
 he wove the thread spun and clipped by the old women 
 into his conversation. It meant many things to him, 
 and it used to warn some of his friends not by any idle 
 visit to clip the golden thread of thought which ran 
 through the morning that always shone in that study. 
 But gradually, as I learned the story of Emerson s 
 early life, the three formidable faces softened to those 
 of the young and fair women who had presided over 
 his destinies, and who remained young and fair even 
 in old age. 
 
 The mother of Emerson, who had been Ruth Haskins 
 of Boston, was a lady of refined culture, of gracious 
 and religious nature, with the blended sweetness and 
 dignity of manner so characteristic of the son. She 
 builded her household in beauty and wisdom when it 
 was left to her on her husband s death. Five sons 
 were thrown upon her care, of whom Ralph was the 
 second. He was born in that happy and cultured 
 home in Boston, and was eight years old when his 
 
42 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 father died. Mary Emerson was second of the foster 
 ing Fates, having devoted herself to the assistance of 
 her brother s widow in bringing up her children. Be 
 sides being of an earnest and conscientious nature, 
 she must be described as a woman of some genius. 
 With a rather formidable eye for all social shams 
 and pretences, a lively interest in all large subjects, 
 and an individuality that verged on eccentricity, her 
 influence was a stimulant to self-reliance. She was 
 almost passionately fond of philosophical studies and 
 well acquainted with the chief European works of that 
 character. There was a considerable survival of the 
 ascetic temper in her, and of theological bias, though 
 she did not accept traditional views in the traditional 
 way. In the discussion of metaphysical problems she 
 had few equals, and her criticisms were often quoted in 
 the controversies which attended the development of 
 heresy in New England. She used to claim that she 
 was "in arms at the battle of Concord," being two 
 years old at the time, and held up by her mother to see 
 it ; but in the theological struggles of a later period 
 her share was less equivocal. 
 
 The third of Emerson s Parcae was Sarah Bradford. 
 She was as fine a Greek scholar as America has pro 
 duced, an accomplished mathematician, and possessed 
 scientific attainments of which professors were glad to 
 ask aid. Of this wonderful woman not less admira 
 ble for her simplicity and womanly charm than for her 
 scholarship more will be said hereafter ; it may be 
 mentioned here, that when Emerson, just after his 
 father s death, entered the grammar school, and after 
 ward when he was studying in the Latin School at 
 
THREE FATES. . 43 
 
 Boston, she corresponded with him about every book 
 and lesson, and revised his translations. From this 
 period she accompanied his entire progress in culture, 
 and to the last was the intimate friend of his thought. 
 
 These three women, all refined and cultivated rep 
 resenting the religious sensibility, the self-reliance, and 
 the philosophical thought and scientific scholarship of 
 the New England renaissance, so to say had charge 
 of the Emerson boys. Never were maternal Parcae 
 more triumphant. The annals of Harvard may be 
 searched in vain to find more brilliant careers than 
 those of several of these youths. It was even for a 
 time doubtful which of them was to be u the coming 
 man." Affectionate with each other, sympathetic in 
 their studies and opinions, devoted to their mother and 
 her two friends (of whom indeed any youths might 
 have been proud) , they were born free of the besetting 
 vices of young men, while full of humour and enter 
 prise. 
 
 The family, without being straitened in circumstances, 
 had to observe strict eccnomy for the supreme object 
 of education, and when the elder had graduated they 
 taught school to pay the way of the younger through 
 college. William was to have entered the ministry, 
 and went to Germany to pursue his studies for that 
 end. He there formed the acquaintance of Goethe, 
 and studied German criticisms until his opinions 
 became sceptical concerning Christianity, and he was 
 compelled to disappoint his mother in his selection of 
 a profession. He died a few years ago, after a suc 
 cessful career in New York as a barrister. It required 
 a good deal of moral courage in the elder son to dis- 
 
44 . EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 appoint his mother and the eminent clergymen around 
 her, who were looking forward to another William 
 Emerson, to make good the promise of the brilliant 
 father. 
 
 The third son, Edward Bliss, also studied law, and 
 in the office of Daniel Webster ; but lost his health in 
 early life, and went to Porto Rico, where he died. 
 "The Last Farewell," written by him in 1832, while 
 sailing out of Boston harbour on the voyage from 
 which he never returned, was printed in the first num 
 ber of the " Dial," and is included in " May Day, 
 and other Poems," followed by Emerson s " In Memo- 
 riam." Robert Bulkeley was enfeebled by scarlet fever, 
 and died in middle life. 
 
 Charles Chauncy died in 1836. This was a particu 
 larly heavy bereavement, not only to the family, but 
 to a large circle of friends. He was betrothed to 
 Elizabeth Hoar of Concord, then as afterwards an 
 intimate and cherished friend of Emerson. 
 
 In the "Dial" some literary fragments left by 
 Charles Emerson were published as " Notes from the 
 Journal of a Scholar," preceded by lines from Per- 
 sius 
 
 u Nunc non e mnnibus illis 
 Nunc non e tumulo, fortunataque favilla 
 Naseuntur violas? " 
 
 Those who read these casual but most suggestive para 
 graphs concerning Homer, Shakespeare, Burke, will not 
 wonder at the enthusiasm of his friends, which antici 
 pated for him a brilliant career. Dr. Oliver Wendell 
 
THREE FATES. 45 
 
 Holmes, who was his class-mate, wrote concerning 
 Charles Emerson these beautiful lines : 
 
 " Thou calm, chaste scholar ! I can see thee now, 
 The first young laurels on thy pallid brow ; 
 O er thy slight figure floating lightly down 
 In graceful folds the academic gown ; 
 On thy curled lip the classic lines, that taught 
 How nice the mind that sculptured them with thought, 
 And triumph glistening in the clear blue eye, 
 Too bright to live, but oh, too fair to die ! " 
 
 I quote a passage from Charles Emerson s journal, 
 from which one may gather that he did not die, but was 
 caught up into the spirit of the brother who mourned 
 his loss so profoundly. 
 
 " This afternoon we read Shakespeare. The verse 
 so sank into me, that as I toiled my way home under 
 the cloud of night, with the gusty music of the storm 
 around and overhead, I doubted that it was all a re 
 membered scene ; that humanity was indeed one, a 
 spirit continually reproduced, accomplishing a vast 
 orbit, whilst individual men are but the points through 
 which it passes. 
 
 We each of us furnish to the angel who stands in 
 the sun a single observation. The reason why Homer 
 is to me like dewy morning is because I too lived while 
 Troy was, and sailed in the hollow ships of the Gre 
 cians to sack the devoted town. The rosy-fingered 
 dawn as it crimsoned the top of Ida, the broad sea 
 shore dotted with tents, the Trojan hosts in their 
 painted armour, and the rushing chariots of Diomed 
 and Idomeneus all these too I saw ; my ghost ani- 
 
46 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 mated the frame of some nameless Argive. And 
 Shakespeare in King John does but recall me to 
 myself in the dress of another age, the sport of new 
 accidents. I, who am Charles, was sometime Romeo. 
 In Hamlet, I pondered and doubted. We forget what 
 we have been, drugged with the sleepy bowl of the 
 present ; but when a lively chord in the soul is struck, 
 when the windows for a moment are unbarred, the 
 long and varied past is recovered. We recognise it 
 all. We are no more brief, ignoble creatures ; we 
 seize our immortality, and bind together the related 
 parts of our secular being." 
 
 It will be seen that the elemental Fates did but par 
 tially second the faithful and wise human Providences 
 which had watched over these young men. It may 
 partly have been the pain suffered in the loss of his 
 brothers which taught Emerson his peculiar horror of 
 ill-health, which he spoke of as a ghoul, and dreaded 
 as the hermits did any sign of a demon invading their 
 solitude It may also have been in part the love, wis 
 dom, and character represented in his three Fates 
 Ruth, Sarah, Mary which made him among the earli 
 est to demand that the equality of woman with man 
 should be represented in politics and the laws. 
 
A BOSTON BOY, 47 
 
 IV. 
 
 A BOSTON BOY. 
 
 THE later life of Emerson furnishes various fore 
 grounds from which his early life may be seen in 
 right perspective. That which I select is the great 
 New Year s Day of 18G3, which brought President 
 Lincoln s proclamation of freedom to the American 
 slaves, when Emerson read to a large assembly his 
 noble Boston Hymn. 
 
 The proclamation found the people assembled in 
 Boston and Emerson reading to them his Hymn : 
 
 u The word of the Lord by night 
 To the watching Pilgrims came 
 As they sat by the seaside, 
 And filled their hearts w r ith flame. 
 
 " God said, I am tired of kings, 
 I suffer them no more ; 
 Up to my ear the morning brings 
 The outrage of the poor." 
 
 So it opened, and through the twenty-two verses, so 
 full of majesty, the vast audience listened with hearts 
 aflame. 
 
 What a vista was visible behind that scholar who 
 
48 EMEHSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 came from his Concord solitude to rejoice with his 
 fellow-citizens and set their bounding pulses to music ! 
 Near that fine Music Hall he was born. Along 
 meadows now covered with mansions he had driven his 
 mother s cow to pasture, pausing on the way to read a 
 little in his Greek or Latin book. As one of his 
 friends lately wrote Frank Sanborn, a college com 
 rade of my own of that boyhood in Boston : u He 
 breathed in its atmosphere and its traditions as a boy 
 while he drove his mother s cow to pasture along what 
 are now the finest streets. He learned his first lessons 
 of life in its schools and churches ; listened to Webster 
 and Story in its courts, to Josiah Quincy and Harrison 
 Gray Otis in its town-meetings at Faneuil Hall ; heard 
 sermons in the Old South Meeting-house." Some years 
 ago, in a speech made at a little gathering of grey- 
 haired gentlemen who had been his companions at the 
 Latin School, Emerson referred to the time when the 
 city was in alarm at the rumoured approach of the 
 British in the war of 1812.^ The master invited the 
 boys to go out to a neighbouring island and help in 
 throwing up earthern defences against the enemy. He 
 remembered a pleasant holiday on Noddle Island, but 
 not any work done by the boys. Whether Great 
 Britain altered her plans on discovering this movement 
 in the Latin School he could not sa} r . Amid such 
 events the Boston Hymn was in process of composi 
 tion, line by line. The scion of English noblemen was 
 learning his lesson in nobility. 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Cooke, in his book on Emerson, tells 
 a pretty story of these early years. He once brought 
 home the first volume of a novel from the circulating 
 
A BOSTON BOY. 49 
 
 library, having paid six cents for it. His aunt Mary 
 reproved him for spending his money in that way, when 
 it was so hard for his mother to obtain it. He was so 
 affected by this appeal that he returned the volume 
 and did not take out the other ; nor was the end of the 
 romance ever read. 
 
 The two leaders of Boston, in those early years, 
 were Webster and Channing. The traditions of the 
 great struggle for American independence were still 
 fresh in many memories, and Daniel Webster gathered 
 up these in his powerful intelligence, and was their 
 organ on every national occasion. His orator} 7 was of 
 the New England type, not passionate after the style 
 of Southerners, but grave and impressive, and some 
 times rising to a poetic strain. There was a grandeur 
 in his personal appearance, such as is ascribed to 
 Goethe, and the tones of his voice were as majestic. 
 When I heard him in the United States Senate, it was 
 after he had begun to surrender the high principles of 
 New England, and there was an undertone of insin 
 cerity which excited distrust ; but in the Supreme 
 Court, where I have also heard him speak, he was still 
 the true orator. Emerson has often told me of the 
 effect of Webster upon his mind in boyhood, when he 
 filled up his ideal of tho Olympian Jove. 
 
 Channing had not as yet become the leader of the 
 theological revolution afterwards associated with him, 
 but he was the most eloquent preacher in Boston. He 
 was ordained minister of a congregation there in 1803, 
 the year of Emerson s birth, at the age of twenty-three, 
 and during Emerson s boyhood was chiefly remarkable 
 for his eloquent discourses against war, intemperance, 
 
50 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 and other evils. The Emerson family attended Chan- 
 ning s church, and Kalph might have heard, in 1814, 
 that brilliant thanksgiving for the overthrow of 
 Napoleon. Channing was intimate in the Emerson 
 home, and the youths always thought of him as a dear 
 relative. The younger brothers of Channing also 
 Edward, a fine scholar and writer, and Walter, an em 
 inent physician, both professors at Harvard were of 
 the circle of friends and instructors surrounding Emer 
 son s early life. It was indeed a time favourable for the 
 touching of line spirits. The controversial era had not 
 fully arrived. The enthusiasm of Channing was for 
 Wordsworth, whose " Excursion " was to him a revela 
 tion. The talk was of poetry, heroism, humanity, the 
 love of nature ; and one of the earliest ideals that rose 
 before the mind of Emerson was Wordsworth, with his 
 plain living and high thinking, his recognition of all 
 grandeurs, whether of nature or human character, in 
 the scenery and the lowly people around his own home. 
 He always spoke of Wordsworth as the great modern 
 poet," and once told me that he still found himself un 
 able to compare any early intellectual experience with 
 the effect produced on his mind by the poet s descrip 
 tion of the influence of nature upon the mind of a boy. 
 
STUDENT AND TEACHER. 51 
 
 y. 
 
 STUDENT AND TEACHER. 
 
 EMERSON was by no means the pedagogue s model 
 boy. He valued studies from books held beneath 
 the bench in the Latin School as much as those exacted. 
 His schoolmates retained affectionate memories of him 
 as a genial and spirited companion. The widow Em 
 erson went to reside at Cambridge when her eider sons 
 were prepared to enter Harvard University. Emerson 
 became the President s freshman there at the age of 
 fourteen. The office, long since abolished, was of 
 some importance : the holder of it was in the President s 
 confidence, and conveyed his will or admonitions to 
 other students. The position was not favourable to 
 an intimate relation with other students. His brother 
 William was a senior at the time, and possibly Ralph 
 Waldo preferred the company of the older youths. 
 The proximity of his room to that of the President 
 prevented its being much affected by other students, 
 and he had more time for quiet reading. He had at 
 this time come under the fascination of Montaigne and 
 Shakespeare, and was never able to devote himself to 
 the college curriculum. But he gained much from the 
 eminent men who taught in the university at that time. 
 Dr. Kirkland had become (1810) President of the uni- 
 
52 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 versicy, which entered upon a new era less religions 
 and more scholarly under his administration. He 
 greatly enlarged its course of studies, increased the 
 number of professorships, and improved the library. 
 Some have dated the New England "Renaissance" 
 from his presidency. He was a philosophical thinker, 
 a man of fine personality, who preferred moulding 
 minds to writing books. As a writer he possessed a 
 remarkable power of generalisation. Among the pro 
 fessors was George Ticknor, historian of Spanish Liter 
 ature. The most important men to Emerson were 
 Edward Everett, professor of Greek ; Levi Frisbie, pro 
 fessor of moral philosophy, the great representative of 
 the intuitive system of ethics ; and Edward Channing, 
 professor of rhetoric and oratory. Edward Everett was 
 the most graceful speaker in America at that time, and 
 taught by example what Professor Channing taught by 
 precept. In both of these studies, Greek and oratory, 
 Emerson gained prizes. Among the students to whom 
 he was attached were Josiah Quincy, afterwards an 
 eminent personage in Boston ; Charles TV. Upham, the 
 historian of Salem Witchcraft ; George Ripley, the 
 founder of Brook Farm Community ; and W. II. Fur- 
 ness, the eminent philanthropist and author who con 
 ducted Emerson s funeral. Mr. Bancroft Hill has 
 recorded the following : 
 
 "While he was pursuing his college course, his 
 mother moved to Cambridge, and some of the students 
 boarded at her table. So he was boarding at home in 
 his sophomore year when his class had a fight with the 
 freshman at supper in Commons Hall a fight de 
 scribed in the mock-heroic poem The Rebelliad. 
 
STUDENT AND TEACHER. 53 
 
 Some of the sophomores were expelled for their share 
 in the disturbance, and thereupon the whole class in 
 dignantly withdrew from college. Emerson remained 
 at home until his class came to terms with the author 
 ities. This trouble had the result of binding the class 
 closely together, and creating a warm sympathy which 
 after years could not chill. On their return from ban 
 ishment, Alden, the wag of the class, established the 
 Conventicle Club a convivial club of which Kings- 
 bury was archbishop, Alden bishop, and John B. Hill 
 parson. . . . Emerson was one of the number. Al 
 though his quiet nature kept him out of most of the 
 convivial societies, he was always genial, fond of hear 
 ing or telling a good story, and ready to do his share 
 towards an evening s entertainment." Emerson was 
 also the leading spirit of a book-club among the stu 
 dents which purchased the English Reviews, and other 
 current literature not found in the college library. He 
 graduated in 1821, and was the " Class Poet" at Com 
 memoration. The memorable class of that year held 
 its annual reunion at Cambridge for fifty years. 
 
 Emerson graduated with a fine reputation in the uni 
 versity for general literary ability, classical culture, 
 and eloquence. About this latter, however, opinions 
 appear to have been divided. The Boylston professor 
 ship of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard included all 
 English compositions, and attended to refinements of 
 style with very great care. Emerson twice won Bow- 
 doin prizes for dissertations, and in his senior year the 
 second Boylston prize for elocution. His rival was 
 Josiah Quincy, in whose journal is found the entry : 
 " July 16, 1821. Attended a dissertation of Emerson s 
 
54 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 in the morning, on the subject of ethical philosophy. 
 I found it long and dry." No doubt it was so as com 
 pared with the conventional oratory of the period. 
 Josiah Quincy had the kind of oratory which could 
 make a mail mayor of Boston, and so made him. But 
 Emerson had a new idea of eloquence and of its aim ; 
 and it is creditable to Professor Charming that even the 
 second prize could have been awarded it sixty years 
 ago. For it is now well known that his style of speak 
 ing was already of the quiet, self-restrained, and simple 
 kind, whose striking effects were the result of artistic 
 touches rather than elaborate statement or highly col 
 oured illustrations. Writing of his college years, Mr. 
 Bancroft Hill says : " His mind was unusually mature 
 and independent. His letters and conversation already 
 displayed something of originality ; and if his two 
 Bowdoin essays were published, I feel sure we should 
 find in them many characteristic turns of thought and 
 expression." He had an enthusiastic admiration for 
 Edward Everett, then just returned from a European 
 tour, in which he had made the acquaintance of Scott, 
 Byron, Jeffrey, Davy, Romilly, Mackintosh, and had 
 prepared himself for his new professorship by studying 
 in Italy and Greece. His first lectures on Greek liter 
 ature and art at Harvard were heard by Emerson with 
 great admiration. Yet Emerson s style of lecturing was 
 totally different from Everett s from the first. The meas 
 ured gesture, the deliberate following of classical models, 
 the never-concealed art of Everett soon palled upon the 
 taste. In his famous lecture upon George Washington, 
 I remember his taking up a glass of water, holding it for 
 a moment, and dexterously spilling some of it as he 
 
STUDENT AND TEACHER. 55 
 
 spoke of Washington s purity and cleanliness of soul. 
 There were no tricks of any kind in Emerson s dis 
 course ; he had no gesture or manner, but depended 
 upon clearness of thought and simplicity of statement. 
 He once told me that when he graduated, his ambition 
 was to be a professor of rhetoric and elocution ; and 
 when I smiled at this, thinking only of what he had 
 actually become, maintained that it was a great art. 
 He recalled Saadi s gratitude for the one gift Allah had 
 given him " sweetness of speech " and thought that 
 many discords and controversies might be avoided if 
 preachers and public speakers had adequately culti 
 vated the art of putting things felicitously. He 
 expressed the belief that an educated Boston congre 
 gation and none could be more conservative just 
 then would call to their pulpit and listen to a really 
 eloquent man whatever his opinions. "An atheist? " 
 " Yes." But he must not be a pedant ; he must have 
 a genuine conviction, and speak from his own heart 
 and mind. "The North suffers in debate with those 
 eloquent Southern Congressmen at Washington because 
 it has not a senator or representative who can speak as 
 well for Northern as they for Southern principles." I 
 named several Northern men I had heard at Washing 
 ton, considered eloquent, but he said, " Yes, but they 
 speak too much after the Southern style. The ade 
 quate answer must be characteristic of the people it 
 comes from. I don t want a man there of the same 
 type, though that is fit for its place and purpose." 
 Daniel Webster was dead when Emerson said this ; 
 Edward Everett had long been over-compliant to the 
 South, and his oratory had declined. Senator Sumner 
 
56 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 was much esteemed by Emerson, but was too much of 
 an egoist to satisfy him. The men he would have been 
 glad to send to Washington were Garrison and Wen- 
 dell Phillips. Of Phillips he said, "It is one of the 
 picturesque incidents of the anti-slavery effort that 
 such a man as Wendell Phillips should be devoting 
 himself to popular gatherings in Massachusetts, and 
 facing mobs with an eloquence that would be admired 
 in any country. He is an ornamental person, with a 
 culture and wealth that presuppose European society 
 and art galleries." Of Dr. Charming he spoke with 
 warm admiration. " The charm of his preaching is not 
 to be discovered by reading his sermons ; whenever he 
 spoke it seemed to an occasion ; the heart of his 
 audience rose to meet him ; here was something 
 sufficient ; the multitude found it good to be there, and 
 went away fed, satisfied." 
 
 Not his own inclination at the time, but his family 
 affections, determined the first step of Emerson after 
 graduation. William Emerson had set up a school for 
 girls in Boston, with the view of assisting his brothers 
 through college. Ralph now went to join him. lie 
 did not like the work much, being no doubt eager to 
 enter upon further studies, but his sympathy with young 
 people and instinct for individualisation made him an 
 excellent teacher. The severest discipline administered 
 is said to have been sending a pupil now and then to his 
 mother s room to pursue her studies. The school was 
 near the Federal Street Church (Channing s), and Em 
 erson witnessed the most striking example of the power 
 possible to the American pulpit. It was in the year of 
 Emerson s graduation (1821) that the new impulse 
 
STUDENT AND TEACHER. 
 
 57 
 
 given to the liberal tendencies of America began to be 
 generally felt. In that year Channing gave his Dud- 
 leian lecture at Cambridge on the " Evidences of 
 Christianity." Every word spoken in that Boston 
 church was now heard throughout the country. He 
 saw Channing to be a " necessary" person, as he said 
 long afterwards, one affirming the verdict of the human 
 faculties, and passing solemn sentence upon guilty 
 dogmas by simply stating their offence against the 
 moral sentiment. 
 
58 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 VI. 
 
 APPROBATION. 
 
 THE determination of his brother ^William not to 
 enter the ministry, which caused his mother sor 
 row, may have inclined Emerson to that profession, but 
 probably Dr. Channing was the determining influence. 
 He began the study of theology when he was twenty 
 years of age not entering Divinity College, but 
 keeping abreast of its classes and after three years 
 was " approbated to preach" by the Middlesex Asso 
 ciation of Preachers. Unitarianism had no written 
 creed, but it had certain forms, concerning which 
 Emerson already had doubts. It looks as if he had 
 not quite kept Lord Bacon s prescription for health, 
 " Never to do anything contrary to your genius," for 
 Emerson went South for his health, and probably his 
 first public sermon was given in Charleston, which then 
 had the only Unitarian pulpit south of the Potomac. 
 In college his room-mate had been a South Carolinian 
 (John Gourdin), and Emerson always had a pleasant 
 feeling towards the South ("except those bonds"), 
 and in after life would have gladly passed some winters 
 in Florida, where the author of u Uncle Tom s Cabin" 
 now finds a congenial home. Part of that winter 
 (1826-27) was indeed passed in beautiful Florida, 
 
APPROBATION. 59 
 
 whose fragrance is in his early song, " To Ellen at the 
 South." 
 
 On his return from the South, in the spring of 1827, 
 his first sermons were given at New Bedford. The im 
 pression made by Emerson at this time on best persons 
 was remarkable. His earliest sermons are almost for 
 gotten in the charm of his personality and in the warm 
 glow of his sympathies, in his das DamonisJie, which, 
 in Jknerson, was known in a peculiar joy felt in his 
 presence. In the privately printed Life of the late 
 Mrs. Lyman of Northampton, written by her daughter, 
 Mrs. Lesley, there are some pages that show the young 
 preacher s footprints already traceable in flowers. They 
 who know anything of the late Mrs. Lyman need not 
 be told that one fourteen years her junior must have 
 possessed extraordinary character and powers to make 
 such an impression upon her as appears in this vol 
 ume, which my friend who wrote it kindly permits me 
 to use. In the autumn of 1827, Mr. Hall, the minis 
 ter at Northampton, being in ill health, his pulpit was 
 supplied by young ministers from Boston. " During 
 this autumn my mother heard that Mrs. Hall was 
 expecting one of the preachers to stay at her house 
 for a fortnight. She did not even know the name of 
 the expected guest, but she knew Mrs. Hall was not 
 well, so she sent her word that, when the preacher 
 came, she would like to have him transferred to her 
 house. It was Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, then a 
 young man, who took up his abode for a fortnight 
 under her friendly roof. I have no power to convey 
 in words the impression she used to give me of this 
 visit, or its effect upon her appreciative mind. To 
 
60 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 her sister she mirthfully quoted an expression some 
 times used by her orthodox neighbours about certain 
 students at Amherst, and wrote, " O Sally ! I thought 
 to entertain a pious indigent, but lo ! an angel una 
 wares ! " Not long after this visit, my brother Joseph 
 became intimate with Charles Emerson at Cambridge, 
 a friendship which my mother hailed as one of the 
 highest and holiest influences in the life of her beloved 
 son. She rarely saw Mr. Emerson in later life ; a few 
 letters passed between them. Once (in 1849) he spent 
 a few days at her house while lecturing in Northamp 
 ton, and after her removal to Cambridge he called to 
 see her. The personal feeling towards him thus en 
 gendered burned henceforth with a flame that threw 
 light upon every passage of his writings, gilded the 
 gloom of many a weary day, and made her fine face 
 shine with responsive sympathy for the author as she 
 read aloud. She was wont to feel a certain property 
 in him and his works ; and I have seen her ready to 
 shed tears when she could not see any appreciation of 
 his thought in her listener. To one I have heard her 
 
 O 
 
 say, " Well, you call that transcendental, and that s all 
 you have to say about it. / call it the profoundest 
 common sense." To another, "You think it very 
 arrogant of me to pretend to understand Mr. Emer 
 son. Well, I tell you I have the key to him ; and I 
 am not going to pretend I have not, whatever any one 
 thinks." And so as the years went by, and volume 
 after volume appeared of the Essays, she hailed them 
 with delight and read them till they became part of 
 herself. 
 
 It is the best benefit of searching into genealogies 
 
APPKOBATION. 61 
 
 it brings ns on so many fair fulfilments reversing ill 
 omens. That beautiful and happy wife of Judge Ly- 
 man was a descendant of Anne Hutchinson, whose 
 genius re-appeared in her. Emerson s ancestor, Rev. 
 Peter Bnlkeley, presided over the Synod which ban 
 ished Anne Hutchinson to Rhode Island and to death. 
 Now these two meet in near friendship, and in the 
 sorrows that were presently the portion of Anne 
 Lyman the word of consolation and sympathy from 
 Emerson never failed. 
 
 The first sentences of Emerson which I have read 
 are in a letter written from Divinity Hall, Cambridge, 
 February 11, 1828, to Mrs. Lyman on the/death of her 
 brother-in-law, Judge Howe, resulting fr^m devotion to 
 the duties of his office. " In such a dfeath of such a 
 man, if there must be to his family and friends the 
 deepest grief, there must also be to them a feeling of 
 deep and holy joy. There is something in his char 
 acter which seems to make excessive sorrow unsea 
 sonable and unjust to his memory, and all who have 
 heard of his death have derived from it new force to 
 virtue and new confidence to faith." 
 
 In a letter dated "Boston, August 25, 1829," to 
 the same friend, he introduces Mr. George Bradford : 
 "But who is Mr. Bradford? He is Mrs. Ripley s 
 brother, and a fine classical and Biblical scholar, and 
 a botanist, and a lover of truth, and an Israelite in 
 whom is no guile, and a kind of Cowper, and a great 
 admirer of all admirable things ; and so I want him to 
 go to your house, where his eyes and ears shall be 
 enriched with what he loves." 
 
 It is a little droll to find him in this note speaking of 
 
62 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 getting Mr. Upham to point him out the lions on a 
 public occasion at Cambridge. Speaking of some 
 pecuniary losses sustained by their friends, Emerson 
 says : " God seems to make some of his children for 
 prosperity, they bear it so gracefully, and with such 
 good-will of society ; and it is always painful when 
 such suffer. But I suppose it is always dangerous, 
 and especially to the very young. In college, I used 
 to echo a frequent ejaculation of my wise aunt s, Oh, 
 blessed, blessed poverty ! when I saw young men of 
 fine capabilities, whose only and fatal disadvantage 
 was wealth. It is sad to see it taken from those who 
 know how to use it, but children whose prospects are 
 changed may hereafter rejoice at the event." 
 
 The question of immortality, so anxiously discussed 
 with Carlyle at Craigenputtock, is touched in a letter 
 to Mrs. Lyman, January G, 1830, on the death of her 
 father, in which he speaks of the "hopes which our 
 Saviour has imparted to us." "Take away these 
 hopes, and death is more ghastly to the soul than the 
 corpse to the eye. Receive them, and the riddle of the 
 universe is explained ; an account given of events 
 perfectly consistent with what we feel in ourselves 
 when we are best." Six years later, in his first book, 
 Emerson wrote, u Even the corpse has its own 
 beauty." 
 
 In a letter to this lady on the occasion of a heavy 
 bereavement, the death of a lovely daughter, he 
 writes (1837): "How gladly have I remembered 
 the glimpses I had of her sunny childhood, her winning 
 manners, her persuading speech, that then made her 
 father, I believe, call her his lawyer. In the pleasant 
 
APPROBATION. 63 
 
 weeks I spent at your house, I rejoiced iu the promise 
 of her beauty, and have pleased myself with the hope 
 that she was surmounting her early trials, and was 
 destined to be one of those rare women who exalt 
 society, and who make credible to us a better society 
 than is seen in the earth. I still keep by me one of her 
 drawings which she gave me. I have scarcely seen her 
 face since. But we feel a property in all the accom 
 plishments and graces that we know, which neither 
 distance nor absence destroys. For my part, I grudge 
 the decays of the young and beautiful whom I may 
 never see again. Even in their death, is the reflection 
 that we are for ever enriched by having beheld them, 
 that we can never be quite poor and low, for they 
 have furnished our heart and mind with new elements 
 of beauty and wisdom. 
 
 " And now she is gone out of sight, I can only offer 
 to you and to Judge Lyman my respectful and affec 
 tionate condolence. I am sure I need not suggest the 
 deep consolations of the spiritual life, for love is the 
 first believer, and all the remembrances of her life will 
 plead with you in behalf of the hope of all souls. How 
 do we go, all of us, to the world of spirits, marshalled 
 and beckoned unto by noble and lovely friends ! That 
 event cannot be fearful which made a part of the con 
 stitution and career of beings so finely framed and 
 touched, and whose influence on us has been so benign. 
 These sad departures open to us, as other events do 
 not, that ineradicable faith which the secret history of 
 every year strips of its obscurities, that we can and 
 must exist for evermore." 
 
 In her extreme age, the lady to whom these letters 
 
64 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 were written was visited by Emerson and one of his 
 daughters. It was a great joy to her, and she wrote : 
 
 " Perhaps I shall never see Mr. Emerson any more. 
 Well, 4 1 saw his day and was glad. " To lead on this 
 glad day which her so distant daughter beheld, the 
 triumph of her noble thought and spirit, Anne 
 Hutchinson had lived and died. 
 
 But we must return now to the beginning of Emer 
 son s ministerial career. After preaching at various 
 places, among others for some Sundays at Concord, 
 
 and meanwhile writing poetry, he was ordained 
 minister of the Second Church in Boston, March 11, 
 1829. It was at first as colleague of the Rev. Henry 
 Ware, jun., but shortly after he became sole pastor of 
 the church. Eminent Unitarian ministers participated 
 in the ordination services, and Emerson received a 
 hearty welcome. In September of the same year he 
 was married to Ellen Louisa Tucker. He was at once 
 accorded in Boston the highest position, and was 
 listened to with admiration in the church of Channing. 
 A venerable minister gave me an account of a sermon 
 he heard from Emerson in those days, impressed on his 
 memory by the vitality it infused in an old theme, and 
 the simplicity with which it was delivered. The text 
 was, "What is a man profited if he shall gain the 
 whole world and lose his own soul?" The emphasis 
 was on the word " own," and the general theme was 
 that to every man the great end of existence was the 
 preservation and culture of his individual mind and 
 character. Each man must be saved by his own inward 
 redeemer ; and the whole world is for each but a plastic 
 material through which the individual spirit is to realise 
 
APPROBATION. 65 
 
 itself. Aspiration and thought become clear and real 
 only "by action and life. If knowledge leads not to 
 action, it passes awa} r , being preserved only on the 
 condition of being used. "The last thing," added 
 rny informant, " that any of us who heard him would 
 have predicted of the youth, whose quiet simplicity 
 and piety captivated all, was that he would become the 
 religious revolutionist of America." 
 
 I once asked Emerson about his sermons, and he told 
 me he had utilised them in his Essays, these being, 
 however, less ethical in form. In a pulpit address 
 delivered in 1830 at Concord, occur characteristic 
 words of Emerson. It was at the ordination of a 
 new minister there. Having recalled the phrase, " Be 
 of one mind," he said: "Thousands of hearts have 
 heard the commandment, and anon with joy receive it. 
 All men on whose souls the light of God s revelation 
 truly shineth, with whatever apparent differences, are 
 substantially of one mind, work together, whether con 
 sciously or not, for one and the same good. Faces that 
 never beheld each other are lighted up by it with the 
 same expression. Hands that were never clasped t:>il 
 unceasingly at the same work. This it is which make s 
 the omnipotence of truth in the keeping of feeble men, 
 this fellowship in all its servants, this swift consenting 
 acknowledgment with which they hail it when it appears 
 God s truth ; it is that electric spark which flies instan 
 taneously through the countless bands that compose 
 the chain. Truth, not like each form of error, depend 
 ing for its repute on the powers and influence of here 
 and there a solitary mind that espouses it, combines 
 
G6 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 hosts for its support, and makes them co-operate across 
 mountains, yea, and ages of time." 
 
 Emerson took an active interest in the public affairs 
 of Boston. He was on its School Board, and was 
 chosen chaplain of the State Senate. He invited the 
 anti-slavery lecturers into his church, and helped phi 
 lanthropists of other denominations in their work. 
 Father Taylor, to whom Dickens gave an English 
 fame, found in him his most important supporter when 
 establishing the Seaman s Mission in Boston. This 
 was told me by Father Taylor himself in his old age. 
 I happened to be in his company once when he spoke 
 rather sternly about my leaving the Methodist Church, 
 but when I spoke of the part Emerson had in it, he 
 softened at once, and spoke with emotion of his great 
 friend. I have no doubt that if the good Father of 
 Boston Seamen was proud of any personal thing, it 
 was of the excellent answer he is said to have given to 
 some Methodists who objected to his friendship for 
 Emerson. Being a Unitarian, they insisted that he 
 must go to hell. " It does look so," said Father 
 Taylor ; " but I am sure of one thing, if Emerson goes 
 to hell he will change the climate there, and emigration 
 will so* that way." 
 
DISAPPROBATION. 67 
 
 VII. 
 
 DISAPPROBATION. 
 
 IN June, 1832, Emerson invited the most active 
 members of his church to his house, " to receive a 
 communication from him in relation to the views at 
 which he had arrived respecting the ordinance of the 
 Lord s Supper." He there made his statement of ob 
 jections to the existing form, and proposed to "so far 
 change the manner of administering the rite as to dis 
 use the elements and relinquish the claim of authority." 
 He suggested a modification. After hearing this com 
 munication a committee was appointed (Deacons Mack 
 intosh and Patterson, Dr. John Ware, George B. 
 Emerson, George A. Sampson, Gedney King, and 
 Samuel Beal) to consider the subject. They reported 
 and submitted: "(1.) That in the opinion of this 
 church, after a careful consideration of this subject, it 
 is expedient to maintain the celebration of the Lord s 
 Supper in the present form. (2.) That the brethren 
 of this church retain an undiminished regard for their 
 pastor, and entertain the hope that he will find it con 
 sistent with his sense of duty to continue the customary 
 administration of the Supper." The minister, however, 
 having given an explanatory sermon on the subject, 
 offered a kindly but firm resignation of his charge. 
 
68 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 Jt is significant that the only sermon by Emerson 
 ever published was this of September 9, 18;52, in which 
 lie announced his resignation of his pulpit and assigned 
 his reasons for it. It is given in full in O. li. Froth- 
 ingham s " Transcendentalism in New England." 
 Reading it, one cannot but wonder that the Unitarians 
 should have let go such a preacher. The text was 
 Romans xiv. 17, u The kingdom of God is not meat 
 and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the 
 Holy Ghost." The history of controversies on the 
 subject is condensed in a page, yet in a way which 
 shows that every phase of it had been carefully studied, 
 up to the time when " the Society of Quakers denied 
 the authority of the rite altogether, and gave good 
 reasons for disusing it." Next are given his reasons 
 for believing that Jesus did not intend to establish an 
 institution for perpetual observance when he ate the 
 Passover with his disciples. The only reporter of the 
 incident whose words, "This do in remembrance of 
 me," would bear a different construction, was Luke, 
 who was not present. But what did this expression 
 really signify? " It is a prophetic and an affectionate 
 expression. Jesus is a Jew, sitting with his country 
 men, celebrating their national feast. He thinks of his 
 own impending death, and wishes the minds of his dis 
 ciples to be prepared for it. When hereafter, he says 
 to them, you shall keep the Passover, it will have an 
 altered aspect to your eyes. It is now a historical cov 
 enant of God with the Jewish nation. Hereafter it will 
 remind you of a new covenant sealed with my blood. 
 In years to come, as long as your people shall come up 
 to Jerusalem to keep this feast, the connection which 
 
DISAPPROBATION. 69 
 
 has subsisted between us will give a new meaning in 
 your eyes to the national festival, as the anniversary 
 of my death. I see natural feeling and beauty in the 
 use of such language from Jesus, a friend to his friends. 
 I can readily imagine that he was willing and desirous, 
 when his disciples met, his memory should hallow their 
 intercourse ; but I cannot bring myself to believe that 
 in the use of such an expression he looked beyond the 
 living generation, beyond the abolition of the festival 
 he was celebrating and the scattering of the nation, 
 and meant to impose a memorial feast upon the whole 
 world." Then follows a statement of the Eastern way 
 of teaching, the readiness of Jesus to spiritualise every 
 occurrence as in washing his disciples feet, more 
 emphatically enjoined as an example than any sacra 
 ment. The communism of the first disciples, which 
 rendered such a festival natural ; the expectation of 
 the second coming of Jesus, which influenced the mind 
 of Paul to preserve the local rite, were considered with 
 great force, and led up to the general view. As to the 
 question of expediency, he thinks the ordinance pro 
 duces confusion in our views of the relation of the soul 
 to God. "For the service does not stand upon the 
 basis of a voluntary act, but is imposed by authority." 
 "The use of the elements, however suitable to the 
 people and modes of thought in the East, where it 
 originated, is foreign and unsuited to affect us." This 
 alone is a sufficient objection to the ordinance. " It is 
 my own objection. This mode of commemorating Christ 
 is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I 
 should abandon it. If I believed that it was enjoined 
 by Jesus on his disciples, and that he even contemplated 
 
70 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 making permanent this mode of commemoration, every 
 way agreeable to an Eastern mind, and yet, on trial, 
 it was disagreeable to my own feelings, I should not 
 adopt it. I should choose other ways which, as more 
 effectual upon me, he would approve more. For I 
 choose that my remembrances of him should be pleas 
 ing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorious 
 friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay 
 him a stilf sign of respect, as men do to those whom 
 they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a 
 moving provocation to works like his, any act or 
 meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow 
 of love, an original design of virtue, I call a true, a 
 worthy commemoration." Freedom, he declares, is the 
 essence of this faith. " It has for its object simply to 
 make men good and wise. Its institutions, then, should 
 be as flexible as the wants of men. That form out of 
 which the life and suitableness have departed should 
 be as worthless in its eyes as the dead leaves that are 
 falling around us." "Although I have gone back to 
 w r eigh the expressions of Paul, I feel that here is the 
 true point of view. In the midst of considerations as 
 to what Paul thought, and why he so thought, I cannot 
 help feeling that it is time misspent to argue to or from 
 his convictions, or those of Luke and John, respecting 
 any form. I seem to lose the substance in seeking the 
 shadow. That for which Paul lived and died so glo 
 riously ; that for which Jesus gave himself to be cru 
 cified ; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and 
 heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem us 
 from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well- 
 being in the formation of the soul. The whole world 
 
DISAPPROBATION . 7 1 
 
 was full of idols and ordinances. The Jewish was a 
 religion of forms. The Pagan was a religion of forms ; 
 it was all body it had no life ; and the Almighty God 
 was pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach men 
 that they must serve him with the heart ; that only that 
 life was religious which was thoroughly good ; that sac 
 rifice was smoke, and forms were shadows. This man 
 lived and died true to this purpose ; and now with his 
 blessed word and life before us, Christians must con 
 tend that it is a matter of vital importance, really a 
 duty, to commemorate him by a certain form, whether 
 that form be agreeable to their understandings or not. 
 Is not this to make vain the gift of God? Is not this 
 to turn back the hand on the dial ? " 
 
 In conclusion Emerson said: "My brethren have 
 considered my views with patience and candour, and 
 have recommended unanimously an adherence to the 
 present form. I have, therefore, been compelled to 
 consider whether it becomes me to administer it. I 
 am clearly of opinion I ought not. This discourse has 
 already been so far extended, that I can only say that 
 the reason of my determination is shortly this : It is 
 my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do 
 nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Hav 
 ing said this, I have said all. I have no hostility to 
 this institution ; I am only stating my want of sym 
 pathy with it. Neither should I ever have obtruded 
 my opinion upon other people had I not been called by 
 my office to administer it. That is the end of my 
 opposition, that I am not interested in it. I am content 
 that it stand to the end of the world, if it please men 
 and please Heaven, and I shall rejoice in all the good it 
 produces. 
 
72 EMERSON AT HOME AXD ABROAD. 
 
 "As it is the prevailing opinion and feeling in our 
 religious community that it is an indispensable part of 
 the pastoral oflice to administer this ordinance, I am 
 about to resign into your hands that office which you 
 have confided to me. It has many duties for which I 
 am feebly qualified. It has some which it will always 
 be my delight to discharge, according to my ability, 
 wherever I exist. And w r hilst the recollection of its 
 claims oppresses me with a sense of my unworthiness, 
 I am consoled by the hope that no time and no change 
 can deprive me of the satisfaction of pursuing and 
 exercising its highest functions." 
 
 Bishop Iluntington, once a Unitarian preacher in 
 Boston, recently said that " to a degree Mr. Emerson s 
 aberrations in religious thought were due to his inapti 
 tude for think ing consecutively and logically on tin}* 
 abstract subject." Dr. Huntington has too readily 
 taken at the foot of the letter Emerson s casual talk of 
 the same kind about himself. The sermon from which 
 I have quoted is an admirable piece of methodical work 
 throughout, and of consecutive logical reasoning. 
 When Emerson had a practical purpose in view, as in 
 this sermon and in several of his essays during the 
 war, he proved himself amply able to follow the logical 
 method. That he did not ordinarily do so was because 
 he was more interested in points not to be so carried. 
 
 Although Emerson s congregation were loth to part 
 with a man who had reflected such honour upon them, 
 and showed in various ways their continued love for 
 him, the Unitarian community outside acted far less 
 creditably. Among his w r armest friends was the 
 Methodist, Father Taylor, who bravery said, " Mr. 
 
DISAPPROBATION. 73 
 
 Emerson may think this or that, but he is more like 
 Jesus Christ than any one I have ever known. I have 
 seen him when his religion was tested, and it bore the 
 test." The report w^as circulated among the Unitarians 
 and believed that Emerson was insane ! The extent 
 to which Unitarian churches in Boston have discon 
 tinued the Eucharist, and the recent encomiums on 
 Emerson delivered in them, warrant the hope that, 
 some day, the Unitarians will adopt the rule of making 
 an annual pilgrimage to the grave at Concord, in re 
 membrance that when the intellectual flower of the 
 New World rose before them, some cried, " Infidel ! " 
 and others " Madman !" 
 
 But the impression made by Emerson s brief ministry 
 in Boston was lasting. From that day to this there 
 have been men and women, well known for their lead 
 ing part in all high works and movements, whose lives 
 and characters were mainly influenced by his sermons. 
 
74 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 VIII. 
 A SEA-CHANGE. 
 
 MERSON S nerves were a good deal strained by 
 the trouble with his church. He had already 
 formed friendships, in his high way, with individual 
 hearts and minds in his congregation ; and though his 
 spiritual sword, with the fine edge of ^l^din s, was 
 able to cut even the silken thread of Ration if it 
 withheld him from his aim, it was not without the 
 laceration of his sensibility in all such relations. His 
 mother had received another blow to her hopes con 
 cerning her sons. William had abandoned the minis 
 try because of sceptical opinions ; Edward had been 
 compelled to give up the law and go south on the 
 vo3 T age from which he never returned , and now Ralph 
 Waldo was severed from the traditional profession of 
 the family. All this Emerson felt deeply. There had 
 also come upon him a heavy bereavement. In the 
 February of 1832, a few months before the difficulty 
 with his church, his young wife had died of consump 
 tion. Under these troubles, and the sharp words of 
 his disappointed fellow-ministers, his health suffered, 
 and he resolved on an excursion to Europe. He had 
 an ardent desire to converse with the English authors 
 who had become important to him, especially Carlyle, 
 
A SEA-CHANGE. 75 
 
 Coleridge, Landor, and Wordsworth. Above all, he 
 wished Carlyle to know that his voice had been heard 
 in New England, and to bear him a prophecy of the 
 response that awaited him. Early in the spring of 
 1833 he sailed for Europe, and though he was at home 
 again by the close of August, he had visited Sicily, / 
 Italy, France, and England. He visited Landor in 
 Florence. With reference to Emerson s visits to Car- 
 lyle and Wordsworth at that time, he wrote at once to 
 Alexander Ireland, whose acquaintance he had made 
 in Edinburgh, and whose friendship was of much value 
 to him. A very interesting account of this visit to 
 Edinburgh, and of the impression made on him by 
 Emerson s sermon in that city, is given in Mr. Ireland s 
 memorial of his friend. I was indebted to Mr. Ireland 
 for Emerson s letter to him, which appears in my book 
 on Carlyle, and from which extracts may be made 
 here. 
 
 " The comfort of meeting a man of genius is that 
 he speaks sincerely ; that he feels himself to be so 
 rich, that he is above the meanness of pretending to 
 knowledge which he has not, and Cartyle does not pre 
 tend to have solved the great problems, but rather 
 to be an observer of their solution as it goes forward in 
 the world. . . . My own feeling was that I had met 
 with men of far less power who had yet greater insight 
 into religious truth. He is, as 3^011 might guess from 
 his papers, the most catholic of philosophers ; he for 
 gives and loves everybody, and wishes each to struggle 
 on in his own place and arrive at his own ends. But 
 his respect for eminent men, or rather his scale of 
 eminence, is about the reverse of the popular scale. 
 
76 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 Scott, Mackintosh. Jeffrey, Gibbon, even Bacon, are 
 no heroes of his ; stranger yet, he hardly admires 
 Socrates, the glory of the Greek world ; but Burns, and 
 Samuel Johnson, and Mirabeau, he said interested him, 
 and I suppose whoever else has given himself with all 
 his heart to a leading instinct, and has not calculated too 
 much. But I cannot think of sketching even his 
 opinions, or repeating his conversations here. I will 
 cheerfully do it when you visit me in America. He 
 talks finely, seems to love the broad Scotch, and I 
 loved him very much at once. ... I could not help 
 congratulating him upon his treasure in his wife, and I 
 hope he will not leave the moors ; tis so much better 
 for a man of letters to nurse himself in seclusion than 
 to be filed down to the common level by the compliances 
 and imitations of city society. " 
 
 Emerson called on Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, and 
 was cordially received, the poet remembering up all 
 his American acquaintance. "He had very much to 
 say about the evils of superficial education, both in 
 this country and in mine. He thinks that the intel 
 lectual tuition of society is going on out of all pro 
 portion faster than its moral training, which last is 
 essential to all education. He does not wish to hear 
 of schools of tuition ; it is the education of circum 
 stances which he values, and much more to this 
 point. . . . He led me out into a walk in his grounds, 
 where he said many thousands of his lines were com 
 posed, and repeated to me three beautiful sonnets, 
 which he had just finished, upon the occasion of his 
 recent visit to Fingal s Cave at Staffa. I hope he will 
 print them speedily. The third is a gem. He was 80 
 
A SEA-CHANGE. 77 
 
 benevolently anxious to impress upon me my social 
 duties as an American citizen, that he accompanied 
 me near a mile from his house, talking vehemently, 
 and ever and anon stopping short to imprint his words. 
 I noted down some of these when I got to my inn, and 
 you may see them in Boston, Massachusetts, when you 
 will. I enjoyed my visits greatly, and shall always 
 esteem your Britain very highly in love for its wise 
 and good men s sake. I remember with much pleasure 
 my visit to Edinburgh, and your good parents. . . . 
 It will give me very great pleasure to hear from you, 
 to know your thoughts. Every man that ever was 
 born has some that are peculiar." 
 
 Caiiyle s tones were tenderer even than his words 
 when, in the evening after his inauguration as Lord 
 Rector at Edinburgh, he told me of this visit. "He 
 came from Dumfries in an old rusty gig ; came one 
 day and vanished the next. I had never heard of him : 
 he gave us his brief biography. We took a walk while 
 dinner was prepared. We gave him welcome ; we 
 were glad to see him. I did not then adequately 
 recognise Emerson s genius ; but she and I thought 
 him a beautiful transparent soul, and he was always a 
 very pleasant object to us in the distance. Now and 
 then a letter still comes from him, and amid the smoke 
 and mist of the world it is always as a window flung 
 open to the azure." 
 
 Emerson s hopes in this pilgrimage were too high to 
 be realised. Though eight years younger than Carlyle, 
 he was really older. The hermit of Craigenputtock 
 was still at heart involved in beliefs that Emerson s 
 fathers had outgrown for him before he was born, and 
 
78 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 he was mourning over ruins which did not exist in the 
 landscape of the New World. Then, and for many 
 years after, Emerson urged Carlyle to settle in the 
 New England his genius implied. 
 
 " A thousand years a poor man sat 
 Before the gate of Paradise ; 
 Then, while he snatehed one little nap, 
 It oped and shut. Ah ! was he wise? " 
 
 It is a fable that on the evening of their meeting 
 Carlyle gave Emerson a pipe and took one himself, 
 and that the two sat together in perfect silence until 
 bedtime, when they shook hands and congratulated 
 each other on the charming evening they had enjoyed. 
 The conversation was fluent enough that evening and 
 the next day, but in the silence that followed their 
 parting, one of them had discovered that the light he 
 had sought so far had not been imparted. 
 
 The little story, which Carlyle allowed me to set 
 afloat years ago, of how, when the first pages of 
 "Sartor" appeared, the general clamour of "Eraser s" 
 readers against it was broken by but two voices "an 
 Irish Catholic priest and a Mr. Emerson of Concord " 
 
 suggests the vaguely contrary elements, combined 
 from the first in that pillar of cloud and fire which rose 
 amid the Scottish moors. Emerson was the first to 
 recognise the sign of a new exodus, but he presently 
 perceived that Carlyle had his eyes fixed on Germany 
 
 on the Old and not the New World. They must 
 part. But the American had found Carlyle a grand 
 figure, and loved him. % From the time (183G) when he 
 
A SEA-CHANGE. 79 
 
 introduced " Sartor" into America, where, I believe, 
 its sale rose over a thousand before its publication as 
 a volume in England, Emerson s chief work was to 
 attend to Carlyle s business. He was perpetually 
 among the booksellers when he had no book of his own 
 to sell, and was visible among foreign exchangers often 
 enough for his head to appear to Lowell, the fabulist 
 of the time, with " Olympus for one pole, and for 
 t other the Exchange." For every work of Carlyle s, 
 certainly during a period of twenty years, Emerson did 
 far more work than for his own. Carlyle had reason 
 to say, as he once did, that there was something ma 
 ternal in the way New England took him up, but the 
 paternal part was Emerson s. His friends were also 
 Carlyle s friends ; and, among these, Le Baron Russell 
 was chiefly instrumental in publishing, and securing 
 subscriptions for, " Sartor," of which he appears as 
 co-editor. He was assisted by the Rev. William Sils- 
 bee. 
 
 The personal love between Carlyle and Emerson 
 was deep ; it survived all its trials, and the wide 
 differences of opinion on nearly every subject. When 
 I was starting for America in 1880, Carlyle said, 
 " Give my love to Emerson. I still think of his visit 
 to us at Craigenputtock as the most beautiful thing in 
 our experience there." When I met Emerson in that 
 year, his memory was nearly gone but the one name 
 that required no suggestion was that of Carlyle. Out 
 of the far past this arose clearly enough, and when 
 he received the message I brought, his face beamed 
 with the old intelligence. 
 
80 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 During the dismal discussion which has gone on 
 over the grave of Carlyle, I heard from a friend a 
 word spoken by Emerson which sends a sunbeam 
 through it all. Just after he had visited Craigen- 
 puttock, a friend asked him how he liked Carlyle. 
 His whole reply was, " A marvellous child ! " 
 
A LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN. 81 
 
 IX. 
 
 A LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN. 
 
 EVERYBODY has been wrong in his guess, except 
 good women, who never despair of an ideal right." 
 These are words from a letter written by Emerson to 
 Carlyle about the American civil war. They are preg 
 nant with a great deal of experience. No man had 
 more reason for his faith in " the moral genius of 
 women " how well I remember the solemnity of his 
 voice in that phrase ! than Emerson. Something of 
 that, indeed, has been told in a previous chapter, but 
 more remains, and this fine influence will be found 
 shedding its light upon the path of Emerson even to 
 the grave. 
 
 The first teachers of Transcendentalism in New 
 England were Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer (more 
 than eight generations ago !). The one was its proph 
 etess, the other its protomartyr. They were beautiful 
 and refined, true ladies, of good education. Anne 
 Hutchinson was a woman of genius, however apolo 
 gists of Puritanism may call it fanaticism. Governor 
 Harry Vane was not far wrong in regarding her as 
 a prophetess ; for with her profitable and sober 
 carriage," which her opponents admitted, she united 
 a far-reaching spiritual instinct, a clear logical Intel- 
 
82 EMERSOX AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 lect, and the eloquence of simple and sweet speech. 
 She had but one religious principle, the indwelling 
 Spirit, setting free the individual from all rites and 
 formulas, and superior to all scriptures. She spoke 
 of the inner immediate revelation, but was careful to 
 guard this against any fanatical notion of its being 
 miraculous. This she pronounced a delusion. It was 
 really a more cultured form of Quakerism, and the 
 best Quakers became identified with it. Among these 
 was Mary Dyer. In 1638, when Anne Hutchinson 
 was banished from the Massachusetts colony, Mary 
 Dyer shared her exile in Rhode Island, but there could 
 not rest. She returned to preach in Boston, was twice 
 sentenced to death and reprieved, the second time 
 when her three male Quaker comrades had been exe 
 cuted beside her, and the rope was around her neck, 
 but on her third return suffered death. 
 
 Peter Bulkeley, as we have seen, presided at the 
 Synod which banished Anne Ilutchinson. It is now 
 visible as Bulkeley banishing Emerson. It is satis 
 factory, however, to know that the founder of Concord 
 died the year before the execution of Mary Dyer. 
 
 Time brought on its picturesque revenge. Anne 
 Hutchinson, with her band of exiles, settled near what 
 is now the beautiful town of Newport. She shares 
 with Roger Williams the glory of having founded the 
 first State on the planet organised on the principles of 
 entire religious liberty. " It was further ordered that 
 none be accounted a delinquent for doctrine." So 
 runs (anno 1638) the constitution of Anne Hutchin- 
 son s " democracie " of Aquetnet Island, which she 
 and her friends bought from the Indians, the signet 
 
A LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN. 83 
 
 of the State being a sheaf of arrows with the motto, 
 Amor vincet omnia. This fair future for love seemed 
 presently overcast when the Puritans pursued her in 
 her retreat. " Her powerful mind still continued its 
 activity," writes Bancroft; "young men from the 
 colonies became converts to her opinions ; and she 
 excited such admiration, that to the leaders in Mas 
 sachusetts it gave cause of suspicion and witchcraft." 
 Among the red men of Naragansett she had found 
 peace and safety ; but the Puritans could not endure 
 even the proximity of a colony so liberal, and Anne, 
 with her friends, had to move away into Connecticut, 
 where the Indians confused them with their Dutch 
 oppressors, and slew them. 
 
 When the Quakers came back into Massachusetts, it 
 was with these great witnesses from the past around 
 them. Among their settlements there was a flourish 
 ing one at New Bedford. At that place Emerson first 
 began to preach in the North. He found the Quakers 
 there in commotion. English Quakers, moved by 
 well-grounded apprehensions that the Amerian soci 
 eties were departing from orthodoxy, had visited the 
 United States. Wherever they preached, there rose 
 up before them Elias Hicks one of the great men 
 whose story remains to be truly told to confront 
 their dogmas. In 1827 the Societies of Friends 
 throughout the country were divided into " Ortho 
 dox " and " Hicksite ; " and when Emerson, in the 
 same year, preached at New Bedford, the controversy 
 was at its height. He there made the acquaintance 
 of Quakers, and his attention may here have been 
 drawn to the sacramental forms they rejected, and 
 
84 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 to the simplicity of their doctrine, the inner light. 
 Their view he adopted ; it was on this that he sepa 
 rated from his church, and in the end abandoned the 
 ministry. The Quaker poet, Whittier, recently wrote 
 of the reverence with which he regarded the beautiful 
 Boston Common, " knowing that hidden somewhere 
 under its green turf are -the graves of the Quaker 
 martyrs." But he might even more reverentially 
 remove his hat as he passes the Second Church in 
 Boston, where the broken body and shed blood of 
 Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer revived to be the 
 sacrament of a New World covenant. Nearly thirty 
 years ago, I went on a Sunday afternoon to a Quaker 
 meeting in Milton Street, Boston. There were hardly 
 a dozen persons present, and no word was spoken. 
 They were so few that they met but once a year. 
 That they should sit there, not knowing that their lost 
 life had been found, their broken seed risen to fruitage, 
 was incomprehensible to me until I found, by the jour 
 nals of Caroline Fox, that the one great man she could 
 not recognise and does not mention while he was 
 lecturing in England was that American in whom 
 her spiritual race had flowered ! 
 
 When Emerson returned from Europe, he straight 
 way went to New Bedford again, and preached there 
 for several months. The struggle between the Ortho 
 dox and the Ilicksites had ended in the latter connect 
 ing themselves with the Unitarian Church, which was 
 prepared to give up the sacraments to which they 
 objected. It was their hope that Emerson would settle 
 with them, but the price of the Sibylline book had been 
 raised ; he could consent only if he were permitted to 
 
A LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN. 85 
 
 pray or refrain from prayer as the spirit might move. 
 This was not conceded. But he remained for the true 
 Friends their good shepherd. A New Bedford boy, 
 afterwards distinguished as a journalist in New York, 
 Charles Congdon, has included in his published "Rem 
 iniscences " the following : 
 
 "One day there came into our pulpit the most 
 gracious of mortals, with a face all benignity, who 
 gave out the first hymn and made the first prayer as 
 an angel might have read and prayed. Our choir was 
 a pretty good one, but its best was coarse and discord 
 ant after Emerson s voice. I remember of the sermon 
 only that it had an indefinite charm of simplicity and 
 wisdom, with occasional illustrations from Nature, 
 which were about the most delicate and dainty things 
 of the kind which I had ever heard. I could under 
 stand them, if not the fresh philosophical novelty of 
 the discourse. Mr. Emerson preached for us for a good 
 many Sundays, lodging in the house of a Quaker lady 
 just below ours. Seated at my own door, I saw 
 him often go by, and once, in the exuberance of my 
 childish admiration, I ventured to nod to him and to 
 say Gootl morning. To my astonishment he also 
 nodded, and smilingly said, Good morning ; and 
 that is all the conversation I ever had with the sage of 
 Concord. He gave us afterwards two lectures based 
 upon his travels abroad, and was at a great deal 
 of trouble to hang up prints by way of illustration. 
 There was a picture of the Tribune in the Uffizi 
 Gallery in Florence, painted by one of our townsmen ; 
 and I recall Mr. Emerson s great anxiety that it should 
 have a good light, and his lamentation when a good 
 
80 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 light was found to be impossible. The lectures them 
 selves were so fine enchanting, we found them 
 that I have hungered to see them in print, and have 
 thought of the evenings on which they were delivered 
 as true Arabian Nights." 
 
 Mr. Hale White, in his letter to the "Athenaeum" 
 already quoted, falls into the familiar mistake of at 
 tributing to the Quakers of New England the indecency 
 which was really that of the Puritans, who scourged 
 those women naked through the streets ; but he tells a 
 charming story of Emerson s relation to the Friends. 
 " When Mr. Emerson was last in this country, I asked 
 him who were his chief friends in America. He replied, 
 I find many among the Quakers. I know one simple 
 old lady in particular whom I especially honour. She 
 said to me : I cannot think what you find in me which 
 is worth notice. Ah ! continued Mr. Emerson to me, 
 if she had said yea, and the whole world had thun 
 dered in her ear nay, she would still have said yea. 
 That was why he honoured her." 
 
 While connected with the Unitarian denomination, I 
 filled an engagement to preach and lecture in New Bed 
 ford, and there met some of these friends of Emerson. 
 In Maryland also I had found the Hicksite Quakers warm 
 sympathisers with the advancing religion of Massa 
 chusetts, in which they recognised the travail of George 
 Fox s soul. There was the triumphal tableau of a his 
 toric drama in these Friends surrounding the pure flower 
 of New England culture. In New Bedford it was 
 through the insight and faith of good women that the 
 new vision was reaching fulfilment. Anne Hutchinson 
 and Mary Dyer were still living and in great peace, 
 
A LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN. 87 
 
 finding their saint in a descendant of the Moderator 
 whose Synod banished them two centuries before. The 
 leading Quaker of New Bedford fifty years ago was Miss 
 Mary Rotch, whose friendship was precious to Emer 
 son, and she must be included among the women 
 whose influence largely moulded his life. She was 
 Margaret Fuller s friend also. It is even doubtful 
 whether it was not the vision of Mary Rotch leaving 
 chinch when the Last Supper was to be commemorated 
 which first cast a blight upon that rite in Emerson s 
 eyes. She was a woman of culture, quiet humour, 
 and sympathetic voice. Emerson loved to quote the 
 words of Mary Rotch whenever conversation threat 
 ened to become theological. On one occasion, I re 
 member an interval of silence, after which he said, 
 " Mary Rotch told me that her little girl one day 
 asked if she might do something. She replied, What 
 does the voice in thee say ? The child went off, and 
 after a time returned to say, Mother, the little voice 
 says, no. That," said Emerson, "calls the tears to 
 one s eyes." 
 
 Among those who were friends of Emerson s thought 
 in that early period may here be mentioned Elizabeth 
 Peabocly. Since Emerson s death a number of ladies 
 in Boston celebrated the seventieth birthday of this 
 lady, and in recalling the time when she came to Boston 
 to teach school, she mentioned her first acquaintance 
 with him. " 1 had a great desire to study Greek, and 
 Waldo, just through Harvard, was teaching it. Through 
 his brother William he became my teacher ; but he was 
 so shy, and I was so shy, we would sit at a table, and 
 he did not dare to look at me, nor I to speak to him. 
 
88 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 So we had a hard time of it till one day William Em 
 erson came with Waldo, and said everything necessary 
 to be said. After William had spoken for him, Waldo 
 took courage, things went on easier, and I went on 
 with my Greek." Miss Peabody and her sisters 
 afterwards Mrs. Hawthorne and Mrs. Horace Mann 
 Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Hoar (who had been be 
 trothed to his brother), and Sarah Clarke, were not 
 only true friends, but of high some of the highest 
 value to him. And meanwhile amid them still sat the 
 three fair Fates, who had helped to attune that heart 
 and intellect of his to a harmony which drew to him 
 the trust of woman. This he found his panoply against 
 animadversions and misunderstandings, whose severity 
 was, and is, underrated because so cheerily borne by 
 Emerson. 
 
 Sarah Bradford, the friend of his childhood, had 
 married Emerson s relative, the Rev. Samuel Ripley, 
 and was settled at Waltham, in the neighbourhood of 
 Boston. A letter of hers to Emerson s aunt, Mary 
 Moody Emerson, shows by its date, Sept. 4, 1883, 
 that Emerson must have sped to that Waltham home 
 immediately after his arrival from Europe. But it 
 shows something more. "We have had a delightful 
 visit of two days from Waldo. We feel about him as 
 you no doubt do. While we regard him still more than 
 ever as the apostle of the eternal reason, we do not 
 like to hear the crows, as Pindar says, caw at the bird 
 of Jove ; nevertheless, he has some stern advocates. 
 A lady was mourning the other day to Mr. Francis 
 about Mr. Emerson s insanity. Madam, I wish I 
 were half as sane, he answered, and with warm indig- 
 
A LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN. 89 
 
 nation." This was the Rev. Dr. Conners Francis, for 
 a long time professor in the Divinity College at Cam 
 bridge, whose wife was a sister of Mrs. Eipley, and 
 whose sister was Lydia Maria Child, author of various 
 works, among others of the earliest contribution to the 
 science of religions, "The Progress of Religious Ideas." 
 Thus was Emerson able to spare the applause of 
 bigots, being surrounded by good women, who never 
 fail in their sympathy for " an ideal right." Nor did 
 they fail of their reward. " You question me," writes 
 Margaret Fuller to a friend, "as to the nature of the 
 benefits conferred upon me by Mr. Emerson s preach 
 ing. I answer that his influence has been more ben 
 eficial to me than that of any American, and that from 
 him I first learned what is meant by the inward life. 
 Many other springs have since fed the stream of living 
 waters, but he first opened the fountain. That the 
 mind is its own place, was a dead phrase to me till 
 he cast light upon my mind. Several of his sermons 
 stand apart in my memory, like landmarks in my spir 
 itual history. It would take a volume to tell what this 
 one influence did for me, but perhaps I shall some time 
 see that it was best to be forced to help myself." In 
 this Margaret Fuller has expressed the grateful expe 
 rience of the women I have named, while each was a 
 sacred person in the experience of Emerson. To her 
 words may be added these of Goethe : 
 
 " Das E wig-Wei bliche 
 Zieht uns hinan." 
 
90 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 X. 
 
 THE WAIL OF THE CENTURY. 
 
 ONCE when we were conversing about Robert 
 Browning s poetry, Emerson said, "Paracelsus 
 is the wail of the nineteenth century." I was a new 
 student in Divinity College, and was rejoicing so much 
 in having reached a shore so free as Unitarianism, that 
 I did not quite understand Emerson s remark. After 
 wards, while rambling along the Plymouth shore, the 
 gently beating waves seemed to repeat 
 
 " The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung 
 To their first fault, and withered in their pride." 
 
 Like those voyagers in Paracelsus s fable, who bore 
 their household gods to the wrong shore, the old 
 Plymouth Pilgrims fixed their ideals in rock-caves of 
 dogma. 
 
 "A hundred shapes of lucid stone! 
 
 All day we built its shrine for each, 
 A shrine of rock for every one, 
 Nor paused we till in the westering sun 
 
 We sat together on the beach 
 To sing because our task was done. 
 When lo ! what shouts and merry songs I 
 What laughter all the distance stirs ! 
 A loaded raft with happy throngs 
 Of gentle islanders ! 
 
THE WAIL OF THE CENTURY. 91 
 
 4 Our isles are just at hand, they cried, 
 
 4 Like cloudlets faint at even sleeping ; 
 Our temple-gates are opened wide, 
 
 Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping 
 For these majestic forms, they cried. 
 Oh, then we awoke with sudden start 
 From our deep dream, and knew, too late, 
 How bare the rock, how desolate, 
 Which had received our precious freight : 
 
 Yet we called out w Depart ! 
 Our gifts, once given, must here abide. 
 
 Our work is done ; we have no heart 
 To mar our work, we cried."" 
 
 Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer and Roger Wil 
 liams, and their bands of liberal pilgrims, seemed now 
 the gentle islanders. From Rhode Island where the 
 islets in the harbour and the streets of their settlements 
 bore the names of graces and virtues they came to 
 tell the Pilgrims how hard and desolate was the dogma 
 that had received their ideals of truth, liberty, and 
 justice, whose exile they had shared. Sternly they 
 were bidden depart, but ever and again they returned. 
 
 In the end the Pilgrims had to yield and start on a 
 new pilgrimage, seeking new shrines for their gods. 
 There, on the self-same island where Anne Hutchinson 
 founded her community of free and equal men and 
 women, one hundred and fifty years later was born 
 Channing ; and there stands the beautiful memorial 
 church that bears his name, though less beautiful in its 
 architecture than in the fact that Channing objected to 
 the introduction of even a theistic expression of belief 
 into the constitution of the earlier church he dedicated 
 at Newport (1835). He demurred to the words " be- 
 
92 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 lieving in one God, the Father," lest they should ulti 
 mately become a fetter upon some honest seeker of 
 truth. Thus is the church a memorial also of Anne 
 Hutchinson, in the constitution of whose State it was 
 expressly provided "-that none be accounted delin 
 quent for doctrine." 
 
 In the phraseology of the old Pilgrims, Anne Hutch 
 inson and her gentle islanders had been banished 
 because they were " unlit for the society" which had 
 been constituted at Boston, and because it was feared 
 that they u might, upon some revelation, make a sud 
 den insurrection." But when from Rhode Island her 
 voice came back in the eloquence of Channing, none 
 could be more fit for the society of the citizens, though 
 there was a revelation, and thereon an insurrection. 
 The young scholars followed Channing as far as he 
 could lead, and once more fixed their ideals in the 
 shrines to which he led them. 
 
 UnitarLanism seemed, indeed, an abode fair enough 
 when seen from the bareness of Plymouth Rock. Its 
 rise and progress are traceable in a fine enthusiasm. 
 It did away with all the horrors of Calvinistic theology 
 its mercantile atonement, its doctrine of human de 
 pravity, its hell and devils. When the lucid ideals had 
 superseded such grim gargoyles of the old churches, 
 the children of the Pilgrims sang because their task 
 seemed done. t 
 
 But, alas ! once again the voice of the gentle island 
 ers was h.eard, and the new coast was found bare and 
 desolate. It was found that Unitarianism had unset 
 tled everything, settled nothing. It was trying to hold 
 on to the Christian fairy-tales after destroying the 
 
THE WAIL OF THE CEXTURY. 93 
 
 faith on which they rested. It clung to the rosy 
 visions of a theologic heaven, whose evidences it inval 
 idated by repudiating its equal revelation of visions 
 not rosy. It was able to give no reason for its sur 
 viving faith in God or immortality ; and when Abner 
 Kneeland denied these, and was shut up in prison, 
 Unitarianism mingled with its petition for mercy to its 
 abhorred child a cry of helplessness. 
 
 It was then shown, also, that temples sprinkled with 
 Unitarian holy water were not only prepared to im 
 prison the human mind, but might be made buttresses 
 of the national inhumanity based upon the Bible. 
 What, then, was Unitarianism? Christianity made 
 easy. New England theology w r ith none of its crosses, 
 but all of its comforts, adapted by scholars to suit 
 spiritual epicures. Between the Universalists, who 
 believed God too good to damn them, and the Unita 
 rians, who believed they were too good to be damned, 
 respectability was able to make itself quite comfort 
 able. But how was it with the real heart and intellect 
 of the country? 
 
 The "wail of the nineteenth century," already audi 
 ble in the Old World, was first heard in the new by 
 Emerson. Even in the peaceful homes of his Quakers, 
 or in that happy retreat at Waltham, it followed him, 
 and to it he must respond. A young man himself, 
 in years only thirty when he returned from Europe, 
 he saw the young men of America as if stricken by 
 a mental malady and melancholy, which " strips them 
 of all manly aims and bereaves them of animal 
 spirits." 
 , "The noblest youths," he wrote in a letter printed 
 
94 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 in the "Dial," "are in a, few years converted into pale 
 caryatides to uphold the temple of conventions. They 
 are in the state of the young Persians when that 
 mighty Yezdan prophet addressed them and said, 
 Behold the signs of evil days are come ; there is 
 now no longer any right course of action nor any self- 
 devotion left among the Iranis. As soon as they have 
 arrived at this turn, there are no employments to sat 
 isfy them ; they are educated above the work of their 
 time and country and disdain it. Many of the more 
 acute minds pass into a lofty criticism of these things, 
 which only embitters their sensibility to the evil and 
 widens the feeling of hostility between them and the 
 citizens at large. From this cause companies of the 
 best-educated young men in the Atlantic States every 
 week take their departure for Europe ; for no business 
 that they have in that country, but simply because 
 they shall so be hid from the reproachful eyes of their 
 countrymen, and agreeably entertained by one or two 
 years, with some lurking hope, no doubt, that some 
 thing may turn up to give them a decided direction. 
 It is easy to see that this is only a postponement of 
 their proper work, with the additional disadvantage of 
 a two years vacation. Add that this class is rapidly 
 increasing by the infatuation of the active class, who, 
 while they regard these young Americans with suspicion 
 and dislike, educate their own. children in the same 
 courses and use all possible endeavours to secure to 
 them the same result." 
 
 This, then, was "the wail of the nineteenth century." 
 Undoubtedly there was a cause for the acute form as 
 sumed by this malady. Authentic voices from Europe 
 
THE WAIL OF THE CENTURY. 95 
 
 were announcing the departure of old beliefs and the 
 crumbling of old institutions. Kant and Schelling, 
 Jacob! and Schleiermacher, Herder and De Wette, 
 Goethe and Schiller, Cousin and Quinet, Coleridge 
 and Carlyle, were read by students in colleges sup 
 posed to be intent upon languages of the dead. Above 
 all, Carlyle had spoken to young Americans, as Em 
 erson said, with an emphasis which deprived them of 
 sleep. Yet, though roused, they were drawn to travel 
 with shamed faces and averted eyes on the traditional 
 paths, albeit these paths had been fringed with fresh 
 flowers by Channing and the early Unitarians. The 
 greatest voices of their time brought them only pain 
 as they " clung to their first fault," heritage from their 
 fathers, who had prisoned the ideals of America in 
 stoniest shrines. 
 
 In Plymouth Emerson s first lecture was given, in 
 1834, and probably in the church founded by the Pil 
 grim Fathers. The long and brave history that made its 
 foreground, sent impressiveness to the vision to which 
 he pointed the children of the Pilgrims. The Hon. 
 Thomas Russell, then a schoolboy, remembers across 
 the half-century the weight of these words : Why 
 cannot some little community of men leave others to 
 seem and content themselves to be ? " 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
96 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABKOAD. 
 
 XI. 
 
 CULTURE. 
 
 T^MERSON S reference, quoted in the previous 
 JLJ chapter, to "that mighty Yezdan prophet" who 
 came to the Iranis in their evil days, may be followed 
 by the legend of how their darkness and doubt were 
 dispelled by Arda Viraf. 
 
 They say that once upon a time the pious Zoroaster 
 made the religion which he had received current in the 
 world, and till the completion of three hundred years 
 the religion was in purity, and men were without doubts. 
 This religion, namely, all the Avesta and Zend, written 
 upon prepared cowskins and with gold ink, was depos 
 ited in the archives of Stakhar Papakan. But Alex 
 ander the Great, who was dwelling in Egypt, burnt 
 them up, and after that there was confusion and con 
 tention among the people of the country of Iran. They 
 were doubtful in regard to God, and religions of many 
 kinds and various codes of laws were promulgated. 
 
 "And it is related that the wise men and teachers 
 of religion assembled, and agreed that they would give 
 to some one among them a sacred narcotic, that he 
 might pass into the invisible world and bring them 
 intelligence. The lot for this task fell on Arda Viraf. 
 
 "Then those teachers of religion filled three golden 
 
CULTURE. 97 
 
 cups with wine and the narcotic Vishtasp ; and they 
 gave one cup to Virdf with the word Well thought, 
 and the second cup with the word Well said, and the 
 third cup with the word Well done. 
 
 "While Viraf slept, seven women kept the ever 
 burning fire and the teachers chanted the Avesta. On 
 the seventh day the soul of Viraf returned, and he rose 
 up as from a pleasant sleep, inspired with good thoughts 
 and full of joy. An accomplished writer sat before 
 him, and whatsoever Viraf said he wrote down clearly 
 and correctly, as folio weth : 
 
 " Taking the first footstep with the good thought, 
 the second with the good word, and the third with the 
 good deed, I entered paradise. 
 
 " I put forth the first footstep to the star-track on 
 Ilumat, where good thoughts are received with hospi 
 tality ; and I saw those souls of the pious whose 
 radiance, which ever increased, was glittering as the 
 stars. And I asked Ataro, the angel, " Which place is 
 this, and which people are these?" And he answered, 
 " This is the star-track and these are they who in the 
 world offered no prayers and chanted no liturgies ; they 
 also exercised no sovereignty. Through other works 
 they have attained this happiness." 
 
 " I came to a place and saw the souls of the liberal 
 adorned above all others in splendour, and it seemed to 
 me sublime. 
 
 " I saw the souls of the great and truthful speakers, 
 who walked in lofty splendour, and it seemed to me 
 sublime. 
 
 " I saw the souls of agriculturists in a shining place, 
 as they stood and offered praise before the spirits of 
 
98 EMEESON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 water and earth, trees and cattle. Great is their throne. 
 The souls of artisans I also saw on embellished thrones. 
 And it seemed to me sublime. 
 
 " I saw the souls of the faithful, the teachers and 
 inquirers, in the greatest gladness, on a splendid throne ; 
 and it seemed to me sublime. 
 
 " I also saw the friendly souls of interceders and 
 peace-makers, who thereby ever increased their brilli 
 ance, and they ever walked in an atmosphere of light. 
 
 " I also saw the pre-eminent world of the religious, 
 which is the light, full of glory and of joy, with which 
 no one is satiated. " 
 
 Five centuries after this was written down, after 
 much earlier traditions, its vision was fulfilled in Con 
 cord. There, in the town of his fathers, Emerson went to 
 reside in 1834. He dwelt in the Old Manse, built by his 
 grandfather, with the venerable Dr. Ripley (for whom 
 his mother was keeping house) , until the following year. 
 Then he was married to Lidian Jackson, and purchased 
 the house and farm where he thenceforth lived. His 
 mother came to reside at his house, and there lived until 
 her death, November 16, 1853. His aunt Mary was a 
 frequent inmate until her death in May, 18G3. Near 
 by, at Waltham, and subsequently in the Old Manse at 
 Concord, was Sarah Ripley, who died in 1867. And 
 soon came the most brilliant and cultivated woman 
 America ever produced, Margaret Fuller. 
 
 While the teachers chanted their scriptures, and noble 
 women kept the sacred fire ever burning, Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson drank the Vishtasp, and with good thought, 
 good word, good deed, mounted to the star- track, and 
 
CULTURE. 99 
 
 conversed with the great souls of all ages, as trans 
 figured in the light and liberty of his own genius. 
 When he re-appeared to the world, it was with the 
 vision of one who had seen the invisible, and was able 
 to shed the needed light upon the life and labour of the 
 farmer and the artisan, no less than upon tasks of the 
 teacher and scholar. The age of scepticism was ended, 
 and the plague of pessimism w r as escaped. 
 / And this Vishtasp, what was it? The life-blood of 
 j all noblest hearts and brains, distilled by finest art 
 ^ and mingled with the wine of his own genius. 
 
 When Emerson was last in London, his friend William 
 Allingham guided him to various places in Old London, 
 Chaucer s " Tabard," Guildhall, and also at his special 
 desire to Milton s grave in the Church of St. Giles, 
 Cripplegate. It is in the chancel, the stone partly 
 covered by a pew. Allingham asked, "Do many 
 people come to look at this grave? "Americans, 
 sir," was the pew-opener s reply. In the cab, Emerson 
 said, " Perhaps nobody has so poor an opinion of my 
 books as I have myself." "That seems to me very 
 likely," answered Allingham with a smile. 
 
 Some day an artist will paint the picture of Emerson 
 in St. Giles Church, and inscribe it, " At the grave of 
 his father." 
 
 So soon as the pew, which partly covers Milton him 
 self as well as his grave, is removed, it will appear that 
 he has had no successor but in America. One may 
 find in England a fragment of him kneeling here, 
 another fragment singing there ; but the whole of him 
 has for some time been discoverable only in the literary 
 fraternity of America, mingling morning lark-songs 
 
100 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 with the chants of prophecy, and illumining the scroll 
 of human equality with the golden letters of poetry. 
 
 Above all was Emerson the flower of the heart of 
 Milton. An unspeakable awe-stricken reverence for 
 virtue and wisdom ; a spirit ever kneeling before the 
 universe as the transcendent temple of goodness and 
 truth ; a horror at the thought of raising private inter 
 ests before eternal principles and laws ; a faith not to 
 be argued with, absolute, in personal righteousness as 
 the primary condition of all worth, involving a sense 
 of corruption in all qualities however brilliant which 
 have not that foundation. These, however invested, 
 were the essential elements of that Puritanism which in 
 Milton saw the earth and sky aflame with cherubim, 
 and coined winds and seas into anthems of adoration. 
 In the course of two centuries Puritanism had, in the 
 hands of the common people, been moulded and 
 hardened into a grim unlovely dungeon. Abandon it, 
 said Channing ; Destroy it utterly, said Parker ; but 
 Emerson said. Be not afraid, this also is penetrable to 
 the spirit : and he led the way beyond the dark mouth 
 of the old cavern to tinted halls and fairy grottos, 
 repeating mystically the foliations and clusters of the 
 bright world without 
 
 An enterprising house in America has promised a 
 reprint of the " Dial." It may be that those four vol 
 umes, long precious to their few fortunate owners, will 
 presently be generally accessible. I will therefore 
 select from them only such passages as may indicate 
 the early impressions made upon Emerson s mind by 
 the masters of literature. Comparison of these early 
 criticisms with later writings will show pretty clearly 
 
CULTURE. 101 
 
 that some of them are transcripts from his diary kept 
 in youth. Horace Mann reports him as having in a 
 lecture (1837) condensed the commandments, as 
 regards young men, into two : " sit alone" and "keep 
 a journal." " Have a room by yourself, and if you can 
 not do without, sell your coat and sit in a blanket." 
 Emerson s advice came from his experience. 
 
 Let us read what in early years he wrote of Mil 
 ton : 
 
 "It is the prerogative of this great man to stand at 
 this hour foremost of all men in literary history, and 
 so (shall we not say?) of all men, in the power to 
 inspire. Virtue goes out of him into others. Leaving 
 out of view the pretensions of our contemporaries 
 (always an incalculable influence), w r e think no man 
 can be named whose mind still acts on the cultivated 
 intellect of England and America with an energy com 
 parable to that of Milton. As a poet, Shakespeare 
 undoubtedly transcends and far surpasses him in his 
 popularity with foreign nations ; but Shakespeare is a 
 voice merely ; who and what he was that sang, that 
 sings, we know not. Milton stands erect, commanding, 
 still visible as a man among men, and reads the laws 
 of the moral sentiment to the new-born race. There is 
 something pleasing in the affection with which we can 
 regard a man who died a hundred and sixty years ago 
 in the other hemisphere, who, in respect to personal 
 relations, is to us as the wind, yet by an influence 
 purely personal makes us jealous for his fame as for that 
 of a near friend. He is identified in the mind with all 
 select and holy images, with the supreme interests of 
 the human race." 
 
102 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 A hundred and sixty years after Milton s death came 
 Emerson s first year at Concord (1834) ; and in these 
 words just quoted is the spirit which still held last 
 those who supposed that they had broken with the new 
 heretic. He did not so much consider the letter of 
 current beliefs as the sentiments and ideas trying to 
 express themselves through them ; these he re-stated 
 with such fulness and beauty that their traditional or 
 dogmatic sheath softly folded away beneath. There 
 was even more of the Puritan than of the Unitarian in 
 him. As Swedenborg made a dictionary of corre 
 spondences for the names and words of the Bible, 
 Emerson found a significance in old beliefs. I remem 
 ber how old religious phraseology sometimes tinged his 
 casual talk, as "the saving grace of common-sense." 
 He looked upon human creeds with the same calmness 
 as upon cn~stals, flowers, and weeds ; they were to him 
 all genuine products of nature ; and as a religious nat 
 uralist, his instinct led him to develop, recombine, 
 transmute. He was never really alienated from the best 
 spirit of his fathers ; and when his mind expanded to 
 its flower, albeit so different from any that the same 
 stem had borne before, there was a corresponding 
 movement of the roots deeper into the Puritan soil 
 from which he had sprung. For every hard dogma he 
 unfolded a fragrant tinted petal of thought. He lost 
 nothing, but raised up all to the last day. This was, 
 I believe, one reason why the religious sentiment of 
 New England was never alienated from Emerson ; 
 he seemed to be giving a consummate statement of fun 
 damental beliefs, a prophet of true lineage announcing 
 the fulfilment of every jot and tittle of the faith deliv 
 ered to the saints. 
 
CULTURE. 103 
 
 When the "Mayflower" sailed, it took along no 
 copy of Shakespeare. A good argument may, indeed, 
 be made from Milton for performing Shakespeare s 
 plays even on Sunday (could that covering pew only be 
 removed !), but, in the Puritan measure, he who would 
 write an epic must live an epic ; and Shakespeare was 
 not in the list of martyrs. In his early estimate of 
 Milton, Emerson s sentence concerning Shakespeare 
 discloses a survival of this feeling. And with all his 
 enthusiasm for Shakespeare, which began when he was 
 at college, there are recurrences of chagrin at the 
 absence of any personality corresponding to the great 
 ness of the works. It was, perhaps, in some mood of 
 this kind that he omitted from " Representative Men," 
 as mentioned by Mr. Cooke, a passage delivered in the 
 lecture on Shakespeare : 
 
 "There is nothing in literature comparable to 
 Shakespeare s expression for strength and for delivery. 
 Men have existed who affirmed that they heard the 
 language of celestial angels, talked with them ; but 
 that, when they returned into the natural world, 
 though they preserved the memory of these conversa 
 tions, they found it impossible to transmute the things 
 that had been said into human thoughts and words. 
 But Shakespeare is like one who had been rapt into 
 some purer state of sensation and existence, had 
 learned the secret of a finer diction, and, when he re 
 turned to the world, retained the fine organ which had 
 been opened above." 
 
 Possibly this was felt to assign too high a source for 
 Shakespeare s inspiration. Whatever may have been 
 the cause of the omission of a passage so beautiful 
 
104 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 and just which recalls Tieck s pretty fable of the 
 fairies whispering in turn to the sleeping boy the 
 secrets he must afterwards tell, as encomium it falls 
 beneath others in his estimates of Shakespeare. Yet 
 in all that he has written about Shakespeare we may 
 hear the echo of Milton s sentence : "I was confirmed 
 in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of 
 his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, 
 ought himself to be a true poem." Schiller as Mr. 
 James Sime has pointed out in his beautiful biography 
 long found it intolerable that in Shakespeare s 
 writings " the poet would never let himself be caught, 
 would never talk with his reader." "For several 
 years," adds Schiller, "I studied Shakespeare, and 
 gave him my entire reverence, before his individuality 
 became dear to me." But this period was even more 
 slowly passed by Emerson. "It must even go into 
 the world s history," he says so late as 1850, "that 
 the best poet led an obscure and profane life, using his 
 genius for the public amusement." I feel pretty cer 
 tain that it was some feeling of this kind which led 
 Emerson to lend an ear to the theory, first propounded 
 by Miss Bacon, that the plays were not written by 
 Shakespeare but by Lord Bacon. Emerson did not, I 
 think, imagine that they could have been written by 
 Bacon, though he might not have agreed with Carlyle 
 that Bacon could as easily have created this planet 
 as written Hamlet. " But he had some scepticism 
 about the authorship of the plays. He introduced 
 Miss Bacon to Carlyle, who wrote back that she was 
 mad, and so she became. Emerson told me that he 
 thought Hawthorne s chapter concerning her, " Ilecol- 
 
CULTURE. 105 
 
 lections of a Gifted Woman," one of the best things 
 he had written, but was not further interested in her 
 theory. Carlyle, as I remember, could never quite 
 forgive Shakespeare for not having written a History 
 of England, and he did not admire him so much as 
 Emerson. In later life, in an extemporaneous speech 
 at Howard University, "Washington, Emerson said of 
 Shakespeare, " No nation has produced anything like 
 his equal. There is no quality in the human mind, 
 there is no class of topics, there is no legion of thought 
 in which he has not soared or descended, and none in 
 which he has not said the commanding word. All men 
 are impressed, in proportion to their own advancement 
 in thought, by the genius of Shakespeare ; and the 
 greatest mind values him the most." 
 
 Emerson went thoroughly into old English books, 
 from Chaucer to Sir Thomas Browne and Burton, but 
 valued more highly the earliest of these, and does not 
 hesitate to speak of his reading of such as an "idle 
 habit." He came among these venerable ones like the 
 man with the touchstone in Allingham s poem 
 
 " Of heirloom jewels, prized so much, 
 
 Were many changed to chips and clods, 
 And even ^tsitues of the gods 
 Crumbled beneath its touch." 
 
 The nature of his touchstone he has told : " There is 
 no better illustration of the laws by which the world is 
 governed than literature. There is no luck in it. It 
 proceeds by fate. Every scripture is given by the 
 inspiration of God. Every composition proceeds out 
 of a greater or less depth of thought, and this is the 
 measure of its effect." 
 
106 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 The chief thing he learned from the philosophers of 
 the past was the characteristic of the best thought of 
 his own time, namely, its realism and tendency to 
 scientific statement. The old wives prescriptions of 
 spiders legs and amulets recommended for divers mal 
 adies by Lord Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne, the 
 aerial devils with which Burton declares the air swarm 
 ing, of these and other cobwebs he sees the age of 
 science sweeping the world clear. The schoolboys of 
 to-day cannot conceive how their fathers were content 
 with their pinhole views of the universe. 
 
 Christendom has now become a vast reading-room. 
 Every hope, fear, folly, whim, has its organ. 
 
 " It prints a vast carcass of tradition every year with 
 as much solemnity as a new revelation. Along with 
 these it vents books that breathe of new mornings, that 
 seem to heave with the life of millions, books for which 
 men and women peak and pine ; books which take the 
 rose out of the cheek of him that wrote them, and give 
 him to the midnight a sad, solitary, diseased man; 
 which leave no man where they found him, but make 
 him better or worse ; and which work dubiously on 
 society, and seem to inoculate it with a venom before 
 any healthy result appears. The favourable side of 
 this research and love of facts is the bold and system 
 atic criticism which has appeared in every department 
 of literature. From Wolf s attack upon the authenticity 
 of the Homeric poems dates a new epoch of learning. 
 Ancient history has been found to be not yet settled. 
 It is to be subjected to common sense. It is to be 
 cross-examined. It is to be seen whether its traditions 
 will consist, not with universal belief, but with universal 
 
CULTURE. 107 
 
 experience. Niebuhr has sifted Roman history by the 
 like methods. Heeren has made good essays toward 
 ascertaining the necessary facts in the Grecian, Persian, 
 Assyrian, Egyptian, Ethiopic, Carthaginian nations. 
 English history has been analysed by Turner, Hallain, 
 Brodie, Palgrave. Goethe has gone the circuit of 
 human knowledge, as Lord Bacon did before him, 
 writing true or false on every article. Bentham has 
 attempted the same scrutiny in reference to civil law. 
 Pcstalozzi, out of a deep love, undertook the reform 
 of education. The ambition of Coleridge in England 
 embraced the whole problem of philosophy, to find, 
 that is, a foundation in thought for everything that 
 existed in fact. The German philosophers, Schilling, 
 Kant, Fichte, have applied tiieir analysis to nature and 
 thought with unique boldness. There can be no honest 
 inquiry which is not better than acquiescence. Inquiries 
 which once looked grave and vital no doubt change 
 their appearance very fast, and come to look frivolous 
 beside the later queries to which they give occasion. 
 This sceptical activity, at first directed on circumstances 
 and historical views deemed of great importance, soon 
 penetrated deeper than Rome or Egypt, than history or 
 institutions, or the vocabulary of metaphysics, namely, 
 into the thinker himself, and into every function he 
 exercises. The poetry and the speculation of the age 
 are marked by a certain philosophic turn which dis 
 criminates them from the works of earlier times. The 
 poet is not content to see how fair hangs the apple 
 from the rock, what music a sunbeam awoke in the 
 woods, nor of Ilardiknute, how stately steppes he 
 east the way, and stately steppes he west, but he now 
 
108 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 revolves, What is the apple to me? and what the birds 
 to me ? and what is Hardiknute to me ? and what am 
 I?" 
 
 Through all this it is felt that the writer is not one 
 of the sceptical phalanx in whose work he rejoices. 
 There is the undertone in it of a man who holds some 
 affirmation for which the way must be cleared. He 
 does not love the transitional, but finds in the motion 
 promise of a fairer repose. And it seems to me unde 
 niable that the impression which Emerson has made 
 upon his age is mainly due to his great convictions. 
 His idealism rises like a rock, almost alone amid the 
 waves of misgiving and doubt, which in these days 
 have covered nearly all others. 
 
 f* I find from these early [tapers, as compared with his 
 / collected writings, that Emerson s theology changed to 
 / a spiritual positivism, and then to a poetical philosophy. 
 His mental keynote is in the first sentence of his first 
 / Essay " There is one mind common to all individual 
 j men." From this point of view he finds history to be 
 V a vast expression of the powers and passions of every 
 heart and brain ; self-reliance to be self-surrender to 
 the Over-soul, that unity within which every man s 
 particular being is contained and made one with all 
 other. The essay on the Over-soul is the fullest ex 
 pression which this central idea of his philosophy has 
 reached. In a paper in the " Dial" this Over-soul is 
 at first generalised by him as the feeling of the in 
 finite," a semi-theological phrase which passes into 
 semi-philosophic statement. " Another element of the 
 modern poetry, akin to this subjective tendency, or 
 rather the direction of that same on the question of 
 
CULTURE. 109 
 
 resources, is the Feeling of the Infinite. Of the per 
 ception now becoming a conscious fact, that there is 
 One Mind, and that all the powers and privileges which 
 lie in any, lie in all ; that I as a man may claim and 
 appropriate whatever of true or fair or good or strong 
 has anywhere been exhibited ; that Moses and Con 
 fucius, Montaigne and Leibnitz, are not so much indi 
 viduals as they are parts of man and parts of me, and 
 my intelligence proves them my own, literature is far 
 the best expression." 
 
 This " feeling" of the infinite" is essentially one with 
 that "depth of thought," from which, as it more or less 
 comes, every scripture is more or less immortal, already 
 described as the touchstone with which Emerson went 
 among the great names of literature. He finds in it, 
 indeed, the dawn of a coming literature, and estimates 
 the writers of the past according to some gleam caught 
 by them here and there of this ascending glory. 
 
 The poet, by Emerson s estimate, was he who stood 
 at the shining point where all things converge to One. 
 Fancy may deal with fragments of the universe, and 
 invest them with fine conceits ; but the imagination is 
 conversant with the whole, and sees truth in universal 
 relations. The poet attained by insight the goal to 
 which all other knowledge is finding its way, step b} r 
 step, and has anticipated Buffon s declaration, " there 
 is but one animal," and Faraday s faith that in the end 
 there will be found but one clement with two polarities. 
 The globule of blood and the rolling planet are one ; a 
 little heat more or less makes of a bit of jelly a fish or 
 a human brain. The poet was therefore necessarily a 
 pantheist, and it looks like a theological survival" 
 
110 KMERSOX AT HOME AXD ABROAD. 
 
 that Emerson did not recognise the " authentic fire " in 
 Shelley. In Wordsworth, with whom pantheism was 
 unconscious, overpowering his intellectual beliefs a 
 feeling rather than a philosophy he recognised the 
 great modern poet." It is not wonderful that the poet 
 of Rydal Mount should have been a companion of those 
 dreamy walks through the vales around Concord, at a 
 time when the young seer s mind was burgeoning toward 
 its spring. "The Excursion awakened in every 
 lover of nature the right feeling. We saw stars shine, 
 we felt the awe of mountains, we heard the rustle of 
 the wind in the grass, and knew again the ineffable 
 secret of solitude. It was a great joy." 
 
 The exhaustive unity which dominated this phase of 
 Emerson s culture found a happy expression in his 
 philosophisings concerning Art. Here also he begins 
 with a statement of the law of identity a theme of 
 which no other writer has furnished so many and such 
 exquisite variations. Trade, politics, letters, science, 
 religion, art, arc the rays of one sun ; they translate 
 each other s laws into new languages. The law as it 
 appears in art is this : the Universal Soul is the alone 
 creator of the useful and the beautiful; therefore, to 
 make anything useful or beautiful, the individual must 
 be submitted to the universal mind. He speaks first of 
 the omnipotence of nature in the useful arts. "All 
 powerful action is performed by bringing the forces of 
 Nature to bear upon our objects. We do not grind 
 corn or lift the loom by our own strength, but we build 
 a mill in such a position as to set the north wind to play 
 upon our instrument, or the elastic force of steam, or 
 the ebb and flow of the sea. So in our handiwork, we 
 
CULTURE. Ill 
 
 do few things by muscular force, but we place ourselves 
 in such attitudes as to bring the force of gravity, that 
 is, the weight of the planet, to bear upon the spade or 
 the axe we wield." The same law prevails over the 
 fine arts. " A masterpiece of art has in the mind 
 a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant 
 or a crystal." u The delight which a work of art 
 affords, seems to arise from our recognising in it the mind 
 that formed Nature again an active operation. . . . 
 Arising out of eternal reason, one and perfect, what 
 ever is beautiful rests on the foundation of the neces 
 sary. ... In the mind of the artist, could we enter 
 there, we should see the sufficient reason for the last 
 flourish and tendril of his work, just as every tint and 
 spine in the seashell pre-exists in the secreting organs 
 of the fish." 
 
 After illustrating the subject by the discovered origin 
 of the Doric, Gothic, and other architectures in the 
 characteristics of Nature as surrounding the peoples 
 among whom they arose, the essay concludes with these 
 pregnant thoughts : 
 
 " In this country, at this time, other interests than 
 religion and patriotism are predominant, and the arts, 
 the daughters of enthusiasm, do not flourish. The 
 genuine offspring of our ruling passions we behold. 
 Popular institutions, the school, the reading-room, the 
 post-office, the exchange, the insurance company, and 
 an immense harvest of economical inventions, are the 
 fruit of the equality and the boundless liberty of lucra 
 tive callings. These are superficial wants ; and their 
 fruits are these superficial institutions. But as far as 
 they accelerate the end of political freedom and na- 
 
112 EMEKSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 tional education, they are preparing the soil of man 
 for fairer flowers and fruits in another age. For 
 / beauty, truth, and goodness are not obsolete ; they 
 1 spring eternal in the breast of man ; they are as 
 indigenous in Massachusetts as in Tuscany or the 
 Isles of Greece. And that Eternal Spirit whose triple 
 face they are, moulds from them for ever, for his mor 
 tal child, images to remind him of the Infinite and 
 Fair." 
 
 For some years after he had left the pulpit and 
 entered upon the study of philosophy and poetry, 
 Emerson did not conceal his sense of a certain friv 
 olity attaching to the " profession of letters." This 
 trait, perhaps, was partly hereditary. For seven or 
 eight horizons back of him there had been no litera 
 ture but what one part of the population preached to 
 the other, or, as he himself said, " ministers and min 
 isters." Even in Emerson s time the Puritan sus 
 picion of intellect remained, and to be simply literary 
 was yet slightly revolutionary. Few of his admirers 
 probably would be satisfied to have him described as a 
 4t man of letters," though all would feel that his style 
 is more that of the purely literary than of the metaphys 
 ical class. My belief is that from the time Emerson met 
 with the writings of Walter Savage Landor his tone 
 became less fervid and prophetic, and more secular. 
 Whatever eccentricity threatened him was dismissed 
 in the presence of the clear and classic style of 
 Landor. There is something almost naive in an 
 apology for literature with which he introduces a 
 paper on Landor. 
 
 " This sweet asylum of an intellectual life must 
 
CULTURE. 113 
 
 appear to have the sanction of nature, so long as 
 so many men are born with so decided an aptitude for 
 reading and writing. . . . Let us not be so illiberal 
 with our schemes for the renovation of society and 
 nature as to disesteem or deny the literary spirit. 
 Certainly there are heights in nature which command 
 this ; there are many more which this commands. It 
 is vain to call it luxury, and, as saints and reformers 
 are apt to do, decry it as a species of day-dreaming. 
 What else are sanctities, and reforms, and all other 
 things? Whatever can make for itself an element, 
 means, organs, servants and the most profound and 
 permanent existence in the hearts and heads of 
 millions of men, must have a reason for its being. 
 Its excellency is reason and vindication enough. If 
 rhyme rejoices us, there should be rhyme, as much as 
 if fire cheers us we should bring wood and coals. 
 Each kind oT excellence takes place for its hour and 
 excludes everything else. Do not brag of your ac 
 tions as if they were better than Homer s verses or 
 Raphael s pictures. Raphael and Homer feel that 
 action is pitiful beside their enchantments. They 
 could act too if the stake were worthy of them ; but 
 now all that is good in the universe urges them to 
 their tasks. Whoever writes for the love of truth and 
 beauty, and not with ulterior ends, belongs to this 
 sacred class." 
 
 Of this class he regarded Landor as chief among his 
 contemporaries, and with him he went, as it were, upon 
 a summer excursion into the land of letters, somewhat 
 as he might in summer pass a few weeks with Agassiz, 
 Holmes, and others in the Adirondack mountains. 
 
114 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 " As it is not from the highest Alps or Andes, but 
 from less elevated summits, that the most attractive 
 landscape is commanded, so is Mr. Landor the most 
 useful and agreeable of critics. 
 
 "In the character of Pericles he has found full play for 
 beauty and greatness of behaviour, where the circum 
 stances are in harmony with the man. These portraits, 
 though mere sketches, must be valued as attempts in 
 the very highest kind of narrative, which not only has 
 very few examples to exhibit of any success, but very 
 few competitors in the attempt. The word Character 
 is in all mouths ; it is a force which we all feel ; yet who 
 has analysed it ? What is the nature of that subtle aiidl 
 majestic principle which attaches us to a few persons, notj 
 so much by persons as by the most spiritual ties ? What 
 is the quality of the persons who, without being public 
 men, or literary men, or rich men, or active men, 
 or (in the popular sense) religious men, have a certain 
 salutary omnipresence in all one life s history, almost 
 giving their own quality to the atmosphere and the 
 landscape? A moral force, yet wholly unmindful of 
 creed and catechism, intellectual, but scornful of 
 books, it works directly and without means, and though 
 it may be resisted at any time, yet resistance to it is a 
 suicide. For the person who stands in this lofty rela 
 tion to his fellow-men is always the impersonation to 
 i them of their conscience. It is a sufficient proof of 
 the extreme delicacy of this element, evanescing 
 before any but the most sympathetic vision, that it has 
 so seldom been emplo} T ed in the drama and in novels. 
 Mr. Landor, almost alone among English living writ 
 ers, has indicated his perception of it." 
 
4 
 
 CULTURE. 115 
 
 Two early essays, "The Comic" and "The Tragic," 
 in some of their sparkling passages might represent 
 that Concord table-talk which so many remember. 
 The first of these opens with a paragraph which would 
 have made Lavater rub his eyes. 
 
 "It is a nail of pain and pleasure, said Plato, 
 which fastens the body to the mind. The way of life 
 is a line between the regions of tragedy and comedy. 
 I find few books so entertaining as the wistful human 
 history written out in the faces of any collection of men 
 at church or court-house. The silent assembly thus talks 
 very loud. The sailor carries in his face the tan of 
 tropic suns and the record of rough weather ; the old 
 farmer testifies of stone walls, rough wood-lots, the 
 meadows, and the new barn. The doctor s head is a 
 fragrant gallipot of virtues. The carpenter still 
 measures feet and inches with his eye, and the licensed 
 landlord mixes liquors in motionless pantomime. What 
 good bargains glimmer on the merchant s aspect ! And 
 if beauty, softness, and faith in female forms have their 
 influence, vices even, in slight degree, are thought 
 to improve the expression. Malice and scorn add to 
 beauty. You shall see eyes set too near, and limited 
 faces, faces of one make and invariable character. 
 How the busy fancy inquires into their biography and 
 relations ! They pique, but must tire. Compared with 
 universal faces, countenances of a general human type, 
 which pique less, they look less safe. In such groups 
 the observer does not think of heroes and sages. In 
 the silentest meeting the eye reads the plain prose of 
 life, timidity, caution, appetite, ignorance, old houses, 
 musty savours, stationary, retrograde faculties putter- 
 
116 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 ing around (to use the country phrase) in paltry 
 routines from January to December." 
 
 Having laid down the precincts of comedy, he main 
 tains that whilst a taste for fun is nearly universal with 
 the human species, the lower orders neither do nor 
 perceive anything ridiculous. Concord has no zoolog 
 ical garden. Is it not certain that an old fox or 
 opossum, an ostrich, an ape, and, measurably, a 
 donkey , are among nature s jokes ? 
 
 The brief paper on " The Tragic" is somewhat in 
 the same vein with his essay on " Fate." He regards 
 the tragical elements of life and nature as superficial 
 and transient. The bitterest of them are derived from 
 a belief in a brute fate that the order of nature is 
 controlled by a law not adapted to man, nor man to 
 that, but which holds on its way to the end, serving 
 him if his wishes chance to lie in the same course, 
 crushing him if his wishes lie contrary to it, and heed 
 less whether it serves or crushes him. " This is the 
 terrible idea that lies at the foundation of the old 
 dreek tragedy, and makes CEdipus and Antigone and 
 Orestes objects of such hopeless commiseration. They 
 must perish, and there is no over-god to stop or to mol 
 lify this hideous enginery that grinds or thunders, and 
 takes them up into its terrific system." In all this, 
 penalties are not grounded on the nature of things, but 
 on arbitrary will ; or, indeed, this destiny is not will 
 at all, but an immense whim. It is discriminated from 
 the doctrine of philosophical necessity in that the 
 last is an optimism, wherein the sufferer finds his 
 good consulted in the good of all of which he is a 
 part. The old idea of fate disappears with civili- 
 
CULTURE. 117 
 
 sation, and so the antique tragedy can never be re 
 produced. 
 
 "Time, the consoler, time, the rich carrier of all 
 changes, dries the freshest tears by obtruding new 
 figures, new costumes, new roads, on our eye, new 
 voices on our ear. . . . Nature will not sit still ; the 
 faculties will do somewhat ; new hopes spring, new 
 affections twine, and the broken is whole again. . . . 
 The intellect is a consoler, which delights in detaching 
 or putting an interval between a man and his fortune, 
 and so converts the sufferer into a spectator, and his 
 pain into poetry. It yields the joys of conversation, 
 of letters, and of science. Hence also the torments 
 of life become tuneful tragedy, solemn and soft with 
 music, and garnished with rich dark pictures. But 
 higher still than the activities of art, the intellect in 
 its purity, and the moral sense in its purity, are not 
 distinguished from each other, and both ravish us into 
 a region whereinto these passionate clouds of sorrow 
 cannot rise." 
 
 Goethe harmonised with Emerson s innate optimism, 
 with the disposition implied in it of looking upon con 
 ventional society with the eye of a naturalist rather 
 than that of a moralist. The devil became a fossil 
 monster for Emerson when Goethe appeared with his 
 sparkling wickedness. Emerson s optimism was a 
 zenith to the Puritan nadir, which held that " the earth 
 is the Lord s and the fulness thereof" in a sense that 
 would change space to a meeting-house and eternity to 
 a Sabbath-daymare. It is interesting to compare his 
 first and later criticisms upon Goethe. A letter to 
 Carlyle (1834) shows him scandalised by Goethe s 
 
118 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 velvet life. But Goethe " held him with his glittering 
 eye," and his first great effort in German was reading 
 Goethe s fifty-five volumes. Emerson came to care 
 more for the quantity than the quality of what he could 
 gain from any teacher. 
 
 " To look at him (Goethe) one would say there never 
 was an observer before. What sagacity, what industry 
 of observation ! To read his record is a frugality of 
 time, for you shall find no word that does not stand for 
 a thing ; and he is of that comprehension which can 
 see the value of truth. His love of Nature has seemed J 
 to give a new meaning to that word. There was never 1 
 man more domesticated in this world than he. ... If 
 we try Goethe by the ordinary canons of criticism, we 
 should say that his thinking is of great altitude and all 
 level ; not a succession of summits, but a high Atlantic 
 tableland. Dramatic power, the rarest talent in liter 
 ature, he has very little. He has an eye constant to 
 the fact of life, and that never pauses in its advance. 
 But the great felicities, the miracles of poetry, he has 
 never. It is all design with him, just thought and in 
 structed expression, analogies, allusion, illustration, 
 which knowledge and correct thinking supply ; but of 
 Shakespeare and the transcendent Muse no syllable. 
 . . . Poetry is with Goethe thus external, the gilding 
 of the chain, the mitigation of his fate ; but the Muse 
 never assays those thunder-tones which cause to vibrate 
 the sun and moon, which dissipate by dreadful melody 
 all this iron network of circumstance, and abolish the 
 old heavens and the old earth before the free-will and 
 godhead of man." Jit 
 
 There are many references to Goethe in Emerson s 
 
CULTURE. 119 
 
 writings, and ever and again, when his moral mood 
 has revolted, he returns almost like a penitent. 
 "After taxing Goethe as a courtier, artificial, unbe 
 lieving, worldly, I took up this book of Helena, 
 and found him an Indian of the wilderness, a piece of 
 pure nature, like an apple or an oak, large as morning 
 or night, and virtuous as a brier-rose." Finally, in 
 " Representative Men," he stereot3 pes his judgment. 
 " Goethe can never be dear to men." " He has not 
 worshipped the highest unity ; he is incapable of a 
 self-surrender to the moral sentiment." But! "The 
 old Eternal Genius who built the world has confided 
 himself more to this man than to any other." 
 
 The burden of his prophecy was on Emerson s 
 shoulders. Goethe had to create his New World out 
 of his brain by magic art, and mount it on a stage 
 tricked out in unyielding walls of a fortress. Emer 
 son is resolved that the poetry of the Old shall be the 
 reality of the New World. He means that the pictures 
 of Raphael and Goethe shall sink to studies of what is 
 to breathe and live in America. 
 
 The influence of Swedenborg upon the mind of Em 
 erson is phenomenal. The lecture upon the Mystic in 
 "Representative Men " suggests that he had placed too 
 much faith in the exaggerated claims for Swedeuborg s 
 scientific work put forth by enthusiastic writers. Hav 
 ing accepted their interpretations, e.g., that Sweden- 
 borg s allusion to seven planets was a prediction of 
 Uranus instead of a bit of astrology, Emerson was 
 prepared to welcome a man who justified the office of 
 the Seer by making more happy discoveries with his 
 scientific eyes shut (itveui,) than when they were open. 
 
120 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 T-ikiiig a general view of Swedenborg s life, nothing 
 could more completely foreshadow the ideal man of 
 Emerson: a powerful brain, whose first outgrowth is 
 a trunk of practical science, and whose last fruit 
 has converted all that trunk and its roots to vis 
 ions. Here, at any rate, was the hint and dim out 
 line of a man. He was much charmed by the ingenious 
 writers Dr. Garth Wilkinson in London, and Samp 
 son Reed in America who had adapted Swedenborg 
 to modern culture. He wrote to Carlyle in the early 
 years of their friendship about Swedenborg, at th 
 same time deprecating his Hebraism and mechanica 
 theism. Carlyle mentioned this to me, and added 
 " I speedily discovered that Swedenborg was mad and 
 gave him up." In the end, the Swedenborgians would 
 have been glad if Emerson had done the same. Noth 
 ing troubled them more than his lecture, fourteen years 
 later, on " Swedenborg, the Mystic." It was a splen 
 did epitaph on that sect. Nevertheless, it remains true 
 that Emerson was the first to discover the place of 
 Swedenborg in nature, the ages of tradition that 
 revealed their force and direction in his evolution. 
 " He is the last Father in the Church, and is not likely 
 to have a successor." He had carried the deity of 
 Christ, miracle, angelolatry, demonology, revelation, 
 to that extreme point that they became dying confes 
 sions of the Christian system. " Nature reveals her 
 secrets in monsters," said Goethe : Emerson, as a 
 spiritual naturalist, found similar revelations in the 
 monstrosities of Swedenborg keys to the discredite 
 spiritual mythology. 
 
 On Emerson s new horizon, Carlyle, the secre 
 
 i the 
 sditedll 
 
 tsu^^* 
 
CULTURE. 121 
 
 his "art and mystery" gained, appeared an English 
 Prometheus, resolved to bear to men the fire which the 
 Teutonic deities were reserving to themselves. His 
 brave effort to animate the cold still forms of trade 
 and politics was an irresistible appeal to Emerson ; and 
 in a paper he wrote on the appearance of " Past and 
 Present " there is the prophecy of Carlyle s career and 
 the omen of revolutions now historical. This paper of 
 seven pages is not so much a criticism as a happy cele 
 bration, the principal theme of which is admiration at 
 the generosity of the thinker who had addressed him 
 self to a great human task, with, however, a sharp 
 touch here and there on that thinker s faults. 
 
 "Here is Carlyle s new poem, his Iliad of English 
 woes, to follow his poem on France, entitled the His 
 tory of the French Revolution. In its first aspect it 
 is a political traqf, and since Burke, since Milton, w T e 
 have had nothii|| to compare with it. It grapples 
 honestly with the facts lying before all men, and with a 
 heart full of manly tenderness offers his best counsel 
 to his brothers. ... It is not by sitting still at a grand 
 distance and calling the human race laruce that men are 
 to be helped, nor by helping the depraved after their 
 own foolish fashion, but by doing unweariedly the work 
 we were born to do." 
 
 4 It requires great courage in a man of letters to 
 handle the contemporary practical questions, not be 
 cause he then has all men for his rivals, but because of 
 the infinite entanglements of the problem, and the 
 waste of strength in gathering unripe fruits. The 
 task i^perhuman, and the poet knows well that a 
 little time will do more than the most puissant genius." 
 
122 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 He expresses frankly his sense of a fault in Carlyle s 
 "Past and Present." The picture is over-coloured, 
 lacks universality, the tone exaggerated ; it is not 
 serene sunshine, but everything is seen in lurid storm- 
 lights. " One can hardly credit, whilst under the spell 
 of this magician, .that the world had always the same 
 bankrupt look to foregoing ages as to us as of a 
 failed world just recollecting its old withered forces to 
 begin again and try to do a little business. . . . Each 
 age has its own follies, as its majority is made up of 
 foolish young people ; its superstitions appear no super 
 stitions to itself; and if you should ask the contem 
 porary, he would tell you with pride or with regret 
 (according as he was practical or poetic) that it had 
 none. But after a short time, down go its follies and 
 weakness, and the memory of them ; its virtues alone 
 remain, and its limitation assumes the form of a beau 
 tiful superstition, as the dimness ojpour sight clothes 
 the objects in the horizon with mist and colour. The 
 Revelation of Reason is this of the uuchangeableness 
 of the fact of humanity under all its subjective aspects, 
 that to the cowering it always cowers, to the daring it 
 opens great avenues. The ancients are only venerable 
 to us because distance has destroyed what was trivial, 
 as the sun and stars affect us only grandly because we 
 cannot reach to their smoke and their surfaces and say, 
 Is that all?" 
 
 In private, Emerson remonstrated with Carlyle about 
 his style of writing, and I gathered from his conversa 
 tion that he never quite recovered from the shock of 
 " Sartor," nor valued that book so highly as hyjfricuds 
 did. It took all his optimism to adapt hiuiselPto his 
 
CULTURE. 123 
 
 friend s "clothes," but it was achieved. " We have 
 never had anything in literature so like earthquakes as 
 the laughter of Carlyle. He shakes with his moun 
 tain mirth. It is like the laughter of the genii in the 
 horizon. These jokes shake down Parliament-house, 
 and Windsor Castle, temple, and tower, and the future 
 shall echo the dangerous peals. The other particular 
 of his magnificence is in his rhymes. Carlyle is a poet 
 who is altogether too burly in his frame and habit to 
 submit to the limits of metre. Yet he is full of rhythm, 
 not only in the perpetual melody of his periods, but in 
 the burdens, refrains, and grand returns of his sense 
 and music. Whatever thought or motto has once ap 
 peared to him fraught with meaning, becomes an omen 
 to him henceforward, and is sure to return with deeper 
 tones and weightier import, now as promise, now as 
 threat, now as confirmation, in gigantic reverberation, 
 as if the hills, the korizon, and the next ages returned 
 the sound." 
 
 Probably the most lasting influence of Carlyle upon 
 Emerson was derived from his political writings, which 
 quickened in him the feeling of the practical relation 
 of his genius to his age and country. The creed of 
 the Puritans, that the worker must think, the thinker 
 must work, revived in his perception that literature is a 
 blossom that must pass away unless fulfilled in fruit. 
 
 In the first discoverable scrap of Emerson s writing 
 there is found nearly the same literary style as in his 
 last. The only authors whose influence seems trace 
 able in it are Shakespeare and Montaigne ; and one 
 may remember that Montaigne s Essays is the only book 
 known to have been in the library of Shakespeare. If 
 
124 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 one should first meet in an essay by Emerson such 
 sentences as, " Spirits are not finely touched but to 
 fine issues," or " Nature is helped by no mean, but 
 nature makes that mean" it would hardly make one 
 pause. In his lecture on Montaigne, Emerson says, 
 " A single odd volume of Cotton s translation of the 
 Essays remained to me from my father s library when a 
 boy. It lay long neglected, until, after many years, 
 when I was newly escaped from college, I read the book 
 and procured the remaining volumes. I remember the 
 delight and wonder in which I lived with it. It seemed 
 to me as if I had myself written the book in some 
 former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thought and 
 experience." 
 
 There is, however, a felicity about Emerson s ex 
 pression such as is hinted in a note he wrote on verses 
 sent to the "Dial" by Wentworth Higginson in his 
 youth: "They have truth and earnestness, and a 
 happier hour may add that external perfection which 
 can neither be commanded nor described." The 
 nearest parallel is in the authentic utterances found in 
 the bibles of the world. Emerson was among the 
 earliest students of Oriental scriptures, from which 
 some of the finest passages were inserted in the 
 "Dial." In the paper which we have been mainly 
 reading, " Thoughts on Literature," he writes : " The 
 Bible is the most original book in the world. This old 
 collection of the ejaculations of love and dread, of the 
 supreme desires and contritions of men, proceeding 
 out of the region of the grand and eternal, by whatso 
 ever different mouths spoken, and through a wide 
 extent of times and countries, seems, especially if you 
 
CULTURE.- 125 
 
 add to our canon the kindred sacred writings of the 
 Hindoos, Persians, and Greeks, the alphabet of the 
 nations. * 
 
 In reading these critical judgments, one may recognise 
 that Emerson had at a very early age liberated himself 
 from all authorities. In his first lecture at Harvard 
 University (1837) he said : " Meek young men grow up 
 in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views 
 which Cicero, which Locke, winch Bacon have given, 
 forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only 
 young men in libraries when they wrote these books." 
 In this spirit he gathered up the literature of the past 
 into himself, but it was transmuted into his own life by 
 his own experience. Herman Grimm (" National 
 Zeitung," June 11, 1882) finds a resemblance in Emer 
 son to Shakespeare in " the precision with which, 
 especially in illustration, he draws from his own experi 
 ence, without caring to go beyond it." And in reading 
 or hearing his sentences on men and books, I have felt 
 that they were not literary criticism but spiritual 
 biography. The finest writing was worse than wasted 
 on Emerson unless it advanced some actuality a point 
 farther. He would forgive endless weeds where he 
 found one sesame that could open any closed door, but 
 cared not for the most felicitous amplifications. It is 
 not in an ordinary sense that Emerson can be described 
 as a literary man at all. In books he valued so much 
 as was not book but man, and could be so proved by 
 assimilation in another man. That writer who had 
 helped him was the writer he could report about. Not 
 that his spirit was, " Save most of men Count Gis- 
 mond, who saved me !" But he knew the danger of a 
 
126 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 counterfeit ; he would never pronounce a thing true 
 gold which had not rung on his counter, nor any cur 
 rency sound which he had not actually converted into 
 the substance of life. "Cut these words and they 
 would bleed," he says of Montaigne. Emerson s 
 literary estimates are sometimes surprising ; but his 
 task lay in a realm where " the perfection of man is 
 the love of use ; " and where words are known only as 
 they are made flesh, and estimated by experience of 
 their creative power. 
 
EAGLE AND DOVE. 127 
 
 XII. 
 EAGLE AND DOVE. 
 
 ON a beautiful day I was walking with Emerson in 
 a wood near Concord. It was in one of my early 
 months at Divinity College, a period of painful rec 
 ollections of my once comfortable little Egypt, left for 
 poverty, loneliness, and a spiritual wilderness. He 
 had questioned me about our studies up at Cambridge, 
 and our experiences, and brought upon himself an out 
 pouring of crude questionings and blank misgivings 
 about the universe. He listened with a patience I now 
 see to be divine. After a silence, and a few sympathetic 
 words, he paused and exclaimed, "Ah! there is one 
 of the gods of the wood ! " I looked and saw nothing ; 
 then turned to him and followed his glance, but still 
 beheld nothing unusual. He was looking with a 
 beaming eye along the path that lay before us through 
 a thicket. "Where? "I asked. "Did you see it?" 
 he said, now moving on. " No, I saw nothing what 
 was it?" " No matter," said he gently. I repeated 
 my question, but he still said smilingly, " Never mind 
 if you did not see it." I was a little piqued, but said 
 no more, and very soon was listening to discourse 
 which obliterated anxieties about the absolute. The 
 incident was never alluded to again, and it was long 
 
128 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 before I knew what god of the woods Emerson then 
 surprised, which I saw not. 
 
 Many have learned, with George Meredith 
 
 u What a dusty answer gets the soul 
 When hot for certainties in this our life." 
 
 But it is the characteristic of our time that the certain 
 ties are hotter after mortals than these are for the cer 
 tainties. Some of us who have known the bitterness 
 of seeing the old stars of faith go down, as we were 
 wandering through the dark wolds of early life, have 
 been guided from it by the tones of Concordia (to 
 remember Schiller s "Bell") ; but we may not have 
 considered or remembered through what fires and hard 
 blows Concordia had to pass ere it gained that pure 
 voice in which the stars that had set rose again in our 
 heart and sang together for joy. It is difficult to 
 associate anything but happiness with Emerson ; but 
 Heine s fact stands, Wherever genius is, there is Gol 
 gotha. When Emerson hacT gone to dwell in Concord, 
 and when, on the two-hundredth anniversary of the 
 settlement of the town by his ancestors, he built their 
 bones into the poetic monument already described, the 
 faith in which they had so nobly wrought was to him 
 the place of a skull. Scepticism was not in his tem 
 perament ; he was a born believer ; his eye was made 
 for ineffable visions ; yet the fatal shaft of criticism 
 had reached the vulnerable point, his intellectual 
 veracity, and there remained not a rack of the an 
 cient deities or heavens. 
 
 Residing with his prayerful mother, in the home of 
 the venerable minister in whom the pious traditions of 
 
EAGLE AND DOVE. 129 
 
 his race are all embodied, what sees that walking eye 
 ball with no past at his back? 
 
 "As men s prayers are a disease of the will, so are 
 their creeds a disease of the intellect." 
 
 " The faith that stands on authority is not faith." 
 
 "The word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian 
 churches, gives a false impression : it is Monster." 
 
 The prayers and even the dogmas of our Church 
 are like the zodiac of Denderah, and the astronomical 
 monuments of the Hindoos, wholly insulated from 
 anything now extant in the life and business of the 
 people." 
 
 "The Puritans in England and America found in 
 the Christ of the Catholic Church, and in the dogmas 
 inherited from Rome, scope for their austere piety and 
 their longings for civil freedom. But their creed is 
 passing away, and none arises in its room." 
 
 " Christianity became a my thus, as the poetic teach 
 ing of Greece and of Egypt before." 
 
 "The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. 
 No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early 
 syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears 
 of mortals." 
 
 " The popular notion of a revelation is that it is a 
 telling of fortunes." 
 
 "These questions which we lust to ask about the 
 future are a confession of sin." 
 
 In the Wiertz Museum at Brussels is pictured a 
 maiden gazing on her own skeleton ; these denials 
 show the skeleton supplanting a form painted with the 
 colours of faith over its shrivelled skin. But what 
 does all this mean for a young, believing, loving, and 
 
130 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 truthful genius like that of Emerson ? for a genius with 
 the world in its winged heart? It means Milton sud 
 denly brought down from his celestial paradise to a 
 small prosaic solitude. 
 
 Goethe s fable tells the near result. As the eagle 
 soared, the huntsman s dart pierced its right wing and 
 brought it to the ground. The wound was healed, but 
 alas ! the power to soar was gone. Now from the earth, 
 pining, he can only look up to the far heaven, his haughty 
 eye filled with a tear. A dove beholds his sorrow, and, 
 turning for a moment from its mate, flutters to the 
 next bush. "Cheer up, my friend," it says sweetly to 
 the wounded king ; "see how near thee are the sources 
 of tranquil bliss. On the brook s mossy brink thy 
 heart can meet the sunset splendours. Amid the dewy 
 flowers thou shalt find delicate food. At the crystal 
 fountain thy thirst may be quenched. O friend ! the 
 sweet spirit of content gives all we know of happiness, 
 and finds everywhere its food." The eagle, its lofty 
 eye turned now to the myrtle grove where it had fallen, 
 then into itself, said, "O wisdom, ever thou speakest 
 as a dove ! " 
 
 Smitten down from his pulpit by the arrow that flieth 
 by day, exiled from the apocalyptic city of God how 
 ever radiant in the visions of Dante and Milton Em 
 erson, with broken wing, still gazed on the ancient 
 heavens. Nay, as we have seen, he flutters away to 
 Highgate, Rydal Mount, Craigenputtock, seeking some 
 helpful strength by which he may rise. "Believe in 
 the Trinity!" cried Coleridge. "Beware of your 
 intellect ! " warned Wordsworth. " No step thither 
 ward can be taken!" said Carl vie. Back, then, to 
 
EAGLE AND DOVE. 131 
 
 Concord ! Back, with however heavy a heart, to listen 
 to what the dove may say at the door of the Old 
 Manse ! 
 
 As over the chaos of crumbled beliefs this sweet 
 spirit brooded, there arose an Eden which turned the 
 visions, from Patmos to Rydal Mount, into mere fables 
 of its eternal beauty. Those negations quoted above 
 are merest thorns, which Emerson pruned away from 
 his roses, that needed no guard but his love to garner 
 the dawns in that garden. Every essential doc 
 trine of every system deemed religious receives its 
 sentence. Read in their context, the negations are 
 shades setting forth glorious forms of affirmation ; 
 they are discords that die in raising the heart to har 
 monies ; they are serpents summoned only to deliver 
 up the fruits of wisdom to him whose heel their head 
 sustains. He has found the immortality that is not 
 postponed ; he prays the prayer that is always 
 answered ; he meets a god in every bush. His joy now 
 looks back upon the former heaven as a prison. He 
 has learned why nature denied man wings, and takes 
 care that when devised they shall melt or be broken 
 even that he may soar. 
 
132 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 XIII. 
 DAILY BREAD. 
 
 SIR RALPH EMERSON in Yorkshire, if a true 
 ancestor, would never have been prouder of the 
 lions on his shield, had he foreseen " Thomas Emerson, 
 Baker," on the front of that house in New England 
 where the American family was founded. This gentle 
 man, reared under chivalrous traditions, finds himself 
 in a wild settlement of his fellows, and recognises be 
 side u Labour- in-vain Creek " the dragon he is to slay 
 Barrenness he is to conquer, swamp he is to clear., He 
 is the best-educated man there, and well-to-do ; he sees 
 a thing needed wholesome wheaten bread ; and into 
 bread he converts a large quantity of dust and mud. 
 When his monument is built, let his coat of arms be 
 carved quartered with a loaf, over the words, "He 
 made bread for men in the wilderness." And the 
 words of his great descendant might be added, " Real 
 service will not lose its nobleness." 
 
 Two centuries later the same English knighthood, 
 its plume changed to a pen, its badge to an invisible 
 charm, is found in Concord, giving to the settlers of an 
 ideal world their daily bread. Nor was he in this less 
 cheerful and earnest because it was a world small and 
 lowly, so far as then visible. From the first Emerson 
 
DAILY BREAD. 133 
 
 had shown himself remarkably free from ambition for 
 public position, his eagerness being apparent where 
 individual minds were concerned. Of spiritual com 
 panionship in Concord, when he first went to reside 
 there, he found very little ; and, much as he loved 
 solitude, he longed ardently for intellectual communion. 
 He pleaded with Carlyle very earnestly to come to 
 New England, as we have seen, but in vain. The great 
 lesson of self-reliance which he was to teach, he now 
 learned in all its depths. One of its most important 
 instructions was that others were essentially like him 
 self or were himself. They would transmute the 
 same ideas and truths, if given them, as they did the 
 same bread and fruit into protoplasm. If he should 
 show these humble country-folk what was in his heart, 
 would they receive it ? could the} ? The question was 
 no sooner asked than answered. 
 
 Emerson was under the necessity of earning his own 
 daily bread, but felt no anxiety on that score. His 
 lectures paid only an average of four pounds each, but 
 that, forty-seven years ago, was enough to secure him 
 what he most needed just then, a year or two of free 
 dom for poise before descending on his object. He 
 used to speak of it as leisure, but in the years 1834 
 and 1835 he gave twenty-two lectures in Boston, the 
 subjects being "Water," " The Relations of Man to 
 the Globe," " Italy (2)," " The Means of Inspiring a 
 Taste for English Literature," " Biography," "Burke," 
 " Michael Angelo," "Luther," "George Fox," "Eng 
 lish Literature (10)." He generally wrote these lec 
 tures out in the week they were delivered. He also 
 wrote some of his best poems about this time. He was 
 
134 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 perfectly conscious that there was a field golden with 
 its harvest before him, and that his sickle was able to 
 reap it. He deliberately prepared himself for the work. 
 He studied the works and lives of the men and women 
 who had made revolutions Socrates and Plato, Plo- 
 tinus, St. Augustine, Dante, Luther, George Fox, 
 Behmen, Swedenborg, Tauler, Bacon, Newton, Goethe. 
 And meanwhile he kept up his habit of teaching the 
 people, and of sedulously attending to every individual 
 whom his thought drew to him. 
 
 Emerson found near Concord (namely, at East Lex 
 ington) a congregation which dearly loved to listen to 
 him, and would have dispensed with any forms what 
 ever to have him settle with them. But this he would 
 not do. He used to drive out there from Concord to 
 preach to them on Sundays. This was while he was 
 giving his earliest lectures in Boston, which so many 
 declared incomprehensible. Emerson never lowered 
 his statement for any audience ; he prepared for the 
 Lexington ians as if they were an assembly of Oxoni 
 ans. Lexington understood him well enough. Eliza 
 beth Peabody told me that an humble woman there, 
 asked whether they meant to settle a preacher, replied, 
 "We are very simple people here, and don t understand 
 anybody but Mr. Emerson." 
 
 A youth whose unfolding mind had attracted him 
 was invited from Boston to pass some days at the Old 
 Manse, and has told me of his great happiness in 
 driving with Emerson over to East Lexington, where 
 he heard him preach on a Sunday morning. On the 
 way Emerson repeated George Herbert s hymn, "Sweet 
 day, so cool, so calm, so bright." It would seem a 
 
DAILY BREAD. 135 
 
 sufficient end of life to pass such a morning in the 
 morning time of life ; and, for his young friend, that 
 sweet day has never set. 
 
 The discourses which Emerson gave these simple peo 
 ple were the same he had given in Boston, and, as he told 
 me, many of them re-appear in substance in his volumes. 
 But he found the country congregation more open to 
 any innovations he saw fit to make in the services. As 
 we have seen, he could no longer conform to the usage 
 of formal prayer. A friend told me that about this 
 time he heard him give a discourse on the text, " Pray 
 without ceasing." The burden of it was that, when 
 prayer was real, whatever men prayed for they re 
 ceived. If the prayer were unreal, a petition for what 
 was against the nature of things, there could ba no heart 
 in it, and no faith ; but if it were the genuine aspira 
 tion of the whole nature, it would be the unceasing 
 aim, and desire, and effort of the life, and that prayer 
 would move on to its answer and fulfilment. " Our 
 prayers are prophets." 
 
 In the same way Emerson gave the people bread 
 made of grain that had grown in them. He differed 
 from the majority of " innovators" in this. He did 
 not undervalue the religious sentiments already in the 
 common people, or their associations. The New 
 England congregations, with their slowly built-up 
 independence ; the weekly day of rest, which gave 
 opportunity for moral culture ; the simplicity of the 
 services, allowing so much room for quiet modification ; 
 all these were recognised by Emerson as forms, in the 
 main, higher than the use commonly made of them. 
 And likewise the popular beliefs in God, in the 
 
136 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 eternal consequence of actions, in retribution, in 
 miracle, in the divinity of a man who had lived and 
 died for his fellows how susceptible all these were of 
 such statement as would make them living bread to 
 mankind ! The only need was that men and women 
 should be made to realise that these things were of the 
 essence of their daily lives, when truly lived. What 
 Confucius had taught in ancient China, Emerson ap 
 plied to his neighbours. u The ode says, As we cut 
 hatchet handles. We use one handle to cut another. 
 The wise man uses what is in man to reform men." So 
 Emerson taught the lowly folk around him that Concord 
 and East Lexington possess the elements of Palestine, 
 that true prayers are alwa} s answered, that the world 
 is what we believe it to be, that the future is what we 
 make it, and that the perfect man is God. 
 
 He studied the sciences carefully, always keeping 
 abreast of their vanguard, and brought every ray of 
 light from Germany, France, England, to illumine the 
 things around him, and around those he taught. The 
 discoveries of philology lit up the every-day speech of 
 the rustic, surprised at finding his words were poems : 
 the gods and goddesses of mythology were seen in 
 the procession of dawns, days, clouds, seasons ; the 
 trees were heard singing and sighing as if an Ariel 
 were in each ; nature was touched and tinted all over 
 with new light, its secrets told, until everything seemed 
 supernatural. To make life, for each whom he could 
 reach, rich, beautiful, divine, was to Emerson an object 
 so assiduously pursued, that to simple minds he was 
 irresistible. 
 
 New England Puritanism had intertwined its theology 
 
DAILY BREAD. 137 
 
 with every-day life. The children bore scriptural 
 names ; a text was cited for everything, whether shoot 
 ing an Indian, executing a witch, or planting peas and 
 beans. The perpetual round of biblical duties gave 
 the week seven sabbaths. It has been said that if a 
 fool would only be consistent in his folly he would cease 
 to be a fool. When the Judaic delusion of Puritanism 
 had gone to a suicidal extreme, when the strain on 
 human nature began to give way, and a generation 
 came that could venture to smile, the jokes became 
 textual. The author of " The Biglow Papers," reply 
 ing to a charge of irreverence, says : " Will any one 
 familiar with the New England countryman venture to 
 tell me that he does not speak of sacred things famil 
 iarly ? " Corresponding to this was that outcome of the 
 Puritan measure which now, by the voice of Emerson, 
 insisted on an actual and every-day application of the 
 principles which had taken the place of the dogmas. 
 They should not be shelved for Sunday use. Whatever 
 was affirmed must be religiously applied. The typical 
 old lady of Boston, who, when asked her opinion of the 
 doctrine, observed that "Total depravity is a good 
 thing if only lived up to," found an unexpected sup 
 porter in the new thinker. Every doctrine which had 
 faintly " survived" in the Unitarian movement, every 
 theory it affirmed, was now tested as to its applicability 
 to the existing time and place, and its harmony with 
 the highest aims that men and women could set before 
 themselves. The churches saw danger in this doctrine 
 when enunciated by one who had found even the 
 creedless church of Channing too narrow, and whose 
 pale of communion had widened to include science and 
 
138 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 art, and the secular work of the world. But the com 
 mon people heard him gladly. Pisgah and Tabor rose 
 up against the horizon around Concord and Lexington. 
 In his twenty-second }*ear Emerson, at the anniversary 
 of the Concord fight, proposed the toast, "The little 
 bush that marks the spot where Captain Davis fell : tis 
 the burning bush where God spake for his people." 
 Now he kindles every bush for the people. He per 
 suades the farmer, so anxious not to be cheated, that 
 when he is equally anxious not to cheat, his market- 
 cart will shine like a chariot of the sun. The corre 
 spondences which Swedenborg saw between biblical and 
 natural forms are fossils beside those which Emerson 
 shewed between nature and the heart, mind, life, of 
 every man ; over every flower hovered its soul, and the 
 farm was a sermon that never wearied. Thus the 
 descendant of Thomas Emerson, baker, did not seek 
 to feed the hunger of his villagers with tidings of 
 heavenly bread harvested in ancient times and far 
 lands. Beside his "Labour-in-vain Creek," as the 
 retrospective fathers found it, he lived and laboured as 
 in the living garden of a living God, and gave of its 
 fruits to all whom he met ; and such made it manifest 
 that his prophecy was true that which was ecstasy 
 shall become daily bread. 
 
THE HOME. 139 
 
 XIV. 
 
 THE HOME. 
 
 A WISE old friend of mine used to say that in 
 marriage one should seek a soul that came into 
 the world about the same time as himself." So Emer 
 son once said to me. Lidian Jackson, whom he 
 married in September, 1835, exceeded him a little in 
 age, and the spiritual breath of the same era was upon 
 her. Born beside Plymouth Rock, she had become of 
 such marked devoutness in the Church there founded 
 by the Pilgrims, dedicated by her ancestors to the 
 God of Calvin, and ascended to the God of Chanuing, 
 and so unwearied in her charities that she was known 
 as "the Saint of Plymouth." Yet, whenever the " Last 
 Supper" was to be celebrated in this church, its saint 
 arose, and, from the old family pew near the pulpit, 
 walked down the aisle and out of the church. This 
 was not because she did not honour the rite, but be 
 cause she held its maintenance as a condition of 
 church-membership to be its perversion and dishonour. 
 Mrs. Emerson brought some pecuniary addition to his j 
 means, and the house, with its pleasant garden, in 
 which he loved to work, and several acres were pur 
 chased. Emerson now regarded himself as a rich man, 
 with his homestead, about twenty thousand dollars in / 
 
140 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 money, and an increasing demand for his lectures. 
 Then, as always, he and his wife knew the art of 
 spending. Simplicity, good taste, comfort, hospitality, 
 sincerity, were the furniture of this Concord home. 
 There were business men in Boston who revered the 
 scholar and philosopher, and perhaps then as later, if 
 they had a good chance for an investment were glad to 
 get Emerson s surplus into it and forward him good 
 dividends. His mother may have been a little dis 
 tressed at first by the strange opinions which had sep 
 arated him from the Church, but she soon found that 
 he had chosen the better part. Surrounded thus by 
 all the resources of happiness, Emerson sorrowed most 
 for his friend Carlyle in his lonely home on the bleak 
 moors, and again urged him to come. He offered 
 Carlyle his home, and even his own destiny. He 
 prophesied and pictured for him a career in America 
 singularly resembling the career afterwards fulfilled by 
 himself. " He used to write," said Carlyle to me, 
 u of solid and honest farmers, and said, Horace 
 Greeley does their thinking for them at a dollar a 
 head. " Whereat Carlyle w r as mirthful ; but one can 
 now see a sad contrast in the environments which the 
 Old World and the New had severally assigned to 
 these representatives of the same era. Carlyle praises 
 poverty, while every posthumous page bears witness to 
 its miserable effects upon himself and his life. Emer 
 son never knew real poverty ; even while he drove his 
 mother s cow to pasture, there were prospects of plenty 
 around him in every direction, and no room for fear or 
 misgiving about the future. To a healthy intelligent 
 youth America was already a fortune. Caiiyle s 
 
THE HOME. 141 
 
 "Blessed be poverty" is not so wise as Solomon s 
 " Give me neither poverty nor riches." After all it is a 
 mean thing, this struggle for existence, to a thinker 
 whose mind should be free to detach the poetic dream 
 of its youth from the local mould, and sound a 
 melody for the young world. " Concordia " lost noth 
 ing from its notes by not having passed through that 
 furnace-smoke. 
 
 Much more will have to be said about Emerson s 
 home as the birthplace of many souls, but 1 insert 
 here reminiscences written by Louisa Alcott, whose 
 tales have carried far the morning breath of Concord. 
 
 "My first remembrance is of the morning when I 
 was sent to inquire for little Waldo, then, lying very ill. 
 His father came to me, so worn with watching and 
 changed by sorrow, that I was startled, and could only 
 stammer out my message. Child, he is dead ! was 
 his answer. Then the door closed, and 1 ran home to 
 tell the sad tidings. I was only eight years old, and 
 that was my first glimpse of a great grief, but I never 
 have forgotten the anguish that made a familiar face so 
 tragical, and gave those few words more pathos than 
 the sweet lamentation of the Threnody. 
 
 " Later, when we went to school with the little 
 Emersons in their father s barn, I remember many 
 happy times when the illustrious papa was our good 
 playfellow. Often piling us into a bedecked hay-cart, 
 he took us to berry, bathe, or picnic at Walden, mak 
 ing our day charming and memorable by showing us 
 the places he loved, the wood-people Thoreau had 
 introduced to him, or the wildflowers whose hidden 
 homes he had discovered. So that when, years after- 
 
142 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 wards, we read of the sweet rhodora in the woods, 
 and the burly, dozing humble-bee, or laughed over 
 The Mountain and the Squirrel, we recognised old 
 friends, and thanked him for the delicate truth 
 and beauty which made them immortal for us and 
 others. 
 
 "When the book mania fell upon me at fifteen, I 
 used to venture into Mr. Emerson s library and ask 
 what I should read, never conscious of the audacity 
 of my demand, so genial was my welcome. His kind 
 hand opened to me the riches of Shakespeare, Dante, 
 Goethe, and Carlyle ; and I gratefully recall the sweet 
 patience with which he led me round the book-lined 
 room, till the new and very interesting book was 
 found, or the indulgent smile he wore when I proposed 
 something far above my comprehension. Wait a 
 little for that, he said. Meantime try this, and 
 if you like it, come again. For many of these wise 
 books I am waiting still, very patiently, because in his 
 own I have found the truest delight, the best inspiration 
 of my life. 
 
 "When these same precious volumes were tumbled 
 out of the window while his house was burning some 
 years ago, as I stood guarding the scorched wet pile, 
 Mr. Emerson passed by, and surveying the devastation 
 with philosophic calmness, only said in answer to my 
 lamentations, I see my library under a new aspect. 
 Could you tell me where my good neighbours have 
 flung my boots ? 
 
 " In the tribulations of later life this faithful house- 
 friend was an earthly Providence, conferring favours 
 so beautifully that they were no burden, and giving 
 
THE HOME. 143 
 
 such sympathy in joy and sorrow that very tender ties 
 were knit between this beneficent nature and the grate 
 ful hearts he made his own. I have often seen him 
 turn from distinguished guests to say a wise or kindly 
 word to some humble worshipper sitting modestly in a 
 corner, content merely to look and listen, and who 
 went away to cherish that moment long and grate 
 fully." 
 
 Emerson had taken a deep interest in everything 
 relating to the village in which he had come to reside. 
 In the month of his marriage he gave the address on 
 the two-hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of 
 Concord. It has been quoted in a previous chapter, 
 but another passage may be set here. " In the eternity 
 of Nature how recent our antiquities appear ! The 
 imagination is impatient of a cycle so short. Who 
 can tell how many thousand years, every day, the 
 clouds have shaded these fields w r ith their purple awn 
 ing ? The river, by whose banks most of us were born, 
 every winter for ages has spread its crust of ice over 
 the great meadows which in ages it had formed. But 
 the little society of men who now, for a few years, fish 
 in this river, plough the fields it washes, mow the grass, 
 and reap the corn, shortly shall hurry from its banks, 
 as did their forefathers. Man s life, said the Druid 
 to the Saxon king, is the sparrow that enters at a 
 window, flutters round the house, and flies out at 
 another, and none kuoweth whence he came or whither 
 he goes/ The more reason that we should give to our 
 being what permanence we can, that we should recall 
 the past, and expect the future." 
 
 Emerson s mother resided in his home until her death 
 
144 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 in 1853. His aunt Mary was a frequent visitor until 
 her death in 18G3. And near by,, at Waltham, sub 
 sequently at the Old Manse in Concord, was Sarah 
 Ripley, who died in 1867. 
 
 He suffered some severe bereavements ; especially 
 heavy was that of his beautiful boy Waldo. But he 
 was invincible by any sorrow. Writing of his first 
 visit to Europe (1833) he says, "If Goethe had been 
 still living, I might have wandered into Germany also." 
 But he had little need to know Goethe personally, for 
 he had learned that great man s secret of life. There 
 is a letter which Goethe addressed "To the youthful 
 poets of Germany," every line of which became actual 
 in the early years of Emerson s life at Concord. 
 "When at our entrance into the life of action and 
 effort, scant in pleasures, in which, be what we may, 
 we must all feel ourselves dependent on a great whole, 
 we ask back all our early dreams, wishes, hopes all 
 the delicious joys and facilities of our youthful fairy 
 land the Muse abandons us, and seeks the company 
 of the man who can bear disappointment cheerfully, 
 and recover from it easily ; who knows how to gather 
 something from every season ; who can enjoy the glassy 
 ice-track and the garden of roses, each in its appointed 
 time ; who understands the art of mitigating his own 
 sufferings, and looks steadfastly and industriously 
 around him, where he may find another s pain to 
 soothe, another s joy to enhance. Then do no years 
 sever him from the benign goddesses, who, if they 
 delight in the bashfulness of innocence, also give their 
 support to far-looking prudence ; here foster the germ 
 
THE HOME. 145 
 
 of hope and promise ; there rejoice in the complete 
 accomplished man in his full development. 
 
 " Jiinglmg, merke dir, in Zeiten, 
 Wo sich Geisfc und Sinn erhdht, 
 Das die Muse zu begleiten 
 Doch zu leiten nicht versteht." 
 
146 EMEKSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 XV. 
 
 NATURE. 
 
 HERMAN GRIMM, writing on Emerson s death 
 (National Zeitung), says, " A picture at Assisi, 
 by Giotto, shows St. Francis restoring to life a woman 
 who had died without confession, long enough to con 
 fess to him. The woman raises herself on her bier, 
 and the saint kneels before her. So, it appears to me, 
 Emerson awakened Nature, and gave her a voice, that 
 she might confess to him her secrets, and that he knows 
 of these more than he has told." 
 
 With this we may remember one of Emerson s early 
 poems Musketaquid. 
 
 " Because I was content with these poor fields, 
 Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams, 
 And found a home in haunts which others scorned, 
 The partial wood-gods overpaid my love, 
 And granted me the freedom of their state." 
 
 The Indian, and the farmer who has succeeded him, 
 are caught into the procession of natural forms pass 
 ing through without interrupting his solitude. 
 
 " Beneath low hills, in the broad interval 
 Through which at w r ill our Indian rivulet 
 Winds, mindful still of stmimp and of squaw, 
 Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies^ 
 
NATURE. 147 
 
 Here in pine houses built of new fallen trees, 
 Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell. 
 Traveller, to thee, perchance, a tedious road, 
 Or, it may be, a picture ; to these men 
 The landscape is an armory of powers, 
 Which, one by one, they know to draw and use. 
 
 They fight the elements with elements 
 
 (That one would say, meadow and forest walked, 
 
 Transmuted in these men to rule their like) , 
 
 And by the order in the field disclose 
 
 The order regnant in the yeoman s brain. 
 
 " What these strong masters wrote at large in miles, 
 I followed in small copy in my acre ; 
 For there s no rood has not a star above it ; 
 The cordial quality of pear or plum 
 Ascends as gladly in a single tree 
 As in broad orchards resonant with bees ; 
 And every atom poises for itself, 
 And for the wiiole. The gentle deities 
 Showed me the lore of colours and of sounds, 
 The innumerable tenements of beauty, 
 The miracle of generative force, 
 Far-reaching concords of astronomy 
 Felt in the plants, and in the punctual birds ; 
 Better, the linked purpose of the whole, 
 And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty 
 .In the glad home plain-dealing nature gave." 
 
 In this poem there is the feeling of Wordsworth, but 
 the presence of a new creative force is revealed in the 
 succession of the scenes. The intellect with its prize 
 
 liberty, with its rood beneath and star overhead 
 
 looks not on shifting landscapes but through vistas 
 unfolding from the morning cloud to man, from man 
 
148 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 to the poetic idea which gathers up again the past and 
 enfolds the whole. 
 
 In 1834 Emerson gave in Boston a lecture on " The 
 Relations of Man to the Globe." It has never been 
 published, but in it occur illustrations prophetic of 
 Darwin s theory. He said, " The brother of the hand 
 existed ages ago in the flipper of the seal." 
 
 While young Darwin was voyaging around the 
 world in the " Beagle," Emerson was vo}*aging around 
 a larger sphere without quitting the limits of Concord. 
 It would be interesting to know the dates of some 
 poems of his, especially those of which Tyndall has 
 said that " in his case Poetry, with the joy of a bac 
 chanal, takes her graver brother Science by the hand, 
 and cheers him with immortal laughter ;" and still 
 more of those in which that grave brother is transfig 
 ured, as in the mystic-scientific chant of Nature in 
 " Wood-Notes : " 
 
 u To the open ear it sings 
 The early genesis of things, 
 Of tendency through endless ages, 
 Of star-dust and star-pilgrimages, 
 Of rounded worlds, of space and time, 
 Of the old flood s subsiding slime, 
 Of chemic matter, force, and form, 
 Of poles and powers, cold, wet, warm : 
 The rushing metamorphosis, 
 Dissolving all that fixture is, 
 Melts things that be to things that seem, 
 And solid nature to a dream." 
 
 Fortunately, however, we are not without dates which 
 show how early Emerson s poetic dreams cohered in an 
 
NATURE. 149 
 
 ideal conception of the new Genesis which Science has 
 since verified. "The day of days, the great day of 
 the feast of life, is that in which the inward eye opens 
 to the Unity in things." Whatever may be the day, by 
 calendar, which shone with such splendour on Emerson, 
 we know that its radiance so encircled him forty-six 
 } r ears ago as to move profoundly wise and venerable 
 scholars around him. The Hon. Horace Mann, emi 
 nent for his educational work in America, wrote to a 
 friend concerning a lecture, probably one of twelve 
 delivered in 1836 at Boston, on the Philosophy of Ilis- 
 tor} T , in these terms : 
 
 "Mr. Emerson, I am sure, must be perpetually dis 
 covering richer worlds than those of Columbus or 
 Herschel. He explores, too, not in the scanty and 
 barren region of our physical firmament, but in a spirit 
 ual firmament of illimitable extent and compacted of 
 treasures. I heard his lecture last evening. It was to 
 human life what Newton s Principia was to mathe 
 matics. He showed me what I have long thought of 
 so much how much more can be accomplished by 
 taking a true view than by great intellectual energy. 
 Had Mr. Emerson been set down in a wrong place, it 
 may be doubted whether he would ever have found his 
 way to the right point of view ; but that he now cer 
 tainly has done. As a man stationed in the sun would 
 see all the planets moving around it in one direction 
 and in perfect harmony, while to an eye on the earth 
 their motions are full of crossings and retrogradations, 
 so he, from his central position in the spiritual world, 
 discovers order and harmony where others can discern 
 only confusion and irregularity. His lecture last even- 
 
150 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 ing was one of the most splendid manifestations of a 
 truth-seeking and truth-developing mind I ever heard. 
 Dr. Walter Charming, who sat beside me, said it made 
 his head ache. Though his language was transparent, 
 yet it was almost impossible to catch the great beauty 
 and proportions of one truth before another was pre 
 sented." 
 
 In 1836, when Darwin returned from his voyage on 
 the "Beagle" and sat down to his mighty task, the 
 pattern of what he was to do was seen in the mount at 
 Concord, and published that year in the little book 
 entitled "Nature." A writer in the "Saturday 
 Review," after speaking of "the great men whom 
 America and England have jointly lost" Emerson 
 and Darwin remarks that " some of those who have 
 been forward in taking up and advancing the impulse 
 given by Darwin, not only on the general ground 
 where it started, but as a source of energy in the wider 
 application of scientific thought, have once and again 
 openly declared that they owe not a little to Emer 
 son." This just remark may be illustrated by Tyn- 
 dall s words in 1873: "The first time I ever knew 
 Waldo Emerson was when, years ago, I picked up at 
 a stall a copy of his Nature. I read it with such 
 delight, and I have never ceased to read it ; and if any 
 one can be said to have given the impulse to my mind, 
 it is Emerson : whatever I have done the world owes 
 to him." 
 
 Dr. Tyndall tells me that in the volume so purchased 
 he wrote, "Purchased by inspiration." And he might 
 have said, "Written by inspiration." The work was 
 
NATURE. 151 
 
 inspired by the dawn of a great idea in the writer s 
 mind Evolution. It has a prelude of six lines 
 
 u A subtle chain of countless rings 
 The next unto the farthest brings ; 
 The eye reads omens where it goes, 
 And speaks all languages the rose ; 
 And striving to be man, the worm 
 Mounts through all the spires of form." 
 
 In this essay occur such phrases as " every chem 
 ical change, from the rudest crystal up to the laws of 
 life ; every change of vegetation, from the first princi 
 ple of growth in the eye of a leaf to the tropical forest 
 and antediluvian coal-mine ; every animal function, 
 from the sponge up to Hercules," showing the direc 
 tion in which his eye is turned. And there are these 
 pregnant sentences: "Nothing in Nature is ex 
 hausted in its first use. When a thing has served an 
 end to the uttermost, it is wholly new for an ulterior 
 service." " Herein is especially apprehended the 
 unity of Nature the unity in variety which meets 
 us everywhere. All the endless variety of things make 
 an identical impression." "Each creature is only a 
 modification of the other." "Any distrust of the 
 permanence of laws would paralyse the faculties of 
 man." " If the reason be stimulated to more earnest 
 vision, outlines and services become transparent, and 
 are no longer seen : causes and spirits are seen through 
 them." " The world proceeds from the same spirit as 
 the body of man." " In a cabinet of natural history 
 we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and 
 sympathy in regard to the most unwieldy and eccentric 
 
152 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 forms of beast, fish, and insect." "Nor has science 
 sufficient humanity so long as the naturalist overlooks 
 that wonderful congruity which subsists between man 
 and the world, of which he is lord, not because 
 he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is 
 its head and heart, and finds something of himself 
 in every great and small thing, in every mountain 
 stratum, in every new law of colour, fact of astron 
 omy, or atmospheric influence which observation or 
 analysis lay open." 
 
 A careful perusal of the sentences just cited will 
 show that Emerson s mind had fully conceived the idea 
 of relationship between all organic forms, and that of 
 the harmony of each and all with elemental environ 
 ment. It may now be further noted that the notions 
 of a mechanical creation, and of a creation passed and 
 ended, have disappeared from his thought. God is 
 " the universal spirit," whose "essence refuses to be 
 recorded in propositions." The "universal essence, 
 which is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power, but 
 all in one, and each entirely, is that for which all 
 things exist, and that by which they are." " Spirit 
 creates." " That which, intellectually considered, we 
 call reason, considered in relation to nature we call 
 spirit." This spirit now creates through man. "He 
 (man) is placed in the centre of beings, and a ray of 
 relation passes from every other being to him. And 
 neither can man be understood without these objects, 
 nor these objects without man." " Spirit, that is, the 
 Supreme Being, does not build up Nature around us, 
 but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts 
 forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the 
 
NATURE. 153 
 
 old." "Who can set bounds to the possibilities of 
 man?" " Man has access to the entire mind of the 
 Creator, is himself the creator in the finite." "The 
 reason why the world lacks unity and lies broken and 
 in heaps, is because man is disunited with himself." 
 
 "When a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every 
 object from personal relations, and see it in the light 
 of thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science with 
 the fire of the holiest affections ; then will God go forth 
 anew into the creation." "Nature is not fixed, but 
 fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immo 
 bility or bruteness of Nature is the absence of spirit ; 
 to pure spirit it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient." 
 " All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of 
 Nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren 
 contemplation but for new creation." 
 
 This, Emerson s first work, ends with these great 
 words: "The kingdom of man over Nature, which 
 cometh not with observation, a dominion such as 
 now is beyond his dream of God, he shall enter 
 without more wonder than the blind man feels who is 
 gradually restored to perfect sight." Forty years later 
 the prophecy rose again when Clifford said: "Those 
 who can read the signs of the times read in them that 
 the kingdom of Man is at hand." 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
154 
 
 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABKOAD. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 EVOLUTION. 
 
 ACCORDING to an American myth, when Emer 
 son visited Egypt the Sphinx said to him, 
 "You re another!" 
 
 The enigmatic element, of which many complained 
 in Emerson s earliest writings, is now explicable 
 enough. He spoke from a generalisation at once poetic 
 and scientific, which as yet had nothing corresponding 
 to it in the popular mind. He could not prove it, but 
 it was perfectly clear to him that the method of nature 
 is evolution, and it organised the basis of his every 
 statement. Thus in August, 1841, addressing the 
 Literary Society of "Waterville College, occur such 
 passages as these: "The wholeness we admire in the 
 order of the world is the result of infinite distribution. 
 Its smoothness is the smoothness of the pitch of the 
 cataract. Its permanence is a perpetual indication. 
 Every natural fact is an emanation, and that from 
 which it emanates is an emanation also, and from every 
 emanation is a new emanation." "We can point 
 nowhere to anything final ; but tendency appears on 
 all hands : planet, system, constellation, total Nature, 
 is growing like a field of maize in July ; is becoming 
 somewhat else ; is in rapid metamorphosis. The em- 
 
EVOLUTION. 155 
 
 bryo does not more strive to be man than yonder burr 
 of light we call a nebula tends to be a ring, a comet, a 
 globe, and parent of new stars." "How silent, how 
 spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert 
 an atom, in graceful succession, in equal fulness, in 
 balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward 
 still. Like an odour of incense, like a strain of music, 
 like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not 
 be dissected, nor unravelled, nor shewn. Away, pro 
 fane philosopher ! seekest thou in nature the cause ? 
 This refers to that, and that to the next, and the next 
 to the third, and everything refers. Thou must ask in 
 another mood, thou must feel it and love it, thou must 
 behold it in a spirit as grand as that by which it exists, 
 ere thou canst know the law. Known it will not be, but 
 gladly beloved and enjoyed." " There is no revolt in 
 all the kingdoms from the commonweal ; no detach 
 ment of an individual. Hence the catholic character 
 which makes every leaf an exponent of the world." 
 " The termination of the world in a man appears to be 
 the last victory of intelligence." " See the play of 
 thoughts ! what nimble gigantic creatures are these ! 
 what saurians, what palaeotheria, shall be named with 
 these agile movers." How simple these thoughts have 
 become to the post-Darwinian world ! 
 
 It is notable that simultaneously with " The Vestiges 
 of Creation" in England, namely, in 1844, Emerson s 
 second essay on " Nature " appeared. It is a prophetic 
 hymn to the ascending star whose light was already 
 leading wise men towards the truth, taking form in 
 exact science, whereof the "Vestiges" was a half- 
 clad forerunner. " Let us no longer omit our homage 
 
156 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 to the Efficient Nature, natura naturans, the quick cause 
 before which all forms flee as the driven snows, itself 
 secret, its works driven before it in flocks and multi 
 tudes (as the ancients represented nature by Proteus, 
 a shepherd), and in undescribable variety. It pub 
 lishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles and 
 specula, through transformation on transformation, to 
 the highest symmetries, arriving at consummate results 
 without shock or leap. A little heat, that is, a little 
 motion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling 
 white and deadly poles of the earth from the pro 
 lific tropical climates. All changes pass without 
 violence, by reason of the two cardinal conditions 
 of boundless space and boundless time. Geology has 
 initiated us into the secularity of nature, and taught 
 us to disuse our r dame-school measures and exchange 
 our Mosaic and Ptolemaic schemes for her large style. 
 We knew nothing rightly for want of perspective. 
 Now we learn what patient periods must round them 
 selves before the rock is formed, then before the rock 
 is broken, and the first lichen race has disintegrated 
 the thinnest external plate into soil, and opened the 
 door for the remote flora, fauna, Ceres and Pomona, to 
 come in. How far off yet is the trilobite ! how far the 
 quadruped ! how inconceivably remote is man ! All 
 duly arrive, and then race after race of men. It is a 
 long way from granite to the oyster ; farther yet to 
 Plato and the preaching of the immortality of the soul. 
 Yet all must come as surely as the atom has two 
 sides." 
 
 In this passage the "Spirit" of Emerson s first work 
 (" Nature," published eight years before) re-appears as 
 
EVOLUTION. 157 
 
 the Natura Naturans; but this again, paraphrased as 
 " Efficient Nature," " quick (living) cause," is an 
 intellectual Declaration of Independence. "Man," 
 he says, "carries the world in his head, the whole 
 astronomy and chemistry suspended in a thought. 
 Because the history of nature is charactered in his 
 brain, therefore is he the prophet and discoverer of 
 her secrets. Every known fact in natural science was 
 divined by the presentiment of somebody before it was 
 actually verified." 
 
 The publication of " The Vestiges of Creation" had 
 the good effect of popularising the idea of evolution, 
 and the bad effect of stating the facts so inaccurately 
 that men of science were prejudiced against the gen 
 eral hypothesis. The panic of the pulpit also led some 
 to commit themselves against a theory so crudely stated. 
 The book did not advance the theory so far as Emerson 
 had already gone, for it still supposed " leaps" in the 
 development of organisation. But Emerson would 
 admit no shock or leap." lie was also repelled bv 
 the mechanic Tlieos which the author of the "Vestiges " 
 imported. The old phrases "Supreme Architect," 
 "Almighty," "Providence," had become fossil to him 
 whose deity had become subjective. However, he once 
 told me that he thought the book had done good ser 
 vice in diffusing many valuable discoveries and general 
 isations of the German and French savants; and while 
 it was trampled on by preachers and professors, he 
 affirmed its main principle to be true. One of his 
 steadfast warnings was that in his essay on "Circles" 
 printed three years before the "Vestiges:" "Fear 
 not the new generalisation. Does the fact look crass 
 
158 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 and material, threatening to degrade thy theory of 
 spirit ? Resist it not ; it goes to refine and raise thy 
 theory of matter just as much." 
 
 While Auguste Comte and Mill ignored evolution, 
 and Carlyle reviled it, Emerson was building on it as 
 upon a rock. His friend Agassiz had committed him 
 self rather warmly against it, though relenting in 
 later life, and I heard several conversations be 
 tween them on the subject. Emerson quoted various 
 things from Agassis s own works, especially his re 
 searches in embryology, which seemed to support the 
 new theory. Agassiz said that unquestionably there 
 was an ideal relation between organic forms, an un 
 broken succession of ascending tyues, but he denied 
 that one species could be developed from another. 
 This seemed to him atheism. But Emerson held no 
 such theism as could be affected by any scientific dis 
 covery or opinion. He worshipped Thought. "Our 
 theism is the purification of the human mind," was his 
 brave word many years before, and it was written again 
 on his face whenever any opinion offered itself author 
 itatively. 
 
 Emerson s theory of evolution was a theory of Ascent. 
 " The gases gather to the solid firmament ; the chemic 
 lump arrives at the plant, and grows ; arrives at the 
 quadruped, and walks ; arrives at the man, and thinks." 
 This was his idealism, that matter and mind, as they 
 are called, are varied movements of one symphony. 
 
 On this he rested his idea of " Poetry." His essay 
 on this subject in " Letters and Social Aims," pub 
 lished in 187G, was read to a small company in Divin 
 ity College twenty-three years before. Some of us at 
 
EVOLUTION. 159 
 
 Harvard University had found our real professor at 
 Concord, and one winter evening we went out, travel 
 ling the seventeen miles in sleighs, to hear a lecture 
 that was to have been given by him. The lecture had 
 been postponed, but Emerson, hearing of our arrival, 
 invited us to his house, and we went back enriched by 
 his conversation, without feeling any disappointment. 
 Nevertheless, Emerson wrote me that if I would make 
 the preparations, he would read a lecture in my room. 
 On that occasion, besides the students who had gone 
 to Concord for the lecture, others were present, in 
 cluding Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow, J. II. Lowell, Mrs. 
 Charles Lowell, J. S. I) wight, Charles Norton and Irs 
 sister, L. G. Ware, H. G. Denny, and Otto Dresel. 
 In that essay Emerson said : The electric word pro 
 nounced by John Hunter a hundred years ago, 
 arrested and progressive development, indicating the 
 way upward from the invisible protoplasm to tl e 
 highest organisms, gave the poetic key to natural 
 science, of which the theories of Geoffroy St. Hil- 
 aire, of Oken, of Goethe, of Agassiz, and Owen and 
 Darwin in zoology and botany, are the fruits, a hint 
 whose power is not yet exhausted, showing unity and 
 perfect order in physics. 
 
 "The hardest chemist, the severest analyser, scorn 
 ful of all but the driest fact, is forced to keep the 
 poetic curve of Nature, and his result is like a myth 
 of Theocritus. All multiplicity rushes to be resolved 
 into unity. Anatomy, osteology, exhibit arrested or 
 progressive ascent in each kind, the lower pointing to 
 the higher forms, the higher to the highest, from the 
 fluid in an elastic sack, from radiate, mollusk, articu- 
 
160 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 late, vertebrate, up to man ; as if the whole animal 
 world were only a Hunterian museum to exhibit the 
 genesis of mankind." 
 
 The Darwin here referred to is the elder Erasmus 
 Darwin ; it was five years later than the revelation of 
 the method of this progression appeared in the paper 
 of Charles Darwin published in the Linnsean Society s 
 Journal (1858). And now that the noble Boston 
 Museum is built, whose successive storeys repeat the 
 history and ascent of organisation in the earth, there 
 might be written on its door that which Emerson fur 
 ther said to us in that small company " Each animal 
 or vegetable form remembers the next inferior and 
 predicts the next higher. There is one animal, one 
 plant, one matter, and one force." 
 
 From this pedestal, like some white column resting 
 on lions winged and couching, carved in its ascent 
 with the symbols of every faith, rose Emerson s dream 
 of the true poem. " In poetry we require the miracle. 
 The bee flies among flowers, and gets mint and mar 
 joram, and generates a new product, which is not mint 
 and marjoram, but honey ; the chemist mixes hydrogen 
 and oxygen to yield a new product, which is not these, 
 but water ; and the poet listens to conversation, and 
 beholds all objects in nature, to give back, not them, 
 but a new and transcendent whole." 
 
 There were poets present, but when this great essay 
 paused, and only an ideal poet crowned the exalted 
 shaft, it appeared the truest New World poem that we 
 were gathered there around the seer, in whose vision the 
 central identity in nature flowed through man s reason, 
 gently did away with discords by their promise of 
 
EVOLUTION. 161 
 
 larger harmonies. That which the Brahmans had 
 found in the East our little company knew there in 
 the West also: "From the poisonous tree of the 
 world two species of fruit are produced, sweet as the 
 waters of life : Love, or the society of beautiful souls, 
 and Poetry, whose taste is like the immortal juice of 
 Vishnu." When Emerson finished there was still a 
 hush of silence : it seemed hardly broken when Otto 
 Dresel performed some u Songs without Words." 
 
162 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 XVII. 
 SURSUM CORDA. 
 
 WHEN the rumour reached the Boston ministers 
 that Emerson had made a visitation at Divinity 
 College, there was some small flutter, and even a little 
 inquisition ; whereat our good professors Dr. Francis 
 and Dr. Noyes smiled, as old sailors might at the 
 shaken nerves which turn squalls to hurricanes. The 
 breeze was useful as a suggestion of the real tornadoes 
 which followed Emerson s earlier visits to Cambridge, 
 concerning which the traditions remained fresh enough 
 up to the time (18G7) when the University surrendered, 
 made Emerson Doctor of Laws, and Overseer, and a 
 Special Lecturer to the young men he had all along 
 been really teaching. To that earlier period we now 
 return. 
 
 The little book of 1836, entitled "Nature," was a 
 soft footfall in the solitude of Concord, but clerical re- 
 adjusters of their religious inheritance, with the keen 
 sense of a threatened race, laid their ear to the ground 
 and heard battalions behind that hermit. " It is a sug 
 gestive book," the " Christian Examiner " must admit. 
 " But the effort of perusal is often painful, the thoughts 
 excited are frequently bewildering, and the results to 
 which thev lead us uncertain and obscure. The reader 
 
SURSUM CORDA. 163 
 
 feels as in a distracted dream, in which shows of sur 
 passing beauty are around him, and he is conversant 
 with disembodied spirits ; yet all the time he is 
 harassed with an uneasy sort of consciousness that 
 the whole combination of phenomena is fantastic 
 and unreal." "Nature" was printed anonymously, 
 but its writer was easily known ; and when the ques 
 tion was asked, Who is the author of "Nature?" 
 the reply was, " God and Ralph Waldo Emerson." 
 
 The misgivings were chiefly excited by the first para 
 graph of " Nature," so often quoted the " Let there 
 be light " of this New World creation. " Our age is ret 
 rospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It 
 writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The fore 
 going generations beheld God and nature face to face ; 
 we through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy 
 an original relation to the universe ? Why should not 
 we. have a poetry and philosophy of insight, and not 
 of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not 
 the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in 
 nature, whose floods stream around and through us, 
 and invite us, by the powers they supply, to action 
 proportioned to nature, why should we grope among 
 the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation 
 into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe ? The sun 
 shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in 
 the fields. There are new lands, new men, new 
 thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws 
 and worship." 
 
 The first response to this was an invitation from the 
 most important literary societ}^ of the country, the 
 Phi Beta Kappa, that Emerson should be their orator 
 
164 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 for the year 1837. The oration was given at Harvard 
 University. Lowell has described it as " an event 
 without any former parallel in our literary annals, a 
 scene to be always treasured in the memory for its 
 picturesqueness and its inspiration. What crowded 
 and breathless aisles, what windows clustering with 
 eager heads, what enthusiasm of eager approval, what 
 grim silence of foregone dissent ! " The theme was 
 " The American Scholar." The scholar was denned 
 as man thinking. He touched again on the unity of 
 nature. " To this schoolboy under the bending dome 
 of day, is suggested that he and it proceed from one 
 root ; one is leaf and one is flower ; relation, sympathy, 
 stirring in every vein." 4t The ancient precept, Know 
 thyself, and the modern precept, Study Nature, be 
 come at last one maxim." He dispersed the illusions 
 of antiquity. "Genius looks forward: the eyes of 
 man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead : man 
 hopes ; genius creates." He repudiates the idea that 
 the scholar should be a dreamer. " The scholar loses 
 no hour which the man lives." From the education of 
 the scholar by nature, by books, and by action, the 
 orator passes to the function of the scholar. His 
 duties are such as belong to the world s eye, and the 
 world s heart, which must be raised above private con 
 siderations to breathe and live in public and illustrious 
 thoughts. For the ease and pleasure of treading the 
 old road he takes the cross of making his own, and is 
 to find consolation in exercising the highest functions 
 of human nature. " In self-trust all the virtues are 
 comprehended. Free should the scholar be free and 
 brave. Free even to the definition of freedom, without 
 
SURSUM CORDA. 165 
 
 any hindrance that does not arise out of his own con 
 stitution. Brave ; for fear is a thing which a scholar 
 by his very function puts behind him." 
 
 The art of Emerson in parts of this oration can best 
 be appreciated by those who know how far the institu 
 tion of slavery had bound fast the conscience of the 
 North with cotton cords, and that pulpits and pro 
 fessions were largely retained to justify the national 
 wrong. Even the brave were apologetic when claim 
 ing their right to speak. The example of slave-holding 
 patriarchs had given a fresh lease of infallibility to the 
 Bible. Longfellow s "Slave Singing at Midnight" 
 might represent the darkness corresponding to that 
 which surrounded the negro that shadow fallen upon 
 the literature of the land, which Emerson was the first 
 to dispel. Preservation of the existing " order " (now 
 recognisable as disorder) being the main factor of 
 moral selection Compromise alone able to pay high 
 for brains the literary tendency was toward imita 
 tion of foreign models. Intellect required diversion 
 to questions other than those which concerned the 
 United States, and while pulpits fulminated against 
 stiff-necked Israelites, literature was actively engaged 
 with the Greeks and Romans. 
 
 Emerson w r as not one sided. While he said, " Give 
 me insight in to-day, and you may have the antique 
 and future worlds," he reminded the scholars that the 
 near and far explain each other, and that Goethe, 
 "the most modern of moderns, has shewn us as none 
 ever did the genius of the ancients." " The scholar is 
 that man who must take up into himself all the ability 
 of the time, the contributions of the past, all the hopes 
 
166 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 of the future/ His concern was that the American 
 scholar should bring his genius into harmony with tlio 
 principles and adequacy to the opportunities of Ins 
 country, and do justice to the trust which human 
 history had placed in his hands. " Young men of the 
 fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated 
 by the mountain winds, sinned upon by all the stars of 
 God, find the earth below not in unison with these, but 
 are hindered from action by the disgust which the prin 
 ciples on which business is managed inspire, and turn 
 drudges or die of disgust some of them suicides. 
 What is the remedy? They did not yet see, and thou 
 sands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the 
 barriers for the career do not yet see, that if the single 
 man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and 
 there abide, the huge world will come round to him." 
 
 This phrase last quoted is now historical. The 
 feathered thunderbolt sped to its mark. It came from 
 a young man who, following his brother, had slowly 
 earned and made his professional panoply only to find 
 there was no post for him, nor corps in which he could 
 serve, and had to form a new army with a new cause. 
 By one of the many whose lives were influenced by it 
 that word was repeated over Emerson s grave: "He 
 planted himself indomitably on his instincts, and did 
 there abide, and the huge world came round to him." 
 
THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD. 167 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD. 
 
 IN the year 1836, the year of "Nature," Concord 
 monument was completed, and Emerson s hymn 
 sung, beginning 
 
 " By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
 
 Their flag to April s breeze unfurled, 
 Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
 And fired the shot heard round the world. 
 
 Two years later, from where that shot announced the 
 birth of a nation, came a farmer to announce the birth 
 of its religion. On July 15, 1838, Emerson delivered 
 before the senior class in Divinity College, Harvard 
 University, that address which stands in the moral 
 history of America where the Declaration of Independ 
 ence stands in its political history. The Phi Beta 
 Kappa oration of the previous year had excited dis 
 cussions, questionings, enthusiasm ; and the assembly 
 which gathered to hear the new prophet s word on 
 religion was not only large, but included the represen 
 tative scholars and teachers of the country. 
 
 Never to be forgotten was the fatal melody that- 
 startled the air when that appeal to the young minis 
 ters was made. Its opening was as the outburst of 
 
1G8 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 some magically gorgeous season. "In this refulgent 
 summer it has been a luxury to draw the breath of 
 life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is 
 spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The 
 air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the 
 pine, the balm of Gilead, and the new hay. Night 
 brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. 
 Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their 
 almost spiritual rays. Man under them seems a young 
 child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night 
 bathes the world as with a river, and prepares his 
 eyes again for the crimson dawn. The mystery of 
 Nature was never displayed more happily. The corn 
 and wine have been freely dealt to all creatures, and 
 the never-broken silence with which the old bounty 
 goes forward has not yet yielded one word of explan 
 ation. One is constrained to respect the perfection of 
 this world in which our senses converse. How wide ; 
 how rich ; what invitation from every property it 
 gives to every faculty of man ! . . . But when the 
 mind opens, and reveals the laws which traverse 
 the universe, and make things what they are, then 
 shrinks the great world at once into a mere illustra 
 tion and fable of this mind. . . . A more secret, sweet, 
 and overpowering beauty appears to man when his 
 heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue." 
 
 The audience sat breathless, expectant. What 
 strange planet was to follow these auroral flushes on 
 the horizon? Meanwhile, this new Hepruestus brings 
 his axe. flashing a curve of light, straight on the head 
 of Zeus. " If a man is at heart just, then in so far is 
 he God ; the safety of God, the immortality of God, 
 
THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD. 169 
 
 the majesty of God, do enter that man with justice." 
 " Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets." 
 "One man was true to what is in you and me." 
 " Christianity became a mythus, as the poetic teaching 
 of Greece and of Egypt before." "The test of the 
 true faith certainly should be to charm and command 
 the soul, as the laws of nature control the activity of 
 the hands, so commanding that we find pleasure and 
 honour in obeying." " The faith should blend with the 
 light of rising and of setting suns, with the flying cloud, 
 the singing bird, and the breath of flowers. But now 
 the priest s sabbath has lost the splendour of Nature ; 
 it is unlovely ; we are glad when it is done ; we can 
 make, we do make, even sitting in our pews, a far bet 
 ter, holier, sweeter for ourselves. . . . The prayers 
 and even the dogmas of our Church are, like the zodiac 
 of Denderah and the astronomical monuments of the 
 Hindoos, wholly insulated from anything now extant 
 in the life and business of the people. . . . The sta- 
 tionariness of religion, the assumption that the age of 
 inspiration is past, that the Bible is closed, the fear of 
 degrading the character of Jesus by representing him 
 as a man, indicate with sufficient clearness the false 
 hood of our theology. * 
 
 And at last from the cloven cloud emerged a Western 
 Athena with panoply of light and fire. "I look for 
 the hour when that supreme Beauty which ravished the 
 souls of those Eastern men, and chiefly of those 
 Hebrews, and through their lips spoke oracles to all 
 time, shall speak in the West also. The Hebrew and 
 Greek scriptures contain immortal sentences, that have 
 been bread of life to millions ; but they have no epical 
 
170 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 integrity ; are fragmentary ; are not shewn in their 
 order to the intellect. I look for the new Teacher that 
 shall follow so far those shining laws that he shall see 
 them come in full circle ; shall see their rounding com 
 plete grace ; shall see the world to be the mirror of the 
 soul ; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation 
 with purity of heart ; and shall shew that the Ought, 
 that Duty, is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and 
 with Joy. 
 
 The Rev. Henry Ware, whose colleague Emerson 
 had been in Boston, addressed to him a friendly expos 
 tulation against the doctrines of this discourse. In 
 reply Emerson wrote as follows: "What you say 
 about the discourse at Divinity College is just what I 
 might expect from your truth and charity, combined 
 with your known opinions. I am not a stock or a 
 stone, as one said in the old time, and could not feel 
 but pain in saying some things in that place and pres 
 ence which I supposed would meet with dissent, and 
 the dissent, I may say, of dear friends and benefactors 
 of mine. Yet, as my conviction is perfect in the sub 
 stantial truth of the doctrines of this discourse, and 
 is not very new, you will see at once that it must ap 
 pear very important that it be spoken ; and I thought 
 I could not pay the nobleness of my friends so mean a 
 compliment as to suppress my opposition to their sup 
 posed views, out of fear of offence. I would rather 
 say to them These things look thus to me, to you 
 otherwise. Let us say our uttermost word, and be the 
 all-pervading truth, as it surely will, judge between us. 
 Either of us would, I doubt not, be equally apprised of 
 his error. Meantime I shall be admonished by this 
 
THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD. 171 
 
 expression of your thought to revise with great care 
 the address before it is printed (for the use of the 
 class) , and I heartily thank you for this expression of 
 your tried toleration and love." 
 
 This was followed by a sermon from the same minis 
 ter against Emerson s views, a copy of which was sent 
 to him with a letter, to which he replied as follows : 
 " I ought sooner to have replied to your kind letter of 
 last week, and the sermon it accompanied. The letter 
 was right manly and noble. The sermon, too, I have 
 read with attention. If it assails any doctrine of mine 
 perhaps I am not so quick to see it as writers gene 
 rally certainly I did not feel any disposition to de 
 part from my habitual contentment that you should 
 say your thought whilst I say mine. I believe I must 
 tell you what I think of my new position. It strikes 
 me very oddly that good and wise men, and Cambridge 
 and Boston, should think of raising me into an object 
 of criticism. I have always been, from my very inca 
 pacity of methodical writing, a chartered libertine, 
 free to worship and free to rail, lucky when I could 
 make myself understood, but never esteemed near 
 enough to the institutions and mind of society to de 
 serve the notice of the masters of literature and reli 
 gion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of my 
 position, for I well know that there is no scholar less 
 willing or less able to be a polemic. I could not give 
 account of myself, if challenged. I could not possibly 
 give you one of the arguments you cruelly hint at, on 
 which any doctrine of mine stands. For I do not 
 know what arguments mean in reference to any expres 
 sion of a thought. I delight in telling what I think ; 
 
172 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 but if you ask me why I dare say so, or why it is so, I 
 am the most helpless of mortal men. I do not even see 
 that either of these questions admits of an answer, so 
 that in the present posture of affairs, when I see myself 
 suddenly raised to the importance of a heretic, I am very 
 uneasy when I advert to the supposed duties of such a 
 personage, who is to make good his thesis against all 
 coiners. I certainly shall do no such thing. I shall 
 read what you and other good men write, as I have 
 always done, glad when you speak my thoughts, and 
 skipping the page that has nothing for me. I shall go 
 on just as before, seeing whatever I can, and telling 
 what I see ; and, I suppose, with the same fortune that 
 has hitherto attended me the joy of finding that my 
 abler and better brothers, who work with the sympathy 
 of society, loving and beloved, do now and then unex 
 pectedly confirm my perception, and find my nonsense 
 is only their own thought in motley. And so I am 
 your affectionate servant, R.W.E." 
 
 Little wonder that the New England shepherds 
 watching their flocks by night should have been sore 
 afraid when this light shone round about them. But 
 their terror could not quench the star that had risen. 
 "It is of no use," said an eminent divine, when he 
 heard of the censure on the Address ; henceforth the 
 young men will have a fifth Gospel in their Testa 
 ments." 
 
 But the heroic spirits born in that day, had it been 
 predicted that in 1870 the heretic of 1838 would be an 
 official instructor of Harvard youth, would have been 
 amazed, as might Paul had he been told that a Cresar 
 would one day hold the stirrup for a Christian pontiff. 
 
SANGEEAL. 173 
 
 XIX. 
 
 SANGREAL. 
 
 IN the " Morte cV Arthur " we see the knights gath 
 ered at the Round Table of Arthur, flower of 
 kings. We find portrayed the splendour of the court, 
 the tournaments, luxuries, gallantries of the knights 
 and dames. But one day, while they sit at the table, 
 there is a voice of thunder, then a sunbeam ; as the 
 stricken knights gaze the Sangreal floats in shrouded 
 in white, and, when it has floated out again, each feels 
 that he has tasted that which he most desires in this 
 world. Then rose up all those knights and vowed that 
 they would no more rest until they had found the Sang 
 real and seen it unveiled. King Arthur pleaded against 
 their resolution, but they must leave him. Then they 
 go about the world, wandering in many a wild place, 
 righting wrongs, delivering imprisoned maidens, sit 
 ting at the feet of wise hermits, fighting down fiends, 
 until at length Sir Galahad, just after he has casually 
 helped a cripple, finds the unveiled Sangreal and as 
 cends to heaven with it. The great British myth is 
 repeated at intervals in history. There arrives a 
 period in the progress of the people when their best 
 heads discover the fictitious character of the rites to 
 which they are sacramented, and when the best hearts 
 
174 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 learn their secret, and then the thunder and the sun 
 beam lead on the true thing above the sham ; the sang 
 real shames the sang unreal, and the Round Table of 
 conventions is broken up. Amid traditional chalices 
 and fonts, and flameless lamps, unable even to borrow 
 oil from other ages, appears the burning glory appeal 
 ing to every brave heart to win for itself to leave the 
 dead symbol and possess the reality. Then are true 
 souls revealed. They make their vow of knighthood ; 
 no bribe or persuasion of church or court can detain 
 them ; they are compelled by a noble discontent ; they 
 are drawn by a pure vision ; they have tasted that 
 which turns detaining dainties to poison ; they must 
 seek a truth and honour as living and real as was ever 
 known by saint or saviour. 
 
 Of such a period we are the children. The sanctities, 
 sacraments, symbols, of an exhausted revelation no 
 longer satisfy any heart or intellect. We have seen 
 in our own time what the life-blood of great hearts, 
 freely shed like the blood of Christ, can accomplish, 
 and the Round Table of Jerusalem breaks up. The 
 great men of our time, by whose fresh graves we stand 
 Darwin, Emerson, Carlyle, Lincoln, Garibaldi were 
 men whose lives are traced in transformations ; millions 
 of slaves have been liberated, nations set free, science 
 advanced, torpid intelligence awakened ; they have 
 been on earth as the Sangreal, or its prototype the 
 cornucopia, from which all have been nourished, and 
 have risen to be a constellation beneath which their 
 words and works shall ripen to the new earth that 
 follows the new heaven. 
 
 The quest of the Sangreal is a bosom experience to 
 
SANGREAL. 175 
 
 all who share the development of their generation. 
 Every youth, whose soul suffers no arrest, is certain 
 to arrive at a period of perception when the old sym 
 bols no longer satisfy him, when he turns from the 
 conventional chalice however cunningly mixed, and is 
 seized with a longing to make every drop of his blood 
 real, and held in the cup of a flawless heart. 
 
 When our virginal Sir Galahad in America, our 
 Emerson, refused any longer to touch the chalice of 
 his Boston church, the knights around him did not at 
 once catch his vision of the radiant cup floating above 
 it. They thought him mad. The thunder and the 
 sunbeam came to them later, when they had gathered 
 to the Round Table of their old university. There 
 each knightly soul found that he had tasted that which 
 he most loved of all on earth. They could no more 
 rest in that to which they had been sacramented. 
 
 Among those who listened to that oration, one 
 preacher, before wont to discourse on such themes as 
 the duties and trials of milkmen, went home to enter 
 in his journal: " My soul is roused, and this week I 
 shall write the long-meditated sermons on the state of 
 the Church and the duties of these times." So under 
 the electric touch of Emerson rose Theodore Parker. 
 
 John Weiss an effective leader of the new religion 
 has well said of Emerson s oration, " The liberal 
 gesture itself was worth a whole body of divinity." The 
 agitation reached the form of a coherent controversy 
 in the following year, when the chief professor of the 
 Divinity College, Andrews Norton, delivered in the 
 same place an answer to it, afterwards published under 
 the title, " The Latest Form of Infidelity." This was 
 
170 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 replied to by George Ripley and Theodore Parker. 
 Ripley maintained that Christianity was sufficiently 
 proved by intuition. Parker supported him, and main 
 tained that miracles are true, being signs of all great 
 religious teachers (Buddha, Zoroaster, as well as 
 Jesus) , but not proofs of their doctrine ! Norton re 
 plied to them, and the controversy filled America with 
 excitement. It also set the youth to reading the works 
 of the great German, French, and English philoso 
 phers whose views were discussed by the Harvard dis 
 putants. 
 
 By far the most important figure in this controversy 
 (from which Emerson was conspicuously absent) was 
 that of Andrews Norton, Professor of Sacred Litera 
 ture in Harvard University. His great learning and his 
 admirable force and clearness as a writer were still of 
 less importance than his intellectual character and his 
 severity towards every kind of sham, whether con 
 scious of itself or not. The young men who undertook 
 to controvert the statements of Andrews Norton con 
 cerning the anti-christian nature and tendency of 
 Emerson s views George Ripley and Theodore Par 
 ker wrote well, and were defeated. The}^ were try 
 ing to base the Christian ontology on intuition in order 
 to cast discredit on supernatural evidences and author 
 ity. " Consciousness or intuition," said Norton, "can 
 inform us of nothing but what exists in our own minds, 
 including the relations of our own ideas. It is there 
 fore not an intelligible error, but a mere absurdity, to 
 maintain thaj; we are conscious or have an intuitive 
 knowledge of the being of God, of our own immor 
 tality, of the revelation of God through Christ, or of 
 
SANGREAL. 177 
 
 any other fact of religion." "Christianity claims to 
 reveal facts, a knowledge of which is essential to the 
 moral regeneration of men, and to offer in attestation 
 of those facts the only satisfactory proof the author 
 ity of God evidenced by miraculous displays of His 
 power." " The latest form of infidelity is distinguished 
 by assuming the Christian name while it strikes at the 
 root of faith in Christianity, and indirectly at all reli 
 gion, by denying the miracles attesting the divine mis 
 sion of Christ." These affirmations, buttressed by 
 impregnable logic, were never shaken. 
 
 Thirty years ago this aged scholar, surrounded by 
 his beautiful daughters, to describe whom we used to 
 borrow the title of his book, The Evidences of Chris 
 tianity," was the ideal of an Arthur. In the depths 
 of that grove behind Divinity College, an Avilion to 
 those who remember the home it embowered, the old 
 man sat, his grand face haloed with whitest locks and 
 on it written the perfect peace that follows victory over 
 all that can harm the spirit of man. In early life he 
 had suffered pain, long and keen, by failure in all his 
 attempts to preach, after carefully preparing himself. 
 He had to abandon the pulpit. Then he wrote the 
 beautiful hymn so widely sung in America, " My God, 
 I thank Thee ! " The last verse is 
 
 Thy various messengers employ, 
 
 Thy purposes of love fulfil ; 
 And mid the wreck of human joy 
 
 May kneeling faith adore thy will ! " 
 
 With such piety had he looked forth over the deso 
 lation beyond which he was to find this earthly para- 
 
178 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 dise ! He was now calm, and mention of the contro 
 versy of fifteen years brought no flash to his eye. I 
 remember that his eye did flash when he spoke of the 
 practical atheism " which reigned over the nation, dis 
 regarding every principle of justice and humanity. 
 " Theological and philosophical controversies," he said, 
 " seem of small importance in the presence of such 
 evils." "Flos theologorum" he was, and the last of 
 his race. 
 
 Emerson was from the first at one with the principle 
 of his honoured antagonist. His bark had passed to 
 another sea. What he afterwards wrote of Sweden- 
 borg and Behmen was equally true of his friends Parker 
 and Ripley, that they "both failed by attaching 
 themselves to the Christian symbol instead of to the 
 moral sentiment which carries innumerable Christian 
 ities, humanities, divinities, in its bosom." Therefore 
 Emerson could take no part in the controversy. And 
 though each of the young thinkers had tasted the holier 
 sacrament in this heart whose blood was shed for them, 
 the Sangreal was as yet veiled from their eyes. Dr. 
 Lowell would now probably smile at two lines about 
 Emerson in his " Fable for Critics " 
 
 " All admire, and yet scarely six converts he s got, 
 To 1 don t (nor they either) exactly know what." 
 
 When he came to write his poem telling how Sir Laun- 
 fal journeyed far but found the Sangreal at his own 
 door, Lowell had learned the secret. 
 
 But it is doubtful whether Theodore Parker ever 
 comprehended the man whose touch had awakened him 
 to the recognition of that task he so faithfully per- 
 
SANG REAL. 179 
 
 formed. Two minds could hardly be more differently 
 moulded than those of these distinguished contem 
 poraries. Parker was certainly a product of the new 
 era of thought, but he was puzzled by Emerson s 
 utterances even while they stirred him. There was 
 little of the mystic about Parker ; he was the old 
 English deist with American sympathies and forms of 
 speech. So although in those days he used to be found 
 in the " Olympicka," where Emerson and his " cosmic 
 questions " formed the chief themes of the New Eng 
 land gods and goddesses in conclave, he would go 
 home to write in his journal such prosaic sentences as 
 this : " Mr. E. says, If a man is at heart just, so far 
 he is God. Now, it seems that he mistakes likeness 
 for identity. My spirit is like God, but is it necessarily 
 God ? There are ten peas in a pod, exactly alike in all 
 things : are there not ten peas, and not one alone ? 
 Now if a man s spirit could become exactly like God s, 
 would his be the same as God s? " &c. After reading 
 this we cannot wonder that the interviews between the 
 two should have been sometimes disappointing. Thus 
 Parker records a walk with some friends C. P. 
 Cranch, poet and artist, among them to Concord, in 
 the following terms : " We all assembled and took tea 
 with R. W. E. lie and Ripley had all the talk. . . . 
 Really it was quite too bad. The only good thing he 
 said was, Come and look at this print of "Endy- 
 mion," which is very beautiful ; so likewise is its rival, 
 the " Coming of Morning," drawn by two dappled 
 steeds and attended by some virgins, daughters of the 
 sun. Carlyle sent it to Mrs. E. In our walk E. ex 
 pressed to me his admiration of and his foolish 
 
180 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 article in the 4 Dial. He said it was full of life. But, 
 
 alas ! the life is Emerson s and not s, and so it had 
 
 been lived before." Nevertheless, Parker rejoiced in 
 Emerson ; his character and elevation he held up in re 
 ply to claims of the Church folk to a monopoly of piety, 
 and one of his stories was that an eminent orthodox 
 preacher, asked whether he supposed Emerson would 
 go to hell, replied that he might go there, but no doubt 
 the devil would be so embarrassed about his disposal 
 that he would have to send him elsewhere ! The only 
 time I remember seeing Parker angry was when some 
 Unitarian preacher, alluding publicly to Emerson s 
 great distress at the loss of his son Waldo, attributed 
 it to his lack of religious faith. When the tk Massa 
 chusetts Quarterly" was projected in 1847, Parker 
 named Emerson as the only one fit to be its editor, a 
 position which the latter accepted, with Parker and 
 Cabot as co-editors. " He is," wrote Parker, "a 
 downright man; we never had such a jewel in America 
 before. I think him worth two or three of Dr. Chan- 
 ning." 
 
 On the other hand, Emerson strongly admired the 
 courage and fidelity of the great Boston preacher, and 
 after his death spoke of him in these words : 
 
 " Tis plain tome that he has achieved an historic 
 immortality here ; that he has so woven himself in these 
 few years into the history of Boston, that he can never 
 be left out of your annals. It will not be the acts of 
 city councils, nor of obsequious mayors, nor, in the 
 State House, the proclamations of governors, with their 
 failing virtue failing them at critical moments that 
 the coming generations will study what really befell ; 
 
SANGREAL. 181 
 
 but in the plain lessons of Theodore Parker in the 
 Music Hall, in Faneuil Hall, or in Legislative Com 
 mittee-Rooms, the true temper and authentic record 
 of these days will be read. The next generation 
 will care little for the chances of election that govern 
 governors now ; it will care little for fine gentlemen 
 who behaved shabbily, but it will read very intelli 
 gently in his rough story, fortified with exact anec 
 dotes, precise with names and dates, what part was 
 taken by each actor ; who threw himself into the cause 
 of Humanity, who came to the rescue of Civilisation 
 at a hard pinch, and who blocked its course." 
 
 Emerson had been desired by Theodore Parker s 
 Society to make the chief address on the funeral occa 
 sion, but this he declined to do, though he said there 
 the best words in his honour. I received a note from 
 him, dated June 6, I860, in which he refers to Parker, 
 then recently dead, and to the answer he had sent to the 
 Society. " I know well what a calamity is the loss of 
 his courage and patriotism to the country ; but of his 
 mind and genius few are less accurately informed than 
 I. It is for you and Sanborn, and many excellent 
 young men who stood in age and sensibility hearers 
 and judges of all his discourse and action for you 
 to weigh and report. My relations to him are quite 
 accidental, and our differences of method and working 
 such as really required and honoured all his Catholicism 
 and magnanimity to forgive in me." 
 
 Theodore Parker s resolution, entered in his journal 
 after hearing Emerson s oration, as already stated, was 
 followed by a steady progress in anti-supernaturalism, 
 and by a valiant effort to introduce that into the Uni- 
 
182 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 tiirian Church. He was at once fastened upon as a 
 scapegoat for all the " infidelity " of the time. He was 
 by no means so radical as Emerson, who, however, 
 escaped the lifelong martyrdom which Parker suffered. 
 The arch-heretic was too much of an artist to excite 
 animosity. The soothsayer who prophesied to the 
 Eastern monarch that he would lose all his family and 
 friends, then die himself, and he who said, "Your 
 majesty will survive all your relations," were types of 
 the different ways in which the same fact was some 
 times put ; and as in the fable one soothsayer was 
 beheaded and the other rewarded, so in this religious 
 controversy in America, some suffered hatred and 
 abuse for a radicalism far less formidable than that of 
 Emerson. 
 
 If the infinite heart of Emerson was veiled even for 
 many true knights who followed its attraction, it was 
 shrouded for some others who sought to borrow his 
 thought for sectarian uses. When it was proposed in 
 the Society of Alumni of the Divinity College to send 
 a message of sympathy to Theodore Parker, dying in 
 a foreign land, the proposal was stormily refused by a 
 majority which included some always profuse in their 
 admirations of Emerson. This was the old unfailing 
 sign of a prophet who has won the popular heart. No 
 man durst lay hands on him. 
 
 I have before me the scrap of a letter written by 
 Emerson to a friend, in early life to whom, or by 
 whom given me I cannot remember in which he says : 
 " We hearken in vain for any profound voice speaking 
 to the American heart, cheering timid good men, ani 
 mating the youth, consoling the defeated, and intelli- 
 
SANGREAL. 183 
 
 gently announcing duties which clothe life with joy and 
 endear the land and sea to men." With a deliberation 
 equalled only by his humility, Emerson set himself to 
 break this dreary stillness. With perfect conviction 
 that the hunger of hearts was for the truth he found 
 satisfying ; with faith in the spirit of man beneath 
 gainsayings of men s lips or fears ; without misgiving, 
 without self-defence, as one who brings glad tidings ; 
 so he spake, and the human heart answered. 
 
 In truth, Emerson never spoke but with the human 
 race behind him, and the flowers of all devout culture 
 around him ; he so took to heart the teachings of all 
 sages, poets, prophets, that they beamed in his face ; 
 the great seemed near him, as one re-affirming the truth 
 of their lives. His negations were the rescue of things 
 eternal from their ruins. The eye never lost sight of 
 the star that rose above them. Where shrill polemics 
 and scoffing denials had hidden this or that new-born 
 truth as behind uncouth forms of the stable, here 
 appeared the human infant, haloed, and all the gold, 
 frankincense, and myrrh around it. Reverence, art, 
 poetry, literature, all the fair hopes of the home and 
 of society, shone now on the side of ideal right and 
 the religion of reason, while the unreformed institu 
 tions were placed on the side of denial, and appeared 
 as if turned to grey fortresses. 
 
184 EMEKSON AT HOME AND ABliOAD. 
 
 XX. 
 
 BUILDING TABERNACLES. 
 
 AMID the confusion in the Unitarian circle caused 
 by Emerson s oration, the most pathetic figure 
 was that of old Dr. Channing, who sees another ocean 
 ahead just as he was preparing to land. The shore, 
 then, as in the case of Columbus, has turned out to be 
 a tinted cloud on the horizon ! 
 
 A significant incident has been lately told by Rev. 
 W. C. Gannet, son of Dr. Channing s successor. In 
 Channing s church it had been the custom for many 
 years to sing " Old Hundred " at the close of the ser 
 vices, but one day, about fifty years ago, the choir 
 conspired among themselves to close with another 
 hymn, whereupon they were visited with such wrath 
 from the astounded congregation, that " Old Hun 
 dred " sounded on twoscore years longer. 
 
 The incident was a fit prelude to the effort made by 
 Channing to introduce the Transcendental theme into 
 Unitarianism. In the earlier days of the movement, 
 Margaret Fuller used to pass much of her time reading 
 to him from the Germans, whose language he did not 
 understand, and Theodore Parker remembered the sim 
 plicity with which the aged preacher expressed the 
 hope that some heretic would translate Strauss s 
 
BUILDING TABERNACLES. 185 
 
 " Leben Jesu." Channing suspected that the Har 
 vard King Arthur had not gone the right way about 
 holding together his Round Table. Professor Norton s 
 severe pamphlets, which really held the knights to 
 veracity in their use of words, seemed to the elo 
 quent preacher somewhat intolerant. The Unitarian 
 body," he wrote, "seems to be forsaking its first 
 love its liberality, its respect for the rights of indi 
 vidual judgment, its separation cf the essential from 
 the unessential in Christianity. I have felt for years 
 that it must undergo important developments. It 
 began as a protest against the rejection of reason. 
 It pledged itself to progress as its life and end ; but 
 it has gradually grown stationary, and now we have a 
 Unitarian orthodoxy." With this feeling he had joined 
 the young thinkers, then known as the " Friends of 
 Progress," who used to meet in country places. They 
 all "regarded themselves as Christians," and, so long 
 as that old flag floated above the company, the Round 
 Table was in happy condition. These "Friends of 
 Progress " had in September, 1836, the year and month 
 in which Emerson s " Nature" had appeared, formed 
 their " Symposium," which subsequently received 
 the name of "The Transcendental Club," and, after 
 Emerson s oration, it began to contemplate some kind 
 of public organisation and work. But Channing had 
 built his new Christianity upon the pre-existence and 
 mediatorial office of Christ. To this idea Emerson s 
 idea was directly fatal. " We must get rid of Christ," 
 he said once to Nathaniel Hawthorne. "No, Mr. 
 Emerson," replied the other, " we cannot do without 
 Christ." But Emerson, who had justified Jesus even 
 
186 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 in his claim to he divine, was resolute in his adherence 
 to Paul s prophecy, "Then shall also the son be sub 
 ject unto him who put all things under him, that God 
 may be all in all." 
 
 Elizabeth Peabody, in her " Reminiscences of Wil 
 liam Ellery Channing," relates an interesting incident 
 of Emerson. "When he was revising the proof of the 
 Divinity College oration she suggested the alteration 
 of a letter in the passage where he speaks of Chris 
 tianity as dwelling " with noxious exaggeration about 
 t\\e person of Jesus." "The soul knows no persons," 
 he says. It invites every man to expand to the full 
 circle of the universe, and will have no preference but 
 those of spontaneous love. But by this Eastern mon 
 archy of a Christianity, which indolence and fear have 
 built, the friend of man is made the injurer of man." 
 Miss Peabody wished him to " put a large F to desig 
 nate Jesus as the friend of souls." After a moment s 
 thought Emerson replied, " No : directly I put in that 
 large F they will all go to sleep." 
 
 There stands the small " f," beautiful as Giotto s O, 
 announcing the true master that had come. There was 
 to be no more sleep among those whom this new word 
 had reached. Parker, Ripley, and others might man 
 age to call themselves Christians for a time, and Chan 
 ning might endeavour to form again in Boston the 
 Round Table dispersed at Cambridge. In vain ! The 
 Quest must go on. At length Dr. Channing sees that, 
 so far from Unitarianism being able to contain the new 
 movement, Christianity itself was an insufficient taber 
 nacle for it. "I see and feel," he writes in 1840, 
 "the harm done by this crude speculation, whilst I 
 
BUILDING TABERNACLES. 187 
 
 also see much nobleness to bind me to its advocates. 
 In its opinions generally I see nothing to give me hope." 
 A year later he says (to James Martineau) of the 
 Transcendentalists : " They are anxious to defend the 
 soul s immediate connection with God, and are in dan 
 ger of substituting private inspiration for Christianity." 
 With almost the same words the Puritans had banished 
 the Quakers two hundred years before. So wrote 
 Channing in 1841 : the next year he was dead. 
 
 Over the grave of Channing the Transcendentalists 
 were the chief mourners. Because of his anti-slavery 
 sermons, even more than his other heresies, Boston 
 paid no public honours to his memory. But one organ 
 expressed regret at this the "Dial." "Dr. Chan 
 ning," it said "was a man of so much rectitude, and 
 such power to express his sense of right, that his value 
 to this country, of which he was a kind of public con 
 science^ can hardly be over-estimated. Not only his 
 merits, but his limitations also, which made all his 
 virtues and talents intelligible and available for the 
 correction and elevation of society, made our Cato dear, 
 and his loss is not to be repaired." 
 
 During all this time the lectures of Emerson were 
 going steadily on diffused also by the "Dial" and 
 in volumes with increasingly wonderful results. As 
 Dr. Holmes has said, " Here was an iconoclast without 
 a hammer, who took down our idols from their pedestals 
 so tenderly that it seemed like an act of worship." 
 The Unitarians were bewildered as one after another 
 their brightest young men caught the new enthusiasm. 
 At first it brought out a good deal of the New England 
 pulpit humour. One divine, on his return from a visit 
 
188 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 to Concord, from which much was expected, opened 
 with the hymn " Thou first great cause, least under 
 stood," and preached on the text, " I saw an altar with 
 this inscription, To an unknown God." Dr. Froth- 
 ingham, whose son is the sympathetic historian of 
 Transcendentalism, preached about Emerson from the 
 text "Some said- that it thundered, others that an 
 angel spoke." Dr. Burnap of Baltimore described 
 Transcendentalism as " a new philosophy which has 
 risen, maintaining that nothing is everything in gen 
 eral, and everything is nothing in particular." 
 
 Some of these ministers, however, were influenced 
 in a way which I heard a young preacher describe in a 
 Western pulpit. " In the early days of California, a 
 preacher went out to save the souls of gold-diggers, 
 who himself was not averse to picking up nuggets with 
 which the New Jerusalem is paved. On one occasion 
 whilst he was praying at a grave, some one stirred the 
 earth heap, and a little yellow dust appeared. One 
 after another of the mourning bystanders rushed off to 
 buy up the claim, and presently the preacher peeped 
 through his eyelids, and, seeing the situation, pro 
 nounced an instant Amen, and also ran off to try and 
 secure the treasure. In the same way Germany crum 
 bled a little gold dust beside the grave of orthodoxy ; 
 Emerson, Parker, Ripley, and the rest rushed off first, 
 and at length even Channing stopped in his prayers 
 over the dead, to try and catch up with the rest." 
 
 There was a multitude simply dazzled by the trans 
 figured man, and at once bent on building a tabernacle 
 for him. Of course it must be along with tabernacles 
 for Moses and Elias, for the Law and Prophecy of tra- 
 
BUILDING TABERNACLES. 189 
 
 dition, but these they believed might be reconstructed. 
 How deeply the orthodox were stirred was shewn in 
 many ways. George Bradford (in the " Memorial 
 History of Boston") relates that one of the meetings 
 of the Transcendental Club was made memorable by 
 an eloquent outburst from Father Taylor. The subject 
 related to preaching, and the Methodist, present by 
 invitation, was asked for his views. "He had been 
 sitting silent while the others talked, knitting his brows, 
 with his green spectacles thrown up on his forehead, 
 leaning forward or shifting about on his chair. When 
 he began to speak, he soon rose to his feet, and, warm 
 ing as he went on, in a sort of indignant and sorrowful 
 eloquence, by and by took his hearers off their feet, 
 and they were carried away as by a flood. He rebuked 
 the shortcomings of the various religious sects, not 
 sparing his own, the Methodists, characterising the 
 faults or peculiarities of each with sarcastic wit and a 
 sort of grim but fervent satire. . . . When he got 
 through, the company were so deeply impressed that 
 they were for the most part disposed to entire silence, 
 and though some desultory attempts were made to 
 renew and continue the discussion, all other speech 
 seemed so cold and hard after the glowing words they 
 had heard, and so out of harmony with their mood, 
 that the company soon broke up." 
 
 In 1840 the tabernacle-builders held a grand con 
 vention in Boston, called by " The Friends of Universal 
 Progress." Emerson attended, but did not speak. We 
 have, however, his report in the " Dial." 
 
 " The composition of the assembly was rich and 
 various. The singularity and latitude of the summons 
 
190 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 drew together, from all parts of New England, and also 
 from the Middle States, men of every shade of opinion, 
 from the straitest orthodoxy to the wildest heresy, and 
 many persons whose church was a church of one mem 
 ber only. A great variety of dialect and of costume 
 was noticed; a great deal of confusion, eccentricity, 
 and freak appeared, as well as of zeal and enthusiasm. 
 If the assembly was disorderly, it was picturesque. 
 Madmen, madwomen, men with beards, Dunkers, 
 Muggletonians, Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, 
 Seventh-day Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calvin- 
 ists, Unitarians, and Philosophers, all came succes 
 sively to the top and seized their moment, if not their 
 hour, wherein to chide, or pray, or preach, or protest. 
 The faces were a study. The most daring innovators 
 and the champions until death of the old cause, sat 
 side by side. The still living merit of the oldest New 
 England families, glowing yet after several generations, 
 encountered the founders of families, fresh merit 
 emerging and expanding the brows to a new breath, 
 and lighting a clownish face with sacred fire. The 
 assembly was characterised by the predominance of a 
 certain plain, sylvan strength and earnestness, whilst 
 many of the most intellectual and cultivated persons 
 attended its councils. Dr. Channing, Edward Taylor, 
 Bronson Alcott, Mr. Garrison, Mr. May, Theodore 
 Parker, II. C. Wright, Dr. Osgood, William Adams, 
 Edward Palmer, Jones Very, Maria W. Chapman, and 
 many other persons of a mystical, or sectarian, or phi 
 lanthropic renown were present, and some of them par 
 ticipant. And there was no want of female speakers : 
 Mrs. Little and Mrs. Lucy Sessions took a pleasing 
 
BUILDING TABERNACLES. 191 
 
 and memorable part in the debate, and that flea of con 
 ventions, Mrs. Abigail Folsoni, was but too ready with 
 her interminable scroll. If there was not parliamentary 
 order, there was life, and the assurance of that condi 
 tional love for religion and religious liberty which in 
 all periods characterises the inhabitants of this part of 
 America. 
 
 "There was a great deal of wearisome speaking in 
 each of those three-days sessions, but relieved by sig 
 nal passages of pure eloquence, by much vigour of 
 thought, and especially by the exhibition of character 
 and by the victories of character. These men and 
 women were in search of something better and more 
 satisfying than a vote or a definition, and they found 
 what they sought, or the pledge of it, in the attitude 
 taken by individuals of their number of resistance to 
 the insane routine of parliamentary usage, in the lofty 
 reliance on principles, and the prophetic dignity and 
 transfiguration which accompanies, even amidst oppo 
 sition and ridicule, a man whose mind is made up to 
 obey the great inward commander, and who does not 
 anticipate his own action, but awaits confidently the 
 new emergency for the new counsel." 
 
 Emerson selected for publication the speech of a 
 mechanic named Whiting, hailing from the town of 
 Webster, in reading which one reflects how often the 
 lowliest of philosophers in praising others was alone 
 unconscious that he was praising himself. Although 
 Emerson did not ascend the tribune nor open his lips, 
 in a sense he made a majority of the speeches. Through 
 the stirred soul and impassioned lips of the mechanic 
 he concluded with these words a speech about the 
 
192 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 Bible: " Above all tilings, maintain the right of the 
 living soul, of every individual man, to judge, unhesi 
 tatingly and unqualifiedly, everything in the past and 
 all of the present ; remembering always that the soul 
 is its own authority, is bound by its own laws, does 
 not live in the past, but is now. It is greater than all 
 books is antecedent to them all. It is the maker of 
 them ; and cannot be made subject to them until the 
 Creator can be placed in bondage to his own workman 
 ship. When this great truth shall fill the human heart, 
 and be shadowed forth in human life, then the morning 
 of the Universal Resurrection will dawn, then man 
 shall arise from his grovelling position among the cof 
 fins, the bones and ashes of a buried Past, and live, 
 and grow, and expand in the bright sunlight of that 
 Eternity in which he dwells." 
 
 This congress, long remembered as the " Chardon 
 Street Convention," was pentecost of the new gospel, 
 its translation into many tongues by the fire that burns 
 through personal prejudices ; and this phenomenon, 
 now as of old, implies a nearness of some heaven, and 
 expectancy of a kingdom at hand. And as, in this 
 case, the old heavens were faded, and no returning 
 Messiah looked for, it became necessary for the enthu 
 siasts to try and build a heaven of their own. Hence, 
 Brook Farm. They who have known the same spirit 
 ual baptism must have all things in common. The 
 preamble of the constitution of Brook Farm must be 
 placed on record. 
 
 " In order more effectually to promote the great pur 
 poses of human culture ; to establish the external rela 
 tions of life on a basis of wisdom and purity ; to apply 
 
BUILDING TABERNACLES. 
 
 193 
 
 the principles of justice and love to our social organi 
 sation in accordance with the laws of Divine Provi 
 dence ; to substitute a system of brotherly co-opera 
 tion for one of selfish competition ; to secure to our 
 children, and those who may be intrusted to our care, 
 the benefits of the highest physical, intellectual, and 
 moral education which in the progress of knowledge 
 the resources at our command will permit ; to institute 
 an attractive, efficient, and productive system of indus 
 try ; to prevent the exercise of worldly anxiety by the 
 competent supply of our necessary wants ; to diminish 
 the desire of excessive accumulation by making the 
 acquisition of individual property subservient to up 
 right and disinterested uses ; to guarantee to each other 
 for ever the means of physical support and of spiritual 
 progress ; and thus to impart a greater freedom, sim 
 plicity, truthfulness, refinement, and moral dignity to 
 our mode of life ; we, the undersigned, do unite in 
 a voluntary association, and adopt and ordain the fol 
 lowing articles of agreement." Among " the under 
 signed " was not the name of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
194 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 A SIX YEARS DAY-DREAM. 
 
 AND so, said Emerson in the first number of the 
 "Dial," "with diligent hands and good intent 
 we set down our Dial* on the earth. We wish it may 
 resemble that instrument in its celebrated happiness, 
 that of measuring no hours but those of sunshine. Let 
 it be one cheerful rational voice amidst the din of 
 mourners and polemics. Or, to abide by our chosen 
 image, let it be such a dial, not as the dead face of a 
 clock hardly, even, such as the gnomon in a garden 
 but rather such a dial as the garden itself, in whose 
 leaves and flowers and fruits the suddenly awakened 
 sleeper is instantly apprised, not what part of dead 
 time, but what state of life and growth, is now arrived 
 and arriving." 
 
 With this sentence, which Rabelais would have set 
 up in gold in his clockless Abbey of Thclema, appeared 
 that magazine which lasted through the morning hours 
 of the movement it registered. It was set upon the 
 earth, and the days were marked by the closing of 
 errors, the unfolding of truths, gently and sweetly as 
 in the floral dial of Linnaeus. Some weeds were, in 
 deed, intermingled, but no poisons ; and if one would 
 know the spirit of this American movement, let him 
 
A six YEARS DAY-DREAM. 195 
 
 compare the records of any controversy in Christian 
 annals with these which report the deliverance of 
 America from them all. Margaret Fuller and Emerson 
 edited it, but in the most catholic spirit. Through this 
 organ men and women since eminent gave their early 
 thoughts to the world, and around these for leading 
 strains there is a chorus of clever writers, all of whom 
 are so charged with the new ideas that their voices 
 seem to come from aerial land raised above the every 
 day world. 
 
 But the " Dial had not been long published before 
 these scattered feeders on honeydew had come to know 
 each other, and it was inevitable that their insulation 
 from the general wovld should lead to t .ie formation of 
 some project like that which was already leading rest 
 less minds westward from Europe. Emerson has traced 
 the origin of the Brook Earm community to a consulta 
 tion between Dr. Channing and George Ripley upon 
 the practicability of bringing thoughtful and cultivated 
 people together and forming a society that should be 
 satisfactory. "That good attempt," said Mr. Emer 
 son, " ended in an oyster-supper with excellent wines." 
 Afterward, however, it was revived in Brook Farm, 
 which, Emerson thinks, showed sufficiently that farming 
 and scholarship were not exactly synonymous. " The 
 ladies took cold on washing-days, and it was ordained 
 that the gentlemen-shepherds should hang out the 
 clothes, which they punctually did ; but a great ana 
 chronism followed in the evening, for when they began 
 to dance, the clothes-pins dropped plentifully from 
 their pockets. . . . One hears the frequent statement 
 of the country members that 0110 man was ploughing 
 
196 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 all clay and another was looking out of the window all 
 day perhaps drawing his picture and they both 
 received the same wages." Emerson had not faith 
 enough in the feasibility of such a community, had it 
 been possible for him to surrender his time for the dis 
 posal of the wisest counsel, to become a resident ; but 
 he was a frequent visitor, and his coming caused more 
 sensation than if he had been an archbishop. 
 
 The publication of Hawthorne s "Note-Books," 
 which contain such lively descriptions of his life at 
 Brook Farm, elicited an interesting paper in " Harper s 
 Magazine" from George W. Curtis, of whom Haw 
 thorne speaks in "The Blithedale Romance" as the 
 man who could best write the real history of that very 
 interesting movement. 
 
 "When the experiment began at Brook Farm, there 
 was no doubt in conservative circles that for their sins 
 this offshoot of Bedlam was permitted in the neighbour 
 hood. What it was, what it was meant to be, were 
 equally inexplicable. Are they fools, knaves, mad 
 men, or mere sentimentalists? Is this Coleridge and 
 Southey again, with their Pantisocracy and Susque- 
 hanna Paradise? Is it a vast nursery of infidelity? 
 and is it true that the abb or religieux sacrifices 
 white oxen to Jupiter in the back parlour ? What may 
 not be true, since it is within Theodore Parker s parish, 
 and his house, crammed with books, and modest under 
 the singing pines, is only a mile away? These extraor 
 dinary and vague and hostile impressions were not 
 relieved by the appearance of such votaries of the new 
 shrine as appeared in the staid streets and halls of the 
 city. There is always a certain amount of oddity latent 
 
A six YEARS DAY-DREAM. 197 
 
 in society which rushes to such an enterprise as a natu 
 ral vent ; and in youth itself there is a similar latent 
 and boundless protest against the friction and apparent 
 unreason of the existing order. At the time of the 
 Brook Farm enterprise this was everywhere observable. 
 The freedom of the anti-slavery reform and its discus 
 sions had developed the come-outers, who bore testi 
 mony in all times and places against church and state. 
 Mr. Emerson mentions an apostle of the gospel of love 
 and no money, who preached zealously, but never 
 gathered a large church of believers. Then there were 
 the protestants against the sin of flesh-eating, refining 
 into curious metaphysics upon milk, eggs, and oysters. 
 To purloin milk from the udder was to injure the mater 
 nal affections of the cow ; to eat eggs was Feejee can 
 nibalism, and the destruction of the tender germ of 
 life ; to swallow an oyster was to mask murder. A 
 still selector circle denounced the chains that shackled 
 the tongue, and the false delicacy that clothed the 
 body. Profanity, they said, is not the use of forcible 
 and picturesque words ; it is the abuse of such to ex 
 press base passions and emotions. So indecency can 
 not be affirmed of the model of all grace, the human 
 body. The fig-leaf is the sign of the Fall. Man re 
 turning to Paradise will leave it behind. The priests 
 of this faith, therefore, felt themselves called upon to 
 rebuke true profanity and indecency by sitting at their 
 front-doors upon Sunday mornings with no other cloth 
 ing than that of the pre-fig-leaf period, tranquilly but 
 loudly conversing in the most stupendous oaths, by 
 way of conversational chiaroscuro, while a deluded 
 world went shuddering by to church. These were 
 
198 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 harmless freaks and individual phantasies. But the 
 time was like the time of witchcraft. The air magni 
 fied and multiplied every appearance, and exceptions 
 and idiosyncrasies and ludicrous follies were regarded 
 as the rule, and as the logical masquerade of this foul 
 fiend Transcendentalism, which was evidently unap 
 peasable, and was about to devour manners, morals, 
 religion, and common-sense. If Father Lawson or 
 Abby Folsom were borne by main force from an anti- 
 slavery meeting, and the non-resistants pleaded that 
 those protestants had as good a right to speak as any 
 body, and that what was called their senseless tuttle 
 was probably inspired wisdom, if people were only 
 heavenly-minded enough to understand it, it was but 
 another sign of the impending anarchy. And what 
 was to be said for you could not call them old do 
 tards when the younger protestants of the time came 
 walking through the sober streets of Boston and seated 
 themselves in concert-halls and lecture-rooms, with 
 hair parted in the middle and falling on their shoulders, 
 and clad in garments such as no human being ever 
 wore before garments which seemed to be a com 
 promise between the blouse of the Paris workmen and 
 the peignoir of a possible sister ? For tailoring under 
 went the same revision to which the whole philosophy 
 of life was subjected, and one ardent youth, asserting 
 that the human form itself suggested the proper shape 
 of its garments, caused trousers to be constructed that 
 closely fitted the leg, and bore his testimony to the 
 truth in coarse crash breeches. 
 
 " These were the ludicrous aspects of the intellectual 
 and moral fermentation or agitation that was called 
 
A six YEARS DAY DREAM. 199 
 
 Transcendentalism. And these were foolishly accepted 
 by many as its chief and only signs. It was supposed 
 that the folly was complete at Brook Farm, and it was 
 indescribably ludicrous to observe reverend doctors 
 and other dons coming out to gaze upon the extraor 
 dinary spectacle, and going about as dainty ladies hold 
 their skirts and daintily step from stone to stone in a 
 muddy street, lest they be soiled. The dons seemed 
 to doubt whether the mere contact had not smirched 
 them. But, droll in itself, it was a thousand-fold droll 
 er when Theodore Parker came through the woods and 
 described it. With his head set low upon his gladiato 
 rial shoulders, and his nasal voice in subtle and ex 
 quisite mimicry reproducing what was truly laughable, 
 yet all with infinite bonhomie and with a genuine 
 superiority to small malice, he was as humorous as he 
 was learned, and as excellent a man as he was noble 
 and fervent and humane a preacher. On Sundays a 
 party always went from the Farm to Mr. Parker s little 
 country church. He was there exactly what he was 
 afterwards when he preached to thousands of eager 
 people in the Boston Music Hall ; the same plain, 
 simple, rustic, racy man. His congregation were his 
 personal friends. They loved him and admired him 
 and were proud of him ; and his geniality and tender 
 sympathy, his ample knowledge of things as well as of 
 books, his jovial manliness and sturdy independence, 
 drew to him all ages and sexes and conditions. 
 
 11 The society at Brook Farm was composed of every 
 kind of person. There were the ripest scholars, men 
 and women of the most aesthetic culture and accom 
 plishment, young farmers, seamstresses, mechanics, 
 
200 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 preachers the industrious, the lazy, the conceited, 
 the sentimental. But they were associated in such a 
 spirit and under such conditions that, with some ex 
 travagance, the best of everybody appeared, and there 
 was a kind of esprit de corps, at least in the earlier or 
 golden age of the colony. There was plenty of steady, 
 essential hard work, for the founding of an earthly 
 Paradise upon a rough New England farm is no pas 
 time. But with the best intention, and much practical 
 knowledge and industry and devotion, there was in the 
 nature of the case an inevitable lack of method, and 
 the economical failure was almost a foregone conclu 
 sion. But there were never such witty potato patches 
 and such sparkling cornfields before or since. The 
 weeds were scratched out of the ground to the music 
 of Tennyson or Browning, and the nooning was an 
 hour as gay and bright as any brilliant midnight at 
 Ambrose s." 
 
 "It is to the Transcendentalism that seemed to so 
 many good souls both wicked and absurd that some of 
 the best influences of American life to-day are due. 
 The spirit that was concentrated at Brook Farm is dif 
 fused, but it is not lost. As an organised effort, after 
 many downward changes, it failed; but those who 
 remember the Hive, the Eyrie, the Cottage when 
 Margaret Fuller came and talked, radiant with bright 
 humour ; when Emerson and Parker and Hedge joined 
 the circle for a night or a day ; when those who may 
 not be publicly named brought beauty and wit and 
 social sympathy to the feast ; when the practical pos 
 sibilities of life seemed fairer, and life and character 
 were touched ineffaceably with good influence cherish 
 
A six YEARS DAY DREAM. 201 
 
 a pleasant vision which no fate can harm, and remem 
 ber with ceaseless gratitude the blithe days at Brook 
 Farm." 
 
 To this brilliant sketch but little need be added here. 
 The Pilgrim House, Eyrie, Hive, Cottage ; the Nest 
 where Marianne Ripley brought some children from her 
 school in Boston ; finally the Phalanstery, which was 
 consumed by fire ere completed, are names that may 
 yet appear in a pretty mythology. George Bradford, 
 in his careful account of the community ("Memorial 
 History of Boston"), says that there were always a 
 number of young people boarding there or attending the 
 school, and that a prominent feature was the opportu 
 nity given for the exercise of divers gifts and faculties. 
 "There were amusements suited to the different 
 seasons tableaux, charades, dances; in the winter, 
 skating and coasting, for which the knolls, wide 
 meadows, and river afforded favourable opportunities ; 
 in summer, rural fetes, masquerades, &c., in the 
 charming localities, rocks, and woods around the 
 place." 
 
 Hawthorne used to attend the evening gatherings in 
 the hall of the Hive ; though admired, he was shy and 
 apt to be silent. Some of the Brook-Farmers have re 
 gretted that in his romance he should have connected 
 with a community, which well deserved the name 
 " Blithedale," the ghastly tragedy of Zenobia s death, 
 which occurred elsewhere. Hawthorne himself re 
 gretted that so many closely identified Zenobia with 
 Margaret Fuller, and that the death of his heroine by 
 drowning should be associated with the tragic end of a 
 woman whom he admired. But it remains the fact 
 
202 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 that " The Blithedale Romance" is the truest monu 
 ment of Brook Farm, and all the pains and losses it 
 cost them might well seem to the inmates a small price 
 to pay for that immortal product which rose out of the 
 ashes of so many fair hopes. 
 
 The most energetic person in founding the community 
 was George Ripley, a scholar and theologian, and his 
 accomplished wife, a niece of the poet Dana. J. 8. 
 Dwight, the eminent writer on music, was a member, 
 and with him came a circle that secured for the com 
 munity enjoyment of the finest classics in that art. 
 William Henry Channing gave inspiring discourses 
 which have hallowed the Brook Farm Sundays in many 
 memories. Charles A. Dana, afterwards Assistant 
 Secretary of War under President Lincoln, now editor 
 of the New York " Sun," added much to the social 
 charm of the place. With refined and cultured fam 
 ilies such as the Russells, Hoxies, the brothers Curtis, 
 Elizabeth Peabody, Hawthorne, Alcott, and Brisbane, 
 Brook Farm had no reason to envy Boston its social 
 resources. These educated and refined people, with 
 few exceptions, were drawn to Brook Farm by moral 
 enthusiasm. They were not generally impecunious, 
 but had found that in the conventional world they were 
 spending their labour for that which did not satisfy, 
 and for much that was repulsive to their new ideal. 
 But the general world had such a hold on them that 
 they could not go far from Boston, and the only spot 
 they could get was a barren one. Though a small 
 brook named their farm, they did not have any of 
 those vigorous streams which elsewhere compensate 
 New Englanders for the hardness and thinness of their 
 
A six YEARS DAY DREAM. 203 
 
 soil with water-power for manufactures. They had 
 to use steam for their mechanical departments. That 
 so many people were able to live at Brook Farm even 
 for seven years is really a good fact for the associative 
 principle. That it was and is remembered by those 
 who dwelt there as a seven years festivity, cheaply 
 purchased by the funds each sank in it, is an indication 
 of the spiritual exaltation of the time. This it was 
 that made their valley of Baca a well, as they travelled 
 through its dry places, and their wilderness blossom as 
 a rose. But they were reminded by Emerson and 
 Margaret Fuller that they were still but pilgrims, and 
 their tabernacles but tents that must presently be 
 folded for the journey to a farther land of promise. 
 
 In 1840, Nathaniel Hawthorne, aged thirty-six, 
 found himself in Salem Custom-House* " murdering 
 the brightest hours of the day." "Never comes any 
 bird of paradise into that dismal region." He resolves 
 to be free to be young again. " I will go forth and 
 stand in a summer shower, and all the worldly dust 
 that has collected on me shall be washed away at once, 
 and my heart will be a bank of fresh flowers for the 
 weary to rest upon." The next year he is at Brook 
 Farm. He arrived there in a snowstorm. " Through 
 faith I persist in believing that spring and summer will 
 come in due season ; but the unregenerated man shivers 
 within me, and suggests a doubt whether I may not 
 have wandered within the precincts of the Arctic circle." 
 The story of Hawthorne s day-dream may be outlined 
 by a few passages taken from his charming " Note- 
 Books," between April 13 and September 3, 1841 : 
 
 " I have not yet taken my first lesson in agriculture, 
 
204 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 except that I went to see our cows foddered yesterday 
 afternoon. We have eight of our own, and the number 
 is now increased by a transcendental heifer belonging 
 to Miss Margaret Fuller." 
 
 " This morning I have done wonders. Before break 
 fast I went out to the barn and began to chop hay for 
 the cattle, and with such righteous vehemence/ as Mr. 
 Kipley says, that in the space of ten minutes I broke 
 the machine." 
 
 "Miss Fuller s cow hooks the other cows, and has 
 made herself ruler of the herd, and behaves in a very 
 tyrannical manner." 
 
 " I shall make an excellent husbandman. I feel the 
 original Adam reviving within me. * 
 
 " I have milked a cow." 
 
 "It is an endless surprise to me how much work 
 there is to be done in the world, but, thank God, I am 
 able to do my share of it, and my ability increases 
 daily." 
 
 " A colony of wasps was discovered in my chamber." 
 
 " It is my opinion that a man s soul may be buried 
 and perish under a dung-heap or in a furrow of the 
 field, just as well as under a pile of money." 
 
 " Joyful thought ! in a little more than a fortnight I 
 shall be free of my bondage, . . . free to enjoy Nature 
 free to think and feel ! . . . Even my Custom-House 
 experience was not such a thraldom and weariness ; 
 my mind and heart were free. Oh, labour is the curse 
 of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without 
 becoming proportionably brutified. Is it a praise 
 worthy matter that I have spent five golden months in 
 providing food for cows and horses ? " 
 
A six YEARS DAY DREAM. 205 
 
 " Other persons have bought large estates and built 
 splendid mansions with such little books as I mean to 
 write ; so that perhaps it is not unreasonable to hope 
 that mine may enable me to build a little cottage, or at 
 least to buy or hire one." 
 
 " Really I should judge it to be twenty years since 
 I left Brook Farm ; and I take this to be one proof 
 that my life there was an unnatural and unsuitable, 
 and therefore an unreal one. It already looks like a 
 dream behind me. The real Me was never an asso 
 ciate of the community ; there has been a spectral 
 Appearance there, sounding the horn at daybreak, and 
 milking the cows, and hoeing potatoes, and raking hay, 
 toiling in the sun, and doing me the honour to assume 
 my name. But this spectre was not myself." 
 
 Hawthorne returned to Brook Farm for a short time, 
 but happily long enough to witness and describe a 
 characteristic Brook Farm scene. 
 
 "A picnic party in the woods yesterday, in honour 
 of little Frank Dana s birthday, he being six years old. 
 I strolled out with Mr. Bradford, and in a lonesome 
 glen we met the apparition of an Indian chief, dressed 
 in appropriate costume of blanket, feathers, and paint, 
 and armed with a musket. Almost at the same time 
 a young gipsy fortune-teller came from among the 
 trees and proposed to tell my fortune. While she 
 was doing this, the goddess Diana let fly an arrow, 
 and hit me smartly in the hand. The fortune-teller 
 and goddess were in fine contrast: Diana being a 
 blonde, fair, quiet, with a moderate composure ; and 
 the gipsy (O. G.), a bright, vivacious dark-haired, 
 rich-complexioned damsel, both of them very pretty, 
 
206 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 at least pretty enough to make fifteen years enchant 
 ing. Accompanied by these denizens of the wild wood 
 we went onward, and came to a company of fantastic 
 figures arranged in a ring for a dance or a game. 
 There was a Swiss girl, an Indian squaw, a negro of 
 the Jim Crow order, one or two foresters, and several 
 people in Christian attire, besides children of all ages. 
 There followed childish games, in which the grown 
 people took part with mirth enough, while I, whose 
 nature it is to be a mere spectator both of sport and 
 serious business, lay under the trees and looked on. 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Emerson and Miss Fuller, who ar 
 rived an hour or two before, came forth into the little 
 glade where we assembled. Here followed much talk. 
 The ceremonies of the day concluded with a cold col 
 lation of cakes and fruit. All was pleasant enough, 
 an excellent piece of work, would twere done ! 
 It has left a fantastic impression on my memory, this 
 intermingling of wild and fabulous characters with real 
 and homely ones, in the secluded nook of the woods. 
 I remember them, with the sunlight breaking through 
 overshadowing branches, and they appearing and dis 
 appearing confusedly, perhaps starting out of the 
 earth, as if the every-day laws of Nature were sus 
 pended for this particular occasion. There were the 
 children, too, laughing and sporting about, as if they 
 were at home among such strange shapes, and anon 
 bursting into loud uproar of lamentation when the rude 
 gambols of the merry archers chanced to overturn 
 them. And apart, with a shrewd, Yankee observation 
 of the scene, stands our friend Orange, a thick-set, 
 sturdy figure, enjoying the fun well enough, yet rather 
 
A SIX YEARS DAY DREAM. 207 
 
 laughing with a perception of its nonsensicalness than 
 at all entering into the spirit of the thing." 
 
 And now let us turn to the memories of Margaret 
 Fuller. 
 
 " All Saturday I was off in the woods. In the 
 evening we had a general conversation, opened by me, 
 upon education in its largest sense, and on what we 
 can do for ourselves and others. I took my usual 
 ground : The aim is perfection, patience the road. 
 The present object is to give ourselves and others a 
 tolerable chance. Let us not be too ambitions as to 
 our hopes as to immediate results. Our lives should 
 be considered as a tendency, an approximation only. 
 Parents and teachers expect to do too much." 
 
 " Sunday. A glorious day ; the woods full of per 
 fume. I was out all the morning. In the afternoon 
 Mrs. R. and I had a talk. I said my position would 
 
 be too uncertain here, as I could not work. said 
 
 they would all like to work for a person of genius. 
 Yes, I told her, but where would be my repose when 
 they were always to be judging whether I was worth it 
 or not ? 
 
 " All Monday morning in the woods again. After 
 noon out with the drawing party. I felt the evils of 
 the want of conventional refinement in the impudence 
 with which one of the girls treated me. She has since 
 thought of it with regret, I notice. 
 
 "Here I have passed a very pleasant week. The 
 tone of society is much sweeter than when I was here 
 a year ago. There is a prevailing spirit of mutual tol 
 erance and gentleness, with great sincerity. There is 
 no longer a passion for grotesque feats of liberty ; but 
 
208 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 a disposition, rather, to study and enjoy the liberty of 
 law. The great development of mind and character 
 observable in several instances persuades me that 
 this state of things affords a fine studio for the soul- 
 sculptor. 
 
 " My hopes might lead to association too an asso 
 ciation, if not of efforts, yet of destinies. In such a 
 one I live with several already, feeling that each one, 
 by acting out his own, casts light upon a mutual des 
 tiny, and illustrates the thought of a master-mind. It 
 is a constellation, not a phalanx, to which I would 
 belong." 
 
LESSONS FOR THE DAY. 209 
 
 XXIT. 
 
 LESSONS FOR THE DAY. 
 
 I HAVE a letter by Emerson, found among the 
 papers of a friend in Cincinnati, now dead, with an 
 inscription showing that it was written in answer to an 
 inquiry concerning his religious opinions. It is dated 
 at Concord in the October of 1838, and contains the 
 following statement of his outlook while the storm was 
 raging over his Divinity College address, delivered 
 three months before : 
 
 I hasten to say that I read these expressions of an 
 earnest character of your faith, of your hope with 
 extreme interest ; and if I can contribute any aid by 
 sympathy or suggestion to the solution of those great 
 problems that occupy you, I shall be very glad. But I 
 think it must be done by degrees. I am not sufficiently 
 master of the little truth I see to know how to state it 
 in forms so general as shall put every mind in posses 
 sion of my point of view. We generalise and rectify 
 our expressions by continual efforts from day to day, 
 from month to month, to reconcile our own light with 
 that of our companions. So shall two inquirers have 
 the best mutual action on each other. But I should 
 never attempt a direct answer to such questions as 
 yours. I have no language that could shortly present 
 
210 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 my state of mind in regard to each of them with any 
 fidelity ; for my state of mind in each is in no way final 
 and detached, but tentative, progressive, and strictly 
 connected with the whole circle of my thoughts. It 
 seems to me that to understand any man s thoughts 
 respecting the Supreme Being we need an insight into 
 the general habit and tendency of his speculations, 
 for every man s idea of God is the last or most 
 comprehensive generalisation at which he has arrived. 
 But besides the extreme difficulty of stating our re 
 sults on such questions in a few propositions, I think, 
 my dear sir, that a certain religious feeling deters 
 us from the attempt. I do not gladly utter any deep 
 conviction of the soul in any company where I think 
 it will be contested no, nor unless I think it will 
 be welcome. Truth has already ceased to be itself if 
 polemically said ; and if the soul would utter oracles, 
 as every soul should, it must live for itself keep itself 
 right-minded, observe with such awe its OW T II law as to 
 concern itself very little with the engrossing topics of 
 the hour, unless they be its own. I believe that most 
 of the speculations and difficulties that infest us we 
 must thank ourselves for that each mind, if true to 
 itself, will, by living for the right and not importing 
 into itself the doubts of other men, dissolve all diffi 
 culties, as the sun at midsummer burns up the clouds. 
 " Hence I think the aid we can give each other is 
 only incidental, lateral, and sympathetic. If we are 
 true and benevolent, we reinforce each other by every 
 act and word ; your heroism stimulates mine, and your 
 light kindles mine. The end of all this is, that I thank 
 you heartily for the confidence of your letter, and beg 
 
LESSONS FOR THE DAY. 211 
 
 you to use your earliest leisure to come and see me. 
 It is very possible that I shall not be able to give you 
 one definition ; but I will shew you with joy what I 
 strive after and what I worship, as far as I can. Mean 
 time I shall be very glad to hear from you by letter. 
 Your friend and servant, R. W. EMERSON." 
 
 "Yew," said Confucius, "permit me to tell you 
 what is knowledge. What you are acquainted with, 
 consider that you know it ; what you do not under 
 stand, consider that you do not know it : this is knowl 
 edge." This definition is in startling contrast with the 
 tone of nearly all other founders of religions and phi 
 losophies. The student speedily discovers that the most 
 commonplace attribute of this class is omniscience. 
 Long before charts of land or sea were made, the 
 invisible heavens and hells were mapped and reported 
 in detail. The seven or seventy hells, the nine celestial 
 spheres, twenty-eight heavens, twenty chiliocosms, four 
 dhyanas, four orders of being, three energies, six days 
 of creation, elven avatars, three dispensations, two 
 dispensations, and a thousand other arrangements of 
 the universe into sixes and sevens, meet us at every 
 turn in the cosmogonies and scriptures which still com 
 mand the faith of the majority of mankind. These 
 exact statements concerning things beyond the scope 
 of human faculties, while they escaped the criticism 
 of the ordinary human understanding by soaring above 
 the objects with which it could deal, indulged a very 
 general weakness of the human mind, and there is little 
 reason to wonder that the every-day rules and moral 
 maxims of Confucius were overshadowed by the clear 
 
212 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 and positive splendours of Buddhism. The scholar of 
 the present day notes this speculative precision as a 
 sign of the infancy of philosophy, and measures the 
 antiquity of a religion by the boldness of its assump 
 tions of particular knowledge in the realm of the un 
 knowable. Nevertheless, he has only to look around 
 him to perceive how large a part of mankind is still 
 prone to follow the teachers who approximate most 
 nearly the attitude of omniscience. Swedenborg gos 
 siping with the angels ; Comte assigning love and 
 thought their grooves ; Fourier pigeonholing the uni 
 verse in his French cabinet ; mediums interviewing 
 departed spirits at their tea-tables, and fairly slapping 
 the shades of heroes and prophets on the back with 
 joyous familiarity ; the popular divines bringing all 
 mysteries down to a rhetorical zodiac around their 
 pulpits : these are the recognised builders of the only 
 new sects and systems of which our age can boast. 
 With the bones of theories and explanations bleaching 
 all along the track by which the human mind has jour 
 neyed, we still find the multitude adoring their calves, 
 and steadily demanding for their leaders those who can 
 most glibly fable of the ineffable. 
 
 The recognition and attention paid to some thinkers 
 w r ho have not enclosed the heavens and the earth in a 
 nutshell is a novel and significant phenomenon. There 
 is, indeed, no sign of decrease in the numbers of the 
 system-makers and system-mongers. When some one 
 spoke of the distance of the sky, poor William Blake 
 cried, "It is false; the other day I walked down a 
 lane and touched it with my cane ! " It is easy to lis 
 ten, on any Sunday, to preachers who have repeatedly 
 
LESSONS FOR THE DAY. 213 
 
 done the same thing. But when Edinburgh called for 
 Carlyle, and Harvard for Emerson, to speak to them, 
 there was a suggestion that the world is beginning to 
 suspect that the sky touched with such facility may be 
 some theologian s umbrella and not the dome of azure. 
 
 With more reverence than the builders or uphold 
 ers of sj^stems and theories, and all their earnest 
 ness, Emerson led his followers to ends only to turn 
 those ends into means ; the shining walls are no sooner 
 reached than they change to tinted mist, their towers 
 gleaming now far ahead. At times, indeed, he has 
 seemed to rebuild the old temples and rekindle the 
 flames of altars that have grown cold ; but it is only to 
 touch them into ruin again, to shew how and why they 
 have perished, and why those that succeed them must 
 perish ; while the disciple gradually learns, if he cannot 
 define it, that there is something that endures through 
 them all ; and learns, too, that all the piety and humil 
 ity of those who knelt at those altars dwell with those 
 who respect the limits of human knowledge and action, 
 adhere to simple truth and reality, and, amid the 
 talkers, can look upon the heavens with a silence like 
 their own. 
 
 There is, indeed, an unmistakable tendency of this 
 kind in the mind of Emerson shewn by his successive 
 works. In his earlier volumes we find more that is 
 dreamy and visionary than in the later. Although 
 there was in the earlier essays nothing so formal as 
 the idealism of Berkeley and the schoolmen, and noth 
 ing so definite as the Hegelian philosophy or any form 
 of Christianity, there was in them a sufficient relation 
 to the metaphysics of modern Germany and to the 
 
214 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 mystical statements of religion, to draw upon his views 
 the label of transcendentalism. His criticisms of so 
 ciety, too, were accompanied by prophecies so har 
 monious, in some respects, with the theories of French 
 socialism, that it is not surprising his more ardent and 
 literal friends should have endeavoured to embody them 
 in communities ; while the fact that his visions never 
 acquired the consistency of theories is shewn in his 
 steady refusal to commit himself to any such practical 
 schemes, and his evident lack of faith in them. The 
 New England pulpit in which the philosopher began his 
 teachings was not abandoned per saltum, and his first 
 essays were modified from those sermons, to whose rare 
 charms many have testified. It was as if, in the deter 
 mination to explore all things for himself, he began 
 as the race began, with the adoration of sun and 
 star, though vaguely and without ritual. But with 
 increasing reticence concerning incomprehensible prob 
 lems, he has with every volume aimed less to realise 
 the ideal than to idealise the real. 
 
 Thus far, it may be said, the American thinker has 
 but kept step with the culture of the world, passing 
 from other worldly dreams to European realism, from 
 the certainties of ignorance to the scepticisms of 
 science. But there is in his works somewhat not 
 characteristic of the thought of modern Europe, even 
 if occasionally traceable in it. With the culture of the 
 Old World he has none of its intellectual despair. The 
 hand is that of scepticism, the voice is that of faith. 
 The tottering Jerichos crumble, but the blast before 
 which they have fallen winds into a prelude of the strain 
 that builds the hundred-gated walls in their place. 
 
LESSONS FOR THE DAY. 215 
 
 There is no trace of cynicism in his fine humour, no 
 showing of the teeth in his searching radicalism 
 though he spare not to touch the best, but always 
 the undertone of hope, as of one who knows that the 
 sunset of one longitude is the sunrise of another. The 
 old religions and institutions pass away because they 
 are false replies to the question that is deepest, but the 
 power of that questioning spirit to set aside such re 
 plies at serious earthly cost, is the ever-renewed pledge 
 of the universe that " whatever curiosity the order of 
 things has awakened, .the order of things can satisfy." 
 To this attitude of expectation all things become hope 
 fully significant ; snowfiakes and blossoms are alike 
 superlative effects of the sunshine, and in vanishings 
 from us, as well as in acquisitions, the advancing ideals 
 trace their steps. Before those for whom alone he 
 writes those who think Emerson holds up the 
 great aim of absolute truth ; it was so in his earliest, it 
 is so in his latest works ; but in the latter there is recog 
 nition that the thinker s business is for the present with 
 the corner-stone rather than the coping-stone of his 
 tower of vision. The scholar is to gain his freedom, 
 to get rid of his gilded gyves, rather than to try 
 his wings ; he is to demonstrate his liberty rather 
 than crudely press it. Here are rules of life that go 
 to the very generation of the thinker, and estimate 
 the virginal elements of which he is born ; his 
 diet, health, habits, physical as well as mental, are 
 anxiously discussed ; for with him is the hope of the 
 world. He is to correct ancient methods, anil sow the 
 grandest formulas for seed. He will sow the very star* 
 for seed, trusting the perfection of the universe. While 
 
216 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 others deprecate or invoke, the scholar will discover 
 and polish lenses of a higher power, and transmit more 
 exact notations, assured that when all the conditions 
 have been fulfilled, the star-mist shall faintly appear to 
 the watchers of the future, and in the end gather into 
 the golden worlds. 
 
 Emerson was not a man to throw away experience. 
 " He has clapped copyright on the world," he has said 
 of Plato. This is the ambition of individualism. But 
 the mouthful proves too large. Boa constrictor has good 
 will to eat it, but he is foiled. He falls abroad in the 
 attempt, and biting gets strangled : the bitten world 
 holds the biter fast by his own teeth. There he perishes : 
 uuconquered Nature lives on and forgets him. So it 
 fares with all ; so must it fare with Plato." The New 
 World idealist is too aged to be similarly strangled. 
 He does not, indeed, dislike occasional empiricism if it 
 puts on no doctrinaire airs. He will have absoluteness. 
 The abyss between Emerson and Christianity, not to be 
 spanned by any metaphysical casuistry, is that he turned 
 its every tenet into an empiricism, and its historical 
 claims into a subject for speculation, like the life of 
 Shakespeare and his plays. 
 
 This idealistic, devout, aspiring genius was the same 
 that in the centuries had bent its searching gaze upon 
 traditional and speculative heavens. Now, for the first 
 time, it is turned earthward ; and, for the first time 
 since Socrates, mankind were reminded that " the pure 
 earth is situated in the pure heavens," and that " there 
 are, indeed, many and wonderful places in the earth, 
 and it is neither of such a kind nor of such a magni 
 tude as is supposed by those who are accustomed to 
 
LESSONS FOU THE DAY. 217 
 
 speak of the earth." Such was the earth that the lowly 
 should inherit ! 
 
 Not in any vision of ancient faith, not in Augustine s 
 dream of the city of God, will be found anything fairer 
 than Emerson s picture of the right and true human 
 home. An architect has said, that if the architecture 
 of the Abbey of Thelema, so minutely written out by 
 Rabelais, could be really built, it would be the ideally 
 perfect edifice. The same may be said of the dwelling 
 planned by Emerson for the human mind and heart, 
 and put within their reach. 
 
 Here are characteristic sentences from an early lec 
 ture, printed in an English journal, "The Truth- 
 Seeker" (1850), as "Mosaics on Home Life," which 
 it is interesting to compare with the corresponding 
 thoughts in his chapter on 4 Domestic Life : " 
 
 "We are eager to make ourselves acquainted with 
 the ancient fossils, foreign manners and customs, the 
 distant parts of the earth, the depths of the sea, and 
 the stars ; but the things which are nearest to us, of 
 which we cannot get out of sight, are the strangest to 
 us of all." 
 
 " Domestic events immediately concern us ; public 
 events may or may not. That which is clone and suf 
 fered at home not what is carried on or left undone 
 in the State-house must be the history of the times 
 and the spirit of the age to us." 
 
 "Never subscribe at another s incitement or buy 
 what you do not want. We must not make-believe with 
 our money." 
 
 "It is not desirable that labour should be avoided. 
 
218 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 It is the birthright and privilege of all. But another 
 age may divide the manual labour of the world more 
 equally. The true acceptance by each man of his vo 
 cation not that chosen for him by others is that 
 which alone will reform the age/ 
 
 44 Animals know what they want ; the human being 
 without his mission found does not." 
 
 44 There is as much scope for the exercise of the 
 greatest abilities, as much breadth of aim and enlarge 
 ment of heart and character requisite to be a master 
 of living well, as the hero or statesman require to be 
 come masters of -their respective arts ; nay, indeed, 
 much more." 
 
 4 4 It is the vice of our housekeeping, the vice of our 
 conversation, the vice of our religion, that we take so 
 little account of what really is of the most conse 
 quence, and do not hold the highest things sufficiently 
 sacred." 
 
 44 We account circumstance everything, the man 
 himself nothing." 
 
 " Every man is furnished with a model which he in 
 stinctively applies to others, and does not find it to fit 
 any one ; but we still hold fast our belief in a better 
 life, a happier state of things and circumstances. This 
 affords a certain test that we are not what we are 
 capable of." 
 
 44 Every individual nature has its own interior 
 beauty. There is no human expression but what 
 has its intense interest, its links down into the very 
 depths of being. In each we may see the foundation 
 of a divine building. Every face and every figure is 
 suggestive. The secret power of form, transcending 
 
LESSONS FOK THE DAY. 219 
 
 anything we can account for or explain, is a proof that 
 matter is assuredly a vehicle of a higher power than 
 its own. This is the answer to the sceptic who denies 
 the unseen divinity." 
 
 " A new friend entering our house is an era in our 
 true history. Our friends illustrate the course of our 
 conduct. It is the progress of our character that 
 draws them about us. Let us cherish around us what 
 ever has a tendency to bring the character into finer 
 life. Beauty has a power transcending all philosophy, 
 which, if sacredly regarded, would assimilate all na 
 tures to itself." 
 
 "Every statue and picture was public in ancient 
 Greece. They considered it absurd and profane to 
 pretend to property in a work of art, it being the 
 property of him who could see it. Although their 
 theory is not the true one, we are yet indebted to the 
 Socialists for many useful hints." 
 
 " Our towns do not fulfil the only object for which 
 men should congregate in masses, namely, the finding 
 for the individual the means of highest convenience 
 and art, which he could not otherwise do for himself. 
 An object or instrument of value becomes more so the 
 more it is accessible. Every man, every child, wishes 
 to see the satellites of Jupiter or Saturn s rings, but 
 he cannot afford to buy, and he does not want the 
 incumbrance of a good telescope. It is the same with 
 chemical and electrical apparatus ; with books, casts, 
 pictures, statues. This is the rationale of a museum 
 in every town, because every citizen could contribute 
 something which would be rendered more valuable 
 than by each man possessing it himself. Its influence 
 
220 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 is to bring us more together, making us more of 
 neighbours, elevating our views, and giving us united 
 interests. The law prevails for ever and ever, and is 
 capable of exact demonstration that a part can never 
 equal the whole." 
 
 " Why should not the same spirit prevail always as 
 in our best and happiest moments ? The consecration 
 of the Sunday is the desecration of the rest of the 
 week ; that of the chapel is the desecration of the 
 house. True religion will be found in the bosom of 
 the family every day in the week, and at any time if 
 at all ; and of all places, home will constantly be the 
 most sacred." 
 
 There is nothing more profane than the invasion 
 of trade and the encroachments of our modern mechan 
 ical improvements and ultra-utilitarian doctrines upon 
 the privacy, the duties, and harmony of domestic life. 
 Can the labour of many for one bring anything half so 
 good as the labour of every man for himself? " 
 
 In these hints and sketches only the edges of the 
 subject have been touched upon. It is one not for 
 description but for action. If we set about reforming 
 the evils of our social couditon one by one, it is lopping 
 the branches while others spring up from the root, and 
 we get disheartened at the extent and uselessness of 
 our labour. We must go to the source of the matter. 
 The Gorgon of convention and fashion must be slain 
 by some master-mind giving birth to a new era, when 
 we can live truly without shame." 
 
 Emerson was, as we have seen, a prophet of Art 
 also. Several years before Ruskin had spoken, the 
 
LESSONS FOR THE DAY. 221 
 
 great essay on Art (first series) had appeared ; and it 
 has been an interesting thing to me to find that the 
 earliest appreciation of Emerson s new poetic idealism 
 in England was among the Preraphaelist Brothers. 
 His new view of art grew out of his new view of 
 nature ; if great, it must be supremest nature. The 
 statue must rise by creative laws akin to those which 
 formed the marble in its quarry, the pigments must 
 pass upon the canvas by methods and in combinations 
 as perfect as those which have grouped and tinted the 
 forms they are to represent, or there can be no true 
 Art. " When science is learned in love, and its powers 
 are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements 
 and continuations of the material creation." This 
 sentence closes Emerson s first series of essays. It is 
 translatable into his view of Art also, so that he is able 
 to say, "Beauty must come back to the useful arts, and 
 the distinction between the fine and the useful arts be 
 forgotten." Thus he anticipated the new utilitarian 
 who denies that a structure fulfils the laws of use com 
 pletely unless it is also beautiful. The body cannot 
 find true repose on a sofa or chair upon which the eye 
 cannot rest with an equal satisfaction. Therefore works 
 originally contrived with an eye to utility alone as 
 the crenellated parapet or the dormer-windows on a 
 spire survive by reason of their decorative beauty. 
 We are led to a principle uniting the workman employ 
 ing the river to turn his wheel, and the statesman lean 
 ing upon the power of justice, and every true work of 
 Art, which is such in the proportion that it accords 
 with the method of nature, where beauty is always 
 organic, inhering in the tissues and combined around 
 
222 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 the central purpose of each object. Every tinted 
 feather on the wing of bird or butterfly was called 
 there by the struggle between life and death, and the 
 poem or picture, though it may appear as mere dec 
 oration, is rooted in the same hard grey strata of 
 Necessity. Such is the final bearing of all of Emerson s 
 essays on Art and Beauty. Therefore, "eccentricity" 
 is fatal to real beauty, which can come only of the laws 
 of Reason, or nature in its highest interpretation, di 
 vested therefore of anything whimsical. He once said, 
 a man must be for a time stony-hearted to paint a 
 stone. " Herein is the explanation of the analogies 
 which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance 
 of one mind, working in many materials to many tem 
 porary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, 
 Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds 
 it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington 
 arms it, Watt mechanises it. The laws of each art are 
 convertible into the laws of every other." 
 
 When Raphael and Watt are selected as the terms 
 of the list of representative artists, we see the line of 
 definition between the workers for Use and the workers 
 for Beauty vanishing ; we are prepared for the affirm 
 ation that all arts rest upon the most real use, and that 
 from the growth and flowering of the institutions act 
 ually around us must come arts comparable to those 
 which our painters and sculptors can now only copy 
 from the past. The old masters were masters because 
 they were not servile to others who preceded them. 
 Emerson appreciated the earnestness of Preraphaelism 
 but deplored its method. They seemed like the Oxo 
 nians who took refuge from the barrenness of Prot- 
 
LESSONS FOR THE DAY. 223 
 
 estantism in Romanism, thereby shifting the burthen 
 only. His burden was against all creators, whether 
 scholars, preachers, politicians, or artists, who would 
 borrow the cil of past ages or adjourn worthy work to 
 the future. It is the artist s business to pierce beneath 
 the trivialities of his age and to compensate men for 
 them. If the age is one of scepticism, w T ith no faith 
 in anything but its economical inventions, all the more 
 necessary is it that the artist shall keep the watchfires 
 of the nobler life bright and burning. Another age ! " 
 There is no other age. Turner found London fog and 
 Thames barges, nay, Covent Garden cabbage-leaves, 
 tender and pathetic. There was spiritual grandeur in 
 that railway train he painted, flashing on through rain 
 and wind. If our artists are satisfied to be retained 
 as painters- in -ordinary to the wealthy, who can see no 
 beauty short of a thousand years in anything save 
 their own portraits or lawns, we cannot perhaps help 
 it ; but we protest against the ascription of their iu- 
 competency to the age. There are flowerings around us 
 as well as buddings. There is a pass at Harper s Ferry 
 as well as at Thermopylae . The earth, steadily becoming 
 transparent to the eye of science, discloses forms and 
 realms unpainted, unsung, grand as any that ever 
 shone from legendary spheres for Homer or Titian. 
 Under the discoveries of philology every common word 
 suggests a poem ; our mythological science recovers the 
 dead deities, and reveals their shining circle seated in 
 the human mind ; while historic criticism strikes the 
 hour at which the masquerade of the ages comes to a 
 close, and the shows of things fall away from the forms 
 of heroes and events. And with this new heaven and 
 
224 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 new earth it seems to be among the least pardonable 
 defalcations of our time that Art should imitate the 
 mere outside of ancient works ; for the heart of them 
 was in the conviction that wrought them, and that con 
 viction can exist in no sane mind at the present day. 
 Walt Whitman s first work was welcomed by Emerson, 
 despite its faults, because it showed an absolute faith 
 that American Leaves of Grass have for clear eyes a 
 sacreduess like that of the Kusa sward which the 
 Brahmin prepares for the seat of his gods. Emerson 
 shewed us that with the telescope and the microscope 
 for our eyes, and the vault of reason and the vault of 
 heaven fast clearing of their cobwebs, there is no rea 
 son why we should consent to be mere preparers of the 
 soil for future arts, or accept the delusion that it is not 
 the eyes of Dante and Milton that we lack, but the 
 whorls of hell and the drama of Paradise. 
 
 Emerson taught a new secret of eloquence. Carlyle, 
 in his address to the Edinburgh students four years 
 ago, expressed the fear that " the finest nations of the 
 world the English and the American are going all 
 away into wind and tongue. * One cannot read fine 
 anecdotes of the effects of eloquence without feeling 
 that the best example falls short of the sufferance of 
 the great, when, as the sheep before its shearers, they 
 are dumb. But the stump-orator found nothing to en 
 courage him in the teachings of Emerson ; he was told 
 that his habit of oratory disqualifies him for eloquence. 
 When Confucius was urged to speak after he had said 
 he would rather remain silent, he asked, " Do heaven 
 and earth speak?" Emerson s reply is, that unless 
 heaven and earth do speak there can be no eloquence. 
 
LESSONS FOR THE DAY. 225 
 
 There are times when the right word carries the force 
 of a cannon-ball. It must be the word without which 
 nothing was made. If one will obey the Pythagorean 
 rule to be silent, unless it be to say something better 
 than silence, his speech must bear us back to the silent 
 laws out of which it was born. " There is for every man 
 a statement possible of that truth which he is most un 
 willing to receive a statement possible, so broad and 
 so pungent, that he cannot get away from it, but must 
 either bend to it or die of it. Else there would be no 
 such word as eloquence, which means this." 
 
 Only for this, if for nothing else, Emerson may be 
 called the most helpful teacher of his generation that 
 he recognised the habitat of the human mind. Recog 
 nising the outlooks toward the unsolved nebulae of 
 thought, he adheres strictly to the realms of actual 
 knowledge and practical life, and sows its sound seed 
 on real soil, and not on any cloudland of theory. Man 
 is dealt with as a being living in lower and higher 
 worlds ; but the higher world is as little speculative as 
 the lower, and is subject to the same scientific state 
 ment. The moral sentiment is dealt with as a fact, the 
 intellect as a fact, and the social and physical environ 
 ment of them are respected as related to and blended 
 with these. It is surely a significant sign to the young 
 generation, that this clear and pure intellect, after ex 
 ploring every epoch of thought, should finally return 
 home to itself and to the near world of realities, as 
 containing the only keys of knowledge entrusted to 
 man. At the same time, it may be safely affirmed that 
 no volumes produced in this generation contain more 
 that is profoundly poetic than those of our teacher. 
 
226 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 With eye ever fixed on the central unity of things as 
 one beholding the dawn in the tinted shell, or reading 
 the signs which galaxies have dropped in the flowers 
 this seer seems hardly able to hold his sentences from 
 breaking out into song, like chapters of the Koran. If 
 amid the confident speculations of our time the lower 
 tone of this thinker is surprising, amid their pallor the 
 blood and passion of his book are startling. As it 
 used to be said by the rustics that all the ferns have 
 one root, we may say of these manifold thoughts that 
 every one draws us to that moral sentiment which is 
 with their author the ultimate element. " Can you tell 
 me," said an Englishman to his neighbour at one of 
 Emerson s lectures, "what connection there is between 
 that last sentence and the one that went before, and 
 what connection it all has with Plato?" "None, 
 my friend save in God ! " But when this is said, 
 it remains true that the religious sentiment is here 
 purged from every superstition, even the most conven 
 tional, and the poetry is never empirical. An Ameri 
 can lecturer complained that in his wanderings from 
 town to town he was pretty sure, at each place that he 
 stopped, to be entertained by a company of ladies who 
 drank green tea and asked him his opinion of the Abso 
 lute. If Emerson was similarly waylaid, it is to be feared 
 the ladies found him an unmanageable subject. The 
 young student will not find himself "crammed" for 
 the rehearsal of life by Emerson s teachings, nor any 
 couch prepared for those who wish to find repose on a 
 "system of the universe." With Confucius, he "re 
 spects the gods, but keeps them at a distance." There 
 is no line in all his books that can encourage any one 
 
LESSONS FOR THE DAY. 227 
 
 to waste his powers in the effort to fence in the illimit 
 able or define the infinite, while every sentence shews 
 that by patient thought and honourable living real 
 progress is made and true knowledge is attained. He 
 who still believes that men were sent into this world to 
 devote their attention to another, or to the benefit and 
 equanimity of the Divine Being, will find no confirma 
 tion here, but rather a recognition of Arthur Clough s 
 conclusion 
 
 u It seems His newer will 
 We should not think at all of Him, but turn, 
 And of the world that He has given us make 
 What best we may." 
 
 It is now wonderful to hear the anecdotes that shew 
 how puzzling to divines, long familiar with a supernal 
 universe, were the simple aspects of the world they 
 lived in, to which Emerson introduced them. After 
 his lecture at Midcllebury College, Vermont, a minister 
 said, in the closing prayer, "We beseech Thee, O Lord, 
 to deliver us from ever hearing any more such tran 
 scendental nonsense as we have just listened to from this 
 sacred desk." Emerson s only remark about this suppli 
 cant was that " he seemed a very conscientious plain- 
 spoken man." At Middletown, Connecticut, the Meth 
 odist professors and divines were affected by his lecture 
 before their college societies as if he had administered 
 laughing-gas. Bishop Janes alone felt the situation to 
 be serious. Afterwards, when some one quoted lines 
 from Emerson, where, alluding to " Taylor, the Shake 
 speare of divines," he says 
 
 u And yet, for all his faith could see, 
 1 would not the good bishop be," 
 
228 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 " What," said Bishop Janes, " not for Jeremy Taylor s 
 hope of heaven ! " So it was for a time. But, when 
 Dean Stanley returned from America, it was to report 
 (" Macmillan," June, 1879) that religion had there 
 passed through an evolution from Edwards to Emerson ; 
 and that "the genial atmosphere which Emerson has 
 done so much to promote is shared by all the 
 churches equally. * 
 
CONCORDIA. 229 
 
 XXIIL 
 
 CONCORDIA. 
 
 "Herein! herein! 
 Gesellen alle, schliesst den Reihen, 
 Dass wir die Glocke tauf end weihen ! 
 CONCORDIA soil ihr Name sein. 
 Zur Eintracht, zu herzinnigen Vereine 
 Versammle sie die liebende Gemeine ! " 
 
 its name shall be ! " was the sound 
 of Schiller s Bell in mj ears when I began this 
 book about the Sage of Concord. Its name could not 
 be that, for it would promise too much, but none would 
 be truer for a full story of Emerson and his friends. 
 The prophecy of Weimar was fulfilled when from a 
 race passed through furnaces, heated by heavenly and 
 earthly Star-chambers, refined and tempered by love 
 and culture, fashioned in mould of a New World, this 
 pure genius was raised aloft in its tower over the 
 broken forms that had held it, and there, in tones 
 melodious with all sweetness and the nobleness of 
 human life, summoned all souls to inward and outward 
 harmony. 
 
 " The town of Concord is one of the oldest towns in 
 this country, far on now in its third century. The 
 selectmen have once in every five years perambulated 
 
230 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 the boundaries, and yet, in this very year, a large 
 quantity of land has been discovered and added to the 
 town without a murmur of complaint from any quarter. 
 By drainage we went down to a subsoil we did not 
 know, and have found that there is a Concord under 
 old Concord, which we are now getting the best crops 
 from." 
 
 When Emerson said this, in one of the hundred lec 
 tures he gave at Concord, some of his neighbours 
 reflected that a much greater addition to their wealth, 
 in a strictly economic sense, had been made by his 
 residence among them. He was the selectman who 
 discovered the supersoil, the Concord above Concord, 
 from which the great crops came. 
 
 The effect of Emerson s lectures on the country gen 
 erally was indescribable. It was found that his voice 
 had been heard in all the byways and hedges, and 
 swarms of a mighty fraternity, popularly classified as 
 "come-outers," swarmed to Concord, each to get his 
 recipe for the millenium countersigned by the new 
 teacher. Hawthorne, who had gone to reside in " The 
 Old Manse," has left us a graphic description of the 
 visitors thus attracted. 
 
 " There were circumstances around me which made 
 it difficult to view the world precisely as it exists ; for, 
 severe and sober as was the Old Manse, it was neces 
 sary to go but a little way beyond its threshold before 
 meeting with stranger moral shapes of men than might 
 have been encountered elsewhere in a circuit of a 
 thousand miles. 
 
 " These hobgoblins of flesh and blood were attracted 
 thither by the wide-spreading influence of a great 
 
CONCORDIA. 
 
 original thinker, who had his earthly abode at the 
 opposite extremity of our village. His mind acted 
 upon other minds of a certain constitution with won 
 derful magnetism, and drew many men upon long pil 
 grimages to speak with him face to face. Young vis 
 ionaries to whom just so much of insight had been 
 imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them 
 came to seek the clue that should guide them out of their 
 self-involved bewilderment. Grey-headed theorists, 
 whose systems, at first air, had finally imprisoned them 
 in an iron frame-work, travelled painfully to his door, 
 not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into 
 their own thraldom. People that had lighted on a new 
 thought, or a thought that they fancied new, came to 
 Emerson, as the finder of a glittering gem hastens to 
 a lapidary to ascertain its quality and value. Uncer 
 tain, troubled, earnest wanderers through the midnight 
 of the moral world beheld his intellectual fire as a 
 beacon burning on a hill-top, and, climbing the difficult 
 ascent, looked forth into the surrounding obscurity 
 more hopefully than hitherto. The light revealed ob 
 jects unseen before mountains, gleaming lakes, 
 glimpses of a creation among the chaos but also, as 
 was unavoidable, it attracted bats and owls, and the 
 whole host of night-birds, which flapped their dusky 
 wings against the gazer s eyes, and sometimes were 
 mistaken for fowls of angelic feather. Such delusions 
 always hover nigh whenever a beacon fire of truth is 
 kindled. 
 
 u For myself, there had been epochs of my life when 
 I too might have asked of this prophet the master- 
 word that should solve me the riddle of the universe. 
 
232 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 But now, being happy, I felt as if there were no ques 
 tion to be put, and therefore admired Emerson as a 
 poet of deep beauty and austere tenderness, but sought 
 nothing from him as a philosopher. It was good, nev 
 ertheless, to meet him in the wood-paths, or sometimes 
 in our avenue, with that pure intellectual gleam dif 
 fused about his presence like the garment of a shining 
 one ; and he, so quiet, so simple, so without preten 
 sion, encountering each man alive as if expecting to 
 receive more than he could impart. But it was impos 
 sible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling, more or 
 less, the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought." 
 
 More of these were emptied at Emerson s door from 
 the Hive of Brook Farm, and from other socialistic 
 tabernacles, which folded their tents like the Arabs, 
 but did not silently pass away. There grew up a 
 transcendental cant which threatened to deluge poor 
 Concord, and the number of insane people that thronged 
 the philosopher s door must have severely tried the 
 nerves of the ladies who dwelt there. To this Mecca 
 came pilgrims with long hair, long beard, and long col 
 lars ; very many with long ears : those who believed 
 that man was to reach the Golden Year by abstinence 
 from meat, committees of all the u Isms," each seeking 
 to get the new candle for its little altar, came in full 
 chase after the millenium, which Mrs. Emerson had 
 much reason to wish would make haste and come. Of 
 course there was abundance of material for the humour 
 ists. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes expanded the new 
 transcendental dialect to ennoble an already prominent 
 feature : u And why is the nose set in the front of 
 the face, stretching outward and upward, but that it 
 
CONCORDIA. 233 
 
 may attain, as it were, a ibresmell of the Infinite ! " 
 But there was no humourist more subtle than Emerson. 
 He did not laugh like Carlyle, but his mirth was deeper, 
 and his constitutional faith was " Sport is the sign of 
 health." At a small festivity in our house at Concord, 
 at which he was present, some of us acted as a charade 
 the word "Transcendentalism." The pedants and 
 fanatics of an earlier period would have been scandal 
 ised could they have seen their prophet beaming on 
 our travesty. But since the era of the u hobgoblins" 
 there had been a change, whose true history would be 
 a new Timsetis, telling of one who, like a god, led 
 things from disorder to order. The sediment of insani 
 ties which the new ideas had stirred up gradually sank 
 to its natural place. There is an allegorical story that 
 once, when Theodore Parker had just parted from 
 Emerson on the road to Boston the importance of 
 which city in the plan of the universe they had dis 
 cussed a crazy " Millerite" encountered Parker and 
 cried, " Sir, do you not know that to-night the world 
 is coming to an end?" Upon which Parker replied, 
 "My good man, that doesn t concern me: I live in 
 Boston." The same fanatic presently announced the 
 end of the world to Emerson, who replied, " I am glad 
 of it ; man will get along better without it." 
 
 Tender as Emerson was to myths and miracles which, 
 with a sufficient perspective, were visible as figures 
 on the stage of antiquity, he gave no quarter to grow 
 ing superstitions. He was attracted by Swedenborg, 
 largely, I think, because the spectral rout of the old 
 world gathered in him to one neck which he could 
 neatly cut, preserving the head for craniological study. 
 
234 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 One who was with him at a meeting of the society for 
 free religious discussion, when somebody happened to 
 be giving his views in favour of all gross delusions of 
 this kind, expressed disgust to Emerson. " Yes," he 
 said, "there are some persons who will suck up the 
 dirty water from every puddle they can find." On one 
 occasion a "spiritualist" approached him with what 
 he used to call the "rat-hole revelation," and Emer 
 son said, " To me the universe is all a spiritual mani 
 festation." All those delusions ultimately vanished 
 from his presence and found their appropriate caves. 
 
 Emerson was also very careful to maintain the high 
 and refined standard in regard to manners, and, against 
 all protests, preserved the word "gentleman," as well 
 as the reality implied. Though never ruffled, he was 
 not defenceless before boorish intruders. A boisterous 
 declaimer against " the conventionalities," who kept on 
 his hat in the drawing-room after repeated invitations 
 to lay it aside, was told, * We will continue this con 
 versation in the garden," and genially taken out of 
 doors to enter them no more. Yet no gentleman could 
 be more free from the pretensions often associated with 
 that title ; and had any one sought to defend him from 
 the best that Bottom and Snug had to offer, he would 
 have said with the Duke Theseus 
 
 I will hear that play ; 
 For never anything can be amiss 
 Where simpleness and duty offer it." 
 
 On one occasion he was travelling in a stage-coach 
 with a friend, and a third entered, a very crude youth, 
 who, after listening to the scholarly talk, was inclined 
 to join in, and asked Emerson, " What do you think of 
 
CONCORDIA. 235 
 
 Romulus ? " His friend proposed in French that they 
 should converse in that language, but Emerson said. 
 " No ; it would hurt the youth s feelings." 
 
 When Emerson fixed his abode at Concord, it was 
 partly because it had been the home of his ancestors, 
 and still more because there was no other place where 
 he could hope to find the solitude he desired so near 
 to the literary advantages of Boston and Harvard 
 University. But he sought no morose solitude ; he 
 loved the society of kindred minds ; he was by nature 
 given to hospitality. For a long time he was, in a 
 spiritual sense, alone. While honouring his name, 
 most of his neighbours were shy or afraid of him. He 
 had come with a reputation for extreme heresy, and 
 the gossip about his insanity had preceded him. He 
 was as a Prospero in this far island, who had not yet 
 learned the might that lay in his book and wand to 
 summon around him ministers more real than the aerial 
 shapes of his masque. But such loneliness is a con 
 dition of the exercise of the highest power. There is 
 a fine passage in Browning s " Colombe s Birthday," 
 where Valence, speaking for the Duchess against the 
 claimant of her throne, speaks also this truth : 
 
 u Vol. (advancing}. The lady is alone ! 
 
 Berth. Alone and thus? So weak and yet so bold ! 
 
 Vol. I said she was alone 
 
 Berth. And weak, I said. 
 
 Vol. When is man strong until he feels alone? 
 It was some lonely strength at first, be sure, 
 Created organs such as those you seek, 
 By which to give its varied purpose shape, 
 And, naming the selected ministrants, 
 Took sword, and shield, and sceptre, each a man." 
 
236 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 Emerson created his own world. This is true in a 
 sense more profound than can be fully told. It is not 
 merely that beneath his spirit light was divided from 
 darkness, morning from evening, dry land from the 
 waters, in that formless chaos already described ; not- 
 only that the brood of ancient Night were dismissed 
 and the children of Light drawn around him ; but that 
 he also breathed into these forms the breath of a new 
 life. Goethe s Prometheus says 
 
 " Here do I sit, and mould 
 Men after mine own image." 
 
 But here was a better than promethean art, which 
 made a race not in the image of the artist a varied 
 race, of which some wrote romances, some advanced 
 sciences, others organised higher education, others 
 again uplifted the standard before which slavery dis 
 appeared, and better laws arose for woman and for the 
 home. Emerson never "played providence" to the 
 minds he had evoked. He allowed no imitation. The 
 inevitable worship came. There are notable instances 
 in which his voice, manners, and the very expression 
 of his face, could be recognised moving about Concord 
 in persons unrelated to him by blood ; but these curi 
 ous unconscious results of personal affection, wrought 
 in long years of intimacy, were most marked in those 
 whose individuality was especially distinct from that of 
 Emerson. Of this more must be said hereafter. At 
 present we may observe with interest the Goldmaker 
 (to remember Zschokke s tale) at work in the trans 
 mutation of his village. One of the pleasantest 
 glimpses of the earlier society there has been sup- 
 
CONCORDIA. 237 
 
 plied by George William Curtis in his "Homes of 
 American Authors." Somewhere about the year 1845 
 this now eminent author went to live at Concord. He 
 had graduated at Harvard University, but he and his 
 brother, thinking they had not had enough of the 
 rough side of life, hired themselves as farm labourers 
 near Concord. The young scholars worked well for 
 fair wages, and reserved leisure to enjoy the society of 
 the men who had attracted them there. Here the 
 higher graduation of George Curtis took place, and 
 his " Memorabilia," given to the world from time 
 to time, are always charming. Of Emerson s home 
 he says: "It is always morning within these doors," 
 and gives us a glimpse into the Concord of his time. 
 
 Toward the end of the autumn Emerson suggested 
 that they should meet every Monday evening through 
 the winter at his library. I went the first Monday 
 evening, very much as Ixion may have gone to his ban 
 quet. The philosophers sat dignified and erect. There 
 was a constrained but very amiable silence, which had 
 the impertinence of a tacit inquiry, seeming to ask, 
 k Who will now proceed to say the finest thing that 
 has ever been said? It was quite involuntary and 
 unavoidable, for the members lacked that fluent social 
 genius without which a club is impossible. It was a 
 congress of oracles on the one hand, and of curious 
 listeners on the other. I vaguely remember that the 
 Orphic Alcott invaded the desert of silence with a 
 solemn saying, to which, after due pause, the Hon. 
 Member for Blackberry Pastures (Thoreau) responded 
 by some keen and graphic observation, while the Olym 
 pian host, anxious that so much good material should 
 
238 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 be spun into something, beamed smiling encouragement 
 upon all parties. . . . Miles Coverdale (Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne) , a statue of Night and Silence, sat, a little 
 removed under a portrait of Dante, gazing imperturba- 
 bly upon the group ; and as he sat in the shadow, his 
 dark hair and eyes and suit of sable made him, in that 
 society, the black thread of mystery which he weaves 
 into his stories ; while the shifting presence of the Brook 
 farmer (Mr. Pratt) played like heat-lightning round 
 the room. . . . Plato (Emerson) was perpetually put 
 ting apples of gold in pictures of silver ; for such was 
 the rich ore of his thought and the deep melody of his 
 voice." 
 
 The "Note-Books" of Hawthorne contain delight 
 ful pictures of the life at Concord. One may be given 
 here. 
 
 " Entering Sleepy Hollow, I perceived a lady reclin 
 ing near the path which bends along its verge. It was 
 Margaret herself. She had been there the whole after 
 noon, meditating or reading ; for she had a book in her 
 hand, with some strange title, which I did not under 
 stand, and have forgotten. She said that nobody had 
 broken her solitude, and was just giving utterance to a 
 theory that no inhabitant of Concord ever visited Sleepy 
 Hollow, when we saw a group of people entering the 
 sacred precincts. Most of them followed a path which 
 led them away from us ; but an old man passed near us, 
 and smiled to see Margaret reclining on the ground and 
 me sitting by her side. He made some remark about 
 the beauty of the afternoon, and withdrew himself into 
 the shadow of the wood. There we talked about autumn, 
 and about the pleasures of being lost in the woods, and 
 
CONCORDIA. 239 
 
 about the crows whose voices Margaret had heard, and 
 about the experiences of early childhood, whose influ 
 ence remains upon the character when the recollection 
 of them has passed away, and about the sight of moun 
 tains from a distance, and the view from their summits, 
 and about other matters of high and low philosophy. 
 In the midst of our talk we heard footsteps above us 
 on the high bank ; and while the person was still hid 
 den among the trees he called to Margaret, of whom he 
 had gotten a glimpse. Then he emerged from the 
 green shade, and behold ! it was Mr. Emerson. He 
 appeared to have had a pleasant time, for he said that 
 there were Muses in the woods to-day, and whispers to 
 be heard in the breezes. There was the most beautiful 
 moonlight that ever hallowed this earthly world ; and 
 when I went to bathe in the river, which was as calm 
 as death, it seemed like plunging down into the sky. 
 But I had rather be on earth than in the seventh heaven 
 just now." 
 
 The Concord Lyceum, in which lectures were given^ 
 in the autumn and winter months, was Emerson s pul 
 pit. His literary friends from a distance were always 
 ready to come and lecture there, the substantial hono 
 rarium being made the largest in the country by the / 
 opportunity afforded of meeting Emerson, who gene 
 rally entertained such visitors. Schools of high char 
 acter arose as the culture and wealth of the place / 
 increased, and gradually the beautiful Free Public 
 Library was built. In this library there is a large 
 alcove filled with books written in Concord or by 
 authors who have resided there, Emerson, Margaret 
 Fuller, Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thoreau, 
 
240 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 G. TV. Curtis, Ellery Charming, Bronson Alcott, Louisa 
 Alcott, Elizabeth Peahody, Frank B. Sanborn, Fred. 
 M. Holland, George P. Lathrop, Mrs. Horace Mann, 
 Julian Hawthorne, Rev. G. TV. Cooke, Mr. Harris, 
 and perhaps others. It is probable that no other vil 
 lage can show a nobler literary monument of more 
 various labours. It is, in a sense, the monument of 
 one man. 
 
 It is the greatest advantage of large cities that each 
 mind can find its circle, though it would be eccentric 
 elsewhere. Emerson was as patient as the earth of 
 all varieties of intellect and character. He w.as scep 
 tical concerning all rumours of " dangerous opinions." 
 George Bradford gave me a sentence, remembered 
 from a lost note, in which, alluding to some teacher 
 of so-called " wild notions," Emerson says, " A meteor 
 shaking from its horrid hair all sorts of evils and dis 
 asters may by and by take its place in the clear upper 
 sky and blend its light with all our day." 
 
 Margaret Fuller first came to Concord in 1836. She 
 came to visit Mr. and Mrs. Emerson. It was a year 
 that opened with a bitter trial. She had been looking 
 forward for years to a visit to Europe, but the death 
 of her father brought her under circumstances which 
 rendered it impossible. She was in her twenty-fourth 
 year, but possessed a culture far in advance of her 
 years ; a culture that was European, and included a 
 knowledge of the literature and art as well as the lan 
 guages of Europe. ; The New Year opens upon me 
 under circumstances inexpressibly sad. I must make 
 the last great sacrifice, and, apparently, for evil to me 
 and mine. Life, as I look forward, presents a scene 
 
CONCORDIA. 241 
 
 of struggle and privation only." So opens her journal 
 on January 1, 1836. But in July she was guest of the 
 man who could be and was far more to her than Europe. 
 She had, indeed, listened to Emerson for some years, 
 but she did not seek his friendship until she had accu 
 mulated treasures worthy to be exchanged for hig own. 
 
 Emerson, who was always wont to scold himself for 
 his love of physical beauty, was repelled by her " ex 
 treme plainness." I remember well that the eyes of 
 Margaret s mother, whom I well knew, filled with tears 
 when she remembered that a lack of personal beauty 
 had been ascribed to her daughter in the biography 
 that had just appeared. " I do not understand it," 
 she said, " for Margaret was not without beauty." 
 But the mention of it was necessary, for only so could 
 be shewn the splendour that was unsheathed in the 
 conversation of that woman, and the charm which held 
 her circle of friends spell-bound. And, moreover, only 
 so can be understood the morbid tendencies of her 
 nature, of which she was healed by the steadfast sun 
 shine of Emerson s genius. 
 
 Such expressions as these are found in her journals : 
 "Of a disposition that requires the most refined, the 
 most exalted tenderness, without charms to inspire it. 
 Poor Mignon ! fear not the transition through death ; 
 no penal fires can have in store worse torments than 
 thou art familiar with already." Such secret pain led 
 inevitably in one direction to an appeal from earth 
 to heaven, from the present to the future. She brought 
 to Concord, along with her riches of knowledge and 
 wit, all manner of notions about talismans, charms, 
 diumonic influences, presentiments. Emerson sepa- 
 
242 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 rated the bits of stained glass from her gems with the 
 skill of a true lapidary ; and then the superstition that 
 had lurked in them assumed a more threatening form. 
 " She passed into certain religious states/ says Emer 
 son, " which did not impress me as quite healthy or 
 likely to be permanent ; and I said, I do not under 
 stand your tone ; it seems exaggerated. You are one 
 who can afford to hear and speak the truth. Let us 
 hold hard to the common-sense, and let us speak in the 
 positive degree. She wrote some bitter complaints 
 to this calm physician, and a plaintive fable, but the 
 worshipper of health was tenderly inflexible. And 
 finally, as Margaret had found that the Europe so 
 bitterly lamented lay only twenty miles out from Bos 
 ton, she discovered that the heavenly friend she had 
 longed for and the new Jerusalem were equally near. 
 It was after she had listened deep and long to the notes 
 of " Concordia " that she wrote the following : 
 
 * The stars tell all their secrets to the flowers, and 
 if we only knew how to look around us, we should not 
 need to look above. But man is a plant of slow 
 growth, and great heat is required to bring out his 
 leaves. He must be promised a boundless futurity to 
 induce him to use aright the present hour. In youth, 
 fixing his eyes on those distant worlds of light, he 
 promises himself to attain them, and there find the 
 answer to all his wishes. His eye grows keener as he 
 gazes, a voice from the earth calls it downward, and 
 he finds all at his feet." 
 
 On my second walk with Emerson he took me to a 
 seat in the woods, which in summer days had been a 
 sort of try sting-place for the literary lotus-eaters, and 
 
CONCO^IA. 243 
 
 as he talked of Margaret so gently, and with a re 
 serve as if she were still living I heard the voice that 
 had called her to the stars at her feet. From what he 
 told me, I knew that none could ever get from her 
 works or from the reports of her friends the real great 
 ness of Margaret Fuller, and felt a personal grief that 
 I had not known her. 
 
 Among Margaret Fuller s friends, in her last years, 
 were Mr. and Mrs. Browning. This was after she had 
 married Count Ossoli. The marriage had been private, 
 and some of her friends in Italy suggested that she 
 should make public explanations of her sufficient 
 reasons for that course ; but she refused, saying that 
 " no one for whose opinion she cared would be likely 
 to believe that she had done anything wrong in such a 
 matter." It was with the Brownings that she, with 
 her husband and child, spent the last evening she ever 
 passed on land. As she was starting for the ship, Mrs. 
 Browning pressed upon her finger a ring with a car 
 buncle in it, quite unaware that Margaret, in her 
 superstitious days, had chosen the carbuncle as her 
 stone, going so for as to put one on when writing to cer 
 tain friends. Later, as Rebert Browning informed me, 
 they received from her a letter w r ritten or scratched, 
 rather at Gibraltar, telling them of the ravages of 
 the small-pox which had deprived them of a captain, 
 and of the rigours by which they were forbidden to 
 land, and compelled to go on to America with disease 
 lurking in the ship and only the mate for captain. 
 This was her last letter. I need not record the tragic 
 end of this strange and heroic life, nor the sorrow of 
 her friends and relatives, who received her and the 
 
244 EMERSON AT H(pIE AND ABROAD. 
 
 husband and child only as the waves dashed them to 
 the shore, within hailing distance of which they per 
 ished. 
 
 The story has been told with all his eloquence by 
 William Henry Channing. This eminent preacher, so 
 well known in England, was, in a sense, chaplain of 
 the socialistic organisations in America. He possessed 
 what was rare among Unitarian preachers a power 
 of eloquent extemporaneous speech. There was a tone 
 of prophetic authenticity in his voice, which, with his 
 scholarly enthusiasm, made him fitter for the new move 
 ment than his more famous uncle could have been. 
 After the failure of the socialistic experiments, William 
 Henry Channing was known as an earnest champion 
 of every human cause. His spiritual home was Con 
 cord, where he was often seen and was always wel 
 comed by the Emersons. While their children were 
 yet very young, as Emerson told me, his wife wished 
 to have their children christened ; he had objected, but 
 said he would consent if she could find a minister "as 
 pure as the children." When Channing came to Con 
 cord, he agreed with his wife that the right man had 
 been found, and the children were accordingly chris 
 tened. 
 
 Among those who went to reside at Concord (1841) 
 were also P^llery Channing, a cousin of William Henry, 
 and his wife, a sister of Margaret Fuller. This writer 
 of what is "very near poetry," as Emerson described 
 him, still resides there. " Ellery Channing is excellent 
 company, and we walk in all directions," wrote Emer 
 son to Thoreau in 1843 ; and, when in England in 
 1848, Emerson read to a circle in Manchester some 
 
COXCORDIA. 245 
 
 pieces from this Concord poet ; among them, no doubt, 
 " The Poet s Hope," whose last line has taken its place 
 as a familiar quotation 
 
 u If my bark sinks, ? tis to another sea." 
 
 Ellery Charming, who still resides in Concord, was 
 an intimate friend of Thoreau, whose life he has told 
 in prose and celebrated in poetry. 
 
 A. Bronson Alcott came with his wife and family to 
 live at Concord in 1840, and there he still resides, a 
 happy and hearty octogenarian, with his daughter 
 Louisa, whose tales are the delight of so many house 
 holds. In early life Alcott had been a pedlar, one 
 picturesque enough to have been a model for Words 
 worth, and when the transcendental movement be 
 gan, he became a peripatetic philosopher, carrying 
 about spiritual " notions " instead of those once sup 
 plied from his native Connecticut. 
 
 In 1834 Alcott opened a transcendental school in 
 Boston, whose "Records, as preserved by Elizabeth 
 Peabody, deserve to be studied by every parent and 
 teacher. He had taken to heart rather literally Words 
 worth s faith that "Heaven lies about us in our in 
 fancy," and believed that from the commonest children, 
 if suitably addressed, secrets might be gained "of 
 that immortal sea that brought us hither." His school 
 room was ideal, with busts of Socrates, Shakespeare, 
 Milton, and Scott, the image of Silence with uplifted 
 finger, a bookcase surmounted with the bust of Plato, 
 and the figure of Christ above the head of the blond, 
 dignified teacher. As to the value of the replies given 
 by the pupils to questions on high themes, as they may be 
 
246 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 now read, there may be some doubt ; but there is, in my 
 own mind, no doubt of the importance of some features 
 in Alcott s method. For instance, he opened his school 
 with an instruction in behaviour and manners. These 
 children, of ages ranging from four to fourteen, were 
 many of them rude, and from rude surroundings. It 
 is one of the survivals of the notion of innate depravity 
 that, even in this age of popular education, the misbe 
 haviour of children is ascribed to moral causes, to be 
 met by punishment. A child just learning to read is 
 expected to act up to Herbert Spencer s "Data of 
 Ethics," or be flogged ! A child is expected to come 
 from among roughs with an instinctive knowledge of 
 how he must behave in school, or to other children, to 
 the aged, to ladies ! It is doubtful whether in all the 
 schools of the world any lesson is taught in politeness, 
 kindness, gentleness. In Alcott s school, this lesson, 
 with which the day began, was so interesting to the 
 children, that they stood waiting at the door for it to 
 open, lest they should miss a word. 
 
 Another remarkable thing in this unique school was 
 the mode of punishment. The teacher having found by 
 experience that the rod was ineffectual for discipline, 
 announced one day that thereafter it should fall only 
 on himself! If any pupil offended, that pupil must 
 inflict on the master the blows merited by the offence. 
 After this announcement, there was more complete 
 silence and obedience than had been known before ; 
 but at length one or two cases occurred where boys 
 were compelled to strike the master s hand with a 
 ferule. They were boys to whom punishments had 
 been of little consequence, but they found this, as one 
 
COXCORDIA. 247 
 
 of them said, "the most complete punishment a master 
 ever invented ; " they pleaded with tears and cries to 
 be spared the disgrace of striking their mild and good 
 teacher, but he was inexorable. The plan was effectual, 
 and the ferule appeared no more. In some respects, 
 this school was an improvement on one which might 
 have suggested it, that of Jean Paul Richter at 
 Schwarzenbach, described in his " Bonmot Anthology." 
 When Emerson and Carlyle were returning from a 
 visit to Stonehenge, the} 7 were entertained by Sir Arthur 
 Helps at Bishops Waltham, with other gentlemen, and 
 to these "Friends in Council" Emerson told an anecdote 
 about Alcott, which I am sorry I did not ask him to 
 repeat literally, for the version I have heard may con 
 tain mythical elements. Alcott seemed unable to pro 
 duce anything for which the great world was willing to 
 trade, and the family was reduced to want. On one 
 occasion, however, he became the owner of a twenty- 
 dollar gold piece, which caused joy in his household. 
 On the same day a traveller in distress knocked at his 
 door, and, telling a piteous story, besought a loan of 
 five dollars to enable him to reach home. Alcott told 
 him he had not a five piece, but could lend him a 
 twenty. The alternative was accepted with a satis 
 faction not shared by Mrs. Alcott when she presently 
 returned from a walk. The papers next day contained 
 a description of the rogue and how he had swindled 
 others. Alcott was in some domestic disgrace until a 
 letter arrived containing the money, the swindler de 
 claring that he could not make up his mind to rob a 
 man so simple-hearted as to give him four times the 
 amount he asked for. Alcott alone recovered his 
 
248 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 money. This, or something like it, was the story 
 Emerson told the company. Carlyle sat silent, and 
 when dinner was announced refused to precede Emer 
 son "he was altogether too wicked." Alcott for 
 many years went about the country presiding at Con 
 versations " on philosophical subjects. Of course the 
 humourist and the fabulist have had their stories to 
 tell about him. To his announcement of a "conver 
 sation" was added, "Ladies invited, without distinction 
 of sex." On one occasion, it was said, when the phi 
 losopher had divided the entity Man into the Knower, 
 the Thinker, the Actor, a pious lady asked whether 
 this Knower was the same that was saved in the Ark. 
 A Harvard student was reported to have asked the phi 
 losopher s opinion "of the late theory of Verdantius 
 Grim, that the moon is a mass of sweitzerocaseous 
 matter congealed from the uberous glands of the lacteal 
 nebula." These inventions were suggested by the fact 
 that Alcott remained in a Platonic labyrinth, where he 
 was left by the advance of science. He had no rela 
 tion to the scientific age. Emerson used to say he 
 needed a reporter, but he also needed an interpreter. 
 Nevertheless some of his oracular paragraphs, printed 
 in the "Dial" as "Orphic Sayings," are fine; and 
 unquestionably a good deal of the intellectual activity 
 of America must be ascribed to this last of the Neo- 
 Platonists. Emerson always regarded Alcott as a 
 kind of transcendental institution, a landmark on his 
 own path, long left but affectionately remembered, 
 and when he was near to death asked if it was well 
 with him. "You have a strong hold on life and will 
 keep it," he said. 
 
CONCORDIA. 249 
 
 One of the most remarkable instances of the effect 
 of the new inspiration was represented by one who 
 never resided at Concord, but was well known there, 
 Jones Very. This man was a fulfilment of Emerson s 
 prophecy that what was sometime ecstasy should be 
 come daily bread. He moved in a continual exaltation, 
 and there came from him beautiful sonnets and hymns. 
 Some of these are now sung by liberal congregations 
 throughout the United States, and they are not un 
 known in England. When Brook Farm had broken 
 up, and the glowing dawn of transcendentalism had 
 faded into the light of common day, Jones Very 
 waked as from a trance and became a prosaic farmer. 
 He never published another line. He was changed 
 even in personal appearance, so that his old friends 
 hardly knew him on the street. 
 
 It must not be supposed that either Alcott or Jones 
 Very were representative of the influence of Emerson, 
 however closely related to an early phase of it. Con 
 cord held fit homes for such, but it appropriated the 
 spirit of its Sage in all practical ways. Judge Rock- 
 wood Hoar was none the less indebted to his great 
 friend for aid in his growth to be a pre-eminent jurist 
 and statesman because his argumentative and logical 
 power was so remote from the genius of Emerson. 
 The father of Judge Hoar, Samuel Hoar, from being a 
 distinguished lawyer and statesman, had become, when 
 I first remember Concord, a saint of the village. 
 " He never comes down on earth among us," said 
 Emerson one day as we passed the calm face of the 
 tall aged man, around whom all the spiritual agitations 
 had gone on for years without interrupting his per- 
 
250 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 petual prayer. The Rev. George Simmons was there 
 also, with his spiritual face, absorbed in critical studies 
 of the age of St. John s Gospel, while yet able, in cer 
 tain moods, to recognise the Beloved passing his door. 
 
 At the Old Manse lived Sarah Ripley, of whom much 
 has already been said, surrounded by her lovely 
 daughters. The story of her life has been told by that 
 lady of Concord who could best tell it the late Eliza 
 beth Hoar, whose countenance and conversation were 
 to me always as if she had come from communion with 
 angels. Mrs. Ripley was born in 1793, and made 
 speedy and prodigious advances in the study of 
 languages and of science. In her seventeenth year 
 she is an earnest student of English philosophy, and 
 knows by heart Darwin s " Botanic Garden." She 
 already has the Darwinian instinct, and writes, " Even 
 the humble dandelion exhibits an order and regularity 
 of parts admirable as the harmony of spheres." She 
 already knows how to unmask the passing day, and 
 writes in her journal, " Some sweet ingredient is each 
 day mingled in my cup." When she is twenty-one we 
 find her corresponding with her little friend of eleven, 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, and in one letter says to him, 
 " I suppose you have Euryalus among your com 
 panions ; or don t little boys love each other as well as 
 they did in Virgil s time ? How beautifully he describes 
 the morning ! " 
 
 A beautiful life she lived, and when the new age 
 came she took it into her heart, and invested it with 
 all loveliness of womanly character and domestic vir 
 tues, which were as potent to win homage as the finest 
 intellectual statements. She was the wife of a Unita- 
 
CONCORDIA. 251 
 
 rian preacher, a relative of Emerson s, but she knew 
 how unsatisfactory was that phase of faith. Of a 
 preacher who filled her husband s pulpit she wrote to a 
 friend, "How the bucket of the gentleman danced up 
 and down on the surface of that deep well of spiritual 
 life, from which the saints in all ages have drawn living 
 water ! But he is a pleasant fellow." And what con 
 versations were those between Sarah Ripley and Emer 
 son ! "I was walking the other morning with Waldo 
 Emerson in Concord, and I told him I thought the 
 soul s serenity was at best nothing more than resigna 
 tion to what could not be helped. He answered, Oh, 
 no not resignation ; aspiration is the soul s true 
 estate ! What have we knees for ? what have we hands 
 for? Peace is victory. " Emerson having promised 
 her to bring "a lecture which has legs," she writes, 
 "But I fear, after all, wings will be sprouting at the 
 heels." 
 
 The Rev. Samuel Ripley died while Emerson was 
 lecturing in England, and he wrote to Mrs. Ripley 
 (from Manchester, 26th December, 1847), "And now 
 that he is gone who bound us by blood, I think we 
 must draw a little nearer together, for at this time of 
 day we cannot afford to spare any friends. I wonder 
 to think here with the ocean betwixt us that I have 
 suffered you to live so near me and have not won from 
 the weeks and months more frequent intercourse. " 
 Nothing could have been more admirable than the con 
 versations, some of which I heard, between these two 
 in the Old Manse. I had heard at Cambridge a story 
 that Audubon called once to consult this lady on the 
 lichens of her neighbourhood, and found her hearing at 
 
252 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 once the lesson of a Harvard student in differential 
 calculus, correcting the translation of another from 
 Sophocles, at the same time shelling peas, and rocking 
 her grandchild s cradle with her foot ; a story not 
 incredible, and quite characteristic of the New England 
 women who were most alive to the intellectual move 
 ments of their time. The Old Manse, while Mrs. 
 Ripley and her daughters lived there, and the Emerson 
 house, were systole and diastole of what my friend 
 Stedman called the Cor Concordia. Mrs. Ripley and 
 her friend Elizabeth Hoar appeared to me especially 
 in accord with the intellectual opinions of Emerson. 
 Once I mentioned to Mrs. Ripley a heated discussion 
 we had in Divinity College on miracles. She said, with 
 her soft solemnity, " I cannot believe in the miracles, 
 because I believe in God. " 
 
 There were nearly always visitors at Concord, but 
 from among them I must single out one, whom I saw 
 one morning emerge from Emerson s door one whose 
 face bore upon it something of the same spiritual light 
 as that of the man he had been visiting. This was 
 Arthur Hugh Clough, whom I afterwards met in Cam 
 bridge, and found that the nobleness of his counte 
 nance was a reflection from within. I did not then 
 know that the white hair around his youthful face was 
 a true halo, set there by a long spiritual struggle, and 
 marking a costly victory. Knowing that he was an 
 Oxonian poet who had crossed the ocean to be near 
 Emerson, I used to gaze upon him with love as he 
 passed Divinity College almost daily, on his way to 
 the home of the Nortons, who were as brother and 
 sisters to him. Emerson lent me Clough s "Bothie" 
 
CONCORDIA. 253 
 
 and the " Ambarvalia," which he loved to quote on his 
 walks. 
 
 With what feelings Clough regarded Emerson 
 appears in these notes in the Memoir of him by his 
 wife : 
 
 " Sunday. Loads of talk with Emerson all morn 
 ing. Breakfast at eight displays two girls and a boy, 
 the family. Dinner at 2.30. Walk with Emerson to 
 a wood with a prettyish pool. Concord is very bare (so 
 is the country in general) ; it is a small sort of a vil 
 lage, almost entirely of wood houses, painted white, 
 with Venetian blinds, green outside, with two white 
 wooden churches one with a stone fa9ade of Doric 
 columns, however. . . . There are some American 
 elms, of a weeping kind, and sycamores, i.e. planes ; 
 but the wood is mostly pine white pine and yellow 
 pine somewhat scrubby, occupying the tops of the 
 low banks, and marshy hay-land between, very brown 
 now. A little brook runs through to the Concord 
 river. 
 
 "At 6.30, tea and Mr. Thoreau, and presently Mrs. 
 Ellery Charming, Miss Channing, and others." 
 
 "Just back at Cambridge after my visit to Emerson. 
 I was rather sleepless there, but it is very good to go to 
 him. He appears to take things very coolly, and not 
 to meddle with religious matters of any kind. Since 
 visiting him, I feel a good deal more reconciled to mere 
 subsistence. If one can only have a little reasonable 
 satisfactory intercourse now and then, subsistence may 
 be to some purpose. But to live in a vain show of 
 society would not do long. The Boston people have 
 
254 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 been too well off, and don t know the realities. Em 
 erson is really substantive." 
 
 " Emerson is the only profound man in this country." 
 
 Frank Sanborn, in whom are embodied the traditions 
 of Concord, has told its personal history in his " Tho- 
 reau." 
 
 Some may imagine that in such a town as this all 
 the children, like Zal in Firdusi s epic, w r ere born grey- 
 haired, but rather like Zoroaster they were born laugh 
 ing. Concord was always remarkable for the large 
 number of its lovely little people, who might be seen in 
 the winter skating on the marble snow through the pine 
 woods, and in the summer bathing in the river, and at 
 all times boating. And for young men and maidens, 
 Goethe s Weimar with its court had hardly more fes 
 tivities than Emerson s Concord. Over the graves of 
 the Puritans went on dances, picnics, berrying parties ; 
 on the Musketaquid, where Eliot the Apostle terrified 
 the red men with a vision of retributions more savage 
 than their own, gay barges were sometimes seen con 
 veying Cleopatra and her dusky beauties to be attacked 
 bv "salvages" in war-paint darting from river-sides 
 fringed with waterlilies ; and the grim embattled 
 farmers" who began the revolution sometimes returned 
 on their anniversary to masquerade with their fair 
 descendants. 
 
 Once in that neighbourhood I met with an unquiet 
 soul yearning for higher social conditions, which had 
 taken shape in his mind after the pattern shewn by 
 Fourier. "Have you ever heard," I asked, " of the 
 child that went about lamenting and searching for the 
 
CONCORDIA. 255 
 
 beautiful butterfly which she had lost ? The butterfly 
 had softly alighted upon her head, and sat there while 
 the search went on. May not this fable apply to one 
 who, living in Concord, searches as far as France for a 
 true society?" 
 
 But, when I was last in Concord, it was to Germany 
 some seemed wandering, after a philosophy ; and the 
 butterfly had changed to a grasshopper, which, near 
 the "Summer School of Philosophy," chirped me a 
 tale of Tithonus, or Transcendentalism outliving its 
 time and shrivelling to metaphysics. Not such was the 
 voice that spake with no past at its back ! " Concordia" 
 is not to be muffled in metaphysics, as for one whose 
 " Finis" was written in skull-bones instead of flowers. 
 
 u Now break up the useless mould : 
 
 Its only purpose is fulfilled. 
 May our eyes with joy behold 
 A \vork to prove us not unskilled. 
 Wield the hammer, wield, 
 Till the frame shall yield ! 
 That the bell aloft may rise 
 The form in thousand fragments flies." 
 
256 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 xxiv. 
 
 NATHANIEL AND SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. 
 
 ON a clay in Concord I saw the two men whom 
 Michael Angelo might have chosen as emblems 
 of Morning and Twilight, to be carved over the gates 
 of the New World. Emerson emerged from his modern 
 home, and the shade of well-trimmed evergreens in 
 front, with "shining morning face," his eye beaming 
 with its newest vision of the golden year. Hawthorne, 
 at the other extreme of the village, came softly out of 
 his earlier home, the Old Manse the grey-gabled 
 mansion, where dwelt in the past men and women 
 who have gained new lease of existence through his 
 genius and stepped along the avenue of ancient ash- 
 trees, which made a fit frame around him. A superb 
 man he was ! His erect, full, and shapely figure might 
 have belonged to an athlete, were it not for the grace 
 and reserve which rendered the strength of frame un 
 obtrusive. The massive forehead and brow, with dark 
 locks on either side, the strong nose and mouth, with 
 another soul beneath them, might be the physiognomy 
 of a military man or political leader some man im 
 pelled by powerful public passions ; but with this man 
 there came through the large soft e} es a gentle glow 
 which suffused the face and spiritualised the form. 
 
NATHANIEL AND SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. 257 
 
 No wonder such fascination held his college fellows to 
 him ! Longfellow used to talk in poetry when his early 
 days at Bowdoin with Hawthorne were the theme ; and 
 the memory of President Pierce has lost some stains 
 through his lifelong devotion to his early friend. 
 
 How the personages who had long before preceded 
 him in that first home of his manhood had become his 
 familiar friends and visitors preferred to others sepa 
 rated from him by reason of their flesh and blood 
 no reader of " Mosses from an Old Manse " need be 
 told. As he came down the avenue, unconscious of 
 any curious or admiring eye resting on him, every step 
 seemed a leap, as if his shadowy familiars w^ere whis 
 pering happy secrets. What was this genius loci think 
 ing of as he walked there ? It may have been about 
 that time he mentioned the Old Manse to a friend, and 
 wrote : " The trees of the avenue how many leaves 
 have fallen since I last saw them ! " It was always on 
 the fallen leaf that Hawthorne found the sentence for 
 his romance, but to what a beautiful new life did it 
 germinate there ! 
 
 It is an almost solemn reflection that in that same 
 Old Manse, and in the same room, were written Emer 
 son s " Nature" and Hawthorne s " Goodman Brown." 
 
 On the twenty-eighth birthday of the American Re 
 public was born also this last wizard of Salem ; and 
 the spirit of the day, as well as of the place, was potent 
 in him. Much of the romance of early American his 
 tory gathers about Salem. Ix, is a charming old town, 
 with broad streets overarched by the foliage of aged 
 elms, and with memorable houses preserved amid the 
 mansions of its cultured citizens. Its oldest families 
 
258 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 are sprung from men who began life as seafarers and 
 became merchants. I know not whether it be because 
 Beauty insists on rising from even such distant waves, 
 but the Salem people and their homes always appeared 
 to me to possess a peculiar charm. Here young Na 
 thaniel could read on Gallows Hill, where the witches 
 were hung, the tragical story of that era, to the time 
 when the people arose and broke open the prison doors 
 of those victims, and entered the door of the judge, 
 whom they forced to kneel and ask pardon of outraged 
 humanity. On the neighbouring sea-beach he was wont 
 to wander in the twilight and see sombre Astarte 
 shall we say ? rising from the waves, where his fathers 
 had commanded ships of war or merchandise. From 
 these years grew many of those mystical " Twice-Told 
 Tales " in which all the moonlight and starlight of New 
 England history is garnered. When they were first 
 read, some thought even the author s name a myth. 
 "Nathaniel" had been suggested by the Puritan s 
 fondness for scriptural names, and " Hawthorne" had 
 an obvious significance ; and, indeed, the letter w, 
 which the author inserted in the old Wiltshire name, 
 may have represented some conscious spiritualisation 
 of his family tree. His ancestor who planted the 
 American branch of Hathornes persecuted Quakers, 
 the next persecuted witches. The best compensation 
 for their lives was when they were turned into gloomily 
 picturesque figures by the art of their descendant, and 
 the blood shed by their thorns tinted the blossoms of 
 Hawthorne. 
 
 Caiiyle used to say a good word for his pet " sur 
 vival, " Calvin, even in the Servetus affair. Think of 
 
NATHANIEL AND SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. 259 
 
 the amount of sincerity and force of purpose required 
 to make a man burn his fellowman to ashes ! Whereon 
 one s comment might be : But what Medusa must that 
 creed be which, three centuries after Calvin s death, 
 can chain the heart of a giant nursed at that stony 
 breast ! The infernal sincerity and force of those 
 Puritan soldiers, William Hathorne and his son John, 
 transmitted their spell also to Hawthorne, but not to 
 bind his heart. "I know not," he wrote, "whether 
 these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent 
 and ask pardon of Heaven for their cruelties, or 
 whether they are now groaning under the heavy conse 
 quences of them in another state of being. At all 
 events, I, the present writer, hereby take shame upon 
 myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred 
 by them as I have heard, and as the dreary and 
 unprosperous condition of the race for some time back 
 would argue to exist may now and henceforth be 
 removed." The last shadow of Calvinism lay in the 
 persistence of this notion of a transmitted curse, 
 which, however refined, held the American Merlin in a 
 prison of air. The transmutation of subjective into 
 objective facts was a more terrible tendency in Haw 
 thorne than in Swedenborg ; for Hawthorne did not 
 project his fancies into conventionalised, but into 
 natural forms. He still uses the fossil word "sin." 
 The punishers of guilt on his stage are palpable, like 
 the Furies of JEschylus, which were so fatal to sensi 
 tive women in Athens ; and neither JEschylus nor any 
 other writer has described the fatal spiritual pheno 
 mena with greater intensity of realisation and more 
 subtle art. 
 
200 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 "The Celestial Railway" was the first piece by 
 Hawthorne that penetrated onr Southern region. It 
 was copied in the newspapers of that region, and 
 much enjoyed as a satire upon tho rationalistic tenden 
 cies of the North. When I became old enough to 
 appreciate the humour of that allegory, and the 
 " serene strength" which Emerson found in it, I was 
 also able to recognise its re-actionary spirit. And years 
 later, recognising Hawthorne as the one American 
 whose genius was comparable with that of Emerson 
 for power, it was my conviction that the piece I have 
 mentioned, and the greater part of the " Mosses from 
 an Old Manse," belong to the earlier and unsunned 
 time of his life. "My son," said Goethe s mother, 
 "whenever he had a grief put it into a poem, and so 
 got rid of it." A dismal day cast its last shadows on 
 those "Mosses," and a careful eye may find them 
 sheathing here and there roses of the fairer morning 
 that had come upon his life 
 
 In his earliest tales, written in Salem, there is 
 revealed, along with the ever-appealing intellect, a sen 
 sitive and loving nature, thirsting for affection, faint 
 with growing despair of finding a nature responsive to 
 his deep heart. In 183G Margaret Fuller wrote to a 
 friend, "I took a two or three year old Token, and 
 chanced on a story called The Gentle Boy, which I 
 remembered to have heard was written by somebody in 
 Salem. It is marked by so much grace and delicacy 
 of feeling that I am very desirous to know the author, 
 whom I take to be a lady." 
 
 Meantime in that same old town, though unknown 
 as the maiden of his fable that stood near slumbering 
 
NATHANIEL AND SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. 261 
 
 David Swan, was dwelling near Hawthorne the heart 
 that held his sunbeam. A kind and intelligent physi 
 cian dwelt in Salem, with his three lovely daughters, 
 dowered only with riches of mind and heart. Of these 
 sisters Peabody, all lived to do honour to the woman 
 hood of America. Mary, as Mrs. Horace Mann, was 
 able to assist her eminent husband in his educational 
 work East and West, recorded but too modestly in her 
 beautiful memoir of that noble man. Elizabeth, by an 
 unwearied zeal in the pursuit of every high ideal, be 
 came a kind of saintly abbess at Concord, of whom I 
 heard Emerson say that her recollections and cor 
 respondence would comprise the spiritual history of 
 her time. Sophia, as the wife of Hawthorne, aided in 
 the realisation of ideals as beautiful as any she dreamed 
 while a favourite pupil in the studio of Allston. 
 
 It was with a certain despair that Hawthorne made 
 his first pilgrimage to the Brook Farm community, 
 the wild plunge of a starved heart to find some other 
 world. He found his millennium in a heart. He was 
 a stranger in the land of promise, but found his ideal 
 community, which consisted of two, whose model halls 
 were in the most ancient and solitary mansion of Con 
 cord village. There was indeed one other member of 
 the Old Manse community, Poverty ; but never was 
 poor relation treated more good-humoureclly. 
 
 No other ! Yes, Happiness. To read Hawthorne s 
 li Notes" of these years starts to the eyes tears that 
 flash prismatic hues. He is still "the obscurest man 
 of letters in America ; " he is poor and without pros 
 pect of becoming otherwise ; and he feels himself su 
 premely blessed. His honeymoon never waned. He 
 
262 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 compares himself to Adam with Eve beside him, and 
 cannot think Eden could have been very different from 
 their garden with its Balm-of-Gilead trees and its 
 unforbidden apples All the four rivers of paradise 
 were merged in the Musketaquid, gently streaming 
 past, adorned with lilies holding gold of Havilah, and 
 reflecting the scarlet cardinal-flower, which he would 
 have accepted as a confessor had there been any snake 
 in his garden. 
 
 He gave his perfect happiness as a reason why he 
 did not seek from Emerson his solution of the riddle 
 of the universe. But Hawthorne could not escape the 
 cloven tongues of his time ; therefore was he at Con 
 cord. He himself speaks of the effect of " living for 
 three years under the subtle influence of an intellect 
 like Emerson s." While yet his art was working in its 
 labyrinthine grotto, its crystals correspond with the 
 roses of Emerson s bower. 
 
 There is an allegorical flower growing out of a grave, 
 so often met with in Hawthorne s pages that it can 
 never fade from his escutcheon. In his early life it 
 promised a fatal quality, like that in "Septimius" 
 which so closely resembled the flower of perpetual life. 
 M. Emile Montegut has spoken of Hawthorne as a 
 romancier petsimiste ; and, superficial as the criticism 
 is, there are some startling correspondences between 
 the early fancies of Hawthorne and the great pessimis 
 tic systems. It is not probable that Hawthorne could 
 have read Firdusi s history of Zohak when he wrote 
 "The Man with a Snake in his Bosom;" and still 
 less that he knew the now familiar legend of Buddha 
 when he wrote the following in his journal at Salein, 
 
NATHANIEL AND SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. 263 
 
 1836 : " Two lovers plan the building of a pleasure- 
 house on a certain spot of ground, but various seeming 
 accidents prevent it. Once they find a group of mis 
 erable children there ; once it is the scene where crime 
 is plotted ; at last the dead body of one of the lovers 
 or of a dear friend is found there ; and, instead of a 
 pleasure-house, they build a marble tomb. The moral 
 is that there is no place on earth fit for the site of a 
 pleasure-house, because there is no spot that may not 
 have been saddened by human grief, stained by crime, 
 or hallowed by death." 
 
 One day there was a Mayday festival for the children 
 of Concord. Emerson gave the use of his woods and 
 a Maypole. While the ladies were out there making 
 the preparations, Hawthorne cany? up and said he 
 would like to see the children dancing if he could do so 
 without being perceived. There was found for him 
 the hollow trunk of a tree long dead ; he hid himself 
 there as the children were coming and gazed upon them. 
 He left unperceived. Was it a tree grown from a slip 
 of Buddha s Bo-tree, brought over by the Puritans to 
 represent their dogma of a curse on nature ? It could 
 not live on Emerson s farm, and its last service was to 
 give Hawthorne his outlook on the dance of happy 
 children in which he could not freely unite. Yet was 
 he a charming playmate to his children and a profoundly 
 sympathetic man ; though to the last he could not part 
 with his " horse of the night," as Emerson styled it, a 
 more delightful companion when dismounted could not 
 be found. 
 
 Emerson feared the melancholy temperament of his 
 most distinguished neighbour, but recognised his genius 
 
264 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 and his almost magical art. So long as Margaret 
 Fuller frequented Concord, she was an element which 
 enabled them to mingle ; but when that mediator was 
 gone, the two shrank a little from each other by elec 
 tive necessity, while preserving mutual esteem. Haw 
 thorne may have been afraid of casting a shadow across 
 that path of sunshine visible wherever Emerson moved, 
 and he may also have feared to meet the unfamiliar 
 people who sought the Sage. Here was a man whose 
 nerves were without integument, terribly exposed to 
 all kinds of impressions from without. If any person 
 or thing came into real contact with his mind, it sank 
 deeply into him, drew upon his heart s blood, and 
 remained until it was born into some mental offspring. 
 Every new experience was a fatality to him for good 
 or ill. No 1 j every one who saw how reserved and 
 gentle he was knew the great struggle by which a 
 nature full of fiery forces had been brought into har 
 mony with its ideal elements. Beneath these remained 
 the lava soil, which must needs nurse into life every 
 seed fallen in it. 
 
 We have seen that his ancestors became his literary 
 offspring. The genesis of " The Scarlet Letter," the 
 New England epic, has been shadowed forth by him 
 self; and there is nothing more thrilling in it than the 
 scene of Hawthorne himself, in the prosaic Custom 
 house pressing the faded broidered "A" to his breast 
 till it burns. But \vhence came the letter and the tale ? 
 From the brow of Cain. (Two great pieces of imagin 
 ative art in New England came from the Bible when its 
 altar-chain was broken. The other is Dr. Holmes s 
 romance of Eve and the Serpent, entitled " Elsie Yen- 
 
NATHANIEL AND SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. 265 
 
 ner.") The " House of the Seven Gables " was once 
 the doomed House of Agamemnon. Nearly all the 
 tales of Hawthorne, even the smallest, have bloomed 
 from seed taken, as it were, from the cerements of 
 royal mummies, where they symbolised eternal ideas, 
 albeit the bodies they receive from his genius have such 
 an American look. That, I believe, is why they pos 
 sess the unique character of seeming new and startling 
 every time one reads them. They do not appear like 
 literary creations, but draw the reader at once to the 
 man in whom these things exist. His writings are 
 overcast with the pain of a heart held tinder a necessity 
 to expose its inmost recesses to the world. 
 
 The Misses Hunt, with whom I boarded during my 
 first summer at Concord, told me the sad story of their 
 near relative who drowned herself in the river. Martha 
 Hunt was young and attractive ; she had interested 
 George Bradford, Emerson, and other scholars by her 
 serious studies and high aims. Her parents and rela 
 tives were poor but affectionate? and anxious to further 
 her intellectual growth ; but she could not u beat her 
 music through." The tidings spread through the vil 
 lage that she had disappeared, and her outer garments 
 were found beside the river, somewhat below the Old 
 Manse, where Hawthorne was then residing. He with 
 a friend shoved off in a boat, and late in the night, 
 under a fitful moonlight, brought to the surface the 
 form of the poor maiden. The tragedy wrote itself 
 inevitably in " The Blithedale Romance," and the artist 
 appears simply in setting it where it belonged. Al 
 though the Brook -Farmers took it to heart that such a 
 tragedy should be associated with their cheery com- 
 
266 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 munity, the incident sets fairly in " Blithedale." The 
 suicide of Martha Hunt was an incident of the tran 
 scendental movement. That there were not other tra 
 gedies of the kind is surprising. Many whose story 
 has found no chronicler must have been brought into 
 sad discord with their environment. 
 
 I suspect that the Faun in " Transformation " may 
 be partly traceable to an incident which, though found 
 in a book, was of a kind likely to haunt Hawthorne s 
 imagination. In his "Recollections of Byron and 
 Shelley" Trelawney says : "I asked Fletcher to bring 
 me a glass of water ; and on his leaving the room, to 
 confirm or remove my doubts as to the cause of his 
 lameness, I uncovered the Pilgrim s feet and was 
 answered both his feet were clubbed and the legs 
 withered to the knee ; the form and face of an Apollo, 
 with the feet and legs of a sylvan satyr." Trelawney s 
 book appeared just as Hawthorne was starting out 
 from Liverpool on his journey to Italy. The incident 
 just quoted was one which would have shocked his 
 moral sense, but also might easily have taken shape in 
 his artistic sense, and re-appeared in the spiritualised 
 Faun. Hawthorne very rarely gained any hint from 
 any other imagination. The only story he ever wrote 
 which might have been suggested by another is 
 "Feathertop." The theme is nearly that of Tieck s 
 " Scarecrow " {Die Vogehcheuclie) , and turns on the 
 career of a scarecrow which a witch has made into a 
 fine gentleman. In Hawthorne s early journal at Con 
 cord he speaks of trying to translate a story of Tieck s, 
 and probably this was the one ; probably also he never 
 got through it, for the two stories diverge widely. 
 
NATHANIEL AND SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. 267 
 
 There is a little story of Hawthorne s which may have 
 flowered out of the tradition of an old house at Concord 
 "A Virtuoso s Collection. This Virtuoso, who has 
 collected so many mythical things, and such specimens 
 as a sonnet by Jones Very and an humble-bee, con 
 tributed by Emerson, turns out to be the Wandering 
 Jew. It was probably about ten years after this was 
 written that Hawthorne purchased the old house at 
 Concord known as the Wayside. Concerning this new 
 residence he wrote to his friend Gr. W. Curtis, "I know 
 nothing of the history of the house except Thoreau s 
 telling me that it was inhabited a century or two ago 
 by a man who believed he should never die." When 
 the Wayside was prepared for Hawthorne s residence, 
 Mr. Bronson Alcott undertook to make it and the hill 
 side behind it picturesque, and his visionary theories 
 about the duration of life may have unfolded for Haw 
 thorne another leaf on the stem which was growing 
 from the Virtuoso, Ahasuerus, to Septimius. Mr. 
 Alcott once told me that he came in with this century 
 and intended to go out with it. His old theories about 
 the effect on life and character of vegetables ripened in 
 the sun, and such as are underground, demonic, had an 
 irritating effect upon Carlyle. "There is Piccadilly," 
 he broke out once while they walked and talked there ; 
 "there it has been for a hundred years, and there it 
 will be when you and your damned potato-gospel are 
 dead and forgotten." But Hawthorne found in Alcott 
 and his speculations a picturesque subject. It is curious 
 enough to find the young writer about the Eternal Jew 
 afterwards dwelling in this house in Concord said to 
 have been occupied by one of the undying, and the 
 
268 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 scenery of the old Indian settlement with its wizard 
 Sachem re-appearing as Concord and its vegetarian 
 visionary. 
 
 It must have seemed to Nathaniel and Sophia Haw 
 thorne a very long pilgrimage that had brought them 
 from the Old Manse to that pretty villa, little as is the 
 distance. It was with a sigh that Hawthorne responded 
 to the kindness of the Hon. George Bancroft, Secre 
 tary of the Navy, in appointing him surveyor of the 
 port of Salem. It ended his poverty, but also his par 
 adise. It seemed also a farewell to his literary aims. 
 It was during the years between 1846, when he received 
 his appointment, and 1849, when he was removed, that 
 he was haunted by the spirits of " The Scarlet Letter." 
 One very intimate with him told me a pleasant story 
 about it. One wintry day he received at his office no 
 tification that his services would no longer be required. 
 With heaviness of heart lie repairs to his humble home. 
 His young wife recognises the change, and stands wait 
 ing for the silence to be broken. At length he falters, 
 "I am removed from office." Then she leaves the 
 room ; soon she returns with fuel and kindles a bright 
 fire with her own hand ; next brings pen, paper, ink, 
 and sets them beside him. Then she toucnes the sad 
 man on the shoulder, and, as lie turns to the beaming 
 face, says, "Now you can write your book!" The 
 cloud cleared away. The lost office looked like a cage 
 from which he had escaped. The book was written ; 
 it was welcomed by the publisher, who knew how to 
 think and write yes, and how to be a friend James 
 Fields, and who never penned a sentence with more 
 pleasure than when (1851) he wrote to Miss Mitford : 
 
NATHANIEL AND SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. 269 
 
 11 A few days ago the author of The Scarlet Letter 
 came to Boston after an absence of many months 
 Every eye glistened as it welcomed an author whose 
 genius seems to have filled his native land quite sud 
 denly with his fame. He blushes like a girl when he is 
 praised." 
 
 When his old college-friend Franklin Pierce was 
 nominated for the Presidency, Hawthorne wrote a biog 
 raphy of him ; and when, after election, Pierce ap 
 pointed him Consul at Liverpool, some, who did not 
 know Hawthorne, regarded the proceeding as a bargain. 
 The truth was, Hawthorne was intensely loyal to the 
 few intimate friends of his life, and he could not be 
 persuaded of anything against Franklin Pierce, who, 
 indeed, had many amiable qualities. When Pierce had 
 become exceedingly unpopular in the country, Haw 
 thorne stood by him even to his cost, and insisted on 
 dedicating " Our Old Home" to him, despite the protest 
 of his publishers. 
 
 This man, who had inherited from an ancestry of 
 soldiers a port and courage equal to the bravest of 
 them, had gained from the record of their cruelties a 
 horror of bloodshed, something like that of a Confed 
 erate soldier of my acquaintance, who, since the Amer 
 ican war refuses to kill a mosquito. Probably his 
 " democratic " sympathies were largely due to his dread 
 of the conflict to which the anti-slavery agitation was 
 leading. 
 
 The shadow that fell upon Hawthorne s patriotic 
 heart from the blackening sky of his country was for a 
 time forgotten in the shadow of death that seemed to 
 be drawing near and nearer his daughter Una. From 
 
270 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 that long illness in Rome this lovely girl seemed to re 
 cover, but not her father. He came back to England 
 and wrote "Transformation." He went to Leaming 
 ton and other pretty places, but found that he could 
 not write well amid ornamental and social surroundings, 
 so his dear friend Francis Bennoch found a wild and 
 desolate seaside place, Redcar, where, in a seclusion 
 like that of the Concord snowstorms, which protected 
 his hours of inspiration, those exquisite creations were 
 finished 
 
 When he foresaw the civil war in America to be in 
 evitable, Hawthorne said to a friend in Liverpool that 
 he meant to "go home and die with the Republic." 
 The war did indeed wear deeply upon his mind and 
 health. He could not share the high hopes which sus 
 tained his nearest friends during those terrible years ; 
 he could not see beyond the black cloud a country lib 
 erated from the blight of slavery. To him the war 
 was an overwhelming tragedy, and the inevitable end 
 seemed to be the end of the Republic. 
 
 These forebodings found much to foster them in the 
 earlier course of the war. Hawthorne visited Wash 
 ington, and on his return wrote that strange account 
 of his observations and reflections there which appeared 
 in the "Atlantic Monthly " for July, 18G2. That paper 
 is a notable instance of the subtlety of Hawthorne s 
 art, which in this case has deceived eyen so subtle an 
 artist as Henry James, jun. " The article," says Mr. 
 James in his Biography of Hawthorne, "has all the 
 usual merit of such sketches on Hawthorne s part 
 the merit of delicate, sportive feeling, expressed with 
 consummate grace ; but the editor of the periodical 
 
NATHANIEL AND SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. 271 
 
 appears to have thought that he must give the antidote 
 with the poison, and the paper is accompanied with 
 several little notes disclaiming all sympathy with the 
 writer s political heresies." The foot-notes here men 
 tioned are severe, and sometimes contemptuous in then* 
 rebuke of the text ; but the} were written by Hawthorne 
 himself! So, at any rate, I was assured by Emerson 
 at the time, and as also about that time I passed a 
 night at the house of Mr. Fields with Hawthorne, feel 
 certain that this is the case. No doubt Mr. Fields had 
 remonstrated with Hawthorne on some sentiments in 
 the contribution to his magazine, but the sharp criti 
 cisms were by Hawthorne on himself. 
 
 Moreover, a close examination of these criticisms 
 convinced me that they represented the real Hawthorne 
 as fairly as the article itself. He was at this time pain 
 fully divided between his" old prejudices against the 
 Northern agitators for disunion in the interest of eman 
 cipation, and his growing horror against a war for dis 
 union begun by their opponents for the sake of slavery. 
 His patriotism, however, was impregnable. 
 
 I have before me two letters that have not been pub 
 lished. They were written by Emerson and Hawthorne 
 to English correspondents, from whom I have received 
 them. They were written in the midst of the war from 
 the same historic town of Concord, and by the two 
 chief representatives of the genius of New England, 
 dwelling a few steps from each other. They are not 
 presented for the sake of contrast, but as shewing 
 what the two most far-reaching eyes in America beheld 
 as they looked upon the great movement whose results 
 are now history. 
 
272 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 The letter of Emerson was written to the late Mrs. 
 Joseph Biggs, at whose home in Leicester he was a 
 guest, and whose friendship, as well as that of her hus 
 band, he much valued. In it he refers to " the probity 
 and honour" of a protest she had written him " against 
 what appears the governing opinion in England," and 
 continues : "I remember that Mr. Biggs in Leicester 
 questioned me on the point, why good and cultivated 
 men in America avoided politics (for so he had heard) , 
 and let them fall into bad hands ? He will find in our 
 calamities to-day the justification of his warning. Our 
 sky is very dark, but the feeling is very general in the 
 Union, that bad as the war is, it is far safer and better 
 than the foregoing peace. Our best ground of hope 
 now is the healthy sentiment which appears in reasona 
 ble people all over the country, accepting sacrifices, but 
 meaning riddance from slavery and from Southern 
 domination. I fear this sentiment is not yet represented 
 by our Government or its agents in Europe, but it is 
 sporadic in the country. Indeed, the Governments 
 of both England and America are far in the rear of 
 their best constituencies : in England, as shewn in the 
 jesolution with which the Government shuts its eyes to 
 the building of ships of war in your ports to attack 
 the Republic now in this spasm to throw off slavery. 
 This unlooked-for attitude of England is our gravest 
 foreign disadvantage. But I have gone quite too far 
 into these painful politics, whose gloom is only to be 
 relieved by the largest considerations. I rejoice in so 
 many assurances of sound heart and clear perception 
 as come to us from excellent persons in England, 
 among which I rank your letter chiefly ; and the sig- 
 
NATHANIEL AND SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. 273 
 
 nificant sympathy of the Manchester workmen, which 
 I wish had been better met." 
 
 The letter of Hawthorne was to Francis Bennoch : 
 "My DEAR B., I owe you much in many ways, 
 but there is one way in which I ought not to be your 
 debtor, and that is in friendly correspondence. 
 
 " The truth is, that at present I have little heart for 
 anything. We are, as you know, at the beginning of a 
 great war - a war the issue of which no man can pred 
 icate, and I for one have no inclination to attempt 
 prophesy. It is not long since the acute ruler of 
 France the epigrammatic speech-maker announced 
 to a startled Europe and a delighted country that he 
 had gone to war for an idea, a very nice, if not an 
 absolutely true idea. But we Yankees have cast him 
 entirely into the shade. We also have gone to war, 
 and we seem to have little, or at least a very misty idea 
 of what we are fighting for. It depends upon the 
 speaker, and that again depends upon the section of 
 the country in which his sympathies are enlisted. The 
 Southern man will say : We fight for State rights, lib 
 erty, and independence. The Middle Western man 
 will avow that he fights for the Union ; whilst our 
 Northern and Eastern man will swear that from the 
 beginning his only idea was liberty to the Blacks and 
 the annihilation of slavery. All are thoroughly in 
 earnest, and all pray for the blessing of Heaven to rest 
 upon the enterprise. The appeals are so numerous, 
 fervent, and yet so contradictory, that the Great Ar 
 biter to whom they so piously and solemnly appeal 
 must be sorely puzzled how to decide. One thing is 
 indisputable, the spirit of our young men is thor- 
 
274 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 oiighly aroused. Their enthusiasm is boundless, and 
 the smiles of our fragile and delicate women cheer 
 them on. When I hear their drums beating, and see 
 their banners flying, and witness their steady marching, 
 I declare were it not for certain silvery monitors hang 
 ing by my temples suggesting prudence, I feel as if I 
 could catch the infection, shoulder a musket, and be 
 off to the war myself ! 
 
 " Meditating on these matters, I begin to think our 
 custom as to war is a mistake. Why draw from our 
 young men, in the bloom and heyday of their youth, 
 the soldiers who are to fight our battles ? Had I my 
 way, no man should go to war under fifty years of age, 
 such men having already had their natural share of 
 worldly pleasures, and life s enjoyments. And I don t 
 see how they could make a more creditable or more 
 honourable exit from the world s stage than by becom 
 ing food for powder and gloriously dying in defence of 
 their home and country. Then I would add a premium 
 in favour of recruits of three-score years and upwards, 
 as, virtually with one foot in the grave, they would not 
 be likely to run away. I apprehend that no people 
 ever built up the skeleton of a warlike history so rap 
 idly as we are doing. What a fine theme for the poet ! 
 If you were not born a Britisher, from whose country 
 we expect no help and little sympathy, I would ask you 
 for a martial strain a song to be sung by our camp- 
 fires to soothe the feelings and rouse the energies of 
 our troops, inspiring them to meet like men the great 
 conflict that awaits them, resolved to conquer or to die 
 if dying, still to conquer. Ten thousand poetasters 
 have tried, and tried in vain, to give us a rousing 
 
NATHANIEL AND SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. 275 
 
 1 Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled. 
 
 If we fight no better than we sing, may the Lord have 
 mercy upon us, and upon the nation ! 
 
 "In the excitement raging everywhere, don t you 
 feel as if you could come and see America in time of 
 war? The room bearing your name is ready ; the fire 
 is laid ; and here we are prepared to give you welcome. 
 Come and occupy the apartment dedicated to you. 
 Come and let us talk over the many pleasant evenings 
 we spent together in dear Old England. Come, and I 
 promise that all distracting thoughts and disturbing 
 circumstances shall be banished from us. And although 
 our children are no longer children, I am sure they 
 would unite with the elder folk, and enjoy the oppor 
 tunity of shewing that Yankee hearts never forget 
 kindnesses, and long for the chance of repaying them, 
 not as a cancelling of debt, but to prove how deeply 
 k i ndly deeds are appreciated by them . We have national 
 foibles ; what nation has not? We have national pecu 
 liarities and whimsical caprices, but we are none the 
 worse for them. We have many sins to answer for and 
 many shortcomings, but ingratitude cannot be reckoned 
 among them. So come, and let us prove that we are, 
 one and all, affectionately your friends. Always, &c., 
 &c. NATII. HAWTHORNE." 
 
 Shortly after Hawthorne s return from Europe, I met 
 him at a dinner of the Literary Club in Boston. A 
 larger number than usual had come together to welcome 
 him home. He was more social and talkative than I 
 had ever supposed he could be, but was much aged in 
 
27() EMERSON AT HOME AND ABKOAI). 
 
 appearance. He had repaired to his Concord home, 
 and, could he only have escaped the sounds of war, 
 perhaps he might have tasted at the Wayside a drop 
 of that elixir which its old Sachem was fabled to pos 
 sess. But he could not find repose, and instead of 
 dreaming, like Septimius, of endless life, said that he 
 hoped no trumpet, however angelic, would sound over 
 his grave short of a thousand years. 
 
 When I passed a night with him under the roof of 
 James T. Fields, after his return from Washington, he 
 had the expression of one who had been wandering 
 amid ruins the ruins of his country. Mrs. Fields 
 had invited a little company, but after the first arrivals 
 Hawthorne made his escape to his room. At the re 
 quest of Mrs. Fields, I went to ask if he could not 
 come down, and found him deep in Defoe s " Short 
 Stories." He did not emerge until the next morning 
 at breakfast-time, and then, with the amusing look of a 
 naughty child, pleaded that he had been carried off by 
 Defoe s wicked ghosts. He must, I think, have been 
 contemplating some phantasmal production at that 
 time ; for I remember his asking me questions about 
 the ghost-beliefs of the negroes, among whom my early 
 life was passed. One of these was of a negro who 
 saw an enormous conflagration near by, but on reaching 
 the spot found only one firecoal and heard a dog bark. 
 Hawthorne was interested in this, and spoke in a sym 
 pathetic way about the negroes that I did not expect. 
 But he evidently suspected that the war conflagration 
 would end in a small ember for the negroes, and I sus 
 pect did not believe that race would be made happier 
 than he had been bv freedom and culture. 
 
NATHANIEL AND SOFFITA HAWTHORNE. 277 
 
 Hawthorne could see between the Old Manse and the 
 Wayside a transformation as beautiful as that which 
 gave Cinderella beauty for ashes : he saw his lovely 
 and gifted children growing around him like fulfilments 
 of what the riverside flowers had promised his early 
 wedded happiness ; and perhaps it seemed to him that 
 it was well enough to pass away in that fulness of life. 
 So it was. Amidst hearts that loved him he was 
 carried to his repose in Sleepy Hollow. 
 
 And now that wife, whose literary ability the world 
 was presently to know by her charming Notes on 
 England and Italy," devoted herself to the work of 
 collecting those " Note-Books" of her husband which 
 have made him an intimate friend of every mind 
 worthy of his friendship. In London she made her 
 home while engaged in this work, and she was sur 
 rounded by the books and pictures he had treasured. 
 "When they were brought over, an edition of " Wa- 
 verley" which Hawthorne had prized was seized at the 
 Liverpool Custom-house, but the letter she wrote the 
 inspector made him forget all regulations, and the vol 
 umes were forwarded. 
 
 Hawthorne once wrote from England to a friend : 
 " Of all things, I should like to find a gravestone in 
 one of these old churchyards with my name upon it ; 
 although, for myself, I should wish to be buried in 
 America." It was not very long before his name was 
 read on an English gravestone. On March 4, 1871, 
 when I stood beside the open grave of Mrs. Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne in Kensal Green Cemetery, my vision wan 
 dered away to another in that little cemetery at Con 
 cord, which, though primitive, is also consecrated by 
 
278 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 the dust of noble spirits ; and the two, so sundered, 
 seemed to represent a happy tale suddenly broken off, 
 and ending with heaviness and pain. She was laid to 
 rest by those who had known and loved her Francis 
 Bennoch, W. H. Channing, Robert Browning, Russell 
 Sturgis ; and not far off the face of Leigh Hunt, from 
 the marble over his grave, seemed to beam with sym 
 pathy upon the two lonely daughters of his friends. 
 Before the coffin was lowered, these two Una and 
 Rose laid upon it, the one a wreath, the other a 
 cross, of white camelias. When the undertaker took 
 up a handful of clay, Una held out her hand for it, and 
 at the words "dust to dust" let the crumbled pieces 
 fall there where lay the form of her mother. 
 
 This was the end. As we turned away the birds 
 sang gaily amid the budding trees. I remembered the 
 old scenes amid which these bereaved children first 
 drew breath, and where, amid the budding joys and 
 heart-melodies of his happiest home, their father wrote, 
 4 There is a pervading blessing diffused over all the 
 world. I look out of the window and think : O perfect 
 day ! O beautiful world ! O good God ! And such a 
 day is the promise of a blissful eternity. It opens the 
 gates of heaven and gives glimpses far inward." 
 
THOEEAU. 279 
 
 XXV. 
 
 THOREAU. 
 
 WHEN Emerson was giving a course of lectures in 
 my church at Cincinnati, he consented to address 
 the children on Sunday morning. Many times have I 
 regretted that no reporter was present to preserve that 
 address. It was given without notes, and its effect 
 upon the large assembly of children could have been 
 no less striking than that extemporaneous speech deliv 
 ered by Emerson at the Burns Centenary, which so 
 experienced a critic as Judge Hoar declares to be the 
 grandest piece of eloquence he ever heard. Emerson, 
 in this case as in that, held his hearers between smiles 
 and tears. He began by telling them about his neigh 
 bour Henry Thoreau, and his marvellous knowledge of 
 nature, his intimate friendship with flowers, and with 
 the birds which lit on his shoulder, and with the fishes 
 which swam into his hand. It was as if he were charm 
 ing the children with a fairy-tale, or something omitted 
 from the Gospel stories, which at the same time they 
 felt to be true. 
 
 Not very long after (18G2) Thoreau died it was at 
 the age of fojrty-fi ve and beside his grave at Concord 
 Emerson delivered an address in which he said, "The 
 country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great 
 
280 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 a son it has lost." And this is still true, although few 
 men have ever had such full and interesting memoirs. 
 Emerson wrote a sketch of his life ; Ellery Charming 
 has written a biography and a fine poem concerning 
 him ; James Russell Lowell, Wentworth Higginson, 
 and George W. Curtis have written excellent essays 
 upon him ; and this year Frank B. Sanborn has pub 
 lished a Life of Thoreau, full of interesting details and 
 shewing his unique relation to Concord., of which he 
 was a native. In England, a book concerning him by 
 u H. A. Page" appeared four years ago, and there 
 have been some articles about him. I remember an 
 able one in the "Saturday Review," in which, how 
 ever, he was described, not happily I thought, as "an 
 American Rousseau." Notwithstanding all this, there 
 are comparatively few in America or England who have 
 read the works of this rare genius. It was about four 
 years after his Week on the Concord and the Mer- 
 rimack " was published that I spoke to him about that 
 charming book, and he told me that the entire edition 
 of it was still on the publisher s shelf with exception 
 of copies he had given to his friends. Although he 
 had found himself in debt for the printing, I thought 
 he spoke of his book s obscurity with a certain satis 
 faction. Thoreau s books are so physiognomical that 
 they seem to possess his own aversion to publicity. 
 Like the pious Yogi, so long motionless whilst gazing 
 on the sun that knotty plants encircled his neck and 
 the cast snake-skin his loins, and the birds built their 
 nests on his shoulders, this poet and naturalist, by 
 equal consecration, became a part of the field and 
 forest ; and lie with his books, to read which is like 
 
THOREAU. 281 
 
 walking amid meadows and magnolias, or in woods 
 melodious with nightingales, might naturally be un 
 discovered in the landscape by the great world thunder 
 ing past in its train. 
 
 In the annals of Tours several hundred years ago 
 this name recurs in connection with its government, 
 but it was from St. Heliers in Jersey that the first 
 American of that name emigrated. I remember well 
 the stolid, taciturn pencil-maker his father, and his 
 simple mother, and long ago came to the conclusion 
 that the great Thoreau was what the Buddha would 
 call a u twice-born" man. He was born in Concord, 
 and entered Harvard University in 1833, the year of 
 Emerson s first visit to England. Emerson had been 
 residing in Concord two or three years when he dis 
 covered this scholar, then twenty years of age. The 
 family was poor, and Thoreau taught school a little 
 and made pencils a little, but read and thought a great 
 deal. At an early period he made up his mind that his 
 road to wealth lay in not wanting things. If he were 
 as satisfied not to have a coach as his neighbour was 
 in having one, was he not quite as well off as that 
 neighbour? " If I had the wealth of Croesus bestowed 
 on me," he was at length able to say, " my aims must 
 still be the same, and my means the same." 
 
 Emerson took me to see Thoreau, and I remember 
 that he asked me what we were studying at Divinity 
 College. I answered, " The Scriptures." "Which? 
 he asked. I was puzzled until Emerson said, " I fear 
 you will find our Thoreau a sad pagan." Thoreau had 
 long been a reverent student of Oriental bibles, and, 
 like Morgana in the story, had marked all the sacred 
 
282 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 doors with the same sign, so that Hebrew were not dis 
 tinguishable from Hindu inspirations. He now shewed 
 me his bioles, translated from various races into French 
 and English, presented him by an English friend, Mr. 
 Cholmondeley. 
 
 In this conversation with Thoreau I perceived that 
 he was not in the least like his parents, but closely 
 resembled Emerson. His features, expression, tones 
 of voice, were more like those of Emerson than any 
 likeness I have known between brothers. This phe 
 nomenon was, no doubt, the result of the naturalist s 
 genius. Emerson may have thought of Thoreau in his 
 quatrain 
 
 " He took the colour of his vest 
 From rabbit s coat and grouse s breast; 
 For as the wild kinds lurk and hide, 
 So walks the huntsman unespied." 
 
 But meanwhile Thoreau, while he hunted the wild kinds 
 with spyglass and microscope, and became friendly with 
 them, was pursuing more ardently winged thoughts and 
 mystical secrets. He cared most, as he said, to " fish 
 in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars." He 
 once said to rue that he had found in Emerson a world 
 where truths existed with the same perfection as the 
 objects he studied in external nature, his ideas real and 
 exact as antenna and stamina. It was nature spirit 
 ualised. I also found that Thoreau had entered deeply 
 Emerson s secret, and was the most complete incar 
 nation of the earlier idealism of the Sage. But because 
 this influence was in the least part personal, the resem 
 blance of Thoreau to Emerson was as superficial as a 
 
THOREAU. 283 
 
 leaf-like creature to a leaf. Thoreau was quite as orig 
 inal as Emerson. He was not an imitator of any mor 
 tal ; his thoughts and expressions are suggestions of a 
 Thoreau-principle at work in the universe. A lady who 
 had known Wordsworth in her girlhood told me that he 
 looked as if nature had adopted him, the furrows in his 
 face as if stained by lichens ; and I at once thought of 
 Thoreau, in whose eye was the clear Walden Water, 
 and on his brow the peace of pastures and purity of 
 the river lilies, as well as the grace of Emerson. 
 
 In 1845 Thoreau built himself a hut with his own 
 hands on the shore of Walderi, that lakelet of a mile 
 and three quarters circumference, which is a pure peren 
 nial spring, framed in a wood of oak and pine. It is 
 without visible inlet or outlet, and so transparent, that 
 once when Thoreau s axe fell into it, he saw it at a 
 great depth and recovered it. It was then that social 
 istic experiments were rife, and Thoreau would shew 
 that educated man could build his house and live hap 
 pily in nature without impawning his hours or sacri 
 ficing life to the means of living. The laud was given 
 him, I believe, by Emerson ; the house cost him twenty- 
 eight dollars twelve and a half cents ; and he lived 
 there, from July 4 to March 1, at a total expense of 
 sixty-two dollars, less one mill. But I cannot help 
 suspecting that a perilous Erl-King s daughter lurked 
 in the beauty of Walden Water, and drew away the 
 life of Thoreau. He was not so strong as his frame 
 suggested his right to be, and died of consumption at 
 forty-five. 
 
 But they who read the book that came from that 
 Walden hermitage will know that by a true estimate 
 
284 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 Thoreau lived very long. This spiritual Pan natu 
 rally had a flute, and he drew wild creatures to him 
 with its music. A mouse became familiar, played bo- 
 peep, and ate from his hand. There was a pet mole 
 in his cellar. Of a sparrow that came to sit on his 
 shoulder he was prouder than any warrior of his epau 
 lette. A phoebe built in his shed, the robin in a pine 
 that waved over his house, and a partridge with her 
 brood fed beneath his window. A fox that had been 
 attracted by the light retreated barking " a vulpine 
 curse," but the owl said, "How der do ? " He observes 
 them all with the eye and ear of a scientific Pilpay. 
 He has a Darwinian dream of his own, though there is 
 more of transmigration than evolution in it. " If we 
 take the ages into our account, may there not be a 
 civilisation going on among brutes as well as men? 
 They seem to me to be rudimeutal, burrowing men, 
 still standing on their defence, awaiting their trans 
 formation." 
 
 Over the door of Thoreau s cabin was written for 
 those who could read it : " Entertainment for man, but 
 not for beast." The beasts were welcome too, if they 
 did not come in human disguise. Hither in the snows 
 came the fools of ideas, the victims of crotchets, the 
 running slave, whom he sheltered on his road to the 
 North Star, and also the poets and philosophers. 
 In Walden they are all botanised and zoologised upon 
 as precisely as their poor relations who came on fins, 
 wings, or all-fours ; from the man of one idea to the 
 intellectual centipede ; from the minister who spoke of 
 God as if he " enjoyed a monopoly of the subject," to 
 the philosopher with whom he made a new theory of 
 life over a, convivial dish of gruel. 
 
THOREAU. 
 
 On my first walk with Thoreau we started westward, 
 for he liked to order his morning walk after the move 
 ment of the race. The sun is the first western pioneer ; 
 lie sets his Hesperian fruits on the horizon to lure the 
 human race ; therefore we will go by Goosepond to 
 Baker s Farm. Of every acre, he contended, the west 
 ern side was wildest, therefore fittest to explore. Ex 
 oriente lux, ex Occidents frux. This new acquaintance 
 filled up my idea of Julius Caesar, such was the cour 
 age and repose in his countenance. His nose was 
 Roman-aquiline, strong and bold, like the prow of a 
 ship, above which watched his wonderful eye, that 
 seemed to reach a far horizon. His powers of conver 
 sation were great. At every step I was surprised and 
 delighted by his recognition of laws and significant 
 attributes in common things, as a relation between 
 grasses and geologic characters beneath them ; the 
 grouping of various pine-needles, and the effect of 
 their differences on the sounds they yield when struck 
 by the wind; and the "shades" of taste, so to say, 
 represented by different herbs. I cannot remember 
 the name of some little herb he gave me to taste ; it 
 was acrid and biting, but tastes very sweet in memory 
 along with his talk about the resolute individuality of 
 some of these lowly organisations. 
 
 Thoreau had a calendar of the plants and flowers of 
 the neighbourhood, and would sometimes go a long 
 way around to visit some floral friend whom he had not 
 seen for a year. On one occasion when I was living at 
 Ponkawtassett Hill, he mentioned the hibiscus beside 
 the river, a rare flower in New England, and 
 when I desired to see it, told me it would be open 
 
286 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 " about Monday, and not stay long." I went on Tues 
 day afternoon and was a day too late the petals lay 
 on the ground. 
 
 Though shy of general society, Thoreau was a hero 
 among children and the captain of their excursions. 
 He was captain of the Concord huckleberry party, 
 which was an institution. To have Thoreau along 
 with us was to be sure of finding acres of bushes laden 
 with the delicious fruit. On these occasions his talk 
 with the children was as a part of the spirit and cir 
 cumstance which go to make up what is called in 
 American phrase "a good time." A child stumbles 
 and falls, losing his carefully gathered store of berries ; 
 Thoreau kneels beside the weeping unfortunate, and 
 explains to him and the pitying group that nature has 
 made these little provisions for next year s crop. If 
 there were no obstacles, and little boys did not fall oc 
 casionally, how would berries be scattered and planted? 
 and what would become of huckleberryings ? He will 
 then arrange that he who has thus suffered for the 
 general good shall have the first chance at the next 
 pasture. 
 
 Sometimes I have gome with Thoreau and his young 
 comrades for an expedition on the river. Upon such 
 excursions his resources for our entertainment were 
 inexhaustible. He would tell stories of the Indians 
 who once dwelt thereabout, until the children almost 
 looked to see a red man skulking with his arrow on 
 shore ; and every plant or flower on the bank or in the 
 water, and every fish, turtle, frog, lizard about us was 
 transformed by the wand of his knowledge from the 
 low form into which the spell of our ignorance had 
 
THOREAU. 287 
 
 reduced its princely beauty. One of his surprises was 
 to thrust his hand softly into the water, and raise up 
 before our astonished eyes a bright fish which lay in 
 his hand as if they were old acquaintances ! If the 
 fish had also dropped a penny from its mouth, it could 
 not have been a more miraculous proceeding to us. 
 The entire crew bared their arms and tried to get hold 
 of a fish, but only our captain succeeded. We could 
 not get his secret from him then, for it was to surprise 
 and delight many another merry boat-full ; but later I 
 have read in his account of the bream or ruff (Pomotis 
 vulgaris) of that river, that it is a simple and inoffen 
 sive fish, whose nests are visible all along the shore, 
 hollowed in the sand, over which it is steadily poised 
 through the summer hours on waving fin. " The 
 breams are so careful of their charge, that you may 
 stand close by in the water and examine them at your 
 leisure. I have thus stood over them half an hour at a 
 time, and stroked them familiarly without frightening 
 them : suffering them to nibble my fingers harmlessly ; 
 and seen them erect their dorsal fins in anger when 
 my hand approached their ova ; and have even taken 
 them gently out of the water with my hand." 
 
 Thoreau had taken deeply to heart the one thing 
 needful for a soul born within sound of " Concor- 
 dia," that the time and place were cosmical. Mar 
 garet Fuller was inclined to rebuke this before she 
 had learned by sad experience how much truth lay 
 in his humourous motto, Ne quid qucesiveris extra te 
 Concordiamque. Emerson relates that he returned 
 " Kane s Arctic Voyage " to a friend with the remark, 
 that " most of the phenomena noted might be observed 
 
288 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 in Concord ! " He seemed a little envious of the 
 Pole for the coincident sunrise and sunset, or five 
 minutes day after six months, a splendid fact which 
 Annursune had never afforded him. He found red 
 snow in one of his walks near Concord, and was 
 hoping one day to find the Victoria Regia. He re 
 ported to Emerson somewhat triumphantly that the 
 foreign savants had failed to discriminate a particu 
 lar botanical variety. " That is to say," replied Em 
 erson, "the blockheads were not born in Concord; 
 but who said they were? It was their unspeakable 
 misfortune to be born in London, or Paris, or Rome ; 
 but, poor fellows ! they did what they could, consid 
 ering that they never saw Bateman s Pond, or Nine- 
 Acre Corner, or Becky Stow s Swamp. Besides, what 
 were you sent into the world for but to add this obser 
 vation?" He would not read the newspapers, which 
 demanded his attention most impertinently for Europe 
 or Washington instead of Walden Pond. One of his 
 beatitudes ran Blessed are the young, for they do 
 not read the President s Message." Of friends who 
 read to him of the Crimean war he asks, " Pray, to be 
 serious, where is Sevastopol? Who is Menchikoff?" 
 and goes on to meditate on the white oak in his 
 stove. 
 
 Thoreau was so resolute in his anti-slavery princi 
 ples that he refused to pay taxes which might be used 
 for the enormities of a Pro-slavery Government, and 
 for this went to prison, of which he wrote an account 
 that makes it all look now like a little comedy got up 
 between him and the authorities. I remember on an 
 occasion he addressed an anti-slavery meeting and 
 
THOREAU. 289 
 
 said, " You have my sympathy ; it is all I have to give 
 you, but you will find it important to you." This 
 transcendental remark impressed some who heard it as 
 egotistical, but they discovered ere long that to have 
 with them such impartial and solitary thinkers and 
 scholars as Thoreau meant a force which partisans 
 could not resist. He remembered with satisfaction 
 that he rang the town- bell in 1844, when Emerson de 
 livered his great anti-slavery address ; now audible as 
 u Concordia " sounding a first note in the chimes of 
 liberty. 
 
 Thoreau was a profoundly religious man, and I fear 
 it must be confessed that it was due to this that, in the 
 absence of resources to win popularity, he could never 
 gain an audience in the country, and readily adapted 
 himself to obscurity. Of course, if he had been super 
 ficially religious it would have been another thing ; but 
 he was convinced that the only way to understand 
 Christ was to get rid of Christianity, and that theology 
 was the only blasphemy. His articles were repeatedly 
 refused by papers and magazines because he would in 
 terpolate sentences of this kind in them. Emerson 
 told me one day that an editor had begged him to per 
 suade Thoreau to write him an article containing no 
 allusion to " God." How can I better shew the relig 
 iousness of this noble nature or close this little sketch 
 than by reporting his answer to one who approached 
 him on his death-bed to speak of a future life? Tho 
 reau simply said u One world at a time." 
 
290 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 XXYI. 
 
 "THE COMING MAN." 
 
 THIS phrase became the cant of tabernacle-builders 
 in the transcendental movement, and passed 
 away with their tabernacles why they never knew, 
 for their eyes were heavy under the splendour of the 
 transfiguration before them ; but, in reality, the man 
 had come, only with heart matched with the need of a 
 world, by no means with the need of any socialist or 
 other sect striving to grow amid ruins imported from 
 the past, or imitations of them. 
 
 At Paris, on the opening of the International Expo 
 sition of 1867, I found many Americans ashamed of 
 the poor display made by their country. The depart 
 ment seemed a wilderness, broken only by a few un 
 opened boxes that promised little. But I could not 
 share their chagrin. Indeed, I was rather glad to have 
 my countrymen taught, even at cost of some humilia 
 tion, that Protectionists cannot change the order of the 
 world nor make America excel in works that can be 
 done better and more cheaply elsewhere. Not for fine 
 cloths and cutlery would I see duplicates of Sheffield, 
 of Manchester, and the Black Country in America. 
 Let the banner of stars float over empty spaces in exhi 
 bitions until it can wave over original products instead 
 
291 
 
 of facsimiles, which only divert hands that might be 
 developing new resources. Let Europe make our 
 knives and boots, and welcome. Yet America was 
 not unrepresented at Paris. At the end of the sec 
 tion were Bierstadt s picture of the Rocky Mountains, 
 Church s Niagara, and close to these a fine portrait of 
 Emerson, and I felt that this group of physical gran 
 deurs, and the best head to match them, constituted 
 the fair symbol and true exposition of that splendid 
 possibility which America is. 
 
 I do not know exactly when Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 wrote his tale "The Great Stone Face," but it was 
 amid much talk about the Coming Man, and probably 
 when he recognised the Man Come, who visited Blithe- 
 dale when he was there. The suggestion, no doubt, 
 came from the Profile Mountain of New Hampshire. I 
 remember a vacation ramble with fellow-students when 
 this wonderful profile came in view. One cried, " It 
 is the face of Carlyle ! " That face was familiar to us 
 all by portraits, and the resemblance was unmistak 
 able. The jutting brow, the strong underface, the deli 
 cate mouth, are all there ; and, above all, the pathetic 
 look, as of a world pain, was in this great stone face, 
 gazing out above the lower earth to a far horizon, as 
 if waiting for a star not yet risen to relieve its weary 
 watch of ages. 
 
 This " Old Man of the Mountains," as the peasants 
 call it, requires a long perspective. They who have 
 travelled towards it have found it vanishing at their 
 approach, and have reached at last a few acres of rug 
 ged and blanched desolation. Carlyle, too, as we 
 have seen, cannot be approached too closely ; even 
 
292 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 now we are beholding the blanched and jagged points 
 into which he has been resolved. A farther perspective 
 will again restore the majestic face, but it will always 
 be that of a genius fettered in the Puritan creed, from 
 whose stony side he could only gaze above and beyond 
 the laughing plains of human life to Titans bound on 
 summits like his own. Emerson, beginning a new race 
 of Titans, had recognised this lonely face in the High 
 lands of Scotland, and had sailed the sea like Herakles 
 when he went to unbind Prometheus. There was good 
 reason why he should first recognise the pain in that 
 face, for it was akin to the intellectual despair in Amer 
 ica also. 
 
 In Hawthorne s tale the country boy gazes upon the 
 Great Stone Face, seeing in it the unfading light of a 
 prophecy that " The Coming Man," of which so much 
 was said, is to resemble it ; he loves and almost wor 
 ships the Face, and whenever any famous personage 
 comes into his region he hastens to gaze upon him, 
 hoping to discover a likeness to the Face. He has to 
 turn away sorrowful from the applauded general or 
 president, until at last he is astounded to find himself 
 hailed, despite his protest, as antitype of the Great 
 Stone Face the Coming Man ! 
 
 Hawthorne s tale told truer than even his subtle 
 power of divination could have imagined when he wrote 
 it. On the great stone face of Puritanism Emerson had 
 gazed till he saw the pain and pathos in it, and the 
 prophecy in its look towards the far horizon ; its moun 
 tain risen from volcanic depths now cold, its summit 
 clouded with scepticism, commanded yet this one 
 vision of a new faith, real as that which drew scholars 
 
"THE COMING MAN." 293 
 
 and tender women from their English universities and 
 homes to the savage shores of New England ; and Em 
 erson, who had sought the new word near and far, 
 from the lecture-room of Everett and church of Chan- 
 ning to the hermitage of Wordsworth and Carlyle, was 
 surprised in his own solitude by the youth of America 
 hailing him as their prophet. 
 
 The political and social independence which Puritan 
 ism sailed across the sea to maintain, then surrendered 
 to the Presbyter or " Priest writ large ;" the intellect 
 ual liberty which Unitarianism affirmed, then denied to 
 those who passed by its own transubstantiatious of the 
 dogmas ; these were made real by Emerson. Under 
 his spirit, as if under a tropical breath, arose strange 
 spiritual fauna and flora ; he did not tolerate but re 
 joiced in them. With the divine impartiality of the 
 earth he nourished every variety of thought and aim 
 from his great heart. 
 
 In "The White Lotus" Buddha teaches: "The 
 rays of intelligence make the order of venerable 
 teachers. They are all and equally born to unite 
 science and virtue. The Great Repose results from the 
 comprehension of the equality of all laws ; there is 
 only one, not two or three. I explain the law to all 
 creatures, after having recognised their inclinations. 
 It is as a cloud with a garland of lightning spreads joy 
 on the earth ; the water falls on all creatures, herbs, 
 bushes, trees, and each pumps up to its own leaf and 
 blossom what it requires for its several end. So falls 
 the rain of the law upon the many-hearted world. The 
 law is for millions ; but it is one and alike beautiful to 
 all it is deliverance and repose." 
 
294 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 Let my reader compare with this strain of the East 
 ern this of the Western seer, from the " Dial : " 
 
 " No one can converse much with different classes 
 of society in New England without remarking the 
 progress of a revolution. Those who share in it have 
 no external organisation, no badge, no creed, no name. 
 They do not vote, or print, or even meet together. 
 They do not know each other s faces or names. . . . 
 This spirit of the time is felt by every individual, with 
 some difference to each one casting its light upon the 
 objects nearest to his temper and habits of thought 
 to one coming in the shape of special reforms in the 
 state ; to another, in modification of the various call 
 ings of men and the customs of business ; to a third, 
 opening a new scope for literature and art ; to a fourth, 
 in philosophical insight ; to a fifth, in the vast solitudes 
 of prayer. It is in every form a protest against usage 
 and a search for principles. . . . It has a step of Fate, 
 and goes on existing like an oak or a river, because it 
 must," 
 
 For this beautiful work Emerson was in every way 
 furnished with ability. On this point, however, I 
 shall here quote Margaret Fuller s account of his lec 
 turing. 
 
 " The audience that waited for years upon the lec 
 tures was never large, but it was select and it was con 
 stant. Among the hearers were some who, though, 
 attracted by the beauty of character and manner, they 
 were willing to hear the speaker through, yet always 
 went away discontented. They were accustomed to 
 an artificial method, whose scaffolding could easily Jbe 
 retraced, and desired an obvious sequence of logical 
 
" THE COMING MAN." 295 
 
 influences. They insisted there was nothing in that 
 which they heard, because they could not give a clear 
 account of its course and purport. They did not see 
 that Pindar s odes might be very well arranged for their 
 own purpose, and yet not bear translating into the 
 methods of Mr. Locke. Others were content to be 
 benefited by a good influence without a strict analysis 
 of its means. My wife says it is about the elevation 
 of human nature, and so it seems to me/ was a fit 
 reply to some of the critics. Many were satisfied to 
 find themselves excited to congenial thought and nobler 
 life without an exact catalogue of the thoughts of the 
 speaker. Those who believed no truth could exist 
 unless encased by the burrs of opinion, went away 
 utterly baffled. Sometimes they thought he was on 
 their side ; then presently would come something on 
 the other. He really seemed to believe there were two 
 sides to every subject, and even to intimate higher 
 ground, from which each might be seen to have an in 
 finite number of sides or bearings an impertinence 
 not to be endured ! The partisan heard but once and 
 returned no more. But some there were simple 
 souls whose life had been, perhaps, without clear 
 light, yet still a search after truth for its own sake, 
 who were able to receive what followed on the sugges 
 tion of a subject in a natural manner as a stream of 
 thought. These recognised beneath the veil of words 
 the still small voice of conscience, the vestal fires of 
 lone religious hours, and the mild teachings of the 
 summer woods. 
 
 "The charm of the elocution,. too, was great. His 
 general manner was that of the reader, occasionally 
 
29 () EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 rising into direct address or invocation in passages 
 where tenderness or majesty demanded more energy. 
 At such times both eye and voice called on a remote 
 future to give a worthy reply a future which shall 
 manifest more largely the universal soul as it was then 
 manifest to this soul. The tone of the voice was a 
 grave body-tone, full and sweet rather than sonorous, 
 yet flexible and haunted by many modulations, as even 
 instruments of wood and brass seem to become after 
 they have been long pla}~ed on with skill and taste ; 
 how much more so the human voice ! In the most 
 expressive passages it uttered notes of silvery clear 
 ness, winning, yet still more commanding. The words 
 uttered in those tones floated a while above us, then 
 took root in the memory like winged seed. 
 
 u In the union of an even rustic plainness with lyric 
 inspiration, religious dignity with philosophic calmness, 
 keen sagacity in details with boldness of view, we saw 
 what brought to mind the early poets and legislators of 
 Greece men who taught their fellows to plough and 
 avoid moral evil, sing hymns to the gods and watch the 
 metamorphosis of nature. Here in civic Boston was 
 such a man one who could see man in his original 
 grandeur and his original childishness, rooted in simple 
 nature, raising to the heavens the brow and eye of a 
 poet." 
 
 When Emerson s fame among his few first friends, 
 extended only by the noisy resentment of theologians, 
 had drawn "respectable" Boston to hear his early lec 
 tures, he had sometimes to speak to audiences that had 
 not yet ears to hear him. The poet Longfellow, who 
 attended a course given in Boston on Human Culture, 
 
"THE COMING MAN." 297 
 
 said to me that it was better than a play to observe the 
 mass of the audience. Things, he said, had so long 
 gone on in their old mill-round in Boston, that the 
 report of something new, and of a preacher who 
 wouldn t administer the sacraments, drew as many as 
 would have come to see a live mermaid combing her 
 hair with a shell. When he began, an awful silence 
 prevailed ; every eye was lit up with expectation, every 
 head inclined forward. This was at eight o clock ; at 
 ten minutes past, a kind of despair began to appear on 
 each face, though still inclined forward, and a ray of 
 hope that something would yet be understood still vis 
 ible in the eye ; twenty minutes past, the heads fallen 
 a little back ; half-past, bodies returned to comfortable 
 postures, but eyes lowered with a sense of their little 
 ness ; forty minutes past, it was as if some one had 
 gone round and turned off the light of every coun 
 tenance ; the last ten minutes was a time of general 
 and profound repose, amid which three or four faces 
 could be seen kindled to ecstasy. 
 
 But the three or four kindled ones that Longfellow 
 saw in the heavy-eyed crowd steadily and swiftly mul 
 tiplied. And they who came to his foiitless baptism 
 were never made Emersonians. The new literary age 
 which dates from Emerson has produced works which 
 could not have appeared if he had not lived ; and no 
 doubt in some of them thoughts or even phrases of his 
 may be found ; but these are exceptional enough to 
 prove the rule to be the reverse. It would be difficult 
 to cite from any generation authors so various in aim 
 and style as those whose minds have been personally 
 and strongly influenced by Emerson. 
 
298 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 I recall the vigorous way in which Emerson, warning 
 parents against what he quaintly called disobedience 
 to children, said in a lecture, "Get off that child! 
 You are trying to make that man another you. One is 
 enough." The patriarch of Concord never made that 
 blunder in the world he created. 
 
 This principle lay so deep in Emerson, and so per 
 vaded his influence, that his voice was ultimately heard 
 calming the angry elements even of theology. He was 
 once denning eloquence, and said that it was a power 
 which could soothe and calm a company on a ship 
 foundered in mid-Atlantic. Looking back upon his 
 work, the thinkers and scholars of America would 
 surely consent to this as a true illustration of what the 
 voice of Emerson has done among those who were 
 panic-stricken at the wreck of another kind of ship. 
 Theological polemics are hopelessly vulgarised, and 
 whatever shall follow the foundered faith, it will surely 
 be catholic. 
 
THE PYTHON. 299 
 
 XXVIT. 
 
 THE PYTHON. 
 
 I ^ MERSON was the first American scholar to cast 
 1 A a dart at slavery. On Sunday, May 29, 1831, 
 he admitted an abolitionist to lecture on the subject 
 in his church, and in the following year another 
 was invited to his pulpit. The dates are important. 
 This was six years before even Channing had commit 
 ted himself to that side. Garrison was at that time 
 regarded as a vulgar street-preacher of notions too 
 wild to excite more than a smile. The despised group 
 of Boston Common was first sheltered by Emerson, 
 and this action was the more significant because he was 
 chaplain of the Massachusetts Legislature, which 
 could hardly have contained one anti-slavery member. 
 Emerson first drew the sympathy of scholars to that 
 side. The voices of the two popular orators, Channing 
 and Phillips, soon followed, and Longfellow began to 
 write the anti-slavery poems collected in 1842. 
 
 When, in 1835, Harriet Martineau was nearly 
 mobbed in Boston, and nq prominent citizen ventured 
 to her side, Emerson and his brother Charles hastened 
 to her defence. " At the time of the hubbub against 
 me in Boston," she wrote, "Charles Emerson stood 
 alone in a large company in defence of the right of 
 
300 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 free thought and speech, and declared that he had 
 rather see Boston in ashes than that I or anybody else 
 should be debarred in any way from perfectly free 
 speech. His brother Waldo invited me to be his guest 
 in the midst of my unpopularity." 
 
 On November 7, 1837, the Rev. E. P. Lovejoy, an 
 abolitionist, was shot by a mob at Alton, Illinois, 
 while attempting to defend his printing-press from de 
 struction. Some citizens of Boston, headed by Dr. 
 Channing, petitioned the mayor of that city for per 
 mission to hold a meeting in Faneuil Hall, "the 
 Cradle of Liberty," and it was refused. The Attorney- 
 General of Massachusetts said that Lovejoy had " died 
 as the fool clieth," and such was the general opinion of 
 "respectability." In a lecture on Heroism, Emerson 
 said, " Whoso is heroic will always find crises to try 
 his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and 
 martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds. 
 It is .but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave his 
 breast to the bullets of a mob for the right of free 
 speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to 
 live." George Bradford says that some of Emerson s 
 friends "felt the sort of cold shudder which ran 
 through the audience at this calm braving of the cur 
 rent opinion." The audience had been " carried on 
 and lifted up " by the speaker s celebrations of hero 
 ism in other lands and ancient times, but when he rec 
 ognised a hero in the lynched abolitionist, they " were 
 wholly unprepared for this unexpected turn and 
 shock ; " and Emerson s friends were in terror. 
 
 Emerson could not throw himself into any organisa 
 tion, uor did he encourage the scholars around him 
 
THE PYTHON. 301 
 
 to do so ; he believed that to elevate character, to 
 raise the ethical standard, to inspire courage in the in 
 tellect of the nation, would speedily make its atmos 
 phere too pure for a slave to breathe. He even re 
 sented the peremptory demand of the abolitionists that 
 every kind of work should be postponed to their cause. 
 Fearless in vindicating those whose convictions led 
 them to enlist for this particular struggle, Emerson 
 saw in slavery one among many symptoms of the 
 moral disease of the time. " The timidity of our pub 
 lic opinion is our disease, or, shall I say, the absence 
 of private opinion. Good nature is plentiful, but we 
 want justice with heart of steel to fight down the proud. 
 The private mind has the access to the totality of good 
 ness and truth, that it may be a balance to a corrupt 
 society, and to stand for the private verdict against 
 popular clamour is the office of the noble. If a hu 
 mane measure is propounded in behalf of the slave, or 
 of the Irishman, or of the Catholic, or for the succour 
 of the poor, that sentiment, that project, will have the 
 homage of the hero. That is his nobility, his oath of 
 knighthood, to succour the helpless and oppressed ; 
 always to throw himself on the side of weakness, of 
 youth, of hope, on the liberal, on the expansive side, 
 never on the conserving, the timorous, the lock-and- 
 bolt system. More than our good-will we may not be 
 able to give. We have our own affairs, our own 
 genius, which chains us to our proper work. We can 
 not give our life to the cause of the debtor, of the 
 slave, or the pauper, as another is doing ; but to one 
 thing we are bound, not to blaspheme the sentiment 
 and the work of that inau, nor to throw stumbling- 
 
302 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 blocks in the way of the abolitionist, the philanthro 
 pist, as the organs of influence and opinion are swift 
 to do." 
 
 Emerson had as much practical sagacity as genius ; 
 when he spoke the words just quoted (in a lecture in 
 Boston, February 7, 1844) he had reached a command 
 ing position, carrying with it gravest responsibilities ; 
 the destinies of best young men and women were de 
 termined by his word. But in this early anti-slavery 
 movement he did more than he exacted from others, 
 and recognised it as a far more important reform than 
 others. In 1844, when coloured citizens of Massa 
 chusetts had been taken to prison from ships in South 
 ern ports, Emerson delivered an oration in Concord on 
 the anniversary of West Indian emancipation, and 
 spoke sternly on the matter. "If such a damnable 
 outrage can be committed on the person of a citizen 
 with impunity, let the Governor break the broad seal of 
 the State ; he bears the sword in vain. The Governor 
 of Massachusetts is a trifler ; the State-house in Boston 
 is a playhouse ; the General Court is a dishonoured 
 body, if they make laws which they cannot execute. 
 The great-hearted Puritans have left no posterity." 
 He demanded that the representatives of the State 
 should demand of Congress the instant release, by 
 force if necessary, of the imprisoned negro seamen, 
 and their indemnification. " As for dangers to the 
 Union from such demands, the Union is already at an 
 end when the first citizen of Massachusetts is thus 
 outraged." 
 
 This address, in which the heroic story of West In 
 dian emancipation was told in simplest words and 
 
THE PYTHON. 303 
 
 with thrilling effect, and the lesson plainly applied to 
 America, became of historic importance. Thoreau 
 always remembered with pleasure that he rang the bell 
 which summoned the people to the town-hall that day, 
 where the representatives of thirteen towns assembled. 
 In a contemporary paragraph in the " Herald of Free 
 dom" its effect upon the abolitionists is indicated. 
 " Imagine a face expressive alike of great intellectual 
 power and sweetness of nature ; eyes which at times 
 seem to look into another world with far-seeing and 
 prophetic ken ; a mouth of chiselled beauty which 
 never speaks but to utter the most melodious, the 
 most exquisite intonations of which the English lan 
 guage is capable. Behold the speaker before you. 
 He appears for the first time on the anti-slavery plat 
 form. You expect that he will look at his subject 
 from an intellectual point of view merely ; that he 
 will give an impartial judgment on the merits and the 
 faults of abolitionism, and stand on a clear eminence 
 above the dust and turmoil of the movement. But 
 not so. Behold he has descended among us. He 
 grasps our hands with warm and earnest pressure, and 
 says, Brothers, I have come to enter with you into 
 this holy war. My arm and my heart are yours, and 
 here do I pledge myself henceforth to do battle in 
 your cause till you have gained the victory. I wish I 
 could picture to you the audience as it listened in rapt 
 and breathless attention to the speaker as he detailed 
 the progress of British emancipation from its com 
 mencement to its close, and then contrasted the noble 
 course of British statesmen with that of their descend 
 ants in our own country, and branded the latter with 
 
304 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 its deserved meed of reproach and contempt. As he 
 pictured the infinite wrongs of the coloured man and 
 his godlike patience, our hearts swayed to and fro at 
 his bidding, and tears found their way down the 
 cheeks of sturdy men as well as of tender-hearted 
 maidens. When the last word was spoken its music 
 still lingered in our ears, and silence alone seemed a 
 fitting expression of our deep and absorbing delight. 
 The faint clapping of hands, which a few attempted, 
 died away immediately as inappropriate to the occa 
 sion." 
 
 Probably it was this brave note coming from the 
 first battlefield of American independence which led 
 the Governor of Massachusetts to select the Hon. 
 Samuel Hoar, Emerson s friend and neighbour, to re 
 pair to South Carolina in order to institute proceed 
 ings for the release of the coloured seamen, on which 
 the Legislature had resolved. Mr. Hoar and his 
 daughter, who had been betrothed to Charles Emer 
 son, proceeded to Charleston, South Carolina, from 
 which place they were driven after repeated threats of 
 violence. This incident produced much effect on 
 Emerson s mind, but it could not swerve him from his 
 method. " Let us withhold every reproachful, and, if 
 we can, every indignant remark. In this cause we 
 must renounce our temper and the risings of pride. 
 If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of 
 men a small matter compared with the last decorations 
 and completions of his own comfort, who would not 
 so much as part with his ice-cream to save them from 
 rapine and manacles, I think I must not hesitate to 
 satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are 
 
THE PYTHOX. 305 
 
 safer and cheaper oy placing the negro nation on a fail- 
 footing than by robbing them. If the Virginian piques 
 himself on the picturesque luxury of his vassalage, on 
 the heavy Ethiopian manners of his house-servants, 
 their silent obedience, their hue of bronze, their tur- 
 baned heads, and would not exchange them for the 
 more intelligent but precarious hired services of 
 whites, I shall not refuse to shew him that when 
 their free papers are made out it will still be their in 
 terest to remain on his estates, and that the oldest 
 planters of Jamaica are convinced that it is cheaper to 
 pay wages than to own slaves." 
 
 The nearest thing to hero-worship that had ever 
 been awakened in Emerson s breast probably was his 
 early admiration for Daniel Webster. No one who in 
 his youth has seen and heard that senator can wonder 
 at the enthusiasm and hope with which Emerson once 
 looked up to him as the man of the u Great Stone 
 Face. * "He looks like a sort of cathedral," said 
 Carlyle when he saw Webster, forty-four years ago, 
 and Emerson was happy at such admiration of his 
 senator. Besides this, his brother Edward had studied 
 law with W r ebster and received much kindness from 
 him. It was a heavy blow to Emerson when Webster 
 surrendered to slavery, and gave his aid to pass the 
 Fugitive Slave Bill. The youth of Massachusetts, who 
 worshipped the eloquent senator, were much demoral 
 ised by his course and speech ; and Emerson, albeit 
 with a heavy heart, for the first time took part in a 
 political campaign. The Hon. J. G. Palfrey, whose 
 opposition to the encroachments of slavery had cost 
 Mm his seat in Congress, was nominated as Gover- 
 
306 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 nor of Massachusetts, and Emerson made speeches 
 in favour of his election. One of especial importance 
 was given at Cambridge. The hall was crowded, 
 chiefly by students, and Emerson, in the course of his 
 speech, pictured the car of Slavery and its abomina 
 tions, with Webster as leading horse straining to drag 
 it. A storm of hisses, perhaps the first Emerson ever 
 heard, broke through the middle of his first severe sen 
 tence. Emerson paused, but stood with face unmoved, 
 as if it were an outside wind, then serenely continued 
 with the very next word of the sentence as if there had 
 been no uproar. With the tone of a judge pronouncing 
 sentence he said of Webster, " Every drop of his blood 
 has eyes that look downward. He knows the heroes 
 of 1776, but cannot see those of 1851 when he meets 
 them on the street." 
 
 Daniel Webster felt the rebuke of Emerson, at whose 
 house he had been entertained, and in a letter printed 
 in Sanborn s " Thoreau," gave as a reason for not 
 visiting Concord that " many of those whom I so highly 
 esteemed in your beautiful and quiet village have be 
 come a good deal estranged, to my great grief, by 
 abolitionism, freesoilism, transcendentalism, and other 
 notions which I cannot but regard as so many vagaries 
 of the imagination/ When Webster died, broken 
 hearted at having failed in the great object, the Presi 
 dency, for which he had sacrificed so much, his best 
 epitaph was the words of Emerson, "He had honour 
 enough to feel degraded." 
 
 On the 7th of March, 1854, exactly four years after 
 Webster s speech in defence of slave-hunting, when the 
 country was agitated by a fresh aggression of slavery 
 
THE FYTIIOX. 307 
 
 (the Nebraska Bill) , Emerson delivered a remarkable 
 address in New York. It was, he said, the stern edict 
 of progress that liberty shall be no hasty fruito It is 
 the result of the perfectness of man. Mountains of 
 difficulty must be surmounted, wiles of seduction must 
 be met, dangers encountered. Man must be healed by 
 a quarantine of calamities before he dare say " I am 
 free ! The patience required is almost too sublime 
 for mortals when one sees how fast the rot spreads. 
 We demand of superior men that they shall be superior 
 in this, that the mind and virtue of the country shall 
 give their verdict in their day, and help to pull down 
 the wrong. Possession is sure to throw its stupid 
 strength for the existing power ; appetite and ambition 
 will go for that. Let the aid of virtue and intelligence 
 be cast where they belong ; they are organically ours. 
 The English Earl Grey said on a memorable occasion, 
 that " he should stand by his order." The instructed 
 or illuminated class should know their own flag and not 
 stand for the kingdom of darkness. We should not 
 forgive the clergy of a country for taking on every 
 issue the immoral side ; nor should we justify a gover 
 nor as the Governor of Pennsylvania did in sus 
 taining a mob against the laws. The lovers of liberty 
 may tax with coldness the scholars and literary class. 
 They were all lovers of liberty in Greece, but the uni 
 versities are now seats of conservatism. They grow 
 worldly and political. He remembered an occasion 
 when the university had a distinguished son returning 
 from the political arena to address her. He listened 
 to the speech of this orator, this eminent political man. 
 If sometimes audiences forget themselves, statesmen 
 
308 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 do not. The low bows to all the crockery gods of the 
 day were duly made only that in one part of the 
 discourse the orator allowed to transpire, against his 
 will perhaps, a little sober sense. He would not say 
 he said it, but this w r as what he (Emerson) heard in his 
 ear: 4 I am, you see, a man virtuously inclined, but 
 only corrupt by my profession of politics. I prefer to 
 be upon the right side. You had the power to make 
 your verdict clear and prevailing in favour of right, 
 and had you done so, you would have found me your 
 willing champion. But vou have not done so you 
 have not armed me. I have to deal with men and 
 things as they are. Abstractions are not for me. I 
 go for such parties as they provide me with. Although 
 I am now to tempt you, you see it is not my will, but 
 my necessities which make me do so." Having made 
 this declaration, he proceeded with his work of de 
 nouncing freedom, but with a lingering conscience 
 which qualified each sentence with a recommendation to 
 mercy. " But now, gentlemen," continued Emerson, 
 " I put it to every noble and generous spirit in the 
 land to every poetic, to every heroic, to every reli 
 gious heart that not so are our learning, our educa 
 tion, our poetry, our worship to be declared ; not by 
 heads reverted to the dying Demosthenes, nor to Wal 
 lace, nor to George Fox, nor to George Washington, 
 but to the dangers and dragons that beset the United 
 States at this hour. Gentlemen, it is not possible to 
 extricate one s self from the questions in which our age 
 is involved. I hate that we should be content with 
 standing on the defensive. Liberty is the crusade of 
 
THE PYTHOX. 309 
 
 all brave and conscientious men the epic poetry, the 
 new religion, the chivalry of all gentlemen." 
 
 About this time I was often with Emerson, as were 
 other students, and the service we could render in the 
 growing perils of freedom and of the country was often 
 the subject of anxious consultation. Emerson was 
 careful to remind us that slavery, like other wrongs, 
 had invisible roots, and that no reform, however much 
 so in appearance, was really radical, which did not cul 
 tivate the spiritual soil so that it would not bear rank 
 and poisonous growths. "There is no man of any 
 importance in our history, and none of our time, who 
 has not spoken or recorded his word against slavery. 
 Generally speaking, a sound man says, I have my own 
 affair, and cannot do your affair well, but my opinion 
 shall be given plainly. But when the ship is in a 
 storm the passengers must lend a hand, and even 
 women tug at the ropes." 
 
 In every emergency during the anti-slavery agita 
 tion, and at each critical event in the national history, 
 Emerson invariably spoke the right and serviceable 
 word, as well as the profoundest word ; he gave leaders 
 their texts and the rank and file their watchwords. 
 These were by no means denunciations of the South, 
 to which he was always magnanimous. During the 
 war he said in a public address that the South had 
 never before appeared to such advantage. But he was 
 a patriot, and was not so lenient to the Northern men 
 who abetted slavery. On one occasion a prominent 
 person, with whom he had travelled pleasantly in Eu 
 rope, but who had distinguished himself by friendliness 
 with the assailant of his own senator (Sumner), came 
 
310 EMERSOX AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 to Emerson after a lecture and offered his hand. Em 
 erson s voice was never gentler than as he said, "If 
 what I hear be true, I must shake hands with you 
 under protest." When Sumner was assaulted by a 
 Southerner in the Senate, Emerson said, "I think we 
 must get rid of slavery or get rid of freedom. Life 
 has no parity of value in the free State and in the 
 slave State." To a Boston orator who declared the 
 Declaration of Independence a series of " glittering 
 generalities," he replied, " They are blazing ubiqui 
 ties." When Captain John Brown made his armed 
 attack on slavery in Virginia, and multitudes called 
 him insane, Emerson silenced those "who can only 
 cry Madman ! when a hero passes," and said that if 
 Brown should suffer, he would make his gallows glo 
 rious like a cross." 
 
 Not long after this Emerson visited us at Cincinnati 
 (whose streets looked over into slave territory), and 
 one evening was in a company where several eminent 
 citizens, who enjoyed his lectures, were still troubled 
 by his reported words about Captain Brown s gallows 
 being glorious like a cross. A wealthy Conservative 
 did not believe that the gentle philosopher had so said, 
 and asked him about it. "Of course," he said, "I do 
 not believe it, but would like to be able to answer the 
 rumour on your own authority." Emerson asked that 
 the reported words should be repeated, and then re 
 marked, "That s about what I said." The questioner, 
 much shocked, said, " Surely you do not approve the 
 bloody raid of John Brown upon the families of Vir 
 ginia." Emerson slowly replied, " If I should tell you 
 why I disapproved, you might not like it any better." 
 
THE PYTHON. 311 
 
 On the day and hour of John Brown s execution, the 
 people of Concord gathered in their town-hall and were 
 addressed by their eminent men. A striking incident of 
 the meeting was the reading by Emerson of Allingham s 
 poem, " The Touchstone : " 
 
 u A man there came, whence none could tell, 
 Bearing a touchstone in his hand, 
 And tested all things in the land 
 By its unerring spell." 
 
 With every verse Emerson s tone grew more pro 
 phetic, and his eye shone as if the future were close to 
 it as he repeated the last : 
 
 " But, though they slew him with the sword, 
 And in a fire his touchstone burned, 
 Its doings could not be o erturned, 
 Its undoings restored. 
 
 "And when, to stop all future harm, 
 They strewed its ashes on the breeze, 
 They little guessed each grain of these 
 Conveyed the perfect charm." 
 
 This poem was published by the press throughout 
 the Northern States as one written for the occasion by 
 Emerson himself, and much applauded. None was 
 more anxious than he to have due credit awarded his 
 friend Allingham, and "The Touchstone" is among 
 the seven pieces by that poet included in Emerson s 
 "Parnassus." Not long after that solemn assembly 
 gathered at Concord, where the martyr was personally 
 known and loved, the "John Brown Song" became the 
 battle-hymn of the Union armies. 
 
 Emerson not only at every critical point spoke the 
 
312 EMERSOX AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 best and bravest word, but was as prompt to share any 
 personal obloquy or danger as he had been in earlier 
 years, when he took Harriet Martineau to his house in 
 the face of the mob. When the Southern States began 
 to secede, frightened compromisers in the North hoped 
 to soothe them by silencing the abolitionists ; roughs 
 were employed to fill the anti- slavery halls, hurl mis 
 siles at the speakers, and drown every voice with their 
 yells. When these scenes were occurring in Boston, 
 Emerson repaired thither and took his place on the 
 platform. The Music Hall, on one such occasion, was 
 possessed by a vast throng of screaming roughs, whom 
 the well-known anti-slavery orators vainly tried to 
 address. Even by those near the platform no word 
 could be heard. Garrison was almost in despair, as 
 was Wendell Phillips, who just then caught sight of 
 Emerson looking calmly on the wild scene. He went 
 to him and whispered. Emerson advanced ; the roughs 
 did not know this man, and there was a break in the 
 roar, through which was now heard the voice of Emer 
 son, beginning, "Christopher North you have all 
 heard of Christopher North." There was perfect 
 silence, as if the name had paralysed every man; Not 
 one of them had ever heard of Christopher North, but 
 this assumption of their intelligence by the intellectual 
 stranger disarmed them. Emerson told his story of 
 Christopher North, that he once defended his mod 
 eration in having only kicked some scoundrels out of 
 the door instead of pitching them out of the window, 
 and went on to shew that under the circumstances 
 the abolitionists had exercised moderation. The power 
 of mind over matter was happily displayed in the atten- 
 
THE PYTHON. 313 
 
 tion with which that mad crowd listened to Emerson, 
 who spoke admirably, though without notes or prep 
 aration. 
 
 During the war, in which many of his friends were 
 slain and his only son wounded, no man did better 
 service than Emerson with voice, pen, and means. It 
 was a terrible trial to him, the war keeping him, as 
 he said, from sleep ; and I do not think he ever quite 
 recovered from the effects of it. Once, when I had just 
 arrived in Boston from Washington, where I had con 
 versed w r ith President Lincoln, and found him waiting 
 for Northern opinion to advance to a demand for the 
 extinction of slavery, I found that Emerson was about 
 to give a lecture there on the condition of the country. 
 I asked him to come to my room at the hotel, and when 
 we were alone I said to him, The accident of my being 
 born and brought up in the South enables me to give a 
 practical suggestion. You remember how Thoreau used 
 to catch bream with only his hand out of Concord river. 
 He had found that this fish had the peculiarity of has 
 tening to defend its spawn, and b} T placing his hand 
 under the spawn pulled up the fish. Well, the spawn 
 of the South is its slaves ; we have only to put our 
 hands on it, and these armies now resisting us will 
 hasten back to hold on to its slaves. As long as we 
 do not touch slavery, the negroes till the fields, and it 
 is they who point the soldier at us as the soldier points 
 his gun." Emerson proceeded at once to say this in 
 his lecture, unnecessarily mentioning it as my sug 
 gestion, and added, " I hope that it is not fatal to this 
 method that it is entirely moral and just." He also, I 
 believe, urged the same plan at Washington, where his 
 
314 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 lecture was attended by the President and his cabinet. 
 The President was much esteemed by Emerson, and I 
 once heard him say that, in an earlier age, Lincoln s 
 good stories would have earned him the fame of a 
 Pilpay. 
 
 Allusion has already been made in this volume to 
 Emerson s " Boston Hymn," read by him on the New 
 Teat s Day which brought the President s proclamation 
 of freedom to the slaves. On the eve of that day the 
 negroes of Boston had assembled to keep watch- 
 night," and, as their preacher said, "to watch and see 
 that the President kept his promise." In that humble 
 assembly there was at midnight a symbolical hissing to 
 indicate the last distress of the dying Python. In the 
 morning the people assembled, and Emerson read his 
 " Boston Efymn." How gently, with all calm enforce 
 ment, did his tones march to their climax : 
 
 " Come East and West and North, 
 
 By races, as snowflakes, 
 And carry my purpose forth, 
 Which neither halts nor shakes. 
 
 " My will fulfilled shall be, 
 
 For, in daylight as in dark, 
 My thunderbolt has eyes to see 
 His way home to the mark." 
 
 Thus did the President of the literary, respond to 
 the President of the political Republic, whose Procla 
 mation closed with the words Upon this act, 
 sincerely believed to be an act of justice warranted by 
 the constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the 
 
THE PYTHON. 315 
 
 considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious 
 favour of Almighty God." 
 
 Python appeared to coil and struggle for a time yet, 
 but to the eye of Emerson it lay already dead, and to 
 some other eyes it was his own shining arrow, so softly 
 feathered and sent in the beginning of the generation, 
 which lay nearest its heart. 
 
 When the war had ended, he gave one of his grand 
 est orations in Boston, at the close of which he uttered 
 the true American faith. America means opportuni 
 ty, freedom, power. The genius of this country has 
 marked out her true policy : opportunity doors wide 
 open every port open. If I could, I would have 
 free trade with all the world, without toll or custom 
 house. Let us invite every nation, even r race, every 
 skin ; white man, black man, red man, yellow man. 
 Let us offer hospitality, a fair field, and equal laws to 
 all. The land is wide enough, the soil has food enough 
 for all. Let us educate every soul." 
 
 It was a sign "gracious as rainbows" that, in the 
 centennial year of American Independence, Emerson 
 delivered the oration before the Literary Societies of 
 the University of Virginia. 
 
316 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 EMEKSON IN ENGLAND. 
 
 SOME brief account of Emerson s first visit to Eng 
 land, near fifty years ago, has been given in the 
 earlier pages of this book. When Professor Charles 
 Norton, to whom both Carlyle and Emerson intrusted 
 the editing of their correspondence, has completed the 
 task, for which none can be more fit, the world will see 
 both men in a clearer light ; and it will also be the best 
 introduction to the history of Emerson s work, friend 
 ships, and experiences in England. 
 
 Carlyle s preface to Emerson s first series of Essays 
 (London, James Eraser, 1841) is one of his character 
 istic writings, but it shews that he had not understood 
 the aim of Emerson. He quotes Paul Louis Courrier, 
 " Ce qui me distingue de tons mes contemporains c est 
 que je n ai pas la prctention d etre roi ; " and regards 
 Emerson as one contemptuously withdrawn from his 
 nation. 
 
 Among the first to be stirred by the Essays was John 
 Sterling, who dedicated his " Straff ord," to Emerson : 
 
 u Teacher of starry wisdom, high, serene, 
 
 Receive the gift our common ground supplies ; 
 Red flowers, dark leaves, that ne er on earth had been 
 Without the influence of sidereal skies." 
 
EMERSON IN ENGLAND. 317 
 
 In 18-45, when Edgar Quinet was lecturing at the 
 College de France, he paid an eloquent tribute to the 
 genius of Emerson. " What we announce in Europe," 
 he said, "from the summit of a ruined past, he also 
 announces in the germinating solitude of a world abso 
 lutely new. Although Emerson cared little for French 
 philosophy, the coincidences between his thought and 
 expression and those of Quinet are sometimes striking. 
 On Matthew Arnold the Essays made a deep impres 
 sion. Matthew Arnold wrote in the volume this son 
 net : 
 
 u O monstrous, dead, unprofitable world! 
 
 That thou canst hoar, and hearing, hold thy way. 
 A voice oracular hath pealed to-day, 
 To-day a hero s banner is unfurled. 
 Hast thou no lip for welcome? So I said. 
 Man after man the world smiled and passed by, 
 A smile of wistful incredulity, 
 As though one spake of noise unto the dead : 
 Scornful, and strange, and sorrowful, and full 
 Of bitter knowledge. Yet the Will is free. 
 Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful : 
 The seeds of godlike power are in us still : 
 Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will. 
 Dumb judges answer, truth or mockery?" 
 
 But the world was not so insensate as the sonnet 
 supposes. The tidings spread swiftly around that a 
 u voice oracular" had been heard in America, and it 
 was loudly called for in England. It was slow in 
 responding, but one of its disciples appeared. 
 
 In the London "Morning Chronicle" of July 5, 
 1842, there appeared the following notice : " PUIILIC 
 INVITATION. An open meeting of the friends of human 
 
318 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 progress will be held to-morrow, July 6, at Mr. Wright s, 
 Alcott House School, Ham Common, near Richmond, 
 Surrey, for the purpose of considering and adopting 
 means for the promotion of the great end, when all who 
 are interested in human destiny are earnestly urged to 
 attend. The chair taken at three o clock, and again at 
 seven, by A. Bronson Alcott, Esq., now on a visit from 
 America." This invitation found about a score sufficient 
 ly interested in or curious about " the great end " to turn 
 aside from the great world and seat themselves on the 
 lawn to hear the apostle speak of the instauration of 
 spirit ; " and they came at length to the following con 
 clusion : 
 
 " In order to obtain the highest excellence of which 
 man is capable, the generation of a new race of persons 
 is demanded, who shall project institutions and initiate 
 conditions altogether original and commensurate with 
 the being and wants of humanity. The germs of this 
 new generation are even now discernible in human be- 
 
 & 
 
 ings, but have been hitherto either choked by ungenial 
 circumstances, or having borne fruit prematurely or 
 imperfectly, have attained no abiding growth. It is 
 proposed to select a spot whereon a new Eden may be 
 planted, and man may, untempted by evil, dwell in 
 harmony with his Creator, with himself, his fellows, 
 and with all external natures. Providence seems to 
 have ordained the United States, more especially New 
 England, as the field wherein this idea is to be realised 
 in actual experience." 
 
 The " great end" of this fine dream is now repre 
 sented by the name "Alcott House" on Ham Com 
 mon, and by a pleasant cottage in Concord, where, 
 
EMERSON IN ENGLAND. 319 
 
 with his daughter, who has gained an eminent place 
 among American novelists, a handsome white-haired 
 old man passes his declining years in a peaceful Eden 
 of his own. 
 
 The longing to see and hear Emerson was not to be 
 quieted. His friend Alexander Ireland put the mat 
 ter strongly to him, and he began to yield. " I feel no 
 call to make a visit of literary propagandism in Eng 
 land," he wrote. " All my impulses to work of that 
 kind would rather employ me at home. It would be 
 still more unpl easing to me to put upon a few friends 
 the office of collecting an audience for me, by much 
 advertisement and coaxing. At the same time..*- it 
 would be very agreeable to me to accept any good in 
 vitation to read lectures from institutions or from a 
 number of friendly individuals who sympathised with 
 my studies. But though I possess a good many de 
 cisive tokens of interest in my pursuits and way of 
 thinking from sundry British men and women, they 
 are widely sundered persons, and my belief is, that in 
 no one city, except perhaps in London, could I find 
 any numerous company to whom my name was favour 
 ably known." u You must not sutfer your own friendly 
 feelings to give the smallest encouragement to the de 
 sign." 
 
 When it was announced that Emerson would visit 
 England and read lectures, applications from every 
 part of the kingdom came to Mr. Ireland, and in 
 many cases it was found impossible to comply with 
 them. Emerson arrived at Liverpool by the packet 
 ship "Washington Irving," October 22, 1847. Mr. 
 Ireland received a letter from Carlyle, dated at Chel- 
 
320 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 sea ten days after Emerson had sailed. " By a letter 
 I had very lately from Emerson which had lain, lost 
 and never missed, for above a month in the treacherous 
 post-office of Buxton, where it was called for and denied 
 I learn that Emerson intended to sail for this coun 
 try about the 1st of October; and infer, therefore, 
 that probably even now he is near Liverpool or some 
 other of our ports. Treadmill or other as emphatic 
 admonition to that scandalous postmaster of Buxton ! 
 He has put me in extreme risk of doing one of the 
 most unfriendly and every way unpardonable-looking 
 things a man could do. Not knowing in the least to 
 what port Emerson is tending, when he is expected, or 
 what his first engagements are, I find no way of mak 
 ing my word audible to him in time, except that of in 
 trusting it, with solemn charges, to you, as here. 
 Pray do me the favour to contrive in some sure way 
 that Emerson may get hold of that note the instant he 
 lands in England. I shall be permanently grieved 
 otherwise ; shall have failed in a clear duty (were it 
 nothing more) , which will never, probably, in my life 
 offer itself again. Do not neglect, I beg much of you ; 
 and, on the whole, if you can, get Emerson put safe 
 into the express train, and shot up hither, as the first 
 road he goes. That is the result we aim at. But the 
 note itself, at all events, I pray you get that delivered 
 duly, and so do me a very great favour, for which I de 
 pend on you." These injunctions were faithfully car 
 ried out, and Emerson was soon in the hospitable 
 home of his friend in Manchester. 
 
 His first course of lectures was delivered at the Man 
 chester Athenajum, its subject, " Representative Men." 
 
EMERSON IN ENGLAND. 321 
 
 lie next gave four in the Manchester Mechanics Insti 
 tution. It is pleasant to find in a provincial paper of 
 the time such a criticism as the following: "The 
 first tendril is now wound around your heart and your 
 attention is riveted. He uses no action, save occasion 
 ally a slight vibration of the body, as though rocking 
 beneath the hand of some unseen power. Then drop 
 the pearls from his mouth in quick succession, and 
 noiselessly do they sink into the hearts of his hearers, 
 there to abide for ever, and, like the famed carbuncle 
 in Eastern cave, shed a mild radiance on all things 
 therein. Your breath is now hushed, and all eyes are 
 on his lips as on the wand of a magician, stealing away 
 each faculty and leading you captive at his will." 
 During his stay at Manchester, Emerson was enter 
 tained at a banquet at the Athenamm, presided over 
 by Sir A. Alison, and attended by Richard Cobden and 
 other eminent men, and made a speech always remem 
 bered by those who heard it. -^ 
 
 It is not a little curious to trace the first impression 
 made by Emerson upon an English audience. A writer 
 in " Howitt s Journal" begins with expressions of 
 disappointment. He had heard the lecture on Sweden- 
 borg, and finds it a misty subject, mistily treated. 
 "Some man near me gravety asked his neighbour if 
 he did not think he could understand it better if they 
 stood on their heads." The tones of the voice are 
 nasal, but at the same time " they now and then come 
 out with musical richness and depth." " His delivery 
 is indifferent and careless. . . . He reads w r ords of 
 passionate admiration, of reprehension, of dissent, and 
 of contempt, and his voice hardly varied ; his counte- 
 
322 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 nance still less." But now the writer has listened to 
 another lecture, that on Montaigne, and writes as fol 
 lows : The stairs were as much and as early crowded ; 
 the lecture-room rather less so, but still well filled. 
 He came on the platform in the same simple, quiet, 
 almost careless and indifferent manner. But it grows 
 
 & 
 
 upon one, does this unconsciousness of an} 7 thing but 
 the matter in hand No loss of time in bowing, but 
 instant commencement, almost before the clapping 
 (which he seemed not to hear) had subsided. It was 
 a noble lecture. . . . Suddenly he closed his MS., and 
 was off and away while we were yet pondering the full 
 meaning of his last exquisite sentence. It is curious 
 to trace back and perceive how one s admiration and 
 appreciation of him grows. His voice, his delivery, his 
 very carelessness of his audience, his indifference as to 
 whether they understand him or no, seem to become en 
 deared to one as forming part of the individual Emer 
 son, whose thoughtful pathway lies alone through the 
 mental world. For he does not remind me of Carlyle, 
 to whom so many are fond of likening him. In form of 
 sentence, in strange, quaint, and often beautiful similes, 
 in the completely new light in which he views com 
 monplace things, he strikes me as more resembling 
 Jean Paul. But the resemblance of Emerson to any 
 one must spring from internal likeness : he is not one 
 to condescend to catch tricks of manner or style from 
 any other person." 
 
 The early appreciation of Emerson in England is so 
 interesting and creditable a fact that I must quote 
 also a discriminating criticism which appeared in the 
 " Gateshead Observer : " "There is a simplicity about 
 
EMERSON IN ENGLAND. 323 
 
 his delivery, in which, to me at least, lies one-half of 
 his intellectual grandeur. He reads with a clear enun 
 ciation and a slight American accent, and utters the 
 deepest and sublimest thoughts with an unconscious 
 ness and a modesty, a serene earnestness and a noble 
 catholicity, and all the other highest attributes of 
 genius. There is not the slightest attempt at oratory 
 no enthusiasm about him ; yet his words have a 
 depth, and a warmth, and an emphasis, and a weigh.ii- 
 ness, and a dignity, and a solemnity, which; I believe, 
 take a deep root in the minds of his hearers, and which 
 many will never forget. He is a thin, tall man, appar 
 ently about forty-five, with an oval Yankee counte 
 nance, rather sallow and emaciated, and a very promin 
 ent Wellington nose." 
 
 On the 6th of June, 1848, Emerson began a series of 
 six lectures in London on "The Minds and Manners 
 of the Nineteenth Century." The programme of the 
 course which was given at the Literary and Scientific 
 Institution, 17 Edwards Street, Portman Square 
 comprised the following subjects : 
 
 June G. Powers and Laws of Thought. 
 " 8. Relation of Intellect to Natural Science. 
 
 " 10. Tendencies and Duties of Men of Thought. 
 
 " 13. Politics and Socialism. 
 
 " 15. Poetry and Eloquence. 
 
 " 17. Natural Aristocracy. 
 
 These lectures were delivered at four o clock of each 
 day. During the course the following letter appeared : 
 
 "To the Editor of the Examiner, SIR, The 
 lectures of Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson leave only one 
 
324 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 thing to be regretted viz., that they cannot be heard 
 by the whole literary and artistic public of the metrop 
 olis., The gumea for the course renders this impossible. 
 How many there are who love beauty, and know well 
 what it is, and create it afresh every day for their fel 
 low-men, and yet they cannot reap guineas for their 
 own instruction ! I would therefore suggest to Mr. 
 Emerson, through your influential trumpet (what I 
 dare not suggest as a private friend) , that he present 
 the literary men of London with his utterances on a 
 liberal scale. It might be done by fixing a small 
 admission charge commensurate with the means of 
 poets, critics, philosophers, historians, scholars, and 
 the other divine paupers of that class. I feel that it 
 ought to be done, because Emerson is a phenomenon 
 whose like is not in the world, and to miss him is to 
 lose an important informing fact out of the nineteenth 
 century. If, therefore, 3*011 will insert this, the favour 
 will at all events have been asked, and one conscience 
 satisfied. It seems also probable that a very large at 
 tendance of thoughtful men would be secured, and that 
 Emerson s stirrup-cup would be a cheering and full one, 
 sweet and ruddy with international charity. Yours 
 always, AN ATTENDANT ON EMERSON S PRESENT 
 COURSE. Hampstead, June 14, 1848." 
 
 Subsequently Emerson delivered three lectures at 
 Exeter Hail, the surplus proceeds of which were de 
 voted to the objects of the Metropolitan Early Closing 
 Association, by which his services were engaged. The 
 subjects were "Napoleon," "Domestic Life," and 
 " Shakespeare the Poet." In the " Heasoner " (July 
 5, 1848), "Panthea" (Miss Sophia D. Collet) 
 
EMERSON IN ENGLAND. 325 
 
 writes : "On Friday evening, June 30, Mr. Emerson 
 gave his last lecture in this country (on Shakespeare), 
 at the end of which Monckton Milnes, M.P., who was 
 in the chair, made some remarks on the influences 
 which had brought together the diverse elements of 
 Shakespeare, Mr. Emerson, and Exeter Hall, and 
 called oil the audience to manifest their gratitude to the 
 lecturer, which was accordingly done by rising en masse, 
 hearty cheering, and waving of hats, &c. Mr. Emer 
 son came forward, and in a very simple and pleasing 
 manner thanked them for their good-will, and spoke 
 gratefully of the unbroken kindness he had received 
 from a large number of Englishmen and English 
 women during his stay here he had not been aware 
 there was so much kindness in the world. His visit 
 had enlarged his views on the condition of England. 
 Americans who grow up in the study of English books 
 are apt to think they know all about England, but 
 they were very glad to come here and know it better. 
 He added that increased knowledge had increased his 
 respect for the English character, sincerely as he had 
 previously esteemed the worth and probity of individ 
 uals. He had only one thing more to say to us, Let 
 your future be worthy of your past and your present/ 
 he would ask no more." 
 
 The lecture referred to by Miss Collet was not, how 
 ever, to be the last in the country. Emerson had 
 already more applications to visit various towns and 
 cities of the country than he could comply with ; but 
 he made a judicious selection. He afterwards went to 
 Sheffield, Worcester, Birmingham, Newcastle-upon- 
 Tyne, and other towns, and was everywhere greeted by 
 
326 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 large audiences. At Leicester he was so unfortunate 
 as to leave his manuscript at the house of his host and 
 chairman, Mr. Joseph Biggs, two miles distant from 
 the hall, and discovered the fact only on the moment 
 announced for the lecture. As he alone could bring it, 
 the audience enjoyed two lectures, the chairman hav 
 ing amused them with anecdotes of absent-mindedness 
 in great men, until his friend s return. 
 
 The subject for which Emerson had been announced 
 at Newcastle was, "Shakespeare, the Poet;" but 
 when he met his large audience he told them he had 
 resolved to substitute for it one on "New England," 
 not delivered before. Dissatisfaction arose at this an 
 nouncement, during which the lecturer stood quietly, 
 and then, stating that the change seemed to him neces 
 sary b.ecause one of the papers had published that 
 morning a full report of the lecture he had meant to 
 give, he gained the consent of the audience to listen to 
 the lecture, by which they were profoundly interested. 
 
 A friend related to me a characteristic incident in 
 connection with the visit to Newcastle. He inquired 
 of the gentleman whose gaest he was whether a poet 
 named William B. Scott resided there. His host had 
 never heard of such a person. The author of " The 
 Year of the World " had been known in Concord, how 
 ever, and was speedily sought out and invited to meet 
 the man who knew his worth. 
 
 From Newcastle he went to Edinburgh, where he 
 gave three lectures before the Philosophical Institu 
 tion, the subjects being " Natural Aristocracy," " The 
 Genius of the Present Age," and " The Humanity of 
 Science." He was the guest of the late Dr. Samuel 
 
EMERSON IN ENGLAND. 327 
 
 Brown, and was warmly welcomed by the circle of 
 scholars residing in that city. 
 
 The late David Scott, artist and poet, had read 
 Emerson s works before they met in Edinburgh. In 
 the biography of him by his brother the following is 
 quoted from his diary of 1845: " Read lately the 
 Essays of Emerson a worthy thinker. The other 
 day mentioned him to Professor Wilson, who proposed 
 to read him, and said he fancied he was both better 
 and worse than Carlyle higher and lower. ... In 
 Emerson I find many things that meet conclusions 
 formed and feelings experienced by myself. He is a 
 less sectarian and more unfettered doctrinist than I 
 have yet met. As yet, however, I have not arrived at 
 the basis (if he has indeed defined such) of the super 
 structure of his mind." It was at a time when the 
 artist was suffering from despondency and failing 
 health that Emerson made his acquaintance, and sat 
 to him for his portrait ; and it is perhaps partly due to 
 that circumstance that the following entry is not more 
 hearty : " Portrait of Emerson nearly done during 
 his stay here. My first impression of him was not 
 what I expected it would have been. His appearance 
 is severe, and dry, and hard. But, although he is 
 guarded and somewhat cold at times, intercourse shews 
 him to be elevated, simple, kind, and truthful." On 
 the other hand, the biographer records, " Emerson was 
 strangely impressed with a sense of the greatness of 
 Scott s character, but noticed the inadequacy of his 
 verbal communications in ordinary circumstances, and 
 said, How rich I find him in the studio ! On one 
 occasion Emerson having said that there was little or 
 
328 EMERSOX AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 no real poetry in Bailey s " Festus," David Scott con 
 tested the assertion, and quoted with sadness the 
 line 
 
 u Friendship hath passed me like a ship at sea." 
 
 On leaving London Emerson wrote him: "I carry 
 with me a bright image of }*our house and studio, and 
 all your immortal companions therein, and I wish to 
 keep the ways open between us, natural and supernat 
 ural. If the Good Power had allowed me the oppor 
 tunity of seeing you more at leisure, and of comparing 
 notes of past years a little ! And it may yet be al 
 lowed in time ; but where and when ? " But Emerson 
 was destined never again to meet one whom he de 
 scribed as a "man of high character and genius, the 
 short-lived painter, David Scott." 
 
 " My portraits," Emerson once remarked to me, 
 " generally oscillate between the donkey and the Lo 
 thario." David Scott s portrait he had to admit was 
 the exception ; and it is now held by his townsmen as 
 a treasure of their Public Library. It is thought by 
 W. B. Scott to be the best of the few pictures of that 
 kind that his brother painted. This portrait is a very 
 successful rendering of the peculiarities of Emerson s 
 look and manner, which were physiognomically signif 
 icant of his thought and spirit. The slight depression 
 at the corners of the mouth, with a touch of sternness, 
 the one arm extending from his side as he became more 
 animated by his theme, the two or three fingers of the 
 other hand pressed to the palm as if holding tightly 
 some reservation, all these, and other indefinable char 
 acteristics photographed on the mind of one who has 
 
EMERSON IX ENGLAND. 329 
 
 attentively listened to Emerson, are in this picture. 
 But some traits but faintly suggested in the picture 
 were developed in after years, of a kind that could not 
 be shewn on canvas. 
 
 After leaving Edinburgh Emerson was the guest of 
 Miss Martineau at Ambleside for a few days, and with 
 her once more visited Wordsworth at Rydal Mount. 
 
 In the summer of 1848 Emerson went over to Paris, 
 and was there during the exciting scenes of that year, 
 attending many meetings of the clubs. His observa 
 tions made during that visit were embodied in a bril 
 liant lecture on the French, which I heard him deliver 
 in Concord, but which has not been published. While 
 in Paris a fine crayon sketch of him was made by 
 Oswald Murray, which is now in possession of Mr. 
 Ireland. Mrs. Murray tells me that she was so little 
 aware of the eminence of the man who used to sit to 
 her husband, that when he proposed to hold her baby 
 while she prepared tea, she always allowed him to do 
 so. He was so simple and kindly that she did not feel 
 awe of him. Before leaving England in the autumn 
 he again visited Manchester ; and for a few days before 
 sailing he was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Paulet, of 
 Liverpool, where a number of his friends assembled to 
 take leave of him, among them Arthur Hugh Clough. 
 
 A pamphlet written by ;t January Searle," pseu 
 donym for George Searle Phil, relates an episode in 
 Emerson s Manchester experience : 
 
 " Before Emerson left England for America, he in 
 vited a number of gentlemen, whose acquaintance he 
 had made during his sojourn amongst us, to a farewell 
 symposium at Manchester. A more motley, dissimilar, 
 
330 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 heterogeneous mass of persons never before, perhaps, 
 met together at the table of a philosopher. 
 
 " It was late in the afternoon of that boisterous win 
 ter s day when we, having marched from the far moors 
 of Yorkshire, and crossed the steep and rocky summit 
 of Stanedge, knocked at the gate of Emerson s house 
 in Manchester. It was a small unpretending house, 
 with a little garden in front, and as we entered we 
 found the hall crowded with coats, hats, sticks, and 
 philosophical umbrellas. A large globe lamp stood 
 upon the table, and there was the noise and chatter of 
 many voices, mingled with bursts of laughter, in the 
 room where the guests were assembled. 
 
 "We were not expected, although warmly invited, 
 for money was scarce in those days and the journey 
 long. As we entered the room, therefore, the host 
 rose to welcome us all the more cordially, introducing 
 us to many there who were previously unknown to us. 
 And when we had recognised friends and exchanged 
 courtesies with all, we took our seat beside Emerson, 
 who expressed himself happy in seeing so many per 
 sons around him who had interested themselves in so 
 many and such various ways in his mission to England. 
 There are some men here, said he, to whom I should 
 like more particularly to introduce you as persons of 
 mark and genius ; and whilst he was thus speaking, a 
 tall, thin, ungainly man, about thirty years of age, 
 speaking in squeaks at the top of his voice, making all 
 kinds of grimaces and strange gesticulations, with a 
 small Puritan head, which was more than half forehead, 
 approached to our side of the room, book in hand, de 
 sirous, as he said, of pointing out a fine passage in 
 
EMERSON IN ENGLAND. 331 
 
 Plato to Emerson, which he had just been reading,, 
 Without more ado, he put the volume within half-an- 
 inch of his eyes and read the passage, after which he 
 commenced a long dissertation upon it, twisting his 
 body into all conceivable and inconceivable forms, roll 
 ing up the whites of his eyes, and moving his head 
 from shoulder to shoulder with extraordinary activity. 
 Learned and eloquent, he poured forth a stream of 
 talk, not presumptuously, but with a diffident confidence 
 if we may use such an expression, whilst Emerson sat 
 silent and listening, with that calm, pale face of his, 
 the eye thoughtful but not excited, and the mouth oc 
 casionally lighted up with a faint moonlight smile. He 
 was evidently pleased, and so were all who listened to 
 that wonderful six feet of brain and nerve. . . . 
 
 " Emerson smiled. That man, said he, is a fine 
 scholar, has a fine mind, and much real culture. He is 
 well read in literature, in philosophy, in history ; and 
 has written rhymes, which, like my friend Ellery Chan- 
 ning s, are very nearly poetry. We then had a con 
 versation ahout Channing and Thoreau. I will give 
 you, said Emerson, in a few minutes, a copy of 
 Channiug s poems, and his " Conversations at Rome." 
 Thoreau, he added, you will hear of by and by. He 
 is now writing a book, most of which I have heard, 
 called A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Riv 
 ers." We subsequently went with Emerson to his 
 chamber, where he packed his portmanteau and gave 
 us these books of Channing s. 
 
 " We had scarcely returned to the room, when a card 
 was put into our hand bearing the name of a friend 
 who had long wished to see Emerson, and who had now 
 
332 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 come from Nottingham for this purpose. He was well 
 known to Emerson through a book he had written on 
 Divine, and other far sweeter, love ; and we went forth 
 to bring in the young philosophical theologian to the 
 host and to the company. He was a thin, timorous 
 young man, not more than twenty years old, with 
 strange mystic eyes, and a head and face like George 
 Herbert s a very singular young man, loving God and 
 man too much to be a priest, and yet not quite happy 
 out of the pale of the Church a devout follower of 
 Emerson at this time, and tinged with his thought. He 
 sat at the right hand of Emerson, the introduction 
 being over, and was the St. John of the company. . . . 
 
 " At last the dinner was announced, and we sat down 
 to the repast. Emerson sat at the head, and our friend 
 
 at the foot of the table. The Apostle John again 
 
 sat at the right hand of his master, and that odd com 
 pound of stuff from Birmingham sat at his left. Emer 
 son spoke very little, except whilst seeing after the 
 comfort and provisioning of his guests. We remained 
 but a short time at the table after dinner, and returned 
 early to the drawing-room, there being no wine-bibbers 
 present. 
 
 " The evening s entertainment was the one redeeming 
 thing in this banquet. It consisted of a reading by 
 Emerson at urgent request of his paper on Plato, 
 which has since been published in the Representative 
 Men. After that the evening fell flat and dead. 
 
 1 The literary men of England made very little im 
 pression upon Emerson, although he spoke of some 
 modern works with praise. Of some private and un 
 known persons he was almost enthusiastic in his laud- 
 
EMERSON IN ENGLAND. 333 
 
 ations. It was life, not literature, that he cared about. 
 And yet he was a great reader of Goethe, and read some 
 chapters of him every morning in the German, and also 
 of Montaigne. . . . 
 
 "We all breakfasted together next morning, when 
 the Apostle John and ourselves drove off to the train 
 on our separate journeys homewards, bidding Emerson 
 adieu, perhaps for ever." 
 
 Emerson had met a young Oxonian whom his eye held 
 like the wedding guest. This was Arthur Hugh dough, 
 who used to walk with him to his London lectures, who 
 followed him to the verge of the ocean, and presently 
 across it. He was the last man that parted with him 
 when he passed down the Mersey on that July day, and 
 he straightway wrote to a friend about Emerson s three 
 days visit to Oxford. " Everybody liked him, and as 
 the orthodox mostly had never heard of him, they did 
 not suspect him. He is the quietest, plainest, unob- 
 trusivest man possible ; will talk, but will rarely dis 
 course to more than a single person, and wholly declines 
 roaring. He is very Yankee to look at, lank and 
 sallow, and not quite without the twang, but his looks 
 and voice are pleasing, nevertheless, and give you the 
 impression of perfect intellectual cultivation, as com 
 pletely as would any great scientific man in England 
 Faraday or Owen, for instance more in their way, 
 perhaps, than in that of Wordsworth or Caiiyle. I 
 have been with him a great deal ; for he came over to 
 Paris and was there a month, during which we dined 
 together daily, and since that I have seen him often in 
 London, and finally here. One thing that struck every 
 body is that he is much less Emersonian than his essays. 
 
334 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 There is no dogmatism, or abitrariness, or positiveness 
 about him." 
 
 Emerson loved Clough, and loved his poetry. In 
 18f>2 he invited him to America, and Clough wrote back, 
 " My best way of thanking you is, I believe, simply to 
 accept your kind proposal." 
 
 Arthur Clough did some fine literary work while he 
 was in America, and he became very dear to the best 
 men and women in that country. It was with sorrow 
 that they parted from him ; when he was married his 
 American literary friends sent him presents ; and when 
 he died, it was nowhere heard of with more pain than 
 at Concord and Cambridge. 
 
 When Emerson was last in England he called sev 
 eral times on his old friend W. B. Scott, who lived 
 near Carlyle, with whom Emerson spent some days, 
 and in the course of their conversation Scott asked him 
 why Dante Rossetti received comparatively little atten 
 tion in America. Emerson said, " We -like our own 
 period, and what is vital in these days about us, es 
 pecially in poetry ; but the Rossetti work is not touch 
 ing us it is exotic." 
 
 It is a notable fact, however, that when Emerson s 
 works appeared in England, among the first to welcome 
 them were the Rossettis, both William and Dante. The 
 Preraphaelist Brothers especially admired his poetry, 
 as one of them tells me, " for its august seer-like qual 
 ities, notwithstanding some rustiness on the hinges of 
 verse." Emerson is mentioned with honour in "The 
 Germ." William Rossetti was present at a lecture in 
 Exeter Hall on " Napoleon," and tells me that he well 
 remembers Emerson s " upright figure, clear-cut physi- 
 
EMERSON IN ENGLAND. 335 
 
 ognomy, clear elocution, resolved self-possession. * 
 On the other hand, a friend of his was chilled by what 
 he called " the impersonal demeanour of Emerson, his 
 impassivity, total want of sympathetic vital relation 
 towards his audience." The late Goodwyn Barmby 
 had attended Alcott s conversations at Ham in 1842, 
 and was not well pleased with his version of the Em 
 ersonian gospel, and he had also had but little satisfac 
 tion in his interviews with Margaret Fuller ; but he was 
 much impressed by Emerson. Twelve years ago he 
 (Goodwyn Barmby) wrote me : " When Emerson came 
 to tea with me at Bayswater, he was quite enchanted with 
 the trees in Kensington Gardens. I remember well his 
 frequent question, Can you shew me any men and 
 women? What life have you here in England? I 
 knew well that he was aiming at the being before 
 ; knowing and doing, of James Pierrepont Greaves. 
 He was after biography ; I was for history. I had just 
 returned from the French Revolution of 48, and had 
 witnessed the inspiration of a nation, and my harmony 
 was jarred by his not appearing to sympathise with the 
 social movement. He afterwards went to Paris, and 
 took up his abode in the lovely little apartment which I 
 had not long before occupied, in a hotel in the Rue des 
 Beaux Arts, which I think I recommended to him. 
 There he would have seen something of Hugh Doherty. 
 My impression of Emerson was that he was the most 
 beautifully simple and clearest-minded man I ever met 
 with ; but I then thought he was too much immersed in 
 biographic ideas, which were after all a certain reflex 
 of egotism, and that he wanted social sympathy and 
 its gospel of self-sacrifice to make him a whole man. 
 
EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 I have no doubt now that your great war has made him 
 greater." 
 
 In London Emerson boarded at the house of Dr. 
 Chapman, where he continually wrote on his lectures, 
 and was prone to let his fire go out. At a dinner 
 party there he met the Hennells, Miss Collet, Mr. Call, 
 the poet, and other liberal thinkers. They were re 
 markably silent, apparently content to gaze upon 
 Emerson and Carlyle. One or two were in an argu 
 mentative state of mind, and Emerson was averse to 
 everything polemical or controversial. " The children 
 of the gods never argue," was one of his puzzling re 
 plies. Wherever he was a guest, children were much 
 drawn to him. I have before me a letter written by him 
 to Miss Ashurst Biggs, at the house of whose father he 
 was entertained, when she was about nine years of age. 
 It was written in reply to one from her, and is on a 
 large sheet surmounted by an engraving of Scarborough 
 Castle. "I have been travelling in Yorkshire, and 
 seeing many towns and curiosities, York Minster and 
 Scarborough Castle, and many other things ; among 
 other things a great cave at Flamborough Head. I 
 stayed in it listening to the roar of the ocean until the 
 tide rose and the sea came in, and drove me and my 
 friend out at the low passage at the other end, since 
 nobody is admitted when the tide is in except the 
 fishes." He copies two verses written to him by his 
 little daughter, and concludes with the words, "Fare 
 well, my dear child." 
 
 Emerson s picture of childhood in one of his London 
 lectures is remembered by some who heard it as un 
 equalled for its charm. His own childlikeness was felt 
 
EMERSON IN ENGLAND. 337 
 
 also by those who met him personally ; but to others 
 his reputation for that " clean intellect," for ^hich 
 Carlyle said Emerson had not his equal on the planet, 
 carried a certain awe. On one occasion, in London, 
 he was told of a young man who wished to see him, 
 but, added the informant, " he s afraid of you." " So 
 am I afraid of him ; let him come ! " One lady said 
 he was a man to be approached after fasting and pray 
 er. A lady of Coventry, daughter of an orthodox 
 minister, told me that Carlyle appeared to many in 
 that day as Emerson s John the Baptist at best ; for 
 they had been troubled by the ridicule of philanthropy 
 that came from Chelsea. The evangelical were im 
 pressed by finding this heretic not a man of the world, 
 like Voltaire and Gibbon, but one whose " righteous 
 ness exceeded that of the orthodox." 
 
 Emerson had read with much interest a work by 
 Charles Bray, the "Philosophy of Necessity," and 
 this led to a brief but memorable visit to Coventry. I 
 am indebted to Miss Sarah Hennell for a letter written 
 to her by her sister, Mrs. Bra} , July 16, 1848, imme 
 diately after this visit: "Yes, we have had the great 
 spirit amongst us, and I feel as you do how much 
 greater his thoughts, which we had before, have be 
 come from the corroboration they have received from 
 his presence. I have quite a grateful feeling that he 
 has been under this roof, though only for a few hours ; 
 but, alas ! we shall see his face no more ! He is roll 
 ing on the waves now towards home. He said his 
 wife insisted on being on the shore to meet him, though 
 they live twenty miles inland. He was taking a rock 
 ing-horse for his two little girls, and a crossbow for his 
 
338 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 son ; and his eyes quite sparkled when he spoke of 
 how much they would be grown in these nine months. 
 My head was full of the preparations for our great 
 juvenile fete on Thursday, when Emerson s letter came 
 to say he should be here at midnight, to stay only till 
 Wednesday afternoon. So I ran upstairs to put the 
 best room in order, and directly after in came Mr. and 
 Mrs. Flower and Kate Marti neau. Of course they 
 wanted to see Emerson above all things, and had in 
 vited him to Stratford. Charles went to meet him at 
 the station. He looked round the drawing-room and 
 said, Coventry is a very nice place ; and the next 
 morning was so easy and pleasant that I wondered 
 where all my awe had gone to. He talked about In 
 dian mytholog} r and Stonehenge. After breakfast in 
 walked the Flowers again. They had set off at five, 
 and came to propose taking him back with them to 
 Stratford, as they had found a note from him, on 
 reaching home, expressing a wish to see Shakes 
 peare. We were rather disconcerted, as Mary Ann 
 (Miss Evans) had just come, and we meant to have a 
 nice quiet day all to ourselves. But, however, it was 
 plain Emerson wished to see Stratford, and we all 
 thought it right he should ; so we all set off together 
 by train to Leamington, then in cars to Stratford ; and 
 had a most delightful ride, we four in an open carriage 
 from Stratford again. This was the pleasantest part 
 of the day to us, and he talked as if we had been old 
 friends. He was much struck with Mary Ann (Miss 
 Evans) : expressed his admiration many times to 
 Charles That young lady has a calm serious soul. 
 He regretted very much he had no more time to stay 
 
EMERSON IX ENGLAND. 339 
 
 amongst us. He came home to tea with us. And so 
 he departed, with much warmth pressing Charles to go 
 and see him in America. It is well for us a great be 
 nign soul does not often come to disgust us with com 
 mon life. No, that s a very false sentiment : common 
 life would not be common then. It was a comfort the 
 next day to find that Hannah had been providing the 
 needful for common life while we had been soaring 
 aloft, and that the cakes were made ready for the chil 
 dren at night. The fete was most successful. We 
 had a fiddle and flute to make music, and they danced 
 on the grass." 
 
 To this charming account of a visit which Emer 
 son remembered with pleasure, I add a sentence from 
 Mrs. Bray s notebook: " If the law of love and jus 
 tice have once entered our hearts, why need we seek 
 any other?" Emerson (as he sat in the drawing- 
 room window, July 12, 1848). 
 
 Emerson remembered well that visit to the Brays 
 at Rosehill, when he sat with them under the beau 
 tiful acacia, and talked with Charles Bray on the 
 "Philosophy of Necessity," which had reached him 
 in Concord and spoke to his mind. George Eliot 
 was then Miss Evans of Birdgrove, where Emerson s 
 essays were among her friends in loneliness. When 
 Emerson had talked a few moments with her he sud 
 denly said, "What one book do you like best?" 
 She instantly answered, "Rousseau s Confessions." 
 He started, then said, "So do I. There is a point 
 of sympathy between us." George Eliot cherished 
 the remembrance of meeting Emerson under these 
 happy auspices, and also in London, where she played 
 
340 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 the piano at evening, in Dr. Chapman s house, with 
 out perhaps knowing that Emerson s ear for such 
 music was what he used to call " marble." 
 
 It was wonderful to me, when I was starting for 
 England, to find how Emerson bore in mind the in 
 dividual traits of the people he had met during his 
 sojourn abroad ; and even in 1875, when his memory 
 was already failing, he asked me questions about 
 some of them. He remembered the attention that 
 Sophia Collet had paid to his lectures, and was hap 
 py when I was able to tell him that invalidism had 
 not been able to quench the sunshine his works had 
 brought into her study. The extent to which Emer 
 son s thought influenced English freethinkers was 
 largely due to this lady, at that time, under the 
 name u Panthea," the most scholarly writer in the 
 " Reasoner." "In the clear morning light in which 
 he bathes us," she wrote in that paper, "we feel 
 that all the accustomed solutions of the mystery of 
 human existence are but degrading caricatures, which 
 shall never again impose on us ; and that the realities, 
 even the (at present) inexplicable ones, which now 
 come forth to view, are more sacred, more dear, and 
 more inspiring than all the Christianities of Europe, 
 Asia, Africa, and America, which do but belong to 
 them as one year s blossoms belong to the root from 
 which they spring." 
 
 Carlyle s best insight into Emerson s first essays was 
 that which found a fresh and new country in them. 
 "A breath as of the green country all the welcomer 
 that it is New England country, not second-hand but 
 first-hand country meets us wholesomely everywhere 
 
EMERSON IN ENGLAND. 341 
 
 in these Essays : the authentic green earth is there, 
 with her mountains, rivers, with her mills and farms. " 
 This was a potent charm of his lectures in England. 
 Wherever he went or spoke, this new world travelled 
 with him and surrounded him while he spoke. His in 
 difference to theology, his aversion to controversy, his 
 affirmative tone, all seemed to come from a land 
 where old dogmas and conventions were unknown. He 
 uttered destructive generalisations of the most startling 
 character as truisms, and swept creeds and institutions 
 out of his path unconsciously, without any tone of 
 radicalism. He might have been the original of 
 the man of the future painted by Weirtz at Brussels, 
 examining with a smile the banners, guns, and crowns 
 of the present time, held in the hollow of his hand. 
 Caiiyle once told of a man he found reading Emerson, 
 as he rested from toil and looking out over the sea. It 
 was that westward look which carried so many agitat 
 ed minds to New England, and no doubt Emerson 
 foresaw the disappointment of many of them when he 
 reserved his sympathy with the social dreams of Good- 
 wyn Barmby. There were enough visionary Ameri 
 cans drawing Englishmen to their country with fanciful 
 pictures, one of whom Herman Melville portrayed in 
 his " Confidence-Man," who, in his blended " shrewd 
 ness and mythiness," seemed a kind of "cross between 
 a Yankee pedlar and a Tartar priest." Emerson 
 probably never tried to persuade any one to settle 
 in America, except Carlyle ; and his word to English 
 youth would have been that of Goethe, u Your Ameri 
 ca is here or nowhere." His best influence in England 
 has been, and is, represented by those whom he in- 
 
342 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 spired to build a new and better world around them. 
 And of these it has been my lot to know and hear of 
 many. The world knows what he has been to Tyndall, 
 who still cherishes the little volume he picked up in a 
 bookstall. The Emersonian sermon in Kingsley s 
 "Alton Locke," the sonnet of Matthew Arnold, the 
 letters of Clough, and the writings of Quinet, Max 
 Miiller, Herman Grimm, Allingham, Ruskin, and many 
 another, attest how much he has been to the best Eu 
 ropean teachers. But his influence has been as great 
 in other than literary directions. When he was last in 
 England, a philanthropic man, a Lord Mayor, asked 
 to be introduced to Emerson, because, when he was a 
 poor youth, the essay on Self-Reliance stimulated his 
 energies and gave him his start to success. The late 
 Dr. Lankester, coroner of London, similarly regarded 
 Emerson as the chief influence in his life, and when he 
 died, there was found in his pocket a well-pencilled 
 copy of the Essays, which had been his companion 
 through many years. Other similar instances have 
 been related to me. 
 
 After Emerson s return from his visit to England of 
 1847-8, he gave a lecture upon " The English People," 
 in New York, at the close of which he said that the 
 fabulous St. George was not the true emblem of the 
 national character. He saw it rather in the lawgiver, 
 scholar, poet, mechanic, monarch, Alfred ; in later 
 times, in Cromwell; and in one not so well known, 
 William of Wykeham, the builder of Windsor Castle, 
 a bishop of Winchester, a putter-down of abuses in 
 his time in his own diocese. He founded a school 
 at Winchester for seventy scholars for ever ; he en- 
 
EMERSON IN ENGLAND. 343 
 
 dowed a college at Oxford for seventy fellows for ever ; 
 and he established a house in the neighbourhood of 
 Winchester to provide a measure of beer and a suffi 
 ciency of bread to every one who asked it for ever. 
 Emerson was curious to test this good man s credit, 
 and knocked at the door, preferred his request, and 
 received his measure of beer and bread, though its 
 donor had been dead seven hundred years ! 
 
 When Emerson was last in England there was much 
 desire that he should give lectures at the Royal Insti 
 tution and at Oxford. This, however, he declined. 
 His only public appearance in England was at the 
 Working-Men s College in London, Thomas Hughes 
 being beside him. That extemporaneous address I 
 heard, and when he spoke of the " pathetically noble" 
 effort of English scholars to educate their humbler 
 brethren, there was before us another "pathetically 
 noble" sight in the figure of the white-haired sage 
 beaming his last farewell, and uttering his last animat 
 ing word to the class that received him as prophet at 
 the dawn of a closing generation. 
 
 When tidings came that Emerson s house was burnt 
 down there was a strong desire in England to help to 
 rebuild it. " Will you please say," he wrote me, " to 
 any such benevolent friend, that whilst I am surprised 
 and gratified at such a good-will, I will have no such 
 thing done, as my friends at home have already taken 
 care to more than indemnify me for my material losses 
 by the fire. Not the less hearty thanks to these Eng 
 lish friends." 
 
 In the spring of 1873, when Emerson was on his way 
 from the South to England, I had also to convey to 
 
344 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 him a, request to accept a banquet in London, but this 
 he declined. " I desire to thank them heartily for 
 their generous good-will, but say to them that they 
 must forgive me for declining the banquet, much pre 
 ferring to meet new and old friends on more simple and 
 private terms." This note was written from Paris, 
 March 31, and at the close of the week Emerson was 
 in London. 
 
 To observe the various men that gathered around 
 Emerson in England, one might say that concord, as a 
 virtue, was organised in and around the Sage of Con 
 cord. Carlyle, Dean Stanley ; Professors Tyndall, 
 Newman, Huxley, Carpenter, Sayce, Ruskin ; Alex 
 ander Ellis, J. A. Fronde, Lord Honghton, Allingham, 
 Edward Sterling, the Amberleys, Prince Leopold, Max 
 Miiller (with whom he stayed in Oxford) , these, and 
 many others, gathered around him with fraternal or 
 filial devotion, and would have had him pass the rest 
 of his life in their homes. He visited the Irelands at 
 Manchester, Dr. William Smith and other friends in 
 Edinburgh, Lord and Lady Ambeiiey at Tintern, and 
 the Crawshays at Cyfarthfa Castle. He also visited 
 again the Flowers at Stratford-on-Avon. 
 
 His eldest daughter accompanied him on this jour 
 ney, and was already beginning to be needed as " his 
 memory." In meeting with new persons his failing 
 memory was noticeable, but his friends of twenty-five 
 year before thought him even nobler and sweeter than 
 in the old times. It was during this last visit, I sup 
 pose, that Emerson visited Stratford Church with James 
 Walter on a Sunday morning, and remained beside 
 Shakespeare s grave during the service and sermon. 
 
EMERSON IN ENGLAND. 345 
 
 The Englishman was ashamed of the sermon, and re 
 lieved when Emerson asked naively, "Did he preach?" 
 To which his English friend answered, "Who ? Shakes 
 peare?" "Yes! " 
 
 My wife and I had the pleasure of being guests with 
 him and his daughter at Cyfarthfa Castle (Merthyr Tyd- 
 fil) . Mrs. Crawshay told me that she was afraid such 
 a devotee of nature might not enjoy her forced straw 
 berries, and rather evaded his question concerning their 
 season in Wales. The Welsh spring might well break 
 forth into earlier strawberries in honour of his visit. At 
 a dinner-party given at Cyfarthfa Castle the most culti 
 vated people of the neighbourhood were invited, but 
 among them was a gentleman more familiar with the 
 antiquities of Wales than with Emerson. At any rate, 
 after the ladies had retired, when Emerson asked him 
 whether traces of Merlin in his prison of air survived 
 in the neighbourhood, he said, Yes, but that he had 
 passed the place at all times and never heard the leg 
 endary sighs, nor did he believe the story. "You 
 must be a bold man," said Emerson in his sweetest 
 voice, but with the old twinkle in his eye. 
 
 In Wales I had opportunities of walking alone with 
 Emerson, and conversing with him on those great sub 
 jects which had been the theme of his teaching in the 
 sacred years at Concord. I discovered, however, that 
 he had become more inclined than formerly to hesitate 
 about stating religious opinions. These opinions he 
 declared unchanged since we had conversed in former 
 years. He was even more optimistic after twenty 
 years, and advised me to trust more to time than de 
 structive criticism in the combat with error. He held 
 
346 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 his old sentiment about prayer, and said, " If I saw a 
 man on his knees, I should not like to tell that man to 
 get up." Even the attitude of reverence for something 
 above self he thought to be of some value, and sug 
 gested that it was a sort of witness against the notion 
 of mediation. 
 
 Max Miiller dedicated his work on the " Science of 
 Religion" to "Ralph Waldo Emerson, in memory of 
 his visit to Oxford in May, 1873, and in acknowledg 
 ment of constant refreshment of head and heart de 
 rived from his writings during the last twenty-five 
 years." 
 
 Emerson s friends in England "marked round with 
 vermilion " that festal year when he visited the homes 
 he had made nobler and happier ; and many were the 
 children brought to him that they might say to their 
 children and children s children, " This hand has been 
 kept purer because it was once touched by Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson." 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 347 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 THE DIADEM OF DAY 
 
 SOME years ago Emerson was asked by a friend 
 which of his own poems he most valued. He re 
 plied, " Days." This piece of eleven lines, as printed 
 in "May-Day," begins "Damsels of Time ;" but I 
 prefer the original word. 
 
 u Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, 
 Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, 
 And inarching single in an endless file, 
 Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. 
 To each they offer gifts after his will. 
 Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. 
 I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, 
 Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 
 Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day 
 Turned and departed silent. I, too late, 
 Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn." 
 
 Rare if not imaginary must have been the "day" 
 that did not bear fruit in Emerson s garden. Let us 
 record here the list of his works : 
 
 Right Hand of Fellowship at the Ordination of II. B. 
 
 Goodwin. February 17, 1830. 
 Sermon and Letter, to the Second Church, Boston. 1832. 
 
 (Reprinted in u Frothingham s Transcendentalism," 
 
 1876.) 
 
348 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 Historical Discourse delivered before the Citizens of Con 
 cord, 12th September, 1835, on the Second Centennial 
 Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town. Con 
 cord, 1835 (reprinted 1875). 
 Nature. Boston, 1836. 
 
 Carlyle s " Sartor Resartus," edited in conjunction with 
 Le Baron Russell. Introduction by Emerson. Bos 
 ton, 1836. 
 
 Michael Angelo. " North American Review." 1837. 
 Milton. " North American Review. 1838. 
 Letter to President Van Buren (concerning certain wrongs 
 of the Cherokee Indians). "National Intelligencer. 1 
 Washington. 1838. 
 Address before the Senior Class in Divinity College. 
 
 Cambridge, July 15, 1838. 
 Carlyle s Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. (Edited.) 
 
 Boston, 1838. 
 
 " The Dial." Boston, 1840-44. Emerson s contributions 
 are: Vol. I. No. 1, " The Editors to the Reader," 
 "The Problem" (a poem) ; No. 2, "Thoughts on 
 Modern Literature," " New Poetry," u Woodnotes " 
 (poem) ; No. 3, " The Sphinx" (poem), u Thoughts 
 on Art; " No. 4, " Man the Reformer." 
 Vol. II. No. 2, "Painting and Sculpture," "Fate" 
 (poem), "Walter Savage Landor;" No. 3, "The 
 Senses and the Soul." 
 
 Vol. III. No. 1, "Lectures on the Times," "Tact." 
 "Holidays" (poems), "Prayers," " Fourierism and 
 the Socialists." "Chardon Street and Bible Conven 
 tion;" No. 2, " Lectures on the Times" ("The 
 Conservative," " English Reformers "), Saadi " 
 (poem); No. 3, "Lectures on the Times" ("The 
 Transcendentalist"), " Literary Intelligence ;" No. 
 4, "Europe and European Books." 
 Vol. IV. No. ], "Past and Present," "To Rhea " 
 (poem) ; No. 2, " The Comic," " Ode to Beauty," 
 -A Letter;" No. 3, "Tantalus," "Eros," "The 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 349 
 
 Times (poem); No. 4, " The Tragic, " The 
 Young American," "The Visit" (poem). 
 
 Essays. First Series. (12.) Boston, 1841. (With 
 Preface by Carlyle. London, 1841.) 
 
 Obituary Notice of Ezra Ripley, D.D. " Concord Repub 
 lican," October 1, 1841. 
 
 Carlyle s t; Past and Present " (edited). Boston, 1843. 
 
 Essays. Second Series. (9.) Boston, 1844. 
 
 Address delivered in Concord, August 1 , 1844, on the An 
 niversary of the Emancipation of Negroes in the Brit 
 ish West Indies. Boston, 1844. (Reprinted in " The 
 Dial," Cincinnati, November and December, 1860.) 
 
 Editors Address To the Public. First number of the 
 Massachusetts " Quarterly Review." 1847. 
 
 Poems. Boston, 1847. 
 
 War Miss Peabody s ^Esthetic Papers. Boston, 1849. 
 
 Nature Addresses and Lectures. Boston, 1849. 
 
 Representative Men. Boston, 1850. (Translated into 
 Danish by Thorson, and published at Copenhagen, 
 1857). 
 
 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. (Chapters on Marga 
 ret in Concord and in Boston.) Boston, 1852. 
 
 English Traits. Boston, 1856. (Translated by Spielhagen. 
 Hanover, 1857.) 
 
 Samuel lloar. " Putnam s Magazine," December, 1856. 
 
 The Chartist s Complaint (poem). 4i Atlantic Monthly," 
 November, 1857. 
 
 The Rommany Girl. "Atlantic Monthly." 1858. In 
 same year and magazine, the poems " Days," " Brah 
 ma," "Two Rivers," "Waldensamkeit," and essays on 
 " Illusions," " Solitude and Society," " Books," " Per 
 sian Poetry," and " Eloquence." 
 
 The Sacred Dance. From the Persian. Printed in " The 
 Dial, Cincinnati, January, 1860. 
 
 Quatrains. (12.) Cincinnati " Dial," February and March, 
 1860. 
 
 Domestic Life. Printed in " The Dial," Cincinnati, Octo 
 ber, 1860. 
 
350 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 Speeches concerning John Brown. (At Boston, Novem 
 ber 18, 1859 ; at Concord, December 2 ; at Salem, Jan 
 uary G, 1860.) " Echoes of Harper s Ferry," 1860. 
 
 Culture. " Atlantic Monthly." 1860. Also the " Song 
 of Nature." 
 
 Conduct of Life. . Boston, 1860. 
 
 The Test (poem). " Atlantic Monthly," January. 1861. 
 
 American Civilisation. " Atlantic Monthly," April, 1861. 
 
 Old Age. " Atlantic Monthly." 1862. In same year and 
 magazine, u The Titmouse" and " Compensation " 
 (poems). 
 
 Thoreau. kt Atlantic Monthly," August, 1862. (Preface 
 to Thoreau s u Excursions," edited by Emerson. 1866.) 
 
 The President s Proclamation. * Atlantic Monthly," No 
 vember, 1862. 
 
 The Boston Hymn. Read in Boston Music Hall, New 
 Year s Day, 1863. " Atlantic Monthly." 1863. 
 
 Voluntaries. " Atlantic Monthly." 1863. 
 
 Saadi. " Atlantic Monthly." 1864. 
 
 Gulistan, or Rose Garden of Saadi. (Gladwin s transla 
 tion, edited by Emerson, with preliminary essay on 
 Persian Poetry.) Boston, 1865. 
 
 Remarks at the Funeral Services of the President (Lincoln) 
 at Concord. April 19, 1865. Boston: u Living Age," 
 May 13, 1865. 
 
 Thoreau s Letters (edited). Boston, 1865. 
 
 My Garden. - Atlantic Monthly." 1866. 
 
 Character. " North American Review." 1866. 
 
 Terminus. " Atlantic Monthly." 1867. 
 
 Address at a Meeting to Organise the " Free Religious 
 Association." 1867. 
 
 Aspects of Culture. Phi Beta Kapa Address at Harvard 
 University, 1867. " Atlantic Monthly," January, 1868. 
 
 May-Day, and other pieces. Boston, 1867. 
 
 Address before the kt> Free Religious Association." Pro 
 ceedings of Second Annual Meeting. 1869. 
 
 Society and Solitude. Boston, 1870. (Haarlem, trans 
 lated into Dutch by Augusta Pease.) 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 351 
 
 Introduction to Goodwin s edition of Plutarch s iv Morals." 
 Boston, 1870. 
 
 Preface to W. E. Channing s poem, " The Wanderer." 
 Boston, 1871. 
 
 Speech at Howard University. Washington, 1872. 
 
 Address at the Opening of Concord Free Public Library. 
 1873. 
 
 Verses quoted in W. E. Channing s " Thoreau." 1873. 
 
 Address at Unveiling of the " Minute Man " Monument on 
 the Hundredth Anniversary of the Concord Fight, 
 April 19, 1875. 
 
 Select Poems. Boston, 1876. (Containing several not in 
 previous volumes.) 
 
 Letters and Social Aims. Boston, 1S7G. 
 
 Parnassus. A volume of choice poems selected from the 
 whole range of English Literature, by Emerson, with 
 a prefatory Essay. Boston, 1874. 
 
 Demonology. North American Review." 1877. 
 
 Perpetual Forces. " North American Review." 1877. 
 
 Fortune of the Republic. Lecture given at Old South 
 Church, Boston, March 30, 1878. 
 
 The Sovereignty of Ethics. " North American Review." 
 1878. 
 
 The Preacher. (Originally written as a parlour lecture to 
 some divinity students in 1807 ; afterwards enlarged 
 from earlier writings and read in the chapel of Divin 
 ity College, Harvard University, May 5, 1879.) " Uni 
 tarian Review. 1879. 
 
 Preface to " One Hundred Greatest Men." London, 1879. 
 
 Paper on Carlyle read before the Massachusetts Historical 
 Society. " Scribner s Magazine." 1881. 
 
 Superlatives. " The Century." February, 1882. 
 
 But these books do not represent all the diadems 
 and fagots that Emerson received from his days. 
 For he distributed them far and wide ; they are the 
 treasure and strength of innumerable hearts and 
 
352 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 homes. One day as we walked in that garden he 
 gave me a plum, saying, 4 At its best it is the fruit of 
 paradise." Such indeed I found it; the light and 
 warmth of many days were garnered in the lustrous 
 fruit, and the last subtle touch of its perfection was 
 added by the ripening beam in the giver s eye. The 
 divine genius was in all his herbs and apples, and al 
 though he might put on the mask of the Days, and 
 veil his gifts in casual humourous phrase, his every 
 word and action were of the organic beauty of his na 
 ture. Such gifts as he had could not be given, any 
 more than those of the Days, except to enterprise. 
 
 It may seem a light thing that Emerson should give 
 me a plum in his garden and call it the fruit of para 
 dise. It was lightly said and done ; nevertheless I be 
 gan to realise that the secret of wisdom is to be able 
 to recognise the day while it is shining, as it will be 
 recognised in the long perspective of memory, and 
 every day that I was able to bear that in mind, while 
 with Emerson, brought its plum. Some of these are 
 gathered in this chapter of further personal recollec 
 tions. 
 
 " The Day cannot be known to the Day," says 
 Goethe. But Emerson shewed us that it can be. When 
 did he learn this art of living out all his days ? I have 
 already told of one who in his youth drove with Emer 
 son on Sunday to his appointment at East Lexington 
 and heard him repeat George Herbert s hymn, " Sweet 
 day ! so cool, so calm, so bright." Twenty years later 
 he used to teach us along the same road that every day 
 is a splendour of opportunity, and that immortality is 
 but a verbal counter unless it be an instant experience. 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 353 
 
 " Deb Socco hopes that her Deb Soccoism will last for 
 ever. She should be encouraged to get rid of her Deb 
 Soccoism." "An actually existent fly is more import 
 ant than a possibly existent angel." This last was 
 said in reference to some new speculation in eschatol- 
 ogy. "When I talked with Coleridge and others 
 about immortality, it soon became slain that they had 
 nothing to say equal to Plato s phaBdo. Their talk 
 was only a fine apology for nability to help me where 
 I desired help, and so you would find any opinion of 
 my own if I should give it you to-day. But of what 
 use were even the certainty of an eternity of days 
 until we have learned how to realise the fulness of 
 one ? Eternity is not duration. The artist said pingo 
 in ceternitatem, and this ceternitatem, if I paint for it, is 
 already mine." 
 
 In every way possible, and with every hint, did our 
 loving teacher try to save us from delusions that might 
 defraud us of our lives ; if any one nodded and fell 
 into teleology, Emerson s eye was sure to be caught at 
 that moment by a curious wildflower, or unique grass 
 blade, or a spider s web in which our speculative fledg 
 ling was softly enmeshed. But the great instruction 
 was that he made our day so beautiful and so lumin 
 ous that it seemed always festal when he was near, 
 and one s heart spake as Glauco to Socrates, " The 
 whole of life, O Teacher, is the measure of hearing 
 such discourse as thine." 
 
 It was afternoon when I first met Emerson, but 
 the morning was in his face as he welcomed me. 
 He was now fifty years of age, but seemed younger ; 
 his manner was cordial and simple, and his voice 
 
354 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 at once relieved me of the trembling with which I stood 
 before him the first great man I had ever seen. (I 
 had seen, however, the President and Senators whose 
 names were upon the tongue of the nation.) Mrs. 
 Emerson sent in an invitation that I should dine with 
 them. Afterwards he took me on a walk ; and while 
 he was preparing I had an opportunity of looking 
 around his library. Over the mantelpiece hung his 
 " Parcae : " on it was a statuette of Goethe, of whom 
 there was an engraved portrait on the walls, also por 
 traits of Shakespeare, Swedenborg, and Montaigne. 
 Afterwards Emerson shewed me a number of other por 
 traits of Goethe which he had collected, and severs! of 
 Dante, including a photograph of the Ravenna mask. 
 I also remember a beautiful engraving of Puck, flying 
 through the air under the stars, whose light contrasted 
 with that in the windows of a castle. The furniture of 
 the room was old-fashioned and simple. The shelves 
 at which I looked most hungrily were those occupied 
 by Emerson s own manuscript lectures and essays, of 
 which there seemed to be enough to fill many volumes. 
 
 On this first walk I^merson took me to Walden Water. 
 A crystal was the lakelet that day, in setting of emer 
 ald, clear and calm, the fit haunt of a poet. In its 
 transparent depths were seen the fishes, and around it 
 sang many birds. In a few moments we were swim 
 ming in the sparkling water. 
 
 Having bathed, we sat down on the shore, near the 
 site of Thoreau s vanished hermitage ; then Walden 
 and its woods began to utter their soft spells through 
 the lips of my poet. Emerson s conversation was dif 
 ferent from that of any other I have met. The contrast 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 355 
 
 between his talk and that of Carlyle was remarkable. 
 Carlyle was, in a sense, the more striking figure, but 
 his manner and tone revived dreams of historic charac 
 ters ; one said, " Surely this is Jeremias," or presently 
 it might be Diogenes, Hans Sachs, Luther, or some 
 other personage more or less conventionalised in the 
 imagination. But Emerson suggested none other ; he 
 was strictly incomparable, and he never appeared to 
 speak what had been thought or said before that mo 
 ment. One always felt that there was a line around 
 Carlyle s vehemence and wrathful eloquence ; there 
 was something that stood for authority ; but every word 
 of Emerson began wiiere authority ended. Emerson 
 was an instinctive artist, and never brought out cannon 
 to slay sparrows. Every one who has witnessed the 
 imperial dignity, or felt the weight of authentic know 
 ledge, which characterised Carlyle s conversation to 
 such an extent that his slight utterances seemed to 
 stand out like pillars of Hercules, must also have felt 
 the earth tremble, as if under " the hammer of Thor" 
 (to remember an expression I once heard Emerson use 
 about Carlyle) ; but though the same falsehood might 
 be fatally smitten by our American, it was by the in 
 visible, inaudible sunstroke, which left the sky as bright 
 and blue as before. Where general truths and princi 
 ples were discussed, whilst Carlyle astonished by the 
 range of his sifted knowledge, he did not convey an 
 impression of having originally thought out problems 
 involved in other departments than his own ; but the 
 mind of Emerson had no special habitat ; there was 
 scarcely a realm of science and art in which he could 
 not instruct the academies. I have heard Agassiz say 
 
356 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 that he preferred Emerson s conversation on scientific 
 subjects to that of any man he knew. Monologues, 
 like those of Carlyle, were impossible to Emerson ; 
 they come of the more viviparous mind ; whereas Em 
 erson s talk was in phrases of which each was, indeed, 
 felicitous, but more remarkable for its productiveness 
 under further thought and experience. An English 
 physician, a friend of Emerson, told me that Emerson 
 required a little wine to make his table-talk perfect. 
 
 1 remember him on that day at Walden as Bunyan s 
 pilgrim might remember the Interpreter. He listened 
 to some rough fishermen in boats, far out from shore, 
 calling to each other about their affairs, remarking how 
 their voices were intoned by the distance and the water 
 to music. He pointed out some of the Walden flora, 
 and observing the suggestiveness of some shapes, as 
 the arrowhead, shewed that he had already an original 
 plant-lore. He spoke only as occasion arose, and was 
 very gracious to me. There was no need that he 
 should talk ; simply to be with him was to me joy 
 enough, and I put no questions. We were having 
 heated debates in theology at the Divinity College, and 
 to leave them for this presence was like a plunge from 
 sultry air into Walden. "I am not much interested 
 in such discussions," he said; "it does seem deplor 
 able that there should be a tendency in some people 
 to creeds which would take man back to the chimpan 
 zee." "I have very good grounds for being a Uni 
 tarian and a Trinitarian too. I need not nibble for 
 ever at one loaf, but eat it and thank God for it, and 
 earn another." He told me about Theodore Parker, 
 who was evidently a most picturesque person to him, 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 357 
 
 and I think he compared him with Socrates. He also 
 had once thought of building himself a study out there 
 beside Waldeu. But Thoreau was " not in awe of 
 early tea, and could do what others cannot." He 
 found in Thoreau that deeper piety vulgarly regarded 
 as impiety, like George Herbert s sweet intimacy with 
 his deity, "with whom he sometimes cracks jokes." 
 What Emerson once called the " wailing sound" com 
 ing from the young world struggling to free itself from 
 dogmas, was but faintly heard in woods melodious 
 with the faith and the flute of Thoreau ; but when 
 ever that sound reached him, Emerson felt grateful 
 to Theodore Parker. "It is a comfort to remember 
 that there is one sane voice amid the religious and 
 political confusions of the country." He could not 
 go to church, but supported the village minister, be 
 cause "it is well to have a conscientious man to sit 
 on town committees, to be active in the moral affairs 
 of the place, to attend the sick and the dead." I had 
 been indignant at a remark made publicly by the said 
 minister (Frost) about his (Emerson s) utter hopeless 
 ness when his child died, but if he had heard of it, 
 Emerson felt no resentment, and continued his support 
 to this minister and his successors. 
 
 Emerson often advised above all things care of 
 health. " Sound sleep is genius," he said. He quoted 
 Dr. Johnson s declaration, "every man is a rascal 
 when he is sick," and in his playful serious way said 
 he thought it might be true that sickness is the result 
 of some wickedness. "One sometimes suspects that 
 outer have something to do with inner complaints, and 
 when one is ill, something the devil s the matter." 
 
358 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 He gave me much counsel about books and reading. 
 It was, he said, a great point to get hold of the right 
 book when it was personally needed, and not too soon 
 or too late. "The time comes when one requires 
 quantity rather than quality;" Goethe awaits that. 
 Not everybody is old enough to read the "Elective 
 Affinities." He maintained that the best in every 
 book is translatable, and that to read foreign books in 
 the original after they were translated, was like swim 
 ming a river instead of going over the bridge. It 
 might do for an occasional exercise. He delighted in 
 the poetical translations from the German by some of 
 his friends, J. S. Dwight, Dr. Frothingham ; and, 
 especially, a few by Christopher P. Cranch, whose 
 genius was highly valued by Emerson, as I need 
 hardly say to those who have read that charming book, 
 " The Bird and the Bell." He often spoke of Carlyle 
 with warm personal affection, but it was plain to me 
 that the later works of his friend were regarded by 
 Emerson as unhealthy. When the " Life of Friedrich " 
 was appearing he derived great benefit from it, and 
 wrote warm thanks to Carlyle for each volume ; but 
 there was some hesitation when it became a question 
 whether any youth should re-enter the old atmosphere 
 of enthusiasm which had surrounded Carlyle s writings. 
 As much care was needed to get at the best in Car- 
 lyle s book as to get at the heart of the man. " When 
 I was in England," he said, "young men desired me 
 to introduce them to Carlyle ; but I said, Why will 
 you have this vitriol thrown over you ? 
 
 In current literature, he said, the really useful books 
 are those that deal seriously with some prominent 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 359 
 
 point or question. 4 The interest of Jane Eyre, for 
 instance, is that it puts earnestly sueh a question. 
 There are writers who write much, and much that is 
 not important, but still shew ability to advance thought 
 at some point. Those are the writers to get hold of." 
 " These novels by Elizabeth Shepherd have an interest 
 in the fact that they shew powerful persons recognising 
 character and superiority under whatever plain exte 
 rior or in humble position, as in Counterparts. " 
 Talking of Browning s " Paracelsus " he did not think 
 Paracelsus aspired ; " it is the mere canine hunger for 
 knowledge for the power it gives." "When nature 
 wants an artist, she makes Tennyson, and everything 
 good is artistic." The work of Tennyson he liked 
 least was " In Memoriain." He valued highly the ro 
 mances of George Borrow, George Sand, and Manzoni. 
 Bat Emerson was rarely enthusiastic except about cer 
 tain ancient books, and especially " scriptures." " The 
 Bhagavat Gita is of high importance, and also the 
 Bhagavat Purana, ah ! there is a book to be read on 
 one s knees! These Oriental bibles are more intel 
 lectual than the Hebrew and Christian, but not so 
 fervent." He personally loved Saadi. "I lately 
 found a charming story about Saadi. He was trav 
 elling on foot towards Damascus, alone and weary. 
 Presently he overtook a boy travelling the same way, 
 and asked him to point out the road. The boy offered 
 to guide him some distance, and in the course of con 
 versation, Saadi spoke of having come from Persia and 
 from Schiraz. Schiraz ! exclaimed the boy, then 
 perhaps you can tell me something of Sheik Saadi who 
 resides there. The other said, I am Saadi. In- 
 
3b EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 stantly the boy knelt and kissed the hem of his skirt 
 with tears, and after that could not be parted from 
 Saadi, but guided and served him during all his stay 
 in Damascus." " Von Hammer s Redekunste is one 
 of the precious books ; and Hafiz, the tongue of the 
 secret, as they called him, who, however, wants 
 translating. The Desatir, or Book of the Seven 
 Prophets, is one of the great collections." 
 
 Careful readers of Walt Whitman will not wonder 
 that Emerson should have been the first to greet him. 
 The Oriental largeness and optimism which he admired 
 in ancient books are not to be found in any modern 
 page except that of Walt Whitman. There was an 
 outcry when Emerson s enthusiastic letter to Walt 
 Whitman was published, and some friends wrote to 
 him of misfortunes he had led them into by inducing 
 them to try reading the " Leaves of Grass " aloud in 
 the presence of ladies. Emerson agreed that if he had 
 known his letter to Walt Whitman would be published, 
 he might have made some deductions from his praise. 
 " There are parts of the book where I hold my nose as 
 I read. One must not be too squeamish when a chem 
 ist brings him to a mass of filth and says, See, the 
 great laws are at work here also ; but it is a fine art if he 
 can deodorise his illustration. However, I do not fear 
 that any man who has eyes in his head will fail to see 
 the genius in these poems. Those are terrible eyes to 
 walk along Broadway. It is all there, as if in an 
 auctioneer s catalogue." 
 
 Emerson s letter to Whitman says of the " Leaves of 
 Grass," " It meets the demand I am always making 
 of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 361 
 
 much handiwork or too much lymph in the tempera 
 ment were making our Western wits fat and mean. I 
 give you joy of your free and brave thought." This 
 was written in July, 1855. By Emerson s suggestion, 
 being about to visit New York, I went to see Walt 
 Whitman, and, I think, sent a report to Concord. 
 Soon after Emerson had praised Whitman s democratic 
 poetry, some Bohemians invented a story that Emerson 
 had been converted by Walt from his spirituality and 
 solitude, and had come to the conclusion that motley 
 was the only wear. He must enter into the holes and 
 dens and know life. Consequently finding himself one 
 day in Broadway so ran the fable he put on the 
 air of a rough as well as he could, and presenting him 
 self at a public bar, demanded " a glass of grog." It 
 was said the barkeeper folded his arms, looked his custo 
 mer in the eye for a moment, and remarked, " I guess 
 lemonade will do for you. 
 
 When his own poetry was praised Emerson interrupt 
 ed with, " You forget ; we are damned for poetry." He 
 included his own poetry under his label for much Ameri 
 can work of that kind " verses." None could come 
 up to his unyielding standard. Rufus Griswald he held 
 an interesting person, as the one man who has discover 
 ed the existence of American Poetry. Not that he did 
 not love and value his contemporaries and literary 
 friends ; he rejoiced in them ; but he was remorseless in 
 his demands about poetry. Poe was merely " the man 
 who jingles." Of moderns, Carlyle most nearly ap 
 proached his poetic standard. Of himself he said once, 
 when forced to speak, " My reputation, such as it is, 
 will be one day cited to prove the poverty of this time." 
 
362 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 Emerson s poetry was never so much liked as his prose ; 
 for the reason, as I believe, that it presupposed in the 
 reader a much wider knowledge of science, philosophy, 
 and mythology. 
 
 In my first summer with Emerson he gave me Arthur 
 Clough s " Bothie " to read. He read to me the beau 
 tiful lines in which Philip describes the silent look of 
 Elspie as she passed him. The scholar suddenly ter 
 minated his flirtations with the Highland maiden and 
 disappeared, and writes back to his vacation-com 
 rades : 
 
 u I was walking along, some two miles from the cottage, 
 Full of my dreamings. A girl went by in a party with 
 
 others ; 
 She had a cloak on, was stepping on quickly, for rain was 
 
 beginning. 
 But as she passed, from her hood I saw her eyes look at 
 
 me; 
 So quick a glance, so regardless I, that although I had felt 
 
 it,. 
 You couldn t properly say our eyes met. She cast it and 
 
 left it." 
 
 In the vacation I found a room to lodge in at Con 
 cord, on Ponkawtassett Hill. Emerson had offered to 
 lend me books, and to give me suggestions as to read 
 ing ; though, indeed, what I most desired was to study 
 his own works, and to be as much as possible in his 
 presence. His mornings I always held sacred, but it 
 was his custom to take a walk in the afternoon, and he 
 invited me to go with him on these. I was fearful 
 about this also, for I knew he loved solitude, but he 
 promised that if he desired to be alone he would let me 
 know. Two or three times every week I went to walk 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 363 
 
 with him. Once or twice I thought I observed a doubt 
 in his face, and proposed to take his children on a 
 boating or other excursion, for I had already been ac 
 cepted by them as a comrade. 
 
 Emerson s mission was to individual minds. Those 
 who were drawn to him, or those in whom he perceived 
 a tendency of growth, found in him a good shepherd 
 who carried them in his arms. He did not like to deal 
 with people on general principles, but recognised the 
 particular talent and the state of each who sought him, 
 and was maternal in his faithfulness no less than his 
 tenderness to them. He was the friend of souls. For 
 this reason few of his conversations would bear to be 
 reported. I was just twenty-one years of age when I 
 first met him, and often since, reflecting how crude I 
 was, his patience and kindness have been remembered 
 with grateful emotion. 
 
 He sometimes talked to young men of love and mat 
 rimony. He feared that intellectual men were those 
 most apt to make mistakes in this most vital of inter 
 ests, perhaps through a certain precocity which might 
 be felt as maturity. They were the natural lovers of 
 beauty, and all the more should study beauty to know 
 the farther beauty. The best security of happiness in 
 marriage is that it should follow a fair degree of culture, 
 especially in the taste for beauty. The age waits for that 
 tardy kind of youth who will not rush upon a career, but 
 can wait. " The engineer asked, How long shall we 
 wait for that signal to move ? The guard replied, Wait 
 till the wheels rust off their axles. Any delay is bet 
 ter than a collision with the forces that cannot be re 
 sisted." With regard to the various schemes of people 
 
364 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 for reforming the world, he thought that the danger in 
 all such things is the tendency to pedantry. The 
 Quaker making a great point of his hat and buttons 
 was what movements are likely to come to when they 
 are organised. They are alive to the first man, to the 
 next they are a tradition, to the third a dogma. 
 Against "spiritualism" he was strong in his admoni 
 tions. If one cannot trust one s senses there is nothing 
 and nobody he can trust. 
 
 But on most matters I found him not inclined to give 
 very positive opinions, especially, I suppose, to one 
 then inclined to worship him ; his constant aim being 
 to lead out thought, and to excite one to take his own 
 view of a matter. I think if Emerson ever affected 
 anything it must have been the interest he took in the 
 nascent ideas of some of his young admirers. He 
 never snubbed any of those who gathered around him, 
 but gave to each the right word to be cherished for 
 ever. 
 
 There could be no question, however, about the 
 delight with which he sometimes sat at the feet of chil 
 dren. I have known him quote the opinions of his 
 own in grave companies. " My son says of Tom 
 Hughes characters, These are real boys, and I have 
 great faith in his opinion." A host of the poems col 
 lected in " Parnassus" were read to his children in the 
 stages of their growth, and I doubt not some are there 
 through domestic suffrage. His talk with any child 
 that approached him was as gracious and dignified as 
 his conversation with elder persons ; he was dear to 
 every child that knew him, and these were many. 
 
 He was fond of the festivities and pleasure-parties 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 365 
 
 which form so important a feature of the Concord sum 
 mer. " Whom shall we invite to the berrying?" cried 
 his daughter, running in. "All children from six 
 years to sixty," was the reply. Edith looked steadily 
 for a moment, then ran off to act in the spirit rather 
 than the letter of the answer. On these occasions 
 Emerson had a way of presently turning up at some 
 point of our march, and his grave conversation with 
 one or two of the elders was rarely so charming as 
 when thus casual, and alternating with remarks to the 
 children. 
 
 Emerson s optimism was qualified, if at all, only by 
 a horror of sickness ; in all other matters he was so 
 free from all impatience that it seemed to amuse him in 
 others. He sometimes appeared to require defenders, 
 and was not without them. Once when Emerson, in 
 his study, was talking in his finest strain, his farm 
 hand broke his sentence in two with report of a broken 
 rake. The Celtic head protruding in at the door said, 
 "The hay s not half in, sir, and the rake we got at 
 Mr. Jones s is broke ; here it is, sir." "Bring it here, 
 Stephen," said Emerson, and proceeded to examine 
 the implement profoundly. It seemed to me as he 
 held it beneath his half-inspired, half-mirthful eye, that 
 it was not a rake concrete but the rake absolute and 
 eternal. " Stephen," he said at last, " take it to Mr. 
 Smith to be mended." " But," remonstrated Stephen 
 indignantly, " we only got it yesterday, sir; hadn t I 
 better take it back to Jones." " Mr. Jones probably 
 did not know it was bad ; we ll take it to Smith, 
 Stephen." When the Irishman had disappeared, Em 
 erson intimated his fear that Stephen would compel 
 
366 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 poor Jones to mend it after all, not being able to see 
 that, even on his own theory, Jones was the least com 
 petent for his great purpose getting in the hay. Of 
 course I have not the actual names right in this anec 
 dote, which, for the rest, is interesting apart from the 
 gentle dignity and friendly simplicity with which the 
 great man conversed with his workman. In truth, 
 many a lesson did Emerson learn from such humble 
 and faithful workmen. He himself was farming invis 
 ible acres above their heads, but with the same reality 
 and necessary method as any sower going forth to sow. 
 He loved to talk with gardener or farmer, if occasion 
 arose, and was no doubt glad to have a rake broken 
 now and then to supply occasion. Many of their 
 hints have blossomed on his page. 
 
 I once visited with him Longworth s Catawba wine 
 vaults at Cincinnati, the workmen in which were 
 chiefly Germans. As we were leaving, I mentioned 
 what the wine-makers had told me, that the bottled 
 wine stirred at the vine-blossoming season, and it was 
 then casks and bottles were most apt to burst. He 
 smiled as we passed on, and said, " The idea is very 
 German." Seven years later I read in " May- 
 Day" 
 
 " When trellised grapes their flowers unmask, 
 And the new-born tendrils twine, 
 The old wine darkling in the cask 
 Feels the bloom on the living vine, 
 And bursts the hoops at hint of spring : 
 And so, perchance, in Adam s race, 
 Cf Eden s bower some dreamlike trace 
 Survived the Flight, and swam the Flood, 
 And wakes the wish m youngest blood 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 367 
 
 To tread the forfeit Paradise, 
 
 And feed once more the exile s eyes ; 
 
 And ever when the happy child 
 
 In May beholds the blooming wild, 
 
 And hears in heaven the bluebird sing, 
 
 Onward, he cries, your baskets bring 
 
 In the next field is air more mild, 
 
 And o er yon hazy crest is Eden s balmier spring. " 
 
 Although Emerson s garb was not rustic, it was 
 plain, never smart, and, with his homely speech and 
 simple manners, he did not find the country-folk shy. 
 The phenomena of the universe were going on in and 
 around Concord, and Emerson kept up a good rela 
 tion with the humblest purveyors of fact and experi 
 ence. They w r ere richly rewarded when the day came 
 for Emerson to lecture in the town-hall, when many a 
 farming villager saw his prosaic fact risen to a star 
 and shining in its constellation. 
 
 What a day was that when Emersou s lecture came 
 on ! Remembering what Longfellow had told me 
 about those sophisticated Bostonians whose faces were 
 as extinguished lamps when listening to Emerson s 
 early lectures, I have remarked the contrast when, 
 with illumined countenances, his villagers were gath 
 ered before him at Concord. They knew his voice and 
 followed him. All the sermons in the village churches 
 for a year were not so well remembered as some of his 
 sentences. It has seemed to me that Emerson never 
 spoke so well elsewhere as to his Concord audience. 
 When I first heard him there, he appeared, as he arose, 
 to be the very type of the New England farmer, so 
 plain in dress and so thoroughly standing on his own 
 feet. Ere long he was unsheathed, and we were in 
 
368 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 the hall of Pericles. It was then that I first heard 
 Emerson, and, while it is the most vivid experience of 
 my life, I find it nearly impossible to transcribe it. I 
 recall no gesture, only an occasional swaying forward 
 of the body by the impulse of earnestness. Though 
 nearly every word had been written, the manuscript 
 did not hold his eye, which kept its magnetic play 
 upon the audience. At one time, indeed, he searched 
 his memory for a quotation from Plato which he wished 
 to introduce, his hand going to his chin and his face 
 turning aside from us as if he would find the words 
 written on the wall. The sentence found was well 
 worth the pause. As he proceeded it was as if genial 
 sunbeams dialled themselves on the mind in unfolding 
 buds of beautiful reasons and the closing of errors. 
 Now and then fell a softly consuming sunstroke upon 
 some reptilian baseness of the time coiled in the gar 
 den that grew around his thought. One was not the 
 same man after such an experience. There had been 
 a fall and a redemption, vanishings from us, but no 
 blank misgivings, rather a new courage of hearts 
 thenceforth moving about in a realisable new world. 
 Never, once more must I say, were flowers more sym 
 bolical than those pinks, pansies, and roses, shaped 
 into an open book above the Sage, as he lay in Con 
 cord church, with " Finis " on the page. His weapons 
 against error and wrong were like those roses, in 
 Goethe s Faust, with which the angels drove away the 
 demons, and his sceptre was made known by blossom 
 ing in his hand. 
 
 Emerson s humour as read has lost some of the 
 flavour it possessed when spoken. Indeed, I have 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 369 
 
 noted here and there the omission from a printed essay 
 of some sally which elicited when it was spoken much 
 mirth, and think he was inclined to suspect any pas 
 sage which had excited laughter. There was omitted 
 from his lecture on u Superlatives," when recently 
 printed in " The Century, " a remark about oaths. The 
 oath, he said, could only be used by a thinking man in 
 some great moral emergency ; in such rare case it 
 might be the verdict of the universe ; but, he added 
 in a low tone, as if thinking to himself as he turned 
 his page " but sham damns disgust." I remember, 
 too, how quietly a little drama was mounted on his 
 face when he described a pedant pedagogue question 
 ing a little maid at the school-examination about 
 Odoacer and Alaric. Sylvina can t remember, but 
 suggests that Odoacer was defeated ; and the professor 
 tartly replies, " No, he defeated the Romans." But it 
 is of no importance at all about Odoacer, and a great 
 deal of importance about Sylvina; and if she says he 
 was defeated, why, he had better, a great deal, have 
 been defeated than give her a moment s annoy. 
 Odoacer, if there had been a particle of the gentleman 
 in him, would rather have been defeated a thousand 
 times, than that Sylvina s feelings should be hurt. 
 
 These humourous passages came from Emerson gent 
 ly, little wayside surprises, and without any air of in 
 tention to excite laughter. One of his wittiest lectures, 
 never published, was that on the French ; it is full of 
 racy anecdotes derived from his sojourn in Paris during 
 the revolution of 1848. In it he contrasted French 
 love of display with English love of reality. "A 
 Frenchman invented the dickey ; an Englishman added 
 
370 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 the shirt." He delivered this lecture to a large 
 audience in Philadelphia where an incident followed a 
 story he told. "A Frenchman and an Englishman 
 fought a duel in the dark ; they were to be let out of 
 the room after two pistol reports had been heard. The 
 Englishman, to avoid wounding his antagonist, crept 
 round to the fireplace ; he fired up the chimney and 
 brought down the Frenchman." After the mirth that 
 ensued was over, Emerson passed on to grave discourse 
 with the words, " The French will have things theatri 
 cal ; God will have things real." But some individual 
 tardily caught the joke about the duel, and his solitary 
 explosion set the house in a roar that made the lecturer 
 pause. 
 
 Emerson s conversation on religious topics was al 
 ways occasional, and it was strictly adapted to the per 
 sonal conditions. He taught those who would be 
 teachers that truth could never be upheld by any word 
 that would make it repulsive. We should remember 
 that all liberal people were once orthodox, and that the 
 tenacity of orthodoxy was a good sinew for the farther 
 work. " Every leading man among the Unitarians 
 came from among the orthodox." These born Unita 
 rians he thought lacked momentum. I never knew him 
 dissuade any one from entering the pulpit which he had 
 abandoned ; he left us to adjust ourselves to practical 
 exigencies as we could, only always reminding his 
 young friends that there was a goal to be reached, and 
 expecting the most of them." " Well, yes," he wrote to 
 one just ordained, " go bravely onward, and we seniors 
 shall wait, with a hope that may become homage, the 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 371 
 
 experiences of faithful years, and the fulfilment of gen 
 erous promises." 
 
 One evening, in a small company, I had the misfor 
 tune to get into a controversial conversation with some 
 ladies who were evidently pained by some of my opin 
 ions, or the crude expression of them. Emerson sat 
 in silence, but when we were going home said, "I 
 thought at one time I would put in an oar, but con 
 cluded it were better not. You were quite right in your 
 criticismSf^but, after all, one need not remind a child 
 enjoying a play that the scene is all pasteboard, all those 
 jewels are paste." "But," I pleaded, "it did not 
 occur to me they were children." " Well, that is a 
 fair reply. People ought not to remain children." 
 
 On a berrying party, just before my graduation, Em 
 erson spoke to me about our studies in Divinity Col 
 lege. I enumerated them, and he said, " I cannot feel 
 interested in Christianity. The thoughts and words of 
 a great man becoming at last the inheritance of don 
 keys, they make them into a system suitable to them 
 selves and into institutions ; for these they will lie, and 
 will hate and malign others who have different thoughts ; 
 and they do not see that their arguments are refuted 
 by their lack of the m nd and character which alone 
 might prove their case." 
 
 I can only give the substance of this pregnant 
 thought, with exception of the first sentence, that start 
 led me, and I have not forgotten the words. " It 
 would seem," he said again, "that there should be an 
 end sometime to these controversies and this casuistry. 
 Why should one ask me an opinion about miracles ? I 
 am familiar with similar narratives in other books matt 
 
372 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 the Bible, and have no difficulty in dealing with them 
 there. Look into the diamond e} T es of that child, and 
 see her hair of sunshine. What is a Jewish or Chris 
 tian miracle beside it ? " 
 
 What we used to call the problem of evil was no 
 problem to Emerson. He told me it had been made 
 clear to him when he first came to a perception of the 
 law of development in nature " from the sponge up 
 to Hercules," to remember his phrase of 1835. The 
 fact lay in that phrase, "arrested development." 
 There is no evil in nature, in the theologic sense of 
 evil ; each organisation is fit for its own purpose, but 
 when it is not fit for mine I call it evil. Cat is evil to 
 mouse. If the obstructed is of higher organisation 
 than the obstructor, he erects his standard of good, and 
 whatever is contrary to it he pronounces bad. Devel 
 opment is shewn in the degree of approach to that ; all 
 that falls short of the standard is arrest. Immorality 
 means people living out their several shortcomings, or 
 comings-short of the social standard. Prisons are 
 asylums for arrested developments. This phenomenon 
 of arrest in nature was popularly called the Devil. 
 But since this Devil was adopted by theology he has 
 become a name for some good things, as one calls him 
 u the great Second Best." This is the substance of 
 what Emerson said. 
 
 I close these anecdotes of days passed with Emerson 
 with recollections of a Sunday morning when he deliv 
 ered a discourse to five thousand people in Boston 
 Music Hall, from the desk then recently made vacant 
 by Theodore Parker s death. No doubt when this dis 
 course is published it will shew discrepancies with my 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 373 
 
 notes, but I give my impressions as written shortly 
 after listening to it. He began by calling attention to 
 the tendency to simplification. The inventor knows 
 that a machine is new and improvable when it has a 
 great many parts. The chemists find the infinite vari 
 ety of things contained in a few elements, and physi 
 cists promise that this number shall be reduced. 
 Faraday declares his belief that all things will in the 
 end be reduced to one element with two polarities. 
 Religious progress has similarly been in the direction 
 of simplification. Every great religion has in its ulti 
 mate development told its whole secret, concentrated 
 its force, in some simple maxims. In our youth we 
 talk of the various virtues, the many dangers and 
 trials of life ; as we get older we find ourselves return 
 ing to the proverbs of the nursery. 
 
 " A few strong instincts and a few plain rules, 
 Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought 
 More for mankind at this unhappy day 
 Than all the pride of intellect and thought." 
 
 In religion one old book serves many lands, ages, 
 and varieties of character ; nay, one or two golden 
 rules out of the book are enough. The many teachers 
 and Scriptures are at last but various routes by which 
 we always come to the simple law of obedience to the 
 light in the soul. " Seek nothing outside of thyself," 
 says one; "Believe nothing against thy own spirit," 
 echoes another part of the world. Jesus said, "Be 
 lowly ; hunger and thirst after justice ; of your own 
 minds judge what is right." Swedenborg teaches that 
 
374 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 heaven and hell are the loves of the soul. George 
 Fox removes the bushel from the light within. The 
 substance of all morals is that a man should adhere to 
 the path which the inner light has marked before him. 
 The great waste in the world comes of the misapplica 
 tion of energy. The tragedies of the soul are strung 
 on those threads not spun out of our own hearts. One 
 records of Michael Angelo that he found him working 
 on his statue with a lamp stuck in his cap, and it might 
 almost symbolise the holier light of patient devotion to 
 his art. No matter what your work is, let it be yours ; 
 no matter if you are tinker or preacher, blacksmith or 
 President, let what you are doing be organic, let it be 
 in your bones, and you open the door by which the 
 affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you. 
 You shall have the hidden joy, and shall carry suc 
 cess with you. Look to yourself rather than to mate 
 rials : nothing is unmanageable to a good hand ; no 
 place slippery to a good foot ; all things are clear to a 
 good head. The sin of dogmatism, of creeds and cate 
 chisms, is that they destroy mental character. Intel 
 lect without character is mere fidgetiness. The youth 
 says that he believes, when he is only browbeaten ; he 
 says he thinks so and so, when that so and so are the 
 denial of any right to think. Simplicity and self-trust 
 are thus lost, and with them the sentiment of obligation 
 to a principle of life and honour. In the legends of the 
 Round Table it is told that a witch wishing to make 
 her child supremely wise, prepared certain herbs and 
 put them in a pot to boil, intending to bathe the child s 
 eyes with the decoction. She set a shepherd boy to 
 stir the pot whilst she went away. Whilst he stirred 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 375 
 
 it a raven dropped a twig into the pot, which spattered 
 three drops of the liquid into the shepherd s eyes. 
 Immediately all the future became as if passing before 
 his eyes ; and seeing that when the witch returned she 
 meant to kill him, he left the pot and fled to the woods. 
 Now if three drops of that all-revealing decoction 
 should suddenly get into the eyes of every human being 
 crowding along Washington street some day, how 
 many of them would still go on with the affair they are 
 pursuing on the street ? Probably they would nearly 
 all come to a dead stand ! But there would, let us 
 hope, be here and there a happy child of the Most 
 High, who had taken hold of her or his life s thread by 
 sacred appointment. These would move on without 
 even a pause : the unveiled future would shew the 
 futility of many schemes, the idleness of many labours ; 
 but every genuine aim would only be exalted, and 
 shewn in eternal and necessary relations. Finally, 
 Humility was, the speaker declared, the one element 
 to which all virtues are reducible. "It was revealed 
 unto me," said the old Quaker, " that what other men 
 trample on must be thy food." It is the spirit that 
 accepts our trust, and is thus the creator of character 
 and the guide to power. Then, lowering his voice, as 
 one might speak on his knees, he recited the sublime 
 paradoxes of Dante s apostrophe to the Virgin : V 
 
 u O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy son, 
 Created beings all in lowliness 
 Surpassing, as in height thou art 
 Above them all." 
 
376 EMERSON AT HOME AXD ABROAD. 
 
 In conclusion, Emerson related the story from Man- 
 zoni s " I Promessi Sposi" of the nobleman who slew 
 another in a brawl, in penitence for which he became 
 a friar. When the slain man s brother demanded this 
 Fra Cristoforo s humiliation before the proud family 
 not that he cared much for his brother, a worthless 
 fellow, but to make a page in the family history the 
 friar was eager so to atone for his deed. There was 
 no attempt at effect in Emerson s descriptions no 
 gestures yet the subtlest actor could not more have 
 moved the vast audience. On his face was seen that 
 face of the friar in which every eye read perfect sin 
 cerity and courage. We saw the friar, frank and 
 fearless, kneeling to confess his wrong, and, pleading 
 in justification, ask pardon of those lie had deprived 
 of a brother. We saw his victory through humiliation, 
 the servants kissing the hem of his coarse garment, 
 the proud lord hastening to raise him, to disown angei, 
 to offer him fine food which he would not taste, beg 
 ging only a little bread and salt as a token of forgive 
 ness ; and finally, when Fra Cristoforo had departed 
 through the company, kneeling for the blessing of him 
 who had knelt, we saw the bewildered nobleman say 
 ing, " That devil of a monk, if he had knelt there 
 longer, I believe I should have asked his pardon for 
 killing my own brother." A smile beamed on the face 
 of the speaker, and played on the faces before him, at 
 these his last words ; but by the time he gathered up 
 Lis pages and sat down, his listeners were in tears. 
 For some moments the assembly of five thousand sat 
 in a stillness that was sacred. 
 
THE DIADEM OF DAYS. 377 
 
 This man in the beginning of that generation had 
 been compelled to leave his pulpit because he could 
 not administer an Eastern sacrament : now did we 
 receive from him the substance of that shadow, and 
 the kneeling heart whispered Take, eat: it is his 
 body and his blood he gives thee. 
 
378 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 LETFIE. 
 
 LIFE is unnecessarily long," was a sentence that 
 once startled an audience listening to Emerson. 
 It might be true enough of those he described as float 
 ing balloon-like over lands and seas, and settling 
 down the same bubbles of breath that started ; but 
 for this man visibly and audibly growing, it was ap 
 palling to contemplate decay and death. Long years 
 afterwards I read in a letter of his an expression of 
 apprehension that he might live too long, and a sug 
 gestion that even suicide might be better than to mar 
 or undo one s work. This was near the close of the 
 civil war in America, which, as I have said, was a 
 strain upon Emerson s nerves from which, probably, 
 they never completely recovered. At any rate, those 
 nearest him had observed indications of physical de 
 cline before the burning of his house in 1872. He 
 said that, on the morning after this fire, he felt some 
 thing snap in his brain. It is probable Emerson might 
 not have survived the illness that followed this severe 
 shock, had it not been for the love and devotion which 
 everywhere rose around him. It was the least part 
 of this manifestation that it insisted, despite his reluc 
 tance, on rebuilding his house for him ; the almost 
 
LETHE. 379 
 
 passionate love, not only of his Concordians, but of 
 many whose names he had never heard, breathed new 
 life into him. Some day, perhaps, the correspondence 
 which passed on this subject may be made public, and 
 it will reveal a touching incident in the life of this 
 great heart, so loving and beloved. 
 
 When he came to England after the fire, with his 
 daughter Ellen, his head was quite clear of hair, like 
 that of an infant. When he returned from a visit to 
 Egypt his head was covered with a snowy downy hair 
 half an inch long. He was in fair physical condition, 
 and cheerful, but already his memory did him but fitful 
 service. Carlyle contended that Emerson s memory 
 was as good as ever, only "he paid less attention to 
 the foolish things said to him ; they came in at one 
 ear and went out at the other." But Emerson knew 
 well enough that this was not the fact. Yet he was 
 good-humoured about it, and when a friend asked 
 after his health replied, " Quite well ; I have lost my 
 mental faculties, but am perfectly well." 
 
 In 1875, when I stayed at his house in Concord for 
 a little time, it was sad enough to find him sitting as a 
 listener before those who used to sit at his feet in 
 silence. But when alone with him he conversed in the 
 old way, and his faults of memory seemed at times to 
 disappear. There was something striking in the kind 
 of forgetfulness by which he suffered. He remem 
 bered the realities and uses of things when he could 
 not recall their names. He would describe what he 
 wanted or thought of; when he could not recall 
 "chair" he could speak of that which supports the 
 human frame, and " the implement that cultivates the 
 
380 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 soil" must do for plough. Could it be that idealism 
 had such deep root in this mind that even disease, veil 
 ing the " nominal" world, was held at bay when assail 
 ing mental concepts ? 
 
 Among the matters we discussed at that time was 
 the report of an interview with him, published in an 
 American paper, in which he had criticised Swinburne 
 severely. He said he could not remember what he 
 had said at the interview, but " its publication was 
 one of the damnable things." 
 
 He evinced some emotion when I said the house 
 and rooms were not distinguishable from what they 
 had been before the fire. The loving art with which 
 his friends and neighbours had made this exact resto 
 ration, and the welcome they had given him on his last 
 return from England the music, the hundreds of chil 
 dren singing " Sweet Home," the floral decorations, 
 had overwhelmed him at the time, but they were 
 now a happy memory that could not be dimmed. 
 
 In 1880, when I was last at Concord, the trouble had 
 made heavy strides. The intensity of his silent atten 
 tion to every word that was said was painful, suggesting 
 a concentration of his powers to break through the in 
 visible walls closing around him. Yet his face was 
 serene ; he was even cheerful, and joined in our laugh 
 ter at some letters his eldest daughter had preserved, 
 from young girls, trying to coax autograph letters, and 
 in one case asking for what price he would write a val 
 edictory address she had to deliver at college ! He was 
 still able to joke about his " naughty memory ; " and 
 no complaint came from him when he once rallied him 
 self on living too long. Emerson, appeared to me 
 
LETHE. 381 
 
 strangely beautiful at this time, and the sweetness of 
 his voice, when he spoke of the love and providence at 
 his side, is quite indescribable. 
 
 The answer of the Methodist, Father Taylor, when 
 told Emerson had not the faith that was saving that 
 if he went to hell, he would change the climate and 
 emigration would set that way found one day a curious 
 commentary. A number of Methodist ministers began 
 this emigration by going to Concord together to pay 
 their respects to Emerson. One of them described the 
 call to a friend of mine as delightful. " Emerson," he 
 said, " looked a little doubtful at first as though he 
 thought, perhaps, we had come to put him through the 
 catechism but became re-assured, affable, and charm 
 ing, as it dawned on him that it was in compliment to 
 his fame as a wise man and a great scholar." On his 
 death, the Methodist paper, " Zion s Herald," said: 
 " Certainly a beautiful life, that for late years has been 
 like an ancient psalm, full of solemn melody, has ceased 
 to be read among men." 
 
 It is to be feared he was not always so happy in his 
 pious visitors. One, at any rate, visited him with the 
 hope of getting some kind of sanction for his own 
 little theology. But Emerson rose to this occasion ; 
 and when asked his religious views, walked to the shelf 
 of his works and said, "There are my opinions; I 
 have nothing to take from them." 
 
 It is in one sense melancholy to know that Emerson s 
 son was under the necessity of contradicting insinua 
 tions that his father had receded from his religious 
 views ; while at the same time one cannot wonder that 
 superstition should feel uneasy under its conscious in- 
 
382 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 ability to produce or to satisfy the finest head and 
 grandest heart in America. It may be that yet such 
 claims will be made ; but, if true, as they certainly are 
 not, they would only be of pathological interest, and 
 shew that the real Emerson had departed this life 
 sooner than had been supposed. 
 
 Apart from such liabilities and annoyances as this, 
 it was not without compensation that Emerson s mem 
 ory failed. His sensitive heart was thereby saved many 
 a pang. This occurred to me when I was walking 
 with him and his wife and son to the house of her 
 brother, Dr. Charles Jackson, then recently deceased. 
 The sorrow had swiftly passed by him. 
 
 He was never more sweet and gracious, and never 
 forgot his way of saying the kindliest word. Not long 
 before he was seized with the fatal illness, he returned 
 from a walk and found two young ladies of the village 
 in his study. "It is too bad of us, Mr. Emerson," 
 said one, "to take possession of your study." "It 
 will be all the brighter that you have thought it worth 
 coming to," was the prompt reply. 
 
 At the funeral of Longfellow, Emerson twice walked 
 up to the coffin, and gazed intently upon the face of 
 his dead friend. Then he turned to a friend and said, 
 " That gentleman was a sweet, beautiful soul, but I 
 have entirely forgotten his name." 
 
 Thus did he pass deeper into his Lethe, and forgot 
 griefs that would have wrung his heart, unto the day 
 when the pain came upon his body. But here, too, as 
 we have seen, a brother s art had provided the anes 
 thetic draught, of which the mythical Lethe seems a 
 dream. The prophet of love and science by their 
 
LETHE. 383 
 
 hands passed painlessly into the elements which hence 
 forth will be gentler because he has lived. 
 
 Here, then, ends the long pilgrimage from Plymouth 
 to Concord, from the Rock to the Soul in which all its 
 strength was humanised. The physician brought his 
 draught of Lethe to the bed of pain against all the pro 
 tests of dogmas which translated blind elements and 
 cherished the curse of nature. Dr. Holmes found it 
 necessary to demand of the medical students at Har 
 vard University that they should not permit the scrip 
 tures of ancient Jahve-worshippers to restrain them 
 from soothing human agonies and mitigating maternal 
 pangs ! When the wife, her tender care of forty-seven 
 years now ending, saw her great husband soothed in 
 his last hours by her brother s anaesthetic, administered 
 by her son, her solace was from that maternal spirit 
 which everywhere presses gently back inorganic power 
 with charms yielded by itself to love and wisdom. 
 Never was the soothing agent more fitly used than on 
 him who had done more than any other to soften for 
 his age the pangs of its new birth. / 
 
 THE END. 
 
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