RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

(‡ decoration)RALPH WALDO EMERSON.THE LIBERATOR OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.TO classify Emerson is a matter of no small difficulty. He was a philosopher, he was an essayist, he was a poet—all three so eminently that scarcely two of his friends would agree to which class he most belonged. Oliver Wendell Holmes asks:“Where in the realm of thought whose air is songDoes he the Buddha of the west belong?He seems a winged Franklin sweetly wise,Born to unlock the secret of the skies.”But whatever he did was done with a poetic touch. Philosophy, essay or song, it was all pregnant with the spirit of poetry. Whatever else he was, Emerson was pre-eminently a poet. It was with this golden key that he unlocked the chambers of original thought, that liberated American letters.Until Emerson came, American authors had little independence. James Russell Lowell declares, “We were socially and intellectually bound to English thought, until Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at the dangers and glories of blue waters. He was our first optimistic writer. Before his day, Puritan theology had seen in man only a vile nature and considered his instincts for beauty and pleasure, proofs of his total depravity.” Under such conditions as these, the imagination was fettered and wholesome literature was impossible. As a reaction against this Puritan austerity came Unitarianism, which aimed to establish the dignity of man, and out of this came the further growth of the idealism or transcendentalism of Emerson. It was this idea and these aspirations of the new theology that Emerson converted into literature. The indirect influence of his example on the writings of Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier and Lowell, and its direct influence on Thoreau, Hawthorne,Chas.A. Dana, Margaret Fuller, G. W. Curtis and others, formed the very foundation for the beautiful structure of our representative American literature.Emerson was profoundly a thinker who pondered the relation of man to God and to the universe. He conceived and taught the noblest ideals of virtue and a spiritual life. The profound study which Emerson devoted to his themes and his philosophic cast of mind made him a writer for scholars. He was a prophet who, without argument, announced truths which, by intuition, he seems to have perceived; but the thought is often so shadowy that the ordinary reader fails to catch it. Forthis reason he will never be like Longfellow or Whittier, a favorite with the masses. Let it not be understood, however, that all of Emerson’s writings are heavy or shadowy or difficult to understand. On the contrary, some of his poems are of a popular character and are easy of comprehension. For instance, “The Hymn,” sung at the completion of the Concord Monument in 1836, was on every one’s lips at the time of the Centennial celebration, in 1876. His optimistic spirit is also beautifully and clearly expressed in the following stanza of his “Voluntaries:”So nigh is grandeur to our dust,So near is God to man,When duty whispers low, “Thou must,”The youth replies, “I can.”These are but two instances of many that may be cited. No author is, perhaps, more enjoyed by those who understand him. He was a master of language. He never used the wrong word. His sentences are models. But he was not a logical or methodical writer. Every sentence stands by itself. His paragraphs might be arranged almost at random without essential loss to the essays. His philosophy consists largely in an array of golden sayings full of vital suggestions to help men make the best and most of themselves. He had no compact system of philosophy.Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803, within “A kite-string of the birth place of Benjamin Franklin” with whom he is frequently compared. The likeness, however, consists only in the fact that they were both decidedly representative Americans of a decidedly different type. Franklin was prose, Emerson poetry; Franklin common sense, real; Emerson imaginative, ideal. In these opposite respects they both were equally representative of the highest type. Both were hopeful, kindly and shrewd. Both equally powerful in making, training and guiding the American people.In his eighth year young Emerson was sent to a grammar school, where he made such rapid progress, that he was soon able to enter a higher department known as a Latin school. His first attempts at writing were not the dull efforts of a school boy; but original poems which he read with real taste and feeling. He completed his course and graduated from Harvard College at eighteen. It is said that he was dull in mathematics and not above the average in his class in general standing; but he was widely read in literature, which put him far in advance, perhaps, of any young man of his age. After graduating, he taught school for five years in connection with his brother; but in 1825, gave it up for the ministry. For a time he was pastor of a Unitarian Congregation in Boston; but his independent views were not in accordance with the doctrine of his church, therefore, he resigned in 1835, and retired to Concord, where he purchased a home near the spot on which the first battle of the Revolution was fought in 1775, which he commemorated in his own verse:—“There first the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world.”In this city, Emerson resided until the day of his death, which occurred in Concord, April 27, 1882, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.HOME OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON, CONCORD,MASS.It was in Concord that the poet and essayist, as the prophet of the advanced thought of his age, gathered around him those leading spirits who were dissatisfied with the selfishness and shallowness of existing society, and, who had been led by him to dream of an ideal condition in which all should live as one family. Out of this grew the famous “Brook Farm Community.” This was not an original idea of Emerson’s, however. Coleridge and Southey, of England, had thought of founding such a society in Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River. Emerson regarded this community of interests as the clear teachings of Jesus Christ; and, to put into practical operation this idea, a farm of about two hundred acres was bought at Roxbury,Mass., and a stock company was formed under the title of “The Brook Farm Institution of Agriculture and Education.” About seventy members joined in the enterprise. The principle of the organization was coöperative, the members sharing the profits. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest of romancers,Chas.A. Dana, of the New York Tribune,Geo.W. Curtis, of Harper’s Monthly, Henry D. Thoreau, the poet naturalist, Amos Bronson Alcott, the transcendental dreamer and writer of strange shadowy sayings, and Margaret Fuller, the most learned woman of her age, were prominent members who removed to live on the farm. It is said that Emerson, himself, never really lived there; but was a member and frequent visitor, as were other prominent scholars of the same school. The project was a failure. After five years of experience, some of the houses were destroyed by fire, the enterprise given up, and the membership scattered.But the Brook Farm served its purpose in literature by bringing together some of the best intellects in America, engaging them for five years in a common course of study, and stimulating a commerce of ideas. The breaking up of the community was better, perhaps, than its success would have been. It dispersed and scattered abroad the advanced thoughts of Emerson, and the doctrine of the society into every profession. Instead of being confined to the little paper, “The Dial,” (which was the organ of the society) its literature was transferred into a number of widely circulated national mediums.Thus, it will be seen how Emerson, the “Sage of Concord,” gathered around him and dominated, by his charming personality, his powerful mind, and his wholesome influence, some of the brightest minds that have figured in American literature; and how, through them, as well as his own writings, he has done so much, not only to lay the foundation of a new literature, but to mould and shape leading minds for generations to come. The Brook Farm idea was the uppermost thought in Edward Bellamy’s famous novel, “Looking Backward,” which created such a sensation in the reading world a few years since. The progressive thought of Emerson was father to the so-called “New Theology,” or “Higher Criticism,” of modern scholars and theologians. It is, perhaps, for the influence which Emerson has exerted, rather than his own works, that the literature of America is mostly indebted to him. It was through his efforts that the village of Concord has been made more famous in American letters than the city of New York.The charm of Emerson’s personality has already been referred to,—and it is not strange that it should have been so great. His manhood, no less than his genius was worthy of admiration and of reverence. His life corresponded with his brave, cheerful and steadfast teachings. He “practiced what he preached.” His manners were so gentle, his nature so transparent, and his life so singularly pure and happy, that he was called, while he lived, “the good and great Emerson;” and, since his death, the memory of his life and manly example are among the cherished possessions of our literature.The reverence of his literary associates was little less than worship. Amos Bronson Alcott,—father of the authoress, Louisa M. Alcott,—one of the Brook Farm members, though himself a profound scholar and several years Emerson’s senior, declared that it would have been his great misfortune to have lived without knowing Emerson, whom he styled, “The magic minstrel and speaker! whose rhetoric, voiced as by organ stops, delivers the sentiment from his breast in cadences peculiar to himself; now hurling it forth on the ear, echoing them; then,—as his mood and matter invite it—dying likeMusic of mild lutesOr silver coated flutes.... such is the rhapsodist’s cunning in its structure and delivery.”Referring to his association with Emerson, the same writer acknowledges in a poem, written after the sage’s death:Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend:By the hand thou took’st me, and did’st condescendTo bring me straightway into thy fair guild;And life-long hath it been high complimentBy that to have been known, and thy friend styled,Given to rare thought and to good learning bent;Whilst in my straits an angel on me smiled.Permit me, then, thus honored, still to beA scholar in thy university.HYMN SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT, 1836.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.The foe long since in silence slept;Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;And Time the ruined bridge has sweptDown the dark stream which seaward creeps.On this green bank, by this soft stream,We set to day a votive stone,That memory may their deed redeemWhen, like our sires, our sons are gone.Spirit that made those heroes dareTo die or leave their children free,Bid Time and Nature gently spareThe shaft we raise to them and thee.THE RHODORA.IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,To please the desert and the sluggish brook;The purple petals fallen in the poolMade the black waters with their beauty gay;YoungRaphaelmight covet such a school;The lively show beguiled me from my way.Rhodora! if the sages ask thee whyThis charm is wasted on the marsh and sky,Dear tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing,Then beauty is its own excuse for being.Why, thou wert there, O, rival of the rose!I never thought to ask, I never knew,But in my simple ignorance supposeThe selfsame Power that brought me there, brought you.THE TRUE HERO.AN EXTRACT FROM “VOLUNTARIES.”The following story is told of the manner in which the poem, “Voluntaries,” obtained its title. In 1863,Mr.Emerson came to Boston and took a room in the Parker House, bringing with him the unfinished sketch of a few verses which he wishedMr.Fields, his publisher, to hear. He drew a small table to the centre of the room and read aloud the lines he proposed giving to the press. They were written on separate slips of paper which were flying loosely about the room. (Mr.Emerson frequently wrote in such independent paragraphs, that many of his poems and essays might be rearranged without doing them serious violence.) The question arose as to title of the verses read, whenMr.Fields suggested♦“Voluntaries,” which was cordially accepted byMr.Emerson.OWELL for the fortunate soulWhich Music’s wings unfold,Stealing away the memoryOf sorrows new and old!Yet happier he whose inward sight,Stayed on his subtle thought,Shuts his sense on toys of time,To vacant bosoms brought;But best befriended of the GodHe who, in evil times,Warned by an inward voice,Heeds not the darkness and the dread,Biding by his rule and choice,Telling only the fiery thread,Leading over heroic groundWalled with immortal terror round,To the aim which him allures,And the sweet heaven his deed secures.Peril around all else appalling,Cannon in front and leaden rain,Him duty through the clarion callingTo the van called not in vain.Stainless soldier on the walls,Knowing this,—and knows no more,—Whoever fights, whoever falls,Justice conquers evermore,Justice after as before;—And he who battles on her side,God, though he were ten times slain,Crowns him victor glorified,Victor over death and painForever: but his erring foe,Self-assured that he prevails,Looks from his victim lying low,And sees aloft the red right armRedress the eternal scales.He, the poor for whom angels foil,Blind with pride and fooled by hate,Writhes within the dragon coil,Reserved to a speechless fate.♦‘Voluntaires’ replaced with ‘Voluntaries’MOUNTAIN AND SQUIRREL.THE mountain and the squirrelHad a quarrel;And the former called the latter “Little Prig.”Bun replied:“You are doubtless very big;But all sorts of things and weatherMust be taken in together,To make up a yearAnd a sphere.And I think it no disgraceTo occupy my place.If I’m not so large as you,You are not so small as I,And not half so spry.I’ll not deny you makeA very pretty squirrel track;Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;If I cannot carry forests on my back,Neither can you crack a nut.”THE SNOW STORM.ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the skyArrives the snow, and driving o’er the fields,Seems nowhere to alight: the whited airHides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.The sled and traveler stopp’d, the courier’s feetDelay’d, all friends shut out, the housemates sitAround the radiant fire-place, enclosedIn a tumultuous privacy of storm.Come see the north-wind’s masonry.Out of an unseen quarry evermoreFurnish’d with tile, the fierce artificerCurves his white bastions with projected roofRound every windward stake, or tree, or door.Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild workSo fanciful, so savage, nought cares heFor number or proportion. MockinglyOn coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,Maugre the farmer’s sighs, and at the gateA tapering turret overtops the work.And when his hours are number’d, and the worldIs all his own, retiring, as he were not,Leaves, when the sun appears, astonish’d ArtTo mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,The frolic architecture of the snow.THE PROBLEM.ILIKE a church, I like a cowl,I love a prophet of the soul,And on my heart monastic aislesFall like sweet strains or pensive smiles,Yet not for all his faith can seeWould I that cowled churchman be.Why should the vest on him allure,Which I could not on me endure?Not from a vain or shallow thoughtHis awful Jove young Phidias brought;Never from lips of cunning fellThe thrilling Delphic oracle;Out from the heart of nature roll’dThe burdens of the Bible old;The litanies of nations came,Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,Up from the burning core below,—The canticles of love and wo.The hand that rounded Peter’s dome,And groin’d the aisles of Christian Rome,Wrought in a sad sincerity.Himself from God he could not free;He builded better than he knew,The conscious stone to beauty grew.Know’st thou what wove yon wood-bird’s nestOf leaves, and feathers from her breast;Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,Painting with morn each annual cell;Or how the sacred pine tree addsTo her old leaves new myriads?Such and so grew these holy piles,Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.Earth proudly wears the ParthenonAs the best gem upon her zone;And morning opes with haste her lidsTo gaze upon the Pyramids;O’er England’s Abbeys bends the skyAs on its friends with kindred eye;For, out of Thought’s interior sphereThese wonders rose to upper air,And nature gladly gave them place,Adopted them into her race,And granted them an equal dateWith Andes and with Ararat.These temples grew as grows the grass,Art might obey but not surpass.The passive Master lent his handTo the vast Soul that o’er him plann’d,And the same power that rear’d the shrineBestrode the tribes that knelt within.Ever the fiery PentacostGirds with one flame the countless host,Trances the heart through chanting choirs,And through the priest the mind inspires.The word unto the prophet spoken,Was writ on tables yet unbroken;The word by seers or sybils toldIn groves of oak or fanes of gold,Still floats upon the morning wind,Still whispers to the willing mind.One accent of the Holy GhostThe heedless world hath never lostI know what say the Fathers wise,—The book itself before me lies,—OldChrysostom, best Augustine,And he who blent both in his line,The youngerGolden Lipsor mines,Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines;His words are music in my ear,I see his cowled portrait dear.And yet, for all his faith could see,I would not the good bishop be.TRAVELING.IHAVE no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.Traveling is a fool’s paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, and embark on the sea, and at last wake up at Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions; but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.But the rage of traveling is itself only a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and the universal system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the traveling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our whole minds, lean to and follow the past and the distant as the eyes of a maid follow her mistress. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.THE COMPENSATION OF CALAMITY.WE cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread and shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover and nerve us again. We cannot find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, “Up and onward for evermore!” We cannot stay amid the ruins, neither will we rely on the new; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those monsters who look backwards.And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed; breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener, is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men.SELF-RELIANCE.INSIST on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. If anybody will tell me whom the great man imitates in the original crisis when he performs a great act, I will tell him who else than himself can teach him. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned thee, and thou canst not hope too much or dare too much.FROM “NATURE.”TO go into solitude a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are!If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these preachers of beauty and light the universe with their admonishing smile.The stars awaken a certain reverence, because,always present, they are always inaccessible; but all natural objects make kindred impression when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort all her secrets and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains reflected all the wisdom of his best hour as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.When we speak of Nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold Nature objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts—that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men’s farms, yet to this their land-deeds give them no title.To speak truly, few adult persons can see Nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of Nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other—who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of Nature a wild delight runs through the man in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, He is my creature, and, maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun nor the summer alone, but every hour and season, yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common in snow-puddles at twilight under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good-fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear to think how glad I am. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of his life is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes)—which Nature cannot repair.The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm is new to me and old.It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight does not reside in Nature, but in man or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs is overspread with melancholy to-day. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.Souvenir of Emerson

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THE LIBERATOR OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.

TO classify Emerson is a matter of no small difficulty. He was a philosopher, he was an essayist, he was a poet—all three so eminently that scarcely two of his friends would agree to which class he most belonged. Oliver Wendell Holmes asks:

“Where in the realm of thought whose air is songDoes he the Buddha of the west belong?He seems a winged Franklin sweetly wise,Born to unlock the secret of the skies.”

“Where in the realm of thought whose air is song

Does he the Buddha of the west belong?

He seems a winged Franklin sweetly wise,

Born to unlock the secret of the skies.”

But whatever he did was done with a poetic touch. Philosophy, essay or song, it was all pregnant with the spirit of poetry. Whatever else he was, Emerson was pre-eminently a poet. It was with this golden key that he unlocked the chambers of original thought, that liberated American letters.

Until Emerson came, American authors had little independence. James Russell Lowell declares, “We were socially and intellectually bound to English thought, until Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at the dangers and glories of blue waters. He was our first optimistic writer. Before his day, Puritan theology had seen in man only a vile nature and considered his instincts for beauty and pleasure, proofs of his total depravity.” Under such conditions as these, the imagination was fettered and wholesome literature was impossible. As a reaction against this Puritan austerity came Unitarianism, which aimed to establish the dignity of man, and out of this came the further growth of the idealism or transcendentalism of Emerson. It was this idea and these aspirations of the new theology that Emerson converted into literature. The indirect influence of his example on the writings of Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier and Lowell, and its direct influence on Thoreau, Hawthorne,Chas.A. Dana, Margaret Fuller, G. W. Curtis and others, formed the very foundation for the beautiful structure of our representative American literature.

Emerson was profoundly a thinker who pondered the relation of man to God and to the universe. He conceived and taught the noblest ideals of virtue and a spiritual life. The profound study which Emerson devoted to his themes and his philosophic cast of mind made him a writer for scholars. He was a prophet who, without argument, announced truths which, by intuition, he seems to have perceived; but the thought is often so shadowy that the ordinary reader fails to catch it. Forthis reason he will never be like Longfellow or Whittier, a favorite with the masses. Let it not be understood, however, that all of Emerson’s writings are heavy or shadowy or difficult to understand. On the contrary, some of his poems are of a popular character and are easy of comprehension. For instance, “The Hymn,” sung at the completion of the Concord Monument in 1836, was on every one’s lips at the time of the Centennial celebration, in 1876. His optimistic spirit is also beautifully and clearly expressed in the following stanza of his “Voluntaries:”

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,So near is God to man,When duty whispers low, “Thou must,”The youth replies, “I can.”

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,

When duty whispers low, “Thou must,”

The youth replies, “I can.”

These are but two instances of many that may be cited. No author is, perhaps, more enjoyed by those who understand him. He was a master of language. He never used the wrong word. His sentences are models. But he was not a logical or methodical writer. Every sentence stands by itself. His paragraphs might be arranged almost at random without essential loss to the essays. His philosophy consists largely in an array of golden sayings full of vital suggestions to help men make the best and most of themselves. He had no compact system of philosophy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803, within “A kite-string of the birth place of Benjamin Franklin” with whom he is frequently compared. The likeness, however, consists only in the fact that they were both decidedly representative Americans of a decidedly different type. Franklin was prose, Emerson poetry; Franklin common sense, real; Emerson imaginative, ideal. In these opposite respects they both were equally representative of the highest type. Both were hopeful, kindly and shrewd. Both equally powerful in making, training and guiding the American people.

In his eighth year young Emerson was sent to a grammar school, where he made such rapid progress, that he was soon able to enter a higher department known as a Latin school. His first attempts at writing were not the dull efforts of a school boy; but original poems which he read with real taste and feeling. He completed his course and graduated from Harvard College at eighteen. It is said that he was dull in mathematics and not above the average in his class in general standing; but he was widely read in literature, which put him far in advance, perhaps, of any young man of his age. After graduating, he taught school for five years in connection with his brother; but in 1825, gave it up for the ministry. For a time he was pastor of a Unitarian Congregation in Boston; but his independent views were not in accordance with the doctrine of his church, therefore, he resigned in 1835, and retired to Concord, where he purchased a home near the spot on which the first battle of the Revolution was fought in 1775, which he commemorated in his own verse:—

“There first the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world.”

“There first the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.”

In this city, Emerson resided until the day of his death, which occurred in Concord, April 27, 1882, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.

HOME OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON, CONCORD,MASS.

It was in Concord that the poet and essayist, as the prophet of the advanced thought of his age, gathered around him those leading spirits who were dissatisfied with the selfishness and shallowness of existing society, and, who had been led by him to dream of an ideal condition in which all should live as one family. Out of this grew the famous “Brook Farm Community.” This was not an original idea of Emerson’s, however. Coleridge and Southey, of England, had thought of founding such a society in Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River. Emerson regarded this community of interests as the clear teachings of Jesus Christ; and, to put into practical operation this idea, a farm of about two hundred acres was bought at Roxbury,Mass., and a stock company was formed under the title of “The Brook Farm Institution of Agriculture and Education.” About seventy members joined in the enterprise. The principle of the organization was coöperative, the members sharing the profits. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest of romancers,Chas.A. Dana, of the New York Tribune,Geo.W. Curtis, of Harper’s Monthly, Henry D. Thoreau, the poet naturalist, Amos Bronson Alcott, the transcendental dreamer and writer of strange shadowy sayings, and Margaret Fuller, the most learned woman of her age, were prominent members who removed to live on the farm. It is said that Emerson, himself, never really lived there; but was a member and frequent visitor, as were other prominent scholars of the same school. The project was a failure. After five years of experience, some of the houses were destroyed by fire, the enterprise given up, and the membership scattered.

But the Brook Farm served its purpose in literature by bringing together some of the best intellects in America, engaging them for five years in a common course of study, and stimulating a commerce of ideas. The breaking up of the community was better, perhaps, than its success would have been. It dispersed and scattered abroad the advanced thoughts of Emerson, and the doctrine of the society into every profession. Instead of being confined to the little paper, “The Dial,” (which was the organ of the society) its literature was transferred into a number of widely circulated national mediums.

Thus, it will be seen how Emerson, the “Sage of Concord,” gathered around him and dominated, by his charming personality, his powerful mind, and his wholesome influence, some of the brightest minds that have figured in American literature; and how, through them, as well as his own writings, he has done so much, not only to lay the foundation of a new literature, but to mould and shape leading minds for generations to come. The Brook Farm idea was the uppermost thought in Edward Bellamy’s famous novel, “Looking Backward,” which created such a sensation in the reading world a few years since. The progressive thought of Emerson was father to the so-called “New Theology,” or “Higher Criticism,” of modern scholars and theologians. It is, perhaps, for the influence which Emerson has exerted, rather than his own works, that the literature of America is mostly indebted to him. It was through his efforts that the village of Concord has been made more famous in American letters than the city of New York.

The charm of Emerson’s personality has already been referred to,—and it is not strange that it should have been so great. His manhood, no less than his genius was worthy of admiration and of reverence. His life corresponded with his brave, cheerful and steadfast teachings. He “practiced what he preached.” His manners were so gentle, his nature so transparent, and his life so singularly pure and happy, that he was called, while he lived, “the good and great Emerson;” and, since his death, the memory of his life and manly example are among the cherished possessions of our literature.

The reverence of his literary associates was little less than worship. Amos Bronson Alcott,—father of the authoress, Louisa M. Alcott,—one of the Brook Farm members, though himself a profound scholar and several years Emerson’s senior, declared that it would have been his great misfortune to have lived without knowing Emerson, whom he styled, “The magic minstrel and speaker! whose rhetoric, voiced as by organ stops, delivers the sentiment from his breast in cadences peculiar to himself; now hurling it forth on the ear, echoing them; then,—as his mood and matter invite it—dying like

Music of mild lutesOr silver coated flutes.

Music of mild lutes

Or silver coated flutes.

... such is the rhapsodist’s cunning in its structure and delivery.”

Referring to his association with Emerson, the same writer acknowledges in a poem, written after the sage’s death:

Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend:By the hand thou took’st me, and did’st condescendTo bring me straightway into thy fair guild;And life-long hath it been high complimentBy that to have been known, and thy friend styled,Given to rare thought and to good learning bent;Whilst in my straits an angel on me smiled.Permit me, then, thus honored, still to beA scholar in thy university.

Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend:

By the hand thou took’st me, and did’st condescend

To bring me straightway into thy fair guild;

And life-long hath it been high compliment

By that to have been known, and thy friend styled,

Given to rare thought and to good learning bent;

Whilst in my straits an angel on me smiled.

Permit me, then, thus honored, still to be

A scholar in thy university.

HYMN SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT, 1836.

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.The foe long since in silence slept;Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;And Time the ruined bridge has sweptDown the dark stream which seaward creeps.On this green bank, by this soft stream,We set to day a votive stone,That memory may their deed redeemWhen, like our sires, our sons are gone.Spirit that made those heroes dareTo die or leave their children free,Bid Time and Nature gently spareThe shaft we raise to them and thee.

Y 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.

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set to day a votive stone,

That memory may their deed redeem

When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit that made those heroes dare

To die or leave their children free,

Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.

THE RHODORA.

IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,To please the desert and the sluggish brook;The purple petals fallen in the poolMade the black waters with their beauty gay;YoungRaphaelmight covet such a school;The lively show beguiled me from my way.Rhodora! if the sages ask thee whyThis charm is wasted on the marsh and sky,Dear tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing,Then beauty is its own excuse for being.Why, thou wert there, O, rival of the rose!I never thought to ask, I never knew,But in my simple ignorance supposeThe selfsame Power that brought me there, brought you.

N May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,

I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,

To please the desert and the sluggish brook;

The purple petals fallen in the pool

Made the black waters with their beauty gay;

YoungRaphaelmight covet such a school;

The lively show beguiled me from my way.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky,

Dear tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing,

Then beauty is its own excuse for being.

Why, thou wert there, O, rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask, I never knew,

But in my simple ignorance suppose

The selfsame Power that brought me there, brought you.

THE TRUE HERO.

AN EXTRACT FROM “VOLUNTARIES.”

The following story is told of the manner in which the poem, “Voluntaries,” obtained its title. In 1863,Mr.Emerson came to Boston and took a room in the Parker House, bringing with him the unfinished sketch of a few verses which he wishedMr.Fields, his publisher, to hear. He drew a small table to the centre of the room and read aloud the lines he proposed giving to the press. They were written on separate slips of paper which were flying loosely about the room. (Mr.Emerson frequently wrote in such independent paragraphs, that many of his poems and essays might be rearranged without doing them serious violence.) The question arose as to title of the verses read, whenMr.Fields suggested♦“Voluntaries,” which was cordially accepted byMr.Emerson.

OWELL for the fortunate soulWhich Music’s wings unfold,Stealing away the memoryOf sorrows new and old!Yet happier he whose inward sight,Stayed on his subtle thought,Shuts his sense on toys of time,To vacant bosoms brought;But best befriended of the GodHe who, in evil times,Warned by an inward voice,Heeds not the darkness and the dread,Biding by his rule and choice,Telling only the fiery thread,Leading over heroic groundWalled with immortal terror round,To the aim which him allures,And the sweet heaven his deed secures.Peril around all else appalling,Cannon in front and leaden rain,Him duty through the clarion callingTo the van called not in vain.Stainless soldier on the walls,Knowing this,—and knows no more,—Whoever fights, whoever falls,Justice conquers evermore,Justice after as before;—And he who battles on her side,God, though he were ten times slain,Crowns him victor glorified,Victor over death and painForever: but his erring foe,Self-assured that he prevails,Looks from his victim lying low,And sees aloft the red right armRedress the eternal scales.He, the poor for whom angels foil,Blind with pride and fooled by hate,Writhes within the dragon coil,Reserved to a speechless fate.

WELL for the fortunate soul

Which Music’s wings unfold,

Stealing away the memory

Of sorrows new and old!

Yet happier he whose inward sight,

Stayed on his subtle thought,

Shuts his sense on toys of time,

To vacant bosoms brought;

But best befriended of the God

He who, in evil times,

Warned by an inward voice,

Heeds not the darkness and the dread,

Biding by his rule and choice,

Telling only the fiery thread,

Leading over heroic ground

Walled with immortal terror round,

To the aim which him allures,

And the sweet heaven his deed secures.

Peril around all else appalling,

Cannon in front and leaden rain,

Him duty through the clarion calling

To the van called not in vain.

Stainless soldier on the walls,

Knowing this,—and knows no more,—

Whoever fights, whoever falls,

Justice conquers evermore,

Justice after as before;—

And he who battles on her side,

God, though he were ten times slain,

Crowns him victor glorified,

Victor over death and pain

Forever: but his erring foe,

Self-assured that he prevails,

Looks from his victim lying low,

And sees aloft the red right arm

Redress the eternal scales.

He, the poor for whom angels foil,

Blind with pride and fooled by hate,

Writhes within the dragon coil,

Reserved to a speechless fate.

♦‘Voluntaires’ replaced with ‘Voluntaries’

MOUNTAIN AND SQUIRREL.

THE mountain and the squirrelHad a quarrel;And the former called the latter “Little Prig.”Bun replied:“You are doubtless very big;But all sorts of things and weatherMust be taken in together,To make up a yearAnd a sphere.And I think it no disgraceTo occupy my place.If I’m not so large as you,You are not so small as I,And not half so spry.I’ll not deny you makeA very pretty squirrel track;Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;If I cannot carry forests on my back,Neither can you crack a nut.”

HE mountain and the squirrel

Had a quarrel;

And the former called the latter “Little Prig.”

Bun replied:

“You are doubtless very big;

But all sorts of things and weather

Must be taken in together,

To make up a year

And a sphere.

And I think it no disgrace

To occupy my place.

If I’m not so large as you,

You are not so small as I,

And not half so spry.

I’ll not deny you make

A very pretty squirrel track;

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;

If I cannot carry forests on my back,

Neither can you crack a nut.”

THE SNOW STORM.

ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the skyArrives the snow, and driving o’er the fields,Seems nowhere to alight: the whited airHides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.The sled and traveler stopp’d, the courier’s feetDelay’d, all friends shut out, the housemates sitAround the radiant fire-place, enclosedIn a tumultuous privacy of storm.Come see the north-wind’s masonry.Out of an unseen quarry evermoreFurnish’d with tile, the fierce artificerCurves his white bastions with projected roofRound every windward stake, or tree, or door.Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild workSo fanciful, so savage, nought cares heFor number or proportion. MockinglyOn coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,Maugre the farmer’s sighs, and at the gateA tapering turret overtops the work.And when his hours are number’d, and the worldIs all his own, retiring, as he were not,Leaves, when the sun appears, astonish’d ArtTo mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,The frolic architecture of the snow.

NNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky

Arrives the snow, and driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveler stopp’d, the courier’s feet

Delay’d, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fire-place, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north-wind’s masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnish’d with tile, the fierce artificer

Curves his white bastions with projected roof

Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work

So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he

For number or proportion. Mockingly

On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;

A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;

Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,

Maugre the farmer’s sighs, and at the gate

A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are number’d, and the world

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonish’d Art

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,

The frolic architecture of the snow.

THE PROBLEM.

ILIKE a church, I like a cowl,I love a prophet of the soul,And on my heart monastic aislesFall like sweet strains or pensive smiles,Yet not for all his faith can seeWould I that cowled churchman be.Why should the vest on him allure,Which I could not on me endure?Not from a vain or shallow thoughtHis awful Jove young Phidias brought;Never from lips of cunning fellThe thrilling Delphic oracle;Out from the heart of nature roll’dThe burdens of the Bible old;The litanies of nations came,Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,Up from the burning core below,—The canticles of love and wo.The hand that rounded Peter’s dome,And groin’d the aisles of Christian Rome,Wrought in a sad sincerity.Himself from God he could not free;He builded better than he knew,The conscious stone to beauty grew.Know’st thou what wove yon wood-bird’s nestOf leaves, and feathers from her breast;Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,Painting with morn each annual cell;Or how the sacred pine tree addsTo her old leaves new myriads?Such and so grew these holy piles,Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.Earth proudly wears the ParthenonAs the best gem upon her zone;And morning opes with haste her lidsTo gaze upon the Pyramids;O’er England’s Abbeys bends the skyAs on its friends with kindred eye;For, out of Thought’s interior sphereThese wonders rose to upper air,And nature gladly gave them place,Adopted them into her race,And granted them an equal dateWith Andes and with Ararat.These temples grew as grows the grass,Art might obey but not surpass.The passive Master lent his handTo the vast Soul that o’er him plann’d,And the same power that rear’d the shrineBestrode the tribes that knelt within.Ever the fiery PentacostGirds with one flame the countless host,Trances the heart through chanting choirs,And through the priest the mind inspires.The word unto the prophet spoken,Was writ on tables yet unbroken;The word by seers or sybils toldIn groves of oak or fanes of gold,Still floats upon the morning wind,Still whispers to the willing mind.One accent of the Holy GhostThe heedless world hath never lostI know what say the Fathers wise,—The book itself before me lies,—OldChrysostom, best Augustine,And he who blent both in his line,The youngerGolden Lipsor mines,Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines;His words are music in my ear,I see his cowled portrait dear.And yet, for all his faith could see,I would not the good bishop be.

LIKE a church, I like a cowl,

I love a prophet of the soul,

And on my heart monastic aisles

Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles,

Yet not for all his faith can see

Would I that cowled churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure,

Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought

His awful Jove young Phidias brought;

Never from lips of cunning fell

The thrilling Delphic oracle;

Out from the heart of nature roll’d

The burdens of the Bible old;

The litanies of nations came,

Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,

Up from the burning core below,—

The canticles of love and wo.

The hand that rounded Peter’s dome,

And groin’d the aisles of Christian Rome,

Wrought in a sad sincerity.

Himself from God he could not free;

He builded better than he knew,

The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Know’st thou what wove yon wood-bird’s nest

Of leaves, and feathers from her breast;

Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,

Painting with morn each annual cell;

Or how the sacred pine tree adds

To her old leaves new myriads?

Such and so grew these holy piles,

Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon

As the best gem upon her zone;

And morning opes with haste her lids

To gaze upon the Pyramids;

O’er England’s Abbeys bends the sky

As on its friends with kindred eye;

For, out of Thought’s interior sphere

These wonders rose to upper air,

And nature gladly gave them place,

Adopted them into her race,

And granted them an equal date

With Andes and with Ararat.

These temples grew as grows the grass,

Art might obey but not surpass.

The passive Master lent his hand

To the vast Soul that o’er him plann’d,

And the same power that rear’d the shrine

Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.

Ever the fiery Pentacost

Girds with one flame the countless host,

Trances the heart through chanting choirs,

And through the priest the mind inspires.

The word unto the prophet spoken,

Was writ on tables yet unbroken;

The word by seers or sybils told

In groves of oak or fanes of gold,

Still floats upon the morning wind,

Still whispers to the willing mind.

One accent of the Holy Ghost

The heedless world hath never lost

I know what say the Fathers wise,—

The book itself before me lies,—

OldChrysostom, best Augustine,

And he who blent both in his line,

The youngerGolden Lipsor mines,

Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines;

His words are music in my ear,

I see his cowled portrait dear.

And yet, for all his faith could see,

I would not the good bishop be.

TRAVELING.

IHAVE no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.Traveling is a fool’s paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, and embark on the sea, and at last wake up at Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions; but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.But the rage of traveling is itself only a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and the universal system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the traveling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our whole minds, lean to and follow the past and the distant as the eyes of a maid follow her mistress. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, and embark on the sea, and at last wake up at Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions; but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

But the rage of traveling is itself only a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and the universal system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the traveling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our whole minds, lean to and follow the past and the distant as the eyes of a maid follow her mistress. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.

THE COMPENSATION OF CALAMITY.

WE cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread and shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover and nerve us again. We cannot find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, “Up and onward for evermore!” We cannot stay amid the ruins, neither will we rely on the new; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those monsters who look backwards.And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed; breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener, is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men.

And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed; breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener, is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men.

SELF-RELIANCE.

INSIST on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. If anybody will tell me whom the great man imitates in the original crisis when he performs a great act, I will tell him who else than himself can teach him. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned thee, and thou canst not hope too much or dare too much.

FROM “NATURE.”

TO go into solitude a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are!If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these preachers of beauty and light the universe with their admonishing smile.The stars awaken a certain reverence, because,always present, they are always inaccessible; but all natural objects make kindred impression when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort all her secrets and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains reflected all the wisdom of his best hour as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.When we speak of Nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold Nature objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts—that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men’s farms, yet to this their land-deeds give them no title.To speak truly, few adult persons can see Nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of Nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other—who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of Nature a wild delight runs through the man in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, He is my creature, and, maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun nor the summer alone, but every hour and season, yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common in snow-puddles at twilight under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good-fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear to think how glad I am. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of his life is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes)—which Nature cannot repair.The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm is new to me and old.It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight does not reside in Nature, but in man or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs is overspread with melancholy to-day. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these preachers of beauty and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because,always present, they are always inaccessible; but all natural objects make kindred impression when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort all her secrets and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains reflected all the wisdom of his best hour as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

When we speak of Nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold Nature objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts—that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men’s farms, yet to this their land-deeds give them no title.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see Nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of Nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other—who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of Nature a wild delight runs through the man in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, He is my creature, and, maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun nor the summer alone, but every hour and season, yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common in snow-puddles at twilight under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good-fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear to think how glad I am. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of his life is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes)—which Nature cannot repair.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm is new to me and old.

It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.

Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight does not reside in Nature, but in man or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs is overspread with melancholy to-day. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

Souvenir of Emerson

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