Addison or Samuel Johnson is absurd: they may with the same reason condemn him for being himself, instead of somebody else. It is the criticism of the fool. Emerson certainly has a style more marked than most writers, but he has likewise a greater individuality of thought to accompany it. When a teacher utters profounder thought than the untaught have been accustomed to hear, the latter accuse him of being mystical or transcendental: just as boys of the lower form grumble at Euclid, and abuse their tutor. There seems something galling to an inferior mind in the confession of ignorance. It appears to wound self-love or egotism more than any other accusation. The generality would prefer to be suspected of knavery, than of boobyism. This will account for the virulence of the blockhead: to surpass him in genius or learning is to make him your deadly enemy. A warfare is always waged by the dull against the witty; they have the worst of it, and fools though they are, they know it: the alpha and omega of dulness is to this extent, no more. They are sensible of their stupidity. We admit this to be unpleasant, but it is unavoidable, and by way of consolation we recommend the old adage of

"What can't be cured,
Must be endured."

So there's an end of the matter, and they had better rest in silence under the misfortune.

We remember in our young days that Lamb was attacked by a very solemn man (who only wanted the fairy head of Bottom, the weaver, to be the "complete animal"), in these

words:-"Mr. Lamb, you are always aiming at being witty, but you do not always succeed." The old humorist replied, "That's better, Mr. ***, than you, who are always aiming at being dull, and, I must say, you invariably succeed." We agree with " rare old Charles," that it is better to aim at the highest mark.

On the subject of Transcendentalism Emerson well ob

serves:

"There is transcendentalism, but no pure transcendentalist: that we know of none but the prophets and heralds of such a philosophy— that all who by strong bias of nature have leaned to the spiritual side in doctrine have stopped short of their goal. We have had many harbingers and forerunners, but of a purely spiritual life history has yet afforded no example. I mean, we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels' food: who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles: who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how: clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how; and yet it was done by his own hands: only in the instinct of the lower animals we find the suggestion of the methods of it, and something higher than our understanding: the squirrel hoards nuts, and the bee gathers honey, without knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for without selfishness or disgrace."

This transcendentalism is evidently founded on Christian Doctrine; it is merely a paraphrase of Christ's words, "Take no thought of what ye shall eat, what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed; but do these things, which I command ye, and all the rest shall be added unto you."

Every new doctrine, when first preached, sounds like a tran

scendentalism, and it is only when it becomes traditional that the mass receive it unchallenged; then any additional obscurity is swallowed as a matter of course. In another place he says, "Transcendentalism is the faith proper to a man in his integrity."

This is the pure religion of regenerate man, or of man in his primal state; it was, doubtless, the faith of Eden.

Now the discussion lies between the believers in the comparative perfectibility of man, and those who have no desire to rise into a loftier sphere; the wing and the wish are at variance in every imperfect nature, and so far as physical happiness is concerned, this discrepancy is fatal.

Mr. Emerson, in the next place, thus discourses of "Pure Nature." These extracts must not be read hastily, but well thought over.

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Language cannot paint it with his colors. It is too subtle. It is undefinable, unmeasurable, but we know that it pervades and contains us.

In sickness, in languor, give us a strain of

. . See

poetry or a profound sentence, and we are refreshed. how the deep divine thought demolishes centuries and millenniums, and makes itself present through all ages.

A thrill

passes through all men at the reception of new truth, or at the performance of a great action, which comes out of the heart of nature. In these communications the power to see is not separated from the will to do, but the insight proceeds from obedience, and the obedience proceeds from a joyful perception."

We must confess here that we cannot do justice to our author by picking a piece here, and another there, as each sen

66

Art," and we

tence belongs so essentially to the one before, and the other after, that we are nearly misrepresenting the man, instead of presenting him to our readers. What, therefore, we must do for the future must be to indicate as nearly as we can, the idea pervading the article we have to comment on. It is not, however, an easy matter to do this with the next essay, "Circles," which we will pass to speak of the next, "Intellect," where we find the same difficulty. We go to the next one, still find it as difficult to give the leading idea. sentences without number, eloquent, poetical, we have already given a number from this little volume of essays-sufficient, we think, to cause the reader to go to the Book itself-once for all, therefore, we must refer him to the fountain head, the essays themselves, confident that he will be richly rewarded for his pains.

We could give

golden, but, as

Besides these Essays, our author has published several separate orations and lectures: "Man Thinking, an Oration," "An Address delivered at Cambridge," "Literary Ethics, an Oration," "The Method of Nature," "Man the Reformer," and "The Young American." We select a few sentences from these.

“The theory of Books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him-life; it went from him-truth. It came to him-shortlived actions; it went from him—immortal thoughts. It came to him--business; it went from him-poetry. It was dead fact; now it is quick thought. It can stand and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to

the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.

“The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by as a loss of Power. It is the raw material out of which the intellect moulds her splendid products. A strange process, too, this by which experience is converted into thought as a mulberry leaf is converted into satin. The manufacture goes forward at all hours."

Mark the more than morning glow thrown over the opening of "the Address."

"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 pour the stars 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 eye again for the crimson dawn. The mystery of nature was never displayed more happily. The corn and the wine have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never broken silence with which the old bounty goes forward has not yielded yet one word of explanation."

The Address, of which this is the opening, did not please the professors, and one of them remonstrated. We give Emerson's reply, as it is a part of his spiritual history.

"What you say about the Discourse at Divinity College is just what I might expect from your truth and charity, combined with