he must be very handsome and tall of stature, if he is to find favor with Emerson, who is himself, they say, a man of singular beauty, and who regards any personal defect as a sort of crime. The new man regards no laws but those within his own breast; but there he finds the unfalsified wells of truth and beauty. The new man believes in himself alone; he demands every thing from himself, and does all for himself, reposes upon himself and in himself. The new man is a stoic, but not stern as such; he is beautiful and gentle. Wherever he comes, life blooms: in the circle of friends it becomes as a holy day; nectar and ambrosia pour forth at his approach; but he himself needs no friend. He needs none, not even God; he himself becomes god-like, inasmuch as that he does not need him. He conquers heaven, inasmuch as he says to heaven, "I desire thee not!" He descends down into nature as a restorer, governs and places it under the spell of his influence, and it is his friend. In it he has that which suffices him; the divinities of the woods whisper to him their peace and their self-sufficingness; there is not a mole-hill which has not a star above it; there is no sorrow which the healing life of nature can not heal. He says farewell to the proud world; he tramples upon the greatness of Rome and Greece in this little rural home, where he in the trees can see God. Emerson's language is compressed and strong, simple, but singularly plastic. His turns of thought are original; old ideas are reproduced in so new and brilliant a manner, that one fancies them heard for the first time. The diviningrod of genius is in his hand. He is master in his own domain. His strength seems to me peculiarly to be that of the critic, a certain grand contempt and scorn of the mediocre of the weak and paltry wherever he sees it, and he sees it in much and in many things. He chastises it without mercy; but, at the same time, with wonderful address. Emerson's performances in this way are really quite regal. They remind me of our King Gustavus Adol

phus the Great, when he took the criminal soldier by the hair and delivered him over to punishment, with the friendly words, “Come, my lad, it is better that thy body now suffer chastisement than that thy soul go to hell." Yet there is more in Emerson even than the intention of chastisement. The writings of this scorner of imperfection, of the mean and the paltry, this bold exacter of perfection in man, have for me a fascination which amounts almost to magic! I often object to him; I quarrel with him; I see that his stoicism is one-sidedness, his pantheism an imperfection, and I know that which is greater and more perfect, but I am under the influence of his magical power. I believe myself to have become greater through his greatness, stronger through his strength, and I breathe the air of a higher sphere in his world, which is indescribably refreshing to me. Emerson has more ideality than is common among thinkers of the English race, and one might say that in him the idealism of Germany is wedded to the realism of Britain.

I have as yet never gone a step to see a literary lion; but Emerson, this pioneer in the moral woods of the New World, who sets his ax to the roots of the old trees to hew them down, and to open the path for new planting-I would go a considerable way to see this man. And see him I will-him who, in a society as strictly evangelical as that of Massachusetts and Boston (Emerson was the minister of a Unitarian congregation in Boston), had the courage openly to resign his ministration, his church, and the Christian faith, when he had come to doubt of its principal doctrines; who was noble enough, nevertheless, to retain universal esteem and old friends; and strong enough, while avoiding all polemical controversy and bitterness of speech, to withdraw into silence, to labor alone for that truth which he fully acknowledged, for those doctrines which the heathen and the Christian alike acknowledge. Emerson has a right to talk about strength and

truth, because he lives for these virtues. And it will benefit the world, which is slumbering in the Church from the lack of vital Christianity, to be roused up by such fresh winds from the Himalaya of heathenism. But how can Emerson overlook -? Yet I will not ask about Would that many were

Emerson is just and true.

like him!

But now I must tell you something of my late doings in society. Miss Catherine Sedgwick, the author of "Redwood," came here, together with her young niece, Susan, a few days after my arrival. Mr. Downing, who greatly esteems her, wished me to make her acquaintance. She is between fifty and sixty, and her countenance indicates a very sensible, kind, and benevolent character. Her figure is beautifully feminine, and her whole demeanor womanly, sincere, and frank, without a shadow of affectation. I felt my soul a little slumbrous while with her for the first few days; but this feeling was, as it were, blown quite away in a moment by a touching and beautiful expression of cordiality on her side, which revealed us to each other; and since then I have felt that I could live with her as with a heavenly soul, in which one has the most undoubting trust. I derived pleasure, also, from her highly sensible conversation, and from her truly womanly human sympathies. She has a true and gentle spirit; and I feel that I could really depend upon her. Of late years she has written much for what I will call the people of lower degree in society; because here, where almost every person works for their living, one can not properly speak of a working class, but quite correctly of people of small means and narrow circumstances-a class which has not yet worked itself up. Franklin, himself a workman, and one who worked himself upward, wrote for this class. Miss Sedgwick writes for the same; and her little novels and stories are much liked, and produce a great deal of good. People praise, in particular, a story called

"Home," which I shall endeavor to read.

Miss Sedgwick

was at this time occupied in preparing a new edition of her collected works. She consulted me about some proposed alterations in some of these works, and I told her that I, for my own part, never would alter any thing in the works which I had written long since, even where I saw their faults, and could easily correct them; because, where an author lives and writes through a long course of years, his or her works constitute a history of that author's development, which ought to remain unaltered as a history in itself, alike instructive to him as to others. An author's works are portions of an autobiography, which he must write whether he will or not.

Miss Sedgwick invited me to her house in Lenox, in the western part of Massachusetts, during the next summer, and promised to visit with me a Shaker establishment in New Lebanon, which lies at no great distance from her house.

While Miss Sedgwick has been here the Downings have made an excursion with us to the top of South Beacon, one of the highest hills in the highlands of this district. Mr. Downing drove me, and for this mountain road a skillful driver and a good horse were really needful, because the road was steep, and rather an apology for a road than any thing else. But we stumbled and struggled over stock and stone in our light carriage, until we had ascended about nine hundred feet, and from the top of the woodcovered hill looked down upon half the world, as it seemed to me, but which presented the appearance of a billowy chaos of wooded heights and valleys, in which human dwellings were visible merely as specks of light, scarcely discernible to the naked eye. Man, so great in his suffering, in his combat, vanished into nothing, seen from this material hilltop, and therefore I thought not about him. That which was most refreshing to me in this landscape was the view of the Hudson, which, like a clear

thought bursting from chaos, makes for itself a path through the woods, and flows brilliantly forth into the infinite. Our party was a little too large and a little too merry for me. I know not how it is that a thoughtful silence should always come over me in such gay parties amid natural scenes. And here I ought to have been alone with the magnificence of Nature. One little moment, partly alone and partly with Mr. Downing, who knows how to be gay and jocular with the gay, and silent with the silent, was to me the crowning luxury of the excursion, during which there was no lack of Champagne and joke, and more substantial fare yet for the palate, together with polite gentlemen and lovely ladies, both young and old. Yes, lovely ladies there certainly are here, but rather pretty and delicate than, properly speaking, beautiful. A really beautiful woman I have not yet seen here, but neither have I seen a single ill-favored countenance or deformed person. That which especially pleases me is the easy, unembarrassed, and yet modestly kind intercourse which exists between the young of both sexes.

Completely weary were we when, after our excursion to the hills, we reached home in the evening, and beautiful was rest in that lovely, quiet home with the kind Downings. That which my mind has retained of the excursion is the view of that bright river, bursting forth from the gloomy forests of earth. It gleams, as it were, within me.

I parted from Miss Sedgwick with a feeling that I should never like to part with her. Her niece, Susan, was an agreeable, well-educated girl. A young gentleman, who is said to be her lover, followed her hither.

A few days after our excursion to South Beacon, we went up the Hudson to visit a family of the name of D., who belong to the aristocracy of these shores. We set off in good time in the morning; the air was delicious; the wind still, and the shores shone out in the utmost splendor of their autumnal pomp beneath a somewhat subdued