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public is doubtful. The author has no great tact; his wit is frequently heavy." And when at length "Sartor Resartus" began to appear piecemeal in "Fraser's Magazine," whatever remark it occasioned in England was of a no wise flattering character. The newspaper critics fell upon it in their most flippant manner. One pronounced it 'a mass of clotted nonsense, mixed, however, here and there, with passages marked by thought and striking poetic vigor." There were sentences which might be read backward or forward, for they are equally intelligible either way. Indeed, by beginning at the tail, and so working up to the head, we think the reader will stand the fairest chance of getting at the meaning." Emerson himself, warned perhaps by the slight favor which has been shown to his own " Nature," did not expect for the book any immediate popularity. In an almost apologetic preface, he says:

"SARTOR RESARTUS.

"The editors would not undertake, as there was no need, to justify the gay costume in which the author delights to dress his thoughts, or the German idioms with which he has sportively sprinkled his pages. It is his humor to advance the gravest speculations in a quaint and burlesque style. If his masquerade offend any of his audience to that degree that they will not hear what he has to say, it may chance to draw others to listen to his wisdom. But we will venture to remark that the distaste excited by these peculiarities, in some readers, is greatest

at first, and is soon forgotten. The author makes ample amends for the occasional eccentricity of his genius, not only by frequent bursts of pure splendor, but by the wit and sense which never fail him."

After those few hours of genial discourse at Craigenputtoch, Carlyle and Emerson never saw each other again until 1848. During the intervening almost twenty years the position of the two men had materially changed. Both had passed the noonday of life, but both were in full. possession of their rare powers. Both had fought the battle of life, and both had come out victors. Emerson had, by his "Nature," Lectures, and Essays, won a high place in the domain of thought in his own country, and his reputation had crossed the ocean, so that he had been invited to lecture in all the principal towns in England and Scotland; and the door of every house which he could care to enter was open to him. Carlyle had written the "French Revolution,” “ Chartism," "Past and Present," and had gathered together the "Letters and Speeches of Cromwell," "gathered them from far and near; fished them up from foul Lethean quagmires where they lay buried; washed them clean from foreign stupidities," and accompanied them with a running commentary which comes near to being a life of the great Lord Protector, or at least furnishes abundant material for such a life. Now, at the age of two-and-fifty, he

stood the foremost figure in English literature. Emerson saw much of Carlyle in his modest London home; and years after, in his "English Traits," he gave some account of this intercourse; especially of a summer trip which they made together to see the ancient Druidical structure of Stonehenge. Of this trip he gives a full account. We present it here, out of its chronological order, as furnishing some striking characteristics of the two men, who acted and interacted so largely upon each other; men so like in a few respects, so unlike in many respects.

To Emerson, as he says, this trip had a double attraction of the monument, which neither had seen, and of the companion. "It seemed a bringing together of extreme points to visit the oldest religious monument of Britain in company of her latest thinker, one whose influence may be traced in every contemporary book. I was glad to sum up a little of my experiences, and to exchange a few reasonable words on the aspects of England with a man on whose genius I set a high value. We took the railway to Salisbury, where we found a carriage to convey us to Amesbury, passing by Old Sarum, a bare, treeless hill, once containing the town which sent two members to Parliament -now, not a hut." The fine weather and Carlyle's local knowledge of Hampshire, where he was wont to spend a part of every summer, made the journey short. Of the conversation by the way

Emerson gives a few characteristic bits, treasured up in note-book and memory:

TALK ON THE ROAD.

"There was much to say of the traveling Americans, and their usual objects in London. I thought it natural that they should give some time to works of art collected here, which they can not find at home; and a little to scientific clubs and museums, which make London very attractive. But my philosopher was not contented. Art,' and 'High Art,' is a favorite object of his wit. 'Yes,' he said, 'Kunst is a great delusion; and Goethe and Schiller wasted a great deal of time on it.' And he thinks he discovers that old Goethe found this out, and in his later writings changed his tone. He said, 'As soon as a man begins to talk of art, architecture, and antiquities, nothing good comes of it.' He wishes to go through the British Museum in silence, and thinks a sincere man will see something and say nothing. In these days he thought it became an architect to consult only the grim necessity, and say, 'I can build you a coffin for such persons as you are, and for such dead purposes as you have; but you shall have no ornament.' For the sciences he had, if possible, even less tolerance; and compared the savants of Somerset House to the boy who asked Confucius, 'How many stars in the sky?' Confucius answered that he minded things near him. 'How many hairs in your eyebrows?' Confucius said he didn't know and didn't care.

Of the Americans, Carlyle complained that they dislike the coldness and exclusiveness of the English, and run away to France, and go with their countrymen, and are amused, instead of manfully staying in London,

confronting Englishmen, and acquiring their culture, who have really so much to teach them."

If we may put faith in a tithe of what Carlyle was wont to say and write in those days, Englishmen, or at least the London species of Englishmen, had very little to teach which it was worth anybody's while to take the trouble to learn. He seems to have spoken, as was often the case with him, the things which lay nearest the tip of his tongue, without taking much heed as to whether it was truth or caricature. Emerson responded with that earnestness and sincerity of which he never lost sight.

"I told Carlyle that I was easily dazzled, and was accustomed to concede readily all that an Englishman would ask. I see everywhere in this country proofs of sense and spirit, and success of every sort. I like the people. They are as good as they are handsome. They have everything, and can do everything. But meantime I surely know that, as soon as I return to Massachusetts, I shall lapse into the feeling, which the geography of America inevitably inspires, that we play the game with immense advantage; that there, and not here, is the seat and center of the English race; and that no skill or activity can long compete with the prodigious natural advantages of that country, in the hands of the same race; and that England, an old and exhausted country, must be contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her children."

"This," says Emerson, "is a proposition