and Professions, Manners, Ethics, with two lectures on The Present Age. James Freeman Clarke has given the following account of the impression made by his lectures at this period:

"The majority of the sensible, practical community_regarded him as mystical, as crazy or affected, as an imitator of Carlyle, as racked and revolutionary, as a fool, as one who did not himself know what he meant. A small but determined minority, chiefly composed of young men and women, admired him and believed in him, took him for their guide, teacher, and master. I, and most of my friends, belonged to this class. Without accepting all his opinions, or indeed knowing what they were, we felt that he did us more good than any other writer or speaker among us, and chiefly in two ways, first, by encouraging self-reliance; and, secondly, by encouraging God-reliance." 1

The majority of the sensible, practical people were well represented by John Quincy Adams, who wrote in his journal that Emerson, "after failing in the every-day vocations of a Unitarian preacher and schoolmaster, starts a new doctrine of transcendentalism, declares all the old revelations superannuated and worn out, and announces the approach of new revelations." 2 He did not believe that the old revelations had worn out, or that the church had gone to colored cobweb, as Carlyle suggested; but he did believe in the mighty truths of a spiritual religion, and he taught those truths as living realities. His own conviction that religion is to be realized in the present, and amidst its conditions, was so strong, his spirit of enthusiastic affirmation was so contagious, his eloquence was so persuasive, and his thought so inspiring, he won the admiration of some of the best minds of the time. Among those he influenced, and inspired with a larger sense of the purposes of life, were several persons since become famous in literature, education, or reform. One of these was Horace Mann. In a letter dated Boston, Dec. 9, 1836, he says,

1 Lecture delivered in his church Jan. 8, 1865, on The Religious Philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

2 Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, vol. i. p. 345, under date of Aug. 2, 1840. 8 In the chapter entitled Horoscope, in Past and Present.

4 Life of Mann, hy his wife.

ures.

"Mr. Emerson, I am sure, must be perpetually discovering richer worlds than those of Columbus or Herschel. He explores, too, not in the scanty and barren region of our physical firmament, but in a spiritual firmament of illimitable extent, and compacted of treasI heard his lecture last evening. It was to human life what Newton's Principia was to mathematics. He showed me what I have long thought of so much, how much more can be accomplished by taking a true view than by great intellectual energy. Had Mr. Emerson been set down in a wrong place, it may be doubted whether he would have found his way to the right point of view; but that he now certainly has done. As a man stationed in the sun would see all the planets moving round it in one direction and in perfect harmony, while to an eye on the earth their motions are full of crossings and retrogradations; so he, from his central position in the spiritual world, discovers harmony and order where others can discover only confusion and irregularity. His lecture last evening was one of the most splendid manifestations of a truth-seeking and truth-compelling mind I ever heard. Dr. Walter Channing, who sat beside me, said it made his head ache. Though his language was transparent, yet it was almost impossible to catch the great beauty and proportions of one truth before another was presented."

Another side of his influence may be seen in a letter which Margaret Fuller wrote to a friend in answer to a question as to the nature of the benefits Emerson conferred upon her.

"This influence, she writes, has been more beneficial to me than that of any American; and from him I first learned what is meant by an inward life. Many other springs have since fed the stream of living waters, but he first opened the fountain. That the 'mind is its own place,' was a dead phrase to me, till he cast light upon my mind. Several of his sermons stand apart in my memory, like landmarks of my spiritual history. It would take a volume to tell what this one influence did for me."

The magnetism alike of his manner and of his thought was an inspiration to many minds, rousing, stimulating, full of invigoration, quickening to the intellect and to the moral nature in equal degree. Those who accepted his influence were kindled with an ardent desire to improve their own natures, and with a zealous purpose to improve the world about them.

During this period two of his brothers died, to whom he had been strongly attached. Edward Bliss Emerson was a man of great brilliancy and promise, of a sturdy

and robust moral nature, severe and high-toned in his ideas of duty, and incapable, as Waldo said, of selfindulgence. He began the study of law with Daniel Webster, worked too hard, denied himself sufficient food and exercise, broke down in health, and became insane. He recovered his reason after a time. Returning to his studies, he soon found his health inadequate for continuing them permanently. In 1832 he went to Porto Rico, and took a clerkship there. He strongly attached himself to the people about him, became reconciled to the abandonment of his cherished plans of life; but he succumbed to the influences of the climate, and died in 1834.

Charles Chauncy Emerson graduated at Harvard in 1828, studied law with Samuel Hoar of Concord, and became engaged in marriage to his daughter Elizabeth. Waldo said he never moved save in the curve of beauty; but he had a varied capacity, and could turn his attention to every subject and occupation. He died of consumption May 9, 1836. In his metrical essay on Poetry, O. W. Holmes, his companion in the university, wrote this tribute to his memory:

"Thou calm, chaste scholar! I can see thee now,
The first young laurels on thy pallid brow,
O'er thy slight figure floating lightly down

In graceful folds the academic gown,

On thy curled lip the classic lines, that taught

How nice the mind that sculptured them with thought;
And triumph glistening in the clear blue eye

Too bright to live,

but oh, too fair to die!"

Both these young men gave great promise for the future, and the little they did of literary work was of the very best. Rockwood Hoar, writing of the history of the Concord Lyceum, says,

"They gave us loftier truths from sweeter lips than this generation knows. The only time I ever heard Edward Bliss Emerson speak in public was before the Concord Lyceum, when he delivered a lecture on the Geography of Asia,' a subject which, to the school-boy, sounded dry. He stood up in the hall over the old academy, with a large map with a painted outline of Asia upon it, with a wand in his hand, and entranced the attention of the audi

ence.

I remember now but one line of that lecture. I remember that from hearing it fifty years ago, -the last line of a poetical quotation with which he closed,

'And seek no other resting-place but heaven.'

Charles Chauncy Emerson's lecture on Socrates was the most stirring appeal to the young men which, at that time, they had ever heard, closing with the line,

'God for thee has done his part, do thine.'"

Many notes from the journal of Charles were afterwards printed in The Dial, which justify all the praises of his friends. Waldo had the most perfect faith in these two brothers. His Dirge expresses his sense of

their loss.

In May-Day and Other Pieces he writes of Edward as the

"Brother of the brief but blazing star,"

in one of the most memorable poems of its kind, and in a strain of the purest eloquence. They looked to him as to a prophet and an oracle, such was their confidence in his wisdom; while he trusted them in all matters of practical import. After their death he took a much greater interest in public matters, feeling his duties were increased, and that he must fill more perfectly his place as a citizen. Their loss was a great one to him, which he felt most keenly; for he was very tenderly attached to them both. He missed everywhere the presence of these

"Strong, star-bright companions;'

and in the Dirge his consoler says,

"They loved thee from their birth;

Their hands were pure, and pure their faith.
There are no such hearts on earth.

Ye drew one mother's milk,

One chamber held ye all;

A very tender history

Did in your childhood fall."

THE

V.

THE ERA OF TRANSCENDENTALISM.

HE first twenty-five years of the present century were marked, in Boston, by a revived interest in classical literature. The way was opened thereby to a new appreciation of the idealistic philosophy, creating a taste for the English transcendentalists, as in the case of Channing; and then, a little later, for those of Germany, as in the case of Emerson. Emerson began to read Carlyle about the year 1828, and soon after he read Wilhelm Meister in Carlyle's translation.

Previous to the introduction of German thought into England by Coleridge and others, the influence of Locke and Bentham had been predominant. All innate ideas were denied, and morality was based on custom or utility. To this school of thought most of the English Unitarians adhered. They were materialists, and believed in a purely mechanical revelation. The like philosophy had prevailed in this country, and it had been a partial cause of the Unitarian protest. The new thought was everywhere a re-action against it, an attempt of the human mind to recover a natural and assured faith in moral things. It declared that man has innate ideas, and a faculty transcending the senses and the understanding. It identified morality and religion, and made intuition their source. Coleridge calls this transcendent faculty reason, and regarded it as an immediate beholding of supersensible things. He says it can not be called a faculty, and much less a personal property of any human mind. We do not possess it, but partake of it; it is identical with the Universal Reason, a spark from which enters the human mind. He says there is but one reason, which all intelligent