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For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

IN MEMORIAM.

OH, to recall the days when, on the road That led me, cheerful or depressed, towards

home,

My little timid son was wont to come
Within my ken, not far from my abode!
On seeing me his eager joy he curbed,
Uncertain of my mood. He peeled his stick
With anxious mien, while casting glances
quick

To learn my humor; if I seemed disturbed
As I drew near, he loitered by my side-
A thought behind- and looked intent on
work;

But if I smiled-then with a sudden jerk, His stick flew far, and such a whelming tide Of love burst forth, in smiles and misty tears, And pressure of his loving little hand, and eager confidence of hopes and fears.

Oh, that we did not fail so oft to find God's angels in our children! How our eyes

Are holden, while we deem that we are wise; Whereas we are but very dull and blind! For what are trifling faults—a noisy tone, A broken platter, or a missing hat? Can we not foster love so passionate, Yet gently chide? Alas! why be so prone To silence lips so loving, or to make The little heart e'en for a moment ache Because our nerves are jarred? How soon we lose

Perception of the treasure of its love! Shock our fastidious sense, and we refuse

The love that fills the little heart with joy the solace that could half our griefs

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OFT to this isle when earth was young
Were men beguiled,

For here the Sirens harped and sung,
Or Circe smiled;

And seamen from their wandering decks
Through golden air

Saw waving arms and bending necks,
And flower-crowned hair;

And vainly, strenuous to be wise,
These urged the oar,

Turned to the shining main their eyes,

And shunned this shore.

And now, though those who charmed are fled,
The charm endures;

The eternal temptress is not dead,
Still lulls and lures.

Yes, Nature here draws close to man
With lenient eyes,

Dissolves with tender touch the ban
Of griefs and sighs:

Bids him forget what things have been,
Life's toil and strain,

Her phantom flash of days serene,
Her births of pain:

Bids him forget what yet must be,
What Fate delays,

The roaring of the angered sea,
The tempest's blaze.

And some will listen to her lure,
Some turn aside

Wrapped in the robe austere and pure
Of stoic pride.

But we, whom gracious Chance has brought
To this soft shore,

Do well to slack the chain of thought,
Nor look before;

For Care creeps on with treacherous feet,
And Time is strong,

Nor ever dream on earth was sweet
Which lived too long.

This I have learn'd, this you shall learn
When these bright days
Look pale as sinking stars which burn
Through twilight haze.

Capri, April, 1888.

W. WORDSWorth. Macmillan's Magazine.

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From The Scottish Review. scendentalism of Emerson, and his strugEMERSON, THE THINKER. gles with religious belief. But it must SINCE Emerson's death we have had not be forgotten that the new religion in three charming monographs illustrating its day tinged and influenced the whole his life and career; these are the "Me- thought and movement of the best intelmoir" by Oliver Wendell Holmes, in the lects of America. Frothingham was an series of "American Men of Letters; apostle of his teachings, Ripley gave up "The Life, Writings, and Philosophy of all that he had for it, and even sold his Emerson," by George Willis Cooke; and library to help its growth and develop "Emerson at Home and Abroad," by ment. Whittier espoused it, and Lowell Moncure Daniel Conway. Other essays wrote some of his sincerest papers for have, of course, appeared, notably those the Dial, the organ of the movement. of Arnold, Morley, Whipple, and Ireland. Margaret Fuller was bewitched by it, SylBut the latter have been more in the way vester Judd published his novel of "Marof reminiscence and criticism than of garet as an illustration of the creed, and biography. We have now the legal life of Theodore Parker, and Curtis, and Hawthe poet and idealist, written by James thorne, had their warmest sympathies Elliot Cabot, the life-long friend and lit-awakened by it. Even George Bancroft erary executor of Mr. Emerson. Mr. believed that the new faith would live. Cabot was well equipped for his task, having at different times materially as sisted the subject of his memoir, in the preparation and arrangement of his lectures and addresses for the press. The book is largely made up of extracts from Emerson's journal and private letters. These tell their own story, and though the life which they describe was uneventful in a measure, as a poet's life perhaps ought to be, still the book possesses much real interest to the general reader. Mr. Cabot attempts no critical estimate of his hero's work. He leaves that task for the sharpened stiletto of Mr. Matthew Arnold, the Sainte-Beuve of English literature. And, on the other hand, he does not destroy the perfect harmony of events by fulsome adulation of the chief actor in them. His work is judiciously done, and of the eight hundred pages before us the reader will not willingly skip a line. Some may think that too much stress is paid to the tran

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Of all that famous group of New England singers and thinkers, Bronson Alcott alone remains staunch to his early principles. The idea, after saturating the lifework of its teachers and disciples, quietly died away, and to-day it is merely a mem ory. No one doubts the sincerity of those who took it up, and demanded so much for it. As a religion, it promised its devotees more than Kant, or Fichte, or Coleridge, or Wordsworth, ever dreamed of granting. But its growth was so rapid that its promoters were surprised and startled. From the rocket at last, however, came the stick.

Mr. Cabot, as we have indicated, emphasizes this period in Emerson's life, as well as his experiences in the pulpit. We have much of the preacher, and too little, it may be said, of the poet and philosopher. But the reader will be thankful for the copious accounts of the man, the lecturer, and the traveller. In his time, letters and mental activity of his country. Emerson was a conspicuous force in the His fame extended to Europe. A future generation must determine his place in literature.

He was the outcome of eight generations of orthodox preachers. His father was the Rev. William Emerson, and he was born on the 25th of May, 1803, in Summer Street, Boston, Mass. His home was an austere one, though perfect sympa thy existed in the family circle, and th

four brothers, William, Ralph, Edward, distaste, regarding the episode of schooland Charles, bore only the kindest rela- keeping as the one gloomy passage in his tions towards one another. Ralph was life. "A hopeless schoolmaster," he calls under three years of age when his schooldays began. He had only been two months at Miss Whitwell's school, when his father wrote, "Ralph does not read very well yet." In 1813 he entered the Latin school. A fellow-student, Dr. Furness, says of his friend :—

We were at the Boston Latin School together. From 11 to 12 every day we went to a private school kept by Mr. Webb, master of one of the public Grammar schools. After the public school was dismissed, Mr. Webb had a few boys who came to him, chiefly to learn to write. Ralph and I used to sit together, I can see him now at his copy-book; quite a laborious operation it appeared, as his tongue worked up and down with his pen. But then, thank Heaven! he never had any talent for anything, — nothing put pure genius, which talents would have overlaid. Then it was that he wrote verses on the naval victories

of the war of 1812. He wrote in verse also a

history or romance - or was it an epic?- -entitled, "Fortus," which I have a dim remembrance of having illustrated. I think Waldo repaid my admiration of his verses with his for my pictures. He was rather jealous of any amendments that I ventured to suggest. At the Latin School his favorite piece for declamation was from the "Pleasures of Hope," "Warsaw's Last Champion," etc. This passage is a telephone to my ears. hear the ringing of his voice.

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himself, "toiling through this miserable employment without even the poor satisfaction of discharging it well; for the good suspect me, and the geese dislike me." But Emerson was a much better schoolmaster than he was disposed to admit. He spent three years in teaching, much as he disliked it, and his earnings from that source were very good, far beyond his personal needs. Like all boys he had a dream. To be a brilliant pulpit orator, swaying multitudes with his eloquence, and bringing men nearer to God, was the ideal career that he had marked out for himself. To achieve that end he studied theology, but as the years passed away doubts and misgivings found their way to his heart, and the boyish vision grew more and more dim. His journals show his discouragements and disappointments. However, he was not the man to draw back. In 1824 he joined the Divinity School at Cambridge, Mass, and in October, 1826, having been "approbated to preach," he delivered his first public sermon at Waltham, in Mr. Samuel Ripley's pulpit. The three divisions of this sermon were 1. Men are always praying; 2. All their prayers are granted; 3. We must beware, then, what we ask. The idea was suggested by a laborer whom he had seen working in the fields. Though rude, says Emerson, he had some deep thoughts. Ill health sent the young preacher to South Carolina and Florida

In 1817 he entered Harvard College, and was graduated four years later. He had early felt the pinch of poverty, and he went to college as president's fresh- for a time. The change helped him wonman (page), and waiter at commons. As derfully, and he returned North, and president's freshman, he had his lodging preached for a few weeks at the First free of charge, in the president's house, Church, and later at Northampton and and his duty was to summon delinquents, New Bedford. In February, 1829, he was and to announce to the students the orders selected as the colleague of the Rev. of the faculty. For waiting at commons, Henry Ware, Jun., of the Second Church three-fourths of the cost of his board was in Boston. In March he was ordained, remitted. He was well liked by profess- but it was not long afterwards that his ors and classmates. Mathematics had mind experienced that change which prono charm for him, but Chaucer, Montaigne, duced so marked an effect on his life. He and Plato were ever in his hands. Before no longer felt that the pulpit was his place. leaving college he tried school-teaching, Preaching became irksome to him. His but he was disgusted with the occupation, theological views drifted more and more and when he took it up again, after con- out of harmony with the old orthodoxy of cluding his studies, he felt the same his fathers, and mental troubles, and ill

ness in his family, made him despondent. | truth, in my opinion that young man was not born to be a minister."

He was nearing the end of his career as a minister of the gospel, but before the blow The beautiful wife continued to droop fell, he met Ellen Louisa Tucker, the and pine. The husband watched over her lovely daughter of a Boston merchant, tenderly, hoping against hope. At times whose hand he espoused after a brief en- the courage she displayed cheered him a gagement. She was a lady of great charm little. But the harsh spring winds provof manner and beauty. Her spirits were ing too severe, a second sojourn at the gay and buoyant, so buoyant, in fact, that South was proposed. While preparing none of her friends suspected that she for the journey, Mrs. Emerson died. was suffering from an incurable and malig- Twelve months later, in 1832, at the close nant malady. In September the marriage of his third year as incumbent of the took place, and Emerson felt that he had Second Church, Emerson determined to reached the zenith of earthly happiness. break off his connection with his charge. But happy as he was, he feared that it He had been gradually reaching the cliwould not hold, and he wrote to his aunt, max, and declared plainly "that he could "There's an apprehension of reverse al- not regard any longer the rite of the ways arising from success." And yet Lord's Supper as a sacrament, estabEmerson was not the one to borrow lished by Christ for his followers in all trouble as a rule; but he could not shake off the forebodings which pressed heavily on his heart. Meanwhile, he went on with his preaching, charming the young hearers of the congregation, and shocking those older men and women who thought his discourses unsanctified because they were unconventional and untheological in style. Dr. Hedge praises their simplicity, and says that Emerson won his first admirers in the pulpit. Still, as a pastor, he does not appear to have been successful. His biographer says of him: —

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As to his performance of the other pastoral duties -the visiting of the sick or the well, and generally his personal and social relations to his flock, Emerson says of himself, that he did not excel, like Dr. Charles Lowell, in domiciliaries," and Dr. Charles Robbins, his successor at the Second Church, had a story of some Revolutionary veteran on his death-bed summoning the minister for the appropriate consolations, and rising in his wrath when Emerson showed some hesitation, as he thought, at handling his spiritual weapons: "Young man, if you don't know your business, you had better go home." Dr. William Hague, also, minister of the First Baptist Church in Hanover Street when Emerson was at the Old North, says that once when Emerson was to take part with him in a funeral service, the sexton said that "while Mr. Emerson's people think so highly of him, he does not make his best impression at a funeral; in fact, he does not seem to be at ease at all, but rather shy and retiring; to tell the

ages." Provided the use of the elements was dispensed with, and the rite made one merely of commemoration, he was willing to continue the service, but on no other conditions. His proposal was referred to a select committee, which met and finally reported that they had entire confidence in their pastor, but declined to advise any change. The precise nature of the rite they did not feel disposed to discuss. This left the question to Emerson alone for solution. He went to the White Hills to think it over, and to decide whether he would resign the pastorate or continue to administer the communion as usual. While there, he enters in his journal :

The Communicant celebrates, on a foundation either of authority or of tradition, an ordinance which has been the occasion to thousands, I hope to thousands of thousands, of contrition, of gratitude, of prayer, of faith, of love, of holy living. Far be it from any of my friends—God forbid it be in my heart- to interrupt any occasion thus blessed of God's influences upon the human mind. I will not, because we may not all think alike of the means, fight so strenuously against the means as to miss of the end which we all value alike. I think Jesus did not mean to institute a perpetual celebration, but that a commemoration of him would be useful. Others think that Jesus did establish this use. We are agreed that one is useful, and we are agreed, I hope, in the way in which it must be made useful, namely, by each one making it an original commemoration. I know very well

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