that it is a bad sign in a man to be too con- | however, he never delivered) introducing him scientious and stick at gnats. The most des- to Carlyle. perate scoundrels have been the over-refiners. He could not consent to withdraw his opinion, and, on his return, he preached the remarkable sermon in which he resigned his charge. His people were very loth to part with him, and an attempt was made to arrive at some arrangement by which he could remain, but nothing came of it. Carlisle from Dumfries. A white day in my years. I found the youth I sought in Scotland- and good and wise and pleasant he seems to me, and his wife a most accomplished, agreeable woman. Truth and peace and faith dwell with them and beautify them. I never saw more amiableness than is in his countenance. 66 "That man," Carlyle said to Lord Houghton, came to see me. I don't know what brought him, and we kept him one night, and then he left us. I saw him go up the hill; I didn't go with him to see him descend. I preferred to watch him mount and vanish like an angel." He preached in Edinburgh, Mr. Ireland tells us, with great acceptance, at the Unitarian Chapel; and a week later, having meantime made a little tour towards the Highlands-spoiled by constant rain, "since the scenery of a shower bath must always be much the same,"-drove across from Dumfries to Craigenputtock, where Carlyle had been living for the last five years, and spent He writes the afternoon and night there. next day in his journal: “Carlisle in Cumber The death of his wife, his mental tor-land, Aug. 26. I am just arrived in merry ture, and the severance of the tie which bound him to a congregation that he loved with all his heart, so undermined his health, that a journey to Europe was ad vised. Addressing a farewell letter to his people, he sailed out of Boston harbor on Christmas day, 1832, in the brig Jasper, and on the 2nd of February he landed at Malta. His letters and journal are full of his impressions of Malta, of Sicily, of Italy, and of England. At Rome he admired most the pictures, the antiquities, and the churches. Raphael's "Transfiguration" and Andrea Sacchi's "Vision of Romuald" never passsed out of his mind. He left the Eternal City on Shakespeare's birthday, and journeyed to Florence, admiring the Duomo, "set down like an archangel's tent in the midst of the city." He dined and breakfasted with Walter Savage Landor, who, he writes to his brother Charles, "did not quite show the same calibre in conversation as in his books." Venice he arrived at on the 1st of June, and soon had enough of the "city for beavers," which made him feel that he was in prison and solitary. "It is," he writes, "as if you were always at sea.' The 20th of the month saw him at Paris, the most hospitable of cities. He went to the Sorbonne, and heard Jouffroy, Thénard, and Gay Lussac. Mme. Mars he saw in Delavigne's "Les Enfants d'Edouard." On the 4th July he dined with General Lafayette and one hundred Americans. The visit to England was rich in interest to Emerson. He arrived in London on the 21st of July. It was Sunday, and he went to St. Paul's. Mr. Cabot says:He stayed in London about three weeks; visited Coleridge, as he has related in "English Traits," and saw a few other persons, among them Dr. Bowring, who took him to see Bentham's house, and made him remark that there were but two chairs in the apart ment where he received his guests, as it was his invariable rule to receive but one at a time -a rule which seemed to Emerson worthy of universal adoption by men of letters. Also John Stuart Mill, who gave him a card (which, | To Emerson the interview was a happy one, and gratified the chief wish he had in coming to England; though he did not find all that he had sought. He had been looking for a masfound, had nothing to teach him. "My own ter; but in the deepest matters Carlyle, he feeling," he says in a letter to Mr. Ireland a few days afterwards, "was that I had met with men of far less power who had got greater insight into religious ruth." Butt he had come close to the affectionate nature and the nobility of soul that lay behind the cloud of whim and dyspepsia, and he kept to that; and, for the rest, confined his expectations thenceforth to what Carlyle had to give. 66 The greatest power of Carlyle," he afterwards wrote, "like that of Burke, seems to me to reside rather in the form. Neither of them is a poet, born to announce the will of the god, but each has a splendid rhetoric to clothe the truth." On his way to Liverpool he stopped at Rydal Mount and paid his respects to Wordsworth, whom he found "ever young" and calmly reciting his own sonnets. Emerson's first lectures in England were on natural science, a department of thought at which in his early days he looked rather askance, as Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes says. His papers were, in a measure, successful. On the fourth of September he sailed from Liverpool for New York, and on arriving home he rejoined his mother at Newton, Mass. A year later mother and son went to reside at Concord, and in 1835 Emerson became engaged to Lydia Jackson of Plymouth, whose name he changed to that of Lidian. Of his journey to his bride's home to get married we have this account: should remain in manuscript. The office of minister had its attractions for him. A lady, then a little girl, who accompanied He loved the Sunday service, and was him as far as Boston on his drive, remembers ever ready as a layman to read a sermon. that the stable-keeper, no doubt in honor of In his journal, he writes on this: "A new the bridal journey, had furnished him for the audience, a new Sabbath, affords an opoccasion with a pair of new reins of yellow portunity of communicating thought and webbing. Emerson noticing them, stopped moral excitement that shall surpass all at the stable and had them changed. "Why, previous experience, that shall constitute child, the Pilgrims of Old Plymouth will think an epoch, a revolution in the minds on we have stopped by the wayside and gathered whom you act, and in your own." It was golden-rods to weave the reins with." The marriage took place at the Winslow House, would be offered to him in New Bedford. intimated to him, later, that a church a well-preserved colonial mansion belonging to Miss Jackson, who had proposed that they He sent word that he must stipulate that should live there. But he could not leave he should not be expected to administer Concord. "I must win you," he writes to her the communion, nor to offer prayer unless during their engagement, "to love it. I am he felt moved to do so. Of course, to born a poet-of a low class without doubt, such terms, the church could not agree. yet a poet. That is my nature and vocation. He lectured a good deal about this time My singing, to be sure, is very husky, and is on natural-history subjects and speculafor the most part in prose. Still I am a poet tive philosophy. These thoughts afterin the sense of a perceiver and dear lover of wards found a place in his books. His the harmonies that are in the correspondences between these and those. A sunset, a forest, fame as a speaker extended throughout a snowstorm, a certain river view, are more the whole of the American Union, and to me than many friends, and do ordinarily he soon found his time fully occupied at divide my day with my books. Wherever I the Lyceum. After completing a course go, therefore, I guard and study my rambiing at Boston, he went to Providence to depropensities. Now Concord is only one liver the same series. His lecture on of a hundred towns in which I could find these necessary objects. But Plymouth, I fear, is not one. Plymouth is streets." As if there were no woods or sunsets in Plymouth! But the attractions of Concord were too strong. In Concord, accordingly, they set up housekeeping; Emerson got his study arranged, and settled down to the manners of life from which he never afterwards departed. There was a small flower-garden already laid out, in which Mrs. Emerson established her favorite plants from Plymouth; and there was also a vegetable garden, where Emerson began his husbandry, leaving his study to do a little work there every day. While thus engaged one day in the following spring, one of his townsmen came to warn him that a stray pig was doing mischief in the neighboring grounds. He then learned that he had been appointed one of the hog-reeves for the year, according to the town custom, which pointed out newlymarried men as particularly eligible for that office. Emerson, though he had left his church, continued to preach at intervals until 1847, when he abandoned the function altogether. "Leaving the pulpit," he interpreted to mean the renunciation of all claim to priestly authority. His sermons numbered, in all, one hundred and seventyone. Of these two only were ever printed, viz., the sermon at the ordination of the Rev. H. B. Goodwin, in 1830, and the discourse on the Lord's Supper, at the Second Church, when he gave up his charge. It was his wish that the others 66 Religion" had excited so much feeling in Boston, that he decided to omit it from sisted on having it read to them. At the his list, but the people of Providence insuggestion of the Rev. Dr. Farley, he consented to do this, and read the lecture before a small audience, in a private room. Farley asked him to preach for him, and on Sunday he accepted the invitation, selecting, from Greenwood's collection, hymns of a purely meditative character, without any distinctively Christian expres sion. The sermon For the Scripture lesson he read a passage from Ecclesiasticus, and from the same book he took his text. was like one of his lectures, the prayers were simply meditations on nature, beauty, order, goodness, love, and wholly without supplication. The congregation was very large. On returning home, Dr. Farley found Emerson with his head bowed on his hands, which were resting on his knees. He looked up and said, "Now tell me plainly, honestly, just what you think of that service." Dr. Farley replied that before he was half through he had made up his mind that it was the last time he should have that pulpit. "You are right," he rejoined," and I thank you. On my part, before I was half through I felt out of place. The doubt is solved." Emerson, as far back as 1837, was an Abolitionist, preaching and lecturing against slavery, though he was not so strong an apostle of the movement as Garrison or Whittier. His life was now spent happily. He read many books to his wife, wrote letters and kept up his literary work with astonishing industry. In 1847 he decided on making a second visit to Europe. The account of his journeyings there, and of the eminent people whom he saw, forms a most interesting part of Mr. Cabot's book. The visit proved a great social success, and Emerson went the rounds of the literary, artistic, and scientific circles, dining and breakfasting everywhere. We have a kindly picture of Carlyle and his wife, different far from Mr. Froude's ungracious portrait, and one which we would rather keep in our hearts. Emerson went at once to the home of his friend at Chelsea. Years before he had seen him at Craigenputtock, in that rude house," amid desolate heather hills, where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart," and he remembered the talk they had had about books and men, and he longed to grasp again the hand of the brave thinker. The door was opened by Jane Carlyle, and the man himself was behind her with a lamp in the entry. They were very little changed [he writes] from their old selves of fourteen years ago, when I left them at Craigenputtock. “Well," said Carlyle, "here we are, shovelled together again." The floodgates of his talk are quickly opened and the river is a great and constant stream. We had large communication that night until nearly one o'clock, and at breakfast next morning it began again. At noon or later we went together, Carlyle and I, to Hyde Park and the palaces, about two miles from here, to the National Gallery, and to the Strand-Carlyle melting all Westminster and London down into his talk and laughter as he walked. We came back to dinner at five or later, then Carlyle came in and spent the evening, which again was long by the clock, but had no other measures. Here in this house we breakfast about 9; Carlyle is very apt, his wife says, to sleep till 10 or 11, if he has no company. An immense talker he is, and altogether as extraordinary in his conversation as in his writing- I think even more So. You will never discover his real vigor and range, or how much more he might do than he has ever done, without seeing him. I find my few hours' discourse with him in Scotland, long since, gave me not enough knowledge of him, and I have now at last been taken by surprise. . . . Carlyle and his wife live on beautiful terms. Nothing could be more engaging than their ways, and in her book-case all his books are inscribed to her, as they came, from year to year, each with some significant lines. In another place he writes: His I had good talk with Carlyle last night. He says over and over for years, the same thing. Yet his guiding genius is his moral sense, his perception of the sole importance of truth and justice, and he too says that there is properly no religion in England. He is quite contemptuous about Kunst also, in Germans, or English or Americans. sneers and scoffs are thrown in every direction. He breaks every sentence with a scoffing laugh- "windbag, 99 66 monkey," " "donkey,' bladder; and let him describe whom he will, it is always "poor fellow." I said: "What a fine fellow you are, to bespatter the whole world with this oil of vitriol!" "No man," he replied, "speaks truth to me." I and admire you.' said: "See what a crowd of friends listen to "Yes, they come to hear me, and they read what I write; but not one of them has the smallest intention of doing these things." Emerson met George Bancroft and his wife, and they drove him to Rogers's house, where the poet received them with "cold, quiet, indiscriminate politeness." Afterwards he breakfasted at this famous house, where he encountered some distinguished people. At Edinburgh he was presented to David Scott, the painter"a noble stoic "- to whom he sat for a portrait. Wilson, too, he saw, and Lord Jeffrey and Dr. Brown. Of De Quincey he says: De Quincey is a small old man of seventy years, with a very handsome face, and a face, too, expressing the highest refinement; a very gentle old man, speaking with the greatest deliberation and softness, and so refined in speech and manners as to make quite indifferent his extremely plain and poor dress. For the old man, summoned by message on Saturday by Mrs. Crowe to this dinner, had walked on this stormy, muddy Sunday ten miles from Lasswade, where his cottage is, and was not yet dry, and though Mrs. Crowe's hospitality is comprehensive and minute, yet she had no pantaloons in her house. Here De Quincey is very serene and happy among just these friends where I found him; for he has suffered in all ways and lived the life of a wretch for many years, but Samuel Brown and Mrs. C. and one or two more have saved him from himself, and defended him from bailiffs and a certain Fury of a Mrs. Macbold (I think it is), whom he yet shudders to remember, and from opium; and he is now clean, clothed, and in his right mind. He talked of many matters, all easily and well, but chiefly social and literary; and did not venture into any voluminous music. When they first agreed, at my request, to invite him to dine, I fancied some figure like the organ of York Minster would appear. In tête à tête, I am told, he sometimes soars and indulges himself, but not often in company. He invited me to dine with him on the following Saturday at Lasswade, where he lives with his three daughters, and I accepted. Professor Wilson he heard lecture to the students on moral philosophy. "He is a big man, gross and tall, with long hair and much beard, dressed large and slouching. His lecture had really no merit." Jeffrey he describes as being very talkative and disputatious, every sentence interlarded with a French phrase, and speaking a dialect of his own, neither English nor Scotch, marked with a certain petitesse, as one might well say, and an affected elegance. Dining with De Quincey the next day, he found him surrounded by his three pleasant daughters. They had a good deal of talk, and after dinner De Quincey went to Edinburgh with Emerson, and heard him lecture. Helen Faucit, the actress, "who is a beauty," Sir William Allan, the painter, "Walter Scott's friend," and Dr. Simpson, were all presented to Emerson. And the next night he met at tea De Quincey and Miss Faucit, where they saw Antigone at their ease. Robert Chambers offered to take him to see the crypts of the town, but this he had to give up, being pressed for time. On his way to London he stayed two days with Harriet Martineau, and spent an hour and a half with Wordsworth. In London, he was elected into the Athenæum Club, during his stay in England, and this honor he highly prized. He writes: April 2-Yesterday night I went to the soirée of the Marquis of Northampton, where may be found all the savants who are in Lon don. Here I saw Prince Albert, to whom Dr. Buckland was showing some microscopic Milnes and other good men are always to be found there. Milnes is the most good-ling's, and others. natured man in England, made of sugar; he is everywhere and knows everything. He told of Landor that one day, in a towering passion, he threw his cook out of the window, and then presently exclaimed, "Good God, I never thought of those poor violets!" The last time he saw Landor he found him expatiating on our custom of eating in company, which he esteems very barbarous. He eats alone, with half-closed windows, because the light interferes with the taste. He has lately heard of some tribe in Crim Tartary who have the practice of eating alone, and these he extols as much superior to the English.... Macaulay is the king of diners-out. I do not know when I have seen such wonderful vivacity. He has the strength of ten men, immense memory, fun, fire, learning, politics, manners, and príde, and talks all the time in a steady torrent. You would say he was the best type of England. He dined at the Barings, where his fellow-guests were Lord and Lady Ashburton, Lord Auckland, Carlyle, Milnes, Thackeray, and the Bishop of Oxford (Wilberforce). Charles Buller came in Pray, after this ostentation of very fashionable acquaintances, do you believe that my rusticities are smoothed down, and my bad manners mended? Not in the smallest de gree. I have not acquired the least facility, nor can hope to. But I do not decline these opportunities, as they are all valuable to me, who would, at least, know how that other half of the world lives, though I cannot and would not live with them. I find the greatest simplicity of speech and manners among these people; ; great directness, but I think the same (or even greater) want of high thought as you would notice in a fashionable circle in Boston. Yes, greater. But then I know these people very superficially. I saw Tennyson, first at the house of Coventry Patmore, where we dined together. I was contented with him at once. He is tall and scholastic looking, no dandy, but a great deal of plain strength about him, and though cultivated, quite unaffected. Quiet, sluggish sense and thought; refined, as all English are, and good-humored. There is in him an air of great superiority that is very satisfactory. He lives with his college set, . . . and has the air of one who is accustomed to be petted and indulged by those he lives with. Take away Hawthorne's bashfulness, and let him talk easily and fast, and you would have a pretty good Tennyson. I told him that his friends and I were persuaded that it was important to his health an instant visit to Paris, and that I was to go on Monday if he was ready. He was very good-humored, and affected to think that I should never come back alive from France; it was death to go. But he had been looking for two years for somebody to go to Italy with, and was ready to set out at once, if I would go there. He gave me a cordial invitation to his lodgings (in Buckingham Place), where I promised to visit him before I went away. . I found him at home in his lodgings, but with him was a clergyman whose name I did not know, and there was no conversation. He was sure again that he was taking a final farewell of me, as I was going among the French bullets, but promised to be in the same lodgings if I should escape alive. Carlyle thinks him the best man in England to smoke a pipe with, and used to see him much; had a place in his little garden, on the wall, where Tennyson's pipe was laid up. After this, Emerson saw Paris, and returned in June to begin his course of lectures, which were only fairly successful pecuniarily, and disappointing in a degree to the author. He wrote often to his wife and friends, telling of his progress on the platform, and of the people he continued to meet. The Duchess of Sutherland was very gracious and invited him to Stafford House, where he lunched and looked at the pictures. Lady Byron, whom he saw at Mrs. Jameson's, appeared quiet and sensible, with this merit among others, she never mentioned the name of her lord or her connection with him. The world she allowed to discuss her supposed griefs or joys in silence. Leigh Hunt proved a very agreeable talker, gentle and full of anecdote. The young and friendly" Duke of Argyll was his guide through Stafford House. "I have seen nothing so sumptuous as was all this," he writes to his sister Elizabeth. "One would so gladly forget that there was anything else in England than these golden chambers, and the high and gentle people who walk in them! May the grim Revolution with his iron hand - if come he must -come slowly and late to Stafford House, and deal softly with its inmates." Of his lecturing tour in England, we have these impressions: you may be sure. What reconciles me to the clatter and routine is the very excellent opportunity it gives me to see England. I see men and things in each town in a close and domestic way. I see the best of the people, hitherto never the proper aristocracy, which is a stratum of society quite out of sight and out of mind here on all ordinary occasions— the merchants, the manufacturers, the scholars, the thinkers, men and women - in a very sincere and satisfactory conversation. I am everywhere a guest. Never call me solitary or Ishmaelite again. I began here by refusing invitations to stay at private houses, but now I find an invitation in every town and accept it, to be at home. I have now visited Preston, Leicester, Chesterfield, Birmingham, since İ returned from Nottingham and Derby, of which I wrote you, and have found the same profuse kindness in all. My admiration and my love of the English rise day by day. I receive, too, a great many private letters, offering me house and home in places yet unvisited. You must not think that any change has come over me, and that my awkward and porcupine manners are ameliorated by English air; but these civilities are all offered to really beguiled many young people here, as that discerning writer, who, it seems, has he did at home, into some better hope than he could realize for them. A manly ability, a general sufficiency, is the genius of the English. They have not, I think, the special and acute fitness to their employment that Americans have, but a man is a man here; a quite costly and respectable production in his own and in all other eyes. After his return home, Emerson lectured on England in the Western States. Seven years later "English Traits" appeared. For twenty years he devoted the winter months to lecturing, his notes afterwards finding their way into volumes of essays. In the anti-slavery conflict, he behaved well, acting honorably throughout, though many thought that he might easily have done more for the cause at the start, and given the leaders the influence of his pen and speech. Hesitancy as to the extent to which he should go, did not last long, and he boldly plunged into the breach, fighting well and dealing heavy blows. From the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill in 1850, to the emancipation of Lincoln, Emerson's journals show the growth and development of his sympathies in the crusade against the slave-holder. John Brown, he characterized as that "new saint, than whom none purer or more brave was ever led by love of man into conflict and death, the new saint awaiting his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross." This speech spoiled Emerson's welcome in Philadelphia, and the |