ballads, and sometimes very terrible odes and dirges. But if you will not tell me the little solitary thoughts that I am asking for, what Nature says to you, and what you say to Nature, at least you can tell me about your books, what you like the least and what the best, the new studies, the drawing and the music and the dancing, and fail not to write to your friend,

R. WALDO EMERSON.

His "immense curiosity for Plymouth news" is not surprising; for he wrote this letter shortly before his marriage with Miss Jackson, of Plymouth. The "wise and kind" sister of his little correspondent was Miss Jackson's closest friend, and stood up with her at the wedding.

Emerson was also a patriot, a man who loved his country, and longed for it to do right. "One thing,' he says, "is plain for all men of common sense and common conscience, that here, here in America, is the home of man." "America is a poem in our eyes," "its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres."

"For He that flung the broad blue fold
O'ermantling land and sea,

One third part of the sky unrolled

For the banner of the free."

"For he that worketh high and wise

Nor pauses in his plan,

Will take the sun out of the skies

Ere freedom out of man."

Yet his greatest patriotic poem is not the Fourth of July Ode, from which I have been quoting,

("O tenderly the haughty day

Fills his blue urn with fire,")

and not the Concord Hymn, never so familiar that we can read without a thrill,

"Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world."

His greatest patriotic poem is Voluntaries, which treats of slavery and the conflict between North and South. Freedom loves the North ;

"The snowflake is her banner's star ;

Her stripes the boreal streamer are.”

It is this poem that answers the terrible question;

"Who shall nerve heroic boys

To hazard all in Freedom's fight?"

with that mighty quatrain,—

"So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,

When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,'

The youth replies, 'I can.'

Yet Emerson is greatest, not as philosopher, poet,

He made men

or patriot, but as helper of men. better by simply walking among them. I have spoken of his face as "through-shine," as transfigured

with love and refinement and wisdom, with the vision that shall not fade,

"And never poor beseeching glance

Shamed that sculptured countenance."

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Mr.

It is much to remember him as I do, even in his old age; to have lived with those to whom he was Emerson," who had known him early, and who loved him as they loved no other man. Some of you may secretly wonder whether he was all that your elders have called him, — just as I used to wonder whether the Parthenon, the great temple at Athens, was not Professor Norton's building rather than mine, whether it would appeal to such as I. When I saw the Parthenon, even in its ruin, I accepted it instantly and forever; and, if you could have seen Emerson, even in his enfeebled old age, you would have accepted him.

"No spring nor summer's beauty hath such grace

As I have seen in one autumnal face."

Emerson's face was the highest and the loveliest and the most "through-shine," because his life was all this. "Is it so bad?" he wrote to a friend who had said that " no one would dare to uncover the thoughts of a single hour," "Is it so bad? I own that to a witness worse than myself and less intelligent I should not willingly put a window into my breast. But to a witness more intelligent and virtuous than I, or to one precisely as intelligent and well intentioned, I have no objection to uncover my heart."

"He was right," says Mr. Cabot, "he could only have gained by it." "It was good," says Hawthorne in a passage that Mr. Cabot quotes," to meet him in the wood-paths or sometimes in our avenue with that pure intellectual gleam diffusing about his presence like the garment of a shining one; and he, so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man alive as if expecting to receive more than he would impart. It was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling more or less the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought.”

Emerson himself has told us that “Rectitude scatters favors on every side without knowing it, and receives with wonder the thanks of all people." So it was with him; as it is written of one whom no man was more like, "There went virtue out of him and healed them all." He who knew sorrow yet was glad, who knew self-distrust yet stood selfreliant, who knew weakness yet remained strong, who knew bitterness yet kept sweet, whose love of man and of nature and of nature in man, shone through his face, and through every page he wrote, he seemed to those near him the very prophet of God, preaching hope, freedom, courage, the glory of a high and simple life. "The sublime vision," he says, comes to the and simple soul in a clean

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pure

and chaste body." "If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong as it is for the weak to be weak."

"Teach me your mood, O patient stars!
Who climb each night the ancient sky,
Leaving on space no shade, no scars,
No trace of age, no fear to die."

In his presence weak men were ashamed that they had ever wondered whether it was worth while to live; for in his presence, even in the presence of what he had written, it was harder to be a coward than to be brave.

Of young people -not children, but young men and women he was the supreme helper; and we must remember that it was not only neighbors and friends who loved him, not only those that touched the hem of his garment who were made whole. His voice, his manner, his presence, charmed and refined all who came near him; but his written words put courage into ten thousand hearts.

"Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string."

"We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.” “If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts and there abide, the huge world will come round to him."

"We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate where strength is born."

"But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, 'Up and onward forever more !

999

"Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say, 'I think,' 'I am,' but