615


32044010 30592


L
12:3.029

Harvard College Library

TVEJRITE
STAS
FROM THE
BRIGHT LEGACY
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ceived in 1880 onder the will of
JONATHAN BROWN BRIGHT
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under its provisions.























Ralph Waldo Emerson
COMPLETE WORKS. Centenary Edition. 12 vols.
With Portraits, and copious notes by E
EMERSON.
1. Nature, Addresses, and Lectures. 2. Essays : First
Series. 3. Essays : Second Series. 4. Representative Men.
5. English Traits. 6. Conduct of Life. 7. Society and
Solitude. 8. Letters and Social Aims. 9. Poems. 10.
Lectures and Biographical Sketches. 11. Miscellanies.
12. Natural History of Intellect, and other Papers. With
a General Index to Emerson's Collected Works.
Little Classic Edition. 12 vols., in arrangement and con-
tents identical with Centenary Edition, except that vol. 12
is without index.
EMERSON'S JOURNALS. Edited by EDWARD W.
EMERSON and WALDO EMERSON FORBES. Illustrated.
10 vols.
POEMS. Household Edition. With Portrait.
ESSAYS. First and Second Series. In Cambridge Classics
NATURE, LECTURES, AND ADDRESSES, together with
REPRESENTATIVE MEN. In Cambridge Classics.
PARNASSUS. A collection of Poetry edited by Mr. Emer-
son. Introductory Essay. Household Edition.
THE SAME. Holiday Edition.
EMERSON BIRTHDAY BOOK. With Portrait and Illus-
trations.
EMERSON CALENDAR BOOK.
CORRESPONDENCE OF CARLYLE AND EMERSON,
1834-1872 Edited by CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. 2
vols.
THE SAME. Library Edition. 2 vols.
CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN STERLING AND EMER-
SON. Edited, with a sketch of Sterling's life, by ED-
WARD WALDO EMERSON.
LETTERS FROM RALPH WALDO EMERSON TO A
FRIEND. 1838-1853. Edited by CHARLES ELIOT
NORTON.
For various other editions of Emerson's works and Emer.
son Memoirs, see catalogue.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND New York


JOURNALS //
of
RALPH WALDO EMERSON'S
1820-1872
VOL. VII 11









1846
ameson,








JOURNALS
OF
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
WITH ANNOTATIONS
EDITED BY
EDWARD WALDO EMERSON
AND
WALDO EMERSON FORBES
1845-1848

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge


KARVARD COLLEGE
SEP 29 1925
LLIBRARY
Cantacalea cebes lost
Chirolt feudd
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY EDWARD WALDO EMERSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published November 1912
Pere
TE
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the co
2The C
a friend


CONTENTS
JOURNAL XXXVI
1845
(From Journals V, W, and Y)
Anti-Texas-Annexation Convention. Wendell Phillips.
Slavery question in Lyceum. Welcome February thaw.
Beauty. Proclus. Thought follows Trade. Talley-
rand. Porosity. Great gentlemen. Napoleon's for-
tune. Democratic institutions. French calculation.
Whig depression. Abolitionist. Degrees of power.
Life's Weather. Penetration. Massachusetts dishonoured
by Carolina. Literature as consolation. The Shakers.
Taming the Holy Ghost. Dæmons. Anti-Slavery Con-
ventions. Thoreau on Fourierists. Manners. What is
the State? Compromise. Experience as teacher. Pov-
erty. Men illumined. Mysticism. God's parabolas.
Fourier. South Carolina's outrage on Samuel Hoar.
Massachusetts. The Indian. Napoleon between
Thought and Matter. Talleyrand. Hope in the Age.
The Poet. Criticism misleads. Texas. New Hamp-
shire. The Constitution. Plato. Pherecydes. Writing
with fire. Busy bodies. Scholar unintelligible to politi-
cians. Friendship is Truth. Uproar or Genius ? Can
Scholar explain Life ? Uses of great men. Man must
obey the Spirit. Art's direction, Love's temperance.


CONTENTS
Degeneracy. Ideals are prophecy. Napoleon's genius.
Taylor on Bacon. Timid scholars. Necessary selfish-
ness. Degrees. The term “ nigger." Slave-labour
products. Staff for a magazine. Criticism. America.
Shaker folly. Poem takes care of itself. Monadnoc's
inspiration. Hero loyal to Beauty. Man’s Counsellor.
Time. Miracles. Degrees. Berkeley. Rich poverty.
Barren days. English verse. Mrs. Ripley on holidays.
Small vs. large house. Schiller on poems. Life must
flow; a game between God and Man. Write yourself.
Timid life. Men rare. The farmers . . . . . 3-50
Householder's questions. Scholar's contrasts. Vestiges of
Creation. Science symbolic. Personality. Fame. The
poet-crop. Identity. Whig party. Plato's terrible dia-
lectic ; the Republic; his commentators. The hide-
bound college, Philosopher in the School Committee.
Insight in Reform. Our self-belief. Genius finds the
links. Service of Sceptic. The Genius of the World.
Class of two. Society a boarding-house. College anni-
versaries. Charles Newcomb. Adaptiveness. The
three words. Magnetism. Effect of farm work. Pol-
troonery. Poetry's aids. Persons ; Initial and Celes-
tial Love. Music if heard but once. Seek the labour-
ers. Faith through skepticism : Evolution. Symbols
in common life. Bhagavat Geeta. Eras. Worship. Ru-
fus Choate. Travel's help. One word in a book ;
“ arrested development.” Father Taylor in Concord.
The “ Timæus." Our private theatres. Taylor
again. Worldly teachers. Men are lawful. Men of
character. Thought given for act. Our forerunners.
Open-mindedness. The two histories of man. Power


CONTENTS
vii
and acting reality. Lectures. Cities of refuge. Gift of
the years. Diagonal in teaching. The sacred persons.
Invention God's gift. Slavery. Common people.
Practical and poetical. Superiority in persons. Cruik-
shank. Court session at Concord; Webster and
Choate ; working of the Law. The old dramatists.
Translation. Plato on truth. Identity. Father Tay-
lor's eloquence. The solving word. Magnetizers.
Byron. Scott. Plutarch. The Neoplatonists. Trans-
migration. Plato and his interpreters ; Cudworth. In-
ertia. The convention ; Stephen Phillips and Garrison.
Abaddon. Genius is health ; the Poet must be human.
Instinct. Whiggism. Thoreau on philosophies.
Humboldt's Cosmos. Gibbon. Opportunity . 51-100
Nature teaches the Law. Garrison on Constitution. Ques- !
tions. Phædo. Parallelism. Adaptiveness. Herbert's
“ Man” true. Seashore. Creation. Eloquence.
Scholar's position. Hold to your thought. The Idea.
Cost of scholarship. “Greek to him” Lectures.
Knowledge in use. The scholar pictured. Akhlak-
i-Jalaly. Vedanta. The Internal Check. Buddha ; icy
light. Landor on Canning ; untrained scholars. The
two boys. Skepticism. Scholars' progress. Symbols.
The effective poem. Winter apples. Knowledge ;
Wisdom and Virtue. “ Native Americans”; cross-
ings. Swedenborg ; fallacy of « The Word” ; did not
see “ the Flowing” ; Real wealth. Timing. The
poles of Philosophy ; Plato a poet. Rachel. Mast-
odons of literature. Unavailable genius. Jones Very.
Goodness. Man's Zodiac. Transmigration. East In-
dian mythology ; sacrifice. France and England.


viii
CONTENTS
Sages, poets, women, and Whigs. Buddhism. Fate in
India and Greece. Swedenborg and Sin ; poets are
pagan ; too much dogma. Vishnu Purana. Stand in
your place ; questions answered. Amalgam between
absolutists and worldsmen. Church doctrines from
India. Vishnu Purana. “ Hamatreya” and “ Earth
Song.” Indian ethics ; identity. Wisdom. Fashion.
Man's attributes ; advance from Chaos ; culmination.
Robert Owen's lecture criticized. The vegetation in
Man. Livy ; a stage-coach thought. Saint-skeptics.
Greeley, Swedenborg and Very. Influences. Man's
inventory and the gleams. Deliverances. Miracles.
Man representative ; communism. Shakspeare's fault.
Proper works. No coöperation. Serve Truth. Travel.
Language making. Reading . . . . . . 101–144
JOURNAL XXXVII
1846
(From Journals Y and o)
God's temple built on ruins ; true reform. Alcott's com-
munity. Majorities. To mend the world. Lyceum
speakers. Personality. Contemporaries and Moods.
Talents and ideas. The tail. The fontal German;
Hegel's philosopheme. Eloquence hot or high ; im-
passivity. Fiction in life. Original action. Relation.
Swedenborg's result. Balance of Genius. The look-
ing glass. Lights. Thoreau's criticism. Divine pro-
blem. Inherited bonds. Crossing stocks. Spending
is gain. Thoreau. Two brains. Immortality. Sacred


CONTENTS
reform. English bards. Poems of Art. The Living
God. Imagination, its two powers. Fourier. Life a
sleep. Hymn-books. Non-voters. Tenacities. Byron's
failure ; uplifting poetry ; poets old and new, Man,
not men, instincts ; poets needed. Companions.
Everett's inauguration ; Webster's coming ; Josiah
Quincy ; Cambridge festivals ; Holmes. Amusement.
Hafiz. The Mystic. Dr. Allyne. The Universe
from an idea. O'Connell on Disraeli. Double the
dose. The Muse. Mother and Child. The great art-
ists. Ten years' confessions. The best here and
cheap. Coming death. The differential. Follow your
calling. Costume. Personal immortality. Goethe's
profusion. Tropes unwelcome. The central man.
Thine and Mine. The Fosters mobbed. Individual
fate. Whigs. The Muse. Alcott and his victims. Alloy
in men. A new man. Poem of Hafiz. The noblest
chemistry. Poetaster. Rotation. Torrey's funeral.
Hope in others' vision. Don't pauperize. Indians,
teamsters, farmers, women. The wildfire of Elo-
quence. Strong Americans. Dickens's service. Com-
munist apostles. Writing “at odd times.” Haw-
thorne's method. Truth. Moral harmony, its notes
everywhere; must be taught. Writers' immunity.
Nature shows, but does not preach. Surface. Sweden-
borg. Nature's support, not man's. Torrey's burial.
Humiliation of Massachusetts. Samanthe Crawford.
Short-sighted cheating. Defences. Tending. Con-
tinuity. The Universal Currents. City of Makebe-
lieve. The Scholar. Carlyle's portrait. Boston Chris-
tianity's diagonal. Pure genius. Witch-laws. Fame.


CONTENTS
zit
The Age of Water. Fatal indirections. Birds at the
study window. Ideal Community . . . . 145-200
Cotton binds the Union. Eloquence; Parker Pillsbury's
quality. Ruggles in debate. Osman. Life is selection.
Successful Americans. Present superstitions. Alcott.
Reform masks reform. Mexican War. Southerner.
Frémont's vanity. Two points of view. Poet must
strike true tone ; those who wait. Thoreau on society,
Days of stagnation. A friendship needed. Society's
curiosity-shop. Yankeedom. The poem “ Circles.”
Milton's evolution. Nature's mixtures. Making of
new men. Raw material for poems and lectures.
Bacchus. Tests of writer and speaker. Styles ; Car-
lyle's medium ; the poet's duty and his measure.
Verses for “Spiritual Laws.” Longevity. America
wants male principle ; her poor policy. Permissive
Destiny. War with Mexico ; Webster ; Thoreau in
jail. Poor, well meaning State ; useless running amuck,
till cause justifies ; Alcott ; Abolitionists. Webster's
method. Teachers, real tests. Exchange of pictures
with Carlyle. Design of poem. Bear with barbarians.
Meeting of Class of 1821. Sumner at Phi Beta
Kappa. The Immortal, Poets and Saints. Equality.
Spenser. Destiny. Channing as a poet. Bangor sights
and men. New England needs a history. Dr. Francis
Parkman. Whitefield on his wife. Burke and Web-
ster. Alcott on Emerson. Reading ... 201-236


CONTENTS
JOURNAL XXXVIII
1847
(From Journals O, AB, CD, GH)
Alfieri ; European characteristics. Machiavelli. Thoreau.
Oriental Scriptures. Power of cotton. Samuel G.
Ward. Legaré. Pillsbury's tactics. Superior friends.
The oldest thing. Scholar perpetual, sacred. Affirma-
tive. Saadi's classes of men. Bridging the wild Atlan-
tic. Happy temper. Temperance. The unmagnetic
man. Greek and Gothic. Measure of health. Herbs
and trees. Alcott desires symposium. Concord's
magic places. Daily help of morals. True Thomas.
Eloquence. Live magnets. Apprentice sciences. The
scholar's courage. A change required ; England? The
national capital, impure politics, light-weight Amer-
icans. What part to take ? Scholars need a club. Na-
ture's police. Pertinent reading ; the English Liturgy.
Greek courage and humors. The cheap and high cour-
ages. Vishnu Purana. Mesmerism ; society on our
own terms; Osman ; Guy. Nonsense. Man follows
Nature ; his gains. Free trade. Proclus. Burke's
growth. Light and shade. A quarterly journal. Au-
tobiography based on choice. Music for sorrow.
Longevity. Inducation. Dr. James Jackson. Boston's
societies. The minority. Whip needed. Transcend-
entalist and Franklin. Journal discussed. Hafiz and
Edda on Fate and Freedom. Reality. Nantucket
shore, people and stories. Community wages. Aunt
Mary. The wonderful boy Safford. Thought of the


xii
CONTENTS
poem “ Days.” Poem of Hafiz ; his spirit. “Keep
the body open.” Oriental superlative. Kurroglou, the
minstrel-bandit. Goethe on Napoleon. To Margaret
Fuller in Rome. Thought works unseen. Beauty of
national myths. Bailey's Festus ; Shelley, Carlyle,
Byron, Johnson. The sword's rank. Secret of Hu-
mility. Diffuse, unformed America. June blood. Re-
jection. The moment in history. Civilization a cake.
The Dollar. Chastity a rocking stone. Life's March
Weather. Van Mons's nurseries . . . . 237-290
Kurroglou. Criticism. East and West. Goethe on
Megadhuta. Land getting. Judgment Day. Corinne.
Garden. Insects. Restless American. Our happy cli-
mate. Idols. Arbors. Feat of genius. Doom of soli-
tude. Strange Intellect. Mystery of poetry. Railroad.
A musician. Yankee speculators. My pear-tree. Law
of affinity. Rich and poor. Dumas ; journeymen writ-
ers. W. E. Channing's book on Rome. The rugged
Thoreau. Goethe. Luther's cure for morbid con-
science. Edda. Conversation, good and poor. Insuffi-
cient forces. Cyrus Stow redeems bog. Lesson of
tools and physics. Friends fell timber for arbor.
Chronicle of the Cid. Joy of Books. The pear trees.
Divine men. Alcott's senses. Gorgias; speculative
and practical. Compensation in Faust and Edda.
Beattie. Aristocracy. July on the river. Atmosphere.
Natural history symbolic. Whip for top. Théâtre des
Variétés. Metamorphosis. Ship Skidbladnir. “Mass-
achusetts Quarterly.” Boston kings. Value of a serv-
ant. Discoverers creative. King's Chapel ; originali-
ties. Superstitions of the Age. Rousseau ; confessions.


CONTENTS
xiii
Machine must be simple. Wilkinson. Education. Life. .
Right reading. Write as you can. Aristocracy in
Hamlet. Wealth is reverence for superiority. Thoreau .
on Food and Art. Newcomb's visit. Aristocracy's
conditions. Thoughts « impracticable”; Hamlet.
Considerateness. Individualism must remain. Zohak
and Eblis; luxury. Real and Ideal. Agent and re-
agent. France asks for books. Boston statistics. In-
tellect detaches; the large patriotism. Laborer and
idealist. Hafiz. Cultivate Imagination; books recom-
mended. Mountains afar. Dr. Frothingham on the
boy Emerson. Channing on Nature. Aunt Mary's
double prayer. Effect of thoughts. Horoscope, Aris-
tocracy. Biography, autobiography. Present and fu-
ture. Americans idealistic. The present. A man's
angle. Love gives personality. Writing like skating.
Real aristocracy; serving society ; phantom men.
Voyage to England ; Thoreau left as guardian. The
scholar's mark. Coals to a market. Joseph Emerson
of Malden ; his diary ; “ The Shay." Catholic and
Protestant religion . . . . . . . . 291--341
England ; landing ; the good Alexander Ireland. Carlyle's
welcome to London ; his wife and mother ; his con-
versation. Mrs. Bancroft ; breakfast with Samuel
Rogers ; his house and his anecdotes. Lectures in Liver-
pool and Manchester ; impressions of the English.
Street sights. Derby; Wollaton Hall. Wisdom not
personal, but in the air; Ellen's verses. Rich and
poor. Nottingham, Chesterfield, Birmingham. The dis-
senter. Wealth. New use of words. Preston, Leices-
ter. Influence of The Times. Worcester cathedral.


xiv
CONTENTS
English coachmen. Public schools; university system.
English triumphs in Science, Art and Letters ; her
Worthies. Verses on Queen Maud, Sir Francis Drake,
the Empress Maud. Milton on his Age. Intellectual
acquaintances. Carlyle's reputation ; Ruskin. Car-
lyle's rhetoric ; books advised by him. Word from
Margaret Fuller ; letter to her on Italy. Reading. 342-371
367
JOURNAL XXXIX
1848
(From Journals GH, LM, ED, “ London," and RS)
England; climate and manners. York minster ; music.
The Bridlington saddler. Armadillo-skinned man.
True Account of the Island of England. The Halifax
mills. Gibbet at Liverpool. Black Country ; Leeds
and Bradford. The Times. “Mechanics’ Institu-
tions.” Huddersfield ; Rawdon ; Manchester. His-
tory in perspective is mythology. Cameron, Espin-
esse and Carlyle. A right Aristocracy. Evolution.
Newcomb on Thoreau. The sea-line. Barnard and
Raby castles. Duke of Cleveland. Newcastle ; Mr.
Crawshay's trip-hammer. Edinburgh ; Wilson, Jef-
frey, De Quincey. Mrs. Crowe's dinner ; David
Scott, Dr. Samuel Brown and De Quincey ; anec-
dotes of him. Dr. Brown's aim in chemistry. David
Scott paints Emerson's portrait. Glasgow. Scottish
speech. Professor Nichol in the Observatory. Edin-
burgh again ; Wilson's lecture ; his quarrel and mag-


CONTENTS
XV
nanimity. Chalmers. Dinner with De Quincey at
Lasswade. De Quincey attends lecture ; his dread of
his Nemesis. Dundee church. Harriet Martineau's
trance ; visit to her and call on Wordsworth. Birth
and manners in England, toughness and materialism.
London. Çarlyle's views ; Chartists ; French Revo- 4 .
lution ; Peel ; Tennyson and De Vere; Cromwell. :/
Englishman and American. Nineteenth century. We
Joshua Bates. Immeasurable London ; characteristics ;
Parliament House ; the Commons. News from Paris.
Immortality. Dreams. England, the country of the
rich. France, Socialism, Rhetoric, Louis Philippe. 4.?
Lady Harriet Baring's dinner ; Milnes ; Buller.
Evangelical lady and her uncle ; Macaulay's story.
Clergy. English women. The Chartist meeting. The
Times's writers. Nature. English tenacity ; American
contrasted. Tom Appleton. Franklin's trick. Dinners
at great houses ; the recluse's instinct. Macaulay's
strength. Christianity old as creation ; thought. Seek-
ing priests. Englishman practical, heavy ; merchants
and scholars ; primogeniture. Richard Owen's lec-
tures; Jerboa rat, bats, hybernation. Alcott's visit to
England. Wealth, power and misery. Oxford; Bod-
leian Library. Marquis of Northampton's soirée. The
Rothschilds. Agassiz’s lectures .... 375-424
The New Religion ; wisdom in reform. Symbols. The W. ☺
souls assessors. Reserves. Self means ignorance. The
dread Idea. The books survive. Oracle dumb, on
Socialism. Revolutions should be scholar's chance.
Power and probity. Machinery. Consciousness, priv-
ate and universal. Question of Socialism. The word


xvi
CONTENTS
List
Ljit wa
Pay. Intellect. Good hobbies. Aim in a book. The
British Museum. St. Paul's. Women for Australia ;
Miss Coutts and the street-girls. The Lycian marbles.
Owen and the sentry. Universal Mind ; startling in-
heritance, Ludgate. Trades of despair. Carlyle's dis-
ciples. English finish; the poets ; Platonism dead;
Birmingham lustre. Visit to Kew Gardens. Whewell.
Carlyle on Clubs, Society, and Plato. Dinner at John
Forster's with Carlyle and Dickens ; their talk on
English unchastity. Carlyle no idealist, insular, intol-
erant, the voice of London ; magnificent, yet poor
aims; declamatory. Hearing Alboni. Dinner at Cov-
entry Patmore's with Tennyson ; his courage, remark
on Carlyle ; on Festus. Visit to Brookfield ; Tenny-
son will not go to France ; his habits ; De Vere's care
of him ; his brothers, anecdotes. Dr. Shepherd's find-
ing Tennyson in Holland. Farie's models. Hallam
on Swedenborg. France. Paris lodgings, shops ;
French poetry ; Mme. de Tocqueville on language.
Boulevards ; architecture. French traits. Meeting with
Clough. Sign of revolution. The day of the Blouse.
Revolutionary Clubs. Louvre ; Spanish paintings.
The table d'hôte; clubs, des Femmes and des Clubs;
Gallic Cock. Artist in society. The rich mind.
Sleep's pranks. Torchlight processions ; pictures.
Hugh Doherty. Odious joking, visions of home
friends. Large incomes. The counter-revolution blazes
and is extinguished; Barbès and Blanqui ; causes of
uprising. Paris seems theatrical. Michelet. Rachel
sings Marseillaise. Old and New Revolution, French
influence. London and Paris ; use of water. The New


CONTENTS
xvii
Religion, its verdict; the Laws. One's own Facts.
Penalty of genius. Writers neutral. Mischievous dog-
mas. Life cheap in Paris. Rising esteem for the
French. Rachel's person and acting. Assemblée Na-
tionale; Lamartine, Restaurant. University. Merits
and attractions of Paris. Amiens. Return to Eng-
land . . . . . . . . . . . . 425-474
London ; Courses of Lectures at Portman Square and
Exeter Hall; “The Nineteenth Century.” The
First and the Third Class Paradise. No pure idealists
in England. Art galleries. Brain and difficulty. Mr.
Stansfield shows the Turner pictures. With Owen to
Hunterian Museum and Turner's studio ; the mullet.
The Athenæum Club ; Richard Monckton Milnes,
stories concerning, and his kind service ; the Bunsens,
Palmerstons, Disraeli, Macaulay. De Tocqueville.
Topics in London. Paris and London to travellers.
French have street courage. Socialist orator. The Eng-
lish dinner ; limitations of young men. Academy Ex-
hibition. Books brought home. Literary substructures.
English acquaintance. Visits to Cambridge, Salisbury,
Stonehenge, Stoke Poges, Eton and Windsor. Home-
ward voyage. Grace at Oxford. Six Points of Chart-
ism. Tedious days, the betting. Tom Appleton. Re-
form-laws. Preach not. Rules of the Gods. Carlyle
no voter. Thoreau the wood-god, the oak tree. De-
voted women. Alcott's barrier ; Thoreau and Alcott ;
a teacher of the soul. George Sand; novelists' task.
Planters of our fruit trees; changed conditions. Writ-
ers’ unpopularity; the old ones leaped into their books.
Disraeli. George Sand's sincerity. Walk to Conan-


xviii
CONTENTS
tum with Channing ; old-time farmers ; return to sav-
agery ; man's lot. Detachment. Dangerous chevelure.
Walk to Estabrook Farms; wild apples. The Bhaga-
vat Geeta. Novels. Recipe for dramatic material.
God grudges Eternity ; Herodotus. Destiny. The
model person. Poet and politics. Emerson's mathe-
matics. Population. Success is adjustment. Behmen,
Fox, Luther, Swedenborg. Spoiled child of Culture.
The Intellect; Aristotle, Proclus, Laing. Selections
in writing. Inspiration and talent. Power of detach-
ment. Nature's economy. Respect the toilers. Tem-
perament. Accommodation. Genius knows to transfer.
On kicking up our heels; wait for sight; activity or
listening ? Strongest means are cheapest. Aristippus
and Plato on Wisdom. Goethe on Immortality. Ra-
phael's originality. Doctrine of Leasts. Result of Eng-
lish visit. Alcott's service incommunicable 475-524
The Age ; service for cash — or grandeur? The sales-
man. Three pamphlets. Talk with low and high.
Parted friends. Conceit of bathing. The merchant.
Memory. St. Augustine on Memory; and Plato.
Beatitude of conversation. English and American ele-
mentary education. The walk to Flint's Pond ; price-
less wood-lot ; need of brook ; Channing on Herrick.
Elusive Germany. History teaches principles ; the
people's facts needed. Dilettante Politics. Love must
right woman. Undesired company. Antony à Wood
on poor poet. Books must have principle. Alcott's
schemes. Brisbane on Education. Art miraculous.
Help of Universities. The colours in White Pond,
talk with Channing ; natural « barrows" ; poets old


CONTENTS
xix
and new ; Boston's neglect ; Fitchburg Railroad and
Cochituate water ; politics as a calling ; Channing as
a showman. Phædrus. To know the way. Working
and indolent minds. The adorer of the Laws. Scholar
posts his books. Two bids to inspiration. Webster
secondary. Plymouth usage. Wit in Trade. Inven-
tion of the cat. Hotel air. Early English poetry.
Merlin's foresight. Barbarian voters. The dulling of
life's impressions. Theory of Transparency applied
to reading. The laws and the will; reactions. The
presidential election. The bad heart. The Athenians.
Heliodorus founder of novels. Get the best. Conven-
ience of culture ; William of Wykeham, his greatness.
Good Englishmen. Hospitality of minds ; Channing
and Thoreau on Alcott. Apples. The few good heads;
Memory's papyrus, Midsummer ; Soul's almanac.
Climate of speech ; Fate. Action and Idea. Teutonic
granite. November drive to the Wayside Inn. Dr.
C. T. Jackson on Ordnance, and Analyzed Sound.
Agassiz on embryos. Proportion of traders to thinkers ;
reactions. Thoreau and Heaton. Higginson calls for
a new Dial. Punch on Saturn. Nature's sympathy.
Archimedes. Fate's part. George Sand. Clough's
Bothie ; good man and poem. Carlyle stands tests.
The Edda ; the people's language ; Iceland. Read-
ing . . . . . . . . . . . . 525-565





ILLUSTRATIONS
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. (Photogravure) . Frontispiece
From a daguerreotype taken for Carlyle in May, 1846.
THOMAS CARLYLE . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Fromadaguerreotype taken for Emerson in April, 1846.
.
.
.
. 272
SAMUEL GRAY Ward . . . . . .
From an oil painting by William Page.





JOURNAL
SLAVERY
NAPOLEON
WEBSTER IN CONCORD
FATHER TAYLOR
ADDRESS AT MIDDLEBURY
COLLEGE
EAST INDIAN STUDIES
COURSE ON REPRESENTATIVE
MEN





JOURNAL XXXVI
1845
(From Journals V, W, and Y)
[All page references to passages from the Journals used by
Mr. Emerson in his published works are to the Centenary
Edition, 1903-05.]
[MR. EMERSON gave no course in Boston in
the last month of 1844 and first of 1845. He
was working on the theme which attracted him,
namely, the men whom he had chosen as repre-
sentative of a few great types. “Napoleon, the
Man of the World,” seems to have been the
lecture first finished, and this was in demand
by the Lyceum Committees. During the winter
and spring he spoke at Fall River, Dover (New
Hampshire), Providence, New Bedford, Glouces-
ter, and other towns. Carlyle had bidden him
write on an American hero, but he did not.
The letters between these friends show the
services each was gladly rendering the other in
their respective countries, for Emerson's second
volume of Essays was coming out in London,
and Carlyle's Miscellanies in America.
LO


JOURNAL
(AGE 41
PE Dct le
Emerson had now three children, for a sec-
ond son had been born to him. His farm was
now increased in the home fields, and he had
bought the Walden pine grove. Concord was
now a railroad town, and steam made the lec-
turer's travelling easier by land and by water.]
nicom
m2
(From V)
January 30, 1845.
In Boston, to hear the debates of the Texan
Convention with the hope that I might catch
some sparks of the Typhonic rage. But I was un-
lucky in my visits to the house, and heard only
smooth Whig speeches on moderation, etc., to
fill time. The poor mad people did not come.'
[It must have been after attending another
Anti - Slavery meeting in February that Mr.
Emerson wrote to his friend Mr. S. G. Ward,
1 This entry occurs in the Journal for 1844 among those
made in the middle of the summer, and is manifestly out of
place there. Mr. Emerson often used a part of a blank page
for a later entry. A joint resolution providing for the annexa-
tion of Texas passed the United States House of Representa-
tives, January 25, 1845, and the Senate on February 7. On
March 1, these resolutions were approved by President Tyler.
On December 29, 1845, a joint resolution of Congress de-
clared Texas admitted to the Union.


ey
18451 WENDELL PHILLIPS
“Have you ever heard Wendell Phillips ? I
have not learned a better lesson in many weeks
than last night in a couple of hours. The core
of the comet did not seem to be much, but the
whole air was full of splendors. One orator
makes many, but I think this the best genera-
tor of eloquence that I have met for many a day,
and of something better and grander than his
own.”']
In January arose the question again in our
village Lyceum whether we should accept the
offer of the ladies who proposed to contribute
to the course a lecture on Slavery by Wendell
Phillips. I pressed the acceptance on the part
of the curators of this proffer on two grounds;
First, because the Lyceum was poor, and should
add to the length and variety of their entertain-
ment by all innocent means, especially when a
discourse from one of the best speakers in the
Commonwealth was volunteered ; Second, be-
cause I thought, in the present state of this coun-
try, the particular subject of Slavery had a com-
manding right to be heard in all places in New
England, in season, and sometimes out of sea-
son; that, as in Europe the partition of Poland
1 Letters to a friend, p. 60.
ca
10.
0


JOURNAL (AGE 41
was an outrage so flagrant that all European
men must be willing, once in every month or
two, to be plagued with hearing over again the
horrid story, so this iniquity of slavery in this
country was a ghost that would not down at the
bidding of Boston merchants, or the best demo-
cratic drill-officers, but the people must consent
to be plagued with it from time to time until
something was done, and we had appeased the
negro blood so.
The proposition was later made to have a
Lyceum supplied by enthusiasts only.
We want a Lyceum just as much as a shoe-
shop. It must be boundless in its hospitality.
Aristo compared lectures to battles.
February 26.
A thaw for more than a week and three days
of heavenly weather, bringing all mythology on
their breezy dawns. Down falls the water from
the steeps; up shoots the northern light after
sunset from the horizon. But Nature seems a
dissipated hussy. She seduces us from all work;
listen to her rustling leaves, - to the invita-
tions which each blue peak and rolling river
and fork of woodland road offers, — and we
should never wield the shovel or the trowel.


1845] BEAUTY. PROCLUS 7
March 15.
How gladly, after three months sliding on
snow, our feet find the ground again!'
Venus or Beauty, author of sport and jest,
cheerer and rejoicer of men by the illuminations
of beauty, was worshipped as the mother of all
things. What right have you scholars and think-
ers to pretend to plans of philanthropy, who
freeze and dispirit me by that selfish, murder-
ous, hang-dog face?
Proclus. I not only do not think he has his
equal among contemporary writers, but I do
not know men sufficiently athletic to read him.
There is the same difference between the writ-
ings of these Platonists and Scotch metaphysics
as between the sculptures of Phidias and the
statues of Tam o' Shanter and my Uncle Toby.
They abound in personification. Every abstract
idea, every element, every agent in nature or in
thought, is strongly presented as a god, in this
i Drug the cup, thou butler sweet,
And send the nectar round.
The feet that slid so long on sleet
Are glad to feel the ground.
“May-Day,” Poems.
Are glad at slidstar rou


JOURNAL (Age 41
most poetic philosophy, so that the universe is
filled with august and exciting images. It is im-
aginative and not anatomical. It is stimulating.
“The soul is intellect in capacity, but life in
energy." (Proclus, In Timæo, vol. ii, p. 448.)
“The parts in us are more the property of
wholes, and of things above us, than they are
our property.” (Vol. ii, p. 435.)
“Why fear to die? At death the world re-
ceives its own.”
“For the universe uses them as irrational ani-
mals.” (Vol. ii, p. 400.)
The Demiurgus, as Orpheus says, was nur-
tured indeed by Adrastia, but associates with
Necessity, and generates Fate.
In the ideal republic, of course, no man
should ever do one thing but once.
It is curious how incidental the best things
are. A nation is dedicated to trade for some
centuries; that occupies the vast majority of
men every day for all that long duration. Yet
the last day it is not more elevated than the first
day, and cannot command our respect. But as
they grow rich, some men of leisure and study
are formed, some men of taste appear; by the
very indignation at the general meanness and


1845) THOUGHT. TALLEYRAND 9
hurry, some souls are driven into a secluded
and sublime way of thinking; these invent arts
and sciences, these pray and sing and carve and
build. Incidentally, too, on all this vast grocery
business floating all over the world books and
letters go; a passenger is carried from one coun-
try who inoculates hundreds and thousands with
the opinions and hopes cherished by a handful
of men in the old. This new influence, quite
incidental to trade, lets loose new thoughts on
trade and politics and religion among the traders,
which go to revise and revolutionize all their
modes of living and conduct.
In 1814, Talleyrand said to Alexander: “Sire,
only one of two things is possible. We must
either have Bonaparte or Louis XVIII. Bona-
parte, if you can support him; but you cannot,
for you are not alone. We will not have an-
other soldier in his stead. If we want a soldier,
we will keep the one we have; he is the first
in the world. After him, any other who may be
proposed would not have ten men to support
him. I say again, Sire, either Bonaparte or
Louis XVIII. Anything else is an intrigue.”
(Bourrienne, vol. iv.)
Louis XVIII is a principle.


1ο
(AGE 41
JOURNAL
Shall we say that the best physical fact is the
porosity of all bodies ? An iron bar is not so
much a barrier as it is a road and a conductor
when we have skill. And when we have sat be-
fore a mountain of obstruction for a time, gleams
and flashes of light begin to play, and by and
by it grows transparent. There shall be no Alps.
We can turn them. We surrender the field to
these Vandal mobs of selfishness and brutality,
and under their very breasts and animalism sud-
denly a conscience glows.
The Gentleman regards only beauty ; so that
it is almost ungenerous to report of him any-
thing else than his most outside action. But it
is a pleasure to know the leaders of our time.
Horace Walpole knows the first men and wo-
men of his time. Every man should know the
great among his contemporaries.
I believe our political parties have nothing
fantastic or accidental in their origin, but express
very rudely some lasting relation. ...
Bonaparte delighted in testing his good for-
1 The rest of the paragraph is found in “Politics” (Essays,
Second Series, pp. 208, 209).


0-
1845) DEMOCRACY. NAPOLEON II
tune. Reguideau, who had dissuaded Madame
Beauharnais from “marrying a soldier with no-
thing but his cloak and his sword,” was sent for
on the day of the coronation of the Emperor,
and asked, “Well, have I nothing but my cloak
and my sword ?”
I neither think our democratic institutions
dangerous to the citizen, nor, on the other hand,
do I think them better than those which pre-
ceded them. They are not better but only fitter
for us.' . ..
Napoleon was entitled to his crowns; he won
his victories in his head before he won them on
the field. He was not lucky only.
But this ciphering is specially French ; Fou-
rier is another arithmetician. Laplace, Lagrange,
Berthollet, — walking metres and destitute of
worth. These cannot say to men of talents, I
am that which these express, as Character always
seems to say.
Yet man always feels that Napoleon fights
for him ; these are honest victories: this strong
steam-engine does our work.
i The rest of the passage is in “ Politics” (Essays, Second
Series, p. 207).


12
(AGE 41
JOURNAL
A despair has crept over the Whig party in
this country. They, the active, enterprising, in-
telligent, well-meaning, and wealthy part of the
people, the real love and strength of the Ameri-
can people, find themselves paralyzed and de-
feated everywhere by the hordes of ignorant and
deceivable natives and the armies of foreign vot-
ers who fill Pennsylvania, New York, and New
Orleans, and by those unscrupulous editors and
orators who have assumed to lead these masses.
The creators of wealth, and conscientious ra-
tional and responsible persons, those whose
names are given in as fit for jurors, for referees,
for offices of trust, those whose opinion is pub-
lic opinion, find themselves degraded into ob-
servers, and violently turned out of all share in
the action and counsels of the nation.
What is the difference between the Aboli-
tionist and the Locofoco? this only, that the
one knows the facts in this iniquity, and the
other does not. One has informed himself of
the slave laws of the Southern States, and the
other has not.
How many degrees of power! That which
we exert political, social, intellectual, moral is
most superficial. We talk and work half asleep.
Between us and our last energy lie terrific social,


1845] LIFE'S WEATHER 13
and then sublime solitary exertions. Let our
community rise en masse, the undrilled original
militia; or let the private man put off the citi-
zen, and make the hero; then is one a match
for a nation.
We do not live an equal life, but one of con-
trasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a
sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave
action. We must always be little whilst we
have these alternations. Character is regular
and homogeneous. Our world, it is true, is like
us: it has many weathers, here a shade and
there a rainbow; here gravel and there a dia-
mond; polar ice, then temperate zone, then
torrid; now a genius, then a good many mediocre
people.
Alas! our Penetration increases as we grow
older, and we are no longer deceived by great
words when unrealized and unembodied. Say
rather, we detect littleness in expressions and
thoughts that once we should have taken and
cited as proofs of strength.
The position of Massachusetts seems to me
to be better from Samuel Hoar's visit to South
Carolina, in this point, — that one illusion is


14
JOURNAL [Age 41
dispelled.' Massachusetts was dishonoured be-
fore ; but she was credulous in the protection
of the Constitution, and either did not believe,
or affected not to believe, that she was dishon-
oured. Now, all doubt on that subject is removed,
and every Carolina boy will not fail to tell every
Massachusetts boy, whenever they meet, how
the fact stands. The Boston merchants would
willingly salve the matter over, but they cannot
hereafter receive Southern gentlemen at their
tables without a consciousness of shame. I do
not like very well to hear a man say he has been
in Carolina. I know too well what men she suf-
fers in her towns. He is no freeman.
In every government there are wild, lawless
provinces where the constituted authorities are
forced to content themselves with such obedi-
ence as they can get. Turkey has its Algiers
and Morocco, Naples its Calabria, Rome its
Fondi, London its Alsatia, and Bristol County
1 What follows seems to have been written for delivery at
an indignation meeting held in Boston or Concord, when the
Honorable Samuel Hoar, sent by the State of Massachusetts
as her accredited agent to South Carolina to take measures for
the protection of Massachusetts colored citizens, who, as sea-
men, entered the port of Charleston, from imprisonment and
sale, had been forcibly expelled from that state. (See the
Sketch of Samuel Hoar in Lectures and Biographical Sketches.)


1845) CAROLINA. SHAKERS 15
its Slab Bridge, where the life of a man is not
worth insuring. South Carolina must be set
down in that infamous category, and we must go
there in disguise and with pistols in our pockets,
leaving our pocketbooks at home, making our
wills before we go.
Literature is resorted to as consolation, not
as decalogue; then is literature defamed and
disguised.
ence
I talked yesterday with the Shaker Elders,
Joseph Myrick and Grove Blanchard, and stated
my chief objection to their community as a place
of education, that there was too much interfer-
ence. In heaven, a squadron of angels would be
a squadron of gods, with profoundest mutual
deference; so should men live.
It is true that a community cannot be truly
seen from the outside. If deep sympathy exists,
what seems interference is not, being justified by
the heart of the suffering party. And in Lane's'
representation of their society, they appear well.
He thinks them open to the greatest improve-
i Charles Lane, Mr. Alcott's English friend, who, after
the failure of the Fruitlands Community, remained for some
time in this country.


16
JOURNAL [AGE 41
ment and enlargement on every side, even of
science, learning, and elegance: only not sud-
denly. In that case, one can well enjoy their
future, and leave them as an order of American
monks and nuns, and willingly release from
nuptial vows a class of Virgins and Children
of Light, who would dedicate themselves to aus-
terity and religion, labor and love.
Lane thought that they looked on their
speech, their dress, and even their worship as
not sacred, nor even the best, but as open to
revival, and though not rashly alterable, yet
modifications were likely to be received. Elder
Grove had said that their mode of worship
was once spontaneous; now it was only pre-
served as a condition for exciting the spirit.
I told him they seemed peasants, with a squalid
contentment.
serv
The aim of writers is to tame the Holy Ghost,
and produce it as a show to the city. But the
sole terms on which the Infinite will come to
cities is the surrender of cities to its will. And
yet Nature seems sometimes to coquet with
great poets, and in the willingness to be ex-
pressed, suffers them to be knowing men of the
world, yet does not withdraw its inspirations.


1845] ANTI-SLAVERY. THOREAU 17
The Dæmons lurk and are dumb:
And, willing to be God, the worm
Flees through all the spire of form.
Let us, says Prudence, attempt somewhat
practicable. Why should we call meetings to
vote against the law of gravitation, or organize
a society to resist a revolution round the sun ?
In the Anti-Slavery conventions, and in most
other meetings, I am forced to remember the
clock, and regret how much time is passing, and
if I spend any hour upon any history of facts,
I think on this loss; but if you bring me a
thought; if you bring me a law; if I contem-
plate an idea, I no longer count the hours.
This is of the Eternity which is the generator
of Time.
Henry Thoreau said that the Fourierists had
a sense of duty which led them to devote them-
selves to their second best.
Good manners require a great deal of time,
as does a wise treatment of children. Orientals
have time, the desart, and stars; the Occidentals
have not.


18
(AGE 41
JOURNAL
The State is our neighbors ; our neighbors
are the State. It is a folly to treat the State as
if it were some individual, arbitrarily willing
thus and so. It is the same company of poor
devils we know so well, of William and Edward
and John and Henry, doing as they are obliged
to do, and trying hard to do conveniently what
must and will be done. They do not impose a
tax. God and the nature of things imposes the
tax, requires that the land shall bear its burden,
of road and of social order, and defence; and I
confess I lose all respect for this tedious de-
nouncing of the State by idlers who rot in indo-
lence, selfishness, and envy in the chimney
corner.
Common sense is the wick of the candle.
X.
Friends to me are frozen wine ;
I wait the sun shall on them shine.
Men do blunder into victories. The compro-
mise which prevails every day is the accepting
of other people's aims for our own, through
these treacherous sympathies, and so this expe-
dient civilization subsists and gets on, which
pleases nobody and torments the sincere. Yet
it seems of little consequence at last whether we
move on other people's tactics or on our own.


1845] TEACHERS. MEN. MYSTICS 19
Experience is the only teacher, and we get his
lesson indifferently in any school. I speak to
A's state of mind; I write on a hint of B's learn-
ing; I enjoy myself in C's genius and tendency;
E comes and says all this is wrong. Be it so,
but I have always been thus facile, and here I
am with prodigious enjoyments and hopes.
Poverty. The worst thing I know of poverty
is that if a man is dead, they call him poor fel-
low.
Fourier is a virile mind. His system is a mili-
tary one.
You no longer see Phænixes;' men are not
divine individuals ; but you learn to revere their
social and representative character. They are
not gods, but the spirit of God sparkles on and
about them.
After this generation one would say mysti-
cism should go out of fashion for a long time.
It makes now the stereotype turn and return
of all poems and poetic prose, “In thyself,”
etc.
i For the introduction to this paragraph, see “ Uses of
Great Men” (Representative Men, p. 34).


20
JOURNAL
[AGE 41
Men are weathercocks and like nothing long.
We are disgusted with history because it is pre-
cise, external, and indigent. But take up Beh-
men, or Swedenborg, or Carlyle even, or any
other who will write history mystically, and we
wish straightway for French science and facts
recorded agreeably to the common sense of
mankind.
on
SY
God's ways are parabolic projections that do
not return into themselves.
The good Fourier does not go for virtue be-
yond his nose. The highest word I find in his
vocabulary is the Aromal, under which spiritual
distinctions, such as he can recognize, should
fall.
We cannot spare the coarsest guard of vir-
tue.' ...
South Carolina has placed itself in a foolish
position and we are willing she should.” It is a
jail, an Alsatia. Leave it to itself. It has ex-
1 See “Worship” (Conduct of Life, p. 222).
2 Referring to the expulsion of Mr. Hoar, mentioned
earlier.


1845) SAMUEL HOAR OUTRAGE 21
cluded every gentleman, every man of honour,
every man of humanity, every freeman from its
territory. Is that a country in which I wish to
walk where I am assured beforehand that I shall
not meet a great man? that all the men are cot-
ton gins? where a great man cannot live, where
the people are degraded, for they go with pad-
locked lips, and with seared conscience ?
I am far from wishing that Massachusetts
should retaliate. If we could bring down the
New England culture to the Carolina level, if
we were cart-whip gentlemen, it might be pos-
sible to retaliate very effectively, and to the
apprehension of Southerners ;- shut up Mr.
Calhoun and Mr. Rhett, when they come to
Boston, as hostages for the mulattoes and ne-
groes they have kidnapped from the caboose
and the cabin of our ships. But the New Eng-
land culture is not so low. Ours is not a brutal
people, but intellectual and mild. Our land is
not a jail; “we keep open house”; we have
taken out the bolt and taken off the latch and
taken the doors off the hinges. Does South
Carolina warn us out and turn us out, and then
come hither to visit us ? She shall find no bar.
We are not afraid of visitors. We do not ring
curfews, nor give passes, nor keep armed pa-


22
JOURNAL
[AGE 41
trols from Berkshire to the sea; our roads are
open from New Hampshire to Connecticut; the
land is without a guard; we have no secrets, no
fears. For her flying slave and for his degraded
master here is rest and plenty and wisdom and
virtue which he cannot find at home.
We don't expect a sovereign state to treat
us like a footpad. But South Carolina does so
treat us.
The doctrine of South Carolina proves too
much.
But new times have come, and new policy,
subtler and nobler and more strong than any
before. It is the inevitable effect of culture -
it cannot be otherwise - to dissolve the animal
ties of brute strength, to insulate, to make a
country of men; not one strong officer, but
a thousand strong men, ten thousand. In all
South Carolina there is but one opinion, but one
man, — Mr. Calhoun. Its citizens are but little
Calhouns. In Massachusetts there are many
opinions, many men. It is coming, I hope, to
a pass when there shall not be the Atlas and
the Post, the Daily Advertiser and the Courier,
but these voices shall lose their importance in
a crowd of equal and happier men.
And such shall their influence be. Every one


23
'1845] THE INDIAN
a new and finished man whom the rogue shall
have no increased skill to meet by his dealing
with his predecessor, but here is a new accuser,
with new character and all the majesty of wis-
dom and virtue. ...
'Tis always time to do right,' and perhaps at
a time of disaster which certainly grows out of
our social wrongdoing (a wrongdoing to which
we have made ourselves parties) is the very hour
when we should throw in a noble expiation.
We in Massachusetts see the Indians only as
a picturesque antiquity;— Massachusetts, Shaw-
mut, Samoset, Squantum, Nantasket, Narragan-
set, Assabet, Musketaquid. But where are the
men?
“ Alas for them! their day is o'er.”
Well, this feeling still honours the race. Hia-
watha, Wyoming, — we thank them for names.
Indian relics, arrowheads. He is the oldest man.
What real merits — knowledge as naturalist,
skill to make bow, tent, sledge, canoe, to find
his north, wise as a hound. ...
1 This paragraph is written on an enclosed sheet, and was
probably written later, after the first heat of indignation on the
outrage on our first citizen had cooled. The passage about
the Indians evidently was of later date.
ace


24
JOURNAL
[AGE 41
Napoleon is immersed in things, in the land,
fruits, forests, arts, money, and so forth, of the
world; he does not say anything of him'self, but
he says what they say, or rather, they always
give some tincture to his speech. That is a very
different sort of speech from any thinker's.
There are men enough immersed in things,
farmers, smiths, truckmen, etc., who have the
strength of this sphere, but who cannot speak,
who cannot organize and arrange. Napoleon
stands at the confluence of the two streams of
thought and of matter, and derives thence his
power.
To Louis XVIII, on his return to France,
Talleyrand said, “Sir, there is something in me
which bodes no good to those governments
which reject me.”
« That lame rascal,” said Chenier, “without
any respect for episcopacy, resembles a sponge
which imbibes every liquid into which it is
dipped, with this difference, that when the
sponge is pressed, it returns the liquid it has
taken, whilst our limping friend makes it his
own.”
Was it fit, after such sacrifices as France had
made in the Revolution, to adopt again the


1845] HOPE IN THE AGE 25
musty garments of the old civilization ? Was it
pathetic to see Napoleon in St. Helena turn his
green coat? it was sadder to see Europe turn its
old coat.
to
c
Of course, I do not wish the formation of
“mutual admiration societies,” but I do not
think the sterility of periods is to be rashly in-
ferred from the absence of eminent talent in a
town. A divine soul, I can easily believe, would
content itself with the society of illustrious minds
which this very hour would afford it (for such
exist, pure, true, faithful amongst the faithless,
seeing amidst the blind), although no person
exists among these with a talent sufficient to
realize and establish his ideas. Not to be bruised
by the business is now a mark of merit; not to
despond in cities; to look at the lower powers,
viz., of demonstration, realization, edification,
as at salt, and lime, and granite; - materials and
agents as indispensable as light and fire, though
lower in the scale of energy. Besides, remember
Sir Humphry Davy’s “best discovery was the
discovery of Michael Faraday.”
So many men whom I know are degraded
only by their sympathies. Their native aims or


26
(AGE 41
JOURNAL
genius being high enough, but their relation all
too tender to the gross people about them. A
poet is so rare because he must be exquisitely
fine and vital in his tissue, and at the same time
immovably centred.
A true melody, like Ben Jonson's good songs
and all Milton's, is of eternity already. Verses
of true poets are hickory nuts, so fresh and
sound.
Criticism misleads; like Bonaparte's quarter-
master, if we listen to him, we shall never stir a
step. The part you have to take, none but you
must know. The critic can never tell you.
The annexation of Texas looks like one of
those events which retard or retrograde the civil-
ization of ages. But the World Spirit is a good
swimmer, and storms and waves cannot easily
drown him. He snaps his finger at laws.
“As we grow old,” said Alcott, “the beauty
steals inward.”
New Hampshire is treacherous to the honour,
honesty, and intelligence of New England : is
and has been. I do not look at the Massachu-


1845) POLITICS. CONSTITUTION 27
setts Democrats in the same light. Theirs is a
sort of fancy politics. I have a better opinion
than to believe they would vote as they do if
the question depended on them. But as the
proverb goes, “You may well walk if you hold
the bridle of your horse in your hand,” so I in-
terpret the caprice of and tactics of our com-
patriots in this Commonwealth on the subject
of Texas. They know that the great and gov-
erning sentiment of the State is anti-slavery and
anti-Texas, and whilst it is so, they can safely
indulge a little flirting with the great Mother
Democracy at Tammany Hall or at Washington
which has made Texas the passport to its grace.
The constitutional argument is ever trivial,
for the animus of the framers is not a fixed fact,
but a Proteus. The Constitution was an arrange-
ment, not an organic somewhat, and in South
Carolina means one thing, in Massachusetts an-
other. In such a case, avails but morals and
might: “You hurt me, and I will blow your
brains out, but I will put an end to this.” I do
not see why the two States cannot immediately
settle the dispute by a treaty. Let them appoint
commissioners to meet at Philadelphia, and fix
a rule of conduct to which both States will
agree.


28
(AGE 41
JOURNAL
Position of Massachusetts is better, (1) that
it is explained; (2) that South Carolina is self-
punished by the exclusion of every virtuous man
from Alsatia.
(From W)
Χαλεποι δε θεοί φαίνεσθαι εναργείς.
Iliad, xx, 131.
March.
Plato. A terrific motive power; he touches
things and they spin: the solar system is fast
becoming a fine transparency.
Yet to women his book is Mahometan.
In the Republic, Book 111, Plato declares that
his “Guardians ” shall not handle gold or silver,
but shall be instructed that there is gold and
silver in their souls, which will make men will-
ing at all times to give them without money
that which they want. A coinage not corrupti-
ble, for with this organic gold we can buy bread
and garments and tools, but cannot make an ill
use of it, to buy comfits and brandy.
Pherecydes Syrus wrote, “ Jove is a circle,
triangle and square, centre and line, and all
things before all,” which indicates profoundness
i For gods revealed are terrible to look upon.


1845] WRITING WITH FIRE 29
of perception. We say then of a Jove-like soul,
like Plato's, that he at once shows the evanes-
cence and the centrality of things. Things are
in a flood and fixed as adamant: The Bhagavat
Geeta adduces the illustration of the sphered,
mutable, yet centred air or ether.
The English nation is full of manly, clever
men, well-bred, who write these pungent off-
hand paragraphs in the literary and poetical
journals.' . .. It is a coup de force. All this is
convenient and civilized : but I had rather take
very uncultured, inornate, irregular, very bad
poetry with the chance of now and then an
urgent, fiery line like threads of gold in a mass
of ore.
We have in America the comfort of the
wretched, that out of this zone of clever medi-
ocrity, England is as indigent as America in
great writers.
mu
ise
Ah, we busy bodies ! Cannot we be a little
abstemious? We talk too much, and act too
much, and think too much. Cannot we cease
doing, and gravitate only to our ends? Cannot
we let the morning be?
1 What follows is printed in English Traits (p. 262).


30
JOURNAL
(AGE 41
The only use which the country people can
imagine of a scholar, the only compliment they
can think of to pay him, is, to ask him to de-
liver a Temperance Lecture, or to be a member
of the School Committee.
A few foolish and cunning managers ride the
conscience of this great country with their Texas,
or Tariff, or Democracy, or other mumbo-jumbo,
and all give in and are verily persuaded that
that is great, — all else is trifling. And why?
Because there is really no great life, and one
demonstration in all the broad land of that which
is the heart and the soul of every rational Ameri-
can man; — the mountains walking, the light
incarnated, reason and virtue clothed in flesh,-
he does not see.
Friends have nothing to give each other; no-
thing to withhold; nothing to ask for, or that
can be refused : such liberty would infer imper-
fect affinity. All that behooves them is clearness,
or, not to miscall relations, Truth forevermore,
and love after that.
Men of talent create a certain artificial posi-
tion, a camp in the wilderness somewhere, about
which they contrive to keep much noise, firing
of guns, and running to and fro of boys and


nd of man that it is thersuade the
nori
1845] UPROAR OR GENIUS 31
idlers with what uproar they can. They have
talents for contention, and they nourish a small
difference into a loud quarrel, and persuade the
surrounding population that it is the cause of
the country and of man. But the world is wide;
nobody will go there after to-morrow; the gun
can defend nothing but itself; nor itself any
longer than the man is by. But Genius Alings
itself on real elemental things, which are powers,
self-defensive, which first subsist, and therefore
resist unweariably forevermore all that opposes.
Genius loves truth and clings to it, so that what
it says and does is not a wilderness or a byroad,
visited for curiosity or forgotten, but on the
great highways of Nature, which were before
the Appian was built, which all men and angels
travel, and he holds fast these, a cement and
comfort of the social being of men.
The scholar does not fall into the existing
forms and professions; they may fall into him;
but is guided in his selection by religion and
necessity.
Seashore, - an imaginative man with a good
hand. The imaginative-practical. Imagination
is suspected, the mechanical is despised; write
the solid and the ethereal, for the divine. ...


32
(AGE 41
JOURNAL
Yet can he [the scholar] explain Life? Can
he unfold the theory of this particular Monday?
Can he uncover the living ligaments, concealed
from all but poets, which attach the dull men
and things we converse with, to the splendor of
the First Cause?'
I have found a subject, “On the use of great
men," which might serve a Schleiermacher for
monologues to his friends. But, in the first
place, there should be a chapter on the distribu-
tion of the hand into fingers, or on the great value
of these individuals as counterweights, checks
on each other. What a satisfaction, a fortress,
a citadel I find in a new individual who is
undoubtedly of this class. How much now
Schelling avails, and how much, every day,
Plato! What storms of nonsense they silently
avert.
No, it is not the part of merit of a man to
make his stove with his own hands, or cook and
bake his own dinner : another can do it better
1 The rest of the passage may be found in “Works and
Days” (Society and Solitude, pp. 179, 180).
2 The first lecture in the course Representative Men, and
first chapter in that volume.


1845] FOLLOW THE GLEAM 33
and cheaper; but it is his essential virtue to
carry out into action his own dearest ends, to
dare to do what he believes and loves. If he
thinks a sonnet the flower and result of the
world, let him sacrifice all to the sonnet; if he
loves the society of one or of several friends
more than life, let him arrange his living and
make everything yield to the procuring him
that chief good. Now, we spend our money for
that which is not bread, for paint and floor-
cloths, for newspapers, and male and female
servants that yield us the very smallest fraction
of direct advantage. The friction of this social
machine is grown enormous, and absorbs almost
all the power applied.
We are bound hand and foot with our de-
corums and superstitions. England has achieved
respectability at what a cost! America with a
valet's eyes admires and copies in vain.
Art requires a living soul. The dunces be-
lieve that, as it must, at any one moment, work
in one direction, an automaton will do as well,
or nearly; and they beseech the Artist to say
in what direction. “In every direction,” he re-
plies, “in any direction, or in no direction, but
it must be alive.”


34
JOURNAL (AGE 41
Love has that temperance which asks for
nothing which is not already on the moment
granted.
“You have, O Socrates,” said he, “like a stat-
uary, made our governors all beautiful.” “And
our governesses likewise, Glauco,” said Socrates.
“For do not suppose that I have spoken what
I have said any more concerning the men than
concerning the women, — such of them as are
of sufficient genius.” (Republic, Book vıı.)
Does the same skepticism exist at all times
which prevails at present in regard to the pow-
ers of performance of the actual population?
Edmund Hosmer thinks the women have de-
generated in strength. He can find no matron
for the else possible community. The men think
the men are less, a puny race. And George
Minott' thinks the cows are smaller.
Conservatism has in the present society every
advantage. All are on its side. Of those who
pretend to ideas, all are really and in practice on
the side of the State. They know that, if they
should persist in actualizing their theories, it
i A valued neighbour of Mr. Emerson's in a little weather-
beaten house on the hill-side opposite. He was a small farmer
and pot-hunter, mild and kindly, living with his sister, the village
tailoress.


1845] DREAMERS. NAPOLEON 35
would be all convulsion and plunging. Their
talk is the mere brag of liberalism. Yet, yet, they
like to feel their wings. The soul, with Plato
in Pbadrus, likes to feel its wings; and they
indulge themselves with this religious luxury,
assured that, though the lion is as yet only half
disengaged from the soil, the dream of to-day is
prophetic of the experience of to-morrow.
Bonaparte represents the Business Men's
Party against the Morgue. But the Morgue is
only the Business Men's Party gone to seed.
The lesson he teaches is that which vigor always
teaches, that there is always room for it. He
would not take “No” for an answer. He found
impediments that would have stopped anybody
else, but he saw what gibbering, quaking ghosts
they were, and he put his hand through them :
genius always sees room for one man more: he
makes room for many.
W
an a
Bonaparte replied to Bourrienne when he
showed the difficulty of getting acknowledged
by the old neighboring families of Europe, “If
it comes to that, I will dethrone them all, and
then I shall be the oldest sovereign among
them.” For really society is at any time only


36
(AGE 41
JOURNAL
a troop of thinkers, and the best heads among
them take the best seats. It is with the prizes
of power and place as it is with estates. A fee-
ble man can only see the farms that are fenced
and tilled; the houses that are built. At the end
of the town, he is at the end of the world. The
strong man sees not only the actual but the pos-
sible houses and farms. His eye makes estates
and villages, as fast as the sun breeds clouds.
Poetry must be as new as foam, and as old
as the rock.
Thomas Taylor calls Bacon's Novum Organon
“the baseless fabric of a vision.” (General In-
troduction to Plato.)
The puny race of Scholars in this country
have no counsel to give, and are not felt. Every
wretched partisan, every village brawler, every
man with talents for contention, every clamor-
ous place-hunter makes known what he calls
his opinion, all over the country, that is, as
loud as he can scream. Really, no opinions
are given; only the wishes of each side are ex-
pressed, of the spoils party, that is, and of the
malcontents. But the voice of the intelligent
and the honest, of the unconnected and inde-


1845] MIND YOUR OWN WORK 37
pendent, the voice of truth and equity, is sup-
pressed. In England, it is not so. You can
always find in their journals and newspapers a
better and a best sense, as well as the low, coarse
party cries.
I have now arrived at a perfect selfishness on
the most enforced consideration, for I am con-
strained by many lapses and failures to propor-
tion any attempts to my means. Now I receive
daily just so much vital energy as suffices to put
on my clothes, to take a few turns in my garden
and in my study with a book or a pen in my
hand. If I attempt anything beyond this, if I
so much as stretch out my hand to help my
neighbour in his field, the stingy Genius leaves
me faint and sprawling; I must pay for this
vivacity by a prostration for two or three days
following. These are costly experiments to try;
I cannot afford two or three days when I count
how many days it requires to finish one of my
tasks; so I grow circumspect and disobliging
beyond the example of all the misers. My kings
and exemplars are St. Hunks and St. Elwes."
Degrees. Do you think nobody would be the
1 John Elwes was a notorious miser in England in the eigh-
teenth century.


38
(AGE 41
JOURNAL
poet if he could be the hero? And do you think
the painter cares to be the subject which he
paints ? I cannot even find that a woman wishes
to be her lover, though she wishes to be united
to him. There are steps and limitations in the
universe, and not a huddle of identity only.
What argument, what eloquence can avail
against the power of that one word niggers?
The man of the world annihilates the whole
combined force of all the anti-slavery societies
of the world by pronouncing it.
I have charged the Abolitionist sometimes
with stopping short of the essential act of ab-
staining from all products of slave-labor. The
apology for their use is not comfort and self-
indulgence, but, I doubt not, the same feeling
which I and others insist on, that we will not be
headlong and abandoned to this one mania.
A journal might find its resources in Calvert,"
Ward, Margaret Fuller, Channing, Thoreau,
Cabot, Hunt, Tappan, Wendell Holmes, Whip-
1 Probably George H. Calvert of Newport, a scholarly
friend of Mr. Emerson's brother William, author of a book
called The Gentle man and many other volumes.
2 Peter Hunt, one of Mr. Emerson's pupils in the Chelms-


1845] CRITICISM. AMERICA 39
ple. Dr. Frothingham should contribute his
treatise on the Augustan Astronomy. Alcott
should be made effective by being tapped by a
good suction-pump. Hawthorne, Tuckerman
the botanist, Parker, Hedge, Lane, George
Curtis, Ellen Hooper, J. F. Clarke.
e
In reading books, as in seeing men, one may
well keep, if he can, his first thoughts; for they
will soon be written over by the details of argu-
ment and sentiment in the book; and yet they
are a juster judgment of the book than a digest
of the particular merits can yield. As W. T.
said of the first impression of a face, that, after
your friend has come and gone many times and
now is long absent, that first seen face comes
back to the memory, and not the more intimate
knowledge of recent days.
Is it not good that the Muse should not gov-
ern; that men of thought and of virtue should
be at leisure, and ridiculously vacant, and to
seek, — rambling ingloriously in woods and by
seashores;—that things should be left to them-
selves, as now in America all goes to a merry
prosperous tune, – good and bad is done, gov-
ford School; later, a man of affairs in Philadelphia. He wrote
in the Dial “ A Voyage to Jamaica.”


40
(AGE 41
JOURNAL
ernment is not felt, and the governors have an
idle time of it?
The eager Shaker charged Adam with the
capital sin of generation, and all his posterity
with the same, compromising the existence of
Mother Ann,' and of the accuser himself with
sincere absurdity. And most of our criticism is
of the same web.
All the arguments are against literature, yet
one verse of a poem will blow them and me
away.
Ballads show the indifferency of subjects,
times, styles, and manners.
[In one of Mr. Emerson's verse-books is a
half-erased pencilling of an improvisation on the
spot — the dark ledges above the spruce forest
- of the poem “Monadnoc” (see its second
and third stanzas in the Poems).]
i Among the original Shakers in England, who were an
offshoot of the Society of Friends, were the Lee family, whose
daughter Ann, in 1770, thought that she received a divine
revelation, which was accepted as such by the Shakers. She,
with several of the leading members, came to this country in
1777, and from Watervliet, New York, their communities
spread to other states.


1845]
41
MONADNOC
3 May, 4 hours, 10 minutes A.M.
I stand
Upon this uplifted land
Hugely massed to draw the clouds,
Like a banner unrolled
To all the dwellers in the plains
Round about a hundred miles.
In his own loom's garment dressed,
By his own bounty blessed,
Thus constant giver
Yielding many a cheerful river
Appearing an aerial isle,
A cheerful and majestic pile
Which morn and crimson eve shall paint
For bard, for lover, and for saint;
The country's core,
Inspirer, prophet evermore;
And which God aloft had set
So that men should not forget ;
It should be their lives' ornament
And mix itself with each event;
Their almanac and dial,
Painter's palette, sorcerer's phial
Mysteries of colour duly laid
By the great painters, light and shade,
And sweet varieties of time
And chance,


42
(AGE 41
JOURNAL
And the mystic seasons' dance;
The soft succession of the hours
Thawed the snowdrift into flowers.
By million changes skilled to tell
What in the eternal standeth well.
We have received the opinion, let us hope
unjustly, that the men who surround us value a
long life, and do not esteem life simply as a means
of expressing the sentiment. But Beauty be-
longs to the sentiment and is always departing
from those who depart out of that. The hero
rises out of all comparison with contemporaries
and with ages of men, because he scorns old
age and lands and money and power, and will
brave all mankind just as readily as a single
enemy at the call of that private and perfect
Right of Beauty in which he lives.
“ Man is a torch borne in the wind.”
Is there only one courage and one warfare?'
... The shepherd boy very sensibly fought with
a sling and a pebble. I decline henceforward (ah,
would God it were so !) foreign methods and
foreign courages. I will do that which I can do:
1 Here follow sentences printed in " The Scholar” (Lec-
tures and Biograpbical Sketches, p. 274).
e CO


* 1845)
THE WHISPER
43
I will fight by my strength, not by my weak-
ness. “Not dead but living are ye to account
those who are slain in the way of God.” (Ma-
homet.) Only the religious can expect the suc-
cor of religion.
When we come into the world a wonderful
whisper gives us a direction for the whole road
(much as if one should hear from a skilful guide,
at setting out on a journey, that to come at the
point he sought he should keep always to the
northeast). This whisper is wonderfully im-
pressed on us, and is temperament, taste, bear-
ing, talent. But having made and moulded the
constitution, the Counsellor contents himself,
and is ever dumb. He that made the world lets
that speak, and does not also employ a town
crier. Beauty forbids. But the man, having re-
ceived this plastic counsel to which he alone is
privy, never can hear it from any other person.
On the contrary, all persons whom he meets
have a different and contrary counsel to offer.
Society is unanimous against his project. And
he never hears it as he knows it. It happens to
most men that they listen to these opinions of
men, and forsake their own, and attempt to work
in other men's work, which is as if cripples should
nan
TOU


44
JOURNAL
(AGE 41
attempt to dance, and hare-lipped men should be
orators. But he who listens to this counsel is
called religious, for he alone worships, and he
may rightly expect virtues and beauties and pow-
ers consonant with the whole frame of things;
to which also he is consonant.
It is like the card of the compass which ar-
ranges itself with the poles of the world.
ers
ran
“May you likewise find the means better to
employ time, which is only truly precious to
more highly organized natures !” (Goethe.)
Understand me, O Charles, when I speak of
miracles, I am never thinking of dead men.
Degrees. There are not one or two, but many
things in the world, and unlike as mutton, and
vowel sounds, and heathen gods, and the nine
solids, and uncles, and many other things.
Bishop Berkeley, in the Minute Philosopher,
compared Southern wits to “cucumbers, which
are commonly all good in their kind, but at best
are an insipid fruit; while the Northern geniuses
are like melons, of which not one in fifty is
good.”


1845] THE UNCERTAIN MUSE 45
The new “Second Church " in Hanover
Street cost $65,000.
Give me bareness and poverty, so that I
know them as the sure signs of the coming
muse.' . .. The solitude of the body is the
populousness of the soul.
It is easy to hide for something, — to hide ·
now, that we may draw the more admiration
anon. Easy to sit in the shade, if we have a
Plato's Republic teeming in the brain, which
will presently be born for the joy and illumina-
tion of men; easy to withdraw and break some-
what morosely the bien-séances of society, visit
not, and refuse visits, if we can make good to
others and to ourselves a rare promise. But how
if you have no security of such a result? —
how if the fruit of your brain is abortive ? — if
cramp and mildew, if dreams and the sons of
dreams, if prose and crotchets and cold trifles,
matter unreadable by other men and odious to
your own eyes be the issue? How, if you must
i In July, by invitation of the literary societies of the col-
lege at Middlebury, Vermont, Mr. Emerson gave an address
there. This paragraph (which is partly printed in “The
Scholar,” an address given at the University of Virginia in
1876), and that which follows it, were probably written for
the Middlebury occasion.


JOURNAL
(Age 41
sit out the day in thoughtful attitude and ex-
periment, and return to the necessities and con-
versation of the household without the support
of any product, and they must believe and you
may doubt that this waste cannot be justified.
I call you to a confidence which surmounts this
painful experience. You are to have a self-sup-
port which maintains you not only against all
others, but against your own skepticism. Pain,
indolence, sterility, endless ennui have also their
lesson for you, if you are great.
The Saharas must be crossed as well as the
Nile. It is easy to live for others; everybody
does. I call on you to live for yourselves, so
shall you find in this penury and absence of
thought a purer splendor than ever clothed the
exhibitions of wit.
You shall not know too much. There is a
difference between a judge's and a deputy sher-
iff's knowledge of the world, and again between
that of the last and a burglar's.
When I read poetry in an English journal,
as in the Athenæum, I am relieved, if, on coming
to the end of the article, I find it is not Ameri-
can.
The poet and the citizen perfectly agree in


1845) THE SMALL HOUSE
47
conversation on the wise life. The poet coun-
sels his own son as if he were a merchant.?...
Every poet knows the unspeakable hope and
represents its audacity by throwing it out of all
probability in his conversation.
Mrs. Ripley “hated to hear of the opposition
of clergymen and others to the Fast Day, for
she thought our people had so few festivals and
this was now well established”; and the peni-
tential form of the proclamation gives it a cer-
tain zest which the other holidays want.
CI
[Here follows the little poem,“ The Moun-
tain and the Squirrel,” written as prose, but for
the most part rhyming.]
Is not a small house best? Put a woman into
a small house, and after five years she comes
out large and healthy, and her children are so.
Put her into a large house, and after the same
time she shall be haggard, sickly, with a sharp
voice, and a wrinkled, care-full countenance, and
her children suffer with her.
i Here follows the long passage thus beginning, printed in
« The Scholar,” as delivered in Virginia, but doubtless writ-
ten for Middlebury College in 1845. (See Lectures and Bio-
grapbical Sketches, pp. 264–266.)


48
[AGE 41
JOURNAL
“Only poetry inspires poetry,” said Schiller;
“therefore we ought to avoid affairs,” — or some-
thing like this he said. True, if he use “poetry”
in a literal sense; but if he mean books of poems,
no. For the test of the poet is that he be able
to read the poetry of affairs. A whole volume
of sermons might be made out of the chips of
one sonnet.
Frivolous reasons have allowance with all men
and with poets also, but no man says, I was
reading Plato and therefore could not come; I
had new rhymes jingling in my brain, and would
not wish losing them.
To-day is carnival in Heaven, the angels
almost assume flesh.' ...
One would think from the talk of men that
riches and poverty were a great matter. ...
A man shall not be a pond. As the water
came in, so it shall go out. I think the charm
i For the rest, see « Works and Days” (Society and Soli-
tude, p. 170).
2 The rest of the paragraph is in “ Illusions” (Conduct
of Life, p. 323).


1845] LIFE'S GAME. WRITING 49
of rhetoric is still that, the hint or advertise-
ment it gives us of our constitution; the pil-
grim, the palmer, shell on shoulder, marching
fraternity, - we are bound on a long tramp.
Before God, why sit ye here?
Life is a game between God and man. The
one disparts himself and feigns to divide into
individuals. He puts part in a pomegranate,
part in a king's crown, part in a person. In-
stantly man sees the beautiful things and goes
to procure them. As he takes down each one
the Lord smiles and says, It is yourself; and
when he has them all, it will be yourself. We
live and die for a beauty which we wronged
ourselves in thinking alien.
Writing should be the settlement of dew on:
the leaf, of stalactites on the wall of the grotto,
the deposit of flesh from the blood, of woody
fibre in the tree from the sap,
Our virtue runs in a narrow rill: we have i
never a freshet. We ought to be subject to en-
thusiasms. One would like to see Boston and
Massachusetts agitated like a wave with some
generosity, mad for learning, for music, for phi-


50
JOURNAL
(AGE 41
losophy, for association, for freedom, for art;
but now it goes like a pedlar with its hand ever
on its pocket, cautious, calculating.
How hard to find a màn! It would take, as
Taylor said, the lamp of Diogenes added to the
splendor of the noonday sun. Otis talked too
much. Webster has no morale. Choate wants
weight. Alcott is unlimited, and unballasted.
Bound, bound, let there be bound! But let
there be not too strict bound. . . . Alcott is
a pail of which the bottom is taken out, and
the Whig a pail from which you cannot get off
the cover.
These farmers, so keen in trade, so cool and
solid in their manners, are no fools, and their
considerate heads might wag to advantage with
'those in Congress or the Cabinet. But living as
they now do, to so humble aims, it seems as if
they must, on some day and year not far back,
have compounded with more generous hopes
and have renounced their homage and duty,
and resolved to get what dirty compensation
they could for their right of subscription to wild
goodness and beauty, by an unmixed, undis-
tracted attention to squalid economics.
A great deal of God in the universe, but not


1845] FARMING. SCHOLAR. GOD 51
valuable to us until we can make it up into
man."
us 1
е
с
can 1
as
What is the use of trying to get that out
which is not in? You may ask me as often as
you will, and in what ingenious forms, for an
opinion concerning the mode of building the
wall, or sinking the well, or laying out the acre,
but always the ball will rebound. These are
questions which you, and not I, will answer.?
The Scholar passes, like the Russian bathers
from hot water to ice-cold, so he from the height
of honour to that of insult, as he falls into studi-
ous or into “practical” company. See the sen-
tence from Visbnoo Sarma.
Vestiges of Creation. What is so ungodly as
these polite bows to God in English books ?
He is always mentioned in the most respectful
1 The remainder of this passage will be found in “ The
Scholar” (Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 276).
2 Mr. Hosmer, or other neighbours who ploughed, ma-
nured, or built wall on the increasing acres, of course asked
Mr. Emerson how he wished the work done, and thus made
a call on his philosophy to salve the natural mortification at
not knowing the answers.


52
(AGE 41
JOURNAL
and deprecatory manner, “that august,” “ that
almighty,” “that adorable providence,” etc., etc.
But courage only will the Spirit prompt or ac-
cept. Everything in this Vestiges of Creation is
good, except the theology, which is civil, timid,
and dull. These things which the author so
well collates ought to be known only to few,
and those, masters and poets.
Cithara crinitus lopas
Personat aurata, docuit quae maximus Atlas.
Hic canit errantem lunam, solisque labores
Unde hominis genus, et pecudes; unde imber et ignes,
Arcturum, pluviasque Hyadas, geminosque Triones,
Quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles
Hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
Æneid, 1, 740.
It is curious that all we want in this depart-
ment is collation. As soon as the facts are stated
we recognize them all as somewhere expressed
in our experience or in history, fable, sculpture,
or poetry. We have seen men with tails in the
Fauns and Satyrs. We have seen Centaurs,
Titans, Lapithæ.
All science is transcendental, or else passes
away. Botany is now acquiring a right theory.
And how excellent is this MacLeay and Swain-


1845] CIRCLES. FAME. POETS 53
son theory of animated circles ! Symbolic also,
as in Kirby and Spence. The cyclic or encyclo-
pædiacal character that Science acquires pleases
also and satisfies. The Avatars of Brahma will
presently be textbooks of natural history.
Well, and it seems there is room for a better
species of the genus Homo. The Caucasian is
an arrested undertype.
Persons. Does any one suppose himself to be
without bounds or limits? Perhaps he will defy
mesmerism.'...
Fame. Among our social advantages what a
signal convenience is fame! Do we read all au-
thors, to grope our way to the best? No; but
the world selects for us the best, and we select
from the best, our best.
A crop of poets is as inevitable as a crop of
violets or anemones, and the asperity, or the
narrowness, or the conceit of any one is of no
account in the cycle, being readily compensated,
not in him, but in the choir. They are all less
than the genus, and why not he?
1 The rest of the passage is in “ Eloquence” (Society and
Solitude, pp. 80, 81).


54
JOURNAL
(AGE 41
Identity. Liars also are true. Truth is the
moral gravitation, and let a man begin where he
will, and work in whatever false direction, he is
sure to be found instantly afterwards arriving at
a true result.
The Whig Party is anxious to disembarrass
itself of the abolitionists. Does it know that no
injustice can be done except by the help of jus-
tice ? — that its true policy is to take away from
the Locofoco Party every right principle and
adopt the same itself? Then will the ruin be
inevitable of the bad. But this boyish policy of
becoming bad and rowdy gives strength to the
other side.
“We know all things as in a dream, and are
again ignorant of them according to vigilant
perception.” (Plato, in Sophista.) Plato, the
whetstone of wits, the yardstick, standard me-
tre of wits.
The hint of the dialectic is more valuable
than the dialectic. One who has seen one proof,
ever so slight, of the terrific powers of this organ
will remember it all the days of his life. The
most venerable proser will be surprised with
silence. It is like the first hint that the earth


1845)
PLATO
55
moves, or that iron is a conductor of fluids, or
that granite is a gas. The solids, the centres,
rest itself, fly and skip. Rest is a relation, and
not rest any longer. Ah, these solid houses,
real estates, have wings like so many nimble
mosquitoes, and do exceedingly hop and avoid
me.
Books are worth reading that settle a prin-
ciple, as lectures are. All others are tickings of
the clock and we have so much less to live.
Objections made to Plato's Republic are shal-
low. He keeps a cobbler a cobbler, but that is
only illustration to show that each passion and
action should keep its orbit. There is no cob-
bler to the Civitas Dei, which alone he would
build.
[Notes for chapter on Plato in Representative
Men, and various quotations occur here in the
Journal.]
It destroys how many originalities, pretended
originals, to read Plato.... Yet how easy to say
“My thunder”; “That's New Church truth.”
Poor little fellows, all our propositions are re-
lated. ...


56 .
JOURNAL
[AGE 41
It is easy to read Plato, difficult to read his
v commentators.
There was an ugly rumor went about from
London to Boston and in other places a twelve-
month since, that Cousin was dished, and now
I owe to him this magnificent Republic; and
how many scholars will thank him for a century
to come for this translation!
There is not the slightest probability that
the college will foster an eminent talent in any
youth. If he refuse prayers and recitations, they
will torment and traduce and expel him, though
he were Newton or Dante.
Of what use to put one whole thread into a
rotten web? The neighbors tax the philosopher
with not using his opportunity, if he refuse to
serve in the school committee. But to what end
should he serve? Any reform that he might
propose is beforehand either wholly inadequate
or else sure of rejection, because he differs from
them in the aim of his teaching; he wishing to
make of the pupil a worshipper of truth and
goodness, and they to make a lover of gain.
The clergymen on the committee do not say
this, but they also mean it, and aim at it, for


OV
1845] INSIGHT IN REFORM 57
the children generally, and for their own child-
ren also. Is it different in regard to political
employments ?
But we have — have we not? — a real rela-
tion to markets and brokers, to currency and
coin.'...
You say that we talk of slavery and patriot-
ism but will not do anything. Why, but because
we have not sufficient insight? In this new mat-
ter of association are men to blame that they
will not leave their homesteads and try the haz-
ardous experiment of a new colony in the woods
of the West or in Brook Farm or Skaneateles,
perilling the means of living of their families ?
They wish well to your enterprise, but it
looks to them by no means wise and secure.
They want sight, certainty, thorough know-
ledge. They are perfectly right in refusing their
contribution and their personal aid to your pro-
ject. Better certainly that you should lack their
aid than that they should do a foolish thing.
Then let us have insight before all things.
With our Saxon education and habit of
i See the passage in “ The Scholar” on the “unmention-
able dollar” (Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 272).


58
(AGE 41
JOURNAL
thought we all require to be first. Each man
must somehow think himself the first in his
own career: if he find that he is not, he thinks
himself cheated; he accuses Nature and Provi-
dence. We are born with lotus in our mouths,
and are very deceivable as to our merits, easily
believing we are the best. But in our present
system that is the basis, that I am to be the first
of my kind. Meantime we have somewhere
heard or dreamed of another order, to wit,
purely social, where a social or loving perfec-
tion subsisted, blending the properties of all,
and each found his beatitude in the atmosphere
of his club. If an American should wake up
some morning and discover that his existence
was unnecessary, he would think himself exces-
sively ill-used, and would declare himself in-
stantly against the government of the Universe.
We construct all our theories and philosophies
so as to show how with many members each
member may be best.
As creeps from leaf to leaf the worm,
So creeps its life from form to form,
And the poor emmet on the ground
On the march of centuries is bound.
Truth, or the connexion of cause and effect,


1845) THE GOOD GENIUS 59
alone interests us.'. .. Talent makes counter-
feit ties. Genius finds the real ones. Wonder
is begotten by showing us legitimate series, but
suppressing one or more of the terms.
Skepticism profits by suggesting the grander
generalization which yet remains to us (as proved
by this or that anomaly) after our present re-
ligion and philosophy shall be outlived.
We say sometimes of a personage, that he
spreads his ability over his whole discourse, and
does not utter epigrams; so eminently does the
good Genius of the world, and cares little to
distil sweetness or sense into moments or per-
sons, but by here a little and there a little, with
infinite tediousness of apparatus and detail, ar-
rives surely at his ends.
I will tell you how you can enrich me, if
you can recommend to-day to me.
Is there a book that will not leave us where
it found us?
The Republic, perhaps?
Yes, if there were one to read it with.
What we want, then, is a class.
A class of two.
i Here follow sentences printed in « Montaigne" (Repro-
sentative Men, p. 170).


60
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
Society is a great boarding-house in which
people of all characters and habits meet for
their dinner and eat harmoniously together;
but, the meal once over, they separate to the
most unlike and opposite employments.
mo
I avoid the Stygian anniversaries at Cam-
bridge, those hurrahs among the ghosts, those
yellow, bald, toothless meetings in memory of
red cheeks, black hair, and departed health.
Most forcible Feeble made the oration that fits
the occasion, that contains all the obituary elo-
quences. Bluebirds celebrate theirs.
Animal Spirits. On common ground, as at
a feast, common people entirely meet or even
blend. Each newcomer is only the animal spirit
of the other extended. Instead of carrying the
water in a hundred buckets we have a hose, and
every hose fits every hydrant.
Saturday, June 7.
I went with C. S. to see Charles Newcomb.
We found him wrapt as ever in his great Gothic
cathedral of fancies ; pained now, it seems, by
the doubt whether he should retire to more ab-
solute inward priesthood, or accept the frequent


1845] A SAINT. ADAPTIVENESS 61
and to him dear solicitations of domestic and
varied life. His idea of love, which he names so
often, is, I think, only the wish to be cherished.
He is too full of his prophecy, once to think
of friendship. Saints in a convent who all
recognize each other, and still retire, - that
is his image. A purer service to the intellect
was never offered than his, — warm, fragrant,
religious, — and I feel when with him the per-
tinency of that Platonistic word, “all-various."
Beautiful and dear, God and all his hosts shall
keep him.
Adaptiveness. The philosophy we want is one
of Auxions and mobility; not a house but a ship
in these billows we inhabit.' ... The universe
and the individual perpetually act and react on
each other. Thus all philosophy begins from
Nox and Chaos, the Ground or Abyss which
Schelling so celebrates. And in every man we
require a bit of night, of chaos, of Abgrund, as
the spring of a watch turns best on a diamond.
In every individual we require a pièce de resist-
ance, a certain abyss of reliance and fortitude on
which to fall back, when worst comes to worst.
That continent, that backbone being secure, he
i See “Montaigne” (Representative Men, p. 160).


62
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
may have what variety, what surface, what orna-
ment, what flourish, he will.
For Plato, it would be pedantry to catalogue
his philosophy; the secret of constructing pyr-
amids and cathedrals is lost, and not less of
Platonic philosophies.
You may know all the people on earth.
Do you know your own genius ? No. Every
thought, every deed, you drag before it that
you may have a verdict and know something of
itself; and it answers from its cloudy seat. What
alone in the history of this world interests us?
What but the mystic import of two or three
words men use ? Genius, Love, Right.
He [the Scholar] will have to answer cer-
tain questions which I must plainly tell you
cannot be staved off.'...
I invite you not to cheap joys."...
Un
Believe in magnetism, not in needles; in the
unwearied and unweariable power of Destiny,
which, without an effort, brings together like to
i The rest of this passage is printed in « The Scholar," an
address given at the University of Virginia in 1876 (Lectures
and Biographical Sketches, p. 284).
2 Idem (p. 287).


1845] EFFECT OF FARM WORK 63
like, the arrow to its mark, the cause to its
effect, the friend to the friend, and the soul to
its fortune, for, though the bases are divided,
the summits are united. Silver to silver.
le-
The Farm once more! The unanimous voice
of thoughtful men is for the life of labor and
the farm. All experience is against it, it being
found, (1) that a small portion of the people
suffice for the raising of bread for the whole ;
(2) that men are born with the most positive
peculiarities of power, as for music, for geome-
try, for chemistry, for care of animals, etc., etc.;
(3) that hard labor on the farm untunes the
mind, unfits for the intellectual exercises which
are the delight of the best men. I suppose that
all that is done in ploughing and sowing and
reaping and storing is repeated in finer sort in
the life of men who never touch the plough-
handles. The essence of those manipulations is
subtle and reappears in counting-houses and
council boards, in games of card and chess, in
conversations, correspondences, and in poets'
rhymes.
The obvious objection to the indulgence of
particular talent and refusing to be man of all
work is the rapid tendency to farther subdivi-
an


64
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
sion and attenuation, until there shall be no
manly man.
The good of doing with one's own hands is
the honoring of the symbol. My own cooking,
my own cobbling, fence-building, digging of a
well, building of a house, twisting of a rope,
forging of a hoe and shovel, - is poetic.
Poltroonery is in acknowledging an inferiority
as incurable. ...
The only suppression of truth we can forgive
is in restraining the confession of inferiority
when really felt because of some trivial advan-
tage. Let the penitent wait and not prematurely
poltroonize.
Poetry aids itself both with music and with
eloquence, neither of which is essential to it.
Say rather that music is proper to it, but that
within the high organic music proper to it are
inferior harmonies and melodies, which it avails
itself of at pleasure. Thus in Channing's piece
called “ Death,” the line -
“I come, I come, think not I turn away” –
is a turn of eloquence. And Byron, when he
writes, —


1845] BYRON. PERSONS - 65
“For who the fool that doth not know
How bloom and beauty come and go,
And how disease and pain and sorrow
May chance to-day, may chance to-morrow
Unto the merriest of us all,” —
enhances the pleasure of the poem by this bit
of plaintive music. In like manner,
“ Out upon Time! who will leave no more
Of the things to come than the things before.
Out upon Time! who forever will leave
But enough of the past for the future to grieve;
Relics of things that have passed away,
Fragments of stone reared by creatures of clay.”
Scholar goes for faith, but is a skeptic.
Persons are a luxury and a convenience, like
shops. Names are the only poems which loving
maidens will hear. Nearness is the aim of all
love. An exchange of nobleness is it also. But
if you would sublimate it, I think you must
keep it hard and cold, and with a Dantean lean-
ness. We strangely stand — souls do — on the
very edges of their own spheres, leaning tiptoe
towards and into the adjoining sphere. The in-
itial love must be allowed; then the celestial
shall follow. The nuptial love releases each from


66
JOURNAL (AGE 42
that excess of influence which warped each from
his own beauty, and gives each again to himself
and herself, so that they acquire their own fea-
ture and proportion again, and a new beauty
and dignity in each other's eyes. Healed of
the fever, let them beware of a second fever.
It is not for lovers (on a high degree of love)
to sue. Great love has that temperance which
asks for nothing which is not already in the mo-
ment granted. It is theirs only to be indulgent
to the joyful necessity which, making them co-
existent, has also made them contemporary.
They are only to find each other and to be in
each other.
me
With what astonishment and reverence would
not men listen to music if it were rarely heard
and a little at a time! But when they stand by
an organ and hear its voluminous voices all day,
the natural reverence is abated.
One who wishes to refresh himself by contact
with the bone and sinew of society must avoid
what is called the respectable portion of his city
or neighborhood with as much care as in Eu-
rope a good traveller avoids American and
English people. The laborers.


1845) HEAVEN'S WAY. SYMBOLS 67
Shall I say that I am driven to express my
faith by a series of skepticisms?'..
seri
By atoms, by trifles, by sots, Heaven operates.
The needles are nothing, the magnetism is all.
Volvox globator has got on so far! He has
rolled to some purpose truly.”
“To make the great, little, and the little,
great,” Socrates said, “ was the orator's part.”
Well, that is what poetry and thinking do. I go
out one day and see the masons and carpenters
busy in building a house, and I discover with
joy the parallelism between their work and
my constitution, and come home glad to know
that I too am a housebuilder. The next day I
go abroad and meet hunters, and, as I return,
accidentally discover the strict relation be-
tween my pursuit of truths and theirs of forest
game. ...
i Here follows in substance, but with some difference of
expression, the matter that is found in Representative Men
(pp. 181, 182) as to the inability which the humane but
honest thinker may find in himself to work in the partial re-
forms of his day.
2 “ Man is the most composite of all creatures; the wheel-
insect, volvox globator, is at the other extreme.” (See the last
page of Representative Men.)


68
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
ty
“Children only, and not the learned, speak of
the speculative and the practical doctrines, as
two. They are but one, for both obtain the self-
same end, and the place which is gained by the
followers of the one is gained by the followers
of the other. That man seeth who seeth that
the speculative doctrines and the practical are
one.” — Bhagavat Geeta.
Eminent experiences. Eras. When the Kepler
laws were learned; when the 47th proposition
[of Euclid was issued] ; when the Idealism was
known; the doctrine of like to like; the doc-
trine of compensation; the doctrine of symbols
and correspondence.
Worship is the height of rectitude. “The
world is no place for the man who doth not
worship, and where, O Arjoon! is there an-
other?” Worship, because the sailor and the
ship and the sea are of one stuff; worship, be-
cause, though the bases of things are divided,
yet the summits are united ; because not by thy
private, but by thy public and universal force
canst thou share and so know the nature of
things. Worship, because that is the difference
between genius and talent; between poetry and


1845] CHOATE. HUNTER'S WORDS 69
prose; between Imagination and Fancy. The
poet is like
... the vaulters in the circus round
Who step from horse to horse, but never touch the
ground.
Superlatives. Choate's Thousand-for-one-style.
Choate is a locomotive that runs so readily back
and forward that there is perpetual need to scotch
the wheels. With so much sail the craft should
mind her helm well. The grimace is a part of
the superlative, and very bad part. A man full-
grown should not cry in a public place alone.
The rich take up something more of the world
into man's life: they include the country as well
as the town, the ocean-side, Niagara, the Far
West, and the old European homesteads of man,
in their notion of available material; and therein
do well.
We owe to every book that interests us one
or two words. Thus, to Vestiges of Creation we
owe “arrested development.”. I remember to
. In his essay, “ Poetry and Imagination,” Mr. Emerson
credits John Hunter with “ the electric word “arrested and
progressive development' indicating the way upward from the
invisible protoplasm to the highest organism which gave the


70
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
have seen three or four important words claimed
as the result of Bentham, of which I think “in-
ternational ” was one. To Plato we owe a whole
vocabulary and at this moment remember the
importance of the words “obstetrical,” “mania,"
and “assimilation,” in their Platonic sense.
June 23.
It was a pleasure, yesterday, to hear Father
Taylor preach all day in our country church.
Men are always interested in a man, and the
whole various extremes of our little village so-
ciety were for once brought together. Black and
white, poet and grocer, contractor and lumber-
man, Methodist and preachers, joined with the
regular congregation in rare union. The speaker
instantly shows the reason in the breadth of his
truly social nature. He is mighty Nature's child;
another Robert Burns trusting heartily to her
power, as he has never been deceived by it, and
arriving unexpectedly every moment at new and
m
poetic key to natural science.” Richard Owen mentioned this
expression to Mr. Emerson as found by him in Hunter's manu-
scripts. Mr. Emerson alluded to it in connection with the
article on Hunter in the Biographie Générale. (See « Bio-
graphical Sketch of Emerson” in Nature, Addresses, and Leco
fures, p. xxix.)


71
1845]
EDWARD TAYLOR
happiest deliverances. How joyfully and manly
he speaks himself abroad. It is a perfect Punch
and Judy affair, his preaching. The preaching
quite accidental and ludicrously copied and cari-
catured from the old style, as he found it in
some Connecticut tubs. As well as he can he
mimics and exaggerates the parade of method
and logic, of text and argument, but after much
threatening to exterminate all gainsayers by his
syllogisms, he seldom remembers any of the di-
visions of his plan after the first, and the slips
and gulfs of his logic would involve him in irre-
parable ridicule if it were not for the inexhausti-
ble wit by which he dazzles and conciliates and
carries away captive the dullest and the keenest
hunter. He is perfectly sure in his generous
humanity. He rolls the world into a ball and
tosses it from hand to hand. He says touching
things, plain things, grand things, cogent things,
which all men must perforce hear. He says
them with hand and head and body and voice;
the accompaniment is total and ever varied. “I
am half a hundred years old, and I have never
seen an unfortunate day. There are none." ...
“I have been in all the four quarters of the
world, and I never saw any men I could not
love.” “We have sweet conferences and prayer
re no


72
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
n
e are
meetings; we meet every day. There are not
days enough in the year for us.”
Everything is accidental to him, — his place,
his education, his church, his seamen, his whole
system of religion, a mere confused rigmarole
of refuse and leavings of former generations,—
all has a grinning absurdity, except the sentiment
of the man. He is incapable of thought, he can-
not analyse or discriminate, he is a singing,
dancing, drunkard of his wit— only he is sure
of the sentiment. That is his mother's milk,
that he feels in his bones, heaves in his lungs,
throbs in his heart, walks in his feet, and gladly
he yields himself to the sweet magnetism, and
sheds it abroad on the people, rejoicing in his
power. Hence he is an cxample — I, at this
moment, say the single example — we have of
an inspiration ; for a wisdom not his own, not
to be appropriated by him, which he cannot re-
call or ever apply, sails to him on the gale of
the sympathetic communication with his audi-
tory. There is his closet, there his college, there
his confessional; he discloses secrets there, and
receives information there, which his conversa-
tion with thousands of men (and he knows every-
body in the world almost) and his voyages to
Egypt and journeys in Germany and in Syria


73
1845]
EDWARD TAYLOR
never taught him. Indeed I think that all his
talk with men and all his much visiting and
planning for the practical in his “Mariners
House,” etc., is all very fantastic, all stuff; I
think his guardians and overseers and treasurers
will find it so. Not the smallest dependence is
to be put on his statement of facts. Arithmetic
is only one of the nimble troop of dancers
he keeps. No; this free happy expression of
himself and of the deeps of human nature, of
the happier, sunny facts of life, of things con-
nected and lying amassed and grouped in healthy
nature, that is his power and his teacher
He is so confident that his security breathes
in all his manners and gestures, in his tones and
the expressions of his face, and he lies all open
to men, a man, and disarms criticism and ma-
lignity by perfect frankness. We open our arms,
too, and with half-closed eyes enjoy this rare
sunshine. A wondrous beauty swims all the
time over the picture gallery and touches points
with an ineffable lustre.
Obviously he is of the class of superior men,
and every one associates him necessarily with
Webster, and, if Fox and Burke were alive,
with Fox and Burke.
What affluence! There never was such ac-


74
JOURNAL
[AGE 42
De
tivity of fancy. How wilful and despotic is
his rhetoric—“No, not the blaze of Diogenes's
lamp added to the noonday sun would suffice
to find it,” he said. Everything dances and dis-
appears, changes and becomes its contrary in
his sculpturing hands. How he played with the
word “lost” yesterday, “the parent who had
lost his child.” “ Lost !” Lost became found
in the twinkling of an eye. So will it always be.
His whole work is a sort of day's sailing out
upon the sea; not to any voyage, but to take
an observation of the sun, and come back again.
Again and again and again, we have the whole
wide horizon, - how rare and great a pleasure !
That is the Iliad, that is picture, that is art, that
is music. His whole genius is in minstrelsy; he
calls it religion, Methodism, Christianity, and
other names, — it is minstrelsy, he is a min-
strel; all the rest is costume. For himself, it is
easy to see that, though apparently of a mod-
erate temperament, he would like the old cocks
of the bar-room a thousand times better than
their temperate monitors.
Timæus. The weathers fit our moods.'. ..
1 The passage on the fit morning to read the Timæus of
Plato follows. See - Works and Days” (Society and Solie
tude, pp. 169, 170).


1845] OUR PRIVATE THEATRES 75
There is a little opium in it (Plato's Timæus);
tête exaltée, the figures wear the buskin and the
grandiose tragic mask: it is all from the tripod,
though in admirable keeping.
Men go through the world each musing on a
great fable, dramatically pictured and rehearsed
before him. If you speak to the man, he turns
his eyes from his own scene, and slower or faster
endeavors to comprehend what you say. When
you have done speaking, he returns to his pri-
vate music. Men generally attempt early in life
to make their brothers first, afterwards their
wives, acquainted with what is going forward in
their private theatre, but they soon desist from
the attempt, or finding that they also have some
farce, or perhaps some ear and heart-rending
tragedy forward on their secret boards, on which
they are intent, all parties acquiesce at last in a
private box with the whole play performed be-
fore himself solus.
se
Even for those whom I really love I have
not animal spirits.
What an eloquence Taylor suggests! Ah,
could he guide those grand sea-horses of his


76
JOURNAL
[AGE 42
with which he caracoles on the waves of the
sunny ocean. But no, he is drawn up and down
the ocean currents by the strong sea-monsters,
— only on that condition, that he shall not
guide. How many orators sit mute there be-
low! They come to get justice done to that ear
and intuition which no Chatham and no De-
mosthenes has begun to satisfy.
Oliver Houghton, Kimball, John Garrison,
Belknap, Britton, Weir, and the Methodist
preachers; W. E. Channing, Thoreau, Horace
Mann, Samuel Hoar, the Curtises, Mrs. Bar-
low, Minot Pratt, Edmund Hosmer, were of
Taylor's auditory. Nobody but Webster ever
assembles the same extremes.'
The scholar is very unfinished who has only
literary weapons. He must be spiritual man.
This list includes the humblest citizens of Concord as
well as those well known. George William Curtis and his
brother Burrell were then working on the farm of Captain
Nathan Barrett (see Correspondence of John S. Dwight and
G. W. Curtis). Mrs. Barlow was the mother of the gallant
General Francis Barlow, then a mischievous schoolboy in Con-
cord. Minot Pratt, originally a printer in Boston and one of
Mr. Emerson's congregation, after sinking most of his money
in Brook Farm, became a farmer, in Concord, and on holidays
secured rare plants from other towns and domesticated them
in Concord woods.


1845] WORLDLY TEACHERS 77
He must be ready for bad weather, poverty,
insult, weariness, reputation of failure, and many
other vexations. He ought to have as many
talents as he can. Memory, practical talent,
good manners, temper, lion-courage are all good
things. But these are superficial, and if he has
none of them he can still do, if he has the main
mast, if he is anything.' ...
I think the scholars who have given so many
counsels are too worldly. Scott will have it that
they shall not be in false position with “good
society,” they shall not be insulated. Goethe
thinks dealing habitually with men and affairs
essential to the health. ... Time will show
whether the facility is not a snare, and do not
drag him that has it back to the shops from
which his genius would remove him.
When somebody adduced the children as ex-
amples of the value of a careful education, Aunt
Mary replied, “My good friend, they were born
to be educated.” It stands just so with this su-
perstition good Whigs have concerning our debt
i The long passage follows which is printed in the con-
cluding pages of « The Scholar” (Lectures and Biographical
Sketches, pp. 286, 287).


78
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
to good laws. I always wish to answer “ Good
friend, we are a lawful people. The law is a
mere effect, like their obedience to laws; Men,
these men, are lawful, and make laws and obey
laws.”
A cat falls on its feet; shall not a man? You
think he has character; have you kicked him?
Talleyrand would not change countenance; Ed-
ward Taylor, Henry Thoreau, would put the
assailant out of countenance.
I am sorry we do not receive the higher gifts
justly and greatly. The reception should be
equal. But the thoughts which wander through
our mind we do not absorb and make flesh of,
but we report them as thoughts, we retail them
as stimulating news to our lovers and to all
Athenians. At a dreadful loss we play this
game; for the secret God will not impart him-
self to us for tea-table talk; he frowns out moths
and puppets, passes by us and seeks out a soli-
tary and religious heart.
Man. Literature has been before us, wherever
we go. When I come in the secretest recess of
a swamp, to some obscure and rare and to me


1845] OUR FORERUNNERS
79
unknown plant, I know that its name and the
number of its stamens, every bract and awn, is
carefully described and registered in a book in
my shelf. So it is with this young soul wander-
ing lonely, wistful, reserved, unfriended, up and
down in nature. These mysteries which he pon-
ders, which astonish and entrance him, this rid-
dle of liberty, this dream of immortality, this
drawing to love, this trembling balance of mo-
tive, and the centrality whereof these are rays,
have all been explored to the recesses of con-
sciousness, to the verge of chaos and néant, by
men with grander steadfastness and subtler or-
gans of search than any now alive; so that when
this tender philosopher comes from this reverie
to literature, he is alarmed (like one whose se-
cret has been betrayed) by the terrible fidelity
with which men, long before his day, have de-
scribed all and much more than all he has just
seen as new continent in the West.
August 19.
We do not expect the tree to bear but one
harvest in the year, but a man we expect to
yield his fruit of wit and action every day.
We are the children of many sires, and every
drop of blood in us in its turn betrays its ances-


80
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
tor. We are of the party of war and of the
peace party alternately; to both very sincerely.
Only we always may be said to be heartily only
on the side of truth. See-saw.
The world is enigmatical; everything said and
everything known and done, and must not be
taken literally, but genially.
W. C.' is a middleman, dragoman, or grace-
ful translator of ideas into the vernacular under-
standing.
er
There are always two histories of man in lit-
erature contending for our faith.
One is the scientific or skeptical, and derives
his origin from the gradual composition, sub-
sidence, and refining, — from the negro, from
the ape, progressive from the animalcule savages
of the waterdrop, from volvox globator, up to the
wise man of the nineteenth century.
The other is the believer's, the poet's, the
faithful history, always testified by the mystic
and the devout, the history of the Fall, of a
descent from a superior and pure race, attested
in actual history by the grand remains of elder
i Probably Rev. William H. Channing.


1845] MAN IN POWER. REALITY 81
ages, of a science in the East unintelligible to
the existing population; Cyclopean architecture
in all quarters of the world. In Swedenborg, it
is called the “Most Ancient Church,” and the
nobilities of thought are called “Remains” from
this. The height of this doctrine is that the en-
tranced soul living in Eternity will carry all the
arts, all art, in power, but will not cumber itself
with superfluous realizations. The faithful dogma
assumes that the other is an optical show, but
that the Universe was long already complete
through law; and that the tiger and the midge
are only penal forms, the Auburn and Sing Sing
of nature; men, men, all and everywhere.
e.
The near-sighted people have much to say
about action. But I can well say that the sing-
ing Iopas seems to me as great as the sworded
Hector. It is by no means action which is the
essential point, but some middle quality indif-
ferent both to poet and to actor, and which we
call Reality. So that we have reality and neces-
sity, it is equivalent in a word or in a blow.
The election of the will is the crisis ; that is cele-
brated often by Yea or Nay: the following ac-
tion is only the freight train. Not action, not
speculation imports, but a middle essence com-


82 'JOURNAL (AGE 42
mon to both. I believe in the sovereign virtue,
or, shall I say, virulence, of probity, against all
arithmetic. Arithmetic is the science of pur-
poses, probity that of essences. The most pri-
vate will be the most public, if it be only real.
I have no defence to set up for the existing
philosophers or poets. The rogue or the states-
man is not made to feel his insignificance among
either divines or literary men; for, at a glance,
he sees that it is rogue again under the cassock,
or with the manuscripts, and they greet each
other; but when he shall see the prophet, he
shall be shamed.
To the vigilant the history of the universe is
only symptomatic; and life mnemonical.
Lectures are a few reasonable words to keep
us in mind of truth amidst our nonsense.
Whiggism hates the relative; it dogmatizes,
it pounds. To science there is no poison : the
word is relative.
See how many cities of refuge we have. Skep-
ticism, and again skepticism? Well, let abyss
open under abyss, they are all contained and
bottomed at last, and I have only to endure. I
am here to be worked upon.


1845] GAINS. THE DIAGONAL 83
· We expose our skepticism out of probity.
Well, we meet, then, on the ground of probity,
and not of skepticism.
I am shamed on reflecting on the little new
skill the years bring me, at the power trifles
have over me, at the importance of my dinner,
and my dress, and my house, more than at the
slenderness of my acquisitions.
For we do acquire some patience, some tem-
per, some power of referring the particular to
the general. We acquire perspective so as to rank
our experiences and know what is eminent. Else
the term An old one would have no meaning.
ni
What a luck in teaching! The tutor aims at
fidelity, the pupil strives to learn, but there is
never a coincidence, but always a diagonal line
drawn partaking of the genius of the tutor and
the genius of the pupil. This, when there is
success, but that how conspicuous ! Two pre-
cious madmen who cannot long conspire.
Honor among thieves, let there be truth
among skeptics. Are any or all of the institu-
tions so valuable as to be lied for? Learn to
esteem all things symptomatic, - no more.


84
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
But, faith, has it not its victories also? Behold
these sacred persons, repulsive perhaps to you,
yet undeniably born of the old simple blood, to
whom rectitude is relative; see them here, white
silver amid the bronze population, one, two,
three, four, five, six, and I know not how many
more, but conspicuous as fire in the night. Each
of them can do some deed of the impossible.
Do you say, our Republic can never be? - I
say, But let citizens be born for it, and it can.
Nothing but God can give invention ; every-
thing else, one would say, the study of Plato
would give; a discipline, it seems, in logic, in
arithmetic, in taste and symmetry, in poetry,
in longanimity, in language, in rhetoric, in sci-
ence or ontology, and in morals or practical
wisdom.
August 25.
I heard last night with some sensibility that
the question of slavery has never been presented
to the South with a kind and thoroughly scien-
tific treatment, as a question of pure political
economy in the largest sense.
A practical question, you say, is, What are
common people made for? You snub them, and


1845] SOCIETY. ADVANCE 85
all your plans of life and all your poetry and
philosophy only contemplate the superior class.
This is a verbal question, never practical. Com-
mon people, uncommon people, all sorts of peo-
ple, dispose of themselves very fast, and never
wait for the sentences of philosophers. The truth
seems to be, there are no common people, no
populace, but only juniors and seniors; the mob
is made up of kings that shall be; the lords
have all in their time taken place in the mob.
The appearance in any assembly is of a rapid
self-distribution into cliques and sets.' . ...
Do you think we should be practical? I grieve
that we have not yet begun to be poetical. It is
after long devotion to austere thought that the
· soul finds itself only on the threshold, and that
truth has steeps inaccessible to any new and
profane foot; long novitiate, long purgation,
maceration, vigils, enthusiasm, she requires.
Human life seems very short to the student.
Its practical importance in your sense vanishes
like a cloud. They have all eaten lotus alike.
Over and above all the particular and enu-
merable list of talents and merits of any distin-
i Most of the long passage which follows is printed in sub-
stance in Society and Solitude (p. 14).


86
[Ace 42
JOURNAL
guished person is their superiority, not to be
described, but which brought into notice all
those talents and merits. One face of it is a
certain eminent propriety, which is taste and
reason and symmetry and makes all homoge-
neous. Homer and Milton and Shakspeare all
have this atmosphere or garment of fitness to
clothe themselves withal, and we sometimes call
it their “humanity.” In Webster, our great
lawyer, it is a propriety again.
Plato is no Athenian. ... It transcends sec-
tional lines, the great humane Plato. But we
read impatiently, still wishing the chapter or
the dialogue at its close. [A trans-national book
again is the Bhagavat Geeta.] The reader in Plato
is soon satisfied that to read is the least part.
The whole world may read the Republic and be
no wiser than before. It is a chief structure of
human wit, like Karnac.'...
B. A.” told me that when he saw Cruikshank's
drawings, he thought him a fancy caricaturist,
but when he went to London he saw that he
drew from nature, without any exaggeration.
i The rest of the passage is printed on the last page of
“ Plato, or the Philosopher" (Representative Men).
2 Alcott ?


1845] COURT AT CONCORD 87
I was in the courthouse a little while to see
the sad game. But, as often happens, the judge
and jury, the government and the counsel for
the prisoner, were on trial as much as he.' ...
Three or four stubborn necessary words are
the pith and fate of the business; all the rest is
expatiating and qualifying: three or four real
choices, acts of will of somebody, the rest is cir-
cumstance, satellite, and flourish.
There was Webster, the great cannon loaded
to the lips : he told Cheney that if he should
close by addressing the jury, he should blow the
roof off. As it was, he did nothing but pound.
Choate put in the nail and drove it; Webster
came after and pounded. The natural grandeur
of his face and manners always satisfies; easily
great; there is no strut in his voice or behavior,
as in the others. Yet he is all wasted; he seems
like a great actor who is not supported on the
boards; and Webster, like the actor, ought to
i Here follows the account of the trial in Concord of the
“Wyman Case,” in which Webster, Choate, and E. R.
Hoar were counsel for the defendant. The Journal, omitting
names, gives the account of the badgering of the Judge by the
District Attorney in almost the same words as are printed in
“ Eloquence." Not “salvage,” but “a trust” was what the
Judge was forced to define. (See Society and Solitude, pp-
86–88.)
dne


88
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
go to London. Ah! if God had given to this
Demosthenes a heart to lead New England,
what a life and death and glory for him. Now
he is a fine symbol and mantel ornament-
costly enough to those who must keep it; for
the great head aches, and the great trunk must
be curiously fed and comforted.
The apparatus of the Law is large and cum-
brous and when one sees to how short an issue
it leads it seems as if a judge would be as safe.
All is for a vent to these two or three decisive
phrases that come leaping out, no man knows
when, at first or at last in the course of the trial.
We go and sit out the tedious hearing for these
moments. But at last when we come away, we
are to eliminate' that result for ourselves : no
reporter, except Time, will do it for us.
The old dramatists wrote the better for the
great quantity of their writing and knew not
when they wrote well. The play house was low
enough to have entire interest for them; they
were proprietors; it was low and popular and
not literary. That the scholars scorned it, was
its saving essence. Shakspeare and his comrades
i Mr. Emerson singularly always uses eliminate as equiva-
lent to get, not to get rid of.


1845] LIVE BOOKS. IDENTITY 89
evidently thought the mass of old plays or of
stage plays corpus vile, in which any experiment
might be freely tried. Had the prestige which
hedges about a modern tragedy or other worth-
less literary work existed, nothing could have
been done. The coarse but warm blood of the
living England circulated in the play as in street
ballads.' . ..
See how the translation of Plutarch gets its
wonderful excellence, as does the English Bible,
by being translation on translation.'. ..
(From Y)
“The earth is upheld by the veracity of the
good.”
“And whatsoever soul shall have received any-
thing of truth shall be safe from harm until an-
other period.”—Plato, Pbadrus.
Identity. If a wise man should appear in our
village, he would create in all the inhabitants a
new consciousness of wealth by opening their eyes
i What follows is printed in “Shakspeare" (Representa-
tive Men, pp. 193, 194).
2 The rest of the long passage is printed in “Shakspeare”
(Representative Men, pp. 200, 201).


90
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
to the sparkle of half-concealed treasures that lie
in everybody's dooryard; he would establish a
sense of immovable equality, as everybody would
discern the checks and reciprocities of condition,
and the rich would see their mistakes and pov-
erty, whilst the poor would behold their own
resources.
Father Taylor, valuable as a psychologic cu-
riosity, a man with no proprium or peculium, but
all social. Leave him alone and there is no man:
there is no substance, but a relation. His power
is a certain mania or low inspiration that repeats
for us the tripod and possession of the ancients.
I think every hearer feels that something like it
were possible to himself, if he could consent: he
has sold his mind for his soul (soul in the low,
semi-animal sense, soul including animal spirits).
Art could not compass this fluency and felicity.
His sovereign security results from a certain re-
nunciation and abandonment. He runs for luck,
and by readiness to say everything, good and bad,
says the best things. Then a new will and under-
standing organize themselves in this new sphere
of no-will and no-understanding, and as fisher-
men use a certain discretion within their luck,
to find a good fishing-ground, or the berry-women
-U


1845] TAYLOR. SOLVING WORD. 91
to gather quantities of whortle - berries, so he
knows his topics, and his unwritten briefs, and
where the profusion of words and images will
likeliest recur. With all his volleys of epithets
and imagery, he will ever and anon hit the white.
He called God, in a profusion of other things,
“a charming spirit”; he spoke of “men who sin
with invention, sin with genius, sin with all the
power they can draw.” But you feel this inspira-
tion. It clothes him like an atmosphere, and he
marches into untried depths with the security of
a grenadier. He will weep and grieve and pray
and chide, in a tempest of passionate speech, and
never break the perfect propriety with a single
false note; and when all is done, you still ask,
or I do, “What's Hecuba to him?”
September.
We sidle towards the problem. If we could
speak the direct, solving word, it would solve us
too; we should die, or be liberated as the gas in
the great gas of the atmosphere.
Call it by whatever name, we all believe in
personal magnetism, of which mesmerism is a
lowest example. But the magnetizers are few.
The best head in the company affects all the rest.


92
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
We believe that if the angels should descend,
we should associate with them easily, and never
shame them by a breach of celestial propriety.
How easy to give a poetic analysis of Byron's
apostrophe to Nemesis in the fourth canto of
the Childe Harold, — too good an example of a
poetic end dissipated and annihilated through
the seduction of the means.
Dinas Emlinn of Scott, like his Helvellyn, shows
how near to a poet he was. All the Birmingham
part he had, and what taste and sense! — yet
rose into the creative region. As a practitioner
or professional poet, he is unrivalled in modern
times. In lectures on poetry almost all Scott
would have to be produced.
What was said of the Rainers, that they were
street-singers, though good of their kind, and
that it was a mistake to bring them into concert
rooms; - the like is true of Scott.
Plutarch's Symposiacs; an admirable passage
concerning Plato's expression that God geo-
metrizes. — Morals, vol. iii.
I think the Platonists may be read for sen-
tences, though the reader fail to grasp the argu-
sen-


1845] PLATO. TRANSMIGRATION 93
ment of the paragraph or the chapter. He may
yet obtain gleams and glimpses of a more excel-
lent illumination from their genius, outvaluing
the most distinct information he owes to other
books. The grandeur of the impression the stars
and heavenly bodies make on us is surely more
valuable than our exact perception of a tub or a
table on the ground.'
Metempsychosis. For this Indian doctrine of
transmigration, it seems easy of reception where
the mind is not preoccupied. Not more wonder-
ful than other methods which are in use, and so
readily suggested, not only by the manners of
insects, but by the manners of men. Here is a
gentleman who abused his privileges when in the
flesh as a gentleman, and curtailed therefore his
amount of vital force. We cannot kill him, for
souls will not die. This punishment, self-im-
posed, is, that he take such a form as his dimin-
ished vital force can maintain. Now it takes, to
make a good dog, say, half a grain; to make a
peacock, a quarter grain; to make a great general,
a pennyweight; a philosopher, two; a poet, ten;
i Compare • Nominalist and Realist” (Essays, Second
Series, p. 233). And « Books” (Society and Solitude, p.
203).


94
JOURNAL (AGE 42
and a good and wise man, a thousand pounds.
Now our ill-behaved man, on emerging from his
rotten body, and a candidate for a new birth, has
not capital enough to maintain himself as man,
and, with his diminished means, nothing is left
for it but that he should take a turn through
nature, this time as monkey. That costs very
little, and by careful governance in the monkey
form, he shall have saved something and be ready
at his return to begin the world again more de-
cently, say, as dog. There he saves again, and,
at the end of that period, may drop his tail, and
come out Hottentot. Good Hottentot, he will
rise, and one of these ages will be a Massachu-
setts man.
What other account is to be given of these
superfluous triflers who whisk through nature,
whom we are sure we have seen before, and who
answer no purpose to the eye while they are
above the horizon? They are passing through
their grub state, or are expiating their ill econ-
omy of long ago.
“Travelling the path of life through thou-
sands of births.”
It requires for the reading and final disposi-
tion of Plato all sorts of readers, Frenchmen,


1845] READERS OF PLATO 95
Germans, Italians, English, and Americans. If
it were left to apprehensive, gentle, imaginative,
Plato-like persons, no justice would be done to
his essence and totality, through the excess or
violence of affection that would be spent on
his excellence of reason and imagination. But
Frenchmen have no reverence; they seize the
book like merchants; it is a piece of goods, and
is treated without ceremony after the manner of
commerce; and though its divine merits are lost
by their profanation, the coarser, namely, the
texture and coherence of the whole, and its larger
plan, its French availableness, its fitness to French
taste, by comprehending that— Too much feel-
ingis as fatal to just seeing as blindness is. People
speak easily of Cudworth, but I know no book
so difficult to read as Cudworth proper. For,
as it is a magazine of quotations, of extraordi-
nary ethical sentences, the shining summits of
ancient philosophy, and as Cudworth himself
is a dull writer, the eye of the reader rests
habitually on these wonderful revelations, and
refuses to be withdrawn; so that, handling the
book for years, the methods and the proposi-
tions of Cudworth still remain a profound secret.
Cudworth is sometimes read without the Platon-
1 The sentence is unfinished in the Journal.


96
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
ism; which would be like reading Theobald's
Shakspeare, leaving out only what Shakspeare
wrote. I think the best reader of Plato the least
able to receive the totality at first, just as a botan-
ist will get the totality of a field of flowers bet-
ter than a poet.'
Platonists: a decline into ornament from the
severity of strength — Corinthian, Byzantine.
Plato is grand; they are grandiose. It is easy to
read Plato, difficult to read his commentators.
Inertia. It is the bulwark of individualism.
In the convention yesterday it was easy to see
the drunkenness of eloquence. As I sat and lis-
tened, I seemed to be attending at a medical ex-
periment.?... I have a bad time of it on these
occasions, for I feel responsible for every one of
the speakers, and shudder with cold at the thin-
ness of the morning audience, and with fear lest
all will fail at every bad speech.3 Mere ability
i Mr. Emerson praised Cudworth to a college-mate. He
came back delighted and quoting him. Emerson did not recog-
nize the passages. Then it appeared that his own delight in
the book had been only its sentences from Plato.
2 Here follow the next two paragraphs in “ Eloquence"
(Society and Solitude, p. 62).
3 This sentence and much that follows is printed in “ Elo.
quence” (pp. 67, 68), published in an impersonal form.


18457 GARRISON. ABADDON 97
and mellowness is then inestimable. Stephen C.
Phillips was a great comfort to me, for he is a good
house warmer, with his obvious honesty and good
meaning, and his hurra-and- universal - scream
sort of eloquence, which inundates the assembly
with a flood of animal spirits, and makes all safe
and secure, so that any and every sort of good
speaking becomes at once practicable. His animal
eloquence is as good as a stove in a cold house.
An orator is a thief of belief.
Garrison is a virile speaker; he lacks the femi-
nine element which we find in men of genius.
He has great body to his discourse, so that he
can well afford occasional flourishes and elo-
quence. He is a man in his place. He brings
his whole history with him, wherever he goes,
and there is no falsehood or patchwork, but sin-
cerity and unity.
Meno's definition of Virtue is
“ To feel a joy from what is fair,
And o'er it to have power.”
Keep a thing by you seven years and it will
come in use, though it were the devil, thought
I, when Abaddon' came lately into favor. Goethe
1 The Hebrew word (meaning the Destroyer) translated in
the New Testament Apollyon.


98
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
had remarked that all men liked to hear him
named.
Health is genius, the higher tone; potentially
all wise enow, wine is what we want, wine of
wine, excitement, opportunity, an initiative.' Is
the solar system good art and architecture? The
same wise achievement is in my brain, can you
only wile me from interference and marring.
The poetic gift we want, but not the poetic
profession; — poetic gift, as the breath and su-
premacy of man, but not rhymes and sonneteer-
ing, not bookmaking and bookselling, not cold
spying and authorship; the poet who suffers the
man to sit in him with the poet, as a charioteer
with the hero in the Iliad. Byron, because his
poetic talent was surpassing, could ruin his poem
(see above, p. 92); a human wisdom should have
assisted at the birth.
Genius consists in health, in plenipotence of
that “top of condition” which allows of not only
exercise but frolic of faculty. To coax and woo
the strong Instinct to bestir itself and work its
miracle is the end of all wise endeavor.?
i Compare Bacchus” in the Poems.
2 Thus to coax and woo the Muse, Mr. Emerson, in the
autumn, saved by purchase from impending destruction the
beautiful woods on the Lincoln shore of Walden, opposite
cm


1845] . INSTINCT. THOREAU 99
The Instinct is resistless and knows the way;
and is melodious, and at all points a god. The
reason we set so high a value on any poetry, and
the same on a line or phrase as on a poem, is,
that it is a new work of Nature, as a man or a
woman is. We admire a new maiden infinitely,
and a new verse is as divine. But a new verse
comes once in five hundred years. This is the
reason why Hafiz and Herrick and Pindar speak
so proudly of what seems to the thoughtless a
mere jingle.
Whiggism, a feast of shells, idolatrous of the
forms of legislature; like a cat loving the house,
not the inhabitant.
Henry Thoreau says “that philosophers are
broken-down poets”; and “that universal as-
sertions should never allow any remarks of the
individual to stand in their neighborhood, for
the broadest philosophy is narrower than the
worst poetry."
the grove of great pines on the hither side, the acquisition
of which in 1844 gave him such pleasure. The rocky ledge
with oaks, chestnuts, and hemlocks sweeping down to the
shore of the pond, he called « My Garden " and celebrates
it in the poem of that name.


100
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
But truly philosophers are poètes manqués, or
neutral or imperfect poets.
S
m
Love attaches, thought detaches man from his
family; head from his hands, head from his
heart.
Cosmos. The wonderful Humboldt, with his
extended centre, expanded wings, marches like
an army, gathering all things as he goes. How
he reaches from science to science, from law to
law, tucking away moons and asteroids and solar
systems, in the clauses and parentheses of his
encyclopædiacal paragraphs !
Gibbon has a strength rare with such finish.
He built a pyramid, and then enamelled it.
Pantheism. Sin, and every man thou meetest
shall stand up like a god, and judge thee. The
God has delegated himself to a thousand depu-
ties, and, at every street corner, God-like is yon-
der youth to those who go by, and where he
halts, lo! the tenth man is a God to him.
Opportunity. This world was created as an
audience for thee. They have so many faculties.
They are so keen and thorough in their know-


1845] WEALTH. HIGHER LAW 101
ledge, only to appreciate thy profoundness. They
are so averse, and they hate thee, only to give
thee a fair field and the greatest value to their
suffrages, O Coriolanus !
are
Wealth. A system there must be in every
economy, or the best single experiments avail
not.'...
The moral of science should be a transfer-
ence of that trust which is felt in Nature's ad-
mired arrangements in light, heat, gravity, and
so on, to the social and moral order. Artificial
legislation, perpetual, brazen-faced interference
of every rowdy boy into the circles of Law:-
he will help the Law! Can't he set his shoulder
to the earth to assist it to spin on its axis, or to
hasten it round the sun! If we had not confi-
dence that the Law provided for every exigency,
that not an impulse of absolute freedom could
exist, we should rush by suicide out of the door
of this staggering Temple.
The Superlative. You cannot say God, blood and
bell too little. Always suppose God. The Jew
named him not.
i The rest of the paragraph is in "Wealth” (Conduct of
Life, pp. 118, 119).


102
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
Every time Garrison repeats his phrase, “a
covenant with Death, and with Hell they are
at agreement,” I think of Dr. Bell's patients."
A great man is he who answers questions
which I have not skill to put.
One man all his lifetime answers a question
which none of his contemporaries put: he is
therefore isolated.
Phædo. Ah, if Cebes and Simmias had now
said, Yes, the Reminiscence is well enow, but
if my future is related to my present only as
my present to my past, that is no immortality
for Cebes and Simmias. It does for the uni-
verse. That suffers no detriment; but I have
not sufficient property in it to interest me a
moment in such a sky-high concern. I wish to
be certified that these dear Johns and Henrys,
Anns and Marys, shall keep the traits that are
most their own and make them dear.”
The universe is traversed with paths or
1 Dr. Luther V. Bell was superintendent of the McLean
Asylum.
2 Mr. Emerson here speaks of the common yearning for
personal identity, not his own.


1845) MOODS. ADAPTATION 103
bridges or stepping-stones across all the gulfs
of space.'...
Parallelism. We know in one mood that
which we are ignorant of in another mood, like
mesmerized patients who are clairvoyant at
night and in the day know nothing of that
which they told.
Adaptiveness, the peculiarity of human na-
ture. The heavenly bodies are also universals,
“but they enjoy not that fluctuating movement
through various steps and in divergent direc-
tions, the circum-lation through all the limits
of imperfection, that shifting with the revolution
of all things, so as to master the whole mass of
reality in all its ramifications, which forms
the essential peculiarity of human nature.”
Akhlak-1--Jalaly.
1 The paragraph may be found in Natural History of In-
tellect (p. 42).
2 A rare book; “The Practical Philosophy of the Mu-
hammadan People, exhibited in its professed connection with
the European, so as to render either an introduction to the
other; being a translation of the Akhlak-1- Jalaly, the most
esteemed work of Middle Asia, from the Persian of Fakir
Jāny Muhammad Asäad (with references and notes)," by
W. F. Thomson, Esq., of the Bengal Civil Service. Lon-
don, 1839.


104
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
Herbs gladly cure our flesh because that they
Find their acquaintance there.
Herbert, “ Man.”
This is mystically true. The master can do
his great deed, the desire of the world, — say
to find his way between azote and oxygen, de-
tect the scent of the new rock superposition, find
the law of the curves, — because he has just
come out of Nature, or from being a part of
that thing. As if one went into the mesmeric
state to find the way of Nature in some func-
tion, and then sharing it, came out into the
normal state and repeated the trick. He knows
the laws of azote because just now he was azote.
Man is only a piece of the universe made alive.
Man active can do what just now he suffered.
The greatest man underlies the human na-
ture, the longest wave quickly is lost in the
sea.'...
Cad
ea
The seashore ; sea seen from shore, shore
seen from sea, must explain the charm of Plato.
Art expresses the One, or the Same, by the
Different. ...
i The long passage beginning thus is printed in “ Plato”
(Representative Men, pp. 77, 78).
2 See « Plato" (Representative Men, p. 56).


1845] CREATION. THE SCHOLAR 105
“Let us declare the cause which led the Su-
preme Ordainer to produce and compose the
Universe. He was good, and he who is good
has no kind of envy : exempt from envy, he
wished that all things should be as much as
possible like himself. Whosoever, taught by
wise men, shall admit this as the prime cause
of origin and foundation of the world, will be
in the truth.” – Timæus.
use
P10
Eloquence. The eloquent man is he who is
no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and
desperately drunk with a certain belief.'...
The hearer occupied with the excellence of
the single thoughts and images is astonished to
see the inspired man still impatient of the tardi-
ness of words and parts, pressing forward to new
parts . . . and in his prodigality ever announc-
ing new and greater wealth to come.
ew
The scholar's is a position of present immu-
nity. The vulgar think he would found a sect;
he knows better. Society has no bribe for him.
Do not give up your thought because you
cannot answer an objection to it. Consider only
i See • Eloquence” (Society and Solitude, pp. 92, 93).


106
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
whether it remains in your life the same which
it was.
We are waiting until some tyrannous idea
emerging out of heaven shall seize us and be-
reave us of this liberty with which we are falling
abroad.
Every intellectual advantage bought at the
expense of manhood. The lumpers are manlier
than the grocers, more absolute. In the water
party, the skipper of the boat was the only in-
teresting person; the rest made puns.
Conversation. A convertible proverb, It is
Greek to him. Those Eastern story-tellers, whose
oily tongues turn day into night and night into
day, who lap their hearers in a sweet drunkenness
of a fancy so that they forget the taste of meat:
Coleridge, too, who could dissipate the solar
system to a thin transparency.
Are not Lectures a kind of Peter Parley's
story of Uncle Plato, and of a puppet show of
Eleusinian Mysteries ? .
Knowledge. World full of tools or machines,
every one a contrivance to exclude some one


1845) TOOLS. SCHOLAR. KORAN 107
error or inconvenience and make a practical
thinker. Thus in making coffee many errors
are likely to intervene and spoil the beverage.
The biggin thinks for us, is a practical thinker
and excludes this and that other impudence. It
hinders the riling, it determines the quantity.
What a stroke of genius is each carpenter's tool.
It would be so easy to draw two pictures of
the literary man, as of one possessed and led by
muses, or as of one ridden by some dragon, or
dire distemper. A mechanic is driven by his
work all day, but it ends at night; it has an
end. But the scholar's work has none.'...
Akhlak-1-Jalaly. Abu Said Abulkhain, the
mystic, and Abu Ali Leena, the philosopher,
on leaving each other said; the one, “All that
he sees, I know," and the other, “All that he
knows, I see."
“There are two that I cannot support, the
fool in his devotions, and the intelligent in his
impieties.” — Koran.
[Here follow many pages of quotations, only
a few of which are given.]
1 See « Immortality” (Letters and Social Aims, p. 341).


108
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
Vishnu Purana. Brahma descended from the
highest heaven which decayeth not, and with the
light of his own body illumined the dark abyss
which now constitutes this world, and walking in
the heavens, joyed in the possession of his glory.
One Brahma and then another from time to
time descended and dwelt in the heavens, and
from the self-inherent virtue of the said Brah-
mas this world below became sweet as the honey
of the honey-bee.
One of the Brahmas, beholding the earth,
said to himself, What thing is this? — and with
one of his fingers having touched the earth put
it to the tip of his tongue and perceived the
same to be deliciously sweet: from which time
all the Brahmas ate of the sweet earth for the
space of sixty thousand years. In the mean time
having coveted in their hearts the enjoyment of
this world, they began to say one to another,
This part is mine; that is thine; and so, fixing
boundaries, divided the earth between them.
On this account the earth lost its sweetness;
then grew a mushroom; then a creeping plant ;
then a tree; then a grain of rice; then rice grain ;
then later, because of the sons of the Brahmas
having used substantial food, the light which
once shone in their bodies was extinguished.


1845] IGNORANCE. CHANNING 109
Individualism. “The notion that self consists
in what is not self, and the opinion that pro-
perty consists in what is not one's own, consti-
tute the double seed of the tree of ignorance.”.
Ellery Channing, said A., is made of earth and
fire; he wants water and air. How fast all that
magnetism would lick up water. He discharges
himself in volleys. Can you not hear him snap
when you are near him? “I never find anything
which I look for.” He cannot drive a nail.
Prometheus is to have a working plan of this
fine machine, this crystal globe with glass wheels
and hooks and teeth within, transparent, like
that African apple whose seeds are seen.
The Caliph Ali’ is a fine example of character.
He “possessed a vein of poignant humor,
which led Soliman Farsy to say of a jest he one
day indulged in, This it is which has kept
you back to the fourth (Abu Beker, Omar, and
Othman having been successively elected before
1 The source of this quotation is not given.
2 Ali ben Abu Taleb, the son-in-law of Mahomet and fourth
Caliph, called for his courage « The Lion of God.” Of him
the Prophet said, “I am the City of Knowledge, but Ali is the
Gate.”


110
JOURNAL [Age 42
Wa
him); for a reliance on his rights of sovereignty
was the ruling feeling of that sacred person, and
it is one which gives ascendence to the inner
and individual nature in opposition to the sug-
gestions of appearance and the observance of
our relations with the many.” — Akblak-1-Jalaly,
p. 158.
Vedanta. The Internal Check. “He who eter-
nally restrains this and the other world, and all
beings therein; who, standing in the earth, is
other than the earth; whom the earth knows
not, whose body the earth is, who interiorly re-
strains the earth, the same is thy soul, and the
Internal Check immortal.”
“The internal check is the Supreme being.”
- COLEBROOKE's Essays, p. 341.
Buddha, or be who knows. Intellect puts an
interval: if we converse with low things, with
crimes, with mischances, we are not compromised,
the interval saves us. But if we converse with
high things, with heroic actions, with heroic per-
sons, with virtues, the interval becomes a gulf,
and we cannot enter into the highest good.
Icy light. It is the chief deduction, almost the
sole deduction from the merit of Plato . . . that
his writings have not the vital authority which
e


III
1845] UNTRAINED SCHOLARS III
the screams of prophets ... the sermons of
unlettered Arabs and Jews possess."
Landor says of Canning (?) that “he was an
understrapper made an overstrapper.” The ex-
pression is coarse enough, but is true of men of
thought also. They are good pupils, and their
life would be fair and blooming, if they could
continue such; but in the absence of intellectual
men, in the absence of many grades and ranks
of power, from the lawful and thoroughly edu-
cated king to the youngest page, - our scholar,
on his first showing of intellectual power, is hur-
ried from the pupil's desk to the master's chair;
and by this rude and rapid change is cheated of
those perfections which long training and faith-
ful abiding in all the intermediate degrees alone
can give. A false relation and false manners and
incompleteness of beauty in every part are the
result. The scholar finds himself not excellent
in his own art, and deficient in the arts of men
around him. He wants security, the unquestion-
able front of power, and feels himself interro-
gated and defied. He wants in this loneliness
nerves of a lion, and has the nerves of a cater-
pillar. Sympathy gives health, but he has not
✓ See - Plato” (Representative Men, p. 76).


I 12
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
sympathy of those he can see, and he has not
quite eyes enough to see those whose sympathy
he has. The bear comes out fatter from his hiber-
nation than he went to it, and the great man
should not have less resource in his hiberna-
tion.
The boy learns chess and whist and takes les-
sons in dancing; the watchful father observes
that another has learned algebra and geometry,
in the meantime. But the first boy has got much
more than those good-for-nothing games with
the games.'...
Skepticism. There are many skepticisms. The
Universe is like an infinite series of planes, each
of which is a false bottom, and when we think
our feet are planted now at last on the Ada-
mant, the slide is drawn out from under us.
Value of the Skeptic is the resistance to pre-
mature conclusions. If he prematurely conclude,
his conclusion will be shattered, and he will be-
come malignant. But he must limit himself with
the anticipation of law in the mutations,-flow-
'ing law.
i The rest of this passage is printed in “ Culture" (Corte
duct of Life, p. 143).


1845] THE SCHOLAR'S PROGRESS 113
The scholar blunders along on his own path
for a time, assured by the surprise and joy of
those to whom he first communicates his results;
then new solitudes, new marches; but after a
time, on looking up he finds the sympathy gone
or changed, he fancies himself accused by all the
bystanders; the faces of his friends are shaded
by grief; and yet no tongue ever speaks of the
cause. There is some indictment out against him,
on which he is arraigned in many courts, and he
cannot learn the charge. A prodigious power we
have of begetting false expectations. These are
the mistakes of others' subjectiveness. The true
scholar will not heed them. Jump into another
bush, and scratch your eyes in again. He passes
on to acquit himself of their charges by develop-
ments as surprising as was his first word; by in-
directions and wonderful alibis which dissipate
the whole crimination.
m
No wonder a writer is rare. - It requires one
inspiration, or transmutation of Nature into
thought, to yield him the truth; another inspir-
ation to write it.
Economy. Nobody need stir hand or foot, the
custom of the country will do it all.'. ..
1 See • Wealth” (Conduct of Life, p. 121).


114
JOURNAL
[AGE 42
Croisements. Symbols. The seashore and the
taste of two metals in contact, and our enlarged
powers in the presence ... of a friend.'...
The poem must be tenax propositi, the fable
or myth must hold, or it is worth no man's
while to read it. If a pilot swings his vessel from
the wharf with one intention, and, after letting
go, changes his intention, and a vessel, deceived
by his first demonstrations, is run afront of and
injured, the pilot loses his branch. Certainly we
must hold the poet to as strict a law.
Winter apples. The worst day is good for
something. All that is not love is knowledge,
and all that is not good to-day is a store laid
up for the wants of distant days.
ver
Knowledge is the straight Line ; Wisdom is
the power of the straight line, or the Square ;
Virtue is the power of the Square, or the
Solid.
Thus, my friend reads in the Cultivator on
the method of planting and hoeing potatoes, or
he follows a farmer hoeing along the row of po-
1 The rest of this paragraph is printed in “ Plato” (Re-
presentative Men, p. 55).


1845] VIRTUE. AMERICANS 115
tato hills ; that is knowledge. At last, he takes
the hoe in his hands and hoes the hills; the first
with care and heed, and pulls up every root of
piper grass : as the day grows hot and the row
is long, he says to himself, “This is wisdom :
But one hill is like another, I have mastered
the art, it is mere trifling to waste my strength
in doing many times the same thing: Why
should I hoe more?” And he desists.
But the last lesson was still unlearned: the
moral power lay in the continuance, in fortitude,
in working against pleasure, to the excellent
end and conquering all opposition. He has
knowledge, he has wisdom, but he has missed
Virtue, which he only acquires who endures
routine and sweat and postponement of fancy
to the achievement of a worthy end.
CS
Native Americans. I hate the narrowness of
the Native American Party. It is the dog in
the manger. It is precisely opposite to all the
dictates of love and magnanimity: and there-
fore, of course, opposite to true wisdom. ...
Man is the most composite of all creatures. ...
Well, as in the old burning of the Temple at
Corinth, by the melting and intermixture of
silver and gold and other metals a new com-
new com-


116
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
pound more precious than any, called the Co-
rinthian brass, was formed; so in this continent,
- asylum of all nations, — the energy of Irish,
Germans, Swedes, Poles, and Cossacks, and all
the European tribes,- of the Africans, and of
the Polynesians, — will construct a new race, a
new religion, a new state, a new literature, which
will be as vigorous as the new Europe which
came out of the smelting-pot of the Dark Ages,
or that which earlier emerged from the Pelasgic
and Etruscan barbarism. La Nature aime les
croisements.
ca
Swedenborg's theology does well as long as
it is repeated to and by those who are wont to
accept something positive. . . . But when I
hear it, I say, This is nothing to me. ... This
is the excess of form. The fallacy seems to be
in the equivocal use of the term The Word. In
the high and sacred sense of that term used by
a strong Oriental rhetoric for the energy of the
Supreme Cause (in act), all that is predicated
of it, is true: it is equivalent to Reason. But
this being granted, theologians shift the word
from this grand sense to signify a written sen-
tence of St. Matthew or St. John, and instantly
assume for this wretched written sentence all


1845] THE FLOWING UNIVERSE 117
that was granted to be true of the Divine Rea-
son.
Swedenborg perceived the central life of each
object and saw the change of appearance as it
passed before different eyes. He does not seem
to have seen with equal clearness the necessity
of progression or onwardness in each creature.
Metamorphosis is the law of the Universe. All
forms are fluent, and as the bird alights on the
bough and pauses for rest, then plunges into
the air again on its way, so the thoughts of God
pause but for a moment in any form,' but pass
into a new form, as if by touching the earth
again in burial, to acquire new energy. A wise
man is not deceived by the pause: he knows
that it is momentary : he already foresees the
new departure, and departure after departure,
in long series. Dull people think they have
traced the matter far enough if they have reached
the history of one of these temporary forms,
which they describe as fixed and final.
ise
CSC
A man should not be rich by having what is
superfluous, but by having what is essential to
1 This sentence occurs in “ Poetry” (Letters and Social
Aims, p. 15).


118
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
ma
eer
ne
him, like a manufacturer or engineer or astron-
omer who has a great capital invested in his
costly apparatus. How to animate all his pos-
sessions: if he have any not animated by his
quality and energy, let him sell them and con-
vert them into things nearer to his nature. Such
a rich man excites no envy. He has no more
than he needs or uses.
Timing. “Unseasonable love is like hate.”
– Socrates, apud STOBÆUS.
“ All things are good and fair to those things
wherewith they agree, but ill and deformed in
respect of those things with which they agree
not.” — SOCRATES, apud XENOPHON, Memora-
bilia.
“What is strength? The motion of the soul
with the body.” — SOCRATES in STOBÆUS.
Philosophy. Unity or Identity, and Variety ;
the poles of philosophy. It makes haste to
develop these two. A too rapid unity or uni-
fication, and a too exclusive devotion to parts
are the Scylla and Charybdis. A too rapid
Unity. Yes, for a wise Skepticism, a long secu-
lar patience that delays and still delays the pre-
mature summation is rewarded with truth per-


18451 THE HEIGHTS. RACHEL 119
haps in another sphere and cycle. This rashness
or partiality is one vice; the other is confusion,
or the misplacing the properties of the planes or
spheres of Nature.
And the mind describes Deity by simple
purification of its own self. Indian mythology
creates Nature from the parts of the human
body; a gigantic crystal.
Every man who would do anything well must
come to it from a higher ground, and a philoso-
pher must be much more than a philosopher.
Plato is a Poet.
lor
Rachel. But Rachel possesses a certain de-
moniacal power which is worthy of wonder.
You feel in her veiled and nowise resonant
voice, in her measured and earnest acting, and
in her majestic delivery, that she is incessantly
brooding on this inward raging fire. But this
bursts up at decisive moments."
[Here follow extracts from the Vishnu Pu-
rana.]
i Mr. Emerson first saw Rachel in Paris during the Revo-
jution of 1848 and heard her sing the Marseillaise. This pass-
age must have been written into the Journal later.


120
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
Me
S
There were Swedenborgs in those days, Mis-
souriums, Mastodons of literature, not to be
measured by a whole population of modern
scholars.
Every genius is defended from approval by
great quantities of unavailableness, good only
for himself. What property! says the hungry
mind, as it sees it afar, and swims toward it as
a fish to its food.
Jones Very is like the rain plentiful. He
does not love individuals: he is annoyed by
edge. He likes only community; and he likes
the lowness also, if it be community. I like
sharp slats. Strength is wonderful.
Some men think their goodness made of
themselves, others think the reverse. See the
Indian Self.
Days. Every age has its objects and symbol,
and every man. Why not, then, every epoch of
our life its own? And a man should journey
through his own Zodiack of Signs.
The Indian woman burns herself on her
husband's funeral pile, because she believes in


1845) TRANSMIGRATION. FATE 121
а
Transmigration; and being born again, if faith-
ful, in a form not less than the last, retains
enough memory to find her husband in his
new form, though a dog, or a jackal, or a wolf,
and, by affectionate speech, recalls to him also
his memory and exhorts him to divest his pres-
ent unworthy weeds. In the long rotation by
fidelity they meet again in worthy forms. The
flame of the funeral pile is cool to the widow.
To this practical doctrine of Migration we
have nothing corresponding. Ours is senti-
mental and literary.
Indian mythology a lace veil; clouds of leg-
ends, but the old forms seen through. We
should infer a country of sages and devotees;
but there seems no relation between the book
and the actual population.
One thing marks it all, the Fate in the char-
acter. As soon as they confront each other, vic-
tory is declared without a struggle. It is by
posts, not battles.
Sensible people, it is said, are selfish. Sen-
suous are. In India, king, courtier, god, are
represented as making the most romantic sac-
rifices — kingdom, goods, life itself— for know-


122
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
ledge and spiritual power. In France, wit,
science, personality, — counts for more than in
England. In England, possession in every kind
counts for more than person.
Lycurgus, Pythagoras, Plato, all poets, all
women believe in the plasticity or education of
man, but the Whig world is very incredulous.
October 27.
In this finest of all Indian Summer days it
seems sad that each of us can only spend it
once. We sigh for the thousand heads and
thousand bodies of the Indian gods, that we
might celebrate its immense beauty in many
ways and places, and absorb all its good.
Trace these colossal conceptions of Buddh-
ism and of Vedantism home, and they are
always the necessary or structural action of the
human mind. Buddhism, read literally, the
tenet of Fate, Worship of Morals, or the tenet
of Freedom, are the unalterable originals in all
the wide variety of geography, language, and
intelligence of the human tribes. The buyer
thinks he has a new article; but if he goes to
the factory, there is the self-same old loom as
before, the same mordants and colors, the same


1845] INDIA AND GREECE
123
blocks even ; but by a little splicing and vary-
ing the parts of all patterns, what passes for new
is produced.
Fate. The Indian system is full of fate, the
Greek not. The Greek uses the word, indeed,
but in his mind the Fates are three respect-
able old women who spin and shear a symbolic
thread, — so narrow, so limitary is the sphere
allowed them, and it is with music. We are
only at a more beautiful opera, or at private
theatricals. But in India, it is the dread reality,
it is the cropping-out in our planted gardens of
the core of the world: it is the abysmal Force,
untameable and immense. They who wrestle
with Hari, see their doom in his eye before the
fight begins.
As for King Swedenborg, I object to his car-
dinal position in morals that evils should be
shunned as sins. I hate preaching. I shun evils
as evils. Does he not know - Charles Lamb
did — that every poetic mind is a pagan, and to
this day prefers Olympian Jove, Apollo and the
Muses and the Fates, to all the barbarous in-
digestion of Calvin and the Middle Ages ?
Great king is King Swedenborg. I will not


*124
JOURNAL (AGE 42
deny him his matchless length and breadth.
Such a world of mathematics, metallurgy, as-
tronomy, anatomy, ecclesiastic history, theol-
ogy, demonology, ouranology, love, fear, form,
terror, law, all to come out of that quiet sleepy
old gentleman with the gold-headed cane, lodg-
ing at Mr. Shearsmith's!
As for “shunning evils as sins," I prefer the
ethics of the Vishnu : see beyond.'—
Too much form, O Swedenborg ! too many
steps, too much dogma, too much government.
We are very clumsy writers of history. We
tell the chronicle of parentage, birth, ... and
1 The passages referred to are:-
“He who meditates not wrong to others [said Prahláda),
but considers them as himself, is free from the effects of sin
inasmuch as the cause does not exist; but he who inflicts pain
upon others in act, thought, or speech sows the seed of future
birth; and the fruit that awaits him after birth is pain. I wish
no evil to any, and do and speak no offence, for I behold
Kasava in all beings as in my own soul.” — Vishnu Purana.
« The whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu, who
is identical with all things, and it is therefore to be regarded
by the wise as not differing from, but as the same with them-
selves. Let us therefore lay aside the angry passions of our
race and so strive that we may obtain that perfect, pure and
eternal happiness which shall be beyond the power of the ele-
ments or their deities, of fire, of the sun, of the moon, of
wind, of Indra, of the regent of the sea," etc., etc. — Idem.


1845] STAND IN YOUR PLACE 125
when we have come to an end of this external
history, the reader is no whit instructed, no ray
of relation appears between all this lumber and
the goddess-born.'...
My dear friend — standing on his mountains
of facts whose strata, chemistry, meteors, land-
scape, countries, towns, meridian, magnetism,
and what not, he knows — asks me how all goes
with me floating in obscure questions, musing
on this and that metaphysical riddle? Well, it
is even so. I stay where I can, and am peaceful
and satisfied enough as long as no sentinel chal-
lenges me. I use no election of the questions
that occupy me. No doubt, I should feel a
limitation if I were wont to task myself for men,
or to compute in any manner of political econ-
omy my day's work, but well assured that this
Questioner who brings me so many problems.
will bring the answers also in due time. Very
rich, very patient, cheerful giver that he is, -
he shall have it all his own way for me.
Amalgam. The absolutist is good and blessed,
though he dies without the sight of that para-
i Here follow the long paragraphs printed in “Shak-
speare" (Representative Men, pp. 206–208).


126
JOURNAL (AGE 42
cel
dise he journeys after; and he can forgive the
earthworms who remain immersed in matter
and know not the felicities he seeks. But not so
well can he dispose of the middle man who re-
ceives and assents to his theories and yet, by
habit and talent formed to live in the existing
order, builds and prospers among the worldly
men, extending his affection and countenance
all the time to the absolutists. Ah, thou evil,
two-faced half-and-half ! how can I forgive thee?
Evil, evil hast thou done. Thou it is that con-
foundest all distinctions. If thou didst not receive
the truth at all, thou couldst do the cause of
virtue no harm. But now the men of selfishness
say to the absolutist, Behold this man, he has
all thy truth, yet lo! he is with us and ours,—
Ah, thou damnable Half-and-Half! choose, I
pray you, between God and the Whig Party,
and do not longer strew sugar on this bottled
spider.
Yes; but Confucius. Confucius, glory of the
nations, Confucius, sage of the Absolute East,
was a middle man. He is the Washington of
philosophy, the Moderator, the Mndèv ayav
of modern history.
Also, this is not anybody's choice, but this
double sympathy is born; this hated amalgam


пса
1845) VISHNU PURANA 127
comes into the world, and natural and super-
natural power.
The doctrine of the Triform came from India,
as did the poetic horror that the demons in hell
had that tremendous power of vision that they
saw through all intermediate regions and worlds,
the great and happy gods moving in heaven;
whilst the heavenly souls were also made to
know their own felicity by discovering the in-
fernal spaces.
“What living creature slays, or is slain? What
living creature preserves or is preserved? Each
is his own destroyer or preserver, as he follows
evil or good.”? – Vishnu Purana.
[The following extract from the Vishnu Pu-
rana was the origin of the “ Hamatreya ” in the
Poems, its title being evidently another form of
the word “Maitreya” in this version.]
“The words 'I and mine' constitute igno-
rance.
“I have now given you a summary account
of the sovereigns of the earth. — These, and
other kings who with perishable frames have
1 Compare the opening lines of " Brahma,” in the Poems.


128
JOURNAL
[AGE 42
:
possessed this ever-enduring world, and who,
blinded with deceptive notions of individual oc-
cupation, have indulged the feeling that sug-
gests This earth is mine, —it is my son's, –
it belongs to my dynasty,' — have all passed
away. So, many who reigned before them, many
who succeeded them, and many who are yet to
come, have ceased or will cease to be. Earth
laughs, as if smiling with autumnal flowers to be-
hold her kings unable to effect the subjugation
of themselves. I will repeat to you, Maitreya,
the stanzas that were chanted by Earth, and
which the Muni Asita communicated to Jan-
aka, whose banner was virtue:-
“How great is the folly of princes who
are endowed with the faculty of reason, to cher-
ish the confidence of ambition when they them-
selves are but foam upon the wave. Before they
have subdued themselves, they seek to reduce
their ministers, their servants, their subjects,
under their authority; they then endeavor to
overcome their foes. “ Thus,” say they, “will
we conquer the ocean-circled earth”; and intent
upon their project, behold not death, which is
not far off. But what mighty matter is the sub-
jugation of the sea-girt earth, to one who can
subdue himself? Emancipation from existence
overco


1845] THE EARTH-SONG 129
is the fruit of self-control. It is through infatua-
tion that kings desire to possess me, whom their
predecessors have been forced to leave, whom
their fathers have not retained. Beguiled by the
selfish love of sway, fathers contend with their
sons, and brothers with brothers, for my pos-
session. Foolishness has been the character of
every king who has boasted, “All this earth is
mine — everything is mine — it will be in my
house forever”; – for he is dead. How is it
possible that such vain desires should survive
in the hearts of his descendants, who have seen
their progenitor, absorbed by the thirst of do-
minion, compelled to relinquish me whom he
called his own, and tread the path of dissolution?
When I hear a king sending word to another
by his ambassador, “ This earth is mine; resign
your pretensions to it,” — I am at first moved to
violent laughter; but it soon subsides to pity
for the infatuated fool.'”
“ These were the verses, Maitreya, which
Earth recited and by listening to which ambi-
tion fades away like snow before the sun.”
“ Fooled thou must be, tho' wisest of the wise
Then be thou the fool of virtue, not of vice.”
The Indian teaching, through its cloud of leg-


130
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
ends, has yet a simple and grand religion, like
a queenly countenance seen through a rich veil.
It teaches to speak the truth, love others as
yourself, and to despise trifles. The East is
grand, - and makes Europe appear the land
of trifles. Identity, identity ! friend and foe are
of one stuff.'... Cheerful and noble is the
genius of this cosmogony. .
Wisdom consists in keeping the soul liquid,
or, in resisting the tendency to too rapid petri-
faction.
There are people who are always in fashion ;
and style and fashion and aristocracy bends and
fits itself to them, denies itself to be possessed
of them.
One said, “If the hand had not been divided
into fingers, man would be still a beast roaming
in the desert.” The like if the tongue had not
been fitted for sharp articulation. Children cry
and scream and stamp with fury, unable to ex-
press their desires. ...
1 The rest of this passage is printed in “ Plato” (Repre-
sentative Men, pp. 49, 50, 51).
2 For the rest of the passage, see “ Plato” (Representative
Men, pp. 45, 46).


1845] ADVANCE FROM CHAOS 131
“I judge by each man's truth, of his degree
of understanding,” said Chesterfield. It is ever
thus, the progress is to accuracy, to skill, to
truth, from blind force. ...
The men of whom we are to speak are all
uplifted to this elevation of civility. Happy in
this ! happy the period in which this truly hu-
man force reaches its perfect extent, and has not
yet gone over into fineness, and an excessive
thought for surfaces.
There must be the Abyss, Nox and Chaos,
out of which all come, and they must never be
far off. Cut off the connection between any of
our works and this dread origin, and the work is
shallow and, unsatisfying. That is the strength
and excellence of the people, that they lean on
this, and the mob is not quite so bad an argu-
ment as we are apt to represent it, for it has this
divine side.
There is a moment in the history of every
nation when, proceeding out of this brute youth,
the perceptive powers reach with delight their
greatest strength and have not yet become micro-
scopic, so that the man at that instant extends
across the entire scale, and, with his feet still
planted on the immense forces of Night, con-
verses by his eyes and brain with Solar and


132
JOURNAL [Age 42
Stellar creation. That is the moment of perfect
health, the culmination of their star of Empire.'
Ah, let the twilight linger! We love the
morning spread abroad among the mountains,
but too fast comes on the broad noon blaze,
only exposing the poverty and barrenness of
our globe, the listlessness and meanness of its
inhabitants.
Montaigne or Socrates would quote Paul of
Tarsus and Goody Twoshoes with equal willing-
ness.
[In the autumn, Mr. Emerson seems to have
been arranging with a Boston publishing house
for the printing of the poems of his friend Wil-
liam Ellery Channing. In the later months of
the year and during the winter, as happened
thereafter during the rest of his active life, he
lectured before literary societies or Lyceums in
cities, towns, or villages, first in New England
and New York, but soon farther West. He was
invited to give an anti-slavery lecture in Salem,
and probably did so. During the summer he had
prepared the course on Representative Men, and
1 The last paragraph, though printed in “ Plato,” is kept
as the connection with those above and below.


1845] ROBERT OWEN 133
the “ Napoleon ” attracted especial attention.
He spoke before the Boston Lyceum in the
same course with J. R. Lowell, Dr. S. G. Howe,
Caleb Cushing, and others; also in Cambridge,
Salem, and Lowell.]
November 5.
Yesterday evening, saw Robert Owen at Mr.
Alcott's.' His Four Elements are Production,
Distribution, Formation of Character, and Local
and General Governing. His Three Errors, on
which society has always been based, and is now,
are,(1) that we form ourselves; (2) that we form
our opinions; (3) that we form our feelings.
The Three Truths with which he wishes to re-
place these, are, (1) that we proceed from a
creating power ; (2) that our opinions come from
conviction; (3) that our feelings come from our
instincts.
The Five Evils which proceed from our Three
Errors, and which make the misery of life, are,
(1) religious perplexities ; (2) disappointment in
i Robert Owen, the English social and industrial reformer
and writer, who, after a marked temporary success with his
community of factory operatives at New Lanark in Scotland,
came to America in 1823 and established a community at New
Harmony, Indiana. This failed, as did others later tried by
him in Scotland, England, and Mexico.


134
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
en W
affections ; (3) pecuniary difficulties ; (4) intem-
perance ; (5) anxiety for offspring. He also re-
quires a Transitional State. Fourier he saw in his
old age. Fourier learned of him all the truth he
had, and the rest of his system was imagination,
and the imagination of a banker.
You are very external with your evils, Mr.
Owen: let me give you some real mischiefs :
v Living for show; losing the whole in the par-
ticular; indigence of vital power. I am afraid
these will appear in a phalanstery, or in a tub.
We were agreed, that Mr. Owen was right in
imputing despotism to circumstances, and that
the priest and poet are right in attributing re-
sponsibility to men. Owen was a better man
than he knew, and his love of men made us for-
get his “Three Errors.” His charitable con-
struction of men, classes, and their actions was
invariable. He was always a better Christian
in his controversy with Christians, and he in-
terpreted with great generosity the acts of the
Holy Alliance and Prince Metternich. “Ah,”
he said, “ you may depend on it, there are as
tender hearts, and as much good will to serve
men, in palaces as in cottages.”
The Owen and Fourier plans bring no a priori
convictions. They are come at merely by count-


1845) WORKS GROW. ARGUMENT 135
ing and arithmetic. All the fine aperçus are for
individualism. The Spartan broth, the hermit's
cell, the lonely farmer's life are poetic; the Phal-
anstery, the “ Self-supporting Village.” (Owen)
are culinary and mean.
There seems to be a certain vegetable prin-
ciple pervading human nature also (or, perhaps
better, a vital power which the vegetable life illus-
trates), which cannot be too much respected. It
appears as if a good work did itself; as if what-
ever is good, in proportion as it is good, had a
certain self-existence and self-creation or organ-
ism. The good book grows whether the writer
is awake or asleep; its subject and order are not
chosen, but preappointed him.
I find it quoted from Livy (?) “that the mo-
ment a man begins not to be convinced, he
begins to convince.”
I had another experience in the coach, if I can
recall it, that the reason why a man becomes in-
tellectual and shuns practice, is reverential and
religious, because action is so melancholy. Man-
liness seems to require something better than this
desultoriness; and, as if out of self-respect, and
courtesy to the world, we withdraw from noise.


136
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
S nos
Skepticism has no such good argument as the
irreligion of facts. We do not approach a man's
house by his woodshed and offices, but through
his park and portico.
Skepticism and gulfs of Skepticism; strongest
of all that of the saints. They come to the mount,
and in the largest and most blissful communi-
cation to them, somewhat is left unsaid, which
begets in them doubt and horrible doubt. “So
then," say they, before they have yet risen from
their knees, “even this, even this does not satisfy:
we must still feel that this, our homage and beati-
tude, is partial and deferred. We must fly for
relief and sanity to that other suspected and re-
viled part of Nature, the kingdom of the under-
standing, the gymnastics of talent, the play of
fancy."
Greeley surprises by playing all the parts.
Only possible in America.
Swedenborg. He reminds me again and again
of our Jones Very, who had an illumination that
i A portion of the above is found in “ Montaigne" (Rep-
resentative Men, p. 174), in connection with the thoughts
quoted from Mr. Emerson's friend Charles K. Newcomb,
who there appears as San Carlo.


1845] WE NEED INFLUENCES 137
enabled him to excel every body in wit and to see
farthest in every company and quite easily to
bring the proudest to confusion; and yet he could
never get out of his Hebraistic phraseology and
mythology, and, when all was over, still remained
in the thin porridge or cold tea of Unitarianism.
we
Influences. We are candidates, we know we
are, for influences more subtle and more high
than those of talent and ambition. We want a
leader, we want a friend whom we have not seen.
In the company and fired by the example of a
god, these faculties that dream and toss in their
sleep would wake. Where is the Genius that
shall marshal us the way that we were going?
There is a vast residue, an open account ever.
The great inspire us: how they beckon, how
they animate, and show their legitimate power
in nothing more than their power to misguide
us. For the perverted great derange and deject
us, and perplex ages with their fame; Alexander,
Napoleon, Mahomet. Then the evil genius of
France at and before the Revolution, a learned
fiend.
It is the largest part of a man that is not in-
ventoried. He has many enumerable parts: he
is social, professional, political, sectarian, literary,


138
[AGE 42
JOURNAL
and is this or that set and corporation. But after
the most exhausting census has been made, there
remains as much more which no tongue can tell.
And this remainder is that which interests. This
is that which the strong genius works upon; the
region of destiny, of aspiration, of the unknown.
Ah, they have a secret persuasion that as little
as they pass for in the world, they are immensely
rich in expectancy and power. Nobody has ever
yet dispossessed this adhesive self to arrive at
any glimpse or guess of the awful life that lurks
under it.
Far the best part, I repeat, of every mind is
not that which he knows, but that which hovers
in gleams, suggestions, tantalizing, unpossessed,
before him. His firm recorded knowledge soon
loses all interest for him. But this dancing chorus
of thoughts and hopes is the quarry of his future,
is his possibility, and teaches him that his man's
life is of a ridiculous brevity and meanness, but
that it is his first age and trial only of his young
wings, but that vast revolutions, migrations, and
gyres on gyres in the celestial societies invite
him.
Inward miracles. Deliverances. That which
so mightily annoyed and hampered us ceases


1845] DELIVERANCES. WORK 139
utterly and at unawares. We wist not how or
whence the redemption came. What so rankled
at heart, and kept the eyes open all night, and
which, we said, will never down, lo! we have
utterly forgot it; cannot by any effort of mem-
ory realize it again, and give it importance. The
crises in our history come so. Thus they steal
in on us, a new life which enters, God knows how,
through the solidest blocks of our old thoughts
and mental habits, makes them transparent and
pervious to its subtle essence; sweetens and en-
lightens all, and at last dissolves them in its new
radiance.
The miracles of the spirit are greater than
those of the history.
Men also representative. Swedenborg and Beh-
men saw that things were representative. They
did not sufficiently see that men were. But we
cannot, as we say, be in two places at once. My
doing my office entitles me to the benefit of your
doing yours. This is the secret after which the
Communists are coarsely and externally striving.
Work in thy place with might and health, and
thy secretion to the spiritual body is made. I
in mine will do the like. Thus imperceptibly
and most happily, genially and triumphantly


140
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
doing that we delight in, behold we are com-
munists, brothers, members one of another.
We are invited to an intellectual banquet, to
a society of thought with them (the great men].
We see them as illustrations, incarnate and beau-
tiful, of the laws, the laws walking and speaking,
but the direct service they render us is that of
health and is above the region of thought and
will.
Shakspeare's fault that the world appears so
empty. He has educated you with his painted
world, and this real one seems a huckster's shop.
Every work needs a necessity, a nature, a ma-
terial already existing, for motive to the poet and
for credence to the people. Otherwise the work
were fantastic. A man does not get up some
fine morning and say, I am full of life. Lo, I will
build a cathedral.'. ..
Dear heart, take it sadly home to thee, that
there will and can be no coöperation.? ...
i The substance of what follows, with slight variations and
additions, may be found in “Shakspeare” (Representative
Men, p. 190).
2 The rest of the passage beginning thus is printed in So-
ciety and Solitude (p. 8).


1845]
SERVE TRUTH
141
The other part of life is self-reliance. Love and
it balance up and down, and the beam never rests.
Thou wouldst fain not look out of the window,
nor waste time in expecting thy friend. Thou
wouldst be sought of him. Well, that also is in
thy soul, and this is its law. The soul of man
must be the servant of another. In its good estate,
it is the servant of the Spirit of Truth. When it
is abandoned to that dominion, it is great and
sovereign, and draweth friends and lovers. When
it is not so, it serveth a friend or lover.
The other and third thing is this, that it is ever
well with him who finishes his work for its own
sake, and the state and the world is happy that
has the most of such Finishers. The world will
do justice to such. It cannot otherwise; but never
on the day when the work is newly done and
presented. But forever it is true that every man
settles his own rate.
Travelling. Our education in Latin and Greek
really mortgages us to Italy, and entitles us to
go. Not so, if we had a commanding idea which
concatenates our readings and doings.
But we have not; why should we say we
have?
If you are abandoned to your genius and


142
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
employment, be it never so special and rare, as
engraving or painting, - men will do you jus-
tice and not reproach you that you do not
plough. .
The language is made, — who has not helped
to make it? Then comes Milton, Shakspeare,
and find it all made to their hand, and use it as
if there never had been language before.
Authors or Books QUOTED OR REFERRED
TO IN JOURNAL FOR 1845
[As has been mentioned in a previous vol-
ume certain authors most frequently mentioned
in the Journals will be omitted from the lists ;
viz., Homer, Plato, Plutarch, Cicero, Virgil,
Horace, Juvenal, Montaigne, Bacon, Shak-
speare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher,
Donne, Herbert, Sir Thomas Browne, Jeremy
Taylor, Pascal, Newton, Fénelon, Young, Pope,
Pitt, Johnson, Swedenborg, Gibbon, De Staël,
Wordsworth, Landor, Scott, Coleridge, Byron.
In spite of the frequent mention of Plotinus,
Proclus, and other Neo-Platonists, and of the
Oriental Scriptures and poets, these names will
appear in the lists, as shedding light on the


1845]
READING
143
question when Mr. Emerson was reading them.
Goethe and Carlyle will also be mentioned
It often happens that the allusion to an au-
thor or book may be in a passage not included
in the selections here printed.]
Bhagavat-Geeta; Pythagoras; Pherecydes Sy-
rus; Pindar; Xenophon, Memorabilia ;
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations ; Livy, Annals;
Ammianus; Proclus, On the Timæus of Plato;,
Stobæus;
Mahomet; Hafiz; Akblak-1-Jalaly (Persian),
translated by W. F. Thomson ;
Spenser; Kepler;
Herrick; Saint Evremond; Bishop Berkeley,
Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher;
Floyer Sydenham; Lagrange ; Jung Stilling;
Bentham; Berthollet; Laplace; Goethe; Thomas
Taylor;Talleyrand; Hahnemann; Schiller;Lord
Edward Fitzgerald; Colebrooke, On the Vedas
or Some Writings of the Hindus; Chenier; Kirby
and Spence; Canning ; Frere; Humboldt;
Robert Owen; Charles Lamb; Schelling;
Fourier; Sir Humphry Davy; Lord Brougham,
The Elective Franchise ; Cousin, Translation of
Plato ; Macleay and Swainson (“Theory of Ani-
mated Circles”), Books on Napoleon, Caulincourt,


144
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
Bourrienne, Duc de Vicenza, Antommarchi;
Karl Postel (“Sealsfield”), Süden und Norden (?);
Hood;
Macaulay; Frederika Bremer; Robert Cham-
bers, Vestiges of Creation; Countess Hahn-hahn,
Countess Faustina;
Alcott; Horace Greeley; Jones Very ; J. J.
Garth Wilkinson, Introduction to Swedenborg's
Animal Kingdom;
Webster ; Choate ; Everett; Nathaniel L.
Frothingham; William Ellery Channing, Poems;
Thoreau, Poems; Margaret Fuller; Hawthorne;
Holmes; Theodore Parker; Frederic H. Hedge;
James Freeman Clarke; Charles Lane; George
W. Curtis; J. Elliot Cabot; E. P. Whipple.


JOURNAL
PHILOSOPHY, ELOQUENCE
EVERETT’S INAUGURATION AT
HARVARD
POETRY HAFIZ
HUMILIATION OF THE NORTH
INTERCHANGE OF PORTRAITS
WITH CARLYLE
COLLEGE CLASS
POEMS PUBLISHED





JOURNAL XXXVII
1846
(From Journals Y and O)
[No entries are to be found for January and
February; probably there was no time for writ-
ing, as Mr. Emerson was giving in Boston the
course on Representative Men, begun in De-
cember, and giving the same in Providence and
Lowell, with single lectures before many Lyce-
ums. Meanwhile he was arranging for the pub-
lication of Carlyle's new Cromwell, and also his
previous works, in this country, to better advan-
tage. Of this service Carlyle wrote, April 18,
“You have made the best of bargains for me,
once again, with the freest contempt of trouble
on your part, which I cannot sufficiently wonder
at.”]
(From Y)
March 24, 1846.
Why should people make such a matter of
leaving this church and going into that? They
betray so their want of Faith, or spiritual per-
ception. The holy principles discredit and ac-


148
JOURNAL (AGE 42
credit all churches alike. God builds his temple
in the heart on the ruins of churches and reli-
gions. It is not otherwise with social forms. A
or B refuses the tax, or some tax, with solemnity,
but eats and drinks and wears and perspires tax-
ation all day. Let them not hew down the state
with axe and gunpowder, but supersede it by
irresistible genius; huddle it aside as ridiculous
and obsolete by their quantity of being. Elo-
quence needs no constable.
The fault of Alcott's community is that it has
only room for one.
Majorities, the argument of fools, the strength
of the weak. One should recall what Laertius
records as Socrates's opinion of the common peo-
ple, “that it was as if a man should except against
one piece of bad money, and accept a great sum
of the same.”
(From O)
Oft have I heard, and deemed the witness true,
Whom man delights in, God delights in too.
Pons de CAPDUEIL.
Nature may be cooked into all shapes, and


1846] LET THE MUSE REFORM 149
not recognized. Mountains and oceans we think
we understand;'...
To know the virtue of the soil, we do not
taste the loam, but we eat the berries and apples;
and to mend the bad world, we do not impeach
Polk and Webster, but we supersede them by
the Muse.
Demades surpassed all when he trusted to
Nature.
Theodore Parker, W. H. Channing, Elizur
Wright, James F. Clarke, George Ripley, John
S. Dwight, Charles Sumner, Parker Pillsbury,
7. Elliot Cabot, H. G. O. Blake, John Brown,
H. D. Thoreau, A. B. Alcott, R. W. E., Edward
Bangs, T. T. Stone, John Weiss.?
1 The rest of the passage so beginning occurs in “ Poetry
and Imagination” (Letters and Social Aims, p. 16).
2 This list is probably of persons who might be engaged
to lecture in the Concord Lyceum that winter, those in italics
being perhaps those who would be first invited. The names
indicate how serious was the character of the lectures gladly
listened to by learned and simple alike. Improvement, not
amusement, was the aim and expectation. As usual, the vil.
lage contributed its quota of lecturers. John Brown was per-
haps the dry goods dealer, a member of one of the old families
still represented in the town.


150
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
The life which we seek is expansion; the actual
life even of the genius or the saint is obstruc-
tion.
What a contest between personality and uni-
versality! The man listens to Stoic, Epicurean, or
Christian, and acknowledges his mistakes. But
he was right; and a little afterwards comes a new
infusion of his own, and he is triumphantly right
again in his own way against the prejudices of the
universe.
Every person is right, or to make him right
needs only more personality.
Intellect makes him strange among his house-
mates."
W
What a dancing jack o' lanthorn is this esti-
mate of our contemporaries. Sometimes I seem
to move in a constellation. I think my birth has
fallen in the thick of the Milky Way: and again
I fancy that the American blightand English nar-
rowness and German defectiveness and French
surface have bereaved the time of all worth.
ar.
In your music, in your speech, in your writing,
I am amused by your talents; but in the pres-
1 Compare the last line of the poem • Insight” (Poems,
P: 360).


1846] THE TAIL. THE GERMANS 151
ence of one capable of serving, and expressing an
idea, the finest talents become an impertinence.
en
In Nature every creature has a tail. The brain
has not yet availed to drop that respectable ap-
pendage. How odious is hunger. Well enough
in the animal, well in the citizen, but in the ill-
starred intellectualist a calamity: he can neither
eat nor not eat. If he could eat an oak forest
or half a mountain, I should like that; a good
Kurroglou supper for thirteen; but hunger for
any dinner he is likely to get, degrades him. If
we cannot have a good rider, at least let us have
a good horse: now, 't is a haggard rider of a hag-
gard horse.
In Germany there still seems some hidden
dreamer from whom this strange, genial, poetic,
comprehensive philosophy comes, and from
which the English and French get mere rumors
and fragments, which are yet the best philosophy
we know. One while we thought that this fon-
tal German was Schelling; then Fichte, Novalis ;
then Oken; then it hovered about Schleier-
macher, and settled for a time on Hegel. But
on producing authenticated books from each of
these masters, we find them clever men, but


152
(Age 42
JOURNAL
nothing like so great and deep a poet sage as we
looked for. And now we are still to seek for the
lurking Behmen of modern Germany.
Hegel's philosopheme, blazoned by Cousin,
that an idea always conquers, and, in all history,
victory has ever fallen on the right side (a doc-
trine which Carlyle has, as usual, found a fine
idiom for, that Right and Might go together),
was a specimen of this Teutonism. Something
of it there is in Schelling; more in his quoted
Maader; something in Goethe, who is catholic
and poetic. Swedenborg had much; Novalis
had good sentences; Kant, nothing of it. Kep-
ler was “ An Unitarian of the united world,"
“ Si non errasset, fecerat ille minus."
Eloquence wants anthracite cozi. Coldness
is the most fatal quality. Phædrus-horses, one
winged, one not; there must be both. Burke had
the high principles (in Chatham never a gen-
eralization). Burke dragged them down to facts
which he never loses sight of: he had a mania,
and yet also gives Mosaic accounts. You must
speak always from higher ground. Webster
does.
But give us the rare merits of impassivity, of
marble texture, against which the mob of souls
W
ma


1846) STEADINESS. FRICTION 153
dashing is broken like crockery falling on stone:
the endurance which can afford to fail in the
popular sense, because it never fails in its own;
it knows what it wants and advances to-day,
and to-morrow, and every day, to that which
belongs to it.
We shall have to describe these arms in de-
tail, though the highest eloquence must combine
them all. Kurroglou' had seventeen weapons,
and in personal combat was wont to try them all
in turn. One should have a great superseding
personality.
Too much friction in life. The proverb teaches
that there is a pound of grindstone to a pound
of cheese, but I think there are always many
pounds of grindstone to an ounce of cheese.
How much arrangement and combination and
drudgery to bring about a pleasant hour, to hear
an eloquent argument, or a fine poetic reading,
or a little superior conversation; what rattle and
jingle; how many miles must be ridden, how
many woods and meadows, alder-borders and
stone walls must be tediously passed!
1 A romantic Kurdish warrior-minstrel celebrated in Chodz-
ko's Specimens of Ancient Persian Poetry. Kurroglou was
also called Roushan Beg, whose leap over the chasm on his
wonderful horse, Kyrat, Longfellow celebrates.
2
се


154
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(AGE 42
Nothing is so rare in any man as an act of
his own; but then how beautiful it is !
What satisfactions in detecting now and then
a long relation far over bounds of space and
time in two parts of consciousness! Well, but
we drop one thing when we grasp another. The
least acceleration in our intellectual processes,
and an increased tenacity, would constitute a
true paradise.
Swedenborg; — how strange that he should
have persuaded men and drawn a church after
him, this enchanter with his mob of dreams!
It recalls Defoe and Drelincourt and Mrs. Veal,
the circumstantiality of his pictures, the com-
bination of variety and of moonshine, dreams
in the costume of science.
The effect of his religion will be denied by
his disciples, but inevitable, that he leads them
away from Calvinism, and under the guise of
allegiance to Christianity, supplants both Calvin
and Christ. When they awake, they have irre-
coverably lost the others, and Swedenborg is
not to be found.
We lie for the right. We affect a greater hope
than we feel. We idealize character, we embel-
lish the story.


1846] THE GLASS. LIGHTS
155
Genius consists neither in improvising nor
in remembering, but in both ever trembles the
beam of the balance in Nature. Two brains in
every man.
I see not how a man can walk in a straight
line, who has ever seen a looking-glass. He
acts, and instantly his act is reflected to him by
the opinion of men. He cannot keep his eyes off
of these dancing images; and that is the death
of glory, the death of duty in him. Safer, oh, far
safer, is the reflection of his form that he finds in
Zoology, in Botany, in Chemistry. Anthro-
pomorphize them,— 't is all well and poetical.
I cannot hope to make any thorough lights
into the caverns of the human consciousness.
That were worth the ambition of angels! No!
but only to make special, provincial, local lights?
Yes; but we obey the impulse to affirm and
affirm, and neither you nor I know the value
of what we say.
real
Henry Thoreau objected to my“Shakspeare,”
that the eulogy impoverished the race. Shak-
speare ought to be praised, as the sun is, so that
all shall be rejoiced.


156
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JOURNAL
That which is divine is to make an entire tra-
verse from Deity to the dust, and it is indiffer-
ent whether it is in a book or in an institu-
tion.
Oh, yes, he may escape from shackles and
dungeons, but how shall he get away from his
temperament? - how from his hereditary sins
and infusions? — how from the yellow humors
through which he must ever see the blue sky
and the sun and stars? Sixty centuries have
squatted and stitched and hemmed to shape and
finish for him that strait jacket which he must
wear.
must
Nature loves to cross her stocks. A pure
blood, Brahmin on Brahmin, marrying in and in,
soon becomes puny and wears out. Some strong
Cain son, some black blood must renew and
refresh the paler veins of Seth.
What a discovery I made one day, that the
more I spent the more I grew, that it was as
easy to occupy a large place and do much work
as an obscure place to do little; and that in the
winter in which I communicated all my results
to classes, I was full of new thoughts.


1846] THOREAU. TWO BRAINS 157
Queenie came it over Henry last night when
he taxed the new astronomy with the poverty
of their new discoveries and showings — not
strange enough. Queenie wished to see with
eyes some of those strange things which the tel-
escope reveals, the satellites of Saturn, etc. H.
said that strange things might be seen with the
naked eye. “Yes,” said Queenie, “but I wish
to see some of those things that are not quite
so strange.”
The one good in life is concentration, the
one evil is dissipation.'...
The book I read of lately, taught, that there
are two brains in every man, as two eyes, two
ears, etc., and that culture consisted in com-
pelling the two to the entertainment of one
thought. ...
Immortality. 'Tis a higher thing to confide
that it is best we should live, then we shall
live. ...
i The rest of the passage occurs in “ Power” (Conduct of
Life, pp. 73, 74).
2 For the rest of this paragraph, see « Worship" (Conduct
of Life, p. 239), where much of the substance of it is given in
the French quotation that follows, but the name of the author
does not appear.


158
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“Vous direz ce serait mieux que nous aurions
une vie éternelle. Bien. Je dis, si ce serait mieux,
cela viendra. Alors, je dis c'est une chose plus
grande de confier que si ce serait mieux, cela
viendra, — beaucoup plus grande que serait la
promesse formelle du Createur que nous sub-
sisterions pour tous les siècles.”
We frigidly talk of reform, until the walls
mock us with contempt. It is that of which a
man should never speak, but if he have cher-
ished it in his bosom, he should steal to it in
the dark as an Indian to his bride; or a monk
should go privily to another monk, and say, Lo,
we two are of one opinion; and a new light has
shined in our hearts. Let us dare to obey it.
ar
Bardic sentences how few! Literature warps
away from life, though at first it seems to bind
it. If now I should count the English Poets
who have contributed aught to the Bible of ex-
isting England and America sentences of guid-
ance and consolation which are still glowing and
effective-how few! Milton, Shakspeare, Pope,
Burns, Young, Cowper, Wordsworth —(what
disparity in the names ! yet these are the au-
thors) and Herbert, Jonson, Donne.


1846]
THE LIVING GOD
159
Is the picture beautiful, and was the man so
great, and must so many Academies convene
to settle the claims of the classic and the roman-
tic schools ? So many journeys and measure-
ments, — Niebuhr, Müller, and Sir William
Gell to identify the plain of Troy and tomb of
Achilles ?' ...
He lurks, be hides, he who is success, real-
ity, joy, power, that which constitutes Heaven,
which reconciles impossibilities, atones for short-
comings, expiates sins, or makes them virtues,
buries in oblivion the crowded historical Past,
sinks religions, philosophies, nations, persons,
to legends; reverses the scale of opinion, of
fame; reduces sciences to opinion, and makes
the thought of the moment the key to the uni-
verse and the egg of history to come. ...
This is he that shall come, or if he come not,
nothing comes; he that disappears on the in-
stant that we go to celebrate him. If we go to
burn those that blame our celebration, he ap-
pears in them.
Hoe and spade; sword and pen; cities, pic-
tures, gardens, laws, bibles, are prized only
1 Much of what follows is found in “Works and Days”
(Society and Solitude, pp. 174, 175).


160
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
because they were means he sometimes used:
so with astronomy, arithmetic, caste, feudalism.
We kiss with devotion these hems of his gar-
ment. They crumble to ashes on our lips.
SO
Ore Sa
Prophecy is not more sacred than is Know-
ledge of the Present. Quantum scimus, sumus.
Do not throw up your thought because you
cannot answer objections.
“Apollo is a god who defends or destroys,
according to the nature of the case.” - MÜLLER,
p. 193.
Imagination. There are two powers of the
imagination, one, that of knowing the symbolic
character of things and treating them as repre-
sentative; and the other (Elizabeth Hoar thinks)
is practically the tenaciousness of an image, cleav-
ing unto it and letting it not go, and, by the
treatment, demonstrating that this figment of
thought is as palpable and objective to the poet
as is the ground on which he stands, or the walls
of houses about him. And this power appears
in Dante and Shakspeare.
I should say that the imagination exists by
sharing the ethereal currents.' ...
i The rest of the paragraph occurs in “ Poetry and Imag-
ination” (Letters and Social Aims, p. 21).?


1846] FOURIER. LIFE. HYMNS 161
Society is trying Fourierism in small pieces:
as the union protective store; clubhouses for
the married; boarding in hotels; book clubs.
It needs now only that a hotel company should
agree to build a palace for three hundred fam-
ilies subscribing beforehand to rent suites of
apartments for three years.
Fourier's seventeen musical instruments
taught him. His musical scale he applied with
confidence to every part of Nature.
Life is the sleep of the soul : as soon as a soul
is tired, it looks out for a body as a bed; enters
into a body in the season of dentition, and sleeps
seventy years.
Nobody is entitled to travel but such as have
done their work. Whilst this world is in chaos,
we shall not be allowed to leave it.
Hymns. There are a great many excellent
hymns in use in our Unitarian churches. The
best collection in the English language is, no
doubt, Dr. Greenwood's; excellent in what he
retained, in what he discovered and brought into
use again from Cowper, Wesley, and the Mora-
vians, etc., and in what he sunk, as I had hoped,


162
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
forever. But already the scribaciousness of our
ministers has produced a number of pretended
new collections: the Plymouth, the Cheshire,
etc. All that is good in these they take from
Greenwood. I will venture to say you cannot
find one good piece in either of them that is not
in his. But they have restored or added a great
deal of trash. Their collections will pass away
and his judicious book will come into lasting
use.
The non-resistants go about and persuade
good men not to vote, and so paralyze the virtue
that is in the conservative party. And thus the
patriotic vote in the country is swamped in the
legion of Paddies. But though the non-voting
is right in the non-resistants, it is a patch and a
pedantry in their converts, not in their system.
Not a just expression of their state of mind.
One of these tenacities, it is no matter where
it goes. It gets an education in a shanty, in an
alehouse, over a cigar or in a fishing boat, as good
as it could find in Germany or in Sais: for the
world is unexpectedly rich, and everywhere tells
the same things. The grasp is much, but not
quite all. The juggle of commerce never loses


1846] POETRY THAT FEEDS 163
its power to astonish and delight us, namely, the
unlooked-for union that cannot but be of things.
Byron is no poet: what did he know of the
world and its law and Lawgiver? What moment
had he of that mania which moulds history and
man, and tough circumstances, - like wax? He
had declamation; he had music, juvenile and
superficial music. Even this is very rare, and
we delight in it so much that Byron has obtained
great' fame by this fluency and music. It is
delicious. All the “ Hebrew Melodies” are
examples.
“Warriors and chiefs! should the shaft or the sword,” —
how neat, how clever, how roundly it rolls off
the tongue— but what poetry is here? It is the
sublime of schoolboy verse. How many vol-
umes of such jingle must we go through before
we can be filled, sustained, taught, renewed?
The office of poetry I supposed was Tyrtæan,
- consoling, indemnifying; and of the Uranian,
deifying or imparadising.
Homer did what he could, -and Callimachus,
Pindar, and the Greek tragedians; Horace and
Persius; Dante was faithful, and Milton, Shak-
speare and Herbert. But how shall I find my
ume
see 164
165


164
JOURNAL [AGE 42
heavenly bread in Tennyson? or in Milnes? in
Lowell? or in Longfellow? Yet Wordsworth
was mindful of the office.
Compare the music of Collins,
Bubbling runnels joined the sound –
and Ben Jonson's,
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
and Herrick, and Chapman's Homer, with the
parlor and piano music of Byron, and Scott, and
Moore."
· Neat versification without poetry is Cowper's
Alexander Selkirk,
I am out of humanity's reach;
I must finish my journey alone;
Never hear the sweet music of speech, —
I start at the sound of my own.
Clever execution; but these are properly col-
lege exercises, not manly labors. No wind-harp;
i And yet at the Centennial celebration of the birth of
Scott, in August, 1871, Mr. Emerson said: “We tread over
our youthful grounds with joy. Critics have found them to be
only rhymed prose. But I believe that many of those who
read them in youth, when, later, they come to dismiss their
school-days' library, will make some fond exception for Scott,
as for Byron."


1846] INSTINCTS. POETS 165
ποντίων τε κυμάτων
'Avýplopov yenao ja.
Æschylus, Prometheus.
O multitudinous laughter of the ocean billows !
“'Tis not clear,” says De Quincey, “whether
Æschylus contemplated the laughter as address-
ing the ear or the eye.”
I like man, but not men. Instincts, tenden-
cies, – they do no wrong: they are beautiful, and
may be confided in and obeyed. Though they
slay us, let us trust them. Why should eggs and
tadpoles talk? All is mere sketch, symptomatic,
possible, or probable, for us, - we dwellers in
tents, we outlines in chalk, we jokes and buffoon-
eries, why should we be talking? Let us have the
grace to be abstemious. The etiquette of society
should guard and consecrate a poet; he should
not be visited, nor be shown at dinner-tables:
too costly to be seen except on high holidays.
He should be relieved of visits and trivial corre-
spondence. His time is the time of his nation.
Yes, we want a poet, the genuine poet of our
time, no parrot, and no child. The poets that
we praise, or try to, the Brownings, Barretts,
Bryants, Tennysons,—are all abortive Homers;
they at least show tendency, the direction of


166
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
Nature to the star in Lyra. Boys still whistle,
and every newspaper and girl’s album attest the
ineradicable appetite for melody. Oh, no, we
have not done with music, nor must console our-
selves with prose poets. We wish the undrawn
line of tendency to be drawn for us. Where is
the Euclid who can sum up these million errors,
and compute the beautiful mean? We do not
wish to make believe be instructed; we wish to
be ravished, inspired, and taught.
Companions. Men of thought who live in the
same sphere are poor company for each other.'
May 1.
I was at Cambridge yesterday to see Everett
inaugurated. His political brothers came as if to
bring him to the convent door, and to grace with
a sort of bitter courtesy his taking of the cowl.
It is like the marriage of a girl; not until the
wedding and the departure with her husband,
does it appear that she has actually and finally
changed homes and connections and social
caste. Webster I could so willingly have spared
on this occasion. Everett was entitled to the
i The passage with a similar beginning is printed in Repre-
sentative Men (p. 31).


eve
Va
1846) EVERETT AND WEBSTER 167
entire field; and Webster came, who is his evil
genius, and has done him incalculable harm by
Everett's too much admiration of his iron na-
ture; — warped him from his true bias all these
twenty years, and sent him cloud - hunting at
Washington and London, to the ruin of all solid
scholarship, and fatal diversion from the pursuit
of his right prizes. It is in vain that Everett
makes all these allusions to his public employ-
ments; he would fain deceive me and himself; he
has never done anything therein, but has been,
with whatever praises and titles and votes, a mere
dangler and ornamental person. It is in vain for
sugar to try to be salt. Well, this Webster must
needs come into the house just at the moment
when Everett was rising to make his Inaugural
Speech. Of course, the whole genial current of
feeling flowing towards him was arrested, and the
old Titanic Earth-Son was alone seen. The house
shook with new and prolonged applause, and
Everett sat down, to give free course to the senti-
ment. He saved himself by immediately saying,
“I wish it were in my power to use the authority
vested in me and to say, 'Expectatur oratio in
lingua vernacula,' from my illustrious friend who
has just taken his seat.”
Everett's grace and propriety were admirable


168
JOURNAL (AGE 42
through the day. Nature finished this man.
He seems beautifully built, perfectly sound and
whole; and eye, voice, hand exactly obey his
thought. His quotations are a little trite, but
saved by the beautiful modulation and falls of
the recitation.
The satisfaction of men in this appointment
is complete. Boston is contented because he is so
creditable, safe, and prudent, and the scholars be-
cause he is a scholar, and understands the busi-
ness. Old Quincy, with all his worth and a sort
of violent service he did the College, was a lub-
ber and a grenadier among our clerks.
Quincy made an excellent speech, so stupid
good, now running his head against a post, now
making a capital point; he has mother wit, and
great fund of honour and faithful serving, and
the faults of his speech increased my respect for
his character.
The Latin allusions flew all day;
“ Sol occubuit, nulla nox sequitur," :
said Webster.
“Uno avulso, non deficit aureus alter," 2
said Winthrop.
1 The sun has set, yet no night follows.
2 When one has been torn away, another golden one is not
lacking.


1846] EVERETT'S ADDRESS 169
It is so old a fault that we have now ac-
quiesced in it, that the complexion of these
Cambridge feasts is not literary, but somewhat
bronzed by the colors of Washington and Bos-
ton. The aspect is political, the speakers are po-
litical, and Cambridge plays a very pale and per-
mitted part in its own halls. A man of letters —
who was purely that — would not feel attracted,
and would be as much out of place there as at
the Brokers' Board.
Holmes's poem was a bright sparkle, but
Frothingham, Prescott, Longfellow, old Dana,
Ward, Parker, Hedge, Clarke, Judd, the author
of “Margaret,” and whoever else is a lover of
letters, were absent or silent; and Everett him-
self, richly entitled on grounds of scholarship
to the chair, used his scholarship only compli-
mentarily.
The close of Everett's Inaugural Discourse
was chilling and melancholy. With a coolness
indicating absolute skepticism and despair, he
deliberately gave himself over to the corpse-
cold Unitarianism and Immortality of Brattle
Street and Boston.
Everett's genius is Persian. The poetry of
his sermons in his youth, his delight in Des-
tiny, the elements, the colors and forms of


170
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
things, and the mixture he made of physical and
metaphysical, strongly recalls the genius of Hafiz.
People wish to be amused, and therefore like
to have the good-natured man, the man of in-
formation, the “Uncle Isaac whose news is
always true," or the poet, or the belle, come to
their houses. But I do not wish to be amused,
and the amusing persons are bores to me. But
if a man speak in public one right and eloquent
word, like Gannett's once at some Bible society,
or Henry Ware's sometimes, or Lovejoy's 'lately
over Torrey's dead body, or disclose the least
vestige of character, then it is pathetic to me,
and I have a feeling of gratitude that would
wash the feet of this benefactor.
OV
OSS
Hafiz. Hafiz, whom I at first thought a cross
of Anacreon and Horace, I find now to have
1 Rev. Joseph C. Lovejoy, the brother of the brave Elijah
P. Lovejoy, who was murdered by the mob at Alton, Illi-
nois, in 1837, for his writings against Slavery in his news-
paper.
Charles T. Torrey, a humane clergyman, born in Massa-
chusetts, resident in Baltimore, was there tried and convicted
of the crime of aiding the escape of a slave from bondage. He
died there in prison of consumption.


1846] THE MYSTIC. PRAYER 171
the best blood of Pindar also in his veins. Also
of Burns.
The mystic labels and tickets one thing, or
two. The mystic, who beholds the flux, yet be-
comes pragmatist on some one particular of faith,
and, what is the mischief, seeks to accredit this
new jail because it was builded by him who has
demolished so many jails. Is not the mystic
like a rogue who comes to an honest man and
says, “By your accumulated character you could
deal an immense stroke at counterfeiting”?
rms
Memory. Memory performs the impossible
for man.'..
:
Prayer. Dr. Allyne,' of Duxbury, prayed for
rain, at church. In the afternoon the boys car-
ried umbrellas. “Why?” Because you prayed
for rain. “Pooh! boys! we always pray for
rain : it's customary.”
1 What follows is printed in “ Memory” (Natural His-
tory of Intellect, p. 91).
2 Of this kindly, humorous but eccentric clergyman many
entertaining stories are told. Mrs. Emerson's brother, Dr.
Charles T. Jackson, with other boys, was placed in his family
for instruction.


172
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
The world, the universe may be reeled off
from any Idea, like a ball of yarn. Thus, if you
please, it is all mechanical. The mental phe-
nomena all admit very well of being solved so.
... Or it is all electrical; or chemical; or
moral. Suit yourself.
O'Connell, in 1835, denounced Benjamin
Þ’Israeli as a humbug of the first magnitude,
and wound up by referring to the origin of
D’Israeli's family. He said, he“ had no doubt,
if his genealogy were traced, it would be found
that he was the true heir-at-law of the impenitent
thief who atoned for his crimes on the cross.”
Double the dose. The pale faces, the pale
faces! We are tired of asking for a great man,
and now ask for a great deal of a man, some-
what satisfying; Bonaparte, Webster, —even
Captain Rynders."
For we must have a success. It is not we that
i Isaiah Rynders, a New York man of German and Irish
descent, after a rough and varied life as boatman, gambler,
etc., returned from the Southwest and became a powerful
Democratic political manager of the worst classes. In 1849
and 1850 he instigated two riots, and was more than once
brought before the courts for acts of violence, and only fear
of him prevented other arrests.


are
18461 THE MUSE. ARTIST 173
are in fault for not being convinced, but you that
cannot convince us. You should mould us and
wind us round your finger, so pliant and willing
as we offer ourselves. We know you are in the
right. Weare already half convinced. You should
take the ground from under us if you had a sliver
of steel; not only neutralize our opposition -
that is a small thing — but convert us into fiery
apostles and publishers of your wisdom. Good
powder, but not a heavy charge enough.
The muse demands real sacrifices, I wrote.
You cannot be poet and a paterfamilias and a
militia captain.
What pity that the mother and child cannot
change states. The child is always awake, and
the mother is always asleep.
Raphael found the material sufficiently ready
and had all his heat for the main work. So
Shakspeare.
Michael Angelo's designs teach us how near
to creation we are; this man is of the Creator that
made and makes men; how much of the origi-
nal craft yet remains in him, and he a man!
Art acquaints us with the wonderful transla-
tions of the same thought into the several lan-


174
JOURNAL [AGE 42
guages of drawing, of sculpture, of music, of
poetry, of architecture; still further into scenery,
into animals, that express it or harmonize with
it; and lastly into human form and character.
Bring any club or company of intelligent men
together again, after ten years, ... and if the
presence of some penetrating and calming genius
could dispose them all to recollection and frank-
ness, what a confession of insanities would come
up!' ...
The best is accessible, is cheap. Every man
cannot get land or jewels, but every man can get
what land and money and rank are valued for,-
namely, substantial manhood, thoughts self-
realizing and prophetic of the farthest future,
thoughts of which poetry and music are the
necessary expression.
When summer opens, I see how fast it ma-
tures, and fear it will be short; but after the heats
of July and August, I am reconciled, like one
who has had his swing, to the cool of autumn.
So will it be with the coming of death.
1 The whole paragraph occurs in Culture” (Conduct of
Life, p. 136).


1846) INDIVIDUAL. THE POET 175
A good invention was the Individual or Dif-
ferential. Here are all the members of my body:
- how they use and rely on each other, trust
each other beyond all the fables of friendship,
and yet without love of each other! Well, so live
two young brothers or sisters, and have no good
of their intimacy and use, because they know it
not. Love never forgets the Differential.
“I will get you to mow this piece of grass for
me,” says the prudent mechanic, “ for I can earn
more in the shop.” And the poet replies, in the
same wisdom on a higher plane, to those who beg
him to come in to the aid of the disturbed insti-
tutions: “I can best help them by going on with
the creation of my own. I am a sad bungler at
laws, being afflicted with a certain inconsecutive-
ness of thought, impertinent association, and ex-
treme skepticism; but I recover my eyesight and
spirits in solitude.”
Costume. We must accept without criticism
or modification the costume of our times, and be
glad we have one care less on our hands, — dress,
money, language, railroads, taxation, and the civ-
ilization generally. The custom of the country
will do so much for us. Let it, and be thankful.


176
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
All the matériel is vanquished to your hand;
now for the triumphs of the Spirituel.'
Immortality. Is my future related to my pres-
ent only as my present to my past ? — say they
all. The universe suffers no detriment. But for
Cebes and Simmias? — We wish to be certified
that these dear Johns and Henrys, Anns and
Marias, shall keep the traits that are most their
own, and make them dear.
ev
Anything that Goethe said, another might
attain to say; but the profusion of sayings,
every one of which is good and striking, — no
man. In these days we rather incline to sniff
at men of talent, and at achievements, as if
the artist cost too much; but when a man
can do so many things, when achievement
amounts to such a prodigious sum, it grows
respectable.
Yet the “Autobiography” looks to-day like
a storm of gold-headed canes, and Ellery per-
ceived the snuff box.”
i Compare the passage in “ Wealth” as to the helpfulness
of custom in country life (Conduct of Life, p. 120).
2 Channing has been elsewhere quoted as detecting the
snuffy in Wordsworth.


1846] THE CENTRAL MAN 177
Men quarrel with your rhetoric. Society
chokes with a trope, like a child with the croup.
They much prefer Mr. Prose, and Mr. Hoarse-
as-Crows, to the dangerous conversation of Ga-
briel and the Archangel Michael, perverting all
rules, and bounding continually from earth to
heaven.
S
We shall one day talk with the central man,
and see again in the varying play of his features
all the features which have characterized our
darlings, and stamped themselves in fire on the
heart: then, as the discourse rises out of the
domestic and personal, and his countenance
waxes grave and great, we shall fancy that we
talk with Socrates, and behold his countenance:
then the discourse changes, and the man, and
we see the face and hear the tones of Shaks-
peare, — the body and the soul of Shakspeare
living and speaking with us, only that Shaks-
peare seems below us. A change again, and the
countenance of our companion is youthful and
beardless, he talks of form and color and the
riches of design ; it is the face of the painter
Raffaelle that confronts us with the visage of a
girl, and the easy audacity of a creator. In a
moment it was Michael Angelo ; then Dante ;


178
JOURNAL [AGE 42
afterwards it was the Saint Jesus, and the im-
mensities of moral truth and power, embosomed
us. And so it appears that these great secular
personalities were only expressions of his face
chasing each other like the rack of clouds.
Then all will subside, and I find myself alone.
I dreamed and did not know my dreams.
Thine and Mine.
Be the condition what it may, you must sup-
port it, and by resources native or constitutional
to you.
Mob. The boys kick and stamp for a noise
when Abby Kelley and Stephen Foster' speak,
not for any good reason, but because it is under-
stood that people are to yell and throw eggs when
the Fosters speak. ’T is a regular holiday for
the boys through the land when these people
go by; and if they do not make the noise, who
will ? You cannot allow too much for the levity
of men. Inconceivable is the levity of men:
every body overrates their character. They have
no meaning ; they have heels, they wish to feel
them, and it is the charm of noise versus the
charm of eloquence.
i S. S. Foster, of Worcester, and his wife, formerly Miss
Abby Kelley, ardent and courageous Abolitionist speakers.


1846] WHIGS. ALCOTT'S CHARGE 179
Individual. The same thing which happens
to us would happen to the gods also; for if you
come into the sweets of personality, you must
accept its adamantine limitations.
The Whigs have only for their system the
negative defence that they maintain it until
something really good appears.
First come, first served, said the World to the
Whig.
“A new commandment,” archly said the
Muse: “Thou shalt not preach, my dismal
one.”. ...
Alcott and Edward Taylor resemble each other
in the incredibility of their statement of facts.
One is the fool of his idea, the other of his fancy.
When Alcott wrote from England that he was
bringing home Wright and Lane, I wrote him
a letter, which I required him to show them,
saying, that they might safely trust his theories,
but that they should put no trust whatever in
his statement of facts. When they all arrived
here, - he and his victims,- I asked them if
1 Here occurs the first trial for the verse called "Adakpu
véuovtal aiwva, printed in the Poems, at the end of the
“Quatrains” (p. 297).


180
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
he showed them that letter; they answered that
he did: so I was clear.
VC
We manage well enough with the elements,
but when the elements become men, not so well;
for they are no longer pure, but have such quan-
tities of alloy as to make them of questionable
use. You can extract sunbeams from cucumbers,
but there is more cabbage than sunlight; and
phosphate from cows, but the chemical phos-
phate is better.
WS-
The New Man. Neither Herodotus nor Hume
has told the story as he knows it. None of
the arts, no politics, no extant religion, no news-
paper, no social circle or private friend quite
represents him. Alphonso of Castile, it is too
plain, was not consulted; might have given good
advice.' I see nothing for it but that yet his
opportunity and theatre should once for all be
expanded to his broad wish ; let him make a
little solar system of his own; let him play all
the parts and sing all the songs.
Don't bore him with your old France and
Egypt, with Homer and Shakspeare any longer.
1 See the poem named for this critical monarch in the
Poems.


1846] THE NEW MAN. HAFIZ 181
His duties are to omit and omit, to show you the
back of his hands, to do nothing as you would
have him. His prudence is a new prudence, his
charity a new kind, his temperance original, his
whole wealth of virtues are undescribed varieties.
Where's the genius, charm or stature
In our crowded highway shown?
Show me thy face, dear Nature;
That I may forget my own!
[The following is a translation from Hafiz
whose poems Mr. Emerson came at through the
medium of Von Hammer-Purgstall.]
Come let us strew roses
And pour wine in the cup,
Break up the roof of heaven
And throw it into new forms -
So soon the army of cares
Shed the blood of the true,
So will I with the cupbearer
Shatter the building of woe.
We will rosewater
In winecups pour,
And sugar in the censer
Full of musk smell throw.


182
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
Thy harping is lovely:
O play sweet airs,
That we may sing songs
And shake our heads.
Bring, East Wind, the dust of the body
To that great lord,
That we also may cast our eyes
On his beauty.
in-
The Noblest Chemistry. Sunshine from cucum-
bers. Here was a man who has occupied him-
self in a nobler chemistry of extracting honor
from scamps, temperance from sots, energy from
beggars, justice from thieves, benevolence from
misers. He knew there was sunshine under
those moping, churlish brows, elegance of man-
ners hidden in the peasant, heart-warming ex-
pansion, grand surprises of sentiment, in these
unchallenged, uncultivated men, and he per-
severed against all repulses until he drew it
forth. Now, his orphans are educated, his
boors are polished, his palaces built, his pic-
tures, statues, conservatories, chapels adorn
them; he stands there prince among his peers,
prince among princes. The sunshine is out and
all flowing abroad over the world.


1846) POETASTER. ROTATION
183
Poetaster. No man deserves a patron until
first he has been his own. What do you bring
us slipshod verses for? No occasional delicacy
of expression or music of rhythm can atone for
stupidities. Here are lame verses, false rhymes,
absurd images, which you indulge yourself in;
which is as if a handsome person should come
into a company with foul hands or face. Read
Collins. Collins would have cut his hand off
before he would have left, from a weak self-
esteem, a shabby line in his ode.
Rotation. The lesson of life lately is a pretty
rapid rotation of friends.' ...
At the funeral of Torrey, it seems almost too
late to say anything for Freedom, — the battle is
already won. You are a superserviceable echo.2
Yet when you come out and see the apathy and
incredulity, the wood and the stone of the people,
their supple neck, their appetite for pineapple
and ice cream!-
The passage on Rotation which follows is essentially
printed in “ Uses of Great Men” (Representative Men, p. 19).
2 The conviction was forming in Mr. Emerson's mind that
the slave power was rapidly working out its own doom.
The death in prison of Charles T. Torrey, a martyr to his
love of freedom, has been alluded to on page 170.


184
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
Singular credulity, which no experience will
cure us of, that another man has seen or may
see somewhat more than we have of the primary
facts; as, for example, of the continuity of the
individual; and eye for eye, object for object,
their experience is invariably identical in a million
individuals. In practical faculty there is great dif-
ference. No education can bring the grenadier
to combine like Bonaparte: but familiarity with
a seer will accustom the dullest swain to con-
template the moral verities and the laws of life.
It will not do to diminish personal responsi-
bility: do not give money and teach the man
to expect it. Do not give him a Bible, or a
genius, to think for him. Break no springs ;
make no cripples and paupers.
The Indians and the old monks choose their
dwelling-place for beauty of scenery. The In-
dians have a right to exist in this world: they
are (like Monadnoc and the Ocean) a part of it,
and fit the other parts — as Monadnoc and the
sea, which they understand and live with so well
- as a rider his horse. The teamster, the farmer,
are jocund and hearty, and stand on their legs:
but the women are demure and subdued as


1846) FIRE OF ELOQUENCE 185
Shaker women, and, if you see them out of
doors, look, as Henry Thoreau said, “as if they
were going for the Doctor.” Has our Chris-
tianity saddled and bridled us?
There never was an eloquence: it is a fabu-
lous power, as I have said, concerning which
men are credulous, because there is in them all
a tantalizing picture, which they would fain
verify on some personal history of Chatham or
Demosthenes. Whoso assays to speak in a pub-
lic assembly is conscious instantly of this lam-
bent flame enlarging, elongating, contracting
to a point, a Zodiacal light, a Jack-oʻlanthorn
evanescent, refusing to be an instrument. Ah!
could he confine that lambent fire ! — once man-
age to catch and confine that wildfire, - confine
and direct it in a blow-pipe, he would melt or
explode the planet. There is no despotism like
this clutching with one strong hand the master
nerve which carries all the pulsations from the
brain to the heart of humanity.
Bust of Demosthenes, a face of ropes; all cord
and tendon.
America. John Randolph is somebody : and
Andrew Jackson ; and John Quincy Adams,
and Daniel Webster.


186
(AGE 42
JOURNAL
Criticism. The next generation will thank
Dickens for showing so many mischiefs which
parliaments and Christianities had not been
strong enough to remove. Punch, too, has done
great service.
· Fourier, Saint-Simon, Bentham, Louis Blanc,
Owen, Leroux, and the Chartist leader, all crazy
men, and so they pound on one string till the
whole world knows that.
Here are two or three things to be discrim-
inated. First : the perception of our polarity
impressed on all the universe, and on the parti-
cles.' ...
Tell children what you say about writing and
laboring with the hands. I know better. Can
you distil rum by minding it at odd times? or ana-
Ilyze soils? or carry on the Suffolk Bank? or the
Greenwich Observatory? or sail a ship through
the Narrows by minding the helm when you hap-
pen to think of it? or serve a glass-house, or a
steam-engine, or a telegraph, or a railroad ex-
press? or accomplish anything good or any-
thing powerful in this manner? Nothing what-
i Most of what follows is printed in « Instinct and
Inspiration” (Natural History of Intellect, p. 87).


18461 WRITING AND LABOR
187
ever. And the greatest of all arts, the subtlest
and most miraculous effect, you fancy is to be
practised with a pen in one hand and a crowbar
or a peat-knife in the other. All power is of
geometrical increase. And to this painting the
education is the costliest, and mankind cannot
afford to throw away on ditching or wood-saw-
ing the man on whom choicest influences have
been concentrated, its Baruch or scribe. Just as
much and just such exercise as this costly crea-
ture needs, he may have; and he may breathe
himself with a spade, or a rapier, as he likes, not
as you like: and I should rather say, bad as I
think the rapier, that it were as much to his
purpose as the other implement. Both are bad,
are only rare and medicinal resorts. The writer
must live and die by his writing. Good for that,
and good for nothing else. A war, an earthquake,
the revival of letters, the new dispensation by
Jesus, or by Angels, Heaven, Hell, Power,
Science, the Néant, - exist only to him as colors
for his brush. That you think he can write at
odd minutes only shows what your knowledge
of writing is. American writing can be written w
at odd minutes, — Unitarian writing, charlatan
writing, Congress speeches, Railroad novels.'
i One or two sentences included above occur in “ Art and
artis
Narily
Keen
ith


188
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
Hawthorne invites his readers too much into
his study, opens the process before them. As
if the confectioner should say to his customers,
“Now, let us make the cake.”
Truth, indeed; we talk as if we had it, or
sometimes said it, or knew anything about
it:'...
Morals. We have never heard that music; it
is that which is sung to the Fates by Sirens or
by their mystic whirling wheel. That is what all
speech aims to say, and all action to evolve.
Literature, epics, tragedies, histories, are only
apology, interlude, makeshift, in the absence of
that. It is the basis of all the elements we know,
and is, as readily reached from one as from an-
other point. Anacreon, Hafiz, Horace, Her-
rick come out on it from drinking songs, as
easily as Newton from stars, and Jeremy Taylor
from a funeral sermon. In the Delphin Juve-
nals and other poets, they print the moral sen-
tences in Roman capitals, and Pope asterisked
Criticism," a fragmentary essay first published in the Cen-
tenary Edition of the Works (Natural History of Intellect,
p. 283).
1 The rest of the passage is in Natural History of Intel-
lect (p. 78).


1846) MORAL PHILOSOPHY 189
Shakspeare, and, in early Greece, they carved
the sentences of the Seven Wise Masters on
stones by the roadside, and the Christian in-
scribed the Church walls with the Command-
ments and Lord's Prayer.
I believe I must transcribe below some sen-
tences I find on a stray leaf that seems to belong
to some old lecture, which refer to this point:-
If I dared, I would summon a class to lec-
tures on Moral Philosophy: for I well know
that all real aid and inspiration which we can
owe each other is therein. It is really only so
much moral philosophy as enters into any dis-
course or any action, — that is memorable, and
gives value to the rest. All the rest is overture
or interlude to fill the time, and make the com-
pany forget the absence of the great performer.
But, on the instant when we rise so high as to
see and affirm the ethical law in relation to our
business, no apology is needed. We feel that
we have come together for a worthy purpose,
and would have done so, though we had trav-
elled hundreds of miles. If I am unworthy, if I
am forbidden to pass within the paling, and to
tell any secret of generosity and immortality, it
is vain that I speak at all; I am only one pre-
tender more. I hover still with inextinguishable
COU


190
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
hope about that mountain even in my exclusion,
happy to be in its neighborhood, for, “of divine
things,” it is said, “ the confines are reverend.”
The reason why I pound so tediously on that
string of the exemption of the writer from all
secular works is our conviction that his work
needs a frolic health to execute.' ...
Nature never draws the moral, but leaves it
for the spectator. Neither does the sculptor, nor
the painter, nor the poet.
The moral equalizes all, ... it is the law,
it takes no heed of the flaws of the material, but
fashions its cups and vases after its now divine
model, alike of porcelain, or of potter's earth, or
of water, or of air, as you fetch it stock, or fetch
it none.
The best is to be had. Under the whip of
the driver, the slave shall feel his equality with
kings; — the nothingness of all, the omnipo-
tence of all, as they share the principle which
fashions suns and earth, and the dreams of their
dreamers, gossamer solid and gossamer in
webs.
1 The rest of this long passage is in “Poetry and Imagina-
tion" (Letters and Social Aims, pp. 40, 41).


1846] SURFACE. NATURE'S VOTE 191
Wit has a great charter.' . . . But if the
metaphysicians or learned German doctors mut-
ter and analyze a little, the king cries with Dio-
tima, “ None of the gods philosophizes,” and
sends the police to him.
Surface. The animals crawl on or fly over the
rind of the planet, and the fishes and whales
swim only at the surface of the water. You
might skim the whole mammalia with a kitchen
dipper. In the deep sea, and under the crust,
all is still, nothing stirs. Human life and thought
is not less external. Nobody is profoundly good
or bad. Were they profound, they would satisfy.
Swedenborg must have the credit of opening
many new doors in what had been esteemed for
ages dead wall, as Belzoni discovered chambers
in the Pyramids. Then nobody knows his
sources of information. ...
“Saint Peter a unitarian,” “Isaac Newton a
unitarian,” that is neither here nor there, but if
you will find the maple and elm, granite, slate,
and slime, to be of your party and opinion, that
were something. That moral nature abhors slav-
i See Progress of Culture” (Letters and Social Aims,
p. 218).


192
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
ery, and New England sides with moral nature
against South Carolina and animal nature.
The Skeptics have got hold of Park Street
Church and will not let the body of the Martyr
Torrey come into it, for fear the crowd will
spoil their carpets. The Skeptics have got into
the Abolition Society, and make believe to be
enraged.
Fire fights fire, the larger faith the less. How
shall I educate my children?'...
If I were a member of the Massachusetts
legislature, I should propose to exempt all col-
ored citizens from taxation because of the in-
ability of the government to protect them by
passport out of its territory. It does not give
the value for which they pay the tax.
Also I should recommend that the executive
wear no sword, and the office of general be abol-
ished and the whole militia disbanded; for if
these persons do not know that they pretend
to be and to do somewhat which they are not
and do not, Hoar of Concord, Walker of the
1 What follows is in “ Instinct and Inspiration ” (Nat-
ural History of Intellect, p. 75).


1846] NEW ENGLAND'S SHAME 193
branded hand, Torrey the martyr, know that
the sword of Massachusetts is a sword of lath
or a turkey feather. It gives me no pleasure to
see the governor attended by military men in
plumes; I am amazed that they do not feel the
ridicule of their position.
New England is subservient. The President
proclaims war, and those Senators who dissent
are not those who know better, but those who
can afford to, as Benton and Calhoun.
Democracy becomes a government of bullies
tempered by editors. The editors standing in
the privilege of being last devoured. Captain
Rynders, tempered by Father Ritchie and
O'Sullivan.
Oliver Wellington describes to me Samanthe
Crawford of Oakham, who thought and felt in
such strict sympathy with a friend in the spirit-
ual world that her thought ultimated itself in a
preternatural writing on her arm, and again into
writing on a paper which seemed to float in at
the open window, and alighted on her lap.
Cunning. Shortsightedness of the mechanics
is wonderful. To win from you an advantage
of a few shillings or a few dollars, they will take


194
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
the risk of the long discontent and heart-burn-
ing of the housemates, who will take in future
any pains to avoid employing them again. Cer-
tainly it costs too much — those two or three
dollars. Mirabeau said, “ Madam, if there were
no such thing as probity, it would be invented
as a means of getting on in the world.” The
reason of this cheating, however, is plain; it is
their inability to make good calculations; they
have found themselves short, they had miscal-
culated, and they now go to piece the hide of
the lion by the skin of the fox.
To every creature its own weapon, however
skilfully concealed. I thought myself laid open,
without walls, to the hoofs of all cattle, but
found, many years ago, that the eyes of all
comers respected some fence which I could not
see. The very strawberry vines can hide their
berry from Fumble and keep it for Cupid.
CS
Tending. When we know not how to steer,
and dare not hoist a sail, we can float.' ...
One thing we have, though it is not of us,
continuity. I live now a little this way, — then
1 The rest of the passage is printed in “Sovereignty of
Ethics” (Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 196).


1846] CURRENTS. CONCORD 195
a little that; —but Nature, independently of our
mathematics, secures a consecutiveness which
later we acknowledge with pleased surprise.
Do you say, that the current goes down
stream? No; these are ocean currents, and the
currents of that ocean I speak of, go in all direc-
tions, up, down, sidewise, by exhalation, and by
radiation. The exhalation which we call death is
still in the current, and the current knows the way.
Continuity of Nature, not of us. We have been
baptized, vaccinated, schooled, churched, married.
In the City of Makebelieve is a great ostenta-
tion bolstered up on a great many small ostenta-
tions. I think we escape something by living in
the villages. In Concord here there is some
milk of life, we are not so raving distracted with
wind and dyspepsia. The mania takes a milder
form. People go a-fishing, and know the taste
of their meat. They cut their own whippletree
in the woodlot, they know something practically
of the sun and the east wind, of the underpin-
ning and the roofing of the house, of the pan
and the mixture of the soils.
In the City of Makebelieve all the marble
edifices were veneered and all the columns were
drums.
un


196
JOURNAL (AGE 42
A scholar is a literary foundation. All his ex-
pense is for Plato, Fabricius, Selden, Bentley.'
Scholar. Scholarship is our religion. We at-
tempt practice, urged by Nature,and are swamped
at once in the profane miscellany; and by re-
ligious instinct we recover the shore as quick as
we can, and in fault of power to execute our
thought, we console us at least with delineating
the picture.
May 23.
In Carlyle's head (photograph), which came
last night, how much appears! How unattain-
able this truth to any painter! Here have I
the inevitable traits, which the sun forgets not
to copy, and which I thirst to see, but which
no painter remembers to give me. Here have
I the exact sculpture, the form of the head, the
rooting of the hair, thickness of the lip, the man
that God made. And all the Lawrences and
D'Orsays will now serve me well as illustration.
I have the form and organism and can better
spare the expression and color. What would I
i The rest of the passage (with different authors named)
occurs in “Domestic Life” (Society and Solitude, p. 110).
2 The daguerreotype here reproduced must be the picture.
The English probably adopted the general term photograph



THOMAS CARLYLE





1846] CARLYLE'S HEAD. BOSTON 197
not give for a head of Shakspeare by the same
artist? of Plato? of Demosthenes? Here I have
the jutting brow, and the excellent shape of the
head. And here the organism of the eye, full of
England; the valid eye, in which I see the strong
executive talent which has made his thought
available to the nations, whilst others, as intel-
lectual as he, are pale and powerless. The pho-
tograph comes dated 25 April, 1846, and he
writes, “I am fifty years old.”
Boston or Brattle Street Christianity is a
compound of force, or the best Diagonal line
that can be drawn between Jesus Christ and
Abbott Lawrence.
How beautiful the manners of wild animals,
the bird that trims herself by the stream, the
habits of antelope and buffalo. Well, the charm
for a light-picture, instead of that giving the inventor's name,
earlier than Americans did. Carlyle, in a letter written April
30, said, “If your Photograph succeed as well as mine, I
shall be almost tragically glad of it. This of me is far beyond
all pictures ; really very like! I got Lawrence the Painter to
go with me and he would not let the people off till they had
actually made a likeness. O my Friend!... Do you bethink
you of Craigenputtock and the still evening there? I could
burst into tears, if I had the habit : but it is of no use.”


198
JOURNAL (AGE 42
of genius is the same: we wish man on the
higher plane to exhibit also the wildness or na-
ture of that higher plane, but the biography of
genius, so thirsted for, is not yet written.
SS
We educate and drill, we hot-press and pol-
ish, but the audacities of genius are one thing,
and the skill of drill another.
Superstition. We do not now make laws, like
our ancestors, forbidding under severe penalties
all persons whatsoever from transporting them-
selves through the air by night.
“Fruitur fama”; no, never. The poet is least
a poet when he sits crowned. The transcen-
dental and divine has the dominion of the world
on the sole condition of not having it.
Rus ruris. To the page on narcotics in “ the
Poet,” is to be added the confession, that the
European history is the Age of Wine. The Age
of Water, the simpler and sublimer condition,
when the wine is gone inward, or the constitu-
tion has powers of original chemistry and can
draw the wine of wine from water (as the earth
from loam and water educes the orange, the
CIS


1846] INDIRECTION. SCULPTOR 199
pomegranate, plum, peach, and pineapple), is
yet to be, is now in its coming.'
We shall not have a sincere literature, we
shall not have anything sound and grand as
Nature itself, until the bread-eaters and water-
drinkers come.
We are slain by indirections. Give us the
question of slavery, — yea or nay; Texas, yea
or nay; War, yea or nay; we should all vote
right. But we accept the devil himself in an in-
direction. What taxes will we not pay in coffee,
sugar, etc., but spare us a direct tax.
To the fir tree by my study-window come
the ground sparrow, oriole, cedarbird, common
crossbill, yellowbird, goldfinch, catbird, parti-
colored warbler, robin.'
Community. I remember often Greenough's
fine eulogy of Phidias and his antique comrades
who wrought together to make a frieze or a
I Compare « Bacchus " in the Poems.
2 Opposite the spaces between the windows on three sides
of the house were, at this time, young and vigorous balsam-
firs which seemed very attractive to birds of all kinds. There
were others in the front yard, but when they grew tall, and all
the lower boughs died, they were cut down.


200
JOURNAL
[AGE 42
statue, - for so intractable is the material of the
sculptor, that otherwise' his heat is expended
before his work is sufficiently forward to keep
him in heart for it. How many things should a
community exist for; as pictures, maps, diction-
aries, and apparatus, – as telescope and galvanic
battery, etc.
Now I think of committees to read books,
and on oath report of them. A scholar is crafty,
and hides his reading; he is full of ends and
reservations. I wish such report as a brother
gives to a brother, or a husband to a wife. I
will read Behmen, if you will read Sweden-
borg; and we will read it as generous gods, each
for the other. The committees must be as naked
and liberal as gods in their agency. Here is
Fourier with unsettled claims. Here is always
Plato; even Livy, I want searched and reported
on. I will take one, if another, who values his
time as much as I, will take another book.
There is, beyond this, a deeper, stricter com-
munity. We converse as spies. Our very ab-
staining to repeat and credit the fine remark
of our friend is thievish. Each man of thought
is surrounded by wiser men than he, if they can-
not write as well. Cannot he and they combine?
i That is, without several working at once.


20I
Chalanx's sumont and God's love
1846] COTTON. PILLSBURY 201
Cannot they sink their jealousies in God's love,
and call their poem Beaumont and Fletcher's
or the Theban Phalanx's. The city will for nine
days or nine years make differences and sinister
comparisons. There is a newer and more excel-
lent public that will bless the Friends.
Yet is not Community the dream of Bed-
lam?... Men are so discordant and of unequal
pulse: and excellence is inflamed or exalted in-
dividualism.
Cotton thread holds the Union together;
unites John C. Calhoun and Abbott Lawrence.
Patriotism for holidays and summer evenings,
with music and rockets, but cotton thread is the
Union.
Eloquence. We go to the bar, the senate, the
shop, the study, as peaceful professions, but you
cannot escape the demand for courage, no, not in
the shrine of Peace itself.' . . . Pillsbury, whom
1 The rest of the paragraph with similar beginning is printed
in “ Eloquence” (Letters and Social Aims, p. 115).
2 The passage which follows, though printed in the Works
with the name suppressed, is given here in the original form,
in honor of the memory of Parker Pillsbury, one of the early
champions of Freedom in the United States. (See Society
and Solitude, pp. 95, 96.)


202
JOURNAL (AGE 42
I heard last night, is the very gift from New
Hampshire which we have long expected, a
tough oak stick of a man not to be silenced or
insulted or intimidated by a mob, because he is
more mob than they; he mobs the mob. John
Knox is come at last, on whom neither money
nor politeness nor hard words nor rotten eggs
nor kicks and brickbats make the slightest im-
pression. He is fit to meet the bar-room wits
and bullies ; he is a wit and a bully himself and
something more; he is a graduate of the plough
and the cedar swamp and the snowbank, and
has nothing new to learn of labor or poverty or
the rough of farming. His hard head, too, had
gone through in boyhood all the drill of Cal-
vinism, with text and mortification, so that he
stands in the New England assembly a purer
.bit of New England than any, and Alings his
sarcasms right and left, sparing no name or per-
son or party or presence. The Concord Freeman
of the last week he held in his hand (the editor
was in the audience), and read the paragraph on
the Mexican War from it, and then gave his
own version of that fact.
What question could be more pertinent than
his to the Church, — “What is the Church
for, if, whenever there is any moral evil to be


1846] DEBATE. SELECTION 203
grappled with, as Intemperance, or Slavery, or
War, there needs to be originated an entirely
new instrumentality ?”
Mr. Ruggles, of Fall River, whom I once
heard in a conversation at the Lyceum, appeared
to me a formidable debater. He had a strong
personality which made nothing of his antago-
nists. They were baubles for his amusement.
His light, scoffing, and, as it were, final dealing
with them, seeming to weigh them and find
them nothings, was exquisitely provoking.
Oh, yes, abolition, or abstinence from rum, or
any other far-off and external virtue that will
divert attention from the all-containing virtue
which we vainly dodge and postpone, but which
must be met and obeyed at last, if we wish to
be substance and not accidents.
Who cannot be famous, said Osman, since
I am ?
Life is a selection, no more. The work of the
gardener is simply to destroy this weed, or that
shrub, or that tree, and leave this other to grow.
... The library is gradually made inestimable
by taking out from the superabounding mass of


204
JOURNAL
(AGE 42
books all but the best. ... Things collect very
fast of themselves, the difference between house
and house is the wise omissions.
A good Success. Alvah Crocker, Sewell F.
Belknap, Patrick Jackson, F. C. Lowell, Croton
Water Commissioner, Upjohn, Wiley and Put-
nam, W. H. Eliot, Horace Greeley, W. L. Gar-
rison, J. J. Astor, Catlin.
Alcott a survivor of the institutions.
Superstition. Pillsbury, commenting on Beech-
er's precious distinction of organic sins, made,
that is, by law, said that the American church
ought to adopt a new formula, and say, I bap-
tize thee in the name of the Governor, and of the
Senate, and of the House of Representatives. And
really, instead of Walter Scott's superstitions, the
virtual superstitions now are the deference to a
supposed public opinion; to a Parliamentari-
ness, to which, for example, Governor Briggs
has just now immolated the State of Massachu-
setts.
Alcott said that whatever could be done with
the eye he could do; meaning gardening, archi-
tecture, and, I suppose, picture and sculpture.


1846] AUDIENCE. REFORM 205
I look for poetry above rhyme, poetry which
the inspirer makes and applauds. The orator
and the poet must be cunning Dædaluses and
yet made of milk like the mob.
My friend said that the orator must have a
dash of the devil in him to suit an audience: at
least his rhetoric must be Satanic.
There is also something excellent in every
audience, capacity of virtue;'... Archangels
listen in lowly forms, archangels in satinette
and gambroon. So fleeting as it is, yet what is
so excellent of present Power as the riding this
wild horse of the People!
Every reform is only a mask under cover of
which a more terrible reform, which dares not
yet name itself, advances. Slavery and anti-
slavery is the question of property and no pro-
perty, rent and anti-rent; and anti-slavery dare
not yet say that every man must do his own
work, or, at least, receive no interest for money.
Yet that is at last the upshot.
The scrupulous and law-abiding become
Whigs, the unscrupulous and energetic are
1 What follows is in “ Eloquence” (Society and Solitude,
p. 66).


206
JOURNAL [AGE 42
Locofocos. The people are no worse since
they invaded Mexico than they were before,
only they have given their will a deed.
i The United States will conquer Mexico, but
· it will be as the man swallows the arsenic,
which brings him down in turn. Mexico will
poison us.
The Southerner is cool and insolent. “We
drive you to the wall, and will again.” Yes, gen-
tlemen, but do you know why Massachusetts
and New York are so tame? — it is because we
own you, and are very tender of our mortgages
which cover all your property.
The stout Frémont, in his Report of his Ex-
pedition to Oregon and California, is continually
remarking on “the group,” on “the picture,”
etc., “which we make.” Our secondary feel-
ing, our passion for seeming, must be highly
inflamed, if the terrors of famine and thirst for
the camp and for the cattle terrors from the
Arapahoes and Utahs, anxieties from want of
true information as to the country and the trail,
and the excitement from hunting, and from the
new and vast features of unknown country, could
not repress this eternal vanity of how we must
look!


1846) OBLIGATION. TONE 207
I play with the miscellany of facts and take
those superficial views which we call Skepti-
cism.'...
There are so many ways of looking at the
man. You call him ungrateful, because he does
not flatter you, who say that you conferred
favors on him. He thinks that which he took
of you was no more yours than the air which
he breathed in your house. He thinks that
favors should be returned in kind and not in
money; that is, that your strength should be
returned by his strength, not by his weakness.
You served, did you not, your Genius, and the
indications of nature and providence, as well as
you could interpret them, in serving him? -
he will not be less generous in his reciproca-
tions. He is grateful, but you must leave him
to designate who is the benefactor.
June 27.
The Poet should instal himself and shove all
usurpers from their chairs by electrifying man-
kind with the right tone, long wished for, never
heard. The true centre thus appearing, all false
1 The rest of the passage occurs in “ Montaigne ” (Repre-
sentative Men, p. 183).


208
(AGE 43
JOURNAL
VeI-
popular prese from the poterning the
a SC
centres are suddenly superseded, and grass grows
in the Capitol. Now and then we hear rarely a
true tone, a single strain of the right ode; but
the Poet does not know his place, he defers to
these old conventions; and though sometimes
the rogue knows well enough that every word
of his is treason to all the kings and conven-
tions of the world, yet he says, “It is only I”;
“Nobody minds what I say ”; and avails him-
self of the popular prejudice concerning his in-
significance, as a screen from
We had conversation to-day concerning the
poet and his problem. He is there to see the
type and truly interpret it. O Mountain, what
would your highness say,' thou grand expressor
of the present tense, of permanence? yet is there
also a taunt at the mutables from old Sitfast.
If the poet could only forget himself in his
theme, — be the tongue of the mountain, - his
egotism would subside, and that firm line which
he had drawn would remain like the names of
discoverers of planets, written in the sky in let-
ters which could never be obliterated.
A man is caught up and takes a breath or
1 This expression Mr. Emerson used in the poem “ Mo-
nadnoc,” begun the previous year.


1846] THOSE WHO WAIT 209
two of the Eternal, but instantly descends, and
puts his eternity to commercial uses.
But a pretty kettle of fish we have here, men
of this vast ambition, who wish an ethics com-
mensurate with Nature, who sit expectant to be
challenged to great performances, and are left
without any distinct aim; there are openings
only in the heavens before them, but no star
which they approach ; they have an invincible
persuasion that the Right is to come to them in
the social form, but they are aghast and deso-
late to know that they have no superiors in so-
ciety. Society treats their conscience as it does
men of genius; the only compliment it knows
how to pay a man of genius is to wait on him
and to ask him to deliver a Temperance Ad-
dress. So it proffers to these holy angels, wish-
ing to save the world, some bead or button
of Communism, an Anti-slavery Cause, Prison
Discipline, or Magdalen Refuge, or some other
absorbent to suck his vitals into some one or
other bitter partiality, and anyhow to deprive
him of that essential condition which he prays
for, — Adequateness.
Henry Thoreau seems to think that society
suffers for want of war, or some good excite-


210
JOURNAL [Age 43
ment. But how partial that is !— the masses
suffer for want of work as barbarous as they are.
What is the difference? Now the tiger has got
a joint of fresh meat to tear and eat: before, he
had only bones to grind and gnaw. But this
concerns only the tigers, and leaves the men
where they were.
The snails believe the geniuses are constitu-
tionally skeptical. I lament that wit is a light
mocker, that knowledge is the knowing that we
cannot know, that genius is criticism. I lament
to have life cheap; that a great understanding
should play with the world as he tosses his
walking-stick and catches it again. I wish the
years and months to be long, the days centuries,
loaded, fragrant: now we reckon them basely,
as bank days, by some debt that we are to pay
or that is to be paid us.'
Now, if there were an affection, a friendship
that could be sovereign, that would at once
bridge over these volcanic craters and gulf of
inequality between the doer and the task !
1 A sentence or two of this entry, though printed in
“Considerations by the Way” (Conduct of Life, p. 247), are
kept here for the connection.


1846] THE ODD MEN. YANKEE 211
Society. Society is a curiosity-shop full of odd
excellences, a Brahmin, a Fakeer, a giraffe, an
alligator, Colonel Bowie, Alvah Crocker, Bron-
son Alcott, Henry Thoreau; a world that cannot
keep step, admirable melodies, but no chorus,
for there is no accord.
Yankeedom. The Yankee means to make
moonlight work, if he can; and he himself,
after he has spent all the business hours in
Wall Street, takes his dinner at a French board-
ing-house, that his soup and cutlet may not be
quite unprofitable, but he shall learn the lan-
guage between the mouthfuls. I rode in the
stagecoach with a pedlar: “Mind the half-
cent,” said my companion. “A man can about
pay his shop-rent by minding the half-cent.”
The only gift to men, the only event, is a
new image, a new symbol. . . . Think how
many more eggs of that kind remain to be
1 This was a not uncommon economy in New England
up to 1850. Prices were named in shillings (six to the dollar
there), Nine pence (12} cents), “Two and thrippence,"
“Seven and six,” etc.
2 Then follows several sentences found in “ Poetry and
Imagination ” (Letters and Social Aims, pp. 13, 14).


212
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
hatched, when the under side of every stick and
stone all round the lake is covered with them.
[Here follows in the Journal the condensed
thought for the poem which Mr. Emerson made
for a motto to the essay “Circles,” and below
it the improving attempts to versify it.
Nature hates lines;
Rolls herself into balls,
And generates new.
Man, who knows the most,
Is confined to surfaces, outside,
And only learns the profile of the sphere,
Which is a circle.
Nature, hating lines and walls,
Self-willed, rolls her into balls,
Generating satellites;
Ill observed by peeping man.
Very wisest of his clan,
Anchored fast to the outsides,
Half learns the profile of the sphere, -
Wise if he knew what that signified.
II
Nature, hating lines and walls,
Rolls her matter into balls.


1846]
213
“CIRCLES.” MILTON
Ah! her wise ephemerals,
Nailed to surface and outside,
See the profile of the sphere;
Knew they what that signified,
A new genesis were here.
[Below, the editors introduce the finished
poem. (See Essays, Second Series ; also Poems.)]
Nature centres into balls,
And her proud ephemerals,
Fast to surface and outside,
Scan the profile of the sphere:
Wist they the thing signified
A new genesis were here.
Criticism is in its infancy. The anatomy of
genius it has not unfolded. Milton in the egg,
it has not found. Milton is a good apple on
that tree of England. It would be impossible,
by any chemistry we know, to compound that
apple otherwise : it required all the tree; and
out of a thousand of apples, good and bad, this
specimen apple is at last procured. That is: We
have a well-knit, hairy, industrious Saxon race,
Londoners intent on their trade, steeped in their
politics ; wars of the Roses ; voyages and trade
to the Low Countries, to Spain, to Lepanto, to
Virginia, and Guiana — all bright with use and


214
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
strong with success. Out of this valid stock
choose the validest boy, and in the flower of
this strength open to him the whole Dorian and
Attic beauty and the proceeding ripeness of the
same in Italy. Give him the very best of this
Classic beverage. He shall travel to Florence
and Rome in his early manhood: he shall see
the country and the works of Dante, Angelo,
and Raffaelle. Well, on the man to whose un-
palled taste this delicious fountain is opened,
add the fury and concentration of the Hebraic
genius, through the hereditary and already cul-
minated Puritanism, - and you have Milton,
a creation impossible before or again; and all
whose graces and whose majesties involve this
wonderful combination ; — quite in the course
of things once, but not iterated. The drill of
the regiment, the violence of the pirate and
smuggler, the cunning and thrift of the haber-
dasher's counter, the generosity of the Norman
earl, are all essential to the result.
mil
Mixture. The whole art of Nature is in these
juxtapositions of diverse qualities to make a
lucky combination, as green and gold, dry oak
leaves and snow, enhance each other, and make
a delicious mixture to the eye.


1846) RAW MATERIAL. TEST 215
Everything that makes a new sort of man is
good; for though he is only a chemic dose in
this generation, in the next, or next but one, he
becomes a poet, and then the new metal be-
comes inestimable.
People do not value raw material. The laws
of Menu, — Bhagavat, Behmen, Swedenborg,
Alcott, Channing, and what not, - I may have
to myself: nobody to quarrel with me for these
masses or particles. But when I have mixed
these simples with a little Boston water, it makes
what they call poetry and eloquence, and will
sell, it seems, in New York and London..
O Bacchus, make them drunk, drive them
mad, this multitude of vagabonds, hungry for
eloquence, hungry for poetry.'...
Test. Opportunity. Do they stand immovable
there, -the sots, — and laugh at your so-called
poetry? They may well laugh; it does not touch
them yet. Try a deeper strain. There is no
make-believe about these fellows; they are good
tests for your skill; therefore, a louder yet, and
yet a louder strain. There is not one of them
1 The rest is given in “ Poetry and Imagination " (Letters
and Social Aims, p. 70).


216
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
but will spin fast enough when the music reaches
him; but he is very deaf, try a sharper string.
Angels in satinette and calico, - angels in hunt-
ing-knives and rifles, — swearing angels, roar-
ers with liquor ;-O poet, you have much to
learn.
VA
Styles. There is the Periclean and there is the
Slam-bang style.
O Carlyle, the merit of glass is not to be seen, ,
but to be seen through; but every crystal and
lamina of the Carlyle glass is visible.
Let the poet work in the aim to eliminate
beauty;' that is verily his work; in that block
of stone, in that rough verse, to free the noble
conception, until it shall be as truly God's work
as is the globe of the earth, or the cup of the
lily.
Metre of the Poet again is his science of love.
Does he know that lore? Never was poet who
was not tremulous with love-lore.3
1 Though usually Mr. Emerson praised Carlyle’s writing,
he sometimes wearied at its intemperance and mannerism.
2 Attention must again be called to Mr. Emerson's habit-
ual misuse of the word eliminate. He means here discover
hidden beauty, not get rid of it.
3 This passage is versified in the Poems (see Quatrains,
“ Casella").


1846] LIVING HEAVEN. LIFE 217
[Mr. Emerson, in preparing a second edition
of the Essays, graced them with mottoes.
Here follows the first attempt for the motto
for “Spiritual Laws.” (See Essays, First Series,
and Poems.)]
Heaven is alive,
Self-built and quarrying itself
Up-builds eternal towers.
Self-commanded works
In vial cirque. . -
By dint of being all
Its loss is transmutation.
Fears not the craft of undermining days,
Grows by decays,
And by the famous might that lurks
In re-creation and recoil
Teach flames to freeze and ice to boil,
And through the arms of all the devils
Builds the firm seat of Innocence.
No lapse of memory
Betrays the angel into unbelief;
But in the beginning sees the time to come,
And on the road his home ;
He cannot fear defeat.
Longevity. I have lamented the brevity of
life, and yet it is easy to see that the stability


218
(AGE 43
JOURNAL
of human beings depends on that consideration.
Who would stay in Concord who had heard of
Valencia, but that there is not time to establish
himself there, without too great a hazard of his
happiness in the few years that remain? There-
fore we stick where we are.
Is not America more than ever wanting in
the male principle? A good many village at-
torneys we have, saucy village talents, preferred
to Congress, and the Cabinet, - Marcys, Buch-
anans, Walkers, etc., — but no great Captains.
Webster is a man by himself of the great mould,
but he also underlies the American blight, and
wants the power of the initiative, the affirmative
talent, and remains, like the literary class, only
a commentator, his great proportions only expos-
ing his defect. America seems to have immense
resources, land, men, milk, butter, cheese, timber,
and iron, but it is a village littleness; — village
| squabble and rapacity characterize its policy.
It is a great strength on a basis of weakness.
Perhaps the fairer picture of the permissive
Destiny - we can see what it allows, what the,
vegetable nature grows to, if unpruned; what
fancies, what appetites are the crop of this plant,
man. What Destiny will.“ What's your wull?”


,
1846] MEXICAN WAR. THOREAU 219
[The Declaration of War with Mexico was
with Mexico was
promulgated May 13, 1846.]
These — rabble — at Washington are really
better than the snivelling opposition. They have
a sort of genius of a bold and manly cast, though
Satanic. They see, against the unanimous ex-
pression of the people, how much a little well-
directed effrontery can achieve, how much crime
the people will bear, and they proceed from step
to step, and it seems they have calculated but
too justly upon your Excellency, O Governor
Briggs. Mr. Webster told them how much the
war cost, that was his protest, but voted the war,
and sends his son to it. They calculated rightly
on Mr. Webster. My friend Mr. Thoreau has
gone to jail rather than pay his tax. On him
they could not calculate. The Abolitionists de-
nounce the war and give much time to it, but
they pay the tax.'
1 Thoreau, with no outcry or parade, simply refused to
pay his small tax that year, as a protest against iniquity of the
Government. The friendly Sam Staples, collector, also deputy
sheriff and jailor, who had often helped him in his surveying,
offered to advance the money, supposing that Thoreau was
short of it. Thoreau explained that he did not mean to pay.
Staples said, “Then I shall have to shut you up.” “One
time is as good as another." • Come along, then.”
The amount of the tax was left at the jailor's door in the


220
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
re
It seems now settled that the world is no
longer a subject for reform: it is too old for
that, and is to have custard and calves' jelly.
We are no longer to apply drastic or alterative
pills, nor attempt remedies at all, but if we have
any new game or some fireworks or ice cream, -
if Jenny Lind come hither, or Fanny Elssler
return, it is all the case admits.
Boston is represented by Mr. Winthrop,
whose ready adhesion to Southern policy out-
speeds even the swift sequaciousness of his con-
stituents.
snes
ON.
The State is a poor, good beast who means
the best: it means friendly. A poor cow who
does well by you, - do not grudge it its hay.
It cannot eat bread, as you can ; let it have with-
out grudge a little grass for its four stomachs.
It will not stint to yield you milk from its teat.
You, who are a man walking cleanly on two
feet, will not pick a quarrel with a poor cow.
Take this handful of clover and welcome. But
evening. Staples did not see the bringer, who gave it to his
child, but said he always thought it was Squire Hoar's act or
that of Miss Hoar. Of course Thoreau had not counted on
this, nor could he protest, nor could Staples keep him at the
State's expense, so he went back to the shores of Walden.


no
18461 REFUSING THE TAX 221
if you go to hook me when I walk in the fields,
then, poor cow, I will cut your throat.
Don't run amuck against the world. Have a
good case to try the question on. It is the part
of a fanatic to fight out a revolution on the
shape of a hat or surplice, on pædo-baptism, or
altar-rails, or fish on Friday. As long as the state
means you well, do not refuse your pistareen.
You have a tottering cause : ninety parts of the
pistareen it will spend for what you think also
good : ten parts for mischief.' You cannot fight
heartily for a fraction. But wait until you have
a good difference to join issue upon. Thus
Socrates was told he should not teach. “Please
God, but I will.” And he could die well for
that. And Jesus had a cause. You will get one
by and by. But now I have no sympathy.
The Abolitionists ought to resist and go to
prison in multitudes on their known and de-
scribed disagreements from the state. They
know where the shoe pinches; have told it a
i Of course the tax was mainly Town tax, but Thoreau
either had not considered that, or, more probably, in his dis-
gust at the abject attitude of the community, felt as if the
whole body politic was iniquitous. Of Alcott's refusal to pay,
the good Staples said, “I vum ! I believe it was nothing but
principle !"


222
JOURNAL
[AGE 43
thousand times; are hot-headed partialists. I
should heartily applaud them; it is in their sys-
tem. ... But not so for you generalizers. You
are not citizens. You are not, as they, to fight
for your title to be church members or citizens,
patriots. Reserve yourself for your own work.
Alcott thought he could find as good a ground
for quarrel in the state tax as Socrates did in the
edict of the Judges. Then I say, Be consistent,
and never more put an apple or a kernel of corn
into your mouth. Would you feed the devil?
Say boldly, “There is a sword sharp enough to
cut sheer between flesh and spirit, and I will
use it, and not any longer belong to this double-
faced, equivocating, mixed, Jesuitical universe.”
The Abolitionists should resist, because they
are literalists; they know exactly what they ob-
ject to, and there is a government possible which
will content them. Remove a few specified griev-
ances, and this present commonwealth will suit
them. They are the new Puritans, and as easily
satisfied. But you, nothing will content. No
government short of a monarchy, consisting of
one king and one subject, will appease you. Your
objection, then, to the State of Massachusetts is
deceptive. Your true quarrel is with the state
of Man.


1846] ALCOTT. WEBSTER 223
In the particular, it is worth considering that
refusing payment of the state tax does not reach
the evil so nearly as many other methods within
your reach. The state tax does not pay the
Mexican War. Your coat, your sugar, your
Latin and French and German book, your
watch does. Yet these you do not stick at
buying.
But really a scholar has too humble an opin-
ion of the population, of their possibilities, of
their future, to be entitled to go to war with
them, as with equals.
This prison is one step to suicide.
He knows that nothing they can do will ever
please him. Why should he poorly pound on
some one string of discord, when all is jangle?
July 31.
Webster knows what is done in the shops,
and remembers and uses it in the Senate. He
saw it in the shop with an eye supertabernal and
supersenatorial, or it would not have steaded.
He is a ship that finds the thing where it is
cheap, and carries it where it is dear.
Every word of Webster has passed through
the fire of the intellect. The statement is already
erect and disengaged.


224
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
ome use
om
Knowledge is of some use in the best com-
pany. But the grasp is the main thing.' ...
August 22.
Teachers. The teacher should be the comple-
ment of the pupil; now, for the most part, they
are Earth's diameters wide of each other. A col-
lege professor should be elected by setting all
the candidates loose on a miscellaneous gang
of young men taken at large from the street.
He who could get the ear of these youths after
a certain number of hours, or of the greatest
number of these youths, should be professor.
Let him see if he could interest these rowdy
boys in the meaning of a list of words.
[About this time Margaret Fuller, having
left New England, to which she was destined
never to return, obeying her yearning for Italy,
visited Carlyle with a letter from Mr. Emerson
commending her to him. (See Carlyle-Emerson
Correspondence, vol. ii, pp. 115, 116.) During
the summer the desired picture of Emerson also
came to Carlyle. Emerson wrote at the end of
May expressing delight in Carlyle's picture and
said, “I was instantly stirred to an emulation
i The rest of the passage thus beginning is in Natural His-
tory of Intellect (p. 48).


1846) EXCHANGE OF PORTRAITS 225
of your love and punctuality, and last Monday,
which was my forty-second birthday, I went to
a new Daguerreotypist who took much pains
to make his picture right. I brought home three
shadows, not agreeable to my own eyes. The
machine has a bad effect on me.” Carlyle did
not like the picture with its heavy shadows. He
wrote, “I could not at first, nor can I with perfect
decisiveness, bring out any feature completely
recalling to me the old Emerson that lighted
on us from the Blue at Craigenputtock long ago
– eheu! Here is a genial, smiling, energetic
face, full of sunny strength, intelligence, integ-
rity, good humor, but it lies imprisoned in bale-
ful shade as of the valley of Death ; seems
smiling on me as if in mockery. “Dost know
me, friend? I am dead, thou seest, and forever
hidden from thee; - I belong already to the
Eternities and thou recognizest me not.” (Car-
lyle-Emerson Correspondence, vol. ii, p. 110.)]
A great design belongs to a poem, and is bet-
ter than any skill in execution. ... We shall
come to value only that excellence of finish
which great design brings with it.
We are liberal to the Astors and Vanderbilts
and Websters, and allow their barbarous and


226
JOURNAL [Ace 43
semi-beast life to pass, though they give none
to the Olympian and Divine, yet we ought as
equitably to reverence Pan in humblebee and
cricket. One example of that would justify so
much.
We talked of the old Baconian or Platonistic
canon. There is nothing in the globe of the
world which is not in the crystal sphere. ...
And our Parisian savant has discovered mathe-
matically a new planet yet invisible.
menceme
S
Wednesday, August (?).
At Commencement met with the members
of the Class of 1821. We counted nineteen
present; Josiah Quincy presided : also present,
Angier, Bulfinch, Bunker, Burton, Dexter, Gard-
ner, Hill, Hilliard, Cheney, Blood, Kent, Lowell,
Reed, Stetson, Upham, Withington, Moody,
Emerson ; a very cordial three hours' space we
spent together, and made up at last a little purse
of $82.50 for — Adjourned for five years.
College Class of 1821.' We have the less time
to spend, for these many years since we met: I
must not detain you. We were here before, mere
lambs and rams, and we have come back solemn
• 1 Evidently prepared for the class meeting.


1846] SPEECH TO THE CLASS 227
Abrahams; and on account of Mrs. A. and the
young A.'s we had some ado to get here now,—
we that so ran and skipped. ... Scots like to
come of “kenned folk,” and there is an eminent
use in having one's training in the public eye.
But it is curious to see how identical we are.
We can remember ourselves, about as good and
bad as to-day, 25, 30, 40 years and more. In
college, I had unpreparedness for all my tasks.
I have the same unpreparedness at this moment.
Who is he that does not remember the roots of
all the habits of his chum and his set in Dr.
Popkin's recitation room or in Commons Hall ?
We have had clients, pupils, patients, parishes.
We have had hay to make, horses to buy, car-
goes to manage, estates to settle, railroads to
superintend, banks to direct, cities to preside
over, states to govern, colleges to rule; but if
we have done these things well, as I doubt not,
it was because we could carry ourselves good-
humoredly as boys. With a fair degree of speed,
I think there is still more bottom in the com-
pany; and what pleases me best in the history
of the Class is its good position and promise at
this moment. Its strength is not exhausted: our
day has not been short; but we are not yet
thinking of going to bed, and being tucked up
e


228
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
for the long night. ... I offer the sentiment;
- the proceeding education of the Class.
was
At Phi Beta Kappa, Sumner's oration was
marked with a certain magnificence which I do
not well know where to parallel.
He quoted Story, as saying, “ Every man is
to be judged by the horizon of his mind.”
“ Taine,” he said, after Allston, I think, “is
the shadow of excellence, but that which follows
him, not which he follows after."
To the youth the hair of woman is a meteor.
I think that he only is rightly immortal to
whom all things are immortal; he who witnesses
personally the creation of the world; he who
enunciates profoundly the names of Pan, of
Jove, of Pallas, of Bacchus, of Proteus, of Baal,
of Ahriman, of Hari, of Satan, of Hell, of Nem-
esis, of the Furies, of Odin, and of Hertha ;
- knowing well the need he has of these, and
a far richer vocabulary; knowing well how im-
perfect and insufficient to his needs language is:
requiring music, requiring dancing, as languages;
a dance, for example, that shall sensibly express
our astronomy, our solar system, and seasons,
in its course.


1846] SAINT. POET. SPENSER 229
Our poets have not the poetic magnanimity,
but a minimimity rather; and, when they would
go abroad, instead of inspecting their inward
poem, they count their dollar bills.
The saints dare more, but I hate lamp-smoke;
I wish them to know the beautiful equality and
rotation of merits, destroying their saintly ego-
tism or prigism; let them worship the apple-
trees, the thistles, and their beautiful lovers the
humblebees, hummingbirds and yellow butter-
flies, as they pass, and, as I say, know the Beau-
tiful Nemesis.
All men are of a size,' . . . we are willing that
Christianity should have its glories, and Greece
its own, and India and England; but we are
inly persuaded that Heaven reserves an equal
universe of good for each of us, ...
Poets do not need to consider how fruitful
the topic is, for with their superfluity of eyes
every topic is opulent. Spenser seems to delight
in his art for his own skill's sake. In the Muio-
potmos, see the security and ostentation with
which he draws out and refines his description
1 All but one sentence of what follows is printed in Repre-
sentative Men (p. 335).
sentati


230
JOURNAL [AGE 43
of a butterfly's back and wings, of a spider's
thread and spinning, of the Butterfly's Cruise
among the flowers, “ bathing his tender feet in
the dew which yet on them does lie,” – it is
all like the working of an exquisite loom which
strongly and unweariedly yields fine webs, for
exhibition, and defiance of all spinners.
Destiny. Everything will come home, and a
man also. Where is his home? There, thither,
where he is incessantly called. He will surely
come home, and, if long delayed, the more
fiercely.
Sunday, September 20.
A mood suffices Ellery Channing for a poem.
“There, I have sketched more or less in that
color and style. You have a sample of it. What
more would you get, if I should work on for-
ever?” He has no proposition to affirm or
support. He scorns it. He has, first of all
Americans, a natural flow, and can say what he
will. I say to him, “If I could write as well as
you, I would write a great deal better.”
“As for beauty, I need not look beyond an
oar's length for my fill of it;” — I do not know
whether he used the expression with design or
no, but my eye rested on the charming play of


1846] COLOUR. BANGOR
231
light on the water which he was striking with
his paddle. I fancied, I had never seen such
color, such transparency, such eddies; it was
the hue of Rhine wines, it was jasper and verd
antique, topaz and chalcedony ; it was gold and
green and chestnut and hazel in bewitching suc-
cession and relief without cloud or confusion.
BANGOR, MAINE, October 6, 7, 8.
Three hundred townships good for timber
and for nothing else. Palmer Mills that I saw
building, — the whole property was reckoned
worth $60,000 before the freshet, but would
not have been relinquished for that sum.
Pines a thousand years old; every year they
must go further for them: they recede, like
beavers, or Indians, before the white man.
Those Bangor men buy townships merely for
the logs that can be cut on them, and add town-
ship to township. Some day a mine, a slate
quarry, good marble or soapstone or lime, is
found in them, or a new railroad is projected;
the timber land becomes unexpectedly what is
called “a settling township,” and the lumber
merchant suddenly finds himself the lord of vil-
lages, towns, and cities, and his family estab-
lished as great proprietors.


232
JOURNAL (AGE 43
My friend William Emerson,' at Bangor, told
me that he thought“Judge Story might be a
great man, oh yes, a man of a good deal of
talent and learning and fame, but he did not
think so highly of him as a judge, as many
did ; that he had two failings as a judge: first,
in p’int of judgment; and second, in p’int of
integrity; — you take my idea?”
New England. I think again of the true his-
tory of New England, and wish to see the just
view taken with such grand sight as to omit all
or almost all the chronologies and personalities
which ordinarily constitute the tale. Now, let
us have only the aboriginal features, a god step-
ping from peak to peak nor planting his foot
but on a mountain. Calvinism and Christianity,
being now ended, shall be ended. Their pow-
erful contribution to the history shall be ac-
knowledged. England should be dealt with as
truly. English conventions and the English
public shall not have so much politeness from
us. Neither shall the forms of our government
and that wearisome constitutional argument mis-
lead us, as it has Whig parties and good-boy
statesmen. But we will see what men here really
1 Probably a distant relative.


1846) NEW ENGLAND. PARKMAN 233
wish and try to obtain, often against their pro-
fessions; what New England gravitates toward.
All the materialities should be freely received
to refresh the picture; the ice, the lumber, leather,
iron, and stone, and the cotton manufacture; and
we should not spare to trace these facts to their
grand home in the geology, and show the man
the contemporary of pine, chestnut and oak,
granite, ice, waterfalls, and therefore a worker
in them; and how his commerce brought him
hides from Valparaiso and lead from Missouri.
The negative merit of the piece would be its
resolute rejection of the faded or regnant super-
stitions, as of the Christian mythology, of the
agricultural, commercial, and social delusions
which pass current in men's mouths, but have
long lost all reality.
Dr. Parkman told me yesterday ’t was thirty-
three years since he was ordained ; and he could
not credit that he was as old as his predecessor,
Dr. Eliot, when he died. “ Dr. Eliot was an old
man, and my infirmity,” said Dr. Parkman, “is
my extreme youth.”
Whitefield's text after the death of his wife
was “The creature was made subject to vanity.”


234
JOURNAL [AGE 43
November 23.
Burke a little too Latin in Debi Sing, but
what gradation ! such opulence as permits se-
lection. Webster, too, always has senatorial
propriety. I wish to see accomplished trans-
lators of the world into language. I wish the
leisures of the spirit. I please me with I know
not what accounts of Oriental tale-tellers who
transport and ravish the hearer and make him
forget the hours of the day and the taste of
meat. But our careful Americans blurt and spit
forth news without grace or gradation, paren-
thetically between the mouthfuls of their hasty
dining.
[The volume of Poems, that friends had been
calling for for more than three years, came out
at last at Christmas. There follows in the Jour-
nal a list of more than eighty persons to whom
Mr. Emerson gave them.]
Ons
non
Alcott, among many fine things he said of,
my volume of Poems, said, the sentiment was
moral and the expression seemed the reverse.
I suppose if verses of mine should be com-
pared with those of one of my friends, the moral
tendency would be found impressed on all mine


1846]
READING
235
as an original polarity; that all my light is polar-
ized.
[Mr. Cabot, in his Memoir, quotes from a
letter written by Mr. Emerson to his brother
William in New York, on December 29, in
which he says: “I had lately an irregular appli-
cation from different quarters in England pro-
posing to me to come thither to lecture, and
promising me engagements to that end in the
great towns, if I would. And I understand the
Queenie (not Victoria, but Lidian) to say that
I must go.” The proposal, however, did not
take sufficiently definite shape to justify decision
for a month or two.]
AUTHORS OR Books QuoTED OR REFERRED TO
IN JOURNAL FOR 1846
Zoroaster; Pindar; Anacreon ;
Alfred the Great; Pons de Capdueil ;
Hafiz; Copernicus; Roger Bacon ;
Spenser, Muiopotmos; Chapman ; Kepler ;
Donne; Selden; Drelincourt, Consolations de
rame fidèle
Bentley; Defoe ; Cowper ; Johann Albert
Fabricius; Abbé Prévost d'Exiles, Histoire du
Chevalier des Grieux et Manon Lescaut;


236
JOURNAL (AGE 43
Whitefield; Kant; Burke, Speeches ; Ben-
tham ; Goethe; Burns; Saint-Simon; Fichte,
Die Zeugung ; Schleiermacher; Robert Owen;
Fourier; Von Hammer-Purgstall, Translations
of Hafiz; Schelling; O'Connell; “Novalis”
(Von Hardenberg);
Pellet, and Basil Hall (Travels and Voyages)
on Napoleon; Karl Otfried Müller, Introduction
to Greek Mytbology; Oken, Natural History;
Chodzko, Specimens of Ancient Persian Poetry ;
Hegel ;
Carlyle; Cousin ; Webster; Everett;
Alcott; Bryant; Dr. Ezra Stiles Gannett;
Pierre Leroux, De l'humanité; Tennyson,
Poems; Richard Monckton Milnes, Poems;
Dickens; Hood, Poems; Elizabeth Barrett;
Robert Browning;
Henry Norman Hudson, Essays ; Longfel-
low; Lowell; O. MacKnight Mitchel, Plane-
tary and Stellar Worlds.


JOURNAL
STUDIES
A NEW QUARTERLY
NANTUCKET
PERSIAN AND NORSE READING
GARDEN AND ORCHARD
YANKEE FACULTY
CONCORD WALKS
ENGLAND
MEETING CARLYLE AGAIN
LECTURES TO WORKINGMEN
IN THE BLACK COUNTRY





JOURNAL XXXVIII
1847
(From Journals O, AB, CD, GH)
Caput est artis decere.'
Θεόυ θέλοντος καν επί ριπός πλέους.
[The year began with the usual lecturing before
Lyceums in cities and country towns, but with
no course in Boston.]
(From 0)
January 10, 1847.
Read Alfieri's Life : who died the year I was
born, was a dear lover of Plutarch and Mon-
taigne, a passionate lover of beauty and of study.
His rare opportunities and the determination
to use them make him a valuable representa-
tive. His temperament, however, isolated him,
i Let Art, first of all, be seemly.
2 God willing, you could sail upon a twig ; a verse of Pin-
dar quoted by Plutarch, or, rendered in verse, by the old
translator,
• Were it the will of Heaven, an osier bough
Were vessel safe enough the seas to plough."


240
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
and he travels in a narrow track with high walls
on either side. Yet he is most fortunate in his
friendships, and at last in his love. The noble
is seeking the same good as the republican,
namely, one or two companions of intelligence,
probity, and grace, to wear out life with, and
rebut the disparagement he reads in the sea and
the sky. Gori, Caluso, and the Countess of
Albany were sea and sky to him. One has many
thoughts, in reading this book, of the uses of
aristocracy and Europe to the native scholar.
The systems of blood and culture which we
call France, Spain, Piedmont, etc., must not be
set down as nothing. There is a strong, char-
acterized, resultant man, result of race, climate,
mountain, sea, occupation, and institutions, who
is the Frenchman, and appears well enough and
acutely interesting to any one who has the op-
portunity of conversing with many of the best
individuals of that nation; not recognized in
any one man, but well enough exhibited in the
most distinguished French circles. In like man-
ner there is a Spaniard, an Englishman, a Ro-
man, and the rest. This is plainer when we
remember how fast Nature adopts art, and,
whatever form of life calculation leads us into
for one or two generations, Nature presently
nvel
One
e


1847) MACHIAVELLI. THOREAU 241
adopts into the blood, and creates men organized
for that accidental and artificial way of working.
To be a noble is to have a ticket of admission
to the flower of each of these races' ...
Grant the man divine, he wants also a divine
fact; and no man, let him be never so thought-
ful, ever went to the seashore, from an inland
home, without a surprise, and a feeling that
here was new invitation for somewhat that hith-
erto slept.
Som
Machiavelli. I have tried to read Machia-
velli's histories, but find it not easy. The Flor-
entine factions are as tiresome as the history of
the Philadelphia fire-companies.
reau W
Henry Thoreau wants to go to Oregon, not
to London. Yes, surely; but what seeks he
but the most energetic Nature? And, seeking
that, he will find Oregon indifferently in all
places; for it snows and blows and melts and
adheres and repels all the world over.
Yes, the Zoroastrian, the Indian, the Persian
scriptures are majestic, and more to our daily
i Here follows a passage with a similar beginning printed
in “Wealth” (Conduct of Life, p. 94).


242 i JOURNAL
(AGE 43
purpose than this year's almanac or this day's
newspaper.' ...
In looking at Menu and Saadi and Bhaga-
vat, life seems in the East a simpler affair,-
only a tent, and a little rice, and ass's milk; and
not, as with us, what commerce has made it, a
feast whose dishes come from the equator and
both poles.
February.
It is now said that the Mexican War is al-
ready paid for in the enhanced value of cotton
and breadstuffs now to be sold by our people;
and chiefly of cotton, a novelty, a single article
on whose manufacture such immense mechani-
cal powers have been concentrated that it takes
the lead of all other articles of trade. Now I
suppose this is mere ignorance. Not a single
plant, perhaps, in the whole botany, that is
not also adapted to general uses, and will not
hereafter make the bread of millions, by its
manufacture.
Ward’ has aristocratical position and turns it
i The rest of this long passage is found in “ Books "
(Society and Solitude, pp. 219, 220).
2 Samuel Gray Ward, Mr. Emerson's friend and corre-
spondent. (See Letters to a Friend, edited by C. E. Norton.
Houghton, Mifflin & Co.)


1847] PILLSBURY. MORALS 243
to excellent account; the only aristocrat who
does. For the rest, this access to the best circles
of information is of no use, and they are trifling
and tedious company. But in reading Legare's
journal, who seems to have seen the best com-
pany, I find myself interested that he should
play his part of the American gentleman well,
but am contented that he should do that instead
of me,- do the etiquette instead of me, -as I
am contented that others should sail the ships
and work the spindles.
February 15.
I find this morning good things in Legaré on
Demosthenes. ...
He translates 'Ttókplous, Demosthenes' fa-
mous receipt, "acting,” not "action.”
Pillsbury said, that he found that people like
to laugh, and he set himself to make them laugh
at things which ought to be laughed down, such
as the Church and Whiggism.
Morals. We are easily great with a loved and
honoured associate ; then the sentiments appear
as new and astonishing as the lightning out of
the sky, and disappear as suddenly, without any
sequel, leaving us among the marketmen.


244
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
(From AB)
What is the oldest thing? A dimple or whirl-
pool in water. That is Genesis, Exodus, and all.
Scholar perpetual. Vice of men is setting up
for themselves too early. I can't go into the
quarrel or into the tavern, etc., because I am old;
or into the Abolition meeting at Faneuil Hall
and attempt to speak; it won't do for me to fail !
But I look at wise men, and see that I am very
young. I look over those stars yonder and into
the myriads of the aspirant and ardent souls, and
I see I am a stranger and a youth, and have yet
my spurs to win. Too ridiculous are these airs
of age. Ancora imparo,' I carry my satchel still.
A scholar brooks no interruptions. He must
post his books every day. For want of posting
the books at Greenwich, the star was lost — by
Adams? and England.
Apples of gold in silver salvers set.
1 I still learn. In his lecture “ Michael Angelo” (Naty-
ral History of Intellect) Mr. Emerson tells that one of the
artist's last drawings gave a hint of his own feeling, — a sketch
of an old man with a long beard riding in a go-cart with an
hour-glass before him, and the motto, Ancora imparo.
2 The English claimant of the discovery of the planet
Neptune.


1847] MUSIC. SAADI. OCEAN 245
We used to think that great thoughts insured
musical expression, but these Thirlwalls and
Grotes write Greek history in dullest prose.
Wine is properly drunk as a salutation ; it is
a liquid compliment.
Affirmative. Set down nothing but what will
help somebody.
Saadi’s five classes of men that may travel are,
the rich merchant; the learned; the beautiful;
the singer; and the mechanic,- because these
are everywhere sure of good reception.
See this terrible Atlantic stretching its stormy
chaos from pole to pole, terrible by its storms, by
its cold, by its icebergs, by its Gulf Stream, — the
desert in which no caravan loiters, but all hurry
as through the valley of the Shadow of Death.
As impassable to the poor Indian through all
ages as the finer ocean that separates him from
the moon; let him stand on the shore and idly
entreat the birds or the wind to transport him
across the roaring waste. Yet see, a man arrives
at the margin with one hundred and twenty dol-
lars in his pocket, and the rude sea grows civil,
and is bridged at once.


246
(AGE 43
JOURNAL
The chief good of life seems — this morning
- to be born with a cheerful, happy temper, and
well adjusted to the tone of the human race: for
such a man feels himself in the harmony of
things, and conscious of an infinite strength. He
need not do anything. But if he is not well
mixed and averaged, then he needs to achieve
something, build a railroad, make a fortune,
write an Iliad, as a compensation to himself for
his abnormal position.
Temperance. In the “Ballad of Lady Jane”
in Jamieson's Ballads, vol. ii, p. 78, I find this
verse: -
“O she has served the lang tables
Wi' the white bread and the wine ;
· But aye she drank the wan water,
To keep her colour fine."
Demosthenes drank fair water.
Health, South wind, books, old trees, a boat,
a friend.
Mesmerism. I thought again of the avarice
with which my man looks at the Insurance
Office and would so fain be admitted to hear the
gossip that goes forward there. For an hour to
be invisible there, and hear the best informed


1847] THE UNMAGNETIC MAN 247
men retail their information he would pay great
prices, but every company dissolves at his ap-
proach. He so eager- and they so coy. A
covey of birds do not rise more promptly from
the ground when he comes near than merchants,
brokers, lawyers, disperse before him. He went
into the tavern, he looked into the window of
the grocery shop, with the same covetous ears.
They were so communicative; they laughed
aloud; they whispered ; they proclaimed their
sentiments;— he opened the door, — and the
conversation received about that time a check,
and one after another went home. Boys and
girls who had so much to say provoked scarcely
, less curiosity, and were equally inaccessible to
the unmagnetic man.
Great men are much when you consider that
the race goes, with us, on their credit.' ...
Greek architecture is geometry. Its temples
are diagrams in marble, and not appeals to the
imagination, like the Gothic. Powers of the
square and cube.
vers
Now we felt out of doors as we do in a parlor
1 The substance of the passage beginning thus is in - Uses
of Great Men” (Representative Men, p. 4).


248
JOURNAL [AGE 43
with a high ceiling, that we are little ; but when
our imaginations are addressed, and we are cul-
tured, we shall not.
The moral must be the measure of health.'...
Greenhouse. Put dittany in your greenhouse,
asphodel, lotus, nepenthe, moly, poppy, rue,
selfheal, hæmony, euphrasy, acanthus.
Arboretum should contain sandal tree, banian,
upas, magnolia.
April 26.
I set out by the hands of John Hosmer and
John Garrison and Anthony Colombe in the
Warren lot twenty-four apple trees, and forty
pear trees; and six apple trees in the east side
of the heater-piece3 = seventy trees.
Alcott wishes to call together the Club of
Notables again. But the old objection recurs :
Better let your tongue lie still till it forgets its
1 The rest of the paragraph is printed in “Worship”
(Conduct of Life, p. 218).
2 A somewhat similar passage is found in “ Country Life,”
which paper, however, was first published in the Centenary
Edition (p. 174). v. 12.
3 The triangular lot between the Cambridge Turnpike and
the “Great Road” to Boston, so called from the shape of
the iron stand on which flat-irons are set down.


1847] THE ENCHANTED PATH 249
office than undertake for God before he calls
you. Thence comes Charlatanism, Unitarian-
ism. “If the other train do not arrive,” said
Mr. Superintendent of the Single Track Rail-
road, “do not move until your wheels rust
off.” And many a life was saved by his tyran-
nical caution.
CI
Concord has certain roads and waste places
which were much valued for their beauty, but
which were difficult to find. There was one
which whoso entered could not forget, — but he
had more than common luck if he ever found
it again, let him search for it with his best dili-
gence. Run, boy, from the swamp beside the
lake to the big hemlock where a chestnut has
been chopped down at twelve feet high from
the ground, then leave the high wood-road and
take the ox-path to the right; — pass one right-
hand turn, and take the second, and run down
a valley with long prairie hay covering it close;
an old felled pine tree lies along the valley; fol-
low it down till the birds do not retreat before
you; then till the faint day-moon rides nearer;
then till the valley is a ravine with the hills of
Nobscot seen at the bottom of it across the Bay.'
i In this route given to the boy, though fancifully treated,


250
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
OV
CI
I value morals because it gives me something
to do to-day. It enhances all my property. The
foreign has lost its charm. The beauty of my
youth has come back. I woke up one morn-
ing and found the ice in my pond promised
to be a revenue. It was as if somebody had
proposed to buy the air that blew over my
field. Well, it should have taught me that my
richest revenues were in fasting and abstain-
ing, in enduring and waiting, in bearing insult
and rendering good service. Can you go to Bos-
ton in the cars to-morrow and come back at
night safe and not degraded ?
Purpose, tendency, I have learned to value
and nothing else. Have you made the life of
man clearer of any snag or sawyer?
man
sa
I think the whole use in literature is the
moral.
Morals differ from intellectuals in being in-
stantly intelligible to all men.
can be traced a walk to which Mr. Emerson once took his
children from the southern bank of Walden, beside the swamp
by the railroad into which the pond drains under the glacial
moraine, and thence down the little brook, named by Mr.
Channing the Sanguinetto, to its outlet into that enlargement
of the river under the cliffs, called Fairhaven Bay.


1847) TRUE THOMAS. ORATOR 251
« Farewell, Thomas, I wend my way;
I may no longer stand with thee.”
“Give me some token, my lady gay,
That I may say I spake with thee."
“ To harp and carp,* where so ever ye gone,
Thomas, take thou these with thee.”
“ Harping,” he said, “ ken I none,
For tongue is chief of minstrelsy.” —
" — If thou wilt spae, † or talés tell,
Thomas, thou shalt make never lye ;
Wheresoever thou go, to frith or fell,
I pray thee speak never no ill of me.”,
* talk
† spell
Eloquence. And let it be well considered in
Eloquence that what we praise and allow is only
relatively good, and that perhaps a person is
there present who, if he would, could unsettle
all that we have just now agreed on. We have
fallen into a poor beggarly way of living, and our
orators are of the same poverty.' ...
i These verses from Thomas the Rhymer (Thomas of
Ercildoune called “ True Thomas "), given by Scott in his
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, were favorites with Mr.
Emerson.
2 What follows is printed in “ Books” and in “ Elo-
quence” (Society and Solitude, pp. 212-213 and 65).


252
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
Swedenborg calls crabs, dogs, bees, birds, etc.,
which find their way, living magnets.
[Here follow many quotations from Sweden-
borg's Principia and Economics of the Animal
Kingdom.]
Every science serves an apprenticeship to
some elder art before it sets up for itself. Chem-
istry served the apothecary and physician, then
the cook, manufacturer, etc., until now it is it-
self a science. Astronomy served navigation, sur-
veying, and fortune-telling.
.
Scholar. The scholar's courage may be meas-
ured by his power to give an opinion of Aris-
totle, Bacon, Giordano Bruno, Swedenborg,
Fourier. If he has nothing to say to these sys-
tems, let him not pretend to skill in reading.
But here am I with so much all ready to be
revealed to me, as to others, if only I could be
set aglow. I have wished for a professorship.
Much as I hate the church, I have wished the
pulpit that I might have the stimulus of a stated
task. N. P. Rogers spoke more truly than he
knew, perchance, when he recommended an Abo-
lition Campaign to me. I doubt not, a course of


1847) SCHOLAR NEEDS SPUR 253
mobs would do me much good. Asnowflake will
go through a pine board, if projected with force
enough. I have almost come to depend on con-
versations for my prolific hours. I who converse
with so few and those of no adventure, con-
nexion, or wide information. - A man must be
connected.' . . . Pericles, Plato, Cæsar, Shaks-
peare, will not appoint us an interview in a hovel.
My friends would yield more to a new com-
panion. In this emergency, one advises Europe,
and especially England. If I followed my own
advices, — if I were master of a liberty to do so,
- I should sooner go towards Canada. I should
withdraw myself for a time from all domestic and
accustomed relations and command an absolute
leisure with books — for a time.
I think I have material enough to serve my
countrymen with thought and music, if only it
was not scraps. But men do not want handfuls
of gold-dust, but ingots.
The name of Washington City in the news-
papers is every day of blacker shade. All the
news from that quarter being of a sadder type,
more malignant. It seems to be settled that no
1 Sentences which follow are in Society and Solitude (p.
10).


254
JOURNAL (AGE 43
our
m
act of honour or benevolence or justice is to be
expected from the American government, but
only this, that they will be as wicked as they
dare. No man now can have any sort of success
in politics without a streak of infamy crossing
his name.
Things have another order in these men's eyes.
Heavy is hollow, and good is evil. A Western
man in Congress the other day spoke of the op-
ponents of the Texan and Mexican plunder as
“every light character in the House,” and our
good friend in State Street speaks of the solid
portion of the community,” meaning, of course,
the sharpers. I feel, meantime, that those who
succeed in life, in civilized society, are beasts of
prey. It has always been so. The Demosthe-
neses, the Phocions, the Aristideses, the Wash-
ingtons even, must bear that deduction, that they
were not pure souls, or they would not have been
fishers and gunners. They had large infusions
of virtue, and hence their calamities and the mis-
chievous dignity they have lent to the rogues
that belong in those piratical employments.
We live in Lilliput. The Americans are free-
willers, fussy, self-asserting, buzzing all round
creation. But the Asiatics believe it is writ on the
iron leaf, and will not turn on their heel to save


1847] LILLIPUT POLITICS 255
them from famine, plague, or sword. That is
great, gives a great air to the people.
We live in Lilliput. Men are unfit to live,
from their obvious inequality to their own ne-
cessities,' ... the only path of escape is Virtue.
Cause and Effect are the gamesters who win,
and it will beget a resignation to Fate that even
the Americans will be exalted.
The question recurs whether we should de-
scend into the ring. My own very small expe-
rience instructs me that the people are to be
taken in very small doses. Vestry meetings and
primary assemblies do not edify me. And I cau-
tion philosophers and scholars to use lenses and
media.
Alcott said, the rest of the man will follow
his head. His head is not his contemporary, but
his ancestor and predecessor. Let him be a
Cause.
Club. Theology, Medicine, Law, Politics,
Trade, have their meetings and assembly rooms;
Literature has none. See how magnificently the
1 Much that follows is printed in “Worship" (Conduct
of Life, pp. 239, 240).


256
(AGE 43
JOURNAL
Merchants meet in State Street. Every Bank
and Insurance Office is a palace, and Literature
has not a poor Café, not a corner even of Mrs.
Haven's shop in which to celebrate its unions.
By a little aliance with some of the rising par-
ties of the time, as the Socialists, and the Aboli-
tionists, and the Artists, we might accumulate a
sufficient patronage to establish a good room in
Boston. As Ellery Channing says, there is not
a chair in all Boston where I can sit down.
Ancients and moderns. The ancients brought
the fire, the moderns collect coal.
[Here follow many sentences used in “The
Superlative”(Lectures and Biographical Sketches)].
Police. Nature has taken good care of us. She
knew what rowdies and tigers she was making,
and she created a police, first, in the conscience;
then, in the preaching propensity, which she
gave indifferently to the worst and to the de-
cent; and, lastly, in the terror of gossip with
which she cowed the boldest heart.
Scholar, Centrality. “Your reading is irre-
levant.” Yes, for you, but not for me. It makes
no difference what I read. If it is irrelevant, I


1847] FOOTSTEPS. COURAGE 257
read it deeper. I read it until it is pertinent to
me and mine, to Nature, and to the hour that
now passes. A good scholar will find Aristo-
phanes and Hafiz and Rabelais full of American
history.
I believe in Omnipresence and find footsteps
in grammar rules, in oyster shops, in church
liturgies, in mathematics, and in solitudes and
in galaxies. I am shamed out of my declama-
tions against churches by the wonderful beauty
of the English liturgy, an anthology of the piety
of ages and nations.
Courage. I have written in different places of
the courage pertinent to scholars. The Greeks
seem to have had a fine audacity, as in Aris-
tophanes. I remember the saying of Brumoy (?)
that the Greeks believed that the gods under-
stood fun as well or better than men, and there-
fore the comic writers did not hesitate to joke
the gods also pretty hardly.
Here is a man who loves fight. “Stranger,
will you liquor?” “No.” “Then perhaps you
will fight.” Our Kentuckian cannot see a man
of good figure but he thinks he should like to
break his back over an iron banister, or give


258
JOURNAL (AGE 43
him a fall that would finish him. But the other
man cannot see the sun or stars without the
wish to wrestle with them, and here is Descartes,
Kepler, Newton, Swedenborg, Laplace, Schel-
ling, who wish to wrestle with the problem of
Genesis and occupy themselves with construct-
ing cosmogonies. Nature is saturated with deity;
the particle is saturated with the elixir of the
Universe. Little men, just born, copernicise.
They cannot radiate as suns, or revolve as plan-
ets, and so they do it in effigy, by building the
orrery in their brain.
“What living Creature slays or is slain?
What living Creature preserves or is preserved?
Each is his own destroyer or preserver as he fol-
lows evil or good.” — Vishnu Purana.'
Mesmerism. Wewant society on our own terms.
Each man has facts that I want, and, though I
talk with him, I cannot get at them for want of
the clue. He does not know what to do with
his facts; I know. If I could draw them from
him, it must be with his keys and reserves.
Here is all Boston, — all railroads, all manufac-
tures, and trade, in the head of this well-informed
i Compare « Brahma” in the Poems.


1847] THE SCHOLAR'S HUNGER 259
merchant at my side: what would not I give for
a peep at his rows and rows of facts! Here is
Agassiz with his theory of anatomy and nature;
I am in his chamber and I do not know what
question to put. Here is Charles T. Jackson,
whom I have known so long, who knows so
much, and I have never been able to get any-
thing truly valuable from him. Here is all
Fourier in Brisbane's head; all languages in
Kraitsir's; all Swedenborg in Reed's; all the
Revolution in old Adams's head; all modern
Europe and America in John Quincy Adams's,
and I cannot appropriate any fragment of all
their experience. I would fain see their picture-
books as they exist. Now if I could cast a spell
on this man at my side and see his pictures
without his intervention or organs, and, having
learned that lesson, turn the spell on another,
lift up the cover of another hive and see the
cells and suck the honey, and then another, and
so without limit, — they were not the poorer,
and I were rich, indeed. So I think this mes-
merism, whereof the fable adheres so pertina-
ciously to all minds, will one day realize itself.
It is for this news, these facts, that I go to Bos-
ton, and visit A and B and C. Boston were ten
times Boston if I could learn what I go thither for,


260
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
USC
The ring of Gyges prefigures this — society
on our own terms.
But Osman' answered and said, I do not know
whether I have the curiosity you describe. I do
not want the particulars which the merchant
values, or the lawyer, or the artist, but only the
inevitable result which he communicates to me
in his manner and conduct and in the tone and
purpose of his discourse.
Then again said Guy, If he could inspect
these experiences, what would it signify? He
can, if he wishes, as things are. He can devote
himself to brokerage and stocks until he sym-
pathizes practically with the merchant. Then he
will have that clue he wants. He can study Hum-
boldt until he can talk with Humboldt. He can
read Bettine until he can predict her speech. If
he could arrive at their pictures by the short cut
you imagine, he must still be imprisoned in their
minds by his dedication to their experience, and
lose so much career of his own, or so much sym-
pathy with still higher souls than theirs.
Man is a manufacturer. He makes sense out
of nonsense, wealth out of rags. There must be
chiffoniers.
I As has been said before, “Osman” stands for a sort of
detached, ideal self.


1847] MISHAP. USE ALL DAYS 261
Discontinuity is a vexation, discontinuity of
thought or other material.
Nonsense is only sense deranged, chaos is
paradise dislocated, poverty is wealth decom-
posed; spite, apathy, bad blood, frivolity, only
dispersed matter and light.
Temperament is fortune, and we must say it
so often.'...
Persistent man works after Nature, whose
productions are secular and cumulative. Therein
is the grandeur of British intellect.
A man must do the work with that faculty
he has now. But that faculty is the accumula-
tion of past days. No rival can rival backwards.
What you have learned and done is safe and
fruitful. Work and learn in evil days, in in-
sulted days, in days of debt and depression and
calamity. Fight best in the shade of the cloud
of arrows.
Courage. Can the scholar disentangle the
i The rest of this passage and several which follow are
found in “ Aristocracy” (Lectures and Biographical Sketches,
Pp. 43-45).


262
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
thread of truth through all the confused ap-
pearances of the Free Trade facts ?
Every man has his own courage, and is be-
trayed because he seeks in himself the courage
of other persons.
When I read Proclus, I am astonished at the
vigor and breadth of his performance. Here is
no epileptic, modern muse with short breath
and short flight, but Atlantic strength, every-
where equal to itself, and dares great attempts
because of the life with which it is filled.
We seem to approach an analysis of Burke's
wonderful powers by observing the employ-
ment of his early years. To a man quite igno-
rant of mechanic arts, a penknife, a thimble, a
pin, seems to be made with inexplicable ingenu-
ity. But, on visiting the shop where it is made
and seeing the successive parts of the work, in
how simple a manner it is put together, the
fabric loses part of its value, the composition is
so easy. Something like this disappointment is
felt by those who trace that complex product,
eloquence, to its elements. We listen with joy
to Burke explaining to the House of Com-
mons, on the rise of an unexpected debate, all
the intricacy of the Revenue Laws, or the Con-


1847] BURKE. CROSSES 263
stitution of a Commission, or reviewing the de-
tails of legislation for years. In the midst of
accurate details, he surprises us with some deep
philosophic remark which, besides its own splen-
dor, astonishes by contrast with the habits of
so practical a man of business. But when we
explore his youth and find him for years the
author of the Annual Register, and that in the
service of that work he spent his days in the
gallery of the House of Commons, and that in
those same years he also wrote a philosophical
treatise on Taste and the sources of the Sub-
lime and Beautiful, we cease to wonder at the
minuteness of his official knowledge or at the
loftiness of his speculation.
Where two shadows cross, the darkness thick-
ens: where two lights cross, the light glows.
Milton, Bacon, Gray, are crosses of the Greek
and Saxon geniuses.
Journal. 'Tis proposed to establish a new
Quarterly Journal. Well, 't is always a favor-
able time, and now is.
Vice of journals, that they contain the second-
best,
I think at this moment any journal would


264
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
be incomplete that did not admit the Zoroas-
trian element.
[Possible Contributors.] Ward, Lowell, Story,
Hill, James, Talbot, Newcomb, John P. Rob-
inson, Benjamin Peter Hunt, Charles T. Jack-
son, Peirce, Mitchel, Wilkinson, Margaret
Fuller. Articles on the State by Charles Sum-
ner and on Disunion by Wendell Phillips in
the same number.
an
An autobiography should be a book of an-
swers from one individual to the many ques-
tions of the time. Shall he be a scholar? - the
infirmities and ridiculousness of the scholar
being clearly seen. Shall he fight? Shall he
seek to be rich? Shall he go for the ascetic, or
the conventional life?— he being aware of the
double consciousness. Shall he value mathemat-
ics? Read Dante?- or not? Aristophanes?
Plato? Cosmogonies, and scholar's courage.
What shall he say of poetry? What of astron-
omy? What of religion?
Then let us hear his conclusions respecting
government and politics. Does he pay taxes and
record his title-deeds ? Does Goethe's Autobi-
ography answer these questions? So of love, of
marriage, so of playing Providence. It should


1847] AUTOBIOGRAPHIES, MUSIC 265
be a true Conversation's Lexicon for earnest men.
Saadi’s Gulistan is not far from this. It should
confirm the reader in his best sentiment. It
should go for imagination and taste. It should
aspire and worship. Every man prefers some-
thing, calling it Art or Music or something else,
perhaps a misnomer.
It should contemplate a just metaphysics, and
should do justice to the coördinate powers of
man, Imagination, Understanding, Will, Sensa-
tion, Science.
Novels, Poetry, Mythology, must be well al-
lowed for an imaginative being. You do us great
wrong, Henry Thoreau, in railing at the novel
reading. '...
In this circle of topics will come Education,
and what we have to say of guns as liberalizers,
and dancers, and chess. ...
Travelling is as fit for some men as it is per-
nicious for others.
[Here follows the first trial for the poem
“The Chartist's Complaint.”]
Pythagoras cured distempers with music. If
i Here follows the passage on this subject found in « Books”
(Society and Solitude, p. 213).


266
(AGE 43
JOURNAL
people are grieved, we go over the sorrow in
words, and the more cunning the repetition of
it in words, the better consoled they are ; or we
lend them a book, - cure with music still, ad-
minister literature, as “Suspiria de Profundis,"
or Milton.
Longevity. How glad were orchards, if we
could make the world-wheels turn a little faster;
or, what were the same thing, if life were longer.
Orchards should not be squares or quincunxes,
but fruit-woods.
The fable of the Wandering Jew is agreeable
to men.'...
How delicious and how rare is literary society!
It is certain that if, for education, inducation
were possible, and one man could actually impart
his talent, instead of its performances, a moun-
tain of guineas would be readily paid for tuition
fees.
May 5.
The best feat of Genius is to make an audi-
ence of the mediocre and the dull.? ...
1 The rest of the passage is printed in “ Immortality"
(Letters and Social Aims, p. 339).
2 The rest is found in “ Aristocracy” (Lectures and Bio-
graphical Sketches, p. 53).


IL
1847] BOSTON. MINORITY 267
Dr. James Jackson said, the whole art of medi-
cine lay in removing and withdrawing the cause
of irritation.
Boston respectable by its Academy, its War-
ren Club of twenty-five members, and its Natu-
ral History Society. The Academy offers to
print gratuitously, with plates, any original mat-
ter falling within the scope that is sent to it.
Greatness. To the grand interests a superficial
success is of no account.' ...
Why have the minority no influence? If Ly-
curgus were in the cars, Boutwell would not dare
that morning to offer resolutions of homage to
Zachary Taylor. Is it not better not to mix or
meddle at all, than to do so ineffectually? Better
mind your lamp and pen as man of letters, inter-
fering not with Politics, but knowing and nam-
ing them justly, than to inculpate yourself in the
Federal crime without power to redress the State,
and to debilitate yourself by the miscellany and
distraction for your proper task.
Our people have no proper expectations in
regard to literary men: they expect a practical
reformer.
1 What follows is in “ Aristocracy” (Lectures and Bio.
graphical Sketches, p. 59).


268
JOURNAL (AGE 43
Whip. My stories did not make them laugh,
my facts did not quite fit the case, my arguments
did not hit the white. Isitso? Then warm your-
self, old fellow, with hot mince-pie and half a
pint of port wine, and they will fit like a glove,
and hit like a bullet.
Look at literary New England; one would
think it was a national fast.
Transcendentalism says, the Man is all. The
world can be reeled off any stick indifferently.
Franklin says, the tools: riches, old age, land,
health ; the tools. . . . A master and tools, –
is the lesson I read in every shop and farm and
library. There must be both. ... The wise
man sees that we cannot spare any advantages,
and that the tools are effigies and statues of men
also; their wit, their genius perpetuated; and he
that uses them becomes a great society of men
as wise as himself.
What a tool is money in a skilful hand.
What a nuisance in a fool's.
May 15[?]
Yesterday, Theodore Parker, William Henry
Channing, Charles Sumner, Alcott, Thoreau,
Elliot Cabot, Dwight, Stone, Weiss, J. F. Clarke,


'1847] DYSPATHY. FREEDOM 269
Stetson, and Mr. Arrington of Texas spent the
day with me and discussed the project of thejour-
nal. George P. Bradford and I made fourteen.
Dyspathy. We are hard to please. It costs me
many shrinkings and starts, the remembrance
of the virtues of those whom I cannot respect.
Lumps of iniquity become missionaries of charity
to the starving and houseless; the heady and sen-
timental become religiously interested in freedom
and quietism, and how can we reject their eager
offering? yet we cannot overcome our aversation.
Freedom. The proudest speech that free-will
ever made is in Hafiz's Divan :-
“It stands written on the Gate of Heaven,
Woe to him who suffers himself to be betrayed by
Fate!”
I have heard that they seem fools who allow
themselves easily to be engaged and compromised
in undertakings, but that at last it appears quite
otherwise, and to the gods otherwise from the
first. I affix a like sense to this text of Hafiz;
for he who loves is not betrayed, but makes an
ass of Fate.
One more good fable I have concerning Free-
dom in the Edda, that the god Freya has a sword


270
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
so good that it will itself strow a field with carnage
whenever the owner ordered it. But Freya could
slay Bela with a blow of his fist, had he had a mind
to it; yet the dwarves killed him.
Reality. The way to make our rhetoricand our
rites and badges sublime is to make them real.
Our flag is not good because it does not repre-
sent the population of the United States, but the
Baltimore Caucus. Not union and sentiment,
but selfishness and cunning. If we never put on
the liberty-cap until we were freemen by love
and self-denial, the liberty-capwould mean some-
thing.
(From CD)
[Mr. Emerson was invited to give a course
of six lectures, probably“ Representative Men,”
on the island of Nantucket and accordingly did
so, spending the first two weeks of May there.
The recompense was ten dollars a lecture and
all expenses paid. He found his stay there very
interesting. On Sunday he read from the pulpit
his discourse on “Worship.”]
May 23.
On the seashore at Nantucket I saw the play
of the Atlantic with the coast. Here was wealth ;
every wave reached a quarter of a mile along


18471 OCEAN. NANTUCKET
271
WOLI
shore as it broke. There are no rich men, I said,
to compare with these. Every wave is a fortune.
One thinks of Etzlers and great projectors who
will yet turn this immense waste strength to ac-
count and save the limbs of human slaves. Ah,
what freedom and grace and beauty with all this
might! The wind blew back the foam from the
top of each billow as it rolled in, like the hair of
a woman in the wind. The freedom makes the
observer feel as a slave. Our expression is so
slender, thin, and cramp; can we not learn here
a generous eloquence ?
This was the lesson our starving poverty
wanted. This was the disciplinary Pythagorean
music which should be medicine.
Then the seeing so excellent a spectacle is a
certificate that all imaginable good shall yet be
realized. We should not have dared to believe
that this existed. Well, what does not the actual
beholding of a hero or of a finished woman cer-
tify?
Nation of Nantucket makes its own war and
peace. Place of winds, bleak, shelterless, and,
when it blows, a large part of the island is sus-
pended in the air and comes into your face and
eyes as if it was glad to see you. The moon


272
(AGE 43
JOURNAL
nc
comes here as if it was at home, but there is no
shade. A strong national feeling. Very sensitive
to everything that dishonours the island, because
it hurts the value of stock till the company are
poorer.
Fifty persons own five sevenths of all the pro-
perty on the island. Calashes. At the fire, they
pilfered freely, as if, after a man was burnt out,
his things belonged to the fire and everybody
might have them.
Before the Athenæum is a huge jawbone of a
sperm whale, and at the corners of streets I no-
ticed (Chester Street) the posts were of the same
material. They say here that a northeaster never
dies in debt to a southwester, but pays all back
with interest.
Captain Isaac Hussey, who goes out soon
in the Planter, had his boat stove by a whale;
he instantly swum to the whale and planted
his lance in his side and killed him before he
got into another boat. The same man, being
dragged under water by the coil of his line, got
his knife out of his pocket and cut the line
1 An old-fashioned light hood for women, made usually of
silk, wadded. It was distended by hoops of light cane, so that
it could be pulled forward over the face like a chaise-top, or
pushed back.



SAMUEL GRAY WARD





1847)
WHALERS
273
and released himself. Captain Brayton was also
dragged down, but the whale stopped after a
short distance and he came up. I saw Captain
Pollard. The captains remember the quarter-
deck in their houses.
Fifty-five months are some voyages. Nine
thousand five hundred people, eighty ships. New
Bedford has three hundred ships.
I saw Captain Isaac Hussey in the steamboat
and asked him about that penknife. He said,
No, he felt in his pocket for his knife, but had
none there, then he managed to let down his
trousers and get the line off from his leg, and
rose. At last he saw light overhead and instantly
felt safe. When he broke water his men were a
quarter of a mile off, looking out for him; they
soon discovered him and picked him up.
Captain Brooks told me that the last whale
he killed was seventy-two feet long, fifty-two feet
in girth, and he got two hundred barrels of oil
from him.
The young man sacrificed by lot in the boats
of the ship Essex was named Coffin, nephew
of Captain Pollard and a schoolmate of Edward
Gardner.
“Grass Widows” they call the wives of these
people absent from home four or five years.
1


274
JOURNAL
[AGE 43
Walter Folger has made a reflecting telescope
and a clock which is now in his house and which
measures hours, days, years, and centuries. In
William Mitchell's observatory I saw a nebula
in Cassiopeia, the double star at the pole, the
double star Zeta Ursi.
At Nantucket every blade of grass describes
a circle on the sand.
Community. At Brook Farm, one man
ploughed all day, and one looked out of the
window all day and drew his picture, and both
received the same wages.
Aunt Mary went out to ride horseback in her
shroud.
(From CD)
Henry Truman Safford (born at Royalston,
Vermont, January 6, 1836) in 1846 was examined
for three hours by Rev. H. W. Adams, of Con-
cord, New Hampshire, and Rev. C. N. Smith,
of Randolph, Vermont, and at last was bidden,
“Multiply in your head 365,365,365,365,365,-
i See “ Mary Moody Emerson” (Lectures and Bio-
graphical Sketches, p. 428).


1847] YOUNG SAFFORD 275
365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365," — eighteen
figures by eighteen. “He flew around the room
like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the top of
his boots, bit his hand, rolled his eyes in their
sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then
seeming to be in agony, until in not more than
one minute, he said, 133,491,850,208,566,-
925,016,658,299,941,583,225. The boy's fa-
ther, Rev. C. N. Smith, and myself had each
a pencil and slate to take down the answer, and
he gave it us in periods of three figures each as
fast as it was possible for us to write them. And
what was still more wonderful he began to mul-
tiply at the left hand and to bring out the answer
from left to right giving first 133, 491, etc.
Here, confounded above measure, I gave up the
examination. The boy looked pale and said he
was tired. He said it was the largest sum he ever
Swer
did.”
Safford. “His infant mind drinks in know-
ledge as the sponge does water. Chemistry, bot-
any, philosophy, geography, and history are his
sport.” — H. W. Adams.
[Trumannus Henricus Safford graduated at
Harvard College, 1854. (Note written in, years


276
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
later, by Mr. Emerson, evidently taken from the
Triennial Catalogue. What follows seems to be
the statement of young Safford's father.)]
“He has found a new rule to calculate eclipses.
He told me it would shorten the work nearly
one third. When finding this rule, for two or
three days he seemed to be in a sort of trance.
One morning very early he came rushing down-
stairs, not stopping to dress him, poured on to
his slate a stream of figures, and soon cried out
in the wildness of his joy, 'Oh! Father, I have
got it! I have got it! it comes, it comes !'”
“In the spring of 1845, Henry began to be
much engaged with the idea of calculating an
almanac, — every old almanac in the house was
treasured up in his little chest, -and sun's de-
clination, rising and setting, moon southings,
risings and settings, seemed to occupy all his
thoughts.
"His almanac was put to press in the autumn
of 1845, and was cast when Henry was nine
years and six months old, the most accurate
of any of the common almanacs of New Eng-
land.”
Mr. Knowall, the American, has no concen-
tration: he sees the artists of fame, the Raffaelles


1847] JUDGMENT. THE DAYS 277
and Cellinis with despair. He is up to Nature
and the First Cause in his consciousness; but
that wondrous power to collect and swing his
whole vital energy into one act, and leave the
product there for the despair of posterity, he can-
not approach.
Eighteen or twenty centuries of European
and Asiatic men have been trained to check
their actions by regard for a Judgment Day.
Now it begins to look to the knowing ones as
if life were more correctly an affair for Punch.
ere I
1O
May 24.
The days come and go like muffled and veiled
figures sent from a distant friendly party, but
they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts
they bring, they carry them as silently away."
Who gave thy cheek the mixed tint
Of tulip and rose
Is also in state to give
Patience and rest to me poor.
Who taught cruelty
i It would seem that, on the eve of Mr. Emerson's forty-
fourth birthday, he wrote this sentence, later embodied in his
poem “ Days.” In his latter years he said that, while he held
it as perhaps his best, he could not recall the writing of it.


278
(AGE 43
JOURNAL
To thy dark hair
Is also in state to give
Me right against myself.
I gave up hope of Ferhad
Once for all, on the day
When I learned he had given
His heart to Schirin.
Surely I have no treasure,
Yet am I richly satisfied;
God has given that to the Shah,
And this to the beggar.
The bride of the world is truly
Outwardly richly dressed;
Who enjoys her must give
His soul for a dowry.
At the cedar's foot by the brook
Lift I freer my hands
When now the blowing of the East
Gives tidings of May, etc., etc.
Hafiz.
When I see my friend after a long time, my
first question is, Has anything become clear to
oma
you?
Loose the knot of the heart, says Hafiz. At
the Opera I think I see the fine gates open
which are at all times closed, and that to-mor-
row I shall find free and varied expression. But


1847] HAFIZ. EXPRESSION 279
to-morrow I am mute as yesterday. Expression
is all we want : not knowledge, but vent: we
know enough; but have not leaves and lungs
enough for a healthy perspiration and growth.
Hafiz has: Hafiz's good things, like those of
all good poets, are the cheap blessings of water,
air, and fire, the observations, analogies, and
felicities which arise so profusely in writing a
letter to a friend.' . . . But my fine souls are
cautious and canny, and wish to unite Corinth
with Connecticut. I see no easy help for it.
Our virtues, too, are in conspiracy against
grandeur, and are narrowing. Benvenuto Cel-
lini— he had concentration and the right rage.
The true nobility has flood-gates, - an equal
inlet and outgo. Thus the name of Sappho in-
spires; the expressive person; not that Casella
or Corinne or Simonides has better thoughts
than we, but that what we all have shall not be
pent and smouldered and noxious in the pos-
sessor, but shall pass over into new forms.
“Keep the body open,” is the hygeian pre-
cept, and the reaction of free circulations on
growth and life. ... Large utterance! ...
i Most of what follows, as well as a sentence above given,
may be found in “ Persian Poetry” (Letters and Social Aims,
p. 247).


280
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
The jockey looks at the chest of the horse, the
physician looks at the breast of the babe, to see
if there is room enough for the free play of the
lungs. Arteries, perspiration. Shakspeare sweats
like a haymaker, - all pores.
Has the Creator put some valve between the
hand and the brain of wisest men?
Oriental Superlative. The life of the Arabian
a perpetual superlative. Khoja Yakub brings
Kurroglou the miniature of the handsome
Ayvaz.' He orders Khoja to be instantly
chained by neck and legs; “if the youth jus-
tify thy praises, I will gild thy head with a
shower of gold; if not, I will tear the root of
thy existence from the soil of life.” ....
On the way he asks the shepherd for a slice
of bread:-
Shepherd. “I have, but no son of man will
eat it.”
Kurroglou. “If it be but a trifle softer than
stone, give it me.”
1 The book from which these extracts are taken (Specimens
of Ancient Persian Poetry, translated by Chodzko) is so rare
that the editors include Mr. Emerson's copy in the Journal
of the greater part of the story of Kyrat, the beautiful horse of
Kurroglou, which Longfellow tells briefly in “ The Leap of
Roushan Beg."


1847] KURROGLOU AND KYRAT 281
Shepherd. “It is made of barley and millet. I
have baked it for my dogs. It will break thy
teeth.”
Kurroglou broke and minced it all into a tub
of milk until the spoon stood in it motionless
in a vertical position; then, he twisted aside
his long mustachios, he opened a mouth similar
to the entrance of some cavern, and thrusting
his hands under the tub he devoured its con-
tents to the very bottom. The shepherd said,
“He is the ghost of the Wilderness, he is a fam-
ine.” ...
[Kurroglou finds and carries away the beauti-
ful youth Ayvaz upon his horse. His way home
is beset by Reyhan Arab and his men. Kur-
roglou rides up on to a mountain which is then
surrounded by his enemies, and a wide chasm
cuts off his escape.]
There was a ravine at the foot of one of the
sides of the mountain twelve yards broad. Kur-
roglou sat before it three days and then encour-
aged his horse with a song, “On! on! my Soul,
Kyrat, carry me to Chamly Bill. Alas! my
horse, let me not look upon thy shame. I will
have thee wrapped in velvet trappings. I will
shoe thy fore and thy hind legs with pure gold.
O my Kyrat, my chosen one of five hundred


282
JOURNAL
(AGE 43
horses . . . thou shalt have a bath in a river
of red wine.”
Reyhan Arab, meantime, with his band,
watched him from below with a telescope.
“Kurroglou, with Ayvaz in the saddle, con-
tinued to walk Kyrat until the foam appeared
in his nostrils. At last he selected a spot where
he had room enough for starting, and then,
giving his horse the whip, pushed him forward.
The brave Kyrat stood on the very brink of
the precipice; the whole of his four legs were
gathered together like the leaves of a rosebud;
he struggled a while, then gave a spring, and
leaped to the other side of the ravine, nay, he
cleared two yards farther than was necessary.
As for Kurroglou, even his cap did not move
on his head, nor did he even look behind as if
anything extraordinary had happened. He then
rode quietly away with Ayvaz. ...
“Without Kyrat life and the world is but
a sin to me. He has cleared a broad river. I
have recognized his foot-marks. Oh, I shall
kiss every one of his hoofs; I shall kiss each
of his burning eyes. This horse can run in
one day from Ardebil to Koshem. What cares
he for the Sultan who is mounted on this
horse?”


1847] MARGARET FULLER 283
“Napoleon, who lived wholly in the ideal,
yet could not consciously comprehend it; he
denies all the ideal throughout, denies to it all
reality, whilst he eagerly strives to realize it.
Such an inner perpetual contradiction, how-
ever, can his clearer, incorruptibler understand-
ing not endure, and it is of the highest im-
portance when he, as if necessitated, expresses
himself thereupon quite originally and agree-
ably.” – GOETHE, Sprüche.
[The following passage, found copied into
the later journal ED, is from a letter written
by Mr. Emerson to Margaret Fuller in Rome.
It is introduced here because of its date.]
To Margaret Fuller at Rome, June 4, 1847.
Old cities. Rome is keeping its old promise
to your eyes and mine; Rome, which always
keeps its promise, and which, like Nature, has
that elasticity of application to all measures of
spirit. These millennial cities, in their immense
accumulations of human works, find it easy to
impress the imagination, by gradually dropping
one piece after another of whim, blunder, and
absurdity, nay, stubble and bladders, until no-
thing but necessity and geometry remains.


284
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
Yesterday, June 5, saw Hedge sail in the
Washington Irving; the mariners sung their
cheeriest song in heaving the anchor and hoist-
ing the sail. It was the opera by daylight.
They say there is in America no thought,
no delineated form, no heading. But who ever
saw Metaphysics passing into history? Who
ever stood so high and so near as to detect the
transition, which yet no one doubts?
What beauty in the mythology of Arabia,
the Anka or Simorg, the Kaf mountain, the
fountain Chiser, the tree of Paradise, Tuba ;
the mirror of Jamschid, the seal of Solo-
mon, ... Well, is it less in Greece? . . . Is
it less in India, with its colossal and profuse
growth, like a giant jungle in which elephants
and tigers pass, the adventures of Hari, the
metamorphosis, the Fate? Or less in Danish
and Scaldic, — Thor, Freya, Loki, Asgard, Ygg-
drasil, and Balder, where Sea, Fire, Old Age,
and Thought are the mead, the eater, the wres-
tler, and the runner; Valhalla thatched with
shields for shingles ?
“Festus ”' and Shelley have both this merit
1 Bailey's poem.


1847) SCHOLAR. DEBT. CARLYLE 285
of timeliness; that is the only account we can
give of their imposing on such good heads.
Yet Bailey is a brilliant young man who has got
his head brimful of Faust, and then pours away
a gallon of ink. But no secondary inspiration,
as on Milton, on Shakspeare, or on Goethe, is
permitted; only an inspiration direct from the
Almighty.
Scholar wishes that every book and chart and
plate belonging to him should drawinterest every
moment by circulation.
Why should men complain of stupid people,
as if a man's debt to his inferiors was not at least
equal to that to his superiors?'...
In Carlyle, as in Byron, one is more struck
with the rhetoric than with the matter. He has
manly superiority rather than intellectuality, and
so makes good hard hits all the time. There is
more character than intellect in every sentence,
herein strongly resembling Samuel Johnson.
On
How is it that the sword runs away with
i The rest of the passage is on the last page of “Great-
ness” (Letters and Social Aims).


286
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
all the fame from the spade and the wheel?
... Courage forever, and this is the proof.
My only secret was that all men were my mas-
ters; I never saw one who was not my superior,
and I would so gladly have been his apprentice
if his craft had been communicable.
100-
Alas for America, as I must so often say, the
ungirt, the diffuse, the profuse, procumbent, —
one wide ground juniper, out of which no cedar,
no oak will rear up a mast to the clouds! It all
runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscel-
lany. The air is loaded with poppy, with im-
becility, with dispersion and sloth.
Eager, solicitous, hungry, rabid, busy-bodied
America attempting many things, vain, ambitious
to feel thy own existence, and convince others
of thy talent, by attempting and hastily accom-
plishing much ; yes, catch thy breath and correct
thyself, and failing here, prosper out there; speed
and fever are never greatness; but reliance and
serenity and waiting.
America is formless, has no terrible and no
beautiful condensation. Genius, always anthro-
1 The rest of the passage appears in “ Aristocracy” (Lec-
tures and Biographical Sketches, p. 37).


1847] JUNE SAP. TEMPTINGS 287
pomorphist, runs every idea into a fable, con-
structs, finishes, as the plastic Italian cannot build
a post or a pump-handle but it terminates in a
human head.
How attractive is land, orchard, hillside, gar-
den, in this fine June! Man feels the blood of
thousands in his body, and his heart pumps the
sap of all this forest of vegetation through his
arteries. Here is work for him and a most will-
ing workman. He displaces the birch and chest-
nut, larch and alder, and will set oak and beech
to cover the land with leafy colonnades. Then
it occurs what a fugitive summer-flower papil-
ionaceous is he, whisking about amidst these
longevities. Gladly he could spread himself
abroad among them; love the tall trees as if he
were their father; borrow by his love the manners
of his trees, and with Nature's patience watch the
giants from the youth to the age of golden fruit
or gnarled timber, nor think it long.
It seems often as if rejection, sturdy rejection
were for us : choose well your part, stand fast by
your task, and let all else go to ruin if it will.
Then instantly the malicious world changes itself
into one wide snare or temptation, - escape it


288
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
who can. With brow bent, with firm intent, I
go musing in the garden walk.'....
ma
O
.
In history, the great moment is when the sav-
age is just ceasing to be a savage,' . . . that mo-
ment of transition, the foam hangs but a mo-
ment on the wave; the sun himself does not pause
on the meridian; literature becomes criticism,
nervousness, and a gnawing when the first mus-
ical triumphant strain has waked the echoes.
Civilization is symbolized (how wittily) by a
cake, in the hierological cipher of the Egyptians.
Worship of the dollar. I may well ask when
men wanted their bard and prophetas now? They
have a Quixote gallery of old romances and
mythologies, Norse, Greek, Persian, Jewish, and
Indian, but nothing that will fit them, and they
go without music or symbol to their day labor.
Channing proposed that there should be a mag-
nified dollar, say as big as a barrel-head, made
of silver or gold, in each village, and Colonel
Shattuck or other priest appointed to take care
i Here follows the passage on the snare of weeding, printed
in “ Wealth” (Conduct of Life, p. 115).
2 Much of what follows is printed in “ Power" (Con-
duct of Life, pp. 70, 71).


18471 CHASTITY. MOODS
289
of it and not let it be stolen; then we should
be provided with a local deity, and could bring
it baked beans, or other offerings and rites, as
pleased us.
Rocking stones. It is said that when manners
are licentious, a revolution is always near: the
virtue of women being the main girth or band-
age of society ; because a man will not lay up
an estate for children any longer than whilst he
believes them to be his own. I think, however,
that it is very difficult to debauch society. This
chastity, which people think so lightly lost, is
not so. 'Tis like the eye, which people fancy
is the most delicate organ, but the oculist tells
you it is a very tough and robust organ, and
will bear any injury; so the poise of virtue is
admirably secured. Unchastity with women is
an acute disease, not a habit; . . . Men are
always being instructed more and more in the
chastity of women.
“In March, many weathers," said the prov-
erb; and in life, many. If anything were but
true two days.' . .. We are the Angel Gabriel
i Much of the substance of what follows is printed in
• Montaigne" (Representative Men, p. 176).


290
JOURNAL (AGE 44
and the Archangel Michael, ... our sword or
spade or pencil or pen is to open the secret
caverns of the Universe. Who but we? and
where is the bondman of the Parcæ ? Well, next
day, we whistle and are speculative, and have
a profusion of common sense, ... Resistance
is good, and obedience is good, but who un-
der Heaven knows how to mix the two?
Our approval of one or another is all retro-
spective.
Then we look over into George Minott's
field and resolve to plough and hoe by old Cause
and Effect henceforward. Life is a puzzle and
a whirl, and the cards beat the best players.
Dr. Van Mons, at Louvain, in Belgium, had
in his nurseries in 1823 no less than two thou-
sand seedlings of merit (Beurré Diel, etc.)“from
among the eighty thousand seedlings raised by
himself,” etc., ... Some of Roman pears were
called proud, would not keep: and Pliny says,
“All pears are but a heavy meat unless they
are well boiled or baked.” “Tree must be in a
state of variation.” “Older the tree, nearer will
seedlings raised from it approach a wild state,
without, however, ever being able to return to
that state.”


1847] CRITIC. EAST AND WEST 291
Van Mons counsels: “Sow, resow, sow again,
sow perpetually; in short, do nothing but sow."
Kurroglou. “ Serdar, hear me, I am wont to
sing some verses in the heat of battle. A song
has just come into my mind. Listen to it first
and we shall fight afterwards.”
Criticism should not be querulous and wast-
ing, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, in- 
structive, inspiring, a south wind, not an east
wind.
Orientalism is Fatalism, resignation : Occi-
dentalism is Freedom and Will. We Occiden-
tals are educated to wish to be first.
Orientalist. Says Goethe, “The English
translator of the Cloud - Messenger, Megad-
1 Mr. Emerson breathed himself by going every morning
after breakfast, during the growing season, into his orchard,
where he paid much affectionate if unskilled attention to his pear
trees. He liked to take his children with him. He had in his
library Downing's thick volume on fruit culture, and took
especial interest in the account therein given of Van Mons's
theories and practice, from which his optimism was reinforced.
(See Representative Men, p. 9, Natural History of Intellect,
pp. 76 and 173.)


292
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
huta, is likewise worthy of all honour, since the
first acquaintance with such a work always makes
an epoch in our life.”
In an evil hour I pulled down my fence and
added Warren's piece to mine; no land is bad,
but land is worse.' ...
Everything hastens to its Judgment Day.
The merriest poem, the sweetest music, rushes
to its critic. From Calvinism we shall not get
away. See how sedulously we plant a pair of
eyes in every window to overlook our own go-
ings and comings. And I know my Parcæ
through all the old hats, pea-jackets, and blue
farmer's frocks which they wear on every road
I walk in.
I cannot live as you do. It is only by a most
exact husbandry of my resources that I am any-
body.
What a spendthrift you are, o beautiful
Corinne! What needless webs you weave, what
busy arts you ply. It costs you no exertion to
1 The rest of this long passage occurs in “ Wealth”
( Conduct of Life, pp. 115, 116).


1847) FRUIT TREES. PESTS 293
paint the image of yourself that lies on any ret-
ina. Yet how splendid that benefit! — and all
your industry adds so little and puts in peril so
much. . . . And every one can do his best
thing easiest.
Garden. Do you not understand values ? said
Sylvan. I economize every drop of sap in my
trees as if it were wine. A few years ago these
trees were whip-sticks. Now every one of them
is worth a hundred dollars. Look at their form.
Not a branch nor a twig is to spare. They look
as if they were arms and hands and fingers hold-
ing out to you the fruit of the Hesperides.
June 22.
An Orientalist, who was a Hercules among the
bugs and curculios, recommended to me a Per-
sian experiment of setting a lamp under the
plum tree in a whitewashed tub with a little
water in it by night. But the curculio showed
no taste for so elegant a death. A few flies and
harmless beetles perished, and one genuine
Yankee spider instantly wove his threads across
the tub, thinking that there was likely to be a
crowd and he might as well set up his booth and
win something for himself. At night in the gar-


294
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
den all bugdom and flydom is abroad. This
year is like Africa or New Holland, all surpris-
ing forms and masks of creeping, flying, and
loathsomeness.
June 27.
Irresistibility of the American; no conscience;
his motto, like Nature's, is, “ Our country, right
or wrong." He builds shingle palaces and shin-
gle cities; yes, but in any altered mood, perhaps
this afternoon, he will build stone ones, with
equal celerity; tall, restless Kentucky strength;
great race, but though an admirable fruit, you
shall not find one good, sound, well-developed
apple on the tree. Nature herself was in a hurry
with these hasters and never finished one.
Happy blending of advantages in this cli-
mate. We get in summer the splendour of the
equator and a touch of Syria, with enormous
natural productiveness ; goes into the genius, as
well as into the cucumbers. Whilst the poor
polar man only gets the last of it. Nature in
this climate ardent, rushing up after a shower
into a mat of vegetation.
Mythology. We do not understand in old
Biblical history the idol business; but we have


1847] IDOLS. GENIUS. HUMILITY 295
a plenty of sub-gods ourselves. Who is not an
idolater? I remember being at a loss to know
why those Israelites should have such a passion
for the idols.
Alcott says, Why is an arbor ornamental, and
intellect is not surely so regarded? I reply, Be-
cause an arbor remains an arbor; but the man
of intellect is will-of-the-wisp and fantastical, a
bird, a bat. It should have reverence enow if it
remained itself.
The Solitude. All intellectual men are believ-
ers in an aristocracy, that is, a hierarchy. But I
think them honest; because it is the preroga-
tive of genius to melt every many-ranked so-
ciety into one company, merging distinction in
their sincere curiosity and admiration.'
Dreadful to sit on the dais, happy to sit near
the salt. Happy who is never seen except
rightly seen! Happy whose dress no man ever
could remember to describe.
Ah! who has society?— people to talk to? -
i Compare in “ Aristocracy” the passage really describ-
ing a village lecture by Agassiz, though there only called “ a
man of teeming brain.” (Lectures and Biographical Sketches,
pp. 53, 54.)


296
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
people who stimulate? Boston has 120,000 and
I cannot now find one: and elsewhere in the
world I dare not tell you how poor I am, how
few they are.
Of the strange scepticism of the Intellect.
It will not speak to the Intellectual on the
platform of Ethics, and that out of a true in-
tegrity. It has strange experience. It knows
that it is a debtor to sin and degradation. Cer-
tainly let it do homage in silence to the Soul.
But in speech I think it should bravely, as it
certainly will with the Intellectual, own the ac-
tual. That is sublime — to abandon one's self,
against all experience, to the Absolute and
Good.
But God will keep his promise yet,
Trees and clouds are prophets sure,
And new and finer forms of life
Day by day approach the pure.
re
The mysterious laws of Poetry, the natural
history of a poem are not known; no practical
rules, no working-plan was ever given. It is
miraculous at all points. The state given, a lit-
tle more or a good deal more or less perform-
ance seems indifferent. There is much differ-


1847) RAILROAD. A MUSICIAN 297
ence in the stops, but the running time need be
but little increased to add great results. As we
say, one master could so easily be conceived as
writing all the books of the world. They are
all alike.
Railroads are to civilization what mathemat-
ics were to the mind. Their immense promise
made the whole world nervous with hope and
fear, and they leave society as they found it.
The man gets out of the railroad car at the end
of five hundred miles in every respect the same
as he got in. But a book or a friend opens a
secret door at his side that may lead to Par-
nassus.
m
My young friend believed his calling to be
musical, yet without jewsharp, catgut or rosin.
Yes, but there must be demonstration. Look
over the fence yonder into Captain Abel's land.'
There's a musician for you, who knows how to
make men dance for him in all weathers, and
1 Captain Abel Moore, a neighbor of Mr. Emerson's on
the Boston Road, an admirable farmer, as was his son John
who followed him. Captain Moore was sheriff and jailor,-
Concord then being a shire town, — and, after the easy-going
fashion of those days, employed the prisoners on his farm,
an arrangement beneficial and not disagreeable to them.


298
JOURNAL
[AGE 44
all sorts of men, — Paddies, felons, farmers, car-
penters, painters, yes, and trees and grapes and
ice and stone, hot days, cold days. Beat that,
Ménétrier de Meudon,' if you can! Knows
how to make men saw, dig, mow, and lay stone
wall, and how to make trees bear fruit God never
gave them, and grapes from France and Spain
yield pounds of clusters at his door. He saves
every drop of sap as if it were his own blood.
His trees are full of brandy. You would think
he watered them with wine. See his cows, see his
swine, see his horses; and he, the musician that
plays the jig which they all must dance, — biped
and quadruped and centipede, — is the plainest,
stupidest-looking harlequin in a coat of no colors.
But his are the woods and the waters, the hills
and meadows. With a stroke of his instrument
he danced a thousand tons of gravel from yonder
blowing sand-heap on to the bog meadow be-
neath us where now the English grass is waving
over countless acres; with another he terraced
the sand-hill, and covered it with peaches and
grapes ; with another he sends his lowing cattle
every spring up to Peterboro' to the mountain
pastures.
i The fiddler in Béranger's poem, who could even make
the mourners in a funeral procession dance.


18471 YANKEE SPECULATORS 299
Nesmith, of Lowell, a little gnarled man, as
Abel Adams says, projected the City of Law-
rence; persuaded Samuel Lawrence to work with
him, and he interested Abbott Lawrence. The
two received, I think, $30,000 each for their
services.
The Ogdensburg speculators of Boston sent
up Billy Kendrick to bond the land at Ogdens-
burg of the farmers. And he went talking and
gossiping about, with his “trees to sell,” and
actually bonded nine hundred acres. He had a
Judge Hall of the place behind him to execute
the papers. A man named Bigelow at Brigh-
ton first came there from Vermont, barefoot,
seventeen years old boy, to help a man drive his
sheep down; and he thought he would stay there
a little while,“ his father would n't find no fault”;
then he drove a butcher's cart; now he was one
of these Ogdensburg speculators.
An American in this ardent climate gets up
early some morning and buys a river; and adver-
tises for twelve or fifteen hundred Irishmen; digs
a new channel for it, brings it to his mills, and
has a head of twenty-four feet of water; then, to
give him an appetite for his breakfast, he raises
a house; then carves out, within doors, a quarter


300
JOURNAL (AGE 44
township into streets and building lots, tavern,
school, and Methodist meeting-house-sends
up an engineer into New Hampshire, to see
where his water comes from, and, after advising
with him, sends a trusty man of business to buy
of all the farmers such mill-privileges as will
serve him among their waste hill and pasture
lots, and comes home with great glee announc-
ing that he is now owner of the great Lake Win-
nipiseogee, as reservoir for his Lowell mills at
midsummer.
They are an ardent race, and are fully pos-
sessed with that hatred of labor, which is the prin-
ciple of progress in the human race, as any other
people. They must and will have the enjoyment
without the sweat. So they buy slaves, where the
women will permit it; where they will not, they
make the wind, the tide, the waterfall, the steam,
the cloud, the lightning, do the work, by every
art and device their cunningest brain can achieve.
e
D
nce
The one event which never loses its romance
is the alighting of superior persons at my gate.
My Pear. This noble tree had every property
which should belong to a plant. It was hardy and
almost immortal. It accepted every species of


n
e
1847] MY PEAR. THE IRRITANT 301
nourishment, and could live almost on none. It
was free from every species of blight. Grubs,
worms, flies, bugs, allattacked it. It yielded them
all a share of its generous juices, but when they
left their eggs on its broad leaves, it thickened
its liber and suffered them to dry up, and shook
off the vermin. It grows like the ash Yggdrasil.
en
One thing is to be remarked concerning the
law of affinity. Every constitution has its natural
enemies and poisons, which are to be avoided, as
ivy and dogwood are by those whom those plants
injure. There are those who, disputing, will make
you dispute ; and, nervous and hysterical and ani-
malized, will produce a like series of symptoms
in you; though no other persons produce the like
phenomena in you, and though you are conscious
that they do not properly belong to you, but are
a sort of extension of the diseases of the other
party into you. I have heard that some men sym-
pathize with their wives in pregnancy, as, for ex-
ample, in the nausea with which women are af-
fected, a ridiculous and incredible circumstance,
but it, no doubt, grew out of this observation,
which Liebig has discovered, a law of bodies —
“ the contagious influence of chemical action.”
...“ A substance, which would not of itself
usea


302
JOURNAL (AGE 44
yield to a particular chemical attraction, will
nevertheless do so if placed in contact with some
other body which is in the act of yielding to the
same force.”
Rich and poor. He is the rich man who on
every day more than answers the demands of
the day.
There is a contest between the demands of
the poor and the demands of the rich; the de-
mands of the rich, — are they not legitimate
also? Thus, I have never seen a man truly rich,
that is, with an adequate command of Nature.
But men are stimulated incessantly from the
ideal to acquire the command over Nature. It
is the interest of the universe of men that there
should be Dukes of Devonshire, Cræsuses, Ka-
runs, and King Solomons.
Yes, Dumas has doubtless journeymen. In
Paris they can be procured, and why not he
have journeymen, as well as Thorwaldsen or
Upjohn? How much better, really better, would
he not write for having the less vigorous, but
yet original vein of another man put entirely
under his command, with that man's honest
experience and imagery?
Omma
2


1847] CHANNING'S BOOK' 303
July 10.
Ellery Channing has written a lively book
on Rome, which certifies that he has been there.
He has the reputation of being a man of genius
and this is some guarantee of it; he has ap-
proached sometimes the lightness and pungency
of his talk, but not often. He has used his own
eyes, and many things are brought to notice
here that had not been reported, as the foun-
tains, the gardens, lively charcoal sketches of
the café the trattoria and the bacon-dealer's shop,
the vettura and postilion, the agriculture in the
Campagna. It was a lucky thought to introduce
Montaigne in Rome, and the tribute to Raf- ·
faelle over his tomb in the Pantheon, and to
Michael Angelo, are warm and discerning. A
very catholic spirit.
Thoreau sometimes appears only as a gen-
darme, good to knock down a cockney with, but
without that power to cheer and establish which
makes the value of a friend.
Goethe in this third volume Autobiogra-
phy, which I read now in new translation,
seems to know altogether too much about
himself.


304
JOURNAL [Ace 44
Luther, according to Mr. Blecker, advises,
in one of his letters, a young scholar, who can-
not get rid of his doubts and spiritual fears, to
get drunk.
Edda. “ The gods have erected a bridge from
earth to heaven which is called Bifrost or Rain-
bow.”
I also find it significant, what is said of Thor's
house (Bilskirnir), that“ it has five hundred and
forty floors.”
Poet. Significant again that“ Balder the good
dreamed dreams great and perilous for his life:
but he told the Asa the dreams.” So the whole
fable [of Balder's slaying).
Conversation that would verily interest me
would be those old conundrums which at Sym-
posia, the seven or seventy wise masters were
wont to crack - What is intellect? What is
time? What are the runners and what the goals?
But now there is no possibility of treating them
well. Conversation on intellect and scholars be-
comes pathology. What a society it needs! I
think you could not find a club at once acute
i Compare the fragment in “ Nature” (Appendix to the
Poems, p. 341) beginning, “ Day by day, for her darling,” etc.


CSS
1847] POOR CONVERSATION 305
and liberal enough in the world. Bring the best
wits together and they are so impatient of each
other, so worldly, or so babyish, there is so
much more than their wit, so many follies and
gluttonies and partialities, so much age and
sleep and care, that you have no academy. The
questions that I incessantly ask myself, as, What
is our mythology ? — which were a sort of test
object for the power of our lenses — never come
into my mind when I meet with clergymen ;
and what academy has propounded this for a
prize ?
But of what use to bring the men together,
when they will torment and tyrannize over each
other, and play the merchant and the statesman?
Conversation in society is always on a platform
so low as to exclude the Saint and the Poet after
they have made a few trials. Ah, we must have
some gift of transcending time also, as we do
space, and collecting our club from a wider
brotherhood. Crier, call Pythagoras, Plato,
Socrates, Aristotle, Proclus, Plotinus, Spinoza,
Confucius and Menu, Kepler, Friar Bacon.
n
.
Insufficient forces. We have experience, read-
ing, relatedness enough, oh, yes, and every other
weapon, if only we had constitution enough.


306
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
“You
But, as the doctor said in my boyhood,
have no stamina.”
Cyrus Stow wanted his bog-meadow brought
into grass. He offered Anthony Colombe, Sol
Wetherbee, and whoever else, seed and manure
and team, and the whole crop; which they ac-
cepted, and went to work, and reduced the tough
roots, the tussocks of grass, the uneven surface,
and gave the whole field a good rotting and
breaking and sunning, and now Stow finds no
longer any difficulty in getting good English
grass from the smooth and friable land. What
Stow does with his field, what the Creator does
with the planet, the Yankees are now doing with
America. It will be friable, arable, habitable, to
men and angels yet.
in
Tools. Mechanic Powers. Shall a man see
wheels every day of his life on every cart, car,
and loom, and not learn the value of manners
as wheels or currency to himself? Shall he, in
his garden, cut down the spindling shoots of his
pear tree, or pinch off the redundant buds of
his grapevine, to give robustness to the stock,
and not learn the value of rejection in his own
spiritual economy?


1847] FORCES. THE HEMLOCKS 307
Shall he see that all his gardening is a selection,
and then a new, and then a newer selection, and
not apply that lesson to his life?
Or shall he see in chemistry that law of su-
perinducing and contagion (mentioned above)
and not see that Plato Platonizes and Napoleon
Napoleonizes men; that a merchant sets every-
body on edge for stocks; Spurzhein fills Amer-
ica with plaster skulls, and Agassiz makes anato-
mists where he goes ?
“ Corpora non agunt nisi soluta." ;
Thursday, July 15.
Alcott, Thoreau, and I went to the “island”
in the Walden woodlot, and cut down and brought
home twenty hemlocks for posts of the arbor.
And these have been growing when I was sleep-
ing, fenced, bought, and owned by other men,
and now, in this new want of mine for an orna-
ment to my grounds, their care and the long
contribution of the great agents, sun and earth,
rain and frost, supply this rich botanic wonder
of our isle.
A rather aristocratic book is the history of the
Cid. Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar (born A.D. 1026,
i Bodies only act when freed.


308
JOURNAL
[AGE 44
Southey's Chronicle). “My Cid, my Fortunate,
he who never was conquered, he of good fortune,
my Cid Ruy Diaz, he who in a happy hour first
girt on his sword.”
The horse Bavieca, like Kurroglou's horse,
Kyrat, is the sub-god in the poem, and then
the swords Colada and Tizona, like Arthur's
Excalibur.
Books. Oh day of days, when we can read! The
reader and the book. Either without the other
is naught.
July 24.
Pear trees this morning in high prosperity.
Hardly a tough, dry, wormy dwarf in all the
garden but is forced to show a bud or a shoot
to-day. Flemish Beauty meanwhile and the
Golden Beurré of Bilboa, and the Green Prin-
cesses who keep their incognito so well near the
plum trees, show a foot and a half of growth
respectively.
The divine man. Alexander the Great emit-
ted from his skin a sweet odor, and Henry
More believed the same thing of himself, and
who does not remember the south wind days
when he was a boy, when his own hand had a
strawberry scent?


1847] ALCOTT'S SENSES. PLATO 309
1. Fuly 25.
Of Alcott it is plain to see that he never loses
sight of the order of things and thoughts before
him. The thought he would record is some-
thing, but the place, the page, the book in
which it is to be written are something also, not
less than the proposition. So that usually in
the attention to the marshalling, the thing mar-
shalled dwindles and disappears. One thing
more. I used to tell him that he had no senses.
And it is true that they are with him merely
vehicular, and do not constitute a pleasure and
a temptation of themselves. We had a good
proof of it this morning. He wanted to know
“Why the boys waded in the water after pond
lilies?” Why, because they will sell in town for
a cent apiece and every man and child likes
to carry one to church for a cologne bottle.
“What!” said he, “have they a perfume? I
did not know it.” See also the account of Chau-
cer's Canon.
man 2
In Gorgias. Callicles. “Tell me, Socrates,
whether we must say that you are now in ear-
nest or in jest? For, if you are in earnest and
these things which you say are true, is not our
human life subverted, and are not all our ac-


310
JOURNAL (AGE 44
sin
tions, as it seems, contrary to what they ought
to be?”
See also the diatribe against philosophers in
Gorgias.
The distinction between speculative and prac-
tical seems to me much as if we should have
champions appointed to tilt for the superiority
respectively of each of the Four Elements - ex-
cept in so far as it covers the difference between
seeming and reality. In this world of dreamers,
it makes small difference whether the men de-
vote themselves to nouns or to laying stone
walls, but whether they do it honestly or for
show. In the neighborhood of the new railroad
the other day, in Westminster, I found two poor
English or Irish men playing chequers on a little
board where the spots were marked with ink, and
the men were beans and coffee berries. They
played on, game after game, one sure of beating
the other, the other indignant at defeat, and I left
them playing. Why not? And what difference?
All the world is playing backgammon, some with
beans and coffee, and some with Texas and
Mexico, with States and Nations.
Eyes outrun the feet, and go where the feet and
hands can never follow. So Plato the practicalists.


1847] SAGA. LAPSE. FLOWERS 311
Compensation. In the Essay should have been
adduced the fable of Faust as the contribution
of Christian mythology to the dogma; and Bal-
der's blessing by Frigga from all harms but the
mistletoe; and the eye left in pledge by the
Allfadir when he drank of Mimir's spring.
The wolf Fenris is not chained except at the
expense of the hand of Tyr.
Beattie is an example of successful poetic ex-
pression. What can be finer than
“See in the rear of the warm summer shower
The visionary boy for shelter Aly.”
Aristocracy. But the day is darkened when
the golden river runs down into mud,'...
There is no individual trait that will not, with a
little self-indulgence, grow to a fanaticism, as
the artistic or the stoical humor, and then
beauty is deformity, and our delightful Image
of Grace and Friendship is a mournful chasm;
... henceforth a subject of tedious explanation.
(From GH)
Concord River in July 25 and August 2 is
decorated with the nymphæa, the cardinal
i The rest of the passage beginning thus is in “ Aristocracy”
(Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 51).


312
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
flower, and the button-bush, asclepias and eu-
patoriums; especially the willow adorns it with a
sort of green smoke. At Cambridge the suc-
cory.
Aristocracy. The astronomers are eager to
know whether the moon has an atmosphere.
Cambridge telescope seems to think it has. I
an only concerned that every man have one.'...
en
The highest value of natural history, and
mainly of these new and secular results, like the
inferences from geology, and the discovery of
parallax, and the resolution of nebulæ, is its
translation into an universal cipher applicable to
Man viewed as Intellect also. All the languages
should be studied abreast, says Kraitsir. Learn
the laws of music, said Fourier, and I can tell
you any secret in any part of the universe, in
anatomy, for instance, or in astronomy. Kepler
thought as much before.
Ah, that is what interests me; when I read in
a true History what befals in that kingdom
where a thousand years is one day, and see that
it is true through all the sciences, in the laws of
1 The substance of what follows is in “ Aristocracy”
(Lectures and Biographical Sketches, pp. 55, 56).


1847] WHIP. THE MANSIONS 313
thought as well as of chemistry. No Marseil-
laise is sung in that high region.
Whip for our top. The young scholar buys an
alarm-clock, he invents a clepsydron, he plants
a dial in his garden, he reads Greek by candle-
light before breakfast. When this fury is first
over, he tries travelling with book and pen, and
relishes his Greek poet in country bar-rooms,
or in sea-beaches and lighthouses, or in a cabin
in the woods.
Later, a public occasion, an expecting audi-
ence, or the pride of printing a book, flagellate
the drowsy muse.
in a
Theâtre des Variétés. There are many man-
sions in my Father's house: Poetry is one, Gar-
dening is one, Chemistry is one, Geology is one,
Engineering is one. They are all intertranslate-
able language.
Metamorphosis. The interest of the gardener
and the pomologist has the same foundation as
that of the Poet, — namely, in the metamor-
phosis: these also behold the miracle, the guided
change, the change conspicuous, the guide in-
visible; a bare stick studs itself over with green
V1
ve
een


314
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
buds, which become again leaves, flowers, and,
at length, delicious fruit.
Though dwarfs built Skidbladnir, as soon as
its sails are unfurled a favorable gale arises and
carries it of itself to whatever place it is destined.
It will hold them all with all their war gear on,
and when they have no mind to sail, they can
fold it up like a cloth in their pocket.
[The new journal (called the Massachusetts
Quarterly Review), considered at meetings in
the spring, and especially urged by Theodore
Parker and Dr. S. G. Howe, had been now de-
cided on with the former as editor. Mr. Emer-
son refused to be an associate editor, but con-
sented to write the initial address to the public.
The following paragraph is, in substance, in
that address, but is so much more local in ex-
pression that it is here given. (See Miscellanies,
pp. 383, 384.)]
I read the fabulous magnificence of these
Karuns and Jamschids and Kai Kans and Feri-
duns of Persia, all gold and talismans; then I
walk by the newsboys with telegraph despatches;
by the Post Office; and Pedding's shop with
English steamers' journals; and pass the Maine
CI


1847] BOSTON KINGS. SERVANT 315
Depot; and take my own seat in the Fitchburg
cars, and see every man dropped at his estate,
as we pass it; and see what tens of thousands of
powerful and armed men, science-armed, society-
armed men, sit at large in this ample land of
ours, obscure from their numbers and the ex-
tent of territory, and muse on the power which
each of these can lay hold of at pleasure, — these
men who wear no star nor gold-laced hat; you
cannot tell if they be poor or rich,—and I think
how far these chains of intercourse and travel
go, what levers, what pumps, what searchings,
are applied to Nature for the benefit of the
youngest of these exorbitant republicans, and I
say, What a negrofine royalty is that of Jam-
schid and Solomon; what a real sovereignty of
Nature does the Bostonian possess !— caout-
chouc, steam, ether, telegraph, — what bells
they can ring! ...
Value of a servant. The New Englander is
attentive to trifles, values himself on a sort of
omniscience, knows when the cars start at every
depot; feels every waterpipe and furnace-flue in
his house; knows where the rafters are in the
wall,— how can he be absorbed in his thought?
how can he be contemplative?


316
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
He must have a servant, he must call Tom
to ask prices and hours; what day of the month
it is, and when the mail closes? who is goy-
ernor of the state, and where is the police office?
But Tom does not come at a call. Nothing is
so rare in New England as Tom. Bad for the
New Englander. His skin is ocular. He is
afflicted with the second thought. Not for an
instant can he be great and abandoned to a
sentiment. Let the countrymen beware of cities.
A city is the paradise of trifles; and the current
sets so strong that way that the city seems a
hotel and a shop, a gigantic clothes-mart, toy-
shop; and if one, perchance, meet in the street
a man of probity and wisdom, an accomplished
and domestic soul, we are taken by surprise,
and he drives the owls and bats, that had in-
fested us, home to their holes again.
Aristocracy. What is it that makes the noble-
man? - loyalty to his thought.'...
Boston divides itself into factions on Dr.
Jackson's discovery of ether; and London and
Paris contest the priority of having found Nep-
The rest of the passage is printed in « Aristocracy"
(Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 55).


1847] SALIENCY. ORIGINALITY 317
tune in the skies. It is not that Dr. Jackson or
Mr. Morton, that Leverrier or Mr. Adams, will
be in the least enlarged or ameliorated by conced-
ing to them the coveted priority, — but there is
evidently a feeling of an awful power in this
creative saliency, this saliency of thought, this
babit of saliency, of not pausing but going on,
which is a sort of importation and domestica-
tion of the Divine Effort in a man."
Originality. I heard old John Keyes º say,
“that it was a story (that of importing the stone
of the Stone Chapel) which he had told so often
that he now firmly believed it himself”; so is it,
no doubt, with many of my originalities. I have
a good many commonplaces which often turn
up in my writing and talking, which I have used
so often that I have the right of the strong
hand unto; but that they are indigenous in my
brain, I do not know nor care.
The Superstitions of our Age:
The fear of Catholicism;
The fear of pauperism;
1 This last sentence occurs in Natural History of Intellect
(p. 59).
2 A lawyer and leading citizen of Concord, father of the
late Judge John Shepard Keyes.


318
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
The fear of immigration;
The fear of manufacturing interests;
The fear of radicalism or democracy;
And faith in the steam engine.
Nemesis takes care of all these things, bal-
ances fear with fear, eradicates nobles by up-
starts, supplants one set of nobodies by new
nobodies.
I am always reminded, and now again by
reading last night in Rousseau's Confessions, that
it is not the events in one's life, but in the fac-
ulty of selecting and reporting them, that the
interest lies. Mrs. Marshall, over the way, if
she could write, would make as interesting a
life as Robinson Crusoe. And this because poetry
needs little history - it is made of one part his-
tory and ninety-nine parts music; or — shall I
say? — fact and affection.
“This machine," said my friend, “must be
far from perfect; see how complex it is.” The
highest simplicity of structure is the last and
requires the most composite.
In England, Landor, De Quincey, Carlyle,
three men of original literary genius; but the


1847]. CHILD. BOOKS. WRITING 319
scholar, the catholic, cosmic intellect, Bacon's
own son, the Lord Chief Justice on the Muse's
Bench is Wilkinson.
Education should leave the child obscure in
his youth; protected so, as the green apple in
its crude state.
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all
day.
If a man read a book because it interests
him, and read in all directions for the same rea-
son, his reading is pure, and interests me; but
if he read with ulterior objects, if he reads that
he may write, we do not impute it to him for
righteousness. In the first case he is like one
who takes up only so much land as he uses;
in the second, he buys land to speculate with.
I have that faith in the necessity of all gifts
that to implore writers to be a little more of
this or that were like advising gunpowder to
explode gently, or snow to temper its white-
ness, or oak trees to be less profuse in leaves
and acorns, or poplars to try the vinous habit
and creep on walls. They do as they can, and


320
(AGE 44
JOURNAL .
they must instruct you equally by their failure
as by their talent, that is, they must teach you
that the world is farmed out to many contract-
ors, and each arranges all things on his petty
task, sacrifices all for that.
Aristocracy may study Hamlet; it is the lit-
erature and manual of that. Aristocracy is the
moral and independent class. Polk and Web-
ster must have power, and must truckle for it.
With patrician airs, they can never be gentle-
men. We understand very well what they mean
when they say “patriotism,” and unless we are
very tired we do not laugh. ... The prerog-
atives of the Teacher are determined, as one
of my friends said, not by his profession, but
by the health he restores to the body and mind
of his patient and the faith he insures by actual
cure.
Wealth. The difference between riches and
poverty, as I so often say, is reverence for supe-
riority ; it makes not much difference what kind
that is, but health requires the upward eye. He
is beautiful in face, in port, in manners, who is
loyal to his thought, absorbed in objects which
he thinks superior to himself.


reau
18471 THOREAU. NEWCOMB 321
Henry Thoreau says that twelve pounds of
Indian meal, which one can easily carry on his
back, will be food for a fortnight. Of course, one
need not be in want of a living wherever corn
grows, and where it does not, rice is as good.
Henry, when you talked of art, blotted a paper
with ink, then doubled it over, and safely defied
the artist to surpass his effect.
Charles K. Newcomb, the fathomless sceptic,
was here August 8th. Thought he defies, he
thinks it noxious. It makes us old, harried, anx-
ious. Yes, but it is no more to be declined than
hands and feet are. We must accept our func-
tions, as well as our organs. Thought is like the
weather, or birth, or death: we must take it as
it comes. Then this is work which, like every
work, reacts powerfully on the workman: out
of this anxiety flows a celestial serenity.
Aristocracy. One word more for a real aristo-
cracy, that, namely, in which each member con-
tributes something real. Every member com-
mits himself, imparts without reserve the last
results of intellect, because he is to receive an
equivalent in virtue, in genius, in talent, from
each other member. None shall join us but on


322
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
that condition. No idler, no mocker, no coun-
terfeiter, no critic, no frivolous person what-
soever, can remain in this company. I propose
this law with confidence, because I believe
every substantial man has somewhat to contrib-
ute.
I talked with Mr. W. of Alcott. W. said, he
is impracticable. I said, Yes, as our thoughts are.
He said, I do not think it will do to say that our
thoughts are quite impracticable. I replied, Nor
do I think that any man is quite impracticable.
Nor do I feel at liberty to decline the thoughts
or the men that go by, because they are not quite
easy to deal with and conformable to the opin-
ions of the Boston Post.
Hamlet was prophecy.
“ Nothing is more indicative of the deepest
culture and refinement than a tender considera-
tion of the ignorant,” said my friend A.— Yes,
and what is agreeable in it is the wealth of nature
it indicates; enough has he and to spare.
Individualism has never been tried. All his-
tory, all poetry deal with it only, and because
now it was in the minds of men to go alone, and
ISE


1847) COMMUNISM. LUXURY 323
now, before it was tried, now, when a few began
to think of the celestial enterprise, sounds this
tin trumpet of a French phalanstery, and the
newsboys throw up their caps and cry, Egotism
is exploded; now for Communism ! But all that
is valuable in the phalanstery comes of individu-
alism. You may settle it in your hearts that when
you get a great man, he will be hard to keep step
with. Spoons and skimmers may well enough
lie together; but vases and statues must have
each its own pedestal.
:
Laws of the World. The fish in the cave is
blind; such is the eternal relation between power
and use.
The fable of Zohak, of whom Eblis asked
as the reward of his services that he might kiss
the king's naked shoulder, and from the touch
sprang two black serpents, who were fed daily
with human victims ;- it is easy to see how fast
a figurative description of luxury becomes a leg-
end. The peasant sees that a pound of meal is
a day's food, and costs a penny, but that the
courtier drinks a cup of wine, or eats a fowl,
which costs fifty or one hundred prices of his
day's provisions; nay, which costs the wages of


324
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
a man for ten days. Of course, ten men must
toil all day, that this trifler may dine at ease.
When this is much exaggerated, he says, The
children of the courtier are corrupted from the
mother's womb; if their father ate up ten men,
they twenty,- and with wrath and contempt
beside. Two snakes have sprung from his shoul-
der who feed on human brains.
Realism. Idealism. “We have no land to put
our words on, yet our words are true,” said my
Sacs and Ioways: the philosopher may say the
same.
Every agent is a reagent. What are govern-
ments but awkward scaffoldings by which the
noble temple of individual genius is reared ? In
Greece one must see that the facility of inter-
course (arising out of peculiar geography) com-
bined with the absence of a massive priesthood,
and the discussion of all political business in
the open air, by all persons, gave that oppor-
tunity, that “easy state of transmission,” that
“state of amelioration ” (which the seedling pear
of Van Mons requires), so essential to the best
genius. If the spark were struck out, it would
be fanned to flame.


1847] BOSTON STATISTICS 325
August 24.
Mem. M. Alexandre Vattemare brings me
compliments, etc., from M. Ravaisson, maître
des requètes, etc., au ministère de l'instruction pub-
lique, - to which address I am to send copies
of two books.
ere
Boston. “The arrivals at the port of Boston
on Saturday last (21 August) were 147 coast-
wise and 22 foreign, — total, 169; by far the
largest number that ever came into this port in
one day. In this number are not included a
large number of vessels bringing wood, sand,
etc., Cape packets and small craft; but such as
arrive from a considerable distance and are
booked at the Merchants Exchange.” — Boston
Daily Advertiser of Tuesday, August 24.
[The following note added, September 14.]
I read in to - day's Post that, according to
the new valuation lists, Boston has increased
within one year by the amount of 1034 polls, by
$7,644,900 real; and by $5,875,900 personal
estate.
.
Transition. oſ péovtes. Intellect detaches in
the most decided manner.


326
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
We touch crimes, depths, mischance, and are
yet safe.
Also with heights, virtues, heroes, we find an
interval.
Intellect detaches the person. In any and
every low company he is always salvable. He
turns his Gyges ring and disappears from them
at will. 'Tis a patent of nobility. Ali. Bona-
parte.
We go to Europe to see aristocratic society
with as few abatements as possible. We go to
be Americanized, to import what we can. This
country has its proper glory, though now
shrouded and unknown. We will let it shine.
Patriotism is balderdash. Our side, our state,
our town, is boyish enough. But it is true that
every foot of soil has its proper quality, that
the grape on either side of the same fence has
its own flavor, and so every acre on the globe,
every group of people, every point of climate,
has its own moral meaning whereof it is the
symbol. For such a patriotism let us stand.
“What is a foreign country to those who
have science?”
The fever, though it groweth in my body, is
my enemy: the febrifuge, though it groweth in
the distant forest, is my friend.


1847] LABORER AND IDEALIST 327
How simple is the problem which Watts or
Hyde or Coombs, these laborers, have to solve;
merely to secure a subsistence, and every part
of their action in this work, cutting peat, saw-
ing wood, mowing hay, digging potatoes, is
comely and solid. Whilst they occupy them-
selves in this matter they are pyramidal, a cubic
solidity: the farmer, the merchant, makes Na-
ture responsible for his performance.
Not so the idealist, as the poet, the saint,
the philosopher; they must be to a certain ex-
tent farmers and merchants, and they propose
to themselves an impossible aim. The farmer
has the conquest of Nature to the extent of a
living; practicable: the poet the conquest of
the Universe ; impracticable.
Why can we not let the broker, the grocer,
the farmer, be themselves, and not addle their
brains with sciolism and religion?
But the spiritualist needs a decided bias to
the life of contemplation, else what prices he
pays! poor withered Ishmaelite, Jew in his
Ghetto, disfranchised, odd one; what succors,
what indemnities, what angels from the celes-
tial side must come in to make him square.
We wish to get the highest skill of finish, an


328
JOURNAL (AGE 44
engraver's educated finger, determination to an
aim, — and then — to let in mania, ether, to
take off the individual's interference and let him
fly as with thunderbolt.
Hafiz characterized by a perfect intellectual
emancipation, which also he provokes in the
reader. Nothing stops him. He makes the
dare-god and dare-devil experiment. He is not
to be scared by a name, or a religion. He fears
nothing.' He sees too far; he sees throughout;
such is the only man I wish to see and to be.
The scholar's courage is as distinct as the sol-
dier's and the statesman's, and a man who has
it not cannot write for me.
Reading. The culture of the Imagination, how
imperiously demanded, how doggedly denied.
There are books which move the sea and the
land, and which are the realities of which you
have heard in the fables of Cornelius Agrippa
and Michael Scott.
Sweetness of reading: Montaigne ; Froissart;
Chaucer.
Ancient: the three Banquets [Plato, Xeno-
phon, Plutarch].
1 Sentences to the same purpose differently expressed occur
in “ Persian Poetry”(Letters and Social Aims, p. 249).


1847]
READING
329
Oriental reading : [not filled out.]
Grand reading: Plato; Synesius ; Dante; Vita
Nuova; Timæus (weather, river of sleep); Cud-
worth ; Stanley
All-reading : Account of Madame de Staël's
rule; Rabelais; Diderot, Marguerite Aretin.
English reading : Clarendon; Bacon; Mil-
ton; Johnson ; Northcote.
Manuals: Bacon's Essays; Ben Jonson; Ford;
Beaumont and Fletcher.
Favorites : Sully; Walpole; Evelyn; Wal-
ton; Burton; White's Selborne ; Aubrey; Bar-
tram's Travels ; French Gai Science, Fabliaux.
Tonic books: Life of Michael Angelo; Gib-
bon; Goethe; Coleridge.
Novels : Manzoni.
Of Translation : Mitchell.
Importers : Cousin ; De Staël; Southey.
Go to mountains and you may find you had
better have stayed at home. You cannot find
your mountain. Yet from your lowland window
there still is the carbuncle visible again.' Moun-
1 Not from his study window, but from the hill-top oppo-
site his house, Wachusett and Watatic in Massachusetts and
Monadnoc and the Peterborough and Temple mountains can
be clearly seen. (See « Monadnoc from afar,” in the Poems,
and Thoreau's poem on these same mountains.)


330
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
tains are haunted. But they would be dull spirits
indeed who could not run away from a pair of
climbing, sweltering cockneys.
Nathaniel L. Frothingham twenty years ago
found me in his parlor, and looking at the form
of my head, said, “If you are good, it is no
thanks to you.”
September 5.
Channing wished we had a better word than
Nature to express this fine picture which the
river gave us in our boat yesterday. Kinde was
the old word, which, however, only filled half
the range of our fine Latin word. But nothing
expresses that power which seems to work for
beauty alone, as Channing said, whilst man works
only for use. The mikania scandens, the steel blue
berries of the cornel, the eupatoriums, enriched
now and then by a well-placed cardinal, adorned
the fine shubbery with what Channing called
judicious, modest colors, suited to the climate,
nothing extravagant, etc.
If an age that is to come would know the his-
tory of this it will seek certainly to know what
idea we attached to the word.


1847] THOUGHT. HOROSCOPE 331
“Give us peace in our boarders,” wrote Aunt
Mary, and when shown the misspelling, said,
“it would do as it was.”
What is the effect of thoughts. Certainly of
single thoughts a limited and often an illusory
effect : but of those elemental, organic thoughts
which we involuntarily express in the very mould
of our features, in the tendency of our charac-
ters, there is no measure known to us. What
differences the men and actions of 1847 from
those of 1747?
Horoscope. Aristocracy. Not the phrenologist
but the philosopher may well say, Let me see
his brain and I will tell you if he shall be poet,
king, founder of cities, etc.? ... People think
it fortune that makes one rich and another poor.
Is it? Yes; but the fortune was earlier in the
balance or adjustment between devotion to the
1 Miss Emerson's eccentricities made her, in spite of her
genius, a difficult boarder, though an actively interesting one.
First and last during her ninety years of life she was domiciled
for short periods in a great many households. See “Mary
Moody Emerson ” (Lectures and Biographical Sketches, pp.
405, 432).
2 The rest of this long passage is in " Aristocracy” (Lec-
tures and Biographical Sketches, pp. 44-46).


332
JOURNAL [AGE 44
present good and a forecast of the good of to-
morrow. G. lives for the moment, praises him-
self for it, and despises E., that he does not.
G., of course, is poor, and E., since he is pro-
viding, is provided. The odd circumstance is,
that G. thinks it a superiority in himself, this
improvidence which ought to be rewarded with
E.'s property.
All biography autobiography. I notice that the
biography of each noted individual is really at
last communicated by himself. The lively traits
of criticism on his works are all confessions made
by him from time to time among his friends and
remembered and printed.
Present and Future. Do not imagine that I
should work for the future, if my services were
accepted or acceptable in the present. Immor-
tality, as you call it, is my pis aller.
Remarkable trait in the American character
is the union, not very infrequent, of Yankee
cleverness with spiritualism. Thus, my Wall
Street cotton-broker, Thomas Truesdale; and
William Green of Boonton, New Jersey, iron
manufacturer; and Rebecca Black, living by slop-


1847] PRESENT. A MAN'S ANGLE 333
work from the tailors; and Sampson Reed, drug-
gist; and Hermann, toyseller; and Edward
Stubler, druggist in Alexandria, were all pros-
pering people who knew how to trade and how
to pray. William Green's wagon always met
Thomas Truesdale and Rebecca Black at the
ferry when they went, moved by the spirit, to
visit him, though he had no notice of their
coming
The Present. The present moment is a boat
in which I embark without fear; boat and pilot
at once.
The modern architecture is ship-building ;
and the modern art is music; and the new power,
steam.
A man is measured by the angle at which he
looks at objects. I am reckoned a better man
than Mr. O'Shaughnessy, because I am found
to see things at a larger angle than he; that is,
not to be quite so much of a trifler or a fly, as
he. Well; here is Alcott looks at everything in
larger angles than any other, and, by good right,
should be the greatest man. But here comes in
another trait: it is found, though the lines of his


334
JOURNAL (AGE 44
angles are of so generous contents, the apex
of the angle is not quite defined, which “ takes
from the pith of nature the noblest attribute.”
This he does not understand, and puts another
construction on it, “that mankind are best
served indirectly, the divine spark loving to in-
sinuate itself through mediators to the minds
of the multitude, he feels that he has the freest
access to the minds of the people through the
peoples' teachers,” etc., etc.
aco
A tool is that which is used purely for my
benefit without any regard to its own. But all
love is of that nature that it instantly respects
the instrument also, and, though it be a ship or
a wheel or bootjack, raises it instantly into per-
sonality and seeks to give it an interest of its
own and to treat it as if it had.
Good writing is a kind of skating which car-
ries off the performer where he would not go,
and is only right admirable when to all its beauty
and speed a subserviency to the will, like that
Lof walking, is added.
(From JK)
Aristocracy. Is the ideal society always to be
only a dream, a song, a luxury of thought, and


1847] REAL ARISTOCRACY 335
never a step taken to realize the vision for living
and indigent men, without misgiving within,
and wildest ridicule abroad? Between poetry and
prose must the great gulf yawn ever, and they
who try to bridge it over be lunatics or hypo-
crites ? And yet the too dark ground of history
is starred over with solitary heroes who dared
to believe better of their brothers and who pre-
vailed by actually executing in some part the
law (the high ideal) in their own life, and though a
hissing and an offence to their contemporaries, yet
they became a celestial figure to all succeeding
souls as they journeyed through nature. How
shine the names of Abraham, Diogenes, Pytha-
goras, and the transcendent Jesus in antiquity.
In our best moments society seems not to
claim equality, but requires to be treated like a
child, to whom we administer camomile and
magnesia, on our own judgment, without con-
sultation. What we can do is little enough for
the other. And we glance for sanction at the
historical position of scholars in all ages, whom
we commend in proportion to their self-reliance.
But when our own light flickers in the socket,
suddenly the pupil seems riper, and more for-
ward, and even assumes the mien of a patron
whom we must court.
II


336
JOURNAL (Age 44
Do you say that all the good retreat from
men, and do not work strongly and lovingly
with them? Well, it is fit and necessary that
they should treat men as ghosts and phantoms,
here for our behoof, here to teach us dramati-
cally, as long as they have not attained to a real
existence in their own right, that is to say, until
the uprise of the soul in them. Then we shall,
without tedious degrees, treat them as ourselves:
they will be ourselves. Now they are not our-
selves: why should we say they are?
Aristocracy. Heroic dreams taught us that the
Golden Table never lacks members :'...
REALLY!
[Mr. Emerson sailed from Boston for Liver-
pool in the packet ship Washington Irving,
Captain Caldwell, on October 14.
He had left his loyal and in every way capa-
ble friend, Henry Thoreau, in his home to man
the wall during his absence. Those persons who
have been led to believe that Thoreau was hard
and undomestic are referred to his letters to
Mr. Emerson in England telling of the home
doings from week to week. For Mrs. Emerson
i For the rest of the passage, see « Aristocracy” (Lectures
and Biographical Sketches, pp. 60-61).


1847] SAILING FOR ENGLAND 337
he felt a reverential and sympathetic regard, as
of a younger brother, and the children found in
him the most delightful of companions. (See
the Familiar Letters of Thoreau, edited by Mr.
F. B. Sanborn.)
Through the friendly offices of Mr. Alex-
ander Ireland, with whom Mr. Emerson had
the kindest relations on his first visit to Eng-
land in 1833, (at this time editor of the Man-
chester Examiner), Mr. Emerson found himself
engaged to lecture before many Mechanics' In-
stitutes in Lancashire and Yorkshire, associated
into a Union and rapidly extending into the
midland counties and northward into Scotland.)
At Sea, October 14.
The good ship darts through the water all
night like a fish, quivering with speed, sliding
through spaces, sliding from horizon to hori-
zon.'....
It occurred, in the night watches, that the
true aristocrat is at the head of his own order,
and that disloyalty is to mistake other chivalries
for his own. Let him stop at the hotel of his
i For an account of the voyage, see English Traits (pp.
26-31).


338
[AGE 44
JOURNAL
fashion: and, whatever he does or does not, let
him know and befriend his friends.
Perhaps a scholar should carry with him a little
trunk of specimens also, and be able to wile his
lowest company from their meat and lowness by
the new charms of romance and of reason.
Coals to a Market. Can you not fancy that,
after all your elections, you are still carried in
some degree by the genius and habit of your
countrymen, of your profession? There is less
of this which you have and know and are, where
you are going than you left at home. Ah! is it
so? — then an idea leads you, and outcalculates
your calculations. Well; is there no insurance
in that? Can you not say, then, By the leave of
God we will arrive?
October 18.
In reading last night this old diary of Joseph
Emerson of Malden,' ending in the year 1736,
i Rev. Joseph Emerson (born, 1700 ; A. B. Harvard,
1717 ; married Mary Moody of Agamenticus (York), Maine,
1767; died, 1775), Emerson's great-grandfather, and father
of William Emerson, minister of Concord. Much of the fol-
lowing extract from the diary of this pious and scholarly man
is printed in the sketch of Rev. Ezra Ripley (Lectures and
Biographical Sketches, pp. 384, 385).


. 1847] JOSEPH OF MALDEN 339
one easily sees the useful egotism of our old Pu-
ritan clergy. The minister experienced life for his /
flock. He gave prominence to all his economy
and history for the benefit of the parish. His cow
and horse and pig did duty next Sunday in the
pulpit. All his haps are providences. If he keeps
school, marries, begets children, if his house
burns, if his children have the measles, if he is
thrown from his horse, if he buys a negro, and
Dinah misbehaves, if he buys or sells his chaise-
all his adventures are fumigated with prayer and
praise — he improves next Sunday the new cir- iv
cumstance,-and the willing flock are contented
with this consecration of one man's adventures
for the benefit of them all, inasmuch as that one
is on the right level and therefore a fair represen-
tative.
Thus, in his diary the minister notes, January
27, 1735:-
“Some talk about buying a shay. How much
reason have I to watch and pray against inordi-
nate affection for things of this world.
" January 31. Bought a Shay for £27,108.
The Lord grant it may be a comfort and bless-
ing to my family!
“ February 5. Remarked smilingly upon my
being drawn in a Shays. The Lord Jesus has the


340
JOURNAL [AGE 44
entire government of the Church, and to his
favour I am indebted for such a smile of Provi-
dence, so very unexpected.”
In the following March, he has “a safe and
comfortable journey” to York. But, on April
24, we find,“ Shay overturned with my wife and
I in it, yet neither of us much hurt. Blessed be
our gracious Preserver. Part of the Shay, as it
lay upon one side, went over my wife, and yet
she was scarcely anything hurt. How wonderful
the preservation!”
Then again, May 5, “ Went to the Beach
with three of the children. The Beast being
frightened, when we were all out of the Shay,
overturned and broke it. I desire (I hope I de-
sire it) that the Lord would teach me suitably
to resent this Providence, to make suitable re-
marks upon it, and to be suitably affected with
it.'
“Have I done well to get me a Shay? Have
I not been proud or too fond of this conven-
ience? Do I exercise the faith in the divine care
and protection which I ought to do? Should I
not be more in my study, and less fond of diver-
1 This obsolete though correct use of “resent” in a good
sense occurs also in the diaries of his son, Rev. William Emer-
son, in 1775.


1847] THE SHAY. CATHOLICISM 341
sions? Do I not withhold more than is meet
from pious and charitable uses ? ”
Well, on 15 May, we have this, “Shay
brought home : mending cost 30 shillings. Fa-
voured in this respect beyond expectation.”
“16 May. My wife and I rode together in
the Shay to Rumney Marsh. The Beast frighted
several times.”
And at last we have this record :-
“June 4. Disposed of my Shay to the Rev.
Mr. White."
Another circumstance appears from all the
names in the diary: that the leading families in
New England seem chiefly descended from some
clergyman of that time, as, Hancock, Lowell,
Sewall, Bulkeley, Chauncy, Forbes, Walter, Par-
sons, Greenleaf, Thacher, Oxenbridge, Barnard,
Colman, Green, Foxcroft, Tappan.
Religion. The Catholic religion respects
masses of men and ages. If it elects, it is yet
by millions, as when it divides the heathen and
Christian. The Protestant, on the contrary, with
its hateful “private judgment,” brings parishes,
families, and at last individual doctrinaires and
schismatics, and, verily, at last, private gentle-
men into play and notice, which to the gentle


342
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
musing poet is to the last degree disagreeable.
This of course their respective arts and artists
must build and paint. The Catholic Church is
ethnical, and every way superior. It is in har-
mony with Nature, which loves the race and
ruins the individual. The Protestant has his
pew, which of course is only the first step to a
church for every individual citizen — a church
apiece.
ENGLAND
(From GH, ED, LM, and London)
Toto divisos orbe Brittannos.
VIRGIL, Æneid, 1, 67.
Ich dien.
Quid vult valde vult.
« L’Angleterre est un vaisseau. Notre île en a la
forme; la proue tournée au nord, elle est comme à
l'ancre au milieu des mers, surveillant le continent.
Sans cesse, elle tire de ses fancs d'autres vaisseaux
faits à son image, et qui vont la représenter sur toutes
les côtes du monde. Mais c'est à bord du grand navire
qu'est notre ouvrage à tous. Le roi, les lords, les com-
munes sont au pavillon, au gouvernail, et à la bous-
sole ; nous autres, nous devons tous avoir la main aux
cordages, monter aux mâts, tendre les voiles, et charger
les canons. Nous sommes tous de l'équipage, et nul


1847]
ENGLAND
343
n'est inutile dans la manœuvre de notre glorieux
navire.'
« Mais, mon garçon,' cria le gros Beckford, que
diable peut faire le poète dans la manæuvre?'
“Il dit, · Le poète cherche aux étoiles quelle route
nous montre le doigt du Seigneur.'” -
ALFRED DE VIGNY.
[During the visit to England and the voy-
ages to and fro, Mr. Emerson, as far as travel,
engagements and hospitalities allowed, recorded,
as usual, in his journal the thoughts which the
days brought. But among these he jotted down
notes of travel and of the acquaintances and
friends, old and new, that he met,- mechanics,
manufacturers, men of letters and science, noble-
men ;- also of the events of that period of
unrest in England and revolution in France.
Unfortunately for the editors, these entries were
scattered through four books with little regard to
chronology, and sometimes repeated with more
detail and different connection. We have selected
and arranged the matter as best we could.
It should be said that some extracts from
these journals were incorporated by Mr. Cabot
in his Memoir, and that some were used in the
notes to the Centenary Edition of the Works.
Yet it seemed best to us to keep them here.
ma


344
JOURNAL (AGE 44
Of his friend, Mr. Ireland, who came from
Manchester to welcome him as he stepped on
the dock at Liverpool, on Saturday, October 22,
Mr. Emerson said, — “Alexander Ireland ap-
proves himself the king of all friends and help-
ful agents; the most active, unweariable and
imperturbable. His sweetness and bonhommie in
an editor of a polemic and rather influential
newspaper is surpassing. I think there is a pool
of honey about his heart which lubricates all the
parts of his system, all his speech and expres-
sion with fine jets of mead. His good humor
is absolutely comic.” Mr. Emerson rested in
Liverpool over Sunday, heard James Martineau
preach, and took tea with him. Mr. Ireland put
a welcome missive into his hands :-)
I found at Liverpool, after a couple of days,
a letter which had been seeking me, from Car-
lyle, addressed to “R. W. E. on the instant
when he lands in England,” conveying the
heartiest welcome and urgent invitation to house
and hearth. And finding that I should not be
wanted for a week in the lecture rooms, I came
down to London, on Monday, and at ten at
night the door was opened to me by Jane Car-
Tyle, and the man himself was behind her with


1847]
CARLYLE
345
a lamp in the hall. They were very little changed
from their old selves of fourteen years ago (in
August) 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 plentiful
stream. We had a wide talk that night until
nearly one o'clock, and at breakfast next morn-
ing again. At noon or later we walked forth 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 into his talk and laughter, as he goes.
Here in his house, we breakfast about nine, and
Carlyle is very prone, his wife says, to sleep till
ten or eleven, if he has no company. An im-
mense talker, and, altogether, as extraordinary
in that 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. My few hours' dis-
course with him, long ago, in Scotland, gave me
not enough knowledge of him; and I have now, .
at last, been taken by surprise by him.
He is not mainly a scholar, like the most of
my acquaintances, but a very practical Scotch-
man, such as you would find in any saddler's


346
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
or iron-dealer's shop, and then only acciden-
tally and by a surprising addition the admirable
scholar and writer he is....
Carlyle and his wife live on beautiful terms.
Their ways are very engaging, and in her book-
case all his books are inscribed to her, as they
come from year to year, each with some signi-
ficant lines.
His brother, Dr. John Carlyle, has ended his
travels as a physician to the families of the
Duke of Buccleugh (?) and Countess Clare,
has retired on some sort of pension, and lives
near them, in lodgings, a bachelor, and is a
good scholar on his own account.
I see that I shall not readily find better or
wiser men than my old friends at home, and,
though no mortal in America could pretend to
talk with Carlyle, yet he is as unique here as
the Tower of London; and neither would he,
in any manner, satisfy them or begin to answer
the questions which they ask.? ...
1 The long paragraphs descriptive of Carlyle which fol-
low are found in the first two pages of the sketch “ Carlyle"
in Lectures and Biographical Sketches, which was printed after
Mr. Emerson's death.
2 The rest of the passage, thus beginning, is found in
“ Carlyle" (p. 490).


1847] CARLYLE'S TALK 347
I had a good talk with Carlyle last night. He
says over and over, for months, 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 pro- »
perly no religion in England. He is quite con-
temptuous about “ Kunst,” also, in Germans,
or English, or Americans.
Carlyle's realism is thorough. He is impa-
tient of a literary trifler. . . . Actors and ac-
tresses all mad monkeys. He saw Rachel in an
impossible attitude, and learned that she could
stand so because her dress was loaded with lead,
and he despises her ever since. The English
Parliament, with its babble, he denounces.' ...
His sneers and scoffs are thrown in every
direction. He breaks every sentence with a scoff-
ing laugh, — “windbag,” “monkey,” “don-
key,” “bladder,” and let him describe whom
he will, it is always “poor fellow.” I said,
“What a fine fellow are you to bespatter the
whole world with this oil of vitriol!” “No man,”
1 What follows about Parliament, the idle young noble-
men, Cobden, Free Trade, his admiration of the Czar, and
of Chadwick, the hydraulic engineer, the Universities, and
Architecture is printed in the short sketch of Carlyle above
mentioned.


348
JOURNAL
(Age 44
he replied, “speaks truth to me.” I said, “See
what a crowd of friends listen to and admire
you.” He said, “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.”
I said, on one occasion, “How can you un-
dervalue such worthy people as I find you sur-
rounded with, — Milnes, and Spedding, and
Venables, and Darwin, and Lucas, and so
forth?” He replied, “May the beneficent gods
defend me from ever sympathizing with the
like of them!”
I begin to understand that this arrogance
and contempt of all people around him is
brought to the genius by numerous experiences
of disappointments in the promise of characters
in a great population.
LONDON, October 26.
Mrs. Bancroft presented me to Samuel Rog-
ers, Esq. Mr. Rogers invited us to breakfast
with him on Friday. Just before ten o'clock, I
attended Mrs. Bancroft, in company with her
son,' and young Butler, of New York, to
I Alexander Bliss.


1847]
SAMUEL ROGERS
349
Rogers's. I suppose no distinguished person
has been in England during the last fifty years
who has not been at this house; so that it has
the prestige of a modern Pantheon. Mr. Rogers
received us with cold, quiet, indiscriminate po-
liteness, and entertained us with a store of
anecdote, which Mrs. Bancroft knew how to
draw forth, about such people as we cared most
to hear of. Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, Wel-
lington, Talleyrand, Madame de Staël, Lafay-
ette, Fox, Burke, and crowds of high men and
women had talked and feasted in these rooms,
which are decorated with every precious work.
The mantelpiece was carved by Flaxman. An
antique marble head Canova had brought with
his own hands and set down in the place which
it now occupies. Sir Francis Chantrey, dining
one day with our host, asked him if he remem-
bered the workman who made a cabinet for
him (which was now in the apartment). “I was
that man,” continued the sculptor. Here are
vases from old Rome; and some of the best
pictures in England; casts of the Elgin Marbles
are judiciously let into the walls (near which a
flying staircase mounts) so as to be examinable
at every angle. Mr. Rogers showed us Milton's
autograph, Pope's original bust, autograph let-


350
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
ters of Washington, Franklin, Mozart, Fox,
Burke, Dr. Johnson, etc. He read letters of
Byron to himself, and I saw original manuscript
of pages of Waverley, and so on, to any extent.
This man's collection is the chief private show
of London. Rogers's sentences are quoted al-
most as much as Sydney Smith's, for their satir-
ical point. It was he who said of Croker's article
on Macaulay in the Edinburgh, “that he had
attempted murder, and committed suicide.”
When Miss Cushman asked him whether he
should not go to America, he replied, " It was
always my intention to visit America before I
died; but now that I have seen you, I have no
longer any desire to do so.”
Rogers told us of Talleyrand's visit to him
with the Duchess of Orleans, blazing with
beauty, and Pamela (afterwards Lady Fitzger-
ald), who was more attractive by the sweet seri-
ousness of sixteen. He repeated Talleyrand's
answer to Madame de Staël, who asked him,
which he should save on a plank, in a ship-
wreck, Madame Récamier, or herself, “ Mais,
madame, vous pouvez nager.”
When this Princess of Orleans was on her
way to England, and the question rose, If you
could only know one English word, one said,


1847] SYDNEY SMITH. SCOTT 351
“You could get along with Yes!” But the Prin-
cess said, “If I knew but one, it should be
No; because No sometimes means Yes, but Yes
never means No."
To an Englishman who said to the Persian
ambassador, “ They worship the sun in your
country,” he replied, “So would you, if you
ever saw him.”
Sydney Smith said, “Macaulay has improved;
he has flashes of silence.”
Of the giraffe, he said, “He would take
cold; and think of having two yards of sore
throat !”
“The two styles, the Antediluvian and Post-
diluvian: men, nowadays, have not time to
lounge seventy years over a pamphlet.” ?
Hogg wrote, “Scott's Novels,” on the back
of Waverley, etc. Walter Scott said, “ Jamie,
do you spell Scots with twa ts?”
Mr. Upcott, who lived in Autograph Cot-
tage, had the writing found in Felton's hat, and
a page of the diary of Princess Charlotte, and
the death warrant of Mary, Queen of Scots.
i These witticisms of Sydney Smith and the two next
sentences were probably parts of Rogers’s table talk.


352
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
[After returning to Liverpool from his four
days' visit in London, Mr. Emerson found him-
self engaged to lecture nearly every evening in
that city or in Manchester for three weeks.]
RP
LIVERPOOL, October 30.
Everything in England bespeaks an immense
population. The buildings are on a scale of size
and wealth out of all proportion to ours, the co-
lossal masonry of the docks and of all the public
to be accommodated by them, and to pay for
them. So the manners of the people,' . .. The
Englishman has thus a necessary talent of letting
alone all that does not belong to him. They are
physiognomically and constitutionally distinct
from the Americans. They incline more to be
large-bodied men; they are stocky, and espe-
cially the women seem to have that defect to
their beauty; no tall slender girls of flowing
shape, but stunted and stocky. ...
Englishman. A manly ability, a general suffi-
ciency, 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
i Omitted sentences are printed in the chapter “Man-
ners” (English Traits, pp. 104, 105).


ann
18471 THE ENGLISHMAN 353
a man here, — a quite costly and respectable
production, in his own, and in all other eyes.
The Englishman is cheerful, and his voice is.
Their nationality is intense.
Englishman is clean, methodical, veracious,
proud, obstinate, comfort-loving, industrious,
accumulative, nautical.
Englishman must have foothold. Security is
in his face and manners, because he has solidity
in his foundations and method in his procedure.
The English secure the essentials, according to
their light, and it falls, at present, on bodily
good health and wealth. The Cyclops operative
cannot subsist on food less solid than beef, and
the masters cannot understand that there is any
way to success but on capital and economy.
The Englishman is aboveboard and direct;
he disdains, in fighting, to strike a foul blow,
he disdains secret ballot. It is “out of his nature
to assassinate even property.”
“Considering the abject respect which Truth
meets with in England, from persons of all
politics.” — Sir Francis HEAD.
England. “Lord Clarendon has pluck like a
cock, and will fight till he dies” -“but Peel
has that damned smile.”


354
(Age 44
JOURNAL
Patience an eminent English virtue.
“I bequeath my Patience to Mr. R. Peel,”
and Peel, the sublime of mediocrity, has come
to be the model man of England.
All we ask of any man is that he should
thoroughly like his own way of life.
That gew-gaw of a tournament, when Cour
de Lion appeared under an umbrella, cost
£100,000.
Two styles of dress, the tortoise style,' and
the supple or becoming. But the former,
wherein the man speaks out of his building,
suits English manners well.
My little Edie cost me many a penny."
Woman is cheap and vile in England.3
1 This was probably written after Mr. Emerson had seen
the armor of the ancestors of the Englishmen of to-day. In
the Journal for 1833 he speaks of the suits in the Tower as
reminding him of crustaceans.
2 That is, when he saw some little begging girl no bigger
than she in the streets.
3 The sad sights of drunken and degraded women in the
streets of the manufacturing towns moved him. (See letters to
Mrs. Emerson in Cabot's Memoir, pp. 506, 507.)


1847] MANCHESTER. SIGHTS 355
It rains at every tide at Manchester.
Only three or four per cent of this population
are idle. Everybody works in England, said
Mr. Rawlins.
In Manchester they attribute the better char-
acter of this people for prudence and industry to
the universal habit here of dining at one o'clock.
If they are to go to business again in the after-
noon, they say, we shall not eat so much.
V
I wish I had remarked who it was they said
uttered the quite English sentence, “So help
me God, I will never listen to evidence again.”
England. Among the local objects are horses
and hounds clothed all over, and postilions in
livery on every span of horses; and mourn-
ing coaches covered with nodding plumes; and
gigs and carts with little horses of the Canadian
(?) breed; and dogs; and sedan-chairs; and men
dressed in shawls; and they turn their horses
to the left hand when they meet, and in Man-
chester lately there is an order for foot passen-
gers to turn to the right; and escutcheons on
the walls for one year after death.
All life moves here on machinery, 't is a va-
rious mill. ...


356
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
Most of the differences between American
and English, referable to dense population here,
and will certainly be lost as America fills up.
What a misfortune to America that she has not
original names on the land, but this whitewash of
English names. Here every name is history.'
еу
[During December Mr. Emerson read lec-
tures in Derby, Sheffield (visiting Newstead
Abbey), Nottingham, Birmingham, Preston,
Leicester, Chesterfield, and Worcester.
At first, he followed his instinct and his al-
most invariable custom in America of being
independent of private hospitalities. Soon,
however, he wrote to his wife, “I find many
kind friends and have given up my caprice of
not going to private houses, and scarcely go to
any other. At Nottingham, I was the guest, on
four nights, of four different friends. At Derby,
I spent two nights with Mr. Birch, Mr. Al-
cott's friend, and at towns which I have prom-
ised to visit I have accepted invitations from
unknown hosts.”]
December 10.
I visited from Derby with Mr. W. Birch
and Mr. Thomas Tunaley, Kedleston Hall,
1 Examples given in English Traits (p. 179).


1847] WORLD IS WISE. ELLEN 357
seat of Lord Scarsdale. At Derby, All Saints
Church tower; and bells. At Nottingham, the
Castle and Mortimer's Hole,
December 11.
I visited Wollaton Hall, seat of Lord Mid-
dleton. Willoughby built in Elizabeth's time.
In the road between Manchester and Shef-
field I passed through a tunnel of three and a
quarter miles to Dunsford Station. One man
drives the engine there all day through it.
Beautiful desolations are these houses.
an
This morning more than ever I believed the
world is wise; the world, and not the individual.
Wordsworth knows very little about his “Ode,”
has as little to do with that as any reader. If
you see the man, you would say, he is not the
writer; and would warmly advise him to read
that poem. In Plutarch's Placita Philosophorum,
I remember some one found the soul in the air
circulating, respired and expired by all alike.
Yes, Wisdom is in the air, and good health gets
it all.
Ellen Tucker's poetry was very sweet, and
on the way to all high merits and yet as easy
as breathing to her who wrote.


358
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
Rich and poor. The insurance of the first-class
carriages in the railway is the Parliamentary
carriage which goes with them; and the telegraph
lines which convey the messages of Rothschild
and Lloyd would be surely cut if it were not
known that tidings also of interest to the million
were vibrating along the same wires.
I met Philip Bailey,' and Henry Sutton, at
Joseph Neuberg's, Nottingham.
December 23.
Dined at Mr. Swanwick's, Chesterfield, with
George Stephenson. One quarter of a pound
of coke will carry one ton one mile.
December 24.
Met T. H. Gill at Mr. Matthews', Birming-
ham. Mosely writes the articles in the Times
1 The author of the poem Festus. Mr. Neuberg was a
scholarly German who gave Carlyle much assistance in his
literary work.
2 Of this occasion Mr. Emerson wrote to his wife:
“ Dined in company with Stephenson, the old engineer who
built the first locomotive, and who is, in every way, the most
remarkable man I have seen in England. I do not know but
I shall accept some day his reiterated invitations • to go to his
home and stay a few days and see Chatsworth and other
things.'"


1847] DISSENT. WEALTH. WORDS 359
on the bishops. Alsiger wrote the City articles.
Jones Lloyd, the banker, writes on trade.'
No dissenter rides in his coach for three gen-
erations; he infallibly falls into the Establish-
ment.
Wealth. “La nation animée de la faveur de
paraître. Paraître quoi ? Riche, au dessus du rang
qu'on occupe réellement.” — Jules LE COMTE.
“To be thought more opulent and tasteful,
and on a footing of intimacy with a larger num-
ber of distinguished persons than they really
are, is the great and laborious pursuit of four
families out of five, the members of which are
exempted from the necessity of daily industry.”
- LORD JEFFREY.
“In this country, where poverty is infamous.”
- SYDNEY SMITH.
In Leicester, the conversion of the letter b
remarkable; an Act of Parliament is a Hact.
Use of words. “The bishops show such a
nasty temper.” “He never uses those nasty
phrases, ‘Blood of Christ,' “Atoning Cove-
i See the chapter on “ The Times” in English Traits.


360
[AGE 44
JOURNAL
nant,'” etc. “I had one or two nasty tumbles
in riding."
At Preston I saw sedan-chairs carried about
the streets, and at Birmingham a kind of cab
drawn by a man, and a milk-cart, or something
like it, drawn by two dogs.
At Leicester (Leir-castra) the river “ Leir,"
now “Soar”; a Roman pavement; part of the
“temple of Janus”; a stockinger at work at his
frames; and the remains of the old castle of John
of Gaunt.
England — it is the Times Newspaper. The
Times newspaper suddenly changed its tone on
free trade one morning, about a week before the
secret was out that Peel would adopt it, and be-
gun its article “ The League is a great fact.”
Peel gave it the information ; for the support of
the Times was wanted, and that paper would ap-
preciate the importance to its interests of the
early intelligence, mortifying all the other prints
which fancied themselves the ministerial organs.
The one rule to give to the traveller in Eng-
land is, Do not sneak about diffidently, but make
up your mind and carry your points.
The only girth or belt that can enable one to


nians
S
1847] WORCESTER. CLASSES 361
face these Patagonians of beef and beer is an ab-
sorbing work of your own. Otherwise, with their
* excessive life they hustle you out of their world.
December 30.
I went over Worcester Cathedral, part of
which has stood nine hundred years (?). I saw
the tomb of King John; of Prince Arthur, son
of Henry VII; and especially, and with most
delight, some old tombs of crusaders with their
mailed legs crossed in marble, and the counte-
nances, handsome and refined as the English
gentlemen of to-day, and with that uncorrupt
youth in the face of manhood, which I often see
here. From the tower I had the fine picture of
the Severn for many a mile, and the Malvern
Hills.
But the reason why any town in England does
not grow is, that it is a cathedral town. If Bir-
mingham had been a cathedral town, they say it
would have been no larger than Worcester.
English aristocracy. It is curious to see the
overflowings of aristocratical manners and cul-
ture in the inferior classes, especially in the coach-
men, who see and hear so much from their supe-
riors. My omnibus driver from Worcester, with


362
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
his quotations from Shakspeare and his praise of
his horses, and his condescending humor and his
account of the visit of his relations to him with
a little boy, were deserving of Dickens, or Ellery
Channing.
Public schools. “In their playgrounds and in
their rooms courage is universally admired;
cowardice or meanness universally despised.
Manly feelings, noble sentiments, and generous
conduct are fostered and encouraged; the spoiled
child of rank, whose face had been most obse-
quiously smoothed downwards, by the rough
hand of the school is rubbed upwards, until his
admiration of himself, of his family, and of the
extraordinary talents of his maiden aunt, are ex-
changed for a correcter estimate which continu-
ally makes him a better, a wiser, and a happier
man. In short, the unwritten code of honour
which, like a halo, shines around the playgrounds
of our public school, ever has done and ever will
do all that can be performed to make those who
have the good fortune to exist under it, gentle-
men.” — Sir F. HEAD.
Their university system, which makes Greek
and Latin alive, galvanizes Greek and Latin and
unnecessary mathematics into the creation of a


1847] SUCCESSES. WORTHIES 363
university aristocracy. So much of their litera-
ture and journalism is antiquarian and manu-
factured.' ...
The Greenwich Observatory and Ephemeris,
the British Museum; the Lycian Marbles, the
excavations and monuments from Nineveh; the
Crystal Palace; the Arctic Voyages; Herschel's
Catalogue of Southern Stars, are other national
monuments of the genius of this singular people.
Gibbon's Decline and Fall; the translations of
the Greek Drama.
Wood's Athena Oxonienses is a proper orna-
ment for this England; it is a pasture oak, and
Hakluyt and Purchas and Fuller. William of
Wykeham.
Worthies. Sir Henry Wotton is a good model
Englishman and equal to business or to study,
able in both, yet had been as good in any other
of twenty ways. Ask him for a counsel, he can
give one. He portrays a man as if he had seen
many, and as good as Homer had. Earl of Essex,
Duke of Buckingham, were men, and equal to
their high fortunes. They were no presidents of
i The conclusion of this passage is printed in “ Literature"
(English Traits, p. 251) in a condensed form.


364
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
the United States. Sir Kenelm Digby; Nelson ;
Wellington ; Samuel Johnson.
Never country had so many good citizens.
The worthies of England. Never had country
so many good fellows going about the world
and each one bringing home something useful.
Sir H. Wotton brought home melon seeds;
Raleigh, tobacco and potatoes. Hargraves in-
vented the spinning-jenny and died in Notting-
ham Workhouse.
Earl Grey (of the Reform Bill).
Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (1381–
1439), at a joust in France, fighting with Sir
Collard Fines, he so bore himself, the French
thought he was tied to the saddle; and to
confute their jealousies, he alighted and re-
mounted. At the Council of Constance, his reti-
nue amounted to eight hundred horse. “Our
success in France lived and died with him.”
Crossing into Normandy, the ship was tossed
with such a tempest that Warwick caused him-
self and lady and infant son to be bound to the
mainmast with his armor and coat of arms upon
him, that he might be known and buried aright.
Yet he died in his bed.
Camden (266) quotes this tetrastich, made in
commendation of Queen Maud (of Henry I):-


1847)
EPITAPHS
365
“ Prospera non lætam fecere, nec aspera tristem;
Aspera risus ei, prospera terror erant.
Non decor effecit fragilem, non sceptra superbam,
Sola potens humilis, sola pudica decens.”:
And of Sir Francis Drake one (Cowley?)
wrote: –
“ Drake, pererrati novit quem terminus orbis,
Quemque semel mundi vidit uterque polus :
Si taceant homines, facient se sidera notum,
Sol nescit comitis immemor esse sui.” 2
Of Empress Maud, daughter of Henry I,
wife of Henry IV, Emperor of Germany, and
mother of Henry II of England:-
“ Magna ortu, majorque viro, sed maxima partu,
Hic jacet Henrici filia, sponsa, parens.”
(Well-born, still better wedded, childed best,
The bones of Henry's daughter, wife, and mother
rest.)
1 This may be freely rendered :-
Good days did not make her joyous, nor evil days mournful ;
She laughed at the rugged days, smooth ones she dreaded.
Beauty did not make her frail, nor the sceptre proud,
Alone humble in power, beautifully formed alone modest.
2 Drake, whom the ends of Earth through which he wandered knew,
Whom once either pole saw,
If men are silent, the stars shall speak thy fame;
The sun kaows not how to forget his comrade.


366
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
“ Butin a Protestant nation, that should have
thrown off these tattered rudiments long ago,
after the many strivings of God's spirit, and our
fourscore years' vexation of him in this our
wilderness, since reformation began, — to urge
these rotten principles, and twit us with the
present age, which is to us an age of ages,
wherein God is manifestly come down among
us to do some remarkable good to our church
or state, is, as if a man should tax the renovat-
ing and reingendering spirit of God with inno-
vation, and that new creature for an upstart nov-
elty.” – John MILTON, Animadversion (Jenks,
vol. i, p. 200).
“The house of chivalry decayed,
Those obelisks and columns broke down
That shook the stars, and raised the British crown
To be a constellation.
Once to the structure went more noble names
Than to the Ephesian temple lost in flames,
Where every stone was laid by virtuous hands."
These made - up people I see everywhere,
but as soon as I come upon an intellectual
person, I fancy a resemblance to the Ameri-
cans. But truly intellectualists are of no
country.


1847]
CARLYLE
367
Here is the English reputation of Carlyle. Is
it founded on wit? No, but on his revolutionary
character, or his setting himself against the
mountainous nonsense of the life; and purer
and higher had it been, if it had not weaved
into it brag and conceit.
Ruskin, again, and a great school of pro-
testants have perceived the natural beauty
over the conventional, and that which is for-
ever.
Carlyle again. Like all men of wit and great
rhetorical power, he is by no means to be held
to the paradox he utters to-day. He states it
well, and overstates it, because he is himself
trying how far it will bear him. But the novelty
and lustre of his language makes the hearers re-
member his opinion, and would hold him to it
long after he has forgotten it.
Carlyle gave me a list of books which he
advised me to buy, as follows:-
Kennett's History of England; Lowth's Life
of William of Wykeham ; Camden's Britannia,
translated by Holland ; Britton's Beauties of
England and Wales ; Hainault, Abrège Chrono-
logique de l'Histoire de France ; Bede's Chroni-
cle; Collins's Peerage, 1745.


368
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
Margaret Fuller writes concerning J. H.
Green's Vital Dynamics, “What a fuss these
English make about presenting thoughts to an
audience. What tedious prelude of apology for
taking liberty to utter anything beyond the
poorest truisms,” etc.
To Margaret Fuller [in Italy]
December, 1847.
Yet I hear nothing lately of our friends F.
and W. and E. and A. The goods of that
country (America) are original and incommu-
nicable to this (England); I see that well.
It would give me no pleasure to bring valued
persons thence, and show them to valued per-
sons here, but lively pleasure to show to
these last, those friends at home, in their own
place.
Shall we not yet — you also — as we used to
talk — build up a reasonable society in that
naked, unatmospheric land, and effectually serve
one another?
I observe that many young men here look
wishfully to America : I never dare say to them,
Go, though I might go in their position. I ob-
serve that the idea of owning woodlands, etc.,
is very attractive to the English imagination.


1847]
READING
369
Yet our young men find it all but impossible
to live in the great continent.
AUTHORS OR BOOKS QUOTED OR REFERRED TO
IN JOURNAL FOR 1847
[As in previous volumes, a few of Mr. Em-
erson's favorite authors from his youth, as
Homer, Plutarch, Montaigne, Ben Jonson,
Swedenborg, Wordsworth, and others are not
given in the list of authors.]
Institutes of Menu; Bhagavat-Geeta; Vishnu
Purana; Confucius; Zoroaster; Pythagoras; Si-
monides ; Aristophanes; Xenophon; Aristotle;
Plotinus; Synesius; Proclus;
Firdusi (Abdul Kasim Mansur); Ferradeddin;
Snorri Sturlason, Younger Edda; Fablieux of
Trouveurs;
Roger Bacon; Dante, Vita Nuova ; Saadi;
Hafiz; Chaucer; Froissart; Machiavelli; Poli-
dore Virgil, Historia Anglica; Luther; Latimer;
Rabelais; Descartes; Kepler ;
Vasari, Lives of the Painters; Giordano Bruno;
Kepler ; Sully, Mémoires; Burton ; Grotius ;
Ford; Izaak Walton; Descartes; A Relation, or
rather a True Account, of the Island of England
by a Venetian Traveller ;


370
JOURNAL (AGE 44
Aubrey; Clarendon, History of England; Spi-
noza; Pascal; Evelyn; Kennett, A Compleat
History of England; Spence, Anecdotes;
Franklin; Robert (?) Lowth, Life of William
of Wykeham ; Hume; Walpole; Diderot ; Gil-
bert White; Rousseau ; Burke;
John Adams ; Bartram, Travels ; Laplace;
Goethe, Autobiography, Sprüche; Gifford (in Ed-
inburgh Review); Schiller ; Jamieson, Collection
of Ballads ;
John Quincy Adams; Humboldt; Von Ham-
mer-Purgstall; O'Connell, Letter to Stevenson
on Disraeli; Hazlitt, Conversations with James
Northcote; Hallam ; Brougham ; Moore ; Bé-
ranger, Le Ménétrier de Meudon ;
Southey, Chronicle of the Cid; De Quincey;
Manzoni ; Shelley ; Herschel; Spence, Entomo-
logy; Sir Francis Head (in Edinburgh Review);
Lockhart;
Eugene Scribe, Le Mariage d'Argent; Cousin;
Mrs. Hemans, Poems; Mrs. Jameson ; Grote,
and Thirlwall, Histories of Greece; Sydney
Smith; Alfieri; Hugh S. Legaré ;
W. H. F. Talbot; Chodzko, Specimens of An-
cient Persian Poetry; Macaulay ; Dumas; James
and Harriet Martineau; Charles Kraitsir; George
Sand;


371
1847] READING
Van Mons apud Downing, Fruit and Fruit
Trees of America; Henry D. Rogers, and Charles
T. Jackson, Geological Reports; Benjamin Peirce;
Agassiz;
J. J. Garth Wilkinson, on Swedenborg ; Philip
Bailey, Festus; Charles Sumner; Theodore
Parker ; Wendell Phillips ; W. W. Story;
Henry James ; Alcott ; Thoreau ; William
Ellery Channing





JOURNAL
NORTHERN ENGLAND
SCOTLAND
EDINBORO' WITS
ENGLISHMEN
AUTHORS AND SAVANTS
CARLYLE, OWEN, TENNYSON
CLOUGH, PATMORE, MILNES
PARIS IN REVOLUTION
LONDON LECTURES AND SOCIETY
RETURN
CONCORD WALKS





JOURNAL XXXIX
1848
(From Journals GH, LM, ED, “ London” and RS)
January.
I TRACE, then, the peculiarities of English man-
ners to their working climate; their dense popu-
lation; the presence of an aristocracy or model
class for manners and speech; their diet, gen-
erous and orderly taken ; and their force of
constitution. Their manners betray real inde-
pendence, and they are studiously inoffensive.
They are castles compared with our men. ...
An American feels like some invalid in their
company.
January 13.
At York, I saw the skull of a Roman cen-
turion. I saw the tree planted by George Fox;
I saw the prison, the pews in which the pris-
oners are locked up; the scales with which they
can weigh their own food.
In the minster, I heard “God save the
King,” of Handel, played by Dr. Camidge on
the grand organ. It was very great. I thought


376
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
I had never heard anything so sublime. The
music was made for the minster, and the min-
ster for the music.'...
The architects of York Minster are not
known; yet what brains were those! It is beau-
tiful beyond belief.
In Bridlington, I was received one evening at
the house of Mr. Potter, a saddler, with a very
cordial hospitality, and the next day he accom-
panied me to Flamborough Head, to show me
the cave, the “Danes' Dyke,” the castle, the
lighthouse, etc. All the objects interested me,
but my conductor more. He had waited on me
in the morning at my hotel, with his apron
tucked up under his coat, and very likely it was
on still, under his surtout; but he told so well
the story of his life, and that he saves two hun-
dred pounds every year, and means by and by
to devote himself principally to the care of the
Mechanics’ Institute, and of the Temperance
Society, of both of which he is the ardent
friend.
He is sent, however, by these institutions to
i The rest of the passage is found in the chapter « Reli-
gion,” in English Traits.
ean


1848] EVOLUTION'S CHANCES 377
wait on Yarborough Graeme, Esq., on Sir
Prichett, and other gentlemen of the county
families, and is always kindly received by these
gentlemen.
en
I saw a young man yesterday whose body is
in greatest part covered over with a hard scale
like that of the armadillo. He was naked, or
nearly so, and I had the nearest view of him,
though I declined touching him. There are a
great many talents in a drop of blood, and
a little suppression or retardation would un-
chain and let out what horns and fangs, what
manes and hoofs, what fins and flippers, what
feathers and coats of mail, which are now sub-
dued and refined into smooth and shapely limbs,
into soft white skin, into the simple, erect, royal
form of man.
It was at Bridlington (pronounced Burling-
ton) that one of the company asked me if there
were many rattlesnakes in the city of New York?
And another whether the Americans liked to
call their country New England ?
I remember the sensation at Mr. Mayor
Elgie's table, at Worcester, when our host an-


378
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
nounced that the port we were now to draw was
from the Duke of Buckingham's cellar.
[Here follow several amusing quotations
from A Relation, or rather a True Account, of
the Island of England, etc., about the year
1500 (translated from the Italian, by Char-
lotte Augusta Sneyd, printed for the Camden
Society. Lond. 1847), but two of which are
here given.]
“How many hours the sun might be above
the horizon I cannot say, he is so rarely to be
seen in winter, and never but at midday.”
“They have an antipathy to foreigners, and
imagine that they never come into their island
but to make themselves masters of it, and to
usurp their goods : neither have they any sin-
cere and solid friendships among themselves —
I have never noticed any one, either at court
or among the lower orders, to be in love; —
very jealous, – though anything may be com-
pensated in the end by the power of money."
January.
In Halifax (England) Mr. Crossley employs
in his carpet mills fifteen hundred operatives.
Beautiful tapestry carpets at 7/6 per yard: saw
the pattern sent to the Queen. Vista made


ma
ers
1848]
HALIFAX. LEEDS
379
by the looms resembled a church aisle. Mr.
Acroyd's stuff-mills employ five or six thou-
sand operatives. In one hall I saw eight hundred
looms. In many they were making ponchos.
Here was a school spaciously built and well
furnished for the children. In England, the
manufacturers are not joint-stock companies,
but individuals.
The Piece-Hall in Halifax was built in better
times, and held twenty thousand children and
teachers on a festival a few years ago, in its
quadrangle.
[LIVERPOOL?]
Remains of the old gibbet. By the local law,
theft to the amount of 13 i pence was death by
the gibbet, till the law was abrogated one hun-
dred and sixty years since. As we were return-
ing down “Gibbet Lane," a respectable old
lady accosted Mr. Stansfeld to pray him to get
the name altered, as she owns a house here,
which she cannot rent, as tenants do not wish
to live in Gibbet Lane.
LEEDS.
Near Leeds and Bradford, I observed the
sheep were black, ... begrimed by the smoke.
... The hopelessness of keeping clothes


380
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
white leads to a rather dowdy style of dress, I
was told, among the ladies; and yet they some-
times indemnify themselves; and Leeds in the
ball-room, I was assured, is a very different
creature from Leeds in Briggate.
Mr. Marshall's mill covers two acres of
ground. The former owner, James Marshall,
presided in this immense hall at a dinner given
to O'Connell; and the Chartists having threat-
ened an attack, Mr. Marshall had a water-pipe
under his chair which was supplied by a steam
engine, and which he was ready to direct on the
mob, if they had ventured to disturb him.
I spent one night here with Rev. Mr. Wick-
steed; one night with Mr. Carbutt the Mayor;
of whom Mrs. Carbutt told me some excellent
anecdotes; one night with George Hyde, Esq.;
and one with Joseph Lupton, Esq.
Everywhere anecdotes of the London Times,
... Its readers are disappointed if there is not
a great public event in each day's paper. Mr.
Mosely named as the writer of these papers on
the Bishops; Mr. Bailey, as a young Cambridge
man who wrote and offered a paper to the
Morning Chronicle, and was refused; sent it to
the Times and received ten guineas, and request


1848) ENGLISH MECHANICS 381
for more communications; and is a regular con-
tributor. Mr. Jones Lloyd writes often on
financial matters. Old Walter? wrote on Poor-
Laws.
The grand feature which recommends the
Times is its independence.
recomm
SW
IV
n
I hear it said that the sense which the manu-
facturers have of their duties to the operatives,
and the exertions they have made in establish-
ing schools and “ Mechanics' Institutions” for
them, is recent, and is, in great part, owing to
Carlyle. At Huddersfield, I was told that they
have over-educated the men in the working-
class, so as to leave them dissatisfied with their
sweethearts and wives ; and the good Schwann
and Kehls there were now busy in educating
the women up to them.
Mr. Kehl thought that my lecture on Napo-
leon was not true for the operatives who heard
it at Huddersfield, but was true only for the
commercial classes, and for the Americans, no
doubt; that the aim of these operatives was to
get twenty shillings a week, and to marry; then
they join the “ Mechanics’ Institute,” hear lec-
i Originally the printer of the Times. (See English Traits,
pp. 264, 266.)


382
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
tures, visit the news-room, and desire no more.
\ I thought it despair.
At Rawdon, I inquired, how much the men
earned who were breaking stone in the road,
and was told twenty pence; but they can only
have work three days in the week, unless they
are married; then they have it four days.
ear
are m
The Chartists, if you treat them civilly, and
show any good will to their cause, suspect you,
think you are going to do them.
January.
At Manchester, William Staley showed me
over the whole warehouse of Messrs. Watts, in
which one hundred and fifty persons are em-
ployed in selling all manner of “dry goods.”
The arrangement was excellent. On the upper
floor, I found ribbons, and was told their stock
of this kind was never less in value than
£20,000.
Use of words. “A good time” is an Ameri-
canism. In England it is a phrase only ap-
plied to a woman after childbirth. Also “fix"
in the sense of arrange.


1848] OUR MYTHOLOGY 383
MANCHESTER, January.
The battery. The staple figure in novels is
the man of aplomb,' ...
History is the group of the types or repre-
sentative men of any age at only the distance
of convenient vision. We can see the arrange-
ment of masses, and distinguish the forms of
the leaders. Mythology is the same group at
another remove, now at a pictorial distance ;
the perspective of history. The forms and faces
can no longer be read, but only the direction
of the march, and the result; so that the names
of the leaders are now mixed with the ends for
which they strove. Distance is essential. There-
fore we cannot say what is our mythology.
We can only see that the industrial, mechan-
ical, the parliamentary, commercial, constitute
it, with socialism; and Astor, Watt, Fulton,
Arkwright, Peel, Russell, Rothschild, George
Stephenson, Fourier, are our mythologic names.
January 25.
Cameron and all the rest of this company
are too deeply indebted to Carlyle, and would
1 The rest of this paragraph is printed in “Social Aims"
(Letters and Social Aims, p. 80).


384
JOURNAL (AGE 44
be better, like wine, for a voyage to India or
to Nootka Sound. Espinesse, who is really a
man of wit and capacity, writes unmitigated
Carlylese, and when I told Carlyle that he
ought to interfere and defend that young
man from him, Carlyle, he appeared piqued,
and said, “He must write as he could, and be
thankful.” :
Aristocracy, Traits.” A soul so much more
drawn to itself than to others that it comes
through and out of any events or companies
In a letter Mr. Emerson wrote : “ Last night I heard a
lecture from Mr. Cameron. . . . He talked without note or
card or compass, for his hour, on Readers and Reading; very
manly, very gaily ; not quite deeply enough, — it did not
cost him enough, — yet what would I not do or suffer to
buy that ability. • To each his own.'"
2 Mr. Emerson wrote to his wife from Manchester on
January 26, “I am writing in these very days a lecture which
I will try at Edinburgh, on Aristocracy." It was given in
London in the course at the Portman Square Literary and
Scientific Institute, in the following June, as the concluding
lecture before a distinguished audience under the title Natural
Aristocracy. Later given with variations in America, its
original form was lost and from the mass of sheets on this
subject Mr. Cabot made the best selection and arrangement
possible for the posthumous volume, Lectures and Biographical
Sketches.


1848) RIGHT ARISTOCRACY
385
10 reas
е rес-
the same; like metals and the nobler chemical
compounds whose particles have that strong
affinity for each other that no solvent can be
found.
These distinctions are in man, and as flagrant
in democracies as in oligarchies.
Beauty no reasoning, no legislation could
impart. It will not only remain a potent, but a
differencing and aristocratic quality. ...
Nor will it at all be foreign to my purpose
if it should appear that I am describing that
which is the theoretic peerage, and not one rec-
ognized and actualized in any kingdom on earth.
It would be ignoble, would it not? to draw our
sketch from any body necessarily so impure as
any that can contrive to exist amidst so much
vice, injustice, and imbecility as we all confess
in our times. I have no compliments to pay,
and no tenderness to one or other renowned
name, and really, therefore, no interest for their
sake but is my own and all men’s; none but
a regard for the behoof of the race that there
should be model men, that we should all have
true pictures of such, and, if possible, living
standards. I write of a nobility always existing,
but its members so scattered, so heedless of
badges, so rarely convened, so little in sympa-
conver


386
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
thy with any favorite measure that it is not ac-
knowledged in any newspaper or in any Peerage."
For the particular of Nature's adopting pe-
culiarities, I think it a sublime hint or beckon-
ing from the outward universe to man to hive
and insert as many virtues and superiorities as
he can into this web which is to be a fossil. ...
Thus it will be seen that, one after the other,
all the material badges are dropped, like so much
tattoo and heraldry, and those powers only worn
which subjugate Nature."
CIC
Charles Newcomb remarked, as Ellery Chan-
ning had done, the French trait in Henry
Thoreau and in his family. Here is the precise
voyageur of Canada sublimed, or carried up to
the seventh power. In the family the brother
and one sister preserved the French character
of face.
February.
Sea-line. As we see the human body or one
of its limbs undraped, so here Nature shows us
a limb of our planet in undress, and we see the
i The substance of the last two sentences occurs in the
opening pages of “ Aristocracy."
2 Compare English Traits (pp. 197, 198).


1848] CASTLES. THE HAMMER 387
nakedness of the sea - line. 'T is a sublime
curve, yet causes an uncomfortable feeling. To
Nature, as to man, we say, Still be drest! Still
hide a poverty even so grand under the orna-
mented details of a broken landscape.
February 8.
Duke of Cleveland's land extends from the
point where we first entered it, coming from
Darlington, toward Barnard Castle, twenty-three
miles to High Force, where the Tees falls two hun-
dred and twelve feet. After passing Raby Castle,
we met the Duke returning from hunting with
his hounds, the horses and dogs very much
blown and spent. The huntsman, as he passed
us, told our coachman that they had had a des-
perate run of two hours, twenty-five minutes,
without check. Beside him, rode the whipper-in,
and, a little behind, the Duke and a gentleman,
in red hunting-coats.
NEWCASTLE, February 9.
At Newcastle, saw at Mr. Crawshay's' iron
works the Nasmith hammer, which will strike
i In a letter to Miss Hoar Mr. Emerson said he was bidden
as a guest by “ Mr. Crawshay, who refused the tests [i. e. reli-
gious tests) at Cambridge after reading my essays! as he writes
me. And so with small wisdom the world is moved, as of old.”


388
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
with a weight of six tons, yet so manageable
that Nasmith will put his hand under it if one
of his own men directs the stroke. Crawshay
put his new hat under it and received a slight
damage. Then an old hat was exploded [i. e.,
crushed to atoms by the triphammer].
Read Natural Aristocracy at Edinburgh,
February 11.
At Edinburgh, February 12, saw Wilson.
Lord Jeffrey told me in his visit to Boston he
saw Edward Everett, then a boy, and Everett
accompanied him to the Cambridge library, etc.'
Wilson said, “I know, but I will not tell
De Quincey's age, for it is my own. We were
at Oxford together, but not acquainted.”
February 13.
Thomas De Quincey. At Edinburgh, I dined
at Mrs. Crowe’s with De Quincey, David Scott,
and Dr. Brown. De Quincey is a small old man
of seventy years, with a very handsome face, —
a face marked by great refinement, - a very
i For interesting extracts from Mr. Emerson's letters tell-
ing about his friends and entertainment in the Scottish capital,
see Cabot's Memoir, vol. ii, p. 519, ff.
2 Both were in their sixty-third year.


1848] DE QUINCEY 389
gentle old man, speaking with the utmost de-
liberation 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
rainy, muddy Sunday ten miles from his house
at Lasswade and was not yet dry, and though
Mrs. Crowe's hospitality is comprehensive and
minute, yet she had no pantaloons in her house.
He was so simply drest, that ten miles could
not spoil him. It seemed, too, that he had lately
walked bome, at night, in the rain, from one of
Mrs. Crowe's dinners. “But why did you not
ride ? " said Mrs. C.; “ you were in time for the
coach.” Because, he could not find money to
ride; he had met two street girls; one of them
took his eight shillings out of his waistcoat
pocket, and the other his umbrella. He told
this sad story with the utmost simplicity, as if
he had been a child of seven, instead of seventy.
Here De Quincey is serene and happy, among
just these friends with whom I found him; for
he has suffered in all ways and lived the life of
a wretch, for many years; and Samuel Brown,
Mrs. C., and one or two more, have saved him
from himself, and from the bailiff, and from a


390
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
ever se
fury of a Mrs. MacBold, his landlady, and from
opinion; and he is now clean, clothed, and in
his right mind. He might remind you of George
P. B. or Ellery C. He talked of many things
easily, - chiefly of social and literary matters,
and did not venture into any voluminous music.
De Quincey has never seen Landor, butgrieves
over the loss of a finely bound copy of Hellenics
sent him by Landor. He has also lost five man-
uscript books of Wordsworth's unpublished
poems. He loses everything. His simplicity is
perfect. He takes Dr. Brown into the middle
of the street, to tell him where his lodgings are.
Yet, on reckoning, it did not appear that all his
debts exceeded a hundred pounds. He estimates
Paradise Regained very highly, thinks the author
always knows which is his best book. He said
Wordsworth appropriates whatever another
says so entirely as to be angry if the originator
claimed any part of it.
Festus was mentioned, and I said I did not
esteem him'a true poet. David Scott, in answer
to my challenge for one good line, recited
“ Friendship hath passed me like a ship at sea.”
De Quincey said that tautology of “ship” and
“ friendship” would ruin any verse.
1 Philip James Bailey.


1848) DE QUINCEY. DR. BROWN 391
De Quincey said that Blackwood pays him
twelve guineas the sheet; pays to others, ten;
to Wilson, twenty; the Quarterlies pay six-
teen, that is, a guinea a page. Blackwood's once
reached a circulation of eight thousand copies.
(When they first agreed, at my request, to
invite De Quincey to dine, I could fancy that
some figure like the organ of York Minster
would appear.) In a tête-à-tête, I am told, he
sometimes soars and indulges himself, but rarely
in company. He invited me to dine with him
on the following Saturday, at Lasswade, where,
since the death of his wife (from whom he was
separated for many years), he lives with his three
daughters.
was
[During his stay in Edinburgh Mr. Emerson
was the guest of Dr. Samuel Brown, brother
of Dr. John Brown the author of Rab and his
Friends and Marjorie Fleming. Of his host he
wrote to Mrs. Emerson: “What I chiefly re-
gret is that I cannot begin on the long chronicle
of our new Paracelsus here, Samuel Brown, who
is a head and heart of chiefest interest to me
and others, and a person from whom every-
thing is yet to be expected.” Mr. Cabot, in his
Memoir, notes that “ Dr. Brown was expect-
C


392
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
ing to reduce several elements, perhaps all
matters — to one substance, a line of specula-
tion always interesting to Emerson.” Compare
“ Xenophanes” in the Poems.]
erson
Carlyle said of Samuel Brown “that he was
that kind of a man, that if God Almighty
wished to hang a new constellation in the sky,
he would give him an estimate for the same.”
H. C. vowed to adhere to Dr. Brown when
all means failed them to pursue an experiment
and they had nothing to pawn. C. came tri-
umphantly with the article wanted from the
druggist. “How did you get it?” “I sold two
old pair of breeches."
[In his first days in Edinburgh Mr. Emerson
became acquainted with David Scott the painter,
who insisted on painting his portrait. This was
a proposition anything but agreeable to Mr.
Emerson, who always said he “was no subject
for art,” but he was so much interested in the
man that he consented. In a letter to his wife
he says of Scott, “The man is a noble stoic,
sitting apart here among his rainbow allegories,
very much respected by all superior persons.”
After the death of Mr. Emerson and the painter,


W
1848) SCOTLAND. GLASGOW 393
the picture was brought to this country for sale,
and was bought and presented to the Concord
Public Library by three of his friends. Though
hard in drawing and color, and showing a much
older man than the daguerreotype of Mr. Em-
erson taken the same year, some of his early
friends found much to like in it. A rainbow
appears in the dark background.]
February 15.
Glasgow the rapidest growth in Britain after
Liverpool. As soon as you cross the border at
Berwick and enter Scotland, the face of things
changes, the grass is less green, the country has
an iron-gray look, it is cold and poor; the rail-
ways are ill-served; no well-trained porters: you
must carry your own luggage ; the ticket-master
weighs your sovereign (it is a rare piece) and
finds it light: you can pay in copper now for what
always cost silver in England. Nobody rides in
first-class carriages: and the manners become
gross and swainish in some observed particulars.
Glasgow has 320,000 people. Students in
scarlet cloaks. Americans here, and a consul.
Dr. Hudson tells me some strange stories about
the Foundation at Eton, and that the subscrip-
tion made previous to entering declares that the


394
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
signer is a beggar, yet is signed by noblemen.
It confounds my understanding. Glasgow adds
1000 a month to its population. At Glasgow
I spoke in a cavern called City Hall to two or
three thousand persons.
The Scotch speech has a most unnecessary
superfluous energy of elocution and of rolling
the r. Great talkers, very fond of argument.
Scotch are plainer drest, plainer mannered than
the English, not so clean, and many of them
look drunk when they are sober.
Scotch are intelligent reading and writing
people, but Edinburgh is still but a provincial
city; the tone of society is incurably provincial.
William Chambers, at Edinburgh, speaking
of American copyright, said, “As long as you
do not grant copyright, we shall instruct you.”
Ferrier, son-in-law of Wilson, helps on Black-
wood's, in which Aytoun, Smith, Moir (A), and
others write. Theodore Martyn is Le Bon Gual-
tier.
[After his first lecture in Glasgow, Mr. Emer-
son returned to Edinburgh, dined with the bro-
thers Robert and William Chambers, heard a


1848) NICHOL. JEFFREY. WILSON 395
lecture by Wilson and one by Sir William Ham-
ilton, then returned to Glasgow to lecture and
spend the night of February 17 with Professor
Nichol in the Observatory. On the 18th he re-
turned to Edinburgh and visited Lord Jeffrey.
(See Cabot's Memoir for the fuller account of
his days in Scotland, pp. 519-524.)]
At Edinburgh, I was introduced to Professor
Wilson, and the next day went up to the Uni-
versity to hear him lecture. Before the lecture,
we called on him in his private room and sat
ten or fifteen minutes with him. He was good-
natured and affable, but nothing important was
said. I thought of our dear fat Stetson, but it
was S. without the wit. Perfervidum ingenium
Scotorum, yes, but heavy as a speaking ox. He
foamed at the mouth with physical exertion, and
not a ray of wit or thought. It was in the course
on Moral Philosophy.
Two gentlemen shot two dogs of Wilson's
that had belonged to his wife. They came and
made their apology. But Wilson carried it to
the law. Their friend came to Wilson and hoped
he would have the magnanimity to forgive them.
“Magnanimity, sir! was there ever any so enor-
mous as mine? Those two men stood where


396
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
you now stand, and I did not pitch them out
of the window."
Tholuck said to Chalmers, that he was as-
tonished that none of the theologians here had
had the candour to read Strauss. “Sir," said
Chalmers, “I will read it on your recommenda-
tion; but is it a big book? for I am old.”
T I find here a wonderful crop of mediocre and
super-mediocre poets, they lie three, six, or ten
1 This anecdote served Mr. Emerson years later. The
meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society held in the
Tremont Temple, Boston, January 24, 1861, was interrupted
by a well-dressed mob of “Union-at-any-price” citizens
of Boston and the suburban towns. Hearing of the probable
danger, Mr. Emerson felt bound to go, and sat upon the plat-
form. The jeers and howls of the mob drowned his attempt
at earnest speech, but he begged the disturbers to be a little
quiet, for he had a very good story to tell them, of which their
action reminded him. Their curiosity quieting them a little, he
told them, as illustrating the patience of this Society, the above
story, but the tumult arose again when Wendell Phillips spoke.
Within two years many of the young men of conservative
families who took part in the mob were in the army, and even
converting their fathers to anti-slavery views
2 Friedrich August Gottreu Tholuck, Professor of The-
ology at Halle, who had written an answer to Strauss's Life
of Jesus. Rev. Thomas Chalmers, Professor at the University
of St. Andrews and Edinburgh.


1848] DE QUINCEY 397
deep, instead of single as in America. But, as atí.
home, the merchants seem to me a greatly supe-
rior class to the clerisy, and they have a right to
a great contempt of these.
were
ever
February 19.
Dined with De Quincey at Lasswade. He
lives with his three daughters Margaret, Flor-
ence, and - Thither I went, with Mrs.
Crowe and Dr. Brown, in Mrs. C.'s carriage.
The second daughter, Florence, had a pleas-
ing style of beauty. His son, Francis, was
also present, who is a medical student in the
University. De Quincey told us how his ac-
quaintance with Wilson began ; for, though they
were at Oxford together, they had never met,
but De Quincey, travelling in Wales, had arrived
at an inn, where he learned that a gentleman lay
sick and sore with his wounds. For Wilson, in
some of his mad pranks, had paid attention to a
country girl at a theatre, and, after the play was
over, her lover and his friends had way laid him
and most ignominiously mauled him. And De
Quincey, learning who it was who was in the
house, sent up his card and made his acquaint-
ance.
Of Turnbull (whom I had seen with Dr.


398
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
Brown) it was told that he had said “he would
go to hell for Sir William Hamilton.”
Mrs. Crowe insisted that De Quincey should
go back to Edinburgh with us in the coach and
should go to my lecture, a proposition to which
he somewhat reluctantly assented, as, I think,
he said he had never attended a public lecture,
- or not for a good many years. But the victo-
rious lady put him into the carriage. As we en-
tered Edinburgh, he grew very nervous, and
Dr. Brown saw the reason, and assured him that
his old enemy (Mrs. MacBold) had removed
to another quarter of the city. “Ah,” said De
Quincey,“ if one of the Furies should arrive in
Edinburgh, it would make little difference at
what hotel she put up.”
Dr. Brown and Mrs. Crowe told me in detail
the story of his rescue from the hands of this
Mrs. MacBold, who was his evil genius, and had
exercised a reign of terror over him for years, –
a very powerful and artful, large-limbed, red-
haired beldame, from whom flight to Glasgow
and concealment there was the only help, whilst
his friends, with Wilson, contrived the extrica-
tion of his valuable papers and literary manu-
scripts from her custody. The woman followed
him to Glasgow, met Dr. Nichol's daughter in


1848]
DUNDEE
399
the street (a child), and asked her pleasantly if
she knew where Mr. De Quincey lived. The
child said Yes, and, at her request, conducted her
to his retreat! He fled again. At Edinburgh she
sent a little girl to Professor Wilson (with a nap-
kin of his own by way of token) “ with Mr. De
Quincey's compliments,”asking him to send him
back by the bearer the bundle of papers he had
left with him, — and he sent them!
February 21.
In seeing old castles and cathedrals I some-
times say, as to-day at Dundee church tower
(which is eight hundred years old), this was
built by another and a better race than any that
now look on it. And, at other times, I say, if
idealists will work as well as these men wrought,
we shall see a new world apace.
[In the last week of his stay in Scotland Mr.
Emerson visited Dundee and Perth, and prob-
ably lectured at both towns. He crossed the
border southward on February 25 and lectured
again at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Thence he went
to make a promised visit to Miss Martineau at
Ambleside.]
Harriet Martineau said, in her trance, that there


400
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
was no ultimate atom, only forces; and this, she
learned, was the stupendous discovery of Faraday.
P. T. visited Harriet Martineau at N. with
Richard Cobden and on departing came back to
say that Cobden said, that 't was a sad business,
this agitation, for his own little boy thought him,
when he went home, a gentleman who visited
his mother.
[Miss Martineau took her guest to visit
Wordsworth, who lived near by. The conversa-
tion with the old man was not very satisfactory
and is not here given, as Mr. Emerson printed
the notes in his journal in the “ Personal” chap-
ter in English Traits.]
en
The Americans are sun-dried, the English
are baked in the oven. The upper classes have
only birth, say people here, and not thought.
Yes, but they have manners, and 't is wonder-
ful how much talent runs into manners. No-
where and never so much as in England.
And when they go into America and find that
this gift has lost its power, the gold has be-
come dry leaves, no wonder they are impatient
to get away.
Every man in the carriage is a possible lord.


1848] VIGOUR AND MORALS 401
Yet they look alike, and every man I meet in
London I think I know.'...
Toughness. Among the men made for work,
dura ilia, seemingly not of flesh and blood, but
of brass and iron, Coke, Mansfield, Gibbon,
Johnson. Strong body, vast memory. De Quin-
cey says he wishes “the morals of the middle
classes of England, combined with the manners
of the highest, — or — the morals of the gentry
with the manners of the nobility.” “No moral-
ity which is built less on the mere amiableness
of quick sensibilities, or more entirely on massy
substructions of principle and conscience, than
the morality of the British middle classes."
Traits. In England the understanding rules,
and materialistic truth; the becoming, the fit, the
discreet, the brave, the advantageous; but they
could not produce such a book as the Bhagavat
Geeta. Dr. Johnson is liked for his courage ; “a
man who is afraid of anything is a scoundrel.”
LONDON
“Spatium est urbis et orbis idem.”
“I believe the parallelogram between Oxford
1 Here follows much that is printed in “ Manners," in
English Traits.


402
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
Street, Piccadilly, Regent Street, and Hyde
Park, encloses more intelligence and human abil-
ity, to say nothing of wealth and beauty, than
the world has ever collected in such a space
before." - SYDNEY SMITH.
[In London Mr. Emerson arrived March 1,
and took lodgings. He dates his letters 142
Strand. He saw much of Carlyle, probably walk-
ing with him, for he would have been unwilling to
trespass on his working hours. His friends, Mr.
and Mrs. George Bancroft, then living in Lon-
don, with a wide acquaintance, did all they could
to make his stay interesting. In Mr. Cabot's
Memoir several letters are printed telling of the
people he met and how his days were spent.]
Carlyle thought the clubs remarkable signs of
the times; that union was no longer sought, but
only the association of men who would not
offend one another. There was nothing to do,
but they could eat better.
He was very serious about the bad times.
The Chartists were then preparing to go in a
procession of two hundred thousand to carry
their petition, embodying the six points of
Chartism, to the House of Commons, on the


1848]
CARLYLE'S OPINIONS
403
0
ees
Toth April, 1848. He had seen this evil coming,
but thought it would not come in his time. But
now it is coming, and the only good he sees
in it is the visible appearance of the Gods. He
thinks it “the only question for wise men -
instead of art and fine fancies, and poetry, and
such things as Tennyson plays with — to ad-
dress themselves to the problem of society.
This confusion is the inevitable end of such
falsehood and nonsense as they have been em-
broiled with.”
Of course, this French Revolution is the best
thing he has ever seen and the teaching this
great swindle, Louis Philippe, that there is a
God's justice in the Universe after all, is a great
satisfaction.'
He values Peel as having shown more valor
as a statesman than any other of these men.
Wellington he esteems real and honest; he will
not have to do with any falsehood. Chalmers
he valued as a naif, honest, eloquent man, who,
in these very days, believed in Christianity, and
though he himself, when he heard him, had
1 The sketch of Carlyle in the Lectures and Biographical
Sketches was mostly taken from this London Journal with some
changes. Some sentences which appear there were difficult
to separate from their connection, and so are given here.
vers
.


404
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
long discovered that it would not hold water,
yet he liked to hear him.
Tennyson dined out every day for months ;
then Aubrey de Vere, a charitable gentleman,
thirty miles from Limerick, on a beautiful estate,
came up and carried him off. Tennyson sur-
rendered on terms: that he should not hear
anything of Irish distress ; that he should not be
obliged to come down to breakfast; and that he
should smoke in the house. So poor Tennyson,
who had been in the worst way, but had not
force enough to choose where to go, and so sat
still, was now disposed of.
Since the new French Revolution, Carlyle has
taken in the Times newspaper, the first time he
has ever had a daily paper.
If such a person as Cromwellshould come now
it would be of no use ; he could not get the ear
of the House of Commons. You might as well
go into Chelsea graveyard yonder, and say,
Shoulder Arms! and expect the old dead church-
wardens to arise.
It is droll to hear this talker talking against
talkers, and this writer writing against writing.
Jane Carlyle said that the rich people whom
she knew had occasion for all the shillings they


1848] TRAITS. JOSHUA BATES 405
could find. The spending is, for a great part, in
servants. Thirty-five servants in Lord Ashbur-
ton's house.
An Englishman is aplomb.
Henry Thoreau thought what we reckon a
good Englishman is in this country a stage-
proprietor.
The people have wide range, but no ascend-
ing range in their speculation. An American,
like a German, has many platforms of thought.
But an Englishman requires to be humoured or
treated with tenderness as an invalid, if you wish
him to climb.
Let who will fail, England will not. She could
not now build the old castles and abbeys, but
the Nineteenth Century loves club-houses, rail-
ways, and docks and mills, and builds them fast
enough.
Mr. Joshua Bates,' the best informed man,
one would say, hesitates to testify before the
House of Commons to the advantage of the
i An American member of the great banking firm of Bar-
ing Brothers.


406
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
proposed abolition of Navigation Laws, because
he thinks the English shipowners and ship-
masters cannot compete with those of America,
here in their own ports.
CS
Plural London. Immeasurable London, evi-
dently the capital of the world, where men have
lived ever since there were men. Yet it seems.
deliberately built. An aggregation of capitals.
There are several little nations here. A Ger-
man quarter in Whitechapel, a French quarter
where they still carry on a silk business in
Spitalfields.
In London only could such a place as Kew
Gardens be overlooked. Wealth of shops burst-
ing into the streets; piles of plate breast-high
on Ludgate Hill. In a London dock Mr. Bates
said he had seen nineteen miles of pipes of wine
piled up to the ceiling.
Many of the characterising features of London
are new. Such as gaslight, the omnibuses, the
steam ferries, the penny-post, and the building
up the West End.
One goes from show to show, dines out, and
lives in extremes. Electric sparks six feet long;
light is polarized; Grisi sings; Rothschild is
your banker ; Owen and Faraday lecture; Ma-


1848] HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT 407
caulay talks; Soyer cooks. Is there not an econ-
omy in coming where thus all the dependence
is on the first men of their kind ?
Englishman has hard eyes. He is great by
the back of the head.
DO
London, March.
In the new Parliament House, great poverty
of ornament, the ball and crown repeated tedi-
ously all over the grand gate, near the Abbey,
and Vivat Regina written incessantly all over the
casements of the windows in House of Lords.
Houses of Parliament a magnificent document
of English power and of their intention to make
it last. The Irish harp and shamrock are carved
with the rose and thistle over all the house. The
houses cover eight acres, and are built of Bol-
sover stone. Fault, that there is no single view
commanding great lines; only, when it is finished,
the Speaker of the House of Commons will be
able with a telescope to see the Lord Chancellor
in the Lords. But mankind can so rarely build
a house covering eight acres that 't is pity to de-
prive them of the joy of seeing a mass and grand
and lofty lines.
In House of Commons, when a man makes
his first speech, there is a cry of “New member!


408
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
new member!” and he is sure of attention. After-
wards, he must get it if he can. In a body of six
hundred and forty-eight members every man is
sure to have some who understand his views on
whatever topic. Facts they will hear, and any mea-
sure proposed they will entertain, but no spec-
ulation, and no oratory. A sneer is the habitual
expression of that body. Therefore Cobbett's
maiden speech, “I have heard a great deal of
nonsense, since I have been sitting here,” was
quite in their vein, and secured their ear.
Stand at the door of the House of Commons,
and see the members go in and out, and you
will say these men are all men of humanity, of
good sense.
March.
They told me, that now, since February, Paris
was not Paris, nor France France, everything
was triste and grim. All the members of the
Provincial Government had become aged since
February, except only Arago.
Immortality. Of Immortality, the Soul, when
well employed, is incurious.' ...
Nobody should speak on this matter polemic-
1 The rest of the passage is printed in “Worship" (Con-
duct of Life, p. 239).


1848] ENGLAND AND FRANCE 409
ally, but it is the Gai Science and only to be
chanted by troubadours.
nce &
In dreams, the ordinary theory is that there
is but one person; the mystical theory is that
there are two or more.
There's a great affinity between wit and oxy-
gen; with the oxygen in these crowded parlours
my wit always departs.
e cr
rs
England is the country of the rich. The great
Poor Man does not yet appear. Whenever he
comes, England will fall like France. It would
seem that an organizing talent applied directly
to the social problem, to bring, for example, labor
to market, to bring want and supply face to face,
would not be so rare. A man like Hudson, like
Trevelyan, like Cobden, should know something
about it.
France. The French Revolution just now has
surprised everybody (themselves included) who
took any thought on the matter. No Guizot,
no Thiers, no Barrot, no Times newspaper, no
party that could remember and calculate, but
was baulked and confounded. Only the simple
workmen, porters, shoeblacks, and women, and
mei


410
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
the few statesmen who, like Lamartine, could
afford through riches and energy of nature to
let themselves go without resistance whither the
explosion was hurling them, found themselves
suddenly right and well. One would say, as Sam
Ward said of the young collegians who drove a
gig down his hill, “ If they had known how to
drive, they would have broken their necks.”
The French are, to a proverb, so formidable
in explosions that every boy sees the folly of
Guizot and his master in bearding that lion. It
had been plain to them a great while that just
by dodging an explosion you might lead the
monster quietly into a cage.
This revolution has a feature new to history,
that of Socialism. The American Revolution
was political merely.
It is not a good feature, the rhetoric of French
politics. The manifestoes read like Buonaparte's
proclamations, instead. It strikes one, too, the
identity of the nation through all these changes.
I ask myself, what makes it? it is like the iden-
tity of an individual.
The King and his party fell [in February,
1848] for want of a shot; they had not conscience
to shoot, so entirely was the heart and spirit of
monarchy eaten out.


ul.
1848] FRANCE. DINNER PARTY 411
In Germany, said N.,' the former revolution
collapsed for want of an idea. Now, all goes
well, for they know what they want.
The delegate who had carried congratulations
to the French Republic said, that “they had
determined not to wait even till they knew
whether it was a boy or a girl.” Mr. Van der
W. said that Louis Philippe has not now £800
a year. Louis Philippe could not be received
publicly, but he went privately to the Queen,
and made her and her company laugh very
heartily by his account of his escapade, and the
incidents of his disguise, voyage, and landing
in England.
March.
At Lady Harriet Baring's dinner, Carlyle
and Milnes introduced me to Charles Buller,
“reckoned,” they said aloud, “the cleverest
man in England” — “until,” added Milnes,
-"until he meddled with affairs.” For Buller
was now Poor - Laws Commissioner, and had
really postponed hitherto to make good the
extraordinary expectation which his speeches in
Parliament had created.
1 Probably Neuberg, a German of culture, who rendered
much good service to Carlyle.


412
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
eva
Religion. Dr. Arnott told a story of a very
evangelical young lady who wanted the com-
pany to subscribe to send a missionary to India.
“The people,” she said, “believed in devils,
and worshipped devils.” “Yes,” said her uncle,
“I tell you, my dear, those are no jokes of
devils, those in India. They actually eat or
cause to be destroyed one per cent of the pop-
ulation. But, niece, they worship devils, too, in
Europe, and news were just brought that this
is creeping into England, and instead of one
per cent, they say their devil sends to eternal
damnation nineteen out of every twenty.” The
niece, who had expected a contribution to her
missionary purse, shut her eyes and her mouth.
Macaulay' said that he had arrested on its
progress to be printed a bill for civilizing and
Christianizing the natives of — in Africa,
appropriating a thousand pounds, first for an
expense of £- for adjusting pipes, etc., on
1 Mr. Emerson met Macaulay, Milman, Lord Morpeth,
Bunsen, and Lyell at dinner at Mr. Bancroft's, and Macaulay
again and Hallam at Milman's. See letter to Mrs. Emerson
in Cabot's Memoir, vol. ii, pp. 528, 530. He says: “Ma-
caulay is the king of diners-out. I do not know when I have
seen such wonderful vivacity. He has immense memory, fun,
fire, learning, politics, manners, and pride, and talks all the
time a steady torrent."


1848) CHURCHMEN AND SCIENCE 413
the paddle-wheels of steamboats for squirting
hot water on the natives.
I have never heard, I believe, but one man
in England speak of “Our Saviour.” At the
dinner of the Geological Club, I sat between
Sir Henry De la Bèche and Lord Selkirk.
When I remarked, what I understood the ac-
cepted view of the creation of races to be, that
many individuals appeared simultaneously, and
not one pair only, Lord Selkirk replied that
there was no geological fact which is at variance
with the Mosaic History.
“Decent debility,” said Sydney Smith of the
clergy.
'Tis a long step from the cromlechs to York
Minster.
Two seasons every night in which the House
of Commons was ferocious, at the dinner hour
by hunger and at two o'clock by sleep.
this period. False Fronted the
Englishwomen wear their grey hair.' In the
1 Women in America, at this period, when their hair be-
gan to turn grey wore "frisettes” or “false fronts,” often
of a singular warm chocolate-brown which heightened the un-
reality. Almost all matrons, however young, wore caps.


414
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
rain, they tuck up their gown about the waist
and expose their skirt.
England a little top-heavy still, though she
keeps her feet much better since the Corn Laws
were thrown overboard.
March 9.
I attended a Chartist meeting in National
Hall, Holborn. It was called to hear the re-
port of the Deputation who had returned after
carrying congratulations to the French Repub-
lic. The Marseillaise was sung by a party of
men and women on the platform, and chorused
by the whole assembly: then the Girondins. The
leaders appeared to be grave men, intent on
keeping a character for order and moral tone
in their proceedings, but the great body of the
meeting liked best the sentiment, “Every man
a ballot and every man a musket.” Much was
whispered of the soldiers, — that “they would
catch it,” i. e., the contagion of Chartism and
rebellion.
In the Times, advertisement of literary assist-
ance. T— R- sold his name to a book.
T- D- sells his book to a name of Mr.
Cunningham, bookseller.


(1848) NEWSPAPER WRITERS 415
March 14.
It is a proof of the abundance of literary tal-
ent here that no one knows, or, I think, asks
the name of the writers of paragraphs and ar-
ticles of great ability. It seems strange that lit-
erary power sufficient to get up twenty such
reputations as Quinet or Michelet, and a hun-
dred Prescotts or Sparkses, is here wasted in
some short-lived paper in the Christian Remem-
brancer or the Foreign Quarterly, or even in a
few leaders in the Times newspaper. The papers
surprise me, for I do not meet anywhere the
fine-tempered talent that could write them, but
only such literary men as I have known before.
I read this morn the excellent critique on
Carlyle's Cromwell in the Christian Remem-
brancer for April, 1846.
nor
Nature. The oceanic working of Nature
which accumulates a momentary individual as
she forms a momentary wave in a running sea.
Englishman talks of politics and institutions,
but the real thing which he values is his home,
and that which belongs to it, – that general cul-
ture and high polish which in his experience
no man but the Englishman possesses, and which


416
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
he naturally believes have some essential con-
nection with his throne and laws. That is what
he does not believe resides in America, and
therefore his contempt of America only half
concealed. This English tenacity in strong con-
trast with our facility. The facile American
sheds his Puritanism when he leaves Cape Cod,
runs into all English and French vices with
great zest, and is neither Unitarian, nor Calvin-
ist, nor Catholic, nor stands for any known
thought or thing; which is very distasteful to
English honour. It is a bad sign that I have
met with many Americans who flattered them-
selves that they pass for English. Levity, lev-
ity. I do not wish to be mistaken for an Eng-
lishman, more than I wish Monadnock or
Nahant or Nantucket to be mistaken for Wales
or the Isle of Wight.
Appleton' spends so much wit, anecdote,
good nature, on every conversation, that it is
impossible with the ordinary economies of Na-
ture that he can have any stores, any winter,
any ulterior views. He is like a broker who
lends such sums that you would infer that he
1 Thomas Gold Appleton, of Boston, then travelling in
Europe.


1848) LONDON SOCIETY 417
was rich; but no, he turns all his capital every
day.
“Our rivers have their sources in their do-
minions,” says the German (East Prussian)
placard reproachfully of Russian dominion.
“And other grain,” Mr. Austin said, were
words introduced by Franklin into a provision
bill in Pennsylvania to cover gunpowder.
“I rise in the dignity of conscious virtue,”
said Roebuck in his first speech in the House
of Commons.
Dined at Lord Ashburton's, at Lady Harriet
Baring's, attended Lady Palmerston's soirée;
saw fine people at Lady Morgan's and at
Lady Molesworth's, Lord Lovelace's, and
other houses. But a very little is enough for
me, and I find that all the old deoxygenation"
and asphyxia that have in town or in village
existed for me in that word “a party,” exist un-
changed in London palaces. Of course the fault
is wholly mine, but I shall at least know how/
to save a great deal of time and temper hence-
forward.
You will wish to know what Mr. Bull really


418
[AGE 44
JOURNAL
says to me and is to me. I confess I am, much
of the time, in that unhappy state which evening
parties throw me into,—the parlor Erebus; —
and that solitary infirmity of mine, Mr. Bull is
the last person to forgive. English society, of
course, requires vigour of health to shine in it.
As we say, You must be a bruiser for Congress.
The novice fancies that the gladiators say some-
thing better than he; no, but they say it better.
Macaulay has the strength of ten men. “A
Unitarian will presently be shown as a Dodo,
an extinct race ” [was his remark]. That Ma-
caulay should be voted a bore in some high
aristocratic companies is pathetic example of the
impossibility of pleasing all.
Not only Christianity is as old as the crea-
tion, not only every sentiment and precept of
Christianity can be parallelled in other religious
writings, but a man of religious susceptibility and,
at the same time conversant with men, — say a
much travelled man, — can find the same height
in numberless conversations. The religious find
religion wherever they associate. When I find
in people narrow religion, I find narrow read-
ing.
Nothing is so expansive as thought. It cannot
evo
SOC
narrow


1848] A PRIEST. THE ENGLISH 419
be confined or hid. 'T is easily carried; it takes
no room.
I travelled, as I said, for a whip for my top.
I had noticed that to every person are usually
sent six or seven priests, in the course of their
(impressible) life, and, to find one of these, he
may well cross to Asia, or the Antarctic Zone.
It was to be expected that I might find the
seventh of mine in England.
cas
ever
Every Englishman is a House of Commons.
As that expects that every speech will propose
a measure, so the man of letters here is never
contemplative; a stanza of the Song of Nature
he has no ear for.
Grievous amount of dross about men of wit,
they are so heavy, so dull, so oppressive with
their bad jokes, and monstrous conceit, and
stupefying individualism. Avoid the great man
as one who is privileged to be an unprofitable
companion. As a class the merchants are out of
all comparison manlier and more sensible, and
even the farmers are more real and agreeable.
But this is babyish; I hate that a scholar should
be an old goody. If excellence as scholars has
cost too much and spoiled them for society, let


420
JOURNAL (AGE 44
religion, let their homage to truth and beauty,
keep them in chambers or caves, that they may
not by personal presence deface the fair festival
which their reason and imagination have dressed.
The most agreeable compliment that could
be paid W. was to say that you had not ob-
served him, in a house or in a street where you
had met him.'...
I see that the Londoner is also, like me, a
stranger in London. I have a good deal to tell
him of it, and there is no man who at all mas-
ters or much affects this self-arranging mass.
The Englishman is proud; yes, but he is
admirable. He knows all things, has all things,
can do all : how can he not be proud ?
Colonel Thompson's theory of Primogeni-
ture is, that it is to make one son strong enough
to force the public to support all the rest.
[Last week in March.]
Richard Owen. Mr. Richard Owen was kind
enough to give me a card to his Course of Lec-
1 The rest of the passage with a similar beginning is
printed in Society and Solitude (p. 4).


1848] RICHARD OWEN 421
tures before the Royal College of Surgeons, and
I heard as many of the lectures as I could. He
is an excellent lecturer. His vinous face is a
powerful weapon. He has a surgical smile, and
an air of virility, that penetrates his audience, a
perfect self-command and temperance, master
of his wide nomenclature, and stepping securely
from stone to stone. But there was no need
that he who thinks lightly of the accumulation
of facts should run counter to his own genius,
and attack the “transmutationists”; for it is they
who obey the idea which makes him great.
Mr. Owen told the story of Dean Buckland's
objection to the gigantic Rat which pulled down
the trees of the elder world, namely, that he
would get killed by their fall; and, when the
fossil skull of one was examined, it was found
to be double and of an immoderate thickness,
and also with great fractures healed over.
The Jerboa Rat and other animals of that
kind are in enormous numbers, and prolific;
have their function to destroy corrupt animal
matter and are like the infusoria in that
office.
The Bat analogous to the Cetacea; one is
a mammal adapted to swim and one a mammal
adapted to fly — then again analogous to the


422
JOURNAL [AGE 44
mole and the shrew, one moving by displacing
air and the other by displacing earth.
Sleep is the hybernation of the day. Hyber-
nation is the sleep of the year. Light is not the
exciting cause always, for some animals wake in
the dark and sleep in the day. Light was thought
the exciting cause in reference to sleep, and heat
in reference to hybernation. And yet there are
animals who sleep during the hottest and driest
part of the equatorial year. The hybernation is
determined by the season of food. The bat liv-
ing on insects would die when the insects died;
but now, he sleeps through this long fast, with-
out respiration.
CS
If I stay here long, I shall lose all my patri-
otism and think that England has absorbed all
excellences. My friend Alcott came here and
brought away a couple of mystics and their shelf
of books from Ham Common, and fancied that
nothing was left in England;' and I see that
Kew Gardens and so many great men and things
are obscure.
I look at the immense wealth and the solid
1 Messrs. Lane and Wright, who joined in the Fruitlands
Community, already mentioned in the Journals of 1843 and
1844. The School at Ham Common had been named Alcott
House.


1848] POVERTY. OXFORD 423
power concentrated, and am quite faint: then I
look in the street at the little girls running bare-
foot through the rain, with broom in hand, to
beg a halfpenny of the passenger at the crossing,
and at so many Lascars, and pitifullest trades,
and think of Saadi, who, barefooted, saw the man
who had no legs, and bemoaned himself no more.
[On the invitation of Arthur Hugh Clough,
then a Fellow of Oriel College, and also of Dr.
Daubeny, the botanical professor, Mr. Emerson
went to Oxford, “and spent something more
than two days very happily,” meeting, among
others, “Palgrave and Froude,” as told in
Cabot's Memoir.]
March 31.
At Oxford, in the Bodleian Library Dr.
Bandinel showed me the manuscript Plato of
the date of A.D. 896, brought by Dr. Clarke
from Egypt.' ...
[On April 1 Mr. Emerson went to a soirée at
the Marquis of Northampton's, and in a letter
tells of the company he met there, among others
Prince Albert, Sir Charles Fellows, Dr. Buck-
i Here follows the narrative of what he saw in this library
printed in English Traits (pp. 203, 204).


424
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
land, and Crabbe Robinson, who in his Diary
mentions his meeting with Emerson. Later, the
same evening, he went to Lord Palmerston's, and
there met Disraeli, Bunsen, Macaulay, and Baron
Rothschild.]
Mr. Neuberg said that the Rothschilds make
great fortunes, but they really do a certain im-
portant service to society ; they are the cashiers
of the world : and it is a public mischief when
any calamity befalls them. People at Notting-
ham are carried into crime, because Rothschild
does not accept bills at Paris; it is quite obvi-
ous to him : he can trace it all the way. So when
a bank discounts freely in any district, immedi-
ately an impulse is given to population, and new
men are born.
See the account Rothschild gave of himself
in Fowell Buxton's Life, especially in regard to
luck.
Agassiz made lectures on anatomy popular by
the aid of an idea : homology, analogy, did that
for him, which all the police of Boston could
not have done, in holding the crowd together at
the Odéon, when Wyman lectured on the same
subject.


1848) THE NEW RELIGION 425
The New Religion. Yes, there will be a new
Church founded on Moral Science, at first cold
and naked, a babe in a manger again.'....
It was necessary that this roaring Babylon
should fall flat, before the whisper that com-
mands the world could be heard. It seems to
every youth that he is alone, and left to fall
abroad with too much liberty, when he is left
with only God. He does not yet begin to see
and to hear.
The English Church, being undermined by
German criticism, had nothing left but tradi-
tion, and Aung itself into the Roman Church,
distrusting the laws of the Universe. The next
step is now the ruin of Christendom.
Wisdom always lays the emphasis of reform
in the right place, on tendency, on character, and
not on some absurd particular, as on the knife
and fork, which is sure to produce dislocation
and ridiculous jangle. A monk must live in a
monastery; an ascetic in Thebais; he cannot get
such puddings as he likes in Nottingham or
Concord.
1 The passage thus beginning is printed in “ Worship”
(Conduct of Life, p. 241).
2 A part of the above passage is printed in the chapter
“ Religion” (English Traits, p. 228).


426
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
I had rather have a good symbol of my
thought, or a good analogy, than the suffrage
of Kant or Plato.'....
Every soul is sent into Nature accompanied
by its assessors or witnesses. They are attached
to it by similarities which keep them through
all changes in the same stratum or plane, and
within the same sphere; as the bodies of one solar
system never quit their respective distances, but
remain, as the foot of an animal follows its head.
To his astonishment the man finds that he can
never think alone, his thought is always appre-
hended by equal intellect; that he can never hide
his action, but witnesses, and those his intimate
acquaintance, look out of the dark of every cave,
in an Asiatic desart, in an Arabian Sahara.”
Everything connected with our personality
fails.3 ...
People interest as long as there is some re-
1 The rest of the passage is found in “ Poetry and Imagina-
tion” (Letters and Social Aims, p. 13).
2 The same idea and some of the same expressions occur
in “Worship” (Conduct of Life, p. 226).
3 The substance of this passage is printed in “ Immortal-
ity” (Letters and Social Aims, pp. 342, 343).


1848] THE DREAD IDEA
427
serve about them. Only that mind draws med
which I cannot read.
serve
IS
n
“ The belief that Self consists in that which
is not self, and that property consists in that
which is not our own, is the double fruit of the
tree of Ignorance.”
The objection, the loud denial, not less proves
the reality and conquests of an idea than the
friends and advocates it finds. Thus communism
now is eagerly attacked, and all its weak points
acutely pointed out by British writers and talk-
ers; which is all so much homage to the Idea,
whose first inadequate expressions interest them
so deeply, and with which they feel their fate to
be mingled. If the French should set out to
prove that three was four, would British jour-
nalism bestir itself to contradict them? The
Geologic Society and the Stock Exchange would
have no time to spare it.
One sees readily, in the embittered acuteness
of the Oxonian reviewer in snuffing heresy from
far, how hapless an unbeliever he is, and why he
inveighs so angrily against that which he vainly
resists in his own bosom.
I was struck, at least in one interview lately,
with the mutual timidity of a couple of emi-


428
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
nences (of very diverse sorts), each exaggerating
the other, and then it appeared that victory was
cheap, and lay there waiting for which one first
recovered his reason.
At Oxford you may hold what opinion you
please so that you hold your tongue.
In going through the street you should be in
- a state of positive electricity, not negative.
If I should believe the Reviews, and I am
always of their opinion, I have never written any-
thing good. And yet, against all criticism, the
books survive until this day.
For the matter of Socialism, there are no ora-
cles. The oracle is dumb. When we would pro-
nounce anything truly of man, we retreat in-
stantly on the individual. We are authorized to
say much on the destinies of one, nothing on
those of many. It seems cruel that every man
should be in false position and that, scholar and
saint though he be, he should find himself in
this most awkward relation to loaves of bread.
And the promise of Socialism is to redress this
distorted balance. But I think it needs that we


h
1848) SOCIALISM. CHARTISTS 429
must have the substance in purity which we will
analyze, and not only cling to individuals but
to angels. We must consider the condition of
a youthful soul sent for its education into this
University of Nature, and perhaps it must have
this drastic treatment of famine and plenty, in-
sult and rapture, wisdom and tragedy, infernal
and supernal society, in order to secure that
breadth of culture so long-lived a destiny needs.
Oh, were there times that deserved any at-
tention! but how can these convulsions effect
any change of mood in any firm Cæsarian scholar?
Archimedes buried himself in his geometry
... when Marcellus was battering down the
walls.
April 6 (?).
I fancied, when I heard that the times were
anxious and political, that there is to be a Chart-
ist revolution on Monday next,' and an Irish
revolution in the following week, that the right
scholar would feel, now was the hour to test his
genius. His kingdom is at once over and under
1 In a letter to his wife on April 10, Mr. Emerson wrote:
“ A good deal of time is lost here in their politics, as I read
the newspapers daily, and the revolution, fixed for the ioth
instant, occupied all men's thought until the Chartists' peti-
tion was actually carried to the Commons."


430
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
these perturbed regions. Let him produce its
Charter now, and try whether it cannot win a
hearing, and make felt its infinite superiority
to-day, as, in the arts, they make winter oil on
the coldest, and spermaceti candles on the hot-
test, day of the year.
People here expect a revolution. There will
be no revolution, none that deserves to be
called so. There may be a scramble for money.
But as all the people we see want the things we
Vad now have, and not better things, it is very cer-
tain that they will, under whatever change of
forms, keep the old system. When I see changed
men, I shall look for a changed world. Whoever
is skilful in heaping money now will be skilful
in heaping money again.
Power. There must be a relation between
power and probity. ... We seem already to
have more power than we can be trusted with.
And this preparation for a superior race is a
higher omen of revolution than any other I have
seen. Except to better men, the augmented
science is a mere chemic experiment of the
quickest poison.
What wrong road have we taken that all the
improvements of machinery have helped every-
see


1848) SOCIAL QUESTIONS 431
body but the operative? Him they have incur-
ably hurt.
A curious example of the rudeness and inac-
curacy of thought is the inability to distinguish
between the private and the universal conscious-
ness. I never make that blunder when I write,
but the critics who read impute their confusion
to me.
In the question of Socialism, which now pro-
poses the confiscation of France, one has only
this guidance ; — you shall not so arrange prop-
erty as to remove the motive to industry. If
you refuse rent and interest, you make all men
idle and immoral. As to the poor, a vast pro-
portion have made themselves so, and in any
new arrangement will only prove a burden on
the state. And there is a great multitude also
whom the existing system bereaves forever of
all culture and of all hope. The masses — ah,
if you could read the biographies of those who
compose them!
The word Pay is immoral.
Now we will work, because we can have it
all to our snug selves; to-morrow we will not,


432
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
because it goes to the community, and we all
stand on a pauper's footing.
The wonder of the Science of Intellect is that
the substance with which we deal is of that tran-
scendent and active nature, that it intoxicates all
who approach it.' . . . Everything is mover or
moved, and we are admonished of omnipotence
when we say, let us have intellect on our own
terms.
Happy is he who gets early in life (or not too
late) a good hobby. What happiness and fortune
for Charles Fellows was in that ruin at Xanthus.'
... Owen by his fixed idea penetrates all courts,
and sees all distinguished men. Morgan's village
is his key to Pope, and prelate, author, and for-
eigner. Dr. Tuckerman with his Ministry-at-
large. So Perez Blood with his telescope.3 Sir
1 This and what follows is printed in “ Powers and Laws
of Thoughts” (Natural History of Intellect, pp. 10, 11).
Mr. Emerson wrote, April 20, to his wife : “My newest
writing is a kind of Natural History of Intellect ; very unpro-
mising title, is it not ?".
2 See « Education” (Lectures and Biographical Sketcbes,
pp. 145, 146).
3 A Concord farmer, referred to in an earlier journal, who
used his small inheritance of money from his father to buy a
telescope and celestial globe.


ire I
1848] BRITISH MUSEUM 433
Joshua Reynolds (Fox said) had no pleasure in
Richmond; he used to say the human face was
his landscape.
Guidance and determination to an aim, — yes,
certainly, the book must have these, were the
author ten times a poet; but it must not be
mechanical, not a placing, but a polarity.
ren
April.
The British Museum holds the relics of an-
cient art, and the relics of ancient nature, in adja-
cent chambers. It is alike impossible to reani-
mate either.
The arrangement of the antique remains is
surprisingly imperfect and careless, without
order, or skilful disposition, or names or num-
bers. A warehouse of old marbles. People go to
the Elgin chamber many times, and at last the
beauty of the whole comes to them at once, like
music. The figures sit like gods in heaven.
Coventry Patmore's remark was, that to come
out of the other room to this was from a roomful
of snobs to a room full of gentlemen.
There are 420,000 volumes in the library, as
Mr. Panizzi assured me, and fifty or sixty thou-
sand manuscripts. In the Bodleian Library prob-
S
anusc


434
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
ably not more than 120,000 books. Five libra-
ries have the right to a copy of every book that
is printed : this, the Bodleian, the Advocates' at
Edinburgh, the Dublin University (?), and Trin-
ity College, Cambridge (?). The King's Library
at Paris is much larger than this — 1,500,000,
said Colman. Here the line of shelves runs
twelve miles. It is impossible to read from the
glut of books. I looked at some engravings in
the print-room with Mr. Patmore, who is con-
nected with this Library.
Ah! there is a nation completely appointed,
and perhaps conveniently small.
St. Paul's is, as I remember it, a very hand-
some, noble architectural exploit, but singularly
unaffecting. When I formerly came to it from
the Italian cathedrals, I said, “Well, here is New
York.” It seems the best of show-buildings, a
fine British vaunt, but there is no moral interest
attached to it.
It is certain that more people speak English
correctly in the United States than in Britain.
The Government offers free passage to Aus-
tralia for twenty-five thousand women. In Aus-


1848) STREET GIRLS. LYCIA
1 435
tralia are six men to one woman. Miss Coutts
has established a school to teach poor girls, taken
out of the street, how to read and write and make
a pudding and be a colonist's wife. They do very
well so long as they are there, but when it comes
to embarking for Australia they prefer to go back
to the London street, though in these times it
would seem as if they must eat the pavement.
Such is the absurd love of home of the English
race, said Dickens.
April 15.
At the British Museum with the Bancrofts
under the guidance of Sir Charles Fellows. Ly-
cian Art. The triumphal Temple plagiarism of
the Parthenon. Exact truth and fitness of every
particular of Greek work. There are ten statues
because ten cities sent aid out of thirteen. Every
statue stands on an emblem, as crab, dove, snake,
etc., which the coins now show to be the arms of
the ten cities. The gods are at the eastern end.
The friezes describe accurately the siege of the
city.
The reconstruction of the Temple, like that
of the Dinornis, the most beautiful work of ar-
chaic science. History, geology, chemistry, and
good sense. The temple itself imitates in stone
the old carpentry of the country still visible in


436
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
ornam
the huts of the peasantry, and is an ark. The
women wear the same ornaments, the boys have
the same tuft of hair.
Illustration of Homer and Herodotus. Eng-
land holds these things for mankind and holds
them well. Conservative, she is conservator.
Owen said he fell in with a sentinel in cross-
ing the French frontier, who cried out, “Who
are you?” Mr. Arnott said he should have
replied, “The creature of circumstances.”
One power streams into all natures. Mind is
vegetable, and grows, thought out of thought,
as joint out of joint in corn. Mind is chemical,
and shows all the affinities and repulsions of
chemistry, and works by presence. ...
Mind knows the way because it has trod it
before. Knowledge is becoming of that thing.
Somewhere, sometime, some eternity, we have
played this game before. Go through the British
Museum and we are full of occult sympathies.
I was azote.
It is a little fearful to see with what genius
some people take to hunting; what knowledge
they still have of the creature they hunt; how
lately they were his organic enemy; and the


1848) LONDON. CARLYLE 437
physiognomies in the street have their type in
woods. As in the British Museum one feels
his family ties, so in astronomy not less; little
men copernicise.
Lud-gate still keeps the hoary memory of
Lud's town. Lud, son of Beli, is represented in
the romantic chronicles as the elder brother of
Cassivellaunus who fought with Julius Cæsar.
Among the trades of despair is the searching
the filth of the sewers for rings, shillings, tea-
spoons, etc., which have been washed out of the
sinks. These sewers are so large that you can
go underground great distances. Mr. Colman
saw a man coming out of the ground with a
bunch of candles. “Pray, sir, where did you
come from?” “Oh, I've been seven miles,”
the man replied. They say that Chadwick’ rode
all under London on a little brown pony.
CO
VIL
I wonder the young people are so eager to
see Carlyle. It is like being hot to see the
Mathematical or the Greek professor, before you
1 Some sentences of the above are printed in “ Powers
and Laws of Thought” (Natural History of Intellect,
p. 22).
2 The engineer of the London water system.


438
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
have got your lesson. They fancy it needs only
clean shirt and palaver. If the genius is true, it
needs genius.
The Englishman is finished like a sea-shell.
After the spires and volutes are all formed, or
with the formation, the hard enamel varnishes
every part.' Pope, Swift, Jonson, Gibbon,
Goldsmith, Gray. It seems an indemnity to the
Briton for his precocious maturity. He has no
generous daring in this age. The Platonism
died in the Elizabethan. He is shut up in
French limits. ...
But Birmingham comes in, and says, “Never
mind, I have some patent lustre that defies
criticism.” Moore made his whole fabric of the
lustre: as we cover houses with a shell of in-
consumable paint.
April 19.
At Kew Gardens, which enclose in all more
than six hundred acres, Sir William Hooker
showed us his new glass palm-house ... which
cost £40,000. The whole garden an admirable
work of English power and taste. Good as Ox-
ford or the British Museum. No expense spared,
1 These two sentences are printed in “ Manners” (Eng-
lish Traits, p. 11).


1848) KEW GARDENS. CLUBS 439
all climates searched. The Echino cactus Vis-
nasa, which is a thousand years old, cost many
hundred pounds to transport it from the moun-
tains in Mexico to the sea. Here was tea grow-
ing, green and black; here was clove, cinnamon,
chocolate, lotus, caoutchouc, gutta-percha, kava,
upas, baobab, orotava, the papaw, which makes
tough meat tender, the graphtophyllum pictum or
caricature-plant, on whose leaves were several
good Punch portraits visible to me (lately, there
was one so good of Lord Brougham appeared,
that all men admire); the ivory nut; the Strel-
itzia Regina, named for Queen Charlotte, one
of the gayest flowers in nature; it looked like a
bird, and all but sung; the papyrus; the banian;
a whole greenhouse or “stove” full of wonder-
ful orchises, which are the rage of England now.
Sydney Smith said of Whewell, that Science
was his forte and Omniscience was his foible.
.
Carlyle thought the clubs remarkable signs
of the times. That union was no longer sought,
but only the association of men who would not
offend one another. There was nothing to do,
but they could eat better.
He said, There are about 70,000 of these


440
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
people who make what is called “society.” Of
course, they do not need to make any acquaint-
ance with new people like Americans.
Plato [he found] very unsatisfactory reading,
very tedious. The use of intellect not to know
that it was there, but to do something with it.
Happy is he who looks only into his work to
know if it will succeed, never into the times or
the public opinion ; and who writes from the
love of imparting certain thoughts and not from
the necessity of sale — who writes always to the
unknown friend.
April 25.
· Carlyle. Dined with John Forster, Esq., at
Lincoln's Inn Fields, and found Carlyle and
Dickens, and young Pringle. Forster, who has
an obstreperous cordiality, received Carlyle with
loud salutation,“ My Prophet!” Forster called
Carlyle's passion, “musket - worship.” There
were only gentlemen present and the conver-
sation turned on the shameful lewdness of the
London streets at night. “ I hear it,” he said,
“I hear whoredom in the House of Commons.
Disraeli betrays whoredom, and the whole
House of Commons universal incontinence, in
every word they say." I said that when I came


441
1848]
MALE CHASTITY
to Liverpool, I inquired whether the prostitu-
tion was always as gross in that city as it then
appeared, for to me it seemed to betoken a fatal
rottenness in the state, and I saw not how any
boy could grow up safe. But I had been told
it was not worse nor better for years. Carlyle
and Dickens replied that chastity in the male
sex was as good as gone in our times; and in
England was so 'rare that they could name all
the exceptions. Carlyle evidently believed that
the same things were true in America. He had
heard this and that of New York, etc. I assured
them that it was not so with us; that, for the
most part, young men of good standing and
good education, with us, go virgins to their nup-
tial bed, as truly as their brides. Dickens replied
that incontinence is so much the rule in England
that if his own son were particularly chaste, he
should be alarmed on his account, as if he could
not be in good health. “Leigh Hunt,” he said,
“ thought it indifferent.”
Carlyle is no idealist in opinions, but a pro-
tectionist in political economy, aristocrat in
politics, epicure in diet, goes for murder, money,
punishment by death, slavery, and all the pretty
abominations, tempering them with epigrams.
His seal holds a griffin with the word, Humili-


442
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
ST
tate. He is a covenanter-philosophe and a sans-
culotte-aristocrat.' .
Yet it must be said of Carlyle that he has the
kleinstadslich traits of an islander and a Scotch-
man, and believes more deeply in London than
if he had been born under Bow Bells, and is
pretty sure to reprimand with severity the re-
bellious instincts of the native of a vast conti-
nent which makes light of the British islands.
He is an inspired Cockney.
(When I saw him, in 1848, he was reading
Wright's translation of some of Plato's Dia-
logues with displeasure. I was told by Clough,
in 1852, that he has since changed his mind,
and professes vast respect for Plato.)
Carlyle is MALLEUS MEDIOCRITATIS. He de-
tects weakness on the instant in his companion,
and touches it. ...
I fancy, too, that he does not care to see any-
body whom he cannot eat, and reproduce to-
morrow, in his pamphlet or pillory. Alcott was
meat that he could not eat, and Margaret Fuller
likewise, and he rejected them, at once.
1 A large part of what is written in the next pages of the
Journal is printed in the “ Carlyle,” in Lectures and Bio-
graphical Sketches.
2 This paragraph, Mr. Emerson wrote into the Journal
years later.


e
1848) CARLYLE. ALBONI 443
He is the voice of London, a true Londoner
with no sweet country breath in him, and the
instigation of these new Pamphlets is the indig-
nation of the night-walking in London streets.
And 't is curious, the magnificence of his gen-
ius and the poverty of his aims. He draws his
weapons from the skies, to fight for some
wretched English property, or monopoly, or
prejudice.
He looks for such an one as himself. He
would willingly give way to you and listen, if
you would declaim to him as he declaims to
you. But he will not find such a mate. And a
short, plain-dealing and a communication of re-
sults, as when Dalton and Dana met, and with-
out speaking, scratched down on scraps of
paper chemical formulas, surprising each other
with authentic proof of a chemist, – that he
does not care for.
May 3.
I heard Alboni sing last night in Cenerentola,
and the Times today calls it the best of her
triumphs. I found only the noble burst of
voice beautiful, and the trills and gurgling and
other feats not only not interesting, but, as in
all other performers, painful; mere surgical, or
rather, functional acts.


444
JOURNAL (AGE 44
rou
[May 6 ?]
I saw Tennyson, first, at the house of Cov-
entry Patmore, where we dined together.' His
friend Brookfield was also of the party. I was
contented with him, at once. He is tall, scholas-
tic-looking, no dandy, but a great deal of plain
strength about him, and though cultivated, quite
unaffected; quiet, sluggish sense and strength,
refined, as all English are, and good-humoured.
The print of his head in Horne's book is too
rounded and handsome. There is in him an air
of general superiority, that is very satisfactory.
He lives very much with his college set,-
Spedding, Brookfield, Hallam, Rice, and the
rest,—and has the air of one who is accustomed
to be petted and indulged by those he lives with,
like George Bradford. Take away Hawthorne's
bashfulness, and let him talk easily and fast,
and you would have a pretty good Tennyson.
\ He has just come home from Ireland, where
he had seen much vaporing of the Irish youth
against England, and described a scene in some
tavern, I think, where a hot young man was
flourishing a drawn sword, and swearing that
he would drive it to the hilt into the flesh and
blood of Englishmen. Tennyson was disgusted,
i On May 5.


1848) MEETING TENNYSON
445
and going up to the young man, took out his
penknife, and offered it to him. “I am an Eng-
lishman,” he said, “and there is my penknife,
and, you know, you will not so much as stick
that into me.” The youth was disconcerted
and said he knew he was not an Englishman.
“Yes, but I am.” Hereupon the companions
of the youth interfered, and apologized for him,
he had been in drink and was excited, etc.
Tennyson talked of Carlyle, and said, “If
Carlyle thinks the Christian religion has lost all
vitality, he is wholly mistaken.” Tennyson and
all Carlyle's friends feel the caprice and incon-
gruity of his opinions. He talked of London as
a place to take the nonsense out of a man.
It is his brother, Tennyson Turner, who wrote
the verses which Wordsworth praised.
When Festus was spoken of, I said that a
poem must be made up of little poems, but
that in Festus were no single good lines; you
could not quote one line. Tennyson quoted —
“ There came a hand between the sun and us,
And its five fingers made five nights in air.”
After dinner, Brookfield insisted that we
should go to his house, so we stopped an om-
nibus, and, not finding room inside for all three,


446
JAGE 44
JOURNAL
Tennyson rode on the box, and B. and I within.
Brookfield, knowing that I was going to France,
told me that, if I wanted him, Tennyson would
go. “ That is the way we do with him,” he said.
“We tell him he must go and he goes. But you
will find him heavy to carry.” At Brookfield's
house we found young Hallam, with Mrs. Brook-
field, a very pleasing woman. I told Tennyson
that I heard from his friends very good accounts
of him, and I and they 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-humoured, 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. I was tempted, of
course, to pronounce for Italy; but now I had
agreed to give my course in London. He gave
mea cordial invitation to his lodgings (in Buck-
ingham Place), where I promised to visit him
before I went away.
On [the next day?] I found him at home in
his lodgings, but with him was a Church clergy-
man, whose name I did not know, and there
was no conversation. He was sure, again, that


1848]
TENNYSON
447
he was taking a final farewell of me, as I was go-
ing among the French bullets, but promised to
be in the same lodgings, if I should escape alive
after my three weeks in Paris. So we parted. I
spent a month in Paris, and, when I returned,
he had left London.
Carlyle describes him as staying in London
through a course of eight o'clock dinners every
night for months until he is thoroughly fevered.
Then, notice is given to one of his friends, as
lately to Aubrey de Vere, who has a fine estate
in Ireland (thirty miles from Limerick), to come
and carry him off bodily. Tennyson had capit-
ulated, on three conditions : first, that he should
not hear anything about Irish distress ; second,
that he should not come downstairs to breakfast;
third, that he might smoke in the house. I think
these were the three. So poor Tennyson, who
had been in the worst way, but had not force
enough to choose where to go, and so sat still,
was now disposed of.
Tennyson was in plain black suit and wears
glasses. Carlyle thinks him the best man in Eng-
land 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. He
has other brothers, I believe, besides Tennyson


448
[AGE 44
JOURNAL
TIIS
Turner, the elder; and, I remember, Carlyle told
me with glee some story of one of them, who
looked like Alfred, and whom some friend, com-
ing in, found lying on the sofa and addressed
him, “Ah, Alfred, I am glad to see you,” and
he said, “I am not Alfred, I am Septimus; I
am the most morbid of all the Tennysons.” I
suppose he is self-indulgent and a little spoiled
and selfish by the warm and universal favor he
has found. Lady Duff Gordon told me that the
first day she saw him he lay his whole length on
the carpet, and rolled himself to her feet and
said, “Will you please to put your feet on me
for a stool.” Coventry Patmore described him
as very capricious and as once spending the even-
ing with a dozen friends, “not, to be sure, his
equals, but as nearly his equals as any that could
be collected." Yet Tennyson would not say a
word, but sat with his pipe, silent, and at last
said, “ I am going to Cheltenham ; I have had
a glut of men.” When he himself proposed, one
day, to read Tennyson a poem which he had
just finished, that Tennyson might tell him of
anything which his taste would exclude, Tenny-
son replied, “Mr. Patmore, you have no idea how
many applications of this sort are made to me."
Dr. T. P. Shepherd, of Providence, who trava


15
an was
n scru
1848] TENNYSON INCOGNITO 449
elled in the East with W. Stirling, told me that
he met Tennyson at a hotel in Amsterdam, and
lived there a fortnight with him, not knowing
his name, but riding out with him to see the en-
virons, and meeting at the table d'hôte. He set
his servant to ascertain from Tennyson's servant
his master's name; but the man was only a valet
de place, and did not know; for Tennyson scru-
pulously concealed his name, and got into trou.
ble with the police about his passport. Dr. Shep-
herd thought he must be Carlyle, from the
strength and brilliancy of his conversation, until
he spoke of Carlyle. One day, however, he re-
cited the “ Moated Grange," and inquired of
Dr. Shepherd if they liked such verses in Amer-
ica. Dr. Shepherd replied, yes, he knew the
verses; they were by Tennyson, and, though he
could not say they were widely known, yet they
had a very cordial troop of admirers in the
United States. “Well,” replied the other, “ I am
Tennyson.” And thereafter their acquaintance
was intimate, and he made Dr. Shepherd prom-
ise to visit him in England. But when Dr.
Shepherd was in England, and inquired for him,
he found, he said, that he was in a kind of re-
treat for the sane, which they keep there, and so
saw him not.


450
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
Mr. Sylvester told me that Mr. Farie could
draw a model of any loom or machine after once
seeing it, for Rees's Cyclopædia, and did so in
the Strutt's mills.
Mr. Hallam asked me, at Lord Ashburton's,
“Whether Swedenborg were all mad, or partly
knave?” He knew nothing of Thomas Taylor,
nor did Milman, nor any Englishman.
FRANCE
[In the first week in May, Mr. Emerson,
neglecting the advice of solicitous friends, in his
wish to see France especially in days of national
crisis, and, incidentally, to gain a better know-
ledge of the language, crossed the Channel.]
May 6.
From Boulogne to Paris fifty - six leagues,
seven and one-half mortal hours.
In approaching Paris, it seemed a nation of
soldiers. The climate seemed altered, and 't is in-
credible that this Syrian capital — all the people
poured into the street — should be so near to
London.
In Paris, my furnished lodgings, a very com-
fortable suite of rooms (15 Rue des petits Augus-
tins) on the second floor, cost me ninety francs a


451
1848]
PARIS
month, or three francs a day. ... The expenses
of living for a day, at my rate, are six francs fif-
teen sous, or seven francs. ’T is true that a break-
fast consists of a certain number of mouthfuls.
Well, in France they count the number of
mouthfuls—say thirty-two or sixty — and put
a price on the mouthfuls, three centimes, five
centimes a spoonful.
I looked in all the shop windows for toys this
afternoon and they are very many and gay, but
the only one of all which I really wish to buy is
very cheap; yet I cannot buy it, namely, their
speech. I covet that which the vilest of the peo-
ple possesses. French poetry is peu de chose and
in their character and performance is always
prose, prose ornée, but never poesy.
Madame de Tocqueville, who is English, tells
me that the French is so beautiful a language,
so neat, concise, and lucid, that she can never
bear to speak English. 'Tis a peculiarity of
the French that they assimilate all foreign words,
and do not suffer them to be pronounced in
the foreign manner. . . . Every blouse in the
street speaks like an academician; which is not
possible in England. I do not distinguish be-
tween the language of a blouse, talking philo-
sophy in a group, and that of a Cousin.


452
JOURNAL (AGE 44
After the pair of noble fountains which play
all day, the principal ornament of the Place de
la Concorde is the Obelisk brought from Thebes.
The boulevards have lost their fine trees, which
were all cut down for barricades in February.
At the end of a year we shall take account, and
see if the Revolution was worth the trees.
In Paris, the number of beggars does not
compare with that in London, or in Manches-
ter even.
The architecture of Paris compares most
favorably with that of London; is far more
original, spirited, national. Here is a royal Pal-
ace. They have spent a great deal of money,
and they have something to show for it. This
Tuileries, this Louvre, this Hôtel de Ville, Pa-
lais de Justice, and old tower de la Boucherie
(St. Jacques). Efflorescence of France.
I find the French all soldiers, all speakers.
The aplomb which these need, every French-
man has; every gamin a certain trimness or
trigness and a certain fancy cut like a dandy
boat at a regatta. A certain ingenuity and ver-
bal clearness of statement they require, and that
satisfies them that they have a new and lucid


1848] THE FRENCH. CLOUGH 453
and coherent statement, though it is artificial,
and not an idea; verbally help, and not really.
M. Lambert is the servant of his literary theory.
But where is the emancipation and joy that
comes from new life of an idea ?
I find the French intensely masculine. I find
them expressive, not reticent. Their heads are
not so round as the English head, said Do-
herty.'
Saw Clough,' — talked of the inevitable civ-
ilization, and how much we owe it; as inevit-
able as we are the development of inevitable
parts. We have got our bread and blood out
of it until this hour, and must contrive to get
our friction-pump or tap-root still applied to it,
nor must we protest in parts, but in system.
O
·
I suppose you could never prove to the
mind of the most ingenious mollusk that such
a creature as a whale was possible.
Hugh Doherty, whom Mr. Emerson speaks of later as a
Unitarian minister, apparently at Paris at this time.
2 Mr. Emerson took pleasure in Clough s society and val-
ued his poems, especially The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolicb.
His presence in Paris at the time of this visit was also helpful
to Mr. Emerson. They dined together daily and often went
about together.


454
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
When men feel and say, “Those men oc-
cupy my place,” the revolution is near. But I
never feel that any men occupy my place;'...
I have never met a person superior to his
talent, — one who had money in his pocket and
did not use it.
May.
The most important word the Age has given
to the vocabulary is Blouse. It has not yet got
into the Dictionary, and even in America for a
year or two it has been of doubtful sound, whether
English “blouse," or French “blouse.” But,
at last, the French Revolution has decided for-
ever its euphony. It is not that it was new for
the workman to have ideas and speak in clubs,
but new in its proportions to find not five hun-
dred but two hundred thousand thinkers and
orators in blouse. Guizot thought they were
but a handful.
An orator in the French Club declares that
“ when the hour arrives for the Second Revolu-
tion, and it is not far off, the people (who had
i For the rest of the passage, see “ Aristocracy” (Lectures
and Biographical Sketches, p. 57).
2 and Humbug (R. W. E.'s note).


roUS
1848] CLUBS. SPANISH ART 455
been too generous at the first revolution in
February) will show that it can avenge as well
as pardon !”
'Tis certain that they are dreadfully in earnest
at these clubs. La vie à bon marché is the idea
of Paris.
“L'inconstance immortelle des Français.”
GEORGE SAND.
“ Le Club des conspirateurs c'est l'aristocratie
de la démocratie.
“Le Club des conspirateurs déclare qu'il recon-
naît les droits de l'émeute, et un conspirateur
suprême. La Conspiration est en permanence.
“Il sera créé au Collège de France une chaire de
conspiration.
“On chargera le citoyen Blanqui de rédiger dans
le silence du cabinet un manuel de conspiration à
l'usage des enfans.”
In the Spanish gallery in the Louvre, it is
easy to see that Velasquez and Spagnoletto were
painters who understood their business. I fancy
them both strong, swarthy men who would have
made good soldiers or brigands at a pinch. And
in running along the numberless cartoons of


456
JOURNAL (AGE 44
old masters, the eye is satisfied that the art of
expression by drawing and color has been per-
fectly attained; that on that side, at least, hu-
manity has obtained a complete transference of
its thought into the symbol.
These Spaniards paint with a certain ferocity.
Zurbaran who paints monks, especially one
monk with a skull in his hands, which seems
the reflection of his own head, is a master so
far.
It is impossible in a French table d'hôte to
guess the social rank or the employment of the
various guests. The military manners universal
in young Frenchmen, their stately bow and
salutation through their beards, are, like their
beards, a screen, which a foreigner cannot pene-
trate.
At the Club des Femmes, there was among
the men some patronage, but no real courtesy.
The lady who presided spoke and behaved with
the utmost propriety, - a woman with heart and
sense, - but the audience of men were perpet-
ually on the lookout for some équivoque, into
which, of course, each male speaker would be
pretty sure to fall; and then the laugh was loud
and general.


1848] CLUBS. SERIOUSNESS 457
Le Club des Clubs was one which consisted of
the chiefs of all the clubs, and to which was ac-
corded a tribune in the assembly. But they were
so dictatorial and insolent that the Chamber at
last mustered courage enough to silence them,
and, I believe, to turn them out.
The Gallic Cock. An errand boy in France is
commissionaire; a kitchen is laboratoire ; applied
to is consacrée. A taper is not a conflagration.
The negative superlative goes on increasing,
and by and by, when all France is mad and
every man takes the other by the throat, Blanqui
will hang himself for joy.
An artist's ticket to society is not transfer-
able, he has not an inch of margin to his own
footing on this precipice to spare, so that, though
he possessed the highest social privileges, he
could not add to them, and (what is worse in
his own eyes) could not impart them.
or
Give me a rich mind, which does not bring a
set of stories to the new companions whom he
joins, and, when they are spent, has no more to
say, but warm bounteous discourse. What trial
is so severe to men as a sea voyage? A college


458
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
examination is nothing to it. He who has not
tired or restrained his shipmates in a month's
voyage has won palms that Cambridge or the
Academy or the Congress cannot give.
What games sleep plays with us! We wake
indignant that we have been so played upon,
and should have lent ourselves to such moun-
tains of nonsense. All night I was scarifying
with my wrath some conjuring miscreant, but
unhappily I had an old age in my toothless
gums, I was as old as Priam, could not articu-
late, and the edge of all my taunts and sarcasms,
it is to be feared, was quite lost. Yet, spite of
my dumb palsy, I defied and roared after him,
and rattled in my throat, until wife waked me
up. Then I bit my lips. So one day we shall
wake up from this longer confusion, and be not
less mortified that we had lent ourselves to such
rigmarole.
rers
Torchlight processions have a seek-and-slay
look, dripping burning oil-drops, and the bearers
now and then smiting the torch on the ground, and
then lifting it into the air as W. described them.
I find in French pictures a coloring of human
flesh, analogous to dead gold in jewelry.


1848) DOHERTY. JOKING 459
Mr. Doherty thought this a revolution against
humbugs; that the English were not so reason-
able as they appear; and the French were more
reasonable than they appear. All the clubs are
armed, – that is, have depots of arms.
Paris, RUE DES PETITS AUGUSTINS,
No. 15; May 13.
The one thing odious to me now is joking.
What can the brave and strong genius of C.'
himself avail? What can his praise, what can his
blame avail me, when I know that if I fall or if
I rise, there still awaits me the inevitable joke?
The day's Englishman must have his joke, as
duly as his bread. God grant me the noble com-
panions whom I have left at home who value
merriment less, and virtues and powers more. If
the English people have owed to their House of
Commons this damnable derision, I think they
have paid an over-price for their liberties and
empire. But when I balance the attractions of
good and evil, when I consider what facilities,
what talents a little vice would furnish, then rise
before me not these laughers, but the dear and
comely forms of honour and genius and piety in
my distant home, and they touch me with chaste
i Carlyle or Clough?


460
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
palms moist and cold, and say to me, You are
ours.
“Remember to be sober and to be disposed
to believe, for these are the nerves of wisdom.”
And Mahomet's retribution of the jokers.'
One of the principal discoveries, or, say con-
firmations, obtained in Europe, was that bigger
incomes do not help anybody.
The scholar was glad to leave his manuscript
and go to the window.
[The above sentence, unexplained, in one of
the journals of these weeks, may be well ac-
counted for in a letter written by Mr. Emerson
to his wife, May 17, from which it seems best
to introduce here the following extract:-]
“On Monday (day before yesterday), as you
will read in the papers, there was a revolution
defeated, which came within an ace of succeed-
ing. We were all assured for an hour or two
that the new government was proclaimed and
the old routed, and Paris, in terror, seemed to
acquiesce; but the National Guards, who are all
I “On the day of resurrection those who have indulged
in ridicule will be called to the door of Paradise and have it
shut in their faces when they reach it.”


arms
1848] PLOT OVERTHROWN 461
but the entire male population of Paris, at last
found somebody to rally and lead them, and
they swept away the conspirators in a moment.
Blanqui and Barbès, the two principal leaders,
I knew well,' as I had attended Blanqui's club
on the evenings of Saturday and Sunday, and
heard his instructions to his Montagnards, and
Barbès' club I had visited last week and I am
heartily glad of the shopkeepers' victory.
“I saw the sudden and immense display of
arms when the rappel was beaten on Monday
afternoon; the streets full of bayonets, and the
furious driving of the horses dragging can-
non towards the National Assembly; the rapid
succession of proclamations proceeding from the
Government and pasted on the walls at the
corners of the streets, eagerly read by crowds of
people; and, not waiting for this, the rapid pass-
age of messengers with proclamations in their
hands which they read to knots of people and
then ran on to another knot, and so on down a
street. The moon shone as the sun went down;
the river rolled under the crowded bridges along
the swarming quays; the tricolor waved on the
great mass of the Tuileries, which seemed too
noble a palace to doubt of the owner; but be-
1 Of course, only as having seen and heard them.


462
JOURNAL
(AGE 44
fore night all was safe, and our new govern-
ment, who had held the seats for a quarter of
an hour, were safe in jail.”.
Fête du 21 Mai. “ Ballon tricolore; 500 jolies
filles, les vivandières et les cantinières, et les petits
enfants de chaque sexe, vêtus en soldat ou avec des
rubans de fête, marchant dans le cortège”; drum-
majors, vast men with baton and huge caps of
fur; sapeurs and pompiers ; children on stilts;
merry-go-rounds —
[The following two sentences were evidently
written twenty years later, after Clough's death:]
Citizen Blanqui, a lame man with the face
and air of a conspirator, and Barbès (head of the
Club de la Révolution) were the leaders of the
'émeute on the 15 of May, I think, which I saw.
For details of May, 1848, in Paris, see Re-
mains of A. H. Clough, pp. 100-130.
The question of history is, what each gene-
ration has done with its surplus produce? One
bought crusades, one churches, one villas, one
horses, and one railroads.
ne
e
“Le règne des épées a passé, le jour où celle de
1 More of this letter may be found in Mr. Cabor's
Memoir (pp. 571-573).


1848) SOCIALIST AGITATION 463
Napoléon a été impuissante pour sa défense et pour
la nôtre!
“La force brutale des sabres, de la conquête,
est brisée : brisez celle des fusils populaires. Que
les fusils, comme les épées, s'abaissent aujourdhui
devant les idées. Faites vous général des idées du
siècle. . . . Ce qui reste aujourdhui des canons de
Bonaparte, c'est la mitraille d'idées qu'ils conte-
naient aussi. ... Ses codes étaient à la suite de ses
armées, comme les cotons suivent les armées de l' An-
gleterre.” — ASSEMBLÉE NATIONALE, May 23.
Paris. In Paris, 117 new newspapers have
been set on foot since the revolution.
This revolution distinguished from the old
by the social problem agitated in every club.
Arithmeticians get up and cipher very shrewdly
before the masses to show them what is each
man's share. The good God, they say, is full of
good sense, and the extreme inequality of prop-
erty had got so far as to drive to revolution,
and now it will not finish until God's justice is
established, nor until the laborer gets his wages,
nor until there is no idler left in the land. The
idler is a diseased person and is to be treated by
the state as a diseased person.
In coming to the city, and seeing in it no


464
JOURNAL [Age 44
men of information, you remain on the out-
side.
But all this Paris seems to me a continuation
of the theatre, when I come out of the theatre,
or of a limonade gazeuse, when I come out of the
restaurant. This is the famous lotus which the
mariners ate and forgot their homes. I pinch
myself to remember mine.
I went to hear Michelet lecture on philoso-
phy, but the sublime creed of the Indian Bud-
dhists was not meant for a Frenchman to ana-
lyze and crack his joke and make his grimace
upon. But I came out hither to see my con-
temporaries, and I have seen Leverrier to-day
working out algebraic formulas on his black-
board to his class, quite heedless of politics and
revolutions. I have seen Rachel in Phèdre and
heard her chant the Marseillaise. I have seen
Barbès rule in his Club de la Révolution, and
Blanqui in his Club des droits de lhomme, and
to-day they are both in the dungeon of Vin-
cennes.
Old Revolution said, Qu'est ce que le tiers
état? Rien. Que doit il être ? Tout. The New
Revolution reads, le producteur, for le tiers état.
ce
: The French have greatly more influence in


1848) WATER. THE VERDICT 465
Europe than the English. What influence the
English have is by brute force of wealth ; that
of the French, by affinity and talent.
An eminent difference between Paris and
London is the economy of water. In Paris, the
stranger is struck with the beautiful fountains
on the Place de la Concorde and gives Paris the
preference to London. But this water is not
drinkable, and the houses in Paris have no
wells or pumps and buy all their water by the
bucket from water-carriers who bring it from
certain springs. In London every house has
some kind of water-privilege ; as that in which
I lived received its water from Hertfordshire
by an aqueduct which entered at the top of
the house.
SO
The New Religion. You need only your own
verdict. . . . Or what if they tax you with gamb-
ling, or drinking, or riot, when you have all your
virtue, health, and serenity, safe about you un-
spent? Let them say it. For the good Laws
know whether it be so or not, and they cannot
be made false witnesses. Much of the time
every man must have himself to his friend.
Nothing seems to me so excellent as a belief


466
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
in the laws: it communicates dignity and an
asylum in temples thenceforward to the char-
acter.
The gods themselves could not help us.
Ah! if a man could explain his own facts, the
little system of laws and companions and as-
sessors or witnesses with which he walks sur-
rounded, from which he cannot escape, the
planet each of a choir of satellites. . . . Had I
not reason to say the secret of the present hour
is as hard to tell as that of the future hour?
Steep and craggy, said Porphyry, is the path
of the gods.
That unhappy man, called of genius, pays dear
for his paltry distinction. His head runs up into
a spire, and, instead of being a healthy, merry,
round and ruddy man, he is some mad domi-
nie. Nature is regardless of the individual....
The writers are bold and democratic. The
moment revolution comes, are they Chartists
and Montagnards? No, but they talk and sit
with the rich, and sympathize with them.
1 The remainder of the passage is in the first paragraph of
“ Culture” (Conduct of Life).


1848] USELESS DOGMAS 467
Should they go with the Chartist? Alas, they
cannot."
Mr. Doherty said, the dogmes were malfaisants.
It needed not to inquire whether men made
them or God made them. In either case they
had every right to take them away. In the nat-
ural world, they had tigers, snakes, wolves, and
other dogmes malfaisants, which they did not
hesitate to put away and kill; and so, in the
moral world, they had the like, which, like
these beasts, had answered their use for a time,
but were now out of time, unfit, noxious.
It is doubtful whether London, whether
Paris, can answer the questions which now rise
in the minds.
Life is cheap in this ant-hill of Paris. One
can see that multitudes sell their future for one
day. What prodigality to turn a little beautiful
French Edie’ into the procession to be con-
sumed in the sun and crowd.
1 The long passage with a similar beginning is printed in
“ Aristocracy” (Lectures and Biographical Sketches, pp. 63,
64). Mr. Emerson used it in his lecture on Aristocracy given
before his select London audience. At such a time this required
moral courage.
2 Some little girl figuring in the street parade of the revo-


468
JOURNAL (AGE 44
I have been exaggerating the English merits
all winter, and disparaging the French. Now I
am correcting my judgment of both, and the
French have risen very fast.
But I see that both nations promise more
than they perform. They do not culminate.
'Tis easy to see that France is much nearer
to socialism than England. In the gay and ad-
mirable illumination of the Champs-Elysées,
one could see that it was but a few steps to the
Phalanstery.
Do not mind trifles — was the lesson so
strenuously inculcated on my childhood. I did
not learn it, and now I see England has not.
I went to the Pantheon and learned that the
tomb of Napoleon was at the Invalides. Rous-
seau and Voltaire sleep under the Pantheon.
I have seen Rachel in Phèdre, in Mithridate,
and now last night in Lucréce (of Ponsard), in
which play she took two parts, that of Lucréce
and that of Tullia. The best part of her per-
formance is the terror and energy she can throw
into passages of defiance or denunciation. Her
manners and carriage are throughout pleasing
by their highly intellectual cast. And her expres-
lutionists, of the age of Mr. Emerson's younger daughter
Edith.


1848] RACHEL. LAMARTINE 469
sion of the character is not lost by your losing
some word or look, but is continuous and is
sure to be conveyed. She is extremely youth-
ful and innocent in her appearance, and when
she appeared after the curtain fell to acknow-
ledge the acclamations of the house and the
heaps of flowers that were flung to her, her
smile had a perfect good nature and a kind
of universal intelligence.
ature
At the Chamber of the National Assembly,
by the kindness of Mr. Rush, who lent me his
diplomatic ticket. Lamartine made his speech
on the question of Poland. He was quite the
best and indeed the only good speaker I heard
in the house. He has a fine head, and a free
and superior style of delivery, manly and cul-
tivated. But he was quite at his ease, no sword
or pikes over his head this time, and really little
energy in his discourse. He read many.extracts
from letters sent him from Italy, and when he
was tired, the members cried out, Reposez vous!
and the President gave an intermission for half
an hour.
The whole house of nine hundred members
obviously listened with great respect and gladly
to Lamartine, for they want information, and it


470
(AGE 44
JOURNAL
has been rather parsimoniously given by any
whom they could trust. His speech is reckoned
wise and moderate. To me it looks as if a wise
Frenchman should say to his country, Leave
Poland and China and Oregon to themselves.
You have more than enough to do, at present,
in constructing your own government and deal-
ing with disorder, hunger, and faction in France.
- But Lamartine praised the new republic be-
cause it had not a moment of Egoism, but had
adopted Poland and Italy.
We now dine daily at a table d'hôte at No.
16 Rue de Notre Dame des Victoires, where five
hundred French babitués usually dine at one
franc sixty centimes. Of course it is an excel-
lent place for French grammar. Nouns, verbs,
adverbs, and interjections furnished gratuitously.
I am told that there are twelve thousand stu-
dents connected with the University, including
all the faculties. 'Tis a noble hospitality, and
well calculated also, as it brings so great a pop-
ulation of foreigners to spend their money in
France.
Paris has great merits as a city. Its river is
1 Mr. Emerson and A. H. Clough.


MO
1848] THE NOBLE CITY 471
made the greatest pleasure to the eye by the
quays and bridges; its fountains are noble and
copious; its gardens or parks far more available
to the pleasure of the people than those of Lon-
don. What a convenience to the senses of men
is the Palais Royal; the swarming Boulevards,
what an animating promenade; the furnished
lodgings have a seductive independence; the
living is cheap and good; then what a luxury
is it to have a cheap wine for the national bev-
erage as uniformly supplied as beer in England.
The manners of the people, and probably their
inferiority as individuals, make it as easy to live
with them as with so many shopkeepers whose
feelings and convenience are nowise to be con-
sulted. Meantime they are very civil and good-
tempered, polite and joyous, and will talk in
knots and multitudes in the streets all day for
the entertainment of the passenger. Then they
open their treasures of art and science so freely
to the mere passport of the traveller and to all
the world on Sunday. The University, the
Louvre, the Hôtel de Cluny, the Institute, the
Gallery of the Luxembourg, Versailles. Then
the churches are always open: Notre Dame ; La
Sainte Chapelle, built by St. Louis and gorgeous
within ; Saint Sulpice; the Madeleine.


472
(Age 45
JOURNAL
Then there is the Pantheon ; and there is the
Jardin des Plantes, worthy of admiration. Every-
thing odd and rare and rich can be bought in
Paris ; and by no means the least attractive of
its shows is the immense book-stalls in the
streets, - maps, pictures, models, busts, sculp-
tures, and libraries of old books spread abroad
on tables or shelves at the side of the road.
The manners of the people are full of entertain-
ment, so spirited, chatty, and coquettish, as lively
as monkeys. And now the whole nation is
bearded and in military uniform. I have no
doubt also that extremes of vice are found here,
and that there is a liberty and means of animal
indulgence hardly known by name, or even by
rumor, in other towns. But any extremes are
here also exceptional, and are visited here by the
fatal Nemesis who climbs all walls, dives into
all cellars; but also the social decorum seems to
have here the same rigors as in England, with a
little variety in the application.
A special advantage which Paris has is in the
freedom from aristocratic pride manifest in the
tone of society. It is quite easy for any young
man of liberal tastes to enter on a good foot-
ing the best houses. It is not easy in England.
Then the customs are cheap and inexpensive;
A


1848) PARIS AS A REFUGE 473
whilst it is a proverb, almost, that, to live in
England at all, you must have a great fortune;
which sounds to me as certain a prediction of
revolution as musket-shots in the streets.
So that on the whole I am thankful for Paris,
as I am for the discovery of ether and chloro-
form ; I like to know that, if I should need an
amputation, there is this balm ; and if hard
should come to hard, and I should be driven
to seek some refuge of solitude and independ-
ency, why, here is Paris.
The cafés are not to be forgotten, filled with
newspapers, blazing with light, sauntering places,
oubliettes or remember-nothings. One in Paris
who would keep himself up with events must
read every day about twelve newspapers of the
two hundred that are printed there. Then in
the street the affiches on every spot of dead wall
attract all eyes and make the text of all talk
for the gazing group. The Government reserve
to their own the exclusive use of white paper.
All others are in colours.
After twenty-five days spent in Paris, I took
the railroad for Boulogne, stopped at Amiens
half an hour and saw the cathedral, which has
nothing equal to it in Paris in the elaboration


474
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
of the details of its moulding and sculpture on
the exterior; saw the weeping angel also. At
Boulogne (where six thousand English reside
for cheapness) I took the night steamboat for
Folkestone.
The twenty - seven miles of roughest sea
between Boulogne and Folkestone made a pite-
ous scene, of course, in the saloon of the boat,
but as that wild strip of sea is from age to age
the cheap standing army of England and worth
a million of troops, no Englishman should
grudge his qualms.
OUIS
[After this short sojourn in France, Mr.
Emerson's lecturing engagements in London
called him back to England. At the Portman
Square Literary and Scientific Institution he
gave, between the 5th and 17th of June, six
lectures, as follows: I, “Powers and Laws
of Thought”; II, “Relation of Intellect to
Natural Science”;III,“ Tendencies and Duties
of Men of Thought” (these were newly written
or put together from his notes, for he had
found, much to his annoyance, that his lectures
given in the manufacturing towns had been so
fully reported in London papers that he was
unwilling to read them there); IV,“ Politics


1848) THE LONDON LECTURES 475
and Socialism”; V, “Poetry and Eloquence”;
VI, “Natural Aristocracy” (this also was writ-
ten in England and first delivered in Edin-
burgh). The price that his friends had arranged
for this course was high, and the audience,
though including many persons of rank and of
literary distinction, was not large, though it
grew after the first lecture. Of it Mr. Emer-
son wrote, “ It is truly a dignified company in
which several notable men and women are
patiently found.” (For some account of the
company, see the letters in Cabot's Memoir,
vol. ii, pp. 546-549.) During the delivery of
this course a letter appeared in the London
Examiner urging a repetition of it at a price
sufficiently low to allow of poor literary men
hearing Emerson. The writer, on behalf of
“poets, critics, philosophers, historians, schol-
ars, and the other divine paupers of that class,”
urged this “ because Emerson is a phenomenon
whose like is not in the world, and to miss him
is to lose an important part out of the Nine-
teenth Century.” Mr. Emerson could not refuse
this plea of “all my public,” as he called them,
so postponed his departure and read in Exe-
ter Hall three lectures ; I, “Napoleon”; II,
“ Shakspeare”; III, “ Domestic Life."7


476
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
Long ago, in Boston, Mr. George Bancroft
invited me to his house and introduced me to
Lord Morpeth. In England, Lord Morpeth,
now changed to Lord Carlisle, invited me to
dine with him, and introduced me to his sister,
the Duchess of Sutherland.'
For a summary or verdict on the Universi-
ties, full of good sense, see Johnson's England
as it Is, vol. ii, p. 122.
June 8 (?).
I write “ Mind and Manners in the Nine-
teenth Century," ? and my rede is to make the
student independent of the century, to show
him that his class offer one immutable front in
all times and countries, cannot hear the drums
of Paris, cannot read the London journals;
they are the Wandering Jew or the Eternal
Angel that survives all, and stands on the same
i For Mr. Emerson's account of this distinguished and at-
tractive lady and his visit to Stafford House, “ the best house
in the kingdom, the Queen's not excepted,” see Mr. Cabot's
Memoir (pp. 548–551).
2 Possibly the third of the three lectures on Natural History
of Intellect in the course of six given in June in London,
though that is elsewhere mentioned as “ Tendencies and
Duties of Men of Thought.”


1848] DEMOCRATIC AMERICA 477
fraternal relation to all. The world is always
childish, and with each gewgaw of a revolution
or new constitution that it finds, thinks it shall
never cry any more: but it is always becoming
evident that the permanent good is for the soul
only, and cannot be retained in any society or
system. This is like naphtha which must be
kept in a close vessel.
SC
S
When I get into our first-class cars on the
Fitchburg Road, and see sweltering men in
their shirt - sleeves (?)' take their seats with
some well-dressed men and women, and see
really the very little difference of level that is
between them all, and then imagine the aston-
ishment that would strike the polished inmates
of English first-class carriages if such masters
should enter and sit beside them, I see that it
is not fit to tell Englishmen that America is
like England. No, this is the Paradise of the
third class; here everything is cheap; here
everything is for the poor. England is the Para-
dise of the first class; it is essentially aristo-
1 The question-mark is in the manuscript, Mr. Emerson
not feeling quite sure whether he remembered shirt-sleeves in
a first - class car at home, for at that time there were also
second-class cars with a reduced fare.


478
JOURNAL (AGE 45
cratic, and the humbler classes have made up
their minds to this, and do contentedly enter
into the system. In England every man you
meet is some man's son; in America, he may
be some man's father.
Miss Hennell said at Edward Street to Car-
lyle, “Do you think, if we should stand on our
heads, we should understand better?”,
It is true that there are no men in England
quite ideal, living in an ideal world, and working
on politics and social life only from that. Car-
lyle is mixed up with the politics of the day,
earth-son Antæus. Milton mixes with politics,
but from the ideal side.
“Is not this of mine a tolerable gallery?”
said Philip Hone. “Yes," said Leslie,“ but who
would think of valuing a tolerable egg?”
Works on art are like the museums them-
selves, each of which has a few gems and the rest
is rubbish. I want a manual which has all the
works of the first style engraved and described ;
and then of the second style.
All the gems are fossil wine.
i At one of the philosophical lectures in the Portman Square
course.


1848) BRAIN WORK. TURNER 479
When Nature adds a little brain, she adds a
little difficulty, or provides work for the brain to
do. Were brains to be sinecures? A weevil, a
mite, is born in the plum or the bark on which
he is to feed; but she has not thought it neces-
sary, when a man is born, to insert him in a
mountain of bread and cheese.
June 25.
Dined at Mr. Field's at Hampstead with
Rowland Hill,” Mr. Sharpe, and Stanfield, the
painter.
June 26.
[Breakfasted) at Mr. Stanfield's, who showed
me some of Turner's pictures and his own. Each
of Turner's cost one hundred guineas.
I went with Edwin Field and Mr. Stanfield
and his son to the house of Mr. Windus, Totten-
ham, to see his collection of Turner's pictures *
and drawings of which altogether he may have
a hundred. This gallery was that in which Rus-
kin had studied. It is quite necessary to see all
these pictures to appreciate the genius of Turner
through his extravagances.
1 Mr. Hill, originator of penny postage, and Mr. Sharpe,
an Egyptologist.
2 In another account of this visit Mr. Emerson adds here,
“ which justify Ruskin's praise."
rner


480
JOURNAL [AGE 45
June 27.
Mr. Owen invited Hillard' and myself to in-
spect the Hunterian (John Hunter) Museum,
of which he is the Curator. Afterwards, he would
carry us to Turner, the artist, who is his friend.
We met accordingly at his chambers and he
showed us over the Museum, communicating a
great deal of valuable information, of which I
deeply regret that I omitted to make immediate
record. He gave a sad history of the misuse and
voluntary destruction of Hunter's manuscripts
by Sir Everard Home, who had built his own
scientific reputation on the private use he had
made of these manuscripts, and then destroyed
them to hide his debt. He was displaced, and
Owen himself appointed to the care of the Mu-
seum, and he does not like to sleep one night
away from it. One of these days when the Mu-
seum shall be confided to other and sufficient
hands, he said, he shall feel at liberty to come
to America, and read lectures to the Lowell In-
stitute of Boston, as Mr. Lowell has pressed him
to do. He thought Faraday would also come to
Boston. Owen seemed to me an Englishman
1 Probably Mr. George S. Hillard, of Boston, at one time
editor of the Courier, author of Six Months in Italy, and
other works.


1848) STORY OF TURNER 481
who had made a prodigious stride in scientific
liberalism for an Englishman, and indemnified
himself in the good opinion of his countrymen
by fixing a certain fierce limitation to his prog-
ress, and abusing without mercy all such as ven-
tured a little farther; these poor transmutation-
ists, for example.
He carried us to Turner's studio, but Turner,
though he had written him a note to announce
his visit, was gone. So he showed us the pic-
tures. In his earlier pictures, he said, Turner
painted conventionally, painted what he knew
was there, finished the coat and buttons; in the
later, he paints only what the eye really sees
and gives the genius of the city or landscape.
He was engaged to paint a whaleship [Query,
“ The Slave Ship”? E. W. E.], and he came
one day to see Mr. Owen and asked to see a
mullet (?) (Agassiz said, a Clio), and begged
him to explain to him, from the beginning, the
natural history of the creature; which he did;
and Turner followed him with great accuracy.
In process of time the picture was painted, and
Owen went there to see his mullet; “I could
not find it,” he said, “in the picture, but I
doubt not it is all there.” He told us that, one
day, being present at the annual dinner of the
annu


482
JOURNAL (AGE 45
Royal Academy, which takes place in the Gal-
lery itself, as the shades of evening darkened
around, all the pictures became opake, — all
but Turner's, and these still glittered like gems,
as if having light in themselves. I was much
struck with the elevated manner in which Mr.
Owen spoke of the few men of science he
named; of Agassiz and others, he said, “Each
had a manner, and a certain strength, and his
own foible too,” and he thought he could well
discern that in all they did, and I think he
added, “I can see the same in myself, too."
Turner's face, I was told, resembles much
the heads of Punch.
[Elsewhere in the Journal Mr. Emerson gives
this anecdote:-] Turner told Stanfield he will
not suffer any portrait to be taken of him, for
nobody would ever believe that such an ugly
fellow made such beautiful things."
It was Miss — of New Haven, who on
reading Ruskin's book, said “Nature was Mrs.
Turner.”
By the kind offices of Mr. Milnes, Mr. Mil-
i The editors are informed that Ruskin had in his house at
Brantwood a beautiful portrait of Turner painted by himself,
and inscribed by him, “ quarto lustro ætatis suæ," i. e. in the
fourth lustrum of the artist's life.


1848]
MILNES
483
man, Lord Morpeth, and I know not what
other gentlemen, I found myself elected into
the “Athenæum” Club,“ during my temporary
residence in England”; a privilege one must
prize, not because only ten foreigners are eligi-
ble, at any one time, but because it gives all
the rights of a member in the library and read-
ing - room, a home to sit in, and see the best
company, and a coffee - room, if you like it,
where you eat at cost. Milnes, Milman, Crabbe
Robinson, and many good men are always to
be found there. Milnes is the most good-nat
ured man in England, made of sugar; he is
everywhere, and knows everything; has the
largest range of acquaintances, from the Chart-
ist to the Lord Chancellor; fat, easy, affable,
and obliging; a little careless and sloven in his
dress. His speeches in Parliament are always
unlucky, and a signal for emptying the House,
- a topic of great mirth to himself and all his
friends, who frankly twit him with it. He is so
entirely at home everywhere, and takes life so
quietly, that Sydney Smith called him“ the cool
of the evening,” and I remember I was told
some anecdotes of exploits of well-bred effront-
ery. They address him now as Citoyen Milnes,
since Punch's, that is, Thackeray's late list of
som


484
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
Seme
the ministry; but with pure feeling between
jest and earnest they speak of him as really
one who might play, one day, the part of La-
martine in England.
Carlyle, at the first meeting of the London
Library, proposed to sacrifice Milnes, as a sort
of acceptable Iphigenia. When he breakfasted
somewhere with the Archbishop of Canterbury,
his friend said, “Now, Milnes, I beg you not
to slap him on the back, and call him Canter-
bury, before breakfast is half over." His good
humor is infinite ; he makes bad speeches of ex-
quisite infelicity, and joins in the laugh against
himself. He is very liberal of his money, and
sincerely kind and useful to young people of
merit. Coventry Patmore told me that Milnes
had procured him spontaneously the place he
holds of sub-librarian in the British Museum;
and that he had known many good deeds of
his. Jane Carlyle testified to his generosity —
rare, she said, among people of fashion — with
his money.
For my part, I found him uniformly kind
and useful to me both in London and in Paris.
He procured me cards to Lady Palmerston's
soirée, introduced me there, and took pains to
show me all the remarkable persons there, the


1848]
SOIRÉES
485
Crown Prince of Prussia; the Prince of Syra-
cuse ; Rothschild, a round, young, comfortable-
looking man; Mr. Hope, reputed the richest
commoner in England; the Turkish Ambassa-
dor; Lord Lincoln, head of the “ Young Eng-
land” party; and princely foreigners, whose
names I have forgotten.
Milnes took pains to make me acquainted
with Chevalier Bunsen and Lady Bunsen,
whom I had already met at Mr. Bancroft's;
with young Mr. Cowper, son of Lady Palmer-
ston; with Disraeli; and with Macaulay, whom
I here met for the second time. I had a few
words with both Lord and Lady Palmerston.
He is frank (at least, in manner; — Bancroft
says, far from frank in business), affable, of a
strong but cheerful and ringing speech.
But I soon had enough of this fine spectacle
and escaped. Milnes sent me again another
card from Lady Palmerston, but I did not go.
Milnes again befriended me at Sir William
Molesworth's, where Bancroft carried me, one
night, and made me acquainted with Dr. Elliot-
son, and a very sensible young man, member of
Parliament, whose name I have lost. At Paris,
he carried me to De Tocqueville, and at last, at
my Exeter Hall lectures in London, he took


486
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
the chair, and made a closing speech full of
praises, perfectly well meant, if not felicitous.
He is one of the most valuable companions in
London, too, for the multitude of anecdotes he
tells about good people, and at Paris I found
him equally acquainted with every body and a
privileged man, with his pockets full of free
cards, which admitted him everywhere.
Milnes said, in my presence, that he desired
nothing so much as to make a good speech in
Parliament. The distinguished Mrs. Norton
(to whom I was carried one day by Carlyle) said
that“Milnes and Disraeli were the two remark-
able political failures which she had known.”
Viscount Melbourne's letter in reply to Lord
Brougham's sheets of objections, — “Dear B.
I am sorry you don't like my appointment of
N. Pray expedite the matter through all the
forms as fast as possible. Yours, M.”
Topics of conversation in England are Irish
affairs ; universal suffrage; pauperism ; public
education; right and duty of government to in-
terfere with increase of population; taxes.
Paris and London have this difference, that
Paris exists for the foreigner, serves him; —


1848] THE FRENCH. SOCIALISM 487
whilst in London is the Londoner, who is much
in the foreigner's way. England has built Lon-
don for its own use. France has built Paris for
the world.
The French have this wonderful street cour-
age. The least dislike, the smallest unpopular-
ity, is intolerable to them. But they will take
your fire with indifference. And is this a world
to ride virtues in? There must, then, be revolu-
tions to bring them out.
In Blanqui's Club des droits de l'homme, an
orator in blouse said, “Why should the rich
fear that we shall not protect their property?
We shall guard it with the utmost care, in the
belief that it will soon be our own.”
People eat the same dinner at every house in
England. 1, soup; 2, fish; 3, beef, mutton, or
hare; 4, birds; 5, pudding and pastry and jel-
lies; 6, cheese ; 7, grapes, nuts, and wine. Dur-
ing dinner, hock and champagne are offered you
by the servant, and sherry stands at the corners
of the table. Healths are not much drunk in
fashionable houses. After the cloth is removed,
three bottles, namely, port, sherry, and claret,
invariably circulate. What rivers of wine are


488
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
drunk in all England daily ! One would say,
every guest drinks six glasses.
The English youth has a narrow road to
travel. Besides his horse and gun, all he knows
is the door to the House of Commons.
OWS
Landseer the only genius of the Academy
exhibition. Leslie very sensible and pleasing.
There are many English portraits, the true na-
tional type. The 'Hôs of Gibson, like the ad-
mirably finished pictures of Scheffer, show want
of all object with great powers of execution, so
that we get noble vases empty.
I bring home from England — 1, the Heim-
skringla, or Sea Kings of Norway, translated by
Laing ; 2, Wood's Athena Oxonienses; 3, Bede;
4, The Meghaduta ; 5, Lowth's Life of William
of Wykeham; 6, Wordsworth's Scenery of the
Lakes; 7, Jacobson's Translation of Æschylus;
8, John Carlyle's Translation of Dante; 9, John
Mill's Political Economy.
I thought how great men build substructures,
and, like Cologne Cathedral, these are never
finished. Lord Bacon begins, Behmen begins,


1848)
PERSONS SEEN
489
Goethe, Fourier, they all begin; we, credulous,
believe, of course, they can finish as they be-
gun. If you press them, they fly to a new topic,
and here again open a magnificent promise which
serves the turn of interesting you, and silencing
your reproaches.
I stayed in London till I had become ac-
quainted with all the styles of face in the street,
and till I had found the suburbs and then strag-
gling houses on each end of the city. Then I took
a cab, left my farewell cards, and came home.
I saw Alison, Thackeray, Cobden, Tennyson,
Bailey, Marston, Macaulay, Hallam, Disraeli,
Milnes, Wilson, Jeffrey, Wordsworth, Carlyle,
Dickens, Lockhart, Procter, Montgomery, Coll-
yer, Kenyon, Stephenson, Buckland, Sedgwick,
Lyell, Edward Forbes, Richard Owen, Robert
Owen, Cryikshank, Jenny Lind, Grisi, William
Allingham, David Scott, William B. Scott, King-
lake, De Tocqueville, Lamartine, Leverrier,
Rachel, Barbès, Eastlake, Spence, Wilkinson,
Duke of Wellington, Brougham, Joanna Baillie,
De Quincey, Sir C. Fellows, Sir Henry De la
Bèche, John Forster.
[Just before his final departure from Lon-
don, Mr. Emerson visited Cambridge, and the


490
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
next day went with Carlyle to Salisbury, and
thence by carriage to Amesbury on July 7,
whence they walked to Stonehenge. Next day
they visited the sacred circle again with the local
antiquary, then saw Wilton House, and passed
Sunday with Arthur Helps at Bishop's Wal-
tham. Monday they spent at Winchester. Of
this excursion Mr. Emerson gives a full ac-
count in English Traits.]
At Stonehenge, it was impossible to forget
Turner's pictures. In the English landscape
the combed fields have the softest look, and
seemed touched with a pencil and not with a
plough.
July 12.
With Mr. Kenyon and Hillard, I joined the
Jays in a visit to Stoke Poges, where is Gray's
churchyard; then to Eton, where we found six
or seven hundred boys, the flower of English
youth, some of them at cricket, on the green;
others strolling in groups and pairs ; some row-
ing in the river; and recalled Lamb's remark,
“What a pity that these fine boys should be
changed into frivolous members of Parliament!”
Kenyon recalled verses of his own, of which
I only remember, —


1848) ETON AND WINDSOR 491
“O give us back our lusty youth!”
and the whole place remembered Gray. Kenyon
asked if ever a dirty request was couched in
more beautiful verse than in the hints touch-
ing livings and preferments, addressed to the
Duke of Grafton, in the Cambridge Installa-
tion Ode.
“ Thy liberal heart, thy judging eye,
The flower unheeded shall descry,
And bid it round heaven's altars shed
The fragrance of its blushing head;
Shall raise from earth the latent gem
To glitter on the diadem.”
After seeing the chapel, we went to Windsor,
where the tickets of the Jays procured admit-
tance for the whole party to the private apart-
ments of Her Majesty. We traversed the long
corridors which form the gallery of sculpture
and paintings, then the chambers, dining-room,
and reception rooms of this palace. The 'green
expanse of trim counties which these windows
command, beginning with a mile of garden in
front, is excellent. Then to the Royal Mews,
where a hundred horses are kept; listened rev-
erentially to all that the grooms told us of the
favorite horses; looked at the carriages, etc.
с


492
JOURNAL
[Age 45
If hard came to hard, the camel has a good
deal of hump left to spend from.
In St. George's Chapel, Mr. Kenyon pointed
out the true character of stained-glass windows,
which is not in large figures or good drawings,
but in gem-like splendor and condensation. In
like manner he quoted Lady Morgan's notion
on carpets, that they should be spread, not
nailed; and there should not be great elaborate
figures, but such a disposition of forms and colors
that they should seem like jewels trodden in.
From Windsor we went to Virginia Water,
the toy lake and toy fishing-house of George
IV. (But the expense squandered on these
grounds does not save them from the ridicule
of a tawdry counterfeit, and the spectator
grudges his time. Here is a made waterfall; or
a made ruin, the “Persepolis of the woods,”
constructed of stones brought from the ruins
of Carthage.) Two red flags hanging from the
little frigates afloat were quite too important
in the raree-show. We suspected the two or
three people in the boat were hired to sit there
by the day; and the eye mistrusted the houses
might be pasteboard and the rocks barley candy.
[Mr. Emerson sailed from Liverpool July 15.]


1848] HOMEWARD VOYAGE 493
At Sea, July 19 (?).
The road from Liverpool to New York is
long, crooked, rough, rainy, and windy. Even
good company will hardly make it agreeable.
Four meals a day is the usual expedient, four
and five (and the extreme remedy shows the
exasperation of the case), and much wine and
porter are the amusements of wise men in this
sad place. Never was a well-appointed dinner
with all scientific belongings so philosophic a
thing as at sea. Even the restless American finds
himself, at last, at leisure. The letter - bag is
Captain Hoxie's best passenger. It neither eats
nor drinks, and yet pays in Liverpool a passen-
ger's fare. Captain H. tells me that he usually
carries between four and five thousand letters
each way. At the New York Post-Office, they
count his letters and pay him two cents for every
one; at Liverpool, twopence. He received in
Liverpool £39 the last time.
I was accustomed to characterize Alcott, in
England, by saying that he was the one man I
had met who could read Plato without surprise
Questions :
What is the Latin Grace at Oxford ?


494
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
Benedictus, benedicat; benedicitur, benedicatur.'
Is Carlyle a voter? Was Coleridge?
The Six Points of Chartism? 1, Universal
suffrage; 2, vote by ballot; 3, paid legislation ;
4, annual Parliament; 5, equality of electoral dis-
tricts ; 6, no property qualification.
At Sea, July 23.
Dragged day and night continually through
the water by this steam engine, at the rate of
near twelve knots, or fourteen statute miles, the
hour; in the nearing America my inviting port,
England loses its recent overweight, America
resumes its commanding claims.
One long disgustis the sea. No personal bribe
would hire one who loves the present moment.
Who am I to be treated in this ignominious
manner, tipped up, shoved against the side of
the house, rolled over, suffocated with bilge me-
phitis and stewing-oil? These lack-lustre days
go whistling over us and are those intercalaries
I have often asked for, and am cursed now with,
- the worthless granting of my prayer.
1 The editors are informed that a usual form of asking the
blessing before a meal is, Benedictus benedicat ; May the
Blessed (Lord) bless (our food): and of grace afterwards,
Benedictus bene dicatur ; (For this) may the Blessed (Lord)
be blessed.
resun


1848) THE NEW STEAMSHIPS 495
Thomas G. Appleton' makes now his four-
teenth passage. “Shakspeare will do,” he said.
The English habit of betting makes them
much more accurate than we are in their know-
ledge of particulars. — “Which is the longest
river, the Mississippi or the Missouri?” — They
are about the same length. — “About! that
won't do, - I've a bet upon it.” Captain Lott
says that 't is difficult to know in America the
precise speed of a boat because the distances are
not settled between the cities, and we overrate
them. In England, the distance from Boston to
New York would be measured to half a foot.
He says that the boat is yet to be built that will
go through the water nineteen miles per hour.
In the cabin conversations about England and
America, Tom Appleton amused us all by trac-
ing all English performance home to the dear
Puritans, and affirming that the Pope also was
once in South America, and there met a Yankee,
who gave him notions on politics and religion.
M. Lehmann, in Paris, who made a crayon
sketch of my head for Madame d'Agout, re-
marked that in American heads was an approach
i Thomas Gold Appleton, the genial Boston wit.


496
[AGE 45
JOURNAL
to the Indian type; and in England, or perhaps
from David Scott at Edinburgh, I heard a sim-
ilar observation.
Gilpin's “ Forest Scenery” is a good exam-
ple of the sincerity of English culture.
(From LM)
August.
Dr. Kraitsir and all Harro Harrings, Maz-
zinis, Rufinis, Major Tochmans, and Chopins,
should be made to translate, spell, construe,
, and render into all languages, the old
lines,—
“ How small, of all that human hearts endure,
The part that laws or kings can cause or cure."
Preach not. “Prends garde à l’emphase, qui
n'est que le langage de la vanité satisfaite," says
Cardonnet, in George Sand.
Dear Doctor, is there any resurrection? What
do you think?:...
The gods deal very strictly with us, make
out quarter - bills, and exact specie payment,
i This passage in substance is found in “ Immortality"
(Letters and Social Aims, pp. 346, 347).


no
0
1848] RULES OF THE GODS 497
allow no partnerships, no stock companies, no
arrangements, but hold us personally liable to
the last cent. Ah, say I, I cannot do this and
that, my cranberry field, my burned woodlot,
the rubbish lumber about the summer house,
my grass, my crop, my trees; — can I not have
some partner; can't we organize our new So-
ciety of poets and lovers, and have somebody
with talent for business to look after these
things, some deacons of trees and grass and
cranberries, and leave me to letters and philoso-
phy?
But the nettled gods say, No, go to the
devil with your arrangements. You, you, you
personally, you alone, are to answer body and
soul for your things. Leases and covenants are
to be punctually signed and sealed. Arithmetic
and the practical study of cause and effect in the
laws of Indian corn and rye meal is as useful as
betting is in England to teach accuracy of state-
ment, or duelling in France or Ireland to make
men speak the truth.
a
It is a sort of proverb with us that an Eng-
lishman who comes into America must first be
ruined before he can rise.


498
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
It is a curious working of the English state
that Carlyle should in all his lifetime have never
had an opportunity to cast a vote.
Henry Thoreau is like the wood-god who
solicits the wandering poet and draws him into
antres vast and desarts idle, and bereaves him
of his memory, and leaves him naked, plaiting
vines and with twigs in his hand. ...
I spoke of friendship, but my friends and I
are fishes in our habit. As for taking Tho-
reau's arm, I should as soon take the arm of an
elm tree.
I observe among the best women the same put-
ting of life into their deed that we admire in
the Seton (was it?) who put her arm into the
bolt-staples to defend Queen Mary,' or in the
women in the old sieges who cut off their hair
to make ropes and ladders for the men.
Ellery Channing remarks in Alcott the ob-
struction of his egoism. Cultivated men always
1 The heroic deed remained in Mr. Emerson's mind, yet
it was not done by Mary Seton to save her Queen, but by
Katherine Douglas on the night when James I of Scotland
was murdered.


1848] THOREAU AND ALCOTT 499
must be had; everybody sends for them as for
peaches. But what to do with this man, when
you have first to kick away the man in order to
get at what he knows.
That each should in his house abide
Therefore was the world so wide ;
that every man might live in his own house,
and not in a hotel, O Fourier !
Henry Thoreau, working with Alcott on the
summer house, said, he was nowhere, doing
nothing.'
Alcott declares that a teacher is one who can
assist the child in obeying his own mind, and
who can remove all unfavorable circumstances.
He believes that from a circle of twenty well-
selected children he could draw in their conver-
sation everything that is in Plato, and as much
better in form than it is in Plato, as the pas-
sages I read him from the Heimskringla are than
Bancroft.
1 A very amusing account by Thoreau of his conversation
with Mr. Alcott while working as his assistant on the sum-
mer-house is given in his letter to Mr. Emerson. (See Famil-
iar Letters of Thoreau, edited by Mr. F. B. Sanborn. )


500
[AGE 45
JOURNAL
He measures ages by teachers, and reckons
history by Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus, and Pes-
talozzi. In his own school in Boston, when he
had made the schoolroom beautiful, he looked
on the work as half-done.
He said that every great man of antiquity
had an eminent philosopher as his teacher. And
this is true for Pericles, Alexander, Alcibiades.
The soul is older than the body.
We are very careful of young pear trees and
defend them from their enemies, from fire,
blight, suckers, grass, slugs, pear - worm, but
we let our young men, in whose youth and
flower all inferior kinds have their flowering and
completion, grow up in heaps and by chance,
take the rough and tumble, as we say (which is
the skepticism of Education), exposed to their
borers, caterpillars, canker-worms, bugs, mop-
ing, sloth, seduction, wine, fear, hatred.
W
Lucrezia Floriani of George Sand is a great
step from the novels of one termination.' ...
Elizabeth Hoar complains of this romance that
tendency is not life. I say, there are always
two things to be done by the novelist; first,
1 The omitted passage, thus beginning, is printed in
“ Books ” (Society and Solitude, p. 214).


1848) GEORGE SAND. FRUIT 501
the aspirations of the mind are to be revered,
that is, Faith; and, secondly, the way things
actually fall out, that is, Fate. Fate and Faith,
these two; and it seems as if justice were done,
if the Faith is vindicated in the sentiments of
the heroes of the tale, and Fate in the course
and issue of the events. George Sand is quite
conversant with all the ideas which occupy us
here in America.
Why did not the last generation of farmers
plant the pears and plums and apples and grapes
of whose growth time is the chief element and
not leave it all to be done by us? Ask in the
market: a good pear will sell for a shilling. ...
There are great and all but insuperable difficul-
ties in raising these fine fruits in this climate;
borer, mouse, curculio, and bug and caterpillar
have settled a democratic majority against these
whig fruits, and they have become a party of
despair and only maintain a local existence in
some few protected Bostons and Vermonts.
That reply of the shilling is a quite impersonal,
parliamentary reply ; it is a voice of things, of
fates, of the general order of the world.
It is as a practical answer, however, subject to i
this question. Was it not a reply for the last gen !


502
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
eration, and are there no new elements now
which will make a new reply? A broad, slattern
farming, it has been said, was the true policy of
our New England men, and not the trim garden
farming of the English. Neither were there many
buyers of fruit. Now there are more people, the
land is more easily manured and rich fruits can
be raised, fed, protected, and ripened. Now there
are fences, also.
To me one good pear tree bearing Bartletts
is a verdict. Why should not my trees know the
way towards the sky as well as yours?
When I go into a good garden and nursery,
I think if it were mine, I should never go out
of it.
I observe that all the bookish men have a
tendency to believe that they are unpopular.
Parker gravely informs me by word and by letter
that he is precisely the most unpopular of all
men in New England. Alcott believes the same
thing of himself, and I, no doubt, if they had
not anticipated me in claiming this distinction,
should have claimed it for myself.
The old writers, such as Montaigne, Milton,
Browne, when they had put down their thoughts,


1848) DISRAELI. CHARACTER 503
jumped into their book bodily themselves, so
that we have all that is left of them in our shelves;
there is not a pinch of dust beside. The Norse-
men wrote with a crowbar, and we with Gillott
pens.
September 10.
Disraeli, the chiffonier, wastes all his talentin
the House of Commons, for the want of charac-
ter. He makes a smart cutting speech, really in-
troduces new and important distinctions, as what
he says in this new speech concerning “ the sen-
timental principle of nationality,” which the Gov-
ernment have adopted; and what he says of
“using forced occasions and invented opportuni-
ties," instead of availing of events. But he makes
at last no impression, because the hearer asks,
Who are you? What is dear to you? What do
you stand for? And the speech and the speaker
are silent, and silence is confession. A man who
has been a man has foreground and background.
His speech, be it never so good, is subordinate
and the least part of him, and as this man has
no planet under him, but only his shoes, the
hearer infers that the ground of the present
argument may be no wider.
George Sand is a great genius, and yet owes


504
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
to her birth in France her entire freedom from
the cant and snuffle of our dead Christianity.
W we
ne
nore
The Railroads is the only sure topic for con-
versation in these days. That is the only one
which interests farmers, merchants, boys, women,
saints, philosophers, and fools.
And now we have one more rival topic, Cali-
fornia gold.
The Railroad is that work of art which
agitates and drives mad the whole people; as
music, sculpture, and picture have done on their
great days respectively.
September.
James Baker does not imagine that he is a
rich man, yet he keeps from year to year that
lordly park of his by Fairhaven Pond," lying
idly open to all comers, without crop or rent,
like some Duke of Sutherland or Lord Bread-
albane, with its hedges of Arcady, its sumptuous
lawns and slopes, the apple on its trees, the
I « Fairhaven Bay,” as it is usually called, is a widening
of the South Branch of the Concord River, partly in Lin-
coln, partly in Concord. “ Baker Farm,” here alluded to,
to which Mr. Channing wrote a pleasing poem, is now the
property of Charles Francis Adams. To the old Holloway
farm opposite, because long owned by the Conant family, the
name “Conantum" was given, probably by Mr. Thoreau.


1848] BAKER FARM. INTELLECT 505
mirror at its foot, and the terraces of Holloway
Farm on the opposite bank.
As we walked thither, Ellery proposed that
we should have a Water - color Exhibition in
Boston. I say, Yes, but I should like better to
have water-color tried in the art of writing. Let
our troubadours have one of these Spanish
slopes of the dry ponds or basins which run
from Walden to the river at Fairhaven, in this
September dress of color, under this glowering
sky, — the Walden Sierras in September, given
as a theme, and they required to daguerreotype
that in good words.
A Mr. Randall, M.C., who appeared before
the Committee of House of Commons on the
subject of the American mode of closing a de-
bate, said, that “the one-bour rule worked well,
made the debate short and graphic.” Nothing
worse can be said of a debate than that it is
graphic. The only place in which I know graphic
to be well used is Ben Jonson's “Minerva's
graphic tread.”
God is a reality and his method is illusion.
Who is to save the present moment? The In-
tellect is the head of the Understanding, but is
the feet of the Moral Power.


506
[ACE 45
JOURNAL
I know what I shall find if Alcott brings me
manuscripts. I shall have a Salisbury Plain full
of bases of pyramids, to each of which I am to
build an apex.
[Last days of September.]
I go twice a week over Concord with Ellery,
and, as we sit on the steep park at Conantum,
we still have the same regret as oft before. Is
all this beauty to perish? Shall none remake
this sun and wind, the sky-blue river, the river-
blue sky; the yellow meadow spotted with
sacks and sheets of cranberry-pickers; the red
bushes; the iron-gray house with just the color
of the granite rock; the paths of the thicket, in
which the only engineers are the cattle grazing
on yonder hill; the wide, straggling wild orchard
in which Nature has deposited every possible
flavor in the apples of different trees? Whole
zones and climates she has concentrated into
apples. We think of the old benefactors who
have conquered these fields; of the old man
Moore, who is just dying in these days, who
has absorbed such volumes of sunshine like a
huge melon or pumpkin in the sun,- who has
owned in every part of Concord a woodlot,
until he could not find the boundaries of these,
and never saw their interiors. But we say, where


1848)
OLD-TIME FARMERS
507
is he who is to save the present moment, and
cause that this beauty be not lost? Shakspeare
saw no better heaven or earth, but had the
power and need to sing, and seized the dull
ugly England, ugly to this, and made it amica-
ble and enviable to all reading men, and now
we are fooled into likening this to that; whilst,
if one of us had the chanting constitution, that
land would no more be heard of.
The journal of one of our walks would be
literature enough for a cockney, — or for us, if
we should be shut up in our houses, — and we
make no record of them. The cranberry mea-
dow yonder is that where Darius Hubbard
-picked one hundred bushels in one season,
worth two hundred dollars, and no labor what-
ever is bestowed on the crop, not so much as
to mow the grass or cut down the bushes. Much
more interesting is the woodlot, which yields its
gentle rent of six per cent without any care or
thought where the owner sleeps or travels, and
fears no enemy but fire. But Ellery declares
that the Railroad has proved too strong for all our
farmers and has corrupted them like a war, or
the incursion of another race; — has made them
all amateurs, given the young men an air their
fathers never had; they look as if they might


508
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
be railroad agents any day. We shall never see
Cyrus Hubbard, or Ephraim Wheeler, or Grass-
and-Oats, or Oats-and-Grass, or Barrett or Hos-
mer, in the next generation. These old Saxons
have the look of pine trees and apple trees, and
might be the sons got between the two; con-
scientious laborers with a science born with them
from out the sap vessels of these savage sires.
This savagery is natural to man, and polished
England cannot do without it. That makes the
charm of grouse-hunting and deer-stalking to
these Lord Breadalbanes walking out of their
doors one hundred miles on their property, or
Dukes of Sutherland getting off at last their
town coat and donning their hunting-gear, exas-
perated by saloons and dress-boots.
But let us have space enough, let us have
wild grapes and rock-maple with tubs of sugar,
let us have huge straggling orchards, let us have
the Ebba Hubbard Pear, hemlock, savin, spruce,
walnut, and oak, cider mills with tons of pomace,
peat, cows, horses, Paddies, carts, and sleds.
I had much discourse concerning the birth,
death, and fate of men. Ellery thought he should
make a prayer to the Chance that brought
him into the world ; I, that when the child had


509
1848) DETACHMENT.
escaped out of the womb, he cries, I thank the
bridge that brought me safe over. I would not
for ten worlds take the next man's chance.
Will they, one of these days, at Fourierville,
make boys and girls to order and pattern? I
want, Mr. Christmas Officer, a boy, between
No. 17 and No. 134, half and half of both; or
you might add a trace of 113. I want another
girl like the one I took yesterday, only you can
put in a leetle more of the devil.
Intellect detaches, yet the way men of talent
make fools of themselves is, by too much de-
tachment. A man knocks at my door and says,
“I am, now for six years, devoted to the sun.
I study the sun that I may thence deduce the
laws of the universe.” I say I will not dispute
against the sun, but beware of taking any one
thing out of its connections, for that way folly
lies.
A little too much in the French novel about
this superbe chevelure. The less said of that
meteor the better. It is of quite unspeakable
character, seat of illusion, and comes as near
to witchcraft and humbugging as anything in
Nature.


510
JOURNAL [AGE 45
October 1.
Yesterday, the last day of September, Ellery
and I went to Carlisle by the old road passing
Daniel Clark's house into the region of the lime-
kiln and the Estabrook farm, and a country
made up of vast orchards where the apple grows
with a profusion that mocks the pains taken by
careful cockneys who come into the country
and plant young trees and watch them dwindle.
Here no hedges were wanted; the wide distance
from any population is fence enough. Here were
varieties of apple not found in Downing, the
Tartaric, and the Cow - apple, as Ellery said.
The ground was strewn with them in red and
yellow heaps. They grew for their own plea-
sure; they almost lost price. Barberries flour-
ished at the roadside, and grapes along the walls.
The apples were of a kind which I remember
in boyhood, each containing a barrel of wine
and half a barrel of cider, — the Touch-me-if-
you-dare.
Books are like rainbows, to be thankfully
received in their first impression, and not ex-
amined and surveyed by theodolite and chain,
as if they were part of the railroad. Perhaps it
would be good in the tuition of an emperor


511
1848] BHAGAVAT GEETA
that he should never read the same book twice.
I owed — my friend and I owed — a magnifi-
cent day to the Bhagavat Geeta. — It was the
first of books; it was as if an empire spake to
us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene,
consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which
in another age and climate had pondered and thus
disposed of the same questions which exercise
us. Let us not now go back and apply a minute
criticism to it, but cherish the venerable oracle.
I still feel a little uneasiness about these nov-
els. Why should these sorceries have a monop-
oly of our delicious emotions? — The novel still,
weakly uses the cheap resource of property mar-
ried away instead of earned, and that is the chief
conjuring-stick it has; for the instincts of man
always attach to property, as he knows what ac-
cumulations of spiritual force go to the creation
of that, and sobs and heart-beats and sudden
self-sacrifice very easily result from the dealing
with it. But the novel will find the way to our
interiors, one day, and will not always be novel
of costume merely. These stories are to stories
of real life what the figures which represent the
fashions of the month on the front page of the
magazine are to portraits and inspired pictures.


512
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
Are you fond of drama? say the Gods. Said
you so my fine fellow? Verily? Speak the truth
a little, and truth on truth, to every man and
woman; try that a few hours, and you shall have
dramatic situations, assaults and batteries, and
heroic alternatives to your heart's content.
(From RS)
To Intellect, the Guardian.
“God's having tasted the sweet of Eternity
occasions him to demean himself enviously in
it,” says the old translator of Plutarch, quoting
Herodotus, Thalia.
“Enlarge not thou thy Destiny,” says the
Chaldaic oracle. And yet the exhilarations and
expansions of spirit which come to us, and the
entertainment in happy hours of dreams of a
superior life are needed to balance the weight
of earth.
“More are made good by exercitation than
by nature.” — DEMOCRITUS.
Oh, if a model person would remain a model
person for a day! but, no, his virtues only serve
to give a currency to his foolish acts and
speeches.
curi


'S
1848) POET AND POLITICS 513
It is plain that some men may be spared from
politics. The salvation of America and of the
human race depends on the next election, if we
believe the newspapers. But so it was last
year, and so it was the year before, and our fa-
thers believed the same thing forty years ago
And these elections depend on the general bias
and system of the people, — on their religion,
interest, appetite, and culture, — and not on the
particular information that is circulated in one
or another set of handbills. The whole action
of the scholar is mediate and to remote ends,
and voting is not for him. His poem is good
because it is not written to any person or mo-
ment, but to life generalized and perspectived.
He does not live by the same calendar as the
banker, but by the sidereal time of cause and
consequence.
All my knowledge of mathematics is the story
of Thales, who measured the Pyramid by its
shadow; and of Pythagoras,
.“When the famed lines Pythagoras devised
For which a hecatomb he sacrificed”;
and of the Decimal Notation, the invention of
zero, which seems to me one of the triumphs
of human wit; and of the Multiplication Table


514
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
which ranks with astronomy; and lastly, of the
Science of Fractions as taught by Warren Col-
burn, for which I even him with Stephenson and
Leverrier among our modern benefactors: and
I add the beautiful command of the Delphian
oracle to the Athenians that they should double
his altar.'
A child is better unborn than untaught! Cer-
tainly be is.
Great cities, enormous populations, are dis-
gusting, like the population of cheese, like hills
of ants, or swarms of fleas, — the more the worse.
But if they contain Merlins and Corneliuses,
Friar Bacons, and Crichtons, if road - makers,
mathematicians, astronomers, chemists; good
kings like Alfred; poets like Chaucer; inventors,
farmers, and sailors, who know the elements, and
can make them work; memories, imaginations,
combinings, perseverances, arts, music, architec-
ture, nations of Spartans, of Athenians, of Eng-
lish, aristocratic men, and not maggots ;- then
1 The story of doubling the Cube at Delos is in Plutarch's
Demon of Socrates; and in Valerius Maximus, vii, 13; and
in Webster's Orations, p. 443; and in Tennemann's Life of
Plato, p. 339 (note by Mr. Emerson).
2 The substance of the first sentence is found in “ The
Uses of Great Men” (Representative Men, p. 4).
can
cmc


1848] SUCCESS IS ADJUSTMENT 515
the more the merrier. Open the gates, let the
miracle of generation go on.
A successful man is a good hit, a lucky ad-
justment to the men about him, and their aims,
as Goodrich, as Weld, as Brown, Belknap, and
all that company are. In another age and tem-
per of the majority, each of these would be an
odd one, an imbecile. Well, what is a great man,
but the like felicity of adjustment on a higher
platform? And when society is advanced, the
ruder strengths will be no more organizable than
are now the first Saurians whose bones lie in the
coal-beds.
The world is a glass dictionary.
Behmen and Swedenborg and Fox and Lu-
ther do with the old, nearly effete Christianity
what good housewives do with their pies and
bread when they are a little old, - put them into
the oven, and check the fermentation which is
turning them sour and putrid.
A book very much wanted is a Beauties of
Swedenborg, or a judicious collection of sentences
and symbols and pictures from his diffuse and
wearisomely repetitious pages.
WO


516
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
N- came with his fine perceptions, his ex-
cellent instincts, his beautiful learning, his catho-
lic mind, but I grudged him the time I gave him.
He has become the spoiled child of culture; the
roué of Art and Letters ; blasé with too much
Plato, Dante, Calderon, and Goethe; tickled
with music; pampered by his narrow society;
amused by ballets; reading novels "like my
Bible”; and so jealous of partialism, so fearful
of losing the level of life, that he has not written
for three years, and now communicates nothing,
but lies like a bit of bibulous paper. ... Fare-
well, my once beautiful genius! I have learned
a sordid respect for uses and values: I must have
them. I must send him a peat-knife. Are we to
say, a man shall not go out to the shed to bring
an armful of wood, lest this violence of action hurt
the balance of his mind?
Cicero interprets Aristotle's ¿VTERÉ Xela, a con-
tinued and perpetual motion. (Tuscul. Quæst. 1.)
Entelecheia, form; the form which the soul gives
the body; perfection of the body; causative form.
All knowledge is assimilation to the object of
knowledge.
« Intellect is a god through a light which is
more ancient than intellectual light and intel-


1848] INACTION. INSPIRATION 517
lect itself.” — Proclus, Theology of Plato, vol.
i, p. 115.
“All conquests that history tells of will be
found to resolve themselves into the superior
mental powers of the conquerors.” – LAING,
vol. I, p. 14.
The powers that make a capitalist are me-
taphysical.
Writing selects only the eminent experiences;
Poetry, the supereminent.
Inaction disgusts : activity is contagious. The
inaction is treated with a bow like a rich man,
but it is a farewell bow. He who bows makes
his quittance so. That one he henceforth avoids,
and will never pay him again the highest com-
pliment of summoning him to help in manly
work.
Ver
i comme
Inspiration and Talent. “Je n'étais pas en peine
de votre succès ; je savais que les hommes comme
vous imposent tout ce qu'ils veulent, et, que, quand
l'inspiration leur échappe, la science y supplée.”
She proceeds, “Mais pour les poètes, pour ces
êtres incomplets et maladifs qui ne savent rien,
qui étudient bien peu de choses, mais qui pres-


518
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
sentent et divinent presque tout, il est difficile de les
tromper, et de l'autel où le feu sacré n'est pas
descendu, nulle chaleur n'émane." — Lettres d'un
Voyageur.
Detachment. I value men as they can complete
their creation. One man can hurl from him a
sentence which is spheral, and at once and for-
ever disengaged from the author. Another can
say excellent things, if the sayer and the cir-
cumstances are known and considered; but the
sentences need a running commentary, and are
not yet independent individuals that can go
alone.
Thales called the soul κινήτικον, apt to move.
If I wrote a novel, my hero should begin a
soldier and rise out of that to such degrees of
wisdom and virtue as we could paint; for that
is the order of Nature.
(From RS)
Nature uniformly does one thing at a time:
if she will have a perfect hand, she makes head
and feet pay for it. So now, as she is making
railroad and telegraph ages, she starves the
spirituel, to stuff the matériel and industriel.


1848] RESPECT THE WORKERS 519
Xpws onlóel, the skin showeth, said the rot-
ting Pherecydes.
Everything comes to the face also.
Who are you that speak of these men? Have
you a title to sit in judgment on industrious,
effective, producing men who have not indulged
themselves by sitting in a corner and year by
year surrounding themselves with new screens
from dust, and light, and noise, and vulgarity,
but have exposed themselves by labor in the
open air to your inspection and criticism? How
dare you mention their names to me? Once
these were your mates. Now you are a gentle-
man. Away with you! These are no gentlemen,
but servants, - earnest, muscular, toilsome, re-
liable servants, whom God and man must serve
and honor.
A bears wine better than B bears water.
Accommodation. Did you give Athens the best
laws?
Solon. No, but the best it would receive.
The Transfer. I am struck with joy whenever
genius makes the transfer from one part of Na-
ture to a remote part, and betrays the rhymes
and echoes that pole makes with pole.


520
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
On Kicking up our beels. We have a ridicu-
lous wisdom, like that which a man has of his
corns, or of his gouty foot, and has become by
experience cunning in setting it down so as not
to hurt him, so we of our limitations. We have
learned not to strut or talk of our wings, or
affect angelic moods, but to keep the known
ways, knowing that at the end of these fine struts
is the Lunatic Asylum.
The Spirit of Knowledge is serious, honest,
and trustworthy.
We say nothing against astronomy and vege-
tation, because we are roaring here in our bed
with rheumatism. We doubt not there are
bounding fawns, and lilies with graceful, spring-
ing stem ; so neither do we doubt or fail to love
the eternal law of which we are such shabby prac-
ticers. A cripple was our father and an Ethiop
was our mother, and we worship the Liberty
which we shall not see with our eyes, nor help
but with our prayer.
Our philosophy is to wait. We have retreated
on Patience, transferring our oft-shattered hope
now to larger and eternal good. We meant well,
but our uncle was crazy and must be restrained
from waking the house. The roof leaked, we
were out of wood, our sisters were unmarried


1848) WAIT FOR SIGHT
521
and must be maintained; there were taxes to
pay, and notes, and, alas, a tomb to build : we
were obliged continually to postpone our best
action, and that which was life to do could only
be smuggled in to odd moments of the month
and year. Then we say, Dear God, but the life
of man is not by man, it is consentaneous and
far-related, it came with the sun and Nature, it
is crescive and vegetative, and it is with it as with
the sun and the grass. I obey the beautiful
Necessity. The powers that I want will be sup-
plied as I am supplied, and the philosophy of
waiting is sustained by all the oracles of the
Universe.
God never made such a bungler as I am at
any practical work, therefore I keep clear of the
garden and the phalanstery.
Henry Thoreau sports the doctrines of ac-
tivity : but I say, What do we? We want a
sally into the regions of wisdom, and do we go
out and lay stone wall or dig a well or turnips?
No, we leave the children, sit down by a fire,
compose our bodies to corpses, shut our hands,
shut our eyes, that we may be entranced and
see truly. Sir David Brewster gives exact direc-
tions for microscopic observation. Thus; “Lie


522
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
down on your back and hold the single lens and
object over your eye,” etc.
Do you think ecstasy is ever communicable ?
The most powerful means are the cheapest,
fire, water, fresh air, the stroke of the hand, a
kind eye, a serene face, these are the drugs of
Æsculapius and Galen and these leave the whole
apothecary's shop to inferior and busier doctors.
“Peu de moyens, beaucoup d'effet."
“Wherein do philosophers excel other men?”
—“Though all laws were abolished, we should
lead the same lives,” answered Aristippus.
“For we should dare to affirm the truth es-
pecially when speaking concerning the truth.”
– Phædrus, Taylor, vol. iii.
Immortality. “Le besoin de spécifier, la persist-
ance tenace de tout ce qui est une fois arrivé à la
réalité, force centripete, à laquelle aucune condition
extérieure ne saurait rien changer : le genre Erica
en est la preuve.” — Goethe, apud MARTINS,
p. 334.
“Is individuality the preached immortality?”
That death takes us away from ill things, not
from good.


1848] IMMORTALITY. LEASTS '523
'Tis an intellectual quality. He has it who
gives life to all names, persons, things, so that
Greek mythology dies not for him, nor any art
is lost.
Raffaelle had no need of more originality than
to watch the clouds and the men.
Doctrine of Leasts.
The principle of all things, entrails made
Of smallest entrails; bone of smallest bone;
Blood of small sanguine drops reduced to one;
Gold of small grains; earth of small sands com-
pacted;
Small drops to water ; sparks to fire contracted.
Lucretius apud STANLEY.
Every director is also a bank.
Every poem must be made up of lines that
are poems.
Every hose in nature fits every hydrant;
every atom screws to every atom; so only is
crystallization, chemistry, vegetable, and animal,
possible.
Lectures: 1, The Superlative; 2, Reading;
3, Natural Aristocracy; 4, Natural History of
· Intellect, I; 5, Natural History of Intellect, II;


524
JOURNAL (AGE 45
6, Natural History of Intellect, III; 7, Spirit
of the Age.
England. Not to see a knife made, but to
see the country of success, I, who delighted in
success, departed.
I went out by invitation of some societies to
read lectures in Lancashire and Yorkshire; yet
I could not have contrived so ingenious a scheme
for seeing towns and cities, men and things with
thoroughness, as that I blundered into.
Alcott. Alcott is a certain fluid in which men
of a certain spirit can easily expand themselves
and swim at large, they who elsewhere found
themselves confined. He gives them nothing
but themselves. Of course, he seems to them
the only wise and great man. But when they
meet people of another sort, critics and prac-
tical, and are asked concerning Alcott's wisdom,
they have no books to open, no doctrines to
impart, no sentences or sayings to repeat, and
they find it quite impossible to communicate
to these their good opinion.
Me he has served now these twelve years in
that way; he was the reasonable creature to
speak to that I wanted.
SCIV


1848) ALCOTT'S GOLD
525
There is in California a gold ore in great
abundance in which the gold is in combination
with such elements that no chemistry has yet
been able to separate it without great loss. Al-
cott is a man of unquestionable genius, yet no
doctrine or sentence or word or action of his
which is excellent can be detached and quoted.
He is like Channing, who possesses a painter's
eye, an appreciation of form and especially of
color, that is admirable, but who, when he
bought pigments and brushes and painted a
landscape on a barrel head could not draw a
tree so that his wife could know it was a tree.
So Alcott the philosopher has not an opinion
or an apothegm to produce.
I shall write on his tomb, Here lies Plato's
reader. Read he can with joy and naïveté inim-
itable, and the more the style rises, the more
natural and current it seems to him. And yet
his appetite is so various that the last book
always seems to him the best. Here lies the
Amateur.
The Age. Among the marks of the Age of
Cities must be reckoned conspicuously the uni-
versal adoption of cash payment. Once it was
one of many methods. People bought, but they


526
JOURNAL (AGE 45
also borrowed, and received much on various
claims of good will, on hospitality, in the name
of God, in the interest of party, of letters, of
charity. Young men made essay of their tal-
ents for proof, for glory, for enthusiasm, on any
reasonable call, nothing doubting that in one
or another way their hazarded bread would re-
turn to them after many days. But now, in the
universal expansion of the city by the railroads,
the stock exchange infects our country fairs, and
no service is thought reasonable which does not
see a requital in money. Yet where is the ser-
vice which can by any dodge escape its remu-
neration? For grandeur, at least, let us once
in a while serve God.
Let us sacrifice to the immortal gods. The
killers of oxen and sheep did not, in old or later
times, but they do who in their action respect
a sentiment, and not cash payment.
City. Gardner Brewer said to me, “To be a
salesman you must have splendid talents.”
American Literature. We have not had since
ten years a pamphlet which I have saved to
bind! and here at last is Bushnell's; and now,
Henry Thoreau's Ascent of Katabdin.


1848] PARTED FRIENDS. BATH 527
Wisdom is like electricity.'...
I think it is indispensable that we should con-
verse both with our superiors and our inferiors
in intellect. With the first, for new aim and cor-
rection; and, with the last, for self-possession and
talent.
C. said, “'Tis so many years since we met,
and you have passed over such stages !” — Ah,
my friend, I must think so often of Captain
Franklin's company in the Arctic regions trav-
elling laboriously for six weeks to the north,
and then discovering by observation that they
were south of their starting-point. The ice had
floated; and so with us.
Conceit. I notice that people who wash much
have a high mind about it, and talk down to
those who wash little. Carlyle washes, and he
has come to believe that the only religion left
us is ablution, and that Chadwick, the man who
is to bring water for the million, is the Priest
of these times. So at home I find the morning
bathers are proud and haughty scorners, and I
1 The rest of the passage is printed in the last paragraph
of “ Clubs” (Society and Solitude).


528
[Age 45
JOURNAL
begin to believe that the composition of water
must be one part hydrogen and three parts
conceit.
When Nature removes a great man, people
explore the horizon for a successor.' ...
Merchant. In the distribution of lots, the
merchant seems to me often enviable, his social
position is so good. He mixes with people on
a ground so free from all hypocrisy. He has
no part to play, but stands on the strength
of things. He acquires facility, knowledge of
things, knowledge of modes, knowledge of men,
knows that which all men gladly hear.
Memory. “ It is best knocking in the nail
over night, and clinching it the next morn-
ing.”- — FULLER.
See Saint Augustine's Analysis of Memory.
(pp. 172-187 of the Boston Edition). “How
they entered into me, let them say if they can;
i The rest of the passage is found in substance in - Uses
of Great Men” (Representative Men, pp. 19, 20).
2 Mr. Emerson quoted this saying to his children when
they had to learn poetry to recite at school, telling them to go
over the piece several times while they were undressing. They
were astonished to find how well they knew it next morning


1848] MEMORY. CONVERSATION 529
for I have gone over all the avenues of my
flesh, and cannot find by which they entered”
(p. 175).
“The memory is, as it were, the belly of the
mind; and joy and sadness, like sweet and bit-
ter food, which, when committed to the memory,
are, as it were, passed into the belly, where they
may be stowed, but cannot taste. Ridiculous is
it to imagine these to be alike; and yet they
are not utterly unlike” (p. 177).
We remember that we forget.
One of the chief faculties which Plato,' like
other ancient philosophers, proposed to exer-
cise and develop was memory,
μνημονικήν αυτήν αν ζητώμεν δείν ειναι –
See Clouds passim, and v. 465, and Republic,
lib. vi. (Sewell, p. 215).
The Beatitude of Conversation. I am afraid
books do stand in our way; for the best heads
are writers, and when they meet and fall into
profound conversation, they never quite lose
all respects of their own economy and pour
i Plato says of the Philosopher in the Republic (Book v11),
“ There a soul which forgets cannot be ranked among genu-
ine philosophic natures; we must insist that the philosopher
should have a good memory.” (Jowett.)


530 : JOURNAL (AGE 45
out the divinest wine, but each is a little wary,
a little checked, by the thought of the rare helps
this hour might afford him to some page which
he has written. Each is apt to become abstracted
and lose the remark of the other through too
much attention to his own. Yet I have no
book and no pleasure in life comparable to
this.
Here I come down to the shore of the Sea
and dip my hands in its miraculous waves.
Here I am assured of the eternity, and can spare
all omens, all prophecies, all religions, for I see
and know that which they obscurely announce.
I seem rich with earth and air and heaven; but
the next morning I have lost my keys.
To escape this economy of writers, women
would be better friends; but they have the
drawback of the perplexities of sex.
berto
UNTRUE.
Forty per cent of the English people cannot
write their names. One half of one per cent of
the Massachusetts people cannot, and these are
probably Britons born.
American Education tends, I am told, to
arithmetic: at least, I hear it complained that
all the public schools teach arithmetic chiefly..


1848] WALK WITH CHANNING 531
October (last week).
Another walk this Saturday afternoon with
Ellery through the woods to the shore of Flint's
Pond.' The witch-hazel was in full bloom and
from the highland we saw one of the best pic-
tures of the New Hampshire Mountains. But
Ellery said that when you come among them
they are low, and nothing but cow pastures. I
say, let us value the woods; they are full of
solicitation. My wood lot has no price. I could
not think of selling it for the money I gave for
it. It is full of unknown mysterious values.
What forms, what colours, what powers, null,
it is true, to our ignorance, but opening inesti-
mably to human wit. The crows filled the land-
scape with a savage sound; the ground was cov-
ered with new fallen leaves which rustled so
loud as we trampled through them that we could
hear nothing else.
One thing our Concord wants, a Berkshire
brook which falls, and now beside the road, and
i In Lincoln; now called Sandy Pond.
2 In dreamy woods what forms abound
That elsewhere never poet found.
Here voices ring, and pictures burn,
And grace on grace where'er I turn.
Verse Book.


532
JOURNAL [Age 45
now under it, cheers the traveller for miles with
its loud voice. Channing asks whether the mul-
lein is in England? I do not remember it. It
is so conspicuous in our pastures with its archi-
tectural spire (especially where it grows with the
poke-weed in the ruined shanties of the Irish
in my woods) that it must not be forgotten.
Channing celebrates Herrick as the best of
English poets, a true Greek in England, a great
deal better poet than Milton, who, he says, is
too much like Dr. Channing. I think that the
landscape before us would give Herrick all he
needed; he who sung a cherry, Julia's hair,
Netherby's pimple, his own hen Partlet, and
Ben Jonson; we have a wider variety here
among the maples. But the prose and the poetry
of that age was more solid and cordial than
ours. I find myself always admiring single twigs
and leaves of that tree, and, for a chance ex-
ample, found in Wood's Athena Oxonienses
(vol. i, p. 225) a quotation from Edmund
Campion's History of Ireland, that was a proof
of the wit of that age.
Germany. How impossible to find Germany!
Our young men went to the Rhine to find the
genius which had charmed them, and it was not


1848] THE PEOPLE. POLITICS 533
there. They hunted it in Heidelberg, in Göt-
tingen, in Halle, in Berlin; no one knew where
it was; from Vienna to the frontier, it was not
found, and they very slowly and mournfully
learned, that in the speaking it had escaped,
and as it had charmed them in Boston, they
must return and look for it there.
10a
History. Community. Better that races should
perish, if thereby a new principle be taught.
All the world may well be bankrupt if they
are driven so into a right socialism.
It is necessary that you should know the
people's facts. If you have no place for them,
the people absolutely have no place for you.
You may prove your theory by all syllogisms
and all symbols, but heaven and earth, the
constitution of things is on the people's side,
and that is a reason not liable to a fallacy.
In politics, all are dilettanti. No man makes a
duty there, but he votes on a magnified whim.
Our politics are an affectation.
'Tis plain that our people will vote for him
who gives them rum. Polk and Cass stand
nearer to the barrel than Webster, Clay, or
Taylor possibly can.


534
JOURNAL (AGE 45
Love is necessary to the righting the estate
of woman in this world. Otherwise nature
itself seems to be in conspiracy against her
dignity and welfare; for the cultivated, high-
thoughted, beauty-loving, saintly woman finds
herself unconsciously desired for her sex, and
even enhancing the appetite of her savage pur-
suers by these fine ornaments she has piously
laid on herself. She finds with indignation that
she is herself a snare, and was made such. I do
not wonder at her occasional protest, violent
protest against nature, in fleeing to nunneries,
and taking black veils. Love rights all this deep
wrong.
I find out in an instant if my companion does
not want me; I cannot comprehend how my
visitor does not perceive that I do not want him.
It is his business to find out that I, of course,
must be civil. It is for him to offer to go. I
certainly shall not long resist. I must pardon
much to English exclusiveness when I see how
life is lost by the swainishness of our fellows.
CSS
Athena Oxonienses. In the article “George
Peele,” Wood writes, “This person was living
in his middle age in the latter end of Queen


1848] BOOKS. HOW TO LEARN 535
Elizabeth; but when or where he died, I cannot
tell; for so it is, and always hath been, that most
poets die poor, and consequently obscurely, and a
hard matter it is to trace them to their graves."
Books are worth reading that sketch a princi-
ple, as lectures are. All others are tickings of a
clock. And we have so much less time to live,
- the Robbers !
Alcott learned to write on the sand and on the
snow, when paper and pens were dear. His
journal must be stablished. He sits here and
plots an invasion of Cambridge Library, which,
er been reported. He proposes
to Thoreau to go down and spend a fortnight
there, and lay it open to the day.
es
Education. It was a right course which Bris-
bane indicated when he told me of his visit to
Paris. “ I went,” he said, “to the first men in
name and credit in science. I said, is there any
man here who, for any price, will teach me the
principles of Music? I found the learnedest in
the science and put myself diligently down to
learn.”
I believe in the admirableness of art. I ex-
pect it to be miraculous, and find it so. The


536
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
combinations of the Gothic building are not now
attainable, and the Phidian friezes with reason
affect us as the forest does.
m
Universities. The university clings to us.
They give a certain mechanical integrity and
make it impossible to make a mistake. These
men are paid to read, who is benefited by their
reading? I wonder the melioration is not more.
The one is wise; but he has a great many fool-
ish faces. The men remain ridiculous under the
beautiful cap of the sky. Why not Platonised ?
Why do they not assimilate the arts and natural
beauties on which they have fed?
on
October 29.
Yesterday, another walk with Ellery well
worth commemoration, if that were possible;
but no pen could write what we saw : it needs
the pencils of all the painters that ever existed
to aid the description. We went to White Pond;
a pretty little Indian basin, lovely now as Wal-
den once was; we could almost see the sachem
in his canoe in a shadowy cove. But making the
circuit of the lake on the shore, we came at last
to see some marvellous reflections of the colored
woods in the water, which held us fast to the ef-


1848] WHITE POND
537
fect, almost to the going down of the sun. The
water was very slightly rippled, which took the
proper character from the pines, and the birches,
and a few oaks, which composed the grove; and
the submarine wood seemed all made of Lom-
bardy poplar, with such delicious green, stained
by gleams of mahogany from the oaks, and
streaks of white from the birches, every moment
growing more excellent. It was the world seen
through a prism, and set Ellery on wonderful
Lucretian theories of “law” and “design.”
Ellery, as usual, found the place with excel-
lent judgment “where your house should be
set,” leaving the wood paths as they were,
which no art could make over; and, after leav-
ing the pond, and a certain dismal dell, whither
a man might go to shoot owls, or to do self-
murder in, we struck across an orchard to a
steep hill of the right New Hampshire slope,
newly cleared of woods, and came presently
into rudest woodland landscapes, unknown,
undescribed, and hitherto unwalked by us Satur-
day afternoon professors.
The sun was setting behind terraces of pines,
disposed in groups unimaginable by Downings,
or Loudons, or Capability Browns; but we
kept our way and fell into the Duganne trail,


538
JOURNAL
[AGE 45
as
as we had already seen the glimpse of his cabin
in the edge of the barbarous district we had
traversed. Through a clump of apple trees,
over a long ridge — (query, what does Dr. Jack-
son call such ridges?)— OSARS ; with fair out-
sight of the river, and across the Nut Meadow
Brook, we came out upon the banks of the
river just below James Brown's.
Ellery proposed that we should send the
Horticultural Society our notes, “Took an ap-
ple near the White Pond fork of the Duganne
trail, — an apple of the Beware-of-this variety,
a true Touch-me-if-you-dare, or Seek-no-further-
of-this.”
We had much talk of books and lands and
arts and farmers. We saw the original tumulus
or first barrow, which the fallen pine tree makes
with its upturned roots, and which, after a few
years, precisely resembles a man's grave. We
talked of the great advantage which he has who
can turn a verse, over all the human race. I read
in Wood's Athena Oxonienses a score of pages
of learned nobodies, of whose once odoriferous
reputations not a trace remains in the air, and
then I came to the name of some Carew, Her-
rick, Suckling, Chapman, whose name is as fresh
and modern as those of our friends in Boston


1848) BOSTON WATER-WORKS 539
and London, and all because they could turn
a verse. Only write a dozen lines, and rest on
your oars forever, you are dear and necessary to
the human race and worth all the old trumpery
Plutarchs and Platos and Bacons of the world.
I quoted Suckling's line, “A bee had stung it
newly” to praise it, and Ellery said, “Yes, every-
body's poetry is good, but your own.” He de-
clares that the modern books, Tennyson, Car-
lyle, Landor, gave him no standard, no measure
of thought and life, and he fancies that the only
writing open for us is the Essay. He arrived at
three rules, 1, that no mercy is to be shown to
poetry; 2, none to artists; 3, lost. I defended
Boston people from his charges of bottomless
stupidity, by the wit they have shown in these
two things I have read today, Fitchburg Road
Report, and Hale's and Quincy's speeches at
the Water Celebration. What a use is their arith-
metic turned to! For four millions of dollars
(and in any street you can pick up forty men
worth a hundred thousand each), they have in
two years finished this splendid and durable
toy, a strong aqueduct to last forever, running
down Snake - Brook bed, placed under navi-
gable salt water, and arriving in Boston, feed-
ing every chamber and closet as well as the


540
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
Frog Pond fountain. And then, by their judi-
cious ciphering, the sale of city lands, new made
(and rendered available by the water), in the next
few years will pay all these four millions, and
give the water free as it is pure to all.
Ellery said, he had once fancied that there
were some amateur trades, as politics, but he
found there were none; these too were fenced
by Whig barricades. Even walking could not be
done by amateurs, but by professors only.
In walking with Ellery you shall always see
what was never before shown to the eye of man.
And yet for how many ages of lonely days has
that pretty wilderness of White Pond received
the sun and clouds into its transparency, and
woven each day new webs of birch and pine,
shooting into wilder angles and more fantastic
crossing of these coarse threads, which, in the
water, have such momentary elegance.
Socrates. “Like those who make a hungry
animal follow them by holding up to him a green
bough or some fruit, so you, whilst you hold
in your hand that roll of paper, could draw me
without difficulty to the end of Attica, and far-
ther, if you would.” – Phædrus, Cousin, p. 11,
vol. vi.
U
w


1848) THE WAY. THOUGHT 541
Every man is entitled to be measured or char-
acterized by his best influence.
Every loafer knows the way to the rum shop,
but every angel does not know the way to his
nectar. Why can we never learn our proper econ-
omy? Every youth and maid should know the
road to prophecy as surely as the cook-maid to
the baker's shop.
October 31.
A good deal of thought and reading is no
better than smoking, yet we give ourselves airs
thereon, and not on our cigars. The difference
between labor and indolence in the world of
thought certainly points at a code and scale of
reward as emphatic as the Christian heaven and
hell. Yet with this difference, that Inspiration
is very coy.' ...
It is a finer thing to hold a man by his ears
than by his eyes, as the Beauty does; by his
belly, as the rich man does; by his fears, as the
State does.
The man whom we have not seen is the rapt
lover in whom no regards of self degraded the
1 The rest of the passage is in “ Instinct and Inspiration”
(Natural History of Intellect, p. 75).


542
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
adorer of the Laws. There is a pretension about
our gasping dilettanti, and we tax them with im-
becility ; but if I discovered in an obscure coun-
try boy, half-witted perhaps, that his sole plea-
sure was in finding certain spots of beautiful
wilderness, that he had the truest taste in this
selection, and it was all his passion and employ,
a new Narcissus, seeing the reflection of man in
Nature, and dying of its beauty, - must I not
respect him?
I think the true solace of the philosopher is
in the perfections of the law which ruins him.
Proud is he that he is a Spartan, and that Sparta
can easily spare him.
The scholar posts his books. The world is
arithmetical. In this numbered system the
scholar is a numberer, and so adds nature's soul
to nature. The Tree Ygdrasil grows, but it grows
geometrically. It is not Plato but the world that
writes, “Let none enter but a geometer.”
Passion is logical as wine is geometrical.
What is indispensable to inspiration? Sleep.
There are two things, both indispensable: sound
sleep; and the provocation of a good book or a
companion.


ne a
amou
1848] WEBSTER. PENNY WISDOM 543
The rules of the game are paramount, and
daunt the genius of the best players. Webster
does not lead, but always plays a reverential
second part to some ancestors, or Whig party,
or Constitution, or other primary, who is much
his inferior, if he had but courage and a call-
ing.
Plymouth. Lidian says, that when she was a
child, her mother never bought any crash, but
that kitchen-towels and coarse cloths were made
from old sails brought home from her father's
vessels, and were called sail towels.
Wit in Trade. There is no good story in the
books to show how much better is wit, liberal
wit, in trade, than penny wisdom; and yet, one
would think, we should have many. The school
textis Thales, who, foreseeing the plenty of olives
that would be that year, before the winter was
gone, bought up all the oil casks at Miletus and
Chios, which he did with little money, and
when the time came that many were sought for
in haste, he, getting what rates on them he
pleased, by this means got together much
money. It might be as the orchardist who cuts
open the fruit-bud of the peach in winter and


544
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
observes the black germ. . . . The famous cof-
fee speculation is a good instance, and I should
like better to know the true history of that, and
the reasons of its failure, than to have many
volumes of political economy. The wit that
elects the site of a new city, finds the mills and a
path and true terminus of a new railroad, per-
ceives well where to buy wild land in the West-
ern country, judging well where the confluence
of streams, the change of soil, climate, or race,
will make thoroughfares and markets.
How Nature, to keep her balance true, in-
vented a Cat. What phantasmagoria in these
animals! Why is the snake so frightful, which
is the line of beauty, and every resemblance to
it pleases ? See what disgust and horror of a rat,
loathsome in its food, loathsome in its form,
and a tail which is villanous, formidable by
its ferocity; yet interposed between this horror
and the gentler kinds is the cat, a beautiful
horror, or a form of many bad qualities, but
tempered and thus strangely inserted as an
offset, check, and temperament, to that ugly
horror. See then the squirrel strangely adorned
with his tail, which is his saving grace in hu-
man eyes. .


1848) MORE MIND. VOTING
545
In the hotels the air is buttered and the whole
air is a volatilized beefsteak.
Our poetry is an affectation, but read Chau-
cer, and the old lays in which Merlin and Ar-
thur are celebrated, and you will find it as sim-
ple as the speech of children.
What awe would not the smallest exaltation
of the intellectual processes awaken, as we see
in Safford or Colburn's case, and the unproved
pretensions of somnambulists. The boy Merlin
laughs three times, and, in each instance, be-
cause he foresees or second-sees what is future
or distant. We are always on the edge of this,
but cannot quite fetch it.
X and Y and so many honest bourgeois in
our population vote on the expectation and as-
surance of a specific reward. It is as honest and
natural in them to expect the place, as in an ox
to expect his hay and stalks; and they are as
legitimately angry and implacable, if they are
baulked of it. This is the true wild, the Hen-
gist and Horsa, unchristianized still, in so many
ages. The same brutish naïveté appears in all
their story, in their family quarrels on wills, etc.


546
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
Nature trains us on to see illusions and prod-
igies.' ...
Channing thinks it the woe of life that nat-
ural effects are continually crowded out, and
artificial arrangements substituted. He remem-
bers when an evening, any evening, grim and
wintry like this, was enough for him, the houses
were in the air; now it takes a very cold winter
night to overcome the common and mean.
And this, no doubt, as we agreed, is the poet-
state. As long as the evening is sufficient, as
long as the youth is in the capability of being
imparadised by the sights and sounds of com-
mon day, he is poet; but as soon as he begins
to use them well, knows how to parse and spell,
turns artist, he ceases to be poet.
I used to value Newton's theory of trans-
parency, that transparent bodies were homo-
geneous, and the ray entering, being attracted
equally in every direction, was as if it were not
attracted at all, and passed directly through; but
opaque were heterogeneous, and the ray, being
drawn this way and that way, was diverted and
i The rest is printed in “Memory” (Natural History
of Intellect, p. 100).


1848] OVER-READING. POLITICS 547
did not traverse. I think it is so with books.
Cram people with your books, furnish them
with a constant river of books and journals, and
you may be sure they will remember as little as
if they read none.
The laws (the statute book) are only the
wishes of the majority of the people: there will
be great deduction to be made for the perform-
ance. Just so much private volition as there is
makes the reliable force of the law.
Laws. I see no security in laws, but only in
the nature of men; and in that reactive force
which develops all kinds of energy at the same
time ; energy of good with energy of evil; the
ecstasies of devotion with the exasperations of
debauchery. The sons of Democrats will be
Whigs, and the fury of republicanism in the
father is only the immense effort of Nature to
engender an intolerable tyrant in the next age.
November 9.
The Whig party are what people would call
first-rate in opposition, but not so good in gov-
ernment. Perhaps they have not sufficient forti-
tude. The same thing happens often in England.


548
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
Here has passed an election, I think, the most
dismal ever known in this country. Three great
parties voting for three candidates whom they
disliked. Next Monday there will be more
heart. Van Buren? Taylor ?
“Sister Lucy,” said the lady,“ how do you
enjoy your mind lately? I have put up a great
many petitions for you.”
“Why, I don't expect much enjoyment,”
said the other, who was quilling skeins, “I have
such a bad heart.”
In Plato's Republic, Book 111, see a sentence
which might be an introduction to a friendly
biography of Alcottis-
“We must seek for those who are to supply
us with the forms of art, men who by instinct
can trace out the springs of grace and beauty,
that, dwelling as in a sanctuary of health, the
young may imbibe good from all around them,
from every work and sight and sound whence
aught may strike their sense, like airs that are
wafting health from purest climes, and, step by
step, from childhood, and changing them into
the image of goodness, and into likeness and
love and harmony with the beauty of truth.”


1848) NOVELS. SOURCES. 549
“ It was the peculiar genius of the Athenian
to anticipate. Before the orator had finished
his first clause they could tell the end.” —
THUCYDIDES.
Novels. Heliodorus, Christian bishop, in
his Æthiopica, containing Tbeagenes and Chari-
clea, is the founder of novels. From this source
comes the Romance of the Middle Ages, and
the modern novel. See Sewell's Plato, p. 154.
Dr. Johnson said he always went into stately
shops,' ...
In the best circles is the best information,
as I thought when I found what I wanted in
Wykeham's Life. You can get phosphate from
cow-dung; but better from bones. Oxygen best
from conferva rivularis.
It is one convenience of culture that it has
no enemies. The finished man of the world
holds his hatred also at arm's length, so that
he can, whenever is fit occasion, receive his foe
with all the world at his house, and associate
with him in public or in private affairs, unen-
cumbered by old quarrel. But country people
1 Much of what follows is omitted, as being printed in
« Books” (Society and Solitude, p. 196).


550
JOURNAL : (Age 45
are like dogs and cows that quarrel, and re-
member their spite. William of Wykeham
quarrelled with the Duke of Lancaster. All
Wykeham's temporalities were sequestered, and
he excluded from Parliament. William man-
aged to get all back, and the Duke was for the
time worsted. It does not hinder that the Duke
should be solemnly received at William's Col-
lege at Oxford on the Visitation.
This fast and loose belongs to the Intellect,
belongs to that power of detachment which the
Intellect introduces.
The other lesson I learned in Wykeham's
Life was certainly a confirmation of my respect
for the solidity of English national genius.
What men that isle yields! What gravity ;
what liberality, and nobleness ; what tenacity of
purpose ; what lofty religion! Here is a man so
allied to the material world, that he is sure to
become rich and great under any government
and times, and whose aims are so public and
disinterested that he can easily be prudent and
not too much mixed with bad politics, though
by greatness of nature he must necessarily be
mixed with great men and affairs. He is a man
of the Washington type, and it is by many such
men as Wykeham that England is great and


1848) ENGLISHMEN. MINDS 551
free. Ah! these fine solitudes around me in
Massachusetts could easily become dear and
enviable to the human race if once they were
the homes of grave, religious, forcible men.
Englishmen. I went to England to know who
were the excellent men of that country. Some
of them I know personally, some only by name.
Wordsworth, Landor, Carlyle, Tennyson, Wil-
kinson, Stephenson, Hallam, Faraday, Owen,
Edward Forbes, Samuel Brown, De Quincey,
David Scott, P. J. Bailey, J. S. Mill, Arthur
H. Clough, W. Sewell, James Moseley, Henry TURNER
Taylor, Edwin Chadwick, Duke of Welling-
ton, Robert Peel, Richard Cobden, Robert
Browning, Matthew Arnold, John Bright. All
these I have seen except Chadwick, Browning,
Taylor, and Sewell, and Moseley.
What difference in the hospitality of minds!
Some are actually hostile, and imprison me as
in a hole. A blockhead makes a blockhead of
me; whilst for my Oriental friend here, I have
always claimed for him, that nothing could be
so expansive as his element is.
My friends begin to value each other, now
that Alcott is to go; and Ellery declares, “ that


552
JOURNAL
[AGE 45
he never saw that man without being cheered,”
and Henry says, “He is the best natured man
I ever met. The rats and mice make their nests
in him.”
ma
rname
Apples. The apple is our national fruit, and
I like to see that the soil yields it; I judge of
the country so. The American sun paints him-
self in these glowing balls amid the green leaves.
Man would be more solitary, less friended, less
supported, if the land yielded only the useful
maize and potato, withheld this ornamental and
social fruit.
I have planted a Pumpkin Sweeting near my
summer house, - I believe out of agreeable
recollection of that fruit in my childhood at
Newton. It grew in Mr. Greenough's pasture,
and I thought it solid sunshine.
“ Ere boyhood with quick glance had ceased to spy
The doubtful apple \mid the yellow leaves.”
sum
There are always a few heads, and out of
these come the mythology and the machinery
of the world. Whence came all these books,
laws, inventions, parties, kingdoms? Out of
the invisible world, through a few brains : and
if we should pierce to the origin of knowledge,


ne
1848) SOUL'S ALMANAC. FATE 553
explore the meaning of memory, we might find
it some strange mutilated roll of papyrus, on
which only a strange, disjointed jumble of uni-
versal traditions, of heavenly scriptures, of an-
gelic biographies, were long ago written, relics
of a foreworld.
ve
Midsummer. 'Tis very certain that this alma-
nack of the Soul may be written as well as that
of Greenwich. We have had our heights of sun
and depths of shade, and it would be easy in
the Soul's year to recall and fix its 21st of June.
Moses had his Ten Commandments; but we
have ours. In the first age they wrote on stone,
and what was fit to be written on stone; Lycur-
gus, his laws; Moses, his Decalogue; but we
write novels and newspapers. You would not
have Bulwer and Disraeli publish their novel
on stone ?
There is a sort of climate in every man's
speech running from hot noon, when words
flow like steam and perfume, - to cold night,
when they are frozen.
We must accept a great deal as Fate. We
accept it with protest, merely adjourning our
experiment, and not squander our strength in


554
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
upheaying mountains. Mountain is conquerable
also, to be sure, but whilst you cannot quarry
it, let it be a mountain.
Action and idea are man and woman, both
indispensable: why should they rail at and ex-
clude each other? Yes, we must call the anato-
mist and physiologist to counsel. The human
body is undoubtedly the true symbol, true and
highest and most instructive; human body and
not sun or galaxy.
tand medicaly the sunsel. The anato-
Teutonic. I still return, or did last night, to the
eulogy of those natural priests who, in every
condition of life, have yielded us some token
of having read the laws of heaven,- beginning
as usual with my poor churl Tarbox'at Newton.
These are the small Behmens, or, the Teu-
tonic School ; and one farmer or labourer of
that sort is worth whole towns full of plausible
farmers, traders, and selectmen. It is the out-
cropping of the granite which is the core of the
i The Methodist working beside him in his uncle's hay-
field who said Men are always praying, and their prayers are
answered. The young minister thought this over, and adding,
Therefore we must be careful what we pray for, made this the
theme of his first sermon.


1848] THE WAYSIDE INN 555
world. I seem to meet no more such. Very
and Rebecca Black' were the last; and yet
perhaps Hermann knows something. In Eng-
land, how few! and yet there was Sylvester,
and Fletcher, and Sutton, and David Scott.
In every family a system settles itself. . . .
in
November 14.
'T is the coldest November I have ever
· known. This morning the mercury is at 26.
Yesterday afternoon cold, fine ride with Ellery
to Sudbury Inn,3 and mounted the side of
Nobscot. Finest picture through wintry air of
the russet Massachusetts. The landscape is
democratic, not gathered into one city or baro-
nial castle, but equally scattered into these white
steeples, round which a town clusters in every
place where six roads meet, or where a river
branches or falls, or where the pan of soil is a
little deeper. The horizon line marched by hills
tossing like waves in a storm : firm indigo line.
’T is a pretty revolution which is effected in
Next
he Ta
OLETE HAIN
che
I A high-minded seamstress in New York.
echter
2 The rest of this passage occurs in “Wealth” (Conduct
of Life, pp. 123, 124).
3 The Wayside Inn, which Longfellow celebrated, then
called Howe's Tavern.
de este


556
JOURNAL
(AGE 45
the landscape by simply turning your head up-
side down, or, looking through your legs : an
infinite softness and loveliness is added to the
picture. It changes the landscape at once from
November to June, or, as Ellery declared, makes
Campagna of it at once; so, he said, Massachu-
setts is Italy upside down.
November 26.
Yesterday walked over Lincoln hills with
Ellery, and saw golden willows, savins with two
foliages, old chestnuts, apples as ever.
I understand Dr. Charles T. Jackson that
a piece of ordnance may usually be fired one
thousand times before it will burst, and only so
many times ; that it is the rule in the United
States service that one piece of each new kind
of firearm should be burst; and that Jenks's
rifle was fired by a sergeant and man appointed
to that service sixty-six thousand times, when
last heard from, and was not yet burst.
The Doctor described the wonderful mirage
of Lake Superior; and the aurora borealis and
the analyzed sounds. The air in the woods at
100, the water at 38. The osars or horsebacks,
i Dr. Jackson made in 1844-45 the first geological survey
of the now rich mineral lands around Lake Superior. For


1848) AGASSIZ. THOREAU 557
so familiar in our woods, are made, he says, by
the combing of waves ?
ur V
A robin, says Agassiz (embryonic), is a gull;
a gull is a duck; a duck is a fish; add now what
I suppose is omitted, pro causa conciliandi gra-
tiam, that a man is a robin, and the chain is
perfect, a man is a fish.
It is not for nothing, that very few heads
are sent into the world busy with abstractions,
and very many heads busy with making money.
Accept the order of the world, though it make
you a shopkeeper.
That is one thing; the second thing which
comes often to mind, lately, is, the conviction
that our security is in the reactive force which
develops all kinds of energy out of the same
time.
December 10.
Henry Thoreau is still falling on some bold
volunteer like his Dr. Heaton who discredits the
Mr. Emerson's use of what his brother-in-law told him of the
phenomenon of analyzed sound, see the stanza in the poem
“ May Day,” beginning —
So by remote Superior Lake.
(Poems, p. 179.)


558
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
regulars; but Henry like all the rest of sensible
men, when he is sick, will go to Jackson and
Warren.
T. W. Higginson at Newburyport urged the
establishment of such a journal as the Dial for
the comfort and encouragement of young men,
who, but for that paper, had felt themselves
lonely and unsupported in the world.
Punch notices that in the late hard times, Sat-
urn has lately appeared without his rings, and
that the other planets openly accuse him of hav-
ing pawned them.
Nature.' The earth takes the part of her child-
ren so quickly and adopts our thoughts, affections,
and quarrels. The school boy finds every step
of the ground on his way to school acquainted
with his quarrel, and smartly expressing it. The
ground knows so well his top and ball, the air
itself is full of hoop-time, ball-time, swimming,
sled, and skates. So ductile is the world. The
rapt prophet finds it not less facile and intelli-
gent. 'Tis Pentecost all; the rose speaks all lan-
guages, the sense of all affections,— Parthians,
Jews, Mesopotamians, Greeks, French, English.
i This passage, versified, is found in the poem “ May Day."


1848] ARCHIMEDES. FATE 559
The girl finds her chamber enchanted, and all
her walks, with the dear dream-
Courage of Archimedes. If he had courage of
heart he would be a gone Archimedes. It is by
pounding on his problem, by being pure brain,
that he suffers the soldier to kill him without a
pang.
Fate in the mixture of the children, one hav-
ing life in, the other life outside herself: the best
antidote to fortune is the religious determination.
Fate, fate. Well, settle this then; the nobility
of the sentiments is in resisting that or in ac-
cepting it.
Here is a blessed piece of realism from George
Sand's joiner Pierre :-
“ Content d'avoir acquis les talents qu'il avait
ambitionnés, il attendait que l'occasion de les faire
apprecier vînt d'ellemême, et il savait bien qu'elle
ne tarderait pas.” — Le Compagnon du tour de
France.
December 22.
Directly on the dreadful calamity of young
George Emerson's' death, comes to me one of
1 The only son of his valued and lifelong friend George
Barrell Emerson.


560
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
my highest prosperities. I received Clough's
poem’ at the bookstore, whilst pondering
the dare or dare not of a visit to Pemberton
Square.
'Tis, I think, the most real benefit I have
k had from my English visit, this genius of Clough.
How excellent, yet how slow to show itself! He
gave no hint of all this to me, and I learned to
esteem him for reticent sense, for solidity, and
tenacity, after he had given proof of his appre-
hensiveness and of his thorough Oxford culture,
which was manifest enough. An Oxonian is a
kind of nobleman, of course. Then he had that
interest in life and realities, in the state of woman,
and the questions so rife in Paris through Com-
munism, and through the old loose and easy con-
ventions of that city for travellers ; he talked so
considerately of the grisette estate, that I found
him the best pièce de resistance, and tough ad-
herence, that one could desire. But I never sur-
mised that this flowing, all-applicable expression
belonged to him. Where had he concealed it?
And now Tennyson must look to his laurels.
And now I have a new friend, and the world
has a new poet.
i The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolicb.


1848) CARLYLE. THE EDDA 561
Tests. Have you given any words to be the
current coin of the country? Carlyle has.
What all men think, he thinks better.
Carlyle is thought a bad writer. Is he? Where-
ever you find good writing in Dorian or Rabe-
laisian, or Norse Sagas, or English Bible, or
Cromwell himself, 't is odd, you find resem-
blance to his style.
eve
an
The Edda. Where there is a common lan-
guage between the authors and the mob, “the
intellectuality of the educated class works down,”
to use Laing's word.
He says, “No sentiment, phrase, popular
idea, or expression from the works of Lessing,
Goethe, Schiller, Richter, or any other German
writer is ever heard among the lower classes in
Germany,” because of the wide difference be-
tween their Plat Deutsch and the written lan-
guage.
I should say, that, in English, only those
sentences stand, which are good both for the
scholar and the cabman, Latin and Saxon; half
and half; perfectly Latin and perfectly Eng-
lish.
Iceland was civilized and learned. Thence
came the Scalds. What New England is to South,


562
(AGE 45
JOURNAL
that was Iceland to Norway. The Christian Ice-
land fitted out no viking expeditions. But young
Icelanders sometimes joined the Northmen's.
So Massachusetts and Rhode Island fit out no
slave trade, yet the De Wolfs go. Rise of Han-
seatic League and wealth of West of Europe
extinguished these pests of Vikings,“ and Scald
fell before clerk with his pen and ink," as Vi-
king before English trade, and as stage-coach
before railroad.
AUTHORS OR Books QUOTED OR REFERRED TO
IN JOURNAL FOR 1848
Moses; Meghaduta ; Vishnu Purana;
Lycurgus, Solon, Periander, Thales, apud
Plutarch; Zoroaster; Æschylus; Herodotus;
Democritus; Aristotle; Aristippus;
Lucretius; Cicero; Valerius Maximus;
Jamblichus; Heliodorus, Ethiopica, Theagenes
and Chariclea; Sidonius Apollinaris, apud Cam-
den ; Saint Augustine; Mahomet;
Bede; Sæmund, Older Edda ; Snorri Sturla-
son, Younger Edda; Richard of Devizes, Chron-
icle; Roger Bacon;
Dante, Inferno, Translation of John Carlyle;


563
1848]
READING
Hafiz; Chaucer; Ellis, Early English Metrical
Romances;
Luther; Rabelais ; Cornelius Agrippa (von
Nettesheim); Edmund Campion, History of
Ireland; William Camden, Britannia ; Hakluyt,
Voyages; Purchas, Pilgrimmes ;
Clarendon, History; Sir Henry Wotton;
Jacob Behmen ; Carew; Herrick; Suckling; Sir
Kenelm Digby; Fuller, Worthies; Cowley;
Malpighi, De Viscerum Structura; Anthony à
Wood, Athena Oxonienses; Locke; Spinoza;
Newton;
Dacier, Doctrine de Platon ; Samuel Laing,
Heimskringla; Defoe; Swift; Pope; Montes-
quieu; Warburton ; Lowth, Life of William of
Wykeham ; Gray, Lines on Eton College;
Kant; Goldsmith; Goethe; R. B. Sheridan;
Thomas Taylor; Jamieson, Collection of Ballads;
Tenneman, History of Philosophy; Humboldt;
Sydney Smith; Metternich; Robert Owen;
Jeffrey; Hallam ; Thomas Chalmers; Dr.
Channing; Sir David Brewster; Colonel
(Thomas P.?) Thompson; John Kenyon,
Verses written in a Churchyard; William Buck-
land; John Wilson (Christopher North); Adam
Sedgwick; De Quincey ; Sir William Hooker;
tes


564
JOURNAL (AGE 45
Guizot; Lamartine ; Von Bunsen ; Procter
(Barry Cornwall); Sir Francis Head; Lockhart;
Mrs. Jameson; Pierre Leroux; Thomas Car-
lyle; David Moir; Sir Charles Fellows ; Alfred
de Vigny, Cing Mars (?); Victor Aimé Huber,
Die englischen Universitäten;
Alcott; Bancroft ; Horace Bushnell; William
and Robert Chambers; Harriet and James
Martineau; William Jacobson, Translation of
Æschylus; Richard Owen;
Charles Kraitsir; George Sand, Jeanne,
Compagnon du tour de France, Lucrezia Floriani;
Jules Lecomte; Disraeli; Bulwer; De Tocque-
ville, Mazzini, Ruffini; J. S. Mill, Political
Economy; William Sewell, Introduction to the
Dialogues of Plato; Alexander Ireland;
Agassiz; (Charles R.) Darwin; Alfred and
Septimus Tennyson (Turner); Mrs. Caroline
Elizabeth Sarah Norton; J. F. Ferrier; Richard
Monckton Milnes;
Benjamin Peirce; Theodore Parker; J. J.
Garth Wilkinson, on Swedenborg ; Dickens;
Frederick Lucas; William E. Aytoun; Edward
Forbes;
Theodore Martyn, Le bon Gualtier ; Philip
Bailey, Festus; H. D. Thoreau ; W. E Chan-


565
1848]
READING
ning; Arthur Helps ; Froude; A. H. Clough,
The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich ; Ruskin; West-
land Marston; Matthew Arnold; Coventry
Patmore ; William Allingham.
ta.
END OF VOLUME VII


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