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HARVARD
COLLEGE
LIBRARY

















Ralph Waldo Emerson.
COMPLETE WORKS. Centenary Edition. 12 vols.,
Crown 8vo. With Portraits, and copious notes by ED-
WARD WALDO EMERSON, Price per volume, $1.75.
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. ro.
Lectures and Biographical Sketches. 11. Miscellapies.
12. Natural History of Intellect, and other Papers. With
a General Index to Emerson's Collected Works
Riverside Edition. With a Portraits. 12 vols., each, 12mo.
gilt top, $1.75; the set, $21.00.
Little Classic Edition. 12 vols., in arrangement and con-
tents identical with Riverside Edition, except that vol. 12
is without index. Each, 18mo, $1.25; the set, $15.00.
POEMS. Household Edition. With Portrait. 1amo, $1.50;
full gilt, $2.00
ESSAYS. First and Second Series. In Cambridge Classics.
Crown 8vo, $1.00.
NATURE, LECTURES, AND ADDRESSES, together with
REPRESENTATIVE MEN. Io Cambridge Classics.
Crown 8vo, $1.00.
PARNASSUS. A collection of Poetry edited by Mr. Emer.
son. Introductory Essay. Hansehold Edition. Tamo, $1.50.
Holiday Edition. 8vo, $3.00.
EMERSON BIRTHDAY BOOK. With Portrait and Illus.
trations. 18mo, $1.00.
EMERSON CALENDAR BOOK. 32mo, parchment-paper,
25 cents.
CORRESPONDENCE OF CARLYLE AND EMERSON,
834-1872. Edited by CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. 3
ols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00.
Library Edition. 2 vols. 12mo, gilt top, $3.00.
CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN STERLING AND EMER-
SON. Edited, with a sketch of Sterling's life, by ED-
WARD WALDO EMERSON. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00.
LETTERS FROM RALPH WALDO EMERSON TO A
FRIEND. 1838-1853. Edited by CHARLES ELIOT NOR-
TON. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00.
THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN EMERSON AND
GRIMM. Edited by F. W. HOLLS. With Portraits.
z6mo, $1.00, net. Postpaid, $1.05.
Por various other editions of Emerson's works and Emer.
son Momoirs see catalogue.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND Now YORK


JOURNALS
OF
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
1820–1872
VOL. I









RW. Camerton








JOURNALS
OF
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
WITH ANNOTATIONS
EDITED BY
EDWARD WALDO EMERSON
AND
WALDO EMERSON FORBES
1820–1824

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1909


AL1323. 029
HARVARD
COLLEGE
LIBRARY
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY EDWARD WALDO EMERSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published November 1909


INTRODUCTION
was
In the year 1902 Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin
and Company asked me whether Mr. Emer-
son's journals could not be published, to fol-
low the annotated edition of the Works which
they were to bring out in honour of the ap-
proaching Centenary. This question was re-
ferred to Mr. Cabot, whom Mr. Emerson, trust-
ing to his good judgment and taste, had made
his literary executor. Mr. Cabot, after a little
consideration, said “Yes.” Many persons, he
agreed, would gladly see Emerson's first record
of his thoughts, come nearer to the man than
in the essays carefully purged of personality,
and also trace the growth of his powers of ex-
pression in prose or rhyme, and the expansion
of his mind during the fifty years or more that
the journals cover.
Mr. Cabot said that he was too old to under-
take further literary work, and expressed his
wish that I should be the editor: “Only take
time enough,” he said ; “ do not allow your-
self to be hurried.” A few months later, Mr.
Cabot died. I was deprived of his important
and valued counsel.


vi
INTRODUCTION
The journals were postponed until the Cen-
tenary Edition with its additions and notes was
published; then the consideration of them be-
gan. Mr. Emerson's grandson, Mr. Waldo
Emerson Forbes, expressed his willingness to
share the labour of editing the journals. This
aid has been of great importance.
At first the plan included only the journals
from the time of Mr. Emerson’s new departure
in life and writing after his return from his first
visit to Europe in the autumn of 1833 ; but,
on carefully reading the journals for the four-
teen years preceding that time, — for the boy
faithfully kept them from the age of seventeen
onwards, it seemed well to the editors to
introduce large extracts from these. Before
deciding to do so, however, they showed speci-
mens of the boyish entries to several persons
in whose taste and literary judgment they con-
fided, and were confirmed in the plan by their
less partial opinions. For we believe that those
who care about Emerson, his thought and
ideals, may wish to look beyond the matured
and sifted work that he left in his books, and
see the youth in his apprenticeship, the priest
in his noviciate and in his full office caring for
his people; his studies, questionings and hopes;
sons


INTRODUCTION
his final sacrifice; meantime, the warmth and
tenderness that came into this monastic life with
his love for Ellen Tucker and his marriage,
soon followed by her death and the sad wreck
of the new home; then, after the parting with
his church, the pilgrimage over-sea to restore
his health and see certain men whose written
words had helped him.
The extracts from the early journals are not
chosen for their merit alone: they show the
soil out of which Emerson grew, the atmos-
phere around, his habits and mental food, his
doubts, his steady, earnest purpose, and the
things he outgrew. His frankness with himself
is seen, and how he granted the floor to the
adversary for a fair hearing. Also the ups and
downs of the boy's health appear in the school-
keeping days, and why, beyond all reasonable
hope, considering the neglect of the body, he
lived to a healthy middle life and old age by
his rambling tendencies, by quietness, and bend-
ing to the blast which shattered the health of
his more unyielding brothers.
In these years the young Emerson was read-
ing eagerly and widely, and learned to find what
the author or the college text-book had for him,
and leave the rest. The growth of his literary


viii INTRODUCTION
taste, his style, independence of thought, and
originality in writing verse can be traced.
But from first to last appears the value to
him of his strange aunt, Miss Mary Moody
Emerson, in her constant interest and stimu-
lating influence : poor, remote, only self-edu-
cated, hungry for knowledge, extraordinarily
well-read, exalted in her religious thought,
critical but proud of her nephews, especially
Ralph, and a tireless correspondent. The boy
prized her letters, and they put him on his
mettle. His most careful youthful writing is
in his answers ; he holds his own in them.
Large extracts from her letters and his an-
swers occur, especially in the earlier journals.
He admired her rhetoric, now poetical, now
fiery, now sarcastic, — always her own.
It was Mr. Emerson's habit often in later
years to copy into his journal passages from
his letters to others in which he had conveyed
his thought with care.
It was as natural to this boy to write as to
another to play ball, or go fishing, or experiment
with the tools of a neighbour carpenter, or feel
out tunes on a musical instrument. When reci-
tations were over, and study did not press, or
he was not walking in Mount Auburn woods


INTRODUCTION
ix
or the wild country around Fresh Pond, he
betook himself to his journal. It was his con-
fidential friend : his ambitions, his disappoint-
ments, his religious meditations, his mortifi-
cations, his romantic imaginings, his sillinesses,
his trial-flights in verse, his joy in Byron and
Scott, or Everett's orations, the ideas gathered
from serious books, — all went in, everything
but what might be expected in a boy's diary;
for of incidents, of classmates, of students' do-
ings, there is hardly an entry.
Throughout, and increasingly in later years,
these are journals, not of incidents and per-
sons, but of thoughts.
With the biography of Mr. Emerson in mind
or in hand, the outward conditions, or relations
with people or public events which suggested
a train of thought, may perhaps be found. A
talk, or ramble with a friend, or the reading
of a book, may be mentioned, but soon the
thought takes its own direction. More often
the thoughts were on the great, the abiding
questions.
The journals of exile in Florida and of the
i On this account it seemed well to introduce the annals of
the Pythologian Club, of which Emerson was Secretary, giv-
ing a flavour of the students' life at that time and his part in it.


INTRODUCTION
visit to Europe in 1833 are exceptional, as
being real records of daily life, of voyages in a
packet ship, of sight-seeing, of travel in Malta,
Sicily, the Italian cities, through the Brenner
Pass, to Paris, the sights as well as thoughts
there; then of the visits in England, and the
voyage home. Much of the account of the visits
to Landor, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Car-
lyle is omitted in these volumes, as it is printed
in English Traits. The notes of the second trip
abroad are less full. Mr. Emerson printed many
of them in that book, and others have been
given in the notes to that volume in the Cen-
tenary Edition. During his third journeying
abroad, in 1871–72, when, sent by his friends,
Mr. Emerson visited England, France, Italy
and Egypt, he took no notes, as his health and
spirits were far below their usual standard.
After 1833, the journals are of greater inter-
est, for Mr. Emerson was entering on a new
life and founding his new home, whither he
brought his wife, Lidian Jackson, and where
their children were born. One finds the men-
tion of the planting of trees, the gradually
added fields, orchard, and — best for him—
woodland by Walden. Turning his back on
tradition, he sought the living God in Nature


INTRODUCTION
and the soul. The book Nature sped well and
was soon published. Day by day, the journal
was the storehouse of the thoughts given him in
the wood.
Wandering voices in the air
And murmurs in the wold
Speak what I cannot declare,
Yet cannot all withhold.
These journals are reflections, sometimes
dim, sometimes clear, of the inner life as stirred
by the outer. The study of Nature led to in-
creasing interest in Natural History, but always
as a key to unlock chambers of thought. The
first lectures after his European trip were on
this subject.
Mr. Emerson often preached by invitation in
various towns for several years, with good ac-
ceptance. But when, in 1837 and 1838, he spoke
for free thought in letters and religion before
chosen audiences gathered at the University,
reaction followed and he stood condemned by
many of the elder professors, clergy, and lead-
ing citizens, as visionary, dangerous, or insane.
The journals show that, however bravely Mr.
Emerson stood against the tide which then
looked so strong, it seemed at the time as if he
might be outlawed as speaker and writer, and


xii
INTRODUCTION
have to turn to the soil for a living. The event
quickly did away with such a fear. Societies
at country colleges, apparently unaware of his
heresies, asked him, year by year, to speak to
them ; his Boston lectures won him increasing
audiences, and new friends, and the spread of
the Lyceums from East to West gave him a
hearing wide as could be desired. The bases
of these lectures, which, thus tested and sifted,
became the essays, came from these day-book
entries of thoughts, sights, experiences, and the
fine passages of his reading.
Now new friends appear one by one: the
young Thoreau, loyal and skilful helper in all
practical matters, yet keeping his fine inde-
pendence, the Platonic Alcott, Jones Very the
mystic, Father Taylor, Dr. Hedge, and always
the beautiful and sisterly presence of Miss Eliza-
beth Hoar, who should have been the wife of
Charles Emerson. The new home had been sad-
dened by the death of the two brilliant younger
brothers, Edward fading away in Porto Rico,
and Charles, not two years later, in Concord. A
few years later Samuel Gray Ward is often al-
luded to, to whom the “ Letters to a Friend”
were written ; then Margaret Fuller came, and
Charles Newcomb from Providence, a youth


INTRODUCTION
xiii
for whom Emerson cared much, and later, Ellery
Channing and Hawthorne became his neigh-
bours.
The earlier friends, of course, appear : the
venerable Doctor Ripley and his beneficent son
Rev. Samuel, of Waltham, his gifted wife, Sarah
Bradford, and her brother George, whom Mr.
Cabot speaks of as the only “crony” that Mr
Emerson ever had. At this period Waldo, the
little son so soon to be taken away, comes into
the Journal, a delight to his father.
The Transcendental Epoch meantime comes
on, with its star-led souls, but also many re-
formers of small and strange pattern, uncom-
fortable creatures who had hitched their wagons
to the smallest asteroids. These were hospita-
bly heard and fed,– Mr. Emerson's humanity,
as appears in the journals, helped out by his
sense of humour. Always the friend across the
sea, Carlyle, remains a planet in his heaven,
though sometimes with smoky and lurid light.
Goethe's wide range of thought was stimulat-
ing, especially in the domain of Art, but the
New England conscience could not accept the
man.
A little earlier than the days of the Dial, the
Neo-platonists stirred Mr. Emerson by their


xiv
INTRODUCTION
mysticism and strange imagery, and from them
he followed upward the stream of thought that
had influenced these to their remote sources in
the scriptures of the ancient East. He found
delight by the way in the gardens of Persia,
with Saadi and Hafiz. In the verse-books
many trial-renderings of their poems (from the
German) are found. Traces of all these influ-
ences appear in his notes.
In 1848, Mr. Emerson, setting his face to-
wards home after his stay in England, wrote
“Boundless freedom in America," but was
forced to add “in the North,” for from that
time on for thirteen years the cloud of Slavery
grew darker, and the attitude of Northern poli-
ticians and merchants was sadly subservient,
while the “comfortable classes " seemed indif-
ferent, even the clergy and the scholars. Cer-
tain of the journals show how heavily the load
of the Country's shame lay on Emerson, and
in them are found his notes of opinions given
by great men of law, which he had sought out,
on the basal rights of man and the supremacy
of the moral law. In these days, although he
well knew that the law of Compensation was
sleeplessly working, out of sight - already the
rifts made by Conscience were running through


INTRODUCTION
XV
the parties, — its slow action tried even his
brave philosophy. He saw too far to devote
his life to abate this special evil, but his aid
was never wanting at a time of danger, as a
strong ally to those brave men who did. Loyal
to the ideal Republic, disregarding coldness or
hostility, there was no tremor in his voice as it
rang out clearly for the eternal rights. In those
years he had the relief each winter, given by his
lecturing journeys afar, of seeing the new coun-
try of youth and courage, and speaking a word
for Freedom as he passed.
The war came, and he rejoiced in the clear-
ing of the heavens once more, though grieving
at the wreck left by the cruel storm. In the
journal of January, 1862, when Mr. Emerson
gave before the Smithsonian Institute in Wash-
ington his lecture “Civilization at a Pinch,
in which he earnestly urged Emancipation, he
wrote out, in detail unusual for him, the story of
his meeting President Lincoln, Seward, Chase,
Sumner, and others of the leading actors in the
great drama.
Peace returned, and the Country seemed
one to be proud of as never before. Mr. Emer-
son's relief and his high hopes appear in the
journals, and reappear in the poems and later


xvi
INTRODUCTION
essays. Then began a calmer, pleasanter chapter
in his life. Years ago he had “ planted himself
on his thought,” and now “the world had come
round to him.” He was now widely known on
both sides of the ocean through his words and
work, and welcomed as a helper. But the in-
creasing call for lectures from a newer West
beyond the Mississippi allowed no abatement
of work, and the journeying, though less expos-
ing, was greater. His material was still accumu-
lating, but the arrangement of the choice pieces
into a harmonious mosaic was growing more
difficult than ever for him. One day he met
the God of Bounds, who said,
No more !
No farther shoot
Thy broad, ambitious branches and thy root.
Fancy departs: no more invent;
Contract thy firmament
To compass of a tent.
· · · · · · · ·
A little while
Still plan and smile,
And — fault of novel germs —
Mature the unfallen fruit.
“ Timely wise,” he accepted the terms; but,
until he told of this meeting, no one had found


INTRODUCTION xvii
out that he was growing old. His powers failed
so gradually that not until the shock and ex-
posure, culminating in serious illness, at the
time of the burning of his house, did anyone
realize that his strength was failing. But the
journals show it, for although in the middle
period of his life the entries in these were not so
many as when his time was freer, after the war they
are much fewer. The fact that Society and Soli-
tude, and May Day, the second book of poems,
were in preparation partly accounts for this.
Mr. Emerson had great happiness in that
period in giving rein to his poetic instinct, now
refined, and in “crooning rhymes” as he walked
in the woods, — lines for“ May Day,”“Wald-
einsamkeit,” “My Garden," and other frag-
ments. The verse-book filled as the journal
shrank.
With the illness of 1872 the journals practi-
cally came to an end, nor after that time did
Mr. Emerson do any original work except
endeavouring to mend or arrange passages in
unpublished lectures for the promised volume
Letters and Social Aims ; but he felt his inabil-
ity for this task, and consented to the calling
in by his family of Mr. Cabot's willing and
admirable aid.


xviii
INTRODUCTION
A few things remain to be said :-
1. In these volumes are selections; not the
whole, but the greater part of the contents of
the journals.
2. During his most productive years Mr.
Emerson used in his books a great part of the
thoughts set down in the journals, often with
little or no change in form. Such paragraphs are
for the most part left out, but sometimes, if im-
portant, are referred to. In some instances it
seems well to give the original form, which may
show the conditions.
3. Most of the personal references, unless
too private, are given. Mr. Emerson's notes
are free from offence in this particular.
4. The passages in which “Osman" appears
are not to be taken as exact autobiography,
though they come near being so. “Osman”
represents, not Emerson himself, but an ideal
man whose problems and experiences are like
his own.
5. In some cases where Mr. Emerson quotes
passages from memory erroneously, the true
version has been given.
6. The reading of the youth, as shown by
the quotations, seems to have been so wide,
and his love of certain authors so great and


INTRODUCTION
xix
constant, that it seemed well to give lists of the
books referred to or authors mentioned in each
year up to 1833. Of course many of these
quotations were at second hand, yet led the
eager scholar to seek out the original work.
Plutarch, Shakspeare, Milton, Montaigne,
Jonson, Newton, Burke, Scott, Byron, Words-
worth, are quoted so often that we have in the
lists, year by year, set down their recurring
names to show his love for them. After 1833
only the notable books of the newer reading
will be mentioned.
It is interesting to see on the pages of the
early journals how the boy's hand instinctively
strayed from writing to drawing heads. A few
of these are given in the illustrations which
seem to show that Emerson had some gift in
that direction, had he chosen to follow it.
The cordial thanks of the editors are due
to those friends who have helped them in their
task by their valuable counsel.
EDWARD W. EMERSON.
September, 1909.





CONTENTS
COLLEGE
3
JOURNAL I
1820
Socrates, "Phrases poetical.” Song for Conventicle Club.
Rebellion of 1820 . . . . . . . . . .
JOURNAL II
1820
Dedication. “Edward Search.” Imagination. The Mov-
ing Universe. Pulpit Eloquence. Webster. Occupa-
tions. Romantic dreams. Return of Spring. Everett's
Lecture. Greek. Invocation of Spirits. Sortes Virgili-
ana. Ben Jonson. Barrow. Cloud-shows. Bacon :
The Novum Organum. The Possible Friend. Specula-
tions in the Future. Consideration of the Journal.
Books. Record of the [Pythologian] Society. ..
JOURNAL III
1820
Drama. The Exact Sciences. Poems : To the possible
Friend; Care and Caress . . . . . . . .
JOURNAL IV
1820–21
The Gift of Fancy. Professor Ticknor's Lecture. Verses,
Fancy. Journal-writing versus Mathematics. Everett.
10
52


xxii
CONTENTS
Exhibition Day ; Oratory of Barnwell and Upham.
The Possible friend again ; verses. Milton. Scott's
Abbot. Recipes to occupy the time. Everett; Value
of Simplicity in Eloquence. Imitation of Chateau-
briand. Escape from his School-room. Everett's
Sermon. Aunt Mary's Religion. Price On Morals.
Use of Sickness. Recovery ; Prayer. The Possible
Mind again. Everett. Books. The Universe, a Quota-
tion-Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
TEACHER
JOURNAL V
1822
Contrast. Aunt Mary on Genius. Religion ; its History,
Of Poetry. Drama. A Venture in Romance. Verses,
Idealism. The Circle of the Virtues . . . . .
95
JOURNAL VI
1822
Dedication. Providence. Novels. College revisited. A
Romance; Verses. Social Feelings. Romance waning.
A Vision. Greatness. Ballad, The Knight and the Hag.
Social Feelings again. Death. Drama again, Fiction,
Prophecy. · ·, · · · · · · · · · III
JOURNAL VII
1822
Dedication ; The Giant of Chimborazo. Vain World.
Populace. Martyrdoma Habit. Reflections: From


CONTENTS
xxiii
Senior to School-teacher; Mortification. Otis in Faneuil
Hall. Poem, Marathon. The coming Walking-jour-
ney. The Country ; The Wood-Gods. Drama again.
God. Differing Rank of Nations ; Greece. Licoő, song
of the Tonga Islanders . . . . . . . . . 132
JOURNAL VIII
1822
Dedication ; The Spirit of America. The Moral Law.
God. Poem, The River. Drama again. Reason.
Drama again. The Organ of Siphar Trees. The Land
of Not. Clarke, Butler, Paley, Sherlock, Newton.
Conclusion ; Webster . . . . . . . . 160
JOURNAL IX
1822
Dedication. Vision of Slavery. Moral Law again. Jus-
tice. God's Benevolence. Professor Andrews Norton.
Verses, Solitary Fancies. The Friend denied. Benevo-
lence again. Greatness. America. Books . . . . 176
JOURNAL X
1822–23
Dedication. Good Hope. Alfred the Great. Everett's
Lecture. Death. Time. Moral Sense. Enthusiasm.
Prayer. History ; its dark side ; meagreness in pros-
perous times. Domestic Manners and Morals. Solitude.
Imagination versus Thought. Animals. Body and Soul.
Men of God . . . . . . . . . . . 205


xxiy
CONTENTS
JOURNAL XI
1823
Dedication. Time. Poem, The Bell. Free Thinking.
Self-Examination. Poem, A Sbout to the Shepberds.
America a Field for Work. Compensation. Moral
Obligation. Dramatic Fragment(blank verse). Morals
pervading the Universe. Trade. Reading in Job.
Temptation. Epilogue . . . . . . . . ; 232
JOURNAL XII
1823
A Walk to the Connecticut ; Framingham, Worcester,
Leicester, Brookfield, Western, Ware, Belchertown,
Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Hadley, Hatfield, Whate.
ly, Deerfield, Greenfield, Montagu, Wendell, New
Salem, Hubbardston, Princeton, Sterling, Waltham.
The Tides of Thought. God and his Works. William
Withington. Andover Seminary. Edwards, On the
Will. Letter to Withington on Studies and Reading.
Dr. Channing's Sermon. Verses. Hume's Essay.
Edinburgh Review. Love. Fear of Criticism. Verses,
Sbakspeare. Religion, Milton's Prose. Books. . 267
JOURNAL XIII
1823–24
Sameness. Self-esteem. Romance. Crossing Stocks. East
Indian Mythology. Beauty. Verses, Thought. The
Puritan Movement. A School. Aristocracy. Genius
versus Knowledge. Friendship. Society. Beginnings.


CONTENTS
XXV
Action and Thought. Burke, Fox, Pitt, Franklin. No
Original Work now. Verses. The Egyptians. The
Farmer. Philosophic Imagination, Buckminster. Lux-
ury. Letter to Aunt Mary : Reason and Science in
Religion ; Newton, Metric System. Earl Carnarvon's
Speech. Chauncy and Whitefield. Letter from Aunt
Mary: Reproof; Poetry a Tempter ; Cæsar and Cic-
ero; Inborn Images ; The Drama ; The Apocalypse.
Priestcraft . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
JOURNAL XIV
1824
Pascal. Praise. Inventions. Asia, Bossuet. Auld Lang
Syne. Nowadays, Education. Moral Beauty, Bancroft.
Sentiment. Poem, Goodbye, Proud World. Metaphors.
Country Life. The Puritans, Melioration. Poem, The
Blackbird; Country Life again. Young America.
Letter to Aunt Mary. Self-Examination: Natural
Defects; Dupe of Hope. Poems: Goodbye, Proud
World continued ; To-day. Letter from Aunt Mary:
Study of Nature, Solitude and The Poets, Independ-
ent Thought; Everett ; The Age ; God's Bow in
the Clouds. Letter to Aunt Mary : Defence of The
Present Age ; Spirit of Liberty as against Mediæval
Religion ; Franklin versus Homer. Self-Examination
again ; Choice of Profession. Creeds do not satisfy,
nor Metaphysics, nor Ethics; Position of Man. Verses,
Asia. Letter to Plato. The Greeks. Young America.
Manners. Books. Conclusion . . . . . . . 338





ILLUSTRATIONS
RALPH WALDO Emerson. (Photogravure). · Frontispiece
From a miniature painting, in 1844, by Mrs. Richard
Hildreth.
EMERSON'S COLLEGE Room (Hollis 15) IN HIS JUNIOR
YEAR . . . . . . . . . . . . .
From a water-colour probably painted by him.
MEMORY SKETCH OF MARTIN GAY, BY EMERSON, IN
HIS JOURNAL FOR 1821. . . . . . . . .
70
SKETCHES BY EMERSON, IN THE LEAVES OF HIS COLLEGE
JOURNALS . . . . . . . . . . 138
SOUTH VIEW OF HARVARD COLLEGE YARD FROM CRAIGIE
ROAD, 1823 . . . . . . . . . . . 264
After an engraving in Harvard College Library, from
the painting by Fisber. .





JOURNAL
COLLEGE
6. In the morning, solitude,' said Pythagoras. By
all means give the youth solitude, that Nature may
speak to his imagination, as it does never in company;
and for the like reason give him a chamber alone;-
and that was the best thing I found in college."
Emerson's Journal, 1859.


“I don't think he ever engaged in boys' plays; not
because of any physical inability, but simply because,
from his earliest years, he dwelt in a higher sphere.
My one deep impression is, that, from his earliest
childhood, our friend lived and moved and had his
being in an atmosphere of letters, quite apart by him-
self. I can as little remember when he was not literary
in his pursuits as when I first made his acquaintance.”
From a letter about Emerson by his earliest friend,
Dr. William H. Furness.


JOURNAL I
“ No. XVII”
1820
un
[This “Blotting-Book” rather than Journal,
simply marked “No. XVII,” showing that it
had predecessors, though these are gone, was
begun almost with the year 1820. Emerson was
then a Junior, living in Hollis Hall, No. 15.
A rude but faithful little picture in water-colours
of that room, apparently done by him, is found
in “The Wide World,” No. 1. Its bare floor,
uncurtained window, cheap paper, and Spartan
furniture, fairly represent the brave simplicity
of those days. The pictures are probably such
engravings of eminent divines as could be spared
from home,–George Whitefield, Dr. Samuel
Cooper, Rev. Charles Chauncy, or other lights
of that ministry for which the boy was already
destined. His chum was John Gaillard Keith
Gourdin (pronounced Godyne): yet strangely no
mention of him occurs in the jottings of that
year. Dr. Holmes, in his memoir of Emerson,
says: “The two Gourdins, Robert and John
Gaillard Keith, were dashing young fellows, as


4
JOURNAL
(AGE 16
I recollect them, belonging to Charleston, South
Carolina. The Southerners' were the reigning
college elegans of that time, the merveilleux, the
mirliflores, of their day. Their swallow-tail coats
tapered to an arrow-point angle, and the prints
of their little delicate calf-skin boots in the snow
were objects of great admiration to the village
boys of the period. I cannot help wondering
what brought Emerson and the showy, fascinat-
ing John Gourdin together as room-mates.”
Emerson was writing a dissertation on the
Character of Socrates, for which he received a
Bowdoin Prize. This, with a later prize-disser-
tation,“On the Present State of Ethical Culture,”
were recently printed, with a sketch of Emer-
son's life, by Dr. Edward Everett Hale, in a
small volume published in Boston by the Uni-
tarian Association. For the latter essay Emerson
only received the second prize; his classmate,
Josiah Quincy, won the first. The book is full
of miscellaneous scraps of prose and verse writ-
ten by the boy, and also quoted from a variety
of sources, given below. Many lines from Shak-
speare, Byron, Scott, Dryden, and Moore, clas-
sified by the initial letter, are stored away there
for use in a game, now becoming obsolete, called
“Capping verses.” The following passages from
Us SC
IS


lead him astray after will. the wish over wilderness
y few bright him washimahestly hobgobling-wreak
your vengeance as you will - He gives you free
love on this sole condition, = ef you can.
.منJum
August24,
18 20.
EMERSON'S COLLEGE ROOM (HOLLIS 15) IN HIS JUNIOR YEAR





1820]
SOCRATES
a study for the paper on Socrates, together with
some“ Phrases Poetical” which the young author
stored to adorn his sentences or enlarge his vo-
cabulary, and a song for a Club festival, are all
that seem worth while to print.]
January, 1820. (Age, 16.)
The ostentatious ritual of India which wor-
shipped God by outraging nature, though soft-
ened as it proceeded West, was still too harsh a
discipline for Athenian manners to undergo.—
Socrates had little to do with these and perhaps
his information on the subject was very limited.
He was not distinguished for knowledge or gen-
eral information, but for acquaintance with the
mind and its false and fond propensities, its
springs of action, its assailable parts; in short,
his art laid open its deepest recesses, and he han-
dled it and moulded it at will. Indeed we do not
have reason to suppose that he was intimately
versed in his own national literature, Herodotus,
Homer, Thucydides, Pindar, etc.—His profes-
sion in early life had perhaps imparted a little
of poetic inspiration, but his leading feature
seems to have been sagacity — little refinement,
little erudition. His genius resembled Æsop.
The greatness of the philosopher shines forth


JOURNAL [Age 16
in its fullest lustre when we examine the origi-
nality, the bold and unequalled sublimity of his
conceptions. His powerful mind had surmounted
the errours of education and had retained useful
acquisitions, whilst it discarded what was absurd
or unprofitable. He studied Nature with a chas-
tised enthusiasm, and the constant activity of his
mind endowed him with an energy of thought
little short of inspiration. When he speaks of
the immortality of the soul, or when he enters
on considerations of the attributes or nature of
the deity, he leaves the little quibblings of the
sophists, and his own inferiour strains of irony,
and his soul warms and expands with his subject;
we forget that he is man- he seems seated like
Jupiter Creator moulding magnificent forms and
clothing them with beauty and grandeur. ...
What is God? said the disciples, and Plato
replied, It is hard to learn and impossible to
divulge. ...
In Athens, learning was not loved for its own
sake, but for sinister ends. It was prized as a
saleable commodity. The Sophists bargained
their literature, such as it was, for a prize which,
always exorbitant, was regulated by the ability


1820) PHRASES. SONG 7
of the disciple. And this must always happen
more or less in the infancy of letters. In a money-
making community literature will soon thrive.
It must always follow, not precede, successful
trade. The first wants to be supplied are the na-
tive ones of animal subsistence and comfort,
and when these are more than provided for, and
luxury and ease begin to look about them for
new gratification, the mind then urges its claim
to cultivation. ...
For use — PHRASES POETICAL
rescuing and crowning virtue. “ coldest complexion
of age.” ill-conditioned. cameleon. zeal. booked in
alphabet. cushioned. compunction. beleaguered. hali-
dom. galloping. whortleberry. spikenard. staunch.
council-chamber. star-crossed. till its dye was doubled
on the crimson cross. countless multitudes. abut-
ments. panoply. sycophant smile. kidnapping. be-
headed. demigods. signal (adjective). Cleopatra. am-
bidexter. register (verb). defalcation.
Sjoner
SONG
You may say what you please of the current rebellion,
Tonight the Conventicle drink to a real one;'
i The Conventicle was a somewhat convivial club, estab-
lished in their Junior year by some of Emerson's friends,
Samuel Alden being Bishop, and John B. Hill, Parson. The
“ current rebellion,” being some outbreak of Sophomores,


JOURNAL AGE 16
The annals of ages have blazoned its fame
And pæans are chanted to hallow its name.
Derry down, etc.
Alas for the windows the Sophs have demolished !
Alas for the Laws that they are not abolished !
And that Dawes could abide the warm battle's
brunt,
And the Government vote it was Gay, Lee and Blunt.
Derry down.
But this shock of the Universe who could control ?
Aghast in despair was each Sophomore's soul,
Save one, who alone in his might could stand forth
To grapple with elements – Mr. Danforth.”
Derry down.
nents
could be looked down on smilingly by Juniors who had, the
year before, been more or less involved in a “real one "
celebrated in that epic, The Rebelliad, which has been from
time to time reprinted; also described in Josiah Quincy's
Figures of the Past.
i Of the above-mentioned victims, Martin Gay and John
Clarke Lee, Sophomores, were suspended ; and though they
finished their college course, did not receive their academic
degrees until 1841 and 1842 respectively. Nathanael B. Blunt,
also a Sophomore, was dismissed from College. Samuel Dan-
forth remained with the class into the Senior year, but did not
receive a degree. Rufus Dawes, a Freshman, seems to have
ended his college career in the Sophomore year.


1820)
SONG
Let the Earth and the Nations to havoc go soon,
And the world tumble upward to mix with the moon;
Old Harvard shall smile at the rare conflagration,
The Coventicle standing her pledge of salvation.
Derry down.


JOURNAL II
THE WIDE WORLD, NO. 1
1820
[The journals from February, 1820, to July,
1824, bear the name “The Wide World,” and
extracts from all of these are given here, except-
ing No. 6, which is missing.)
February, 1820.
Mixing with the thousand pursuits and pas-
sions and objects of the world as personified
by Imagination, is profitable and entertaining.
These pages are intended at their commence-
ment to contain a record of new thoughts (when
they occur); for a receptacle of all the old ideas
that partial but peculiar peepings at antiquity
can furnish or furbish; for tablet to save the
wear and tear of weak Memory, and, in short,
for all the various purposes and utility, real or
imaginary, which are usually comprehended
under that comprehensive title Common Place
book. Oye witches, assist me! enliven or horrify
some midnight lucubration or dream (whichever
may be found most convenient) to supply this


1820)
DEDICATION
II
reservoir when other resources fail. Pardon me,
Fairy Land! rich region of fancy and gnomery,
elvery, sylphery, and Queen Mab! pardon me
for presenting my first petition to your enemies,
but there is probably one in the chamber who
maliciously influenced me to what is irrevo-
cable; pardon and favour me! — And finally,
Spirits of Earth, Air, Fire, Water, wherever ye
glow, whatsoever you patronize, whoever you
inspire, hallow, hallow this devoted paper —
Dedicated and Signed January 25, 1820,
JUNIO.
After such a dedication, what so proper to
begin with as reflections on or from Edward
Search?: It is a fine idea which he either intends
i The nom de plume always used by Abraham Tucker
(1705-1774), an English scholar, country gentleman and
magistrate. His writings were highly praised by Dugald Stew-
art, Sir James Mackintosh, Hazlitt and others. Leigh Hunt
called him “ The most agreeable of metaphysicians,” and
Paley said, “I have found in this writer more original think-
ing and observation upon the several subjects he has taken in
hand than in any other, not to say than all others put to-
gether.” His principal works are : 1. A Country Gentle-
man's Advice to his Son; 2. Free will, Foreknowledge and
Fate ; 3. Man in Quest of Himself, or a Defence of the Indi-
viduality of the Human Mind or Self ; 4. The Light of Na-
ture Pursued.


12
JOURNAL (AGE 16
to convey, or else the form of expression unin-
tentionally did (pray let us believe the latter for
the credit of originality) that those parts of the
world which man cannot or does not inhabit are
the abodes of other orders of sentient being,
invisible or unperceived by him. To amplify:
Perhaps the inferiour centre of the earth, the
bottomless depths and the upper paths of Ocean,
the lands circumjacent to the poles, the high
rock and clefts of the rock, are peopled by
higher beings than ourselves;- animals cast in
more refined mould; not subject to the incon-
veniences, woes, etc., of our species — to whom,
as to us, this world appears made only for
them, and among whom our very honest and
honourable species are classed only as the high-
est order of brutes — perhaps called of the bee
kind. When Imagination has formed this class
of beings and given them the name of Supro-
mines, it will be perfectly convenient to rise
again to an order higher than these last, hold-
ing our self-complacent friends, the Supromines,
in as utter contempt as they us, or as we the
beasts, and then she may rise to another and an-
other, till, for aught I know, she may make this
world one of the Mansions of heaven, and in
parts of it, though in and around, yet thoroughly


1820] THE MOVING UNIVERSE 13
m
e
.
unknown to us, the seraphim and cherubim
may live and enjoy. I have now already fallen
into an errour, which may be a very common
one, to hunt an idea down, when obtained, in
such a remorseless manner as to render dull
and flat an idea originally plump, round and
shining.
Perhaps our system and all the planets, stars,
we can discover, nay, the whole interminable
Universe, is moving on, as has been supposed, in
one grand circle round the centre of light, and
since the world began it has never completed a
single revolution. It is an improvement on the
grandeur of this supposition to suppose there
is a source of light before us and the whole vast
machinery has been forever and is now sweep-
ing forward in a direct line through the inter-
minable fields — extensions of space. It is a
singular fact that we cannot present to the im-
agination a longer space than just so much of
the world as is bounded by the visible horizon;
so that, even in this stretching of thought to
comprehend the broad path lengthening itself
and widening to receive the rolling Universe,
stern necessity bounds us to a little extent of a
few miles only. But what matters it? we can
talk and write and think it out. ... Chateau-


14
JOURNAL (AGE 16
briand's “the universe is the imagination of the
deity made manifest” is worthy him.
“Mount on thy own path to Fame, nor
swerve for man or more than man ” says Cas-
wallon (in “Samor”), and it will be a fine
motto by striking out the last four words.
INDEPENDENCE; PULPIT ELOQUENCE
Let us suppose a pulpit Orator to whom the
path of his profession is yet untried, but whose
talents are good and feelings strong, and his in-
dependence, as a man, in opinion and action is
established; let him ascend the pulpit for the
first time, not to please or displease the multi-
tude, but to expound to them the words of the
book and to waft their minds and devotions to
heaven. Let him come to them in solemnity
and strength, and when he speaks he will claim
attention with an interesting figure and an in-
terested face. To expand their views of the sub-
lime doctrines of the religion, he may embrace
the universe and bring down the stars from
their courses to do homage to their Creator.
i Samor, Lord of the Bright City, an Heroic Poem, by
the Rev. Henry Hunt Milman, M. A., New York (reprint),
C. Wiley & Co., 1818.


1820] PULPIT ELOQUENCE 15
Here is a fountain which cannot fail them.
Wise Christian orators have often and profit-
ably magnified the inconceivable power of the
Creator as manifested in his works, and thus
elevated and sobered the mind of the people
and gradually drawn them off from the world
they have left by the animating ideas of Majesty,
Beauty, Wonder, which these considerations be-
stow. Then when life and its frivolities is fastly
flowing away from before them, and the spirit
is absorbed in the play of its mightiest energies,
and their eyes are on him and their hearts are
in heaven, then let him discharge his fearful
duty, then let him unfold the stupendous de-
signs of celestial wisdom, and whilst admiration
is speechless, let him minister to their unearthly
wants, and let the ambassador of the Most High
prove himself worthy of his tremendous voca-
tion. Let him gain the tremendous eloquence
which stirs men's souls, which turns the world
upside down, but which loses all its filth and
retains all its grandeur when consecrated to God.
When a congregation are assembled together to
hear such an apostle, you may look round and
you will see the faces of men bent forward in
the earnestness of expectation, and in this desir-
able frame of mind the preacher may lead them
IS
Sd


16
[AGE 16
JOURNAL
whithersoever he will; they have yielded up
their prejudices to the eloquence of the lips
which the archangel hath purified and hallowed
with fire, and this first sacrifice is the sin-offer-
ing which cleanseth them.
WEBSTER
February 7th.
Mr. K., a lawyer of Boston, gave a fine char-
acter of a distinguished individual in private
conversation, which in part I shall set down.
“Webster is a rather large man, about five feet,
seven, or nine, in height, and thirty-nine or forty
years old — he has a long head, very large black
eyes, bushy eyebrows, a commanding expres-
sion, and his hair is coal-black, and coarse as
a crow's nest. His voice is sepulchral — there is
not the least variety or the least harmony of
tone- it commands, it fills, it echoes, but is harsh
and discordant. — He possesses an admirable
readiness, a fine memory and a faculty of perfect
abstraction, an unparallelled impudence and a
tremendous power of concentration - he brings
all that he has ever heard, read or seen to bear
on the case in question. He growls along the bar
to see who will run, and if nobody runs he will
fight. He knows his strength, has a perfect con-


1820)
WEBSTER
17
re
fidence in his own powers, and is distinguished by
a spirit of fixed determination; he marks his path
out, and will cut off fifty heads rather than turn
out of it; but is generous and free from malice,
and will never move a step to make a severe re-
mark. His genius is such that, if he descends to
be pathetic, he becomes ridiculous. He has no
wit and never laughs, though he is very shrewd
and sarcastic, and sometimes sets the whole court
in a roar by the singularity or pointedness of a
remark. His imagination is what the light of a
furnace is to its heat, a necessary attendant-no-
thing sparkling or agreeable, but dreadful and
gloomy.”— This is the finest character I have
ever heard pourtrayed, and very truly drawn, with
little or no exaggeration. With respect to the
cause of a town's condition of bad society he said
well, “There is stuff to make good society, but
they are discordant atoms,” and regarding the
contrasting and comparing the worthy and great
dead, -"you may not tell a man 'your neigh-
bor's house is higher than yours,' but you may
measure gravestones and see which is the tall-
est."
CAMBRIDGE, March 11th, 1820.
Thus long I have been in Cambridge this
term (three or four weeks) and have not before


18
JOURNAL (Age 16
this moment paid my devoirs to the Gnomes to
whom I dedicated this quaint and heterogene-
ous manuscript. Is it because matter has been
wanting? — noI have written much elsewhere
in prose, poetry, and miscellany - let me put
the most favourable construction on the case and
say that I have been better employed. Beside
considerable attention, however unsuccessful, to
college studies, I have finished Bisset's life of
Burke, as well as Burke's “Regicide Peace,” to-
gether with considerable variety of desultory
reading, generally speaking, highly entertaining
and instructive. The Pythologian poem' does
not proceed very rapidly, though I have experi-
enced some poetic moments. Could I seat my-
self in the alcove of one of those public libraries
which human pride and literary rivalship have
made costly, splendid and magnificent, it would
indeed be an enviable situation. I would plungen
into the classic lore of chivalrous story and of
the fairy-land bards, and unclosing the ponder-
ous volumes of the firmest believers in magic
and in the potency of consecrated crosier or
elfin ring, I would let my soul sail away delighted
into their wildest phantasies. Pendragon is rising
i A poem written for another Club, which will be later
mentioned.


1820)
IMAGININGS
19
before my fancy, and has given me permission
to wander in his walks of Fairy-land and to pre-
sent myself at the bower of Gloriana. I stand in
the fair assembly of the chosen, the brave and
the beautiful; honour and virtue, courage and
delicacy are mingling in magnificent joy. Un-
stained knighthood is sheathing the successful
blade in the presence of unstained chastity. And
the festal jubilee of Fairy-land is announced by
the tinkling of its silver bells. The halls are full
of gorgeous splendour and the groves are joy-
ous with light and beauty. The birds partake and
magnify the happiness of the green-wood shades
and the music of the harp comes swelling on the
gay breezes. Or other views more real, scarcely
less beautiful, should attract, enchain me. All
the stores of Grecian and Roman literature may
be unlocked and fully displayed —or, with the
Indian enchanters, send my soul up to wander
among the stars till “ the twilight of the gods.”
April 2d.
Spring has returned and has begun to unfold
her beautiful array, to throw herself on wild-
flower couches, to walk abroad on the hills and
summon her songsters to do her sweet homage.
The Muses have issued from the library and
e
IS


20
JOURNAL (Age 16
costly winter dwelling of their votaries, and are
gone up to build their bowers on Parnassus, and
to melt their ice-bound fountains. Castalia is
flowing rapturously and lifting her foam on high.
The hunter and the shepherd are abroad on the
rock and the vallies echo to the merry, merry
horn. The Poet, of course, is wandering, while
Nature's thousand melodies are warbling to him.
This soft bewitching luxury of vernal gales and
accompanying beauty overwhelms. It pro-
duces a lassitude which is full of mental enjoy-
ment and which we would not exchange for
more vigorous pleasure. Although so long as
the spell endures, little or nothing is accom-
plished, nevertheless, I believe it operates to
divest the mind of old and worn-out contem-
plations and bestows new freshness upon life,
and leaves behind it imaginations of enchant-
ment for the mind to mould into splendid forms
and gorgeous fancies which shall long continue
to fascinate, after the physical phenomena which
woke them have ceased to create delight.
April 4th.
Judging from opportunity enjoyed, I ought
to have this evening a flow of thought, rich,
abundant and deep; after having heard Mr.


1820) EVERETT’S LECTURE 21
Everett deliver his Introductory Lecture, in
length one and one half hour, having read much
and profitably in the Quarterly Review, and
lastly having heard Dr. Warren's introductory
lecture to anatomy, — all in the compass of a
day! — and the mind possessing a temperament
well adapted to receive with calm attention what
was offered., Shall endeavor to record promiscu-
ously received ideas:— Though the literature
of Greece gives us sufficient information with
regard to later periods of their commonwealth, as
we go back, before the light of tradition comes
in, the veil drops. “All tends to the mysterious
i Edward Everett was appointed in 1815, first to fill the
chair of Greek Literature just founded anonymously by Samuel
Eliot. He went to Europe to fit himself for it. Many years
later, Mr. Emerson wrote, “ Germany had created criticism in
vain for us until 1820, when Edward Everett returned from
his five years in Europe and brought to Cambridge his rich
results, which no one was so fitted by natural grace and the
splendor of his rhetoric to introduce and recommend.” (See
long passage in his praise in “ Historic Notes of Life and Let-
ters in New England” in Lectures and Biographical Sketches,
vol. x, Emerson's Works.)
Dr. John Collins Warren, second in a line of eminent sur-
geons which still holds high place in Boston, and founder of
the Warren Museum, after six years' service as adjunct pro-
fessor, had succeeded his father as Hersey Professor of Anatomy
and Surgery


22
JOURNAL [AGE 16
East.” . . . From the time of the first disper-
sion of the human family to the time of Grecian
rise, everything in the history of man is obscure,
and we think ourselves sufficiently fortunate “if
we can write in broad lines the fate of a dynasty,”
though we know nothing of the individuals who
composed it. The cause is the inefficiency and
uncertainty of tradition in those early and igno-
rant times when the whole history of a tribe was
lodged in the head of its patriarch, and in his
death their history was lost. But even after the
invention of letters, much, very much, has never
reached us. This we need not regret. What was
worth knowing was transmitted to posterity, the
rest buried in deserved forgetfulness. Every-
thing was handed down which ought to be
handed down. The Phenicians gave the Greeks
their Alphabet, yet not a line of all which they
wrote has come down, while their pupils have
built themselves an imperishable monument of
fame.
IS
I here make a resolution to make myself
acquainted with the Greek language and anti-
quities and history with long and serious atten-
tion and study; (always with the assistance of
circumstances.) To which end I hereby dedicate


1820)
VIRGILIAN LOT
23
and devote to the down-putting of sentences
quoted or original, which regard Greece, his-
torical, poetical and critical, page 47 of this time-
honored register. By the way, I devote page 45
to the notation of Inquirenda and of books to
be sought.
Signed, Junio.
April 30th.
... Ethereal beings to whom I dedicated
the pages of my "Wide World,” do not, I entreat
you, neglect it; when I sleep waken me; when
I weary animate! Wander after moonbeams,
fairies! but bring them home here. Indeed, you
cannot imagine how it would gratify me to wake
up from an accursed Enfield lesson and find a
page written in characters of light by a moon-
beam of Queen Mab! I will give you a subject
-a thousand if you wish; - for instance “Pen-
dragon,” your own Pendragon; record his life
and his glories. “Prince Arthur” if it is not too
trite; or “the Universe," or a broom-stick;
either or all of these, or fifty thousand more.
Tune 7tb.
A very singular chance led me to derive very
sensible answers to the two questions I pro-


24
(AGE 17
JOURNAL
For the first I opened to the
posed to Virgil.
line-
O crudelis Alexi, nihil mea carmina curas.?
For the other I opened to a line, Dryden's
translation of which is —
« Go, let the gods and temples claim thy care."
Have been of late reading patches of Barrow
and Ben Jonson; and what the object — not
curiosity? no — nor expectation of edification
intellectual or moral — but merely because they
are authors where vigorous phrases and quaint,
peculiar words and expressions may be sought
and found, the better“ to rattle out the battle of
my thoughts.” I shall now set myself to give a
good sentence of Barrow's (the whole beauty of
which he has impaired by a blundering colloca-
tion) in purer and more fashionable English; —
Obvious manifestations may be sometimes seen
1 This passage refers to his consulting the Virgilianæ Sortes,
that is, opening Virgil at random and taking the first line the
eye lighted on for an oracle. On the first occasion, he was a
competitor for a college prize for verse. When the prizes
were announced, he had won the second. It is probable that
the other question he propounded was with regard to his voca-
tion in life.
2 Virgil, Eclogue II.


1820] STYLE OF BARROW 25
of the ruling government of God. Sometimes in
the career of triumphant guilt when things have
come to such a pass that iniquity and outrage
do exceedingly prevail, so that the life of the
offender becomes intolerably grievous, a change
comes upon the state of things, however stable
and enduring in appearance, a revolution in a
manner sudden and strange, and flowing from
causes mean and unworthy, which overturneth
the towering fabric of fortune and reduces its
gigantic dimensions; and no strugglings of
might, no fetches of policy, no circumspection
or industry of man availing to uphold it: there
is outstretched an invisible hand checking all
such force and crossing all such devices-a
stone cut out of the mountain without hands
and breaking to pieces the iron and the brass
and the clay and [the] silver and the gold. —
In looking over the sentence however, though
the grand outline of the whole was originally
the Rev. Isaac Barrow's, yet we very self-com-
placently confess that great alterations have ren-
dered it editorially Mr. Ralph Emerson's, and
I intend to make use of it hereafter, after an-
other new modelling, for it is still very suscepti-
ble of improvement.


JOURNAL
[AGE 17
June 19th.
When those magnificent masses of vapour
which load our horizon are breaking away, dis-
closing fields of blue atmosphere, there is an
exhilaration awakened in the system of a sus-
ceptible man which so invigorates the energies
of mind, and displays to himself such manifold
power and joy superiour to other existences, that
he will triumph and exult that he is a man. ...
We feel at these times that eternal analogy which
subsists between the external changes of nature,
and scenes of good and ill that chequer human
life. Joy cometh, but is speedily supplanted by
grief, and we look at the approach of transient
verities like the mists of the morning, fearful
and many, but the fairies are in them and White
Ladies beckoning.
August 8th.
I have been reading the Novum Organum.
Lord Bacon is indeed a wonderful writer; he
condenses an unrivaled degree of matter in one
paragraph. He never suffers himself “to swerve
from the direct forthright,” or to babble or speak
unguardedly on his proper topic, and withal
writes with more melody and rich cadence than
any writer (I had almost said, of England) on a


1820)
BACON
27
similar subject. Although I have quoted in my
“Universe” of composition (by which presump-
tuous term I beg leave to remind myself that
nothing was meant but to express wideness and
variety of range), yet I will add here a fine little
sentence from the thirtieth section of the sec-
ond volume of the Novum Organum. Speaking
of bodies composed of two different species of
things, he says: “but these instances may be
reckoned of the singular or heteroclite kind,
as being rare and extraordinary in the universe;
yet for their dignity they ought to be separately
placed and treated. For they excellently indi-
cate the composition and structure of things;
and suggest the cause of the number of the
ordinary species of the universe ; and lead the
understanding from that which is, to that which
may be.” There is nothing in this sentence
which should cause it to be quoted more than
another. It does not stand out from the rest;
but it struck me accidentally as a very different
sentence from those similarly constructed in
ordinary writers. For instance, in the last three
clauses (beginning “For they excellently”) it is
common to see an author construct a fine sen-
tence in this way, with idle repetitions of the
same idea, embellished a little for the sake of
sam


28
JOURNAL
(AGE 17
shrouding the deception. In this, they all con-
vey ideas determinate, but widely different and
all beautiful and intelligent. — But, says Sterne,
“the cant of criticism is the most provoking.'
There is a strange face in the Freshman class
whom I should like to know very much. He
has a great deal of character in his features and
should be a fast friend or bitter enemy. His
name is — I shall endeavour to become ac-
quainted with him and wish, if possible, that I
might be able to recall at a future period the sin-
gular sensations which his presence produced at
this."
i The name is given, and later scratched out. The person
referred to was Martin Gay of Hingham, who, born in the
same year with Emerson, came to college two years later.
The entries in prose and verse concerning this boy, which
follow in Emerson's journals for the Junior and Senior years,
show how strong the fascination was, for there is a remarkable
absence of mention of other students. It would seem that this
was an imaginary friendship. There is no evidence that the
elder student ever brought himself to risk disenchantment by
active advances, and the younger boy could not understand
why he was watched and even followed afar by this strange
upper-class man. It would have been not unnatural that he
should have resented it, being of an entirely different temper-
ament, and called “Cool Gay” by his classmates. His active
interests are said to have been scientific experiments and the


1820)
ART
29
ans
When we see an exquisite specimen of paint-
ing-whence does the pleasure we experience
arise? From the resemblance, it is immediately
answered, to the works of nature. It is granted
that this is in part the cause, but it can't explain
the whole pleasure we enjoy; for we see more
perfect resemblances (as a stone apple or fruit)
without this pleasure. No, it arises from the
power which we immediately recollect to be
necessary to the creation of the painting.
College Military Company. Gay studied medicine and took
his doctor's degree in 1826. He practised a short time in
New Bedford, then for the rest of his life in Boston. He was
modest and faithful, with a high sense of honour. His practice
grew slowly but steadily, and he was much beloved. His
interests were scientific, chemistry especially. He was a mem-
ber of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and cura-
tor of the department of Mineralogy in the Boston Natural
History Society. As an analytical chemist he acquired a high
reputation, and it is said that his testimony in the courts in
cases of death by poisoning “ marked an era in the history of
medical jurisprudence in this country." Yet although Dr. Gay
lived within twenty miles of Emerson, and was a valued friend
of his wife's brother, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, whose claim to
the discovery of anæsthesia by ether in surgical operations he
loyally defended, it does not appear that Emerson ever really
knew him; yet he always was interested to hear of him, and
was grieved at his untimely death in 1850.


30
JOURNAL (Age 17
August 21st.
In the H [arvard] C[ollege] Athenæum I en-
joyed a very pleasant hour reading the life of
Marlborough in the" Quarterly Review.” I was
a little troubled there by vexatious trains of
thought; but once found myself stopping en-
tirely from my reading and occupied in throw-
ing guesses into futurity while I was asking
myself if, when, ten or a dozen years hence, I
am gone far on the bitter, perplexing roads of
life, when I shall then recollect these moments,
now thought so miserable, shall I not fervently
wish the possibility of their return, and to find
myself again thrown awkwardly on the tilted
chair in the Athenæum study with my book in
my hand; the snuffers and lamps and shelves
around; and Motte' coughing over his news-
paper near me, and ready myself to saunter out
into gaiety and Commons when that variously-
meaning bell shall lift up his tongue.
“Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus.”
August 23, 1820.
To-morrow finishes the Junior year. As it is
i Emerson's classmate, Mellish Irving Motte, from Charles-
ton, S. C. He was minister of the South Congregational
Church in Boston from 1828 to 1842.


1820]
REVIEW
31
time to close our accounts, we will conclude
likewise this book which has been formed from
the meditations and fancies which have sprinkled
the miscellany-corner of my mind for two terms
past. It was begun in the winter vacation. I
think it has been an improving employment
decidedly. It has not encroached upon other
occupations and has afforded seasonable aid
at various times to enlarge or enliven scanty
themes, etc. Nor has it monopolized the ener-
gies of composition for literary exercises. Whilst
I have written in it, I have begun and completed
my Pythologian Poem of 260 lines,' — and
my Dissertation on the Character of Socrates.
It has prevented the ennui of many an idle
moment and has perhaps enriched my stock of
language for future exertions. Much of it has
been written with a view to their preservation,
as hints for a peculiar pursuit at the distance of
years. Little or none of it was elaborate—its
office was to be a hasty, sketchy composition,
containing at times elements of graver order.
i Emerson was secretary of a small literary (and, when
fines permitted, mildly convivial,) club of this name, and on
this 'occasion had written in “heroics” a didactic poem on
Improvement. The record-book of the Club was found among
his papers, and will be given to the College library. Some
extracts from this book will be given later in this volume.


32
JOURNAL
(AGE 17
So fare ye well, gay Powers and Princedoms!
To you the sheets were inscribed. Light thanks
for your tutelary smiles. Grim witches from
Valhalla, and courteous dames from Faery-land,
whose protection was implored and whose dreams
were invoked to furnish forth the scroll, adieu
to you all;—you have the laughing poet's beni-
son and malison, his wish and his forgetfulness.
Abandoning your allegiance, he throws you to
the winds, recklessly defying your malice and
fun. Pinch the red nose; lead him astray after
Will-o'-the-wisp over wilderness and fen; fright
him with ghastly hobgoblins — wreak your ven-
geance as you will — He gives you free leave
on this sole condition, - if you can.
Junio.
ce
ve
August 24, 1820.
Books to be Sought
Wordsworth's Recluse; Quarterly Review,
September, 1819; Liber VIII, of Buchanan's
Scotland — Wallace; Spenser's View of the State
of Ireland; Camden's Annals of Queen Eliza-
beth; Kennet's Life and Characters of Greek
Poets; Hody, De Illustribus Graecis; Middle-
ton's Cicero; Burton's Melancholy; Barrow's
Sermons; Hobbes' Leviathan; Joinville's Life


1819) PYTHOLOGIAN SOCIETY 33
of St. Louis; Froissart's History of England;
Chaucer's Works; Bayle's Dictionaire; Corinne ;
Massinger's Plays; Fletcher's do; Bentley's
Phalaris; Peter's Letters; Letters from Eastern
States; Waverley; Cogan On the Passions ; Sir
Charles Grandison.
Inquirenda
Extent, history of the Troubadours. - Pen-
dragon. — Sir Walter Raleigh's conceipt of the
“Faery Queen.” — Valhalla. — Archipelago. -
Paestum.— Taillefer at the battle of Hastings.
- Illumination (graphic). — Griselda of Boc-
cace. — Walter Raleigh's account of Theories
of Paradise. — Water-spouts.'
EXTRACTS FROM THE RECORD OF THE (Py-
THOLOGIAN ?) SOCIETY,
of which Emerson was for a time Secretary.
1819–1821
[Although in the Secretary's book no name is
given to the Society, and in the record of the
1 A book-club was organized by Emerson and some of his
college friends. They subscribed for some of the English re-
views and for the North American, then new. They also
bought new poems and fiction, especially Scott's novels; and
often read them aloud at their meetings. Of course, most of
the serious reading mentioned in the journals, while in Cam.
bridge, was done in the College library.
Cac
CO
Tes


34
JOURNAL
(Age 16
meeting of June 13, 1819, the committee ap-
pointed to consider the subject reported that “it
is best that the society should have no name,”
and that report was accepted, it there appears
that Emerson was appointed to prepare a poem
for the celebration of the first anniversary of the
Society, and read one, as the accompanying ex-
tracts show. In the journal covering this period,
however, he twice mentions the writing of his
“Pythologian Poem.”]
Several members of the Sophomore class met
at Gourdin's room,' April 24th, 1819, for the
purpose of forming a society, for exercise in com-
position and discussion : Present, Blood, Emer-
son, Frye, Gourdin 2d, Hill 2d," James, Reed,
and Wood. The question, whether it be expe-
dient to form a society for this purpose, was
proposed and debated. Voted unanimously, to
form a society, for these purposes ; Hill 2d,
· Wood and Emerson, were chosen to prepare
regulations and laws, to be presented at the next
meeting. They adjourned to meet at Frye’s
room on the second of May, at half-past 7, P. M.
ma
1 Also Emerson's room.
2 There were two Gourdins and two Hills, brothers, in
the class.


1819) PYTHOLOGIAN SOCIETY
35
LAWS AND REGULATIONS OF THE —
The great design of public education is to
qualify men for usefulness in active life, and the
principal arts by which we can be useful are
those of writing and speaking. -
We are told by those from whose decision
there is no appeal that by constant, unwearied
practice only can facility and excellence in these
arts be attained. We believe that societies, when
well regulated, and supported with spirit, are
of great use towards acquiring these important
qualifications. We therefore agree to form our-
selves into a society for writing and extempo-
raneous speaking, to be called
We engage to endeavour to promote the inter-
ests of the society and the mutual improvement
of each other by freely receiving and impart-
ing instructions, and we pledge our honour to
be governed by the following laws and regula-
tions:'-
Article 1. The society shall consist of no more
than twelve members, and no person shall be
1 The more important of these, submitted by the committee
at the meeting of May 2, and adopted and signed by the
members, are here given.


36
JOURNAL (AGE 16
admitted without the consent of every mem-
ber.
Article 4. Six members shall read composi-
tions at every regular meeting, upon subjects
given out by the society, as they are called
upon by the Moderator, and six shall discuss
subjects proposed at the preceding meeting,
each upon the subject assigned him by the so-
ciety.
Article 5. Two members shall be chosen from ·
those who read compositions to decide the ques-
tion, and, in case of disagreement, the Modera-
tor shall decide it.
Article 6. Four members shall be chosen by
the society to read essays before the society upon
subjects of their own choice, two at the meeting
nearest the middle of each term to perform at
the meeting nearest the middle of the next term,
and two at the end of each term to perform at
the last meeting of the succeeding term. Any
member neglecting or refusing to read a com-
position or discuss, shall be fined twelve and
one-half cents; for neglecting to read an essay,
fifty cents. Disorderly or disrespectful conduct
shall subject the offender to a fine of six and
one-quarter cents; non-attendance shall be fined
twelve and one-half cents. Any member coming


1819) PYTHOLOGIAN SOCIETY 37
after the meeting shall be fined six and one-
quarter cents."
*JOHN ANGIER ?
*Geo. B. JAMES
Oliver BLOOD *Benj. T. Reed
WARREN BURTON *CHARLES W. UPHAM
RALPH W. EMERSON Natal. Wood
Enoch Frye
EDWARD Kent
John G. K. GOURDIN SAML. H. LYON
JOSEPH B. HILL John M. Cheney
Jn. B. HILL
i Spanish silver coins représenting these amounts were in
general circulation up to the year 1850; the six and one-quar-
ter cents was however called “ fourpence-hapenny,” and the
twelve and one-half cents “ ninepence” in New England, and
in the Western and Southern States a “ bit,” surviving still in
“ two bits” for twenty-five cents.
2 Those whose names are marked with an asterisk were
“honourably dismissed” at their own request.
A few words may be said of some of these members. War-
ren Burton, of Wilton, N. H., became a clergyman, first a
Unitarian, afterwards an enthusiastic Swedenborgian. He
preached in various Massachusetts and New Hampshire towns,
and was minister-at-large among the poor in Boston. But he
chiefly devoted himself to writing and lecturing upon domestic
education and home-culture.
John Gourdin returned to his home in the South and died
early.
John Boynton and Joseph Bancroft Hill, twin brothers,
came from Mason, N. H. The former became a lawyer; the


38
(AGE 16
JOURNAL
October 25th, 1819.
The next meeting being that of the essays, a
committee of three were chosen to provide for
the evening: Blood, Gourdin and Lyon. It was
found necessary by the society to have a partic-
ular sum of money agreed on to be expended
essay evenings."
Accordingly, it was voted that two dollars
should be the sum ; that what the fines did
latter also studied law, but was successively a printer, teacher
and Presbyterian preaching elder, mainly in Tennessee. During
the Civil War he was a field agent of the U. S. Christian Com-
mission and died in that service at Chattanooga.
Charles W. Upham studied divinity and was a minister in
Salem. Later, he was mayor of that city and was sent to
Congress. His book on the Salem witchcraft is well known.
Edward Kent, a handsome, forcible, and dignified man, was
born in Concord, N. H. He studied law and moved to Ban-
gor, Maine, of which city he was mayor. He was twice
Governor of Maine, later, Consul at Rio Janeiro, and finally a
justice of the Supreme Court of Maine.
John M. Cheney lived in Concord, like Emerson, and was
for most of his life cashier of the bank there.
i On essay evenings (if the essays were forthcoming, and
not without) there was some simple refreshment. Mr. Emer-
son used to say that he remembered the Malaga from War-
land's (the grocer) as more delicious than any wine he had
tasted since.


1820] PYTHOLOGIAN SOCIETY 39
not cancel should be paid by an assessment upon
the members. Voted to adjourn till Monday
evening, 6 o'clock, to Br. Gourdin's room, No-
vember 7th.
NATHANIEL Wood, Sec'y.
THANIEL
Monday Ev'g., March 6tb, (1820).
• Met at Br. Wood's room according to ad-
journment. Proceeded to confer on the admis-
sion of a new member, vice Upham. Cheney
was nominated and elected, and Br. Wood ap-
pointed to inform him and invite him to join.
Proceeded to the reading of themes. Brs. Lyon
and Gourdin being absent, chose by lot as vol-
untary discussers Blood, vice Gourdin, and
Wood, vice Lyon. The first discussion between
Kent and Frye was decided in favour of Kent by
Blood and Reed, judges. After discussion, chose
Brs. Kent and Hill ist to appoint subjects for
discussion; Brs. Wood and Burton for themes.
The committee for discussions report:-
· ist: Which is most conducive to individual
happiness, a state of celibacy or matrimony? -
Burton and Reed.
2d: Whether Daddy Tracy can be justified
in spending his days in Cambridge? — Wood
and Blood.


40
[Age 16
JOURNAL
3d: Which is the strongest passion, Love or
Ambition ?—Emerson.
Committee for themes report, “Envy wishes,
and then believes.” Both reports accepted.
Br. Reed requested that the fine which he
had paid for non-performance of Essay might
be refunded, as he had been sick for three weeks
previous to the evening on which it was due,
and was then sick and out of town. Much warm
debate ensuing, he withdrew the request and it
was Voted, That the members of the society as
individuals in the situation of Br. Reed would
consider an essay as due from them.
Adjourned till Monday evening, a fortnight
hence, to meet at 7 o'clock at Br. Emerson's
room.
Attest, R. W. Emerson.
Monday Evg., March 20th [1820).
Met according to adjournment, Br. Kent in
the chair. Proceeded to reading themes, then to
discussion. On account of the absence of Brs.
Hill ist, Gourdin and Lyon, it was Voted that
Brs. Frye and Hill 2d be judges of all the dis-
cussions. Question arising with regard to the
expediency of choosing by lot one who should
voluntarily discuss with Br. Emerson, it was


1820] PYTHOLOGIAN SOCIETY 41
Voted, That in the present or a similar instance
the single discussor should speak alone. The
judges decided the first discussion in favour of
Br. Reed (for celibacy!). On examination of
the second, the judges reported indecision, and
the Moderator decided for Br. Wood. After dis-
cussion, proceeded to hear Br. Wood's report
as committee, who reported that Mr. Cheney
will join the society with pleasure, but cannot
appear till the next meeting. Proceeded to com-
mittees. Brs. Blood and Burton, committee for
discussions, report:-
ist: Whether the accession of the Canadas
to the territory of the U. S. A. would be for
the best interest of this country. – Frye and
Hill ist.
2d: Whether Commons be honourable to
the progress of College literature. — Kent and
Hill 2d.
3d: Whether Cicero or Demosthenes be the
greatest orator. — Gourdin and Lyon.
Committee of themes report “Futurity.”
Voted, That the anniversary of this society,
the 24th of April next, be celebrated by Oration
and Poem. Chose Br. Kent Orator, and Br.
Emerson Poet. As the next meeting is Essay
night, chose Br. Burton and Emerson committee
of arrangements.


42
JOURNAL
(AGE 16
Adjourned to Monday Evg., 7 o'clock, to
meet at Br. Burton's room.
Attest, R. W. Emerson, Sec’y.
Monday Evg., April 3d (1820).
Met according to adjournment. Br. Lyon in
the chair. Proceeded to hear Br. Hill ist's Es-
say Voted, that the thanks of the society be
presented to Br. Hill for his elegant and ingen-
ious performance. Br. Gourdin not being pre-
sent, proceeded to the convivial business of the
evening. Afterwards Br. Gourdin appearing, on
account of the lateness of the time, and other
considerations, it was Voted, That Br. G.'s Essay
should be read at the next ordinary meeting of
the society.
Appointed Brs. Hill 2d and Wood to be the
Essayists at the meeting in the middle of next
term.
Adjourned till April 24th, the anniversary of
the Society, to meet at Br. Emerson's Room, to
hear the Oration and Poem.
Attest, R. W. Emerson, Sec’y.
April 26th, 1820.
Met by mistake two days later than the anni-
versary. Voted, that Br. Gourdin be requested


1820] PYTHOLOGIAN SOCIETY 43
to read his Essay this evening to the society.
Proceeded to initiate Br. Cheney, then to hear
the Essay. Voted, that the thanks of the society
be presented to Br. Gourdin, for his correct and
elegant essay. Br. Blood presented Br. Kent's
excuse for non-attendance, and it was Voted, that
Br. Emerson be a committee to request Br.
Kent to deliver his oration to the society at the
earliest convenient opportunity. Proceeded to
hear the poem. A treat was then given to the
society by the liberality of Brs. Reed and Lyon.
Voted that the thanks of the society be given
to Brs. Reed and Lyon for their unexampled
munificence. Adjourned to a fortnight from next
Monday evening.
Sec. R. W. EMERSON.
November 18, 1820.
After several unsuccessful efforts, on the
part of the Secretary, to call the society to-
gether, a few of the members (affording an in-
stance of disinterestedness and self denial, which
reflects the highest honour on themselves) met
this evening at Br. Hill's room. After spending
some time in lively conversation, a sufficient
number were found present to form a quorum;


44
JOURNAL (AGE 17
and, accordingly, the meeting was opened, when,
agreeably to the object of the meeting, the Es-
says were called for.
But Br. Gourdin, from whom one has been
some time due, not appearing, his of course was
omitted; as was Br. Blood's for the same reason.
The Essayists, whose performances became due
this evening, were Brs. Cheney and Emerson.
Br. Cheney was, therefore, called upon, and de-
livered a very elegant and patriotic Essay; for
which the sincere thanks of the society were be-
stowed upon him; a mark of honour incompara-
bly more valuable than medals, which time will
tarnish and destroy, or statues, which violence
will deface, and barbarism overthrow. -
Here the Secretary would gladly close the
record of this evening, and let the critics of Pos-
terity suppose that what he has written above is
merely a fragment of what he recorded ; and ex-
ercise their learning and ingenuity in supplying
the deficiency, but truth and fidelity forbid. For
(O tempora ! O mores !) no sooner had Br. Che-
ney delivered his Essay, and received the thanks
of the Society, as above recorded, than some
of the members present began to express un-
easiness at being any longer detained; and that,
although Br. Emerson was prepared to read the


1821) PYTHOLOGIAN SOCIETY 45
Essay due from him. Strange infatuation! But
such was their desire to depart that it was found
impossible to keep them together any longer.
The meeting was therefore adjourned.-
Attest, E. Frye, Secretary.
February 26th, 1821.
Wonderful to relate! within an hour of the
time appointed, a larger number of the members
than have attended any meeting since I have had
the honour to be Sec'y, met at No. 4 H'y'to hear
the Essays due last time, and the anniversary
oration due from time not quite immemorial, but
so long that it should have been delivered almost
a year ago. —The meeting was then opened (with
Br. Kent in the chair) and the oration called
for. But Br. Kent, not having had sufficient time,
we may suppose, to prepare himself since he
was chosen Orator, desired that it might be post-
poned till the next anniversary (April 24th);
which was agreed to by the society. We shall
then verify the old proverb, by killing two birds
with one stone. Having settled this business,
Br. Burton was called on for his Essay, which
has been due almost as long as the Oration. But
not being prepared, it was Voted, after hearing
1 Holworthy Hall.


46
JOURNAL
[AGE 17
his excuse, “ that it be delivered on the evening of
the Monday nearest the fifteenth of April.” — Br.
Gourdin being absent, his Essay of course was
not read. Br. Blood, whose Essay was due at
the same time with Br. Gourdin's, was next
called on. — But it appearing that, by some fatal
mistake, he had left it in Sterling, or elsewhere,
a vote was passed to hear it with Br. Burton's.
Thus we despatch business. No Essay now re-
mained to be heard except Br. Emerson's; which
was not read last term on account of circum-
stances mentioned page 46 of this volume. He
was, therefore, called on to read now. And, oh!
how the Secretary's heart beat with joy, when he
actually saw him arise from his seat, and, taking
a roll of paper from his pocket, seat himself by
the table! Rejoice with me, my Brethren, for we
shall yet hear an Essay this evening. - He ac-
cordingly read a very “Elegant and appropriate
Essay,” for which he received the unanimous
and (let me add) the most sincere thanks of the
society.
All business relative to performances being
thus finished, Br. Hill 2d was chosen commit-
tee of one to wait on Br. Gourdin, and inform
him that, unless he, in future, attend the meet-
ings of the society more regularly than in times


1821] PYTHOLOGIAN SOCIETY 47
past, he shall be expelled. Br. Blood was likewise
chosen committee of one to wait on Br. Lyon
for the same purpose. ...
re-
And now, as my term of service has expired,
I must leave it with him Hill, the new Secre-
tary] to transmit to posterity the very interest-
ing proceedings of this society, while I with true
firmness of mind (Oh! the sweets of power !),
will descend to a private station. So farewell to
all my greatness; Frye’s occupation's gone!
Attest, Enoch FRYE, Sec'y.
Wednesday, March 21, 1821.
Met at Br. Blood's, and let us look up, for
the day of restoration draweth nigh. With rap-
ture do I record the proceedings of this joyful
evening.
Imprimis: Br. Wood filled the chair with su-
perior dignity, in which gravity and imposing
majesty were predominant. The house was then
called to order, and we were favoured with a
most ingenious, amusing, and humorous per-
formance by Br. Blood, entitled, “journal trav-
els, etc” in the country. The effect which this
produced upon us was — I cannot tell how power-
ful—and therefore shall not attempt to describe
1 us was
pr-


48
[Age 17
JOURNAL
it,-it baffled description. Therefore we will drop
that subject and turn to a milder atmosphere,
and calmer sky. - Br. Emerson next advanced,
with a neat, concise and pitby comparison of
country and city life, much to the edification
of the Brotherhood. Br. Wood then obliged us
with an original and, no doubt, very accurate
description of “country life,” in which he drew
aside the curtain, that is, opened the door and
introduced us, at once, into the interior of a
Yeoman's dwelling. We were very much pleased
with the mistake which the master of the house,
“good easy soul” made, by taking his guest at
first for an Ass, or some other outlandish beast.
But on awaking from his nap, he saw his error,
and gave him such a cordial reception, that we
were charmed with “ country life.” Themes be-
ing despatched, proceeded to discussion. The
first, Hill 2d solus, Gourdin absent, decided in
his favour of course. Then the important
Dowling question was discussed by Kent and
Frye.' In the progress of which the former
displayed an interest, an eloquence, warmth
of feeling, and sensibility in defence of Patrick
i At a meeting in the preceding August, the question had
been assigned to these members, “Whether Dowling be ad-
vantageous to the welfare of college ?"


1821] PYTHOLOGIAN SOCIETY 49
Dowling, a Catholic Irishman, which did equal
honour to his head and his heart. He even rose
to the Sublime in defence of this great and much
injured man, interlarded with specimens of the
most beautiful Pathos. His feelings indeed were
so much affected, that they choked his utterance,
but his expressive countenance did more for his
cause than all the letters in the alphabet. Brother
Frye on the contrary produced many “knock-
down” arguments, which had a manifest ten-
dency to disprove all his opponent had advanced.
He assailed him with invectives and contradic-
tions in abundance. Displayed much sophistry,
satire, humour, in his attack upon the maculate
Dowling. He would even gladly have buried
him in a hole of his own digging, into which a
fit of intoxication had plunged him. This being
a case of peculiar importance, instead of com-
mitting the decision, as usual, to two members
only, the secretary formally took the opinion
of all present; and notwithstanding the obstinate
virulence, and the position of Mr. Attorney
Frye, the Patrick was cleared by a majority of
one. So may intemperance triumph!'
Committees : Kent and Hill 2d, For Dis-
1 This last sentence seems to have been written in later.


50
JOURNAL [AGE 17
cussions, reported the following which were ac-
cepted.
I: Whether it be beneficial to the students to
spend much time in the acquisition of the polite
accomplishment. — Burton and Emerson.
2: A Conference. On the comparative inter-
est excited by the lectures of Ware, Willard and
Everett. — Blood, Cheney and Wood.
Blood and Cheney, for themes, reported:
“The miseries of human life.” Accepted.
Voted to adjourn to the 5 April next, to meet
at Burton's, at 7 o'clock P. M.
April 5, 1821.
Met at Burton's. ...
Kent and Hill 2d, judges of the discussion by
Burton and Emerson, decided in the negative,
in favour of Burton.
Attest, Jos. B. Hill, Sec.
May ist, 1821.
Met at Brother Blood's to hear Br. Kent's an-
niversary oration. Liberal provision had been
made for social conviviality, to which two bottles
of wine, handed over by brother Emerson, not
a little contributed, and for which by a public


1821] PYTHOLOGIAN SOCIETY 51
vote the society bestowed their warmest thanks
to brother Emerson. Br. Cheney filled the chair,
and after a cheerful glass the orator held forth
on-
[Here the records of the society come to an
abrupt end, excepting certain accounts in the
end of the books, and the following official de-
claration :-)
I,R.W.Emerson, committee of arrangements,
have received of R. W. Emerson, Secretary, the
sum of two dollars for each essay-meeting in the
past term collected from fine and assessment,
and likewise the donations made to the society
on the anniversary meeting, &c., and have faith-
fully expended the same for the best interests of
the society, as far as my limited apprehension
would assist me. There remains in the Trea-
sury the sum of one cent, being the donation of
Br. Oliver Blood to the Society — which I shall
pay on the demand of the new Secretary.
Signed, R. W. EMERSON.


RNAL III
“NO. XVIII”
1820
BETWEEN, or contemporary with “Wide
Worlds,” Nos. 1 and 2, is a manuscript book,
marked as above, a few specimens from which
are here given. Besides these, it contains notes
on College lectures, and extracts copied from the
books he was reading; also some very juvenile
criticism of Wordsworth, especially the “Excur-
sion,” and notes for his prize dissertation “ On
the Present State of Ethical Philosophy,” which,
as has been said, Rev. Dr. Edward Everett
Hale printed, with that on Socrates, accompany-
ing his sketch of Emerson.
The note-book also has fragments on the Re
ligion of the Middle Ages, Religious Tenden-
cies of Different States of Society, on Poetry, et
cætera. Of romance also there are a few pages,
“The Magician,” and an unnamed one about a
witch-wife; also various scraps of verse, includ-
ing part of a ballad on King Richard.
But much space is given in this and some of
the following “Wide Worlds" to a discussion


1820)
DRAMA
53
of the Drama, especially in America. He attacks
it in a daring and violent manner, praising the
Greek tragedies, but his youthful sense of mo-
rality is outraged by the grossness of passages.
in the Elizabethan dramatists, and his taste dis-
gusted by the degeneracy of the later drama. It
must be borne in mind, however, first, that it is
doubtful whether the youth had ever been inside
of a play-house; second, that the writings in
question were probably prepared for a debate in
the Pythologian Society, in which he had his
part assigned; hence, do not exactly represent
Emerson's views at the time, especially as, some-
what later, he adopts a much less stringent tone,
and believes that the Theatre in America might
be reformed, and become an elevating influence,
from which, however, Shakespeare with all his
charms, must be excluded, unless severely
expurgated.]
“NO. XVIII”
Boston, September 22d, 1820.
Where dost thou careless lie
Buried in ease and sloth ?
Knowledge that sleeps doth die;
And this security,


54
[AGE 17
JOURNAL
It is the common moth
Which eats on wits and arts, and quite destroys them
both.
Are all the Aonian springs
Dryed up? Lies Thespia waste ?
Does Clarius' harp want strings ?
That not a nymph now sings,
Or droop they as disgraced
To see their seats and bowers by chattering pies de-
faced ?
Ben Jonson to HIMSELF.
DRAMA
Campbell, the poet, said to Professor Ever-
ett that the only chance which America has for
a truly national literature is to be found in the
Drama;' we are bound to reverence such high
authority, and at least to examine the correct-
ness of the position.
Few speculations have such a charm in their
nature as this, whose object is, how to conduct
a dialogue between a man and his fellow just
far enough removed from common life to avoid
1 This statement is twice made in this journal. I have sub-
stituted for the one found in this place the later one, as better
expressed, and mentioning that the opinion was given to Pro-
fessor Everett.
Innan


1820]
DRAMA
55
disgust while it must claim the attention and
elevate the tone of feeling.
In the nation which has always been regarded
as the model in all the arts, the fountain of all
polished letters, and the pattern of all time, the
Drama was invented, and there alone succeeded
perfectly. All inquiries therefore upon this sub-
ject begin from Greece. The history and influ-
ence of tragedy, its modes and machines of op-
eration, must be explained from these sources.
Tragedy, by exciting the emotions of fear
and of pity, tends to correct the same affections
in the soul. This has been all along esteemed
the philosophy of tragedy, with what correct-
ness we shall not pretend to determine; but
these ends were answered in Greece, and more
than this, a respect for the gods was effectually
inculcated. The thraldom of superstition was
made useful to shackle those whom the light
and law of natural religion could not guide, and
he whom the beauty of moral rectitude could
not win, was afraid to face the temple of the
Furies, and averted his head as he passed by it.
But by whom was this powerful influence cre-
ated over a people whose refined taste kept a
watchful eye on the artist, so that it should not
be seduced unawares, and never yielded save to


56
JOURNAL [Ace 17
the irresistible might of genius? In what schools
did they purchase the subtle art which became
in their hands an instrument of such power?
This question is the most important which can
be asked, for it developes the causes of their pre-
eminence. It was not the robed disciple at ease
in the Academy who gained the prize of tragedy,
but Æschylus was a son of the republic who had
fought valiantly at Marathon and Plataea, and
came bleeding from the battle, to assemble in
a simple natural plot the personages of old tra-
ditions, and attribute to them the feelings he
had just felt, and place them in circumstances
in which himself had been placed. Miraculous
effects have been recorded of their representa-
tion; but by whom and how were they per-
formed? In answer to this we all know how the
primitive stage differed from the modern; that
all was on a magnificent scale, that the actors
were transformed to giants, and the strength of
their voices increased by a metallic mouthpiece.
But that which formed their chief distinction
were their independent habits of feeling, of sen-
timent, of invention. This is illustrated by an
anecdote of their theatre. Polus, the first actor
on the stage, was preparing to perform the part
of Electra. In this piece Electra embraces the


1820]
DRAMA
57
urn supposed to hold the remains of Orestes.
The Greek actor ordered that the urn contain-
ing the ashes of his own son should be brought
from the tomb and conveyed to the theatre;
and when, on the stage, this urn was offered to
him and the father bent over it, he rent the air
with no mimic grief or insincere howlings, but
the whole audience was melted with the moving
picture of his grief and lamentation.
When the light had failed from the Greek
theatre which those masters had poured upon
it, it would have violated the common order of
events had an equal illumination been rekin-
dled. The frivolous Comic Muse, hitherto of
slight esteem, grew into favour and trode fast on
the steps of sceptred Tragedy. The witty and
offensive Aristophanes parodied the eloquent
declamation of Euripides, mimicked the awful
port of princes and gods, and converted the gen-
eral satire of the old comedians into a vicious
personal ribaldry. Finally the civil authority in-
terfered to stop its flagrant abuses.
was
The tragedy was not inherited by Rome,
which scrupulously incorporated all the arts of
Athens. It was too delicate a treasure to be


58
[AGE 17
JOURNAL
lightly transmitted by instruction or won with
the spoils.
In France, during the dark ages, the castle
of feudal chieftains witnessed a second rude
drama, the name and character of which is all
that remains. The “Mysteries” served to shew
that it was a natural expression of the human
feelings.
In England, the progress was somewhat sim-
ilar, but the first productions which were marked
for fame are works of prodigious power and their
origin is sudden and unaccountable. From an
obscurity which none had illuminated since
Chaucer's era, there suddenly issued a series of
elegant and original performances equal in power
to the masterpieces of Greece, and adorned by
a strain of such delicate feeling, and the wisdom
of solid and rare philosophy, in verse wherein
was breathed the very melody of nature to ar-
rest the soul withal.
Over all this fair miracle a hideous corrup-
tion was spread which made every page offen-
sive. It is wonderful how intimately health and
poison, beauty and destruction, can combine,
and nowhere shall we find such a fatal illustra-
tion. The inhabitants of England have sat down
rejoicing in the light which Shakspeare's genius


1820] THE SCIENCES 59
hath shed around them, unconscious or careless
of the defilement which attends us. ...
Shall we be told that Shakspeare painted na-
ture as he found it, that we only see here what
we see elsewhere in the scenes of life daily?
No, he paints nature, not in innocence and its
primitive condition, but not until it has become
depraved itself, and its exhibition will deprave
others. Nor is the general moral which is to be
deduced from the whole pure. ...
Shakspeare assumed the commanding atti-
tude of bold unrivalled genius; men saw that the
inspiration was genuine, and few were so scru-
pulous as to ask if all were here. ...
The statue is colossal but its diabolical fea-
tures poison our admiration for the genius which
conceived and the skilful hand which carved it.
[THE EXACT SCIENCES]
Of all the sciences the science of the Mind is
necessarily the most worthy and elevating. But
it cannot precede the others. Natural Philosophy
and Mathematics must be sought in order to gain
first, the comforts of civilized life, and then the
data whence our moral reasonings proceed. It is
an old saying that all are a circle, and necessarily
depend on one another; that great improvements


60
JOURNAL [AGE 17
e
1
ve
in Astronomy involve a knowledge of Mathe-
matics, and so of the others. We exist to moral
purposes and are proud to call ourselves intel-
lectual beings! Hence, one would say, Leave
matter to the beasts that are only matter, and
indulge your peculiar and distinguishing faculties.
But then our reason and all our mental powers
are called into as active exercise in demonstrat-
ing the properties of matter as the properties of
mind, and the beasts are alike incapable of both.
So your plea confutes itself.
With regard then to the study of Natural
Philosophy, I do not think any one study so
contributes to expand the mind as our first cor-
rect notions of this science;—when we first know
that the sky is not a shell, but a vacant space,
that the world is not still and a plain, but a little
globe, performing, as one of a system, immense
revolutions. ...


1820]
61
POEM
DEDICATION
Quem fugis ? aut quis te nostris complexibus arcet ?
Haec memorans, cinerem et sopitos suscitat ignes.
Virgilian lot.
(This song to one whose unimproved talents and unat-
tained friendship have interested the writer in his char-
acter and fate.)
By the unacknowledged tie
Which binds us to each other,
By the pride of feeling high
Which friendship's name can smother;
By the cold encountering eyes
Whose language deeply thrilling
Rebelled against the prompt surmise
Which told the heart was willing;
By all which you have felt and feel,
My eager glance returning,
I offer to this silent zeal
On youthful altars burning.
All the classic hours which fill
The little urn of honour;
Minerva guide and pay the pen
Your hand conferred upon her.


JOURNAL :
[AGE 17
TRANSLATION OF MONTAIGNE TO MONSIEUR
CHARRON
May fortune bless thee
And friends caress thee
Remote from care, but loved by me;
The gifts of Pleasure
In boundless treasure
Not withheld, but poured on thee.
Garlanded with roses
At eve thy friend reposes,
Yet looks for joys that boundless be.
R. W. E.
When Jove's grey daughter, beldame Care,
On crimson couches first was laid,
Her thousand wrinkled children there
Scowled on poor Man— to all betrayed.
There was a little Fairy then
Of crooked form, whose name was S,
Who bade the miscreants join to form
A smiling cherub, hight Caress.
“ Doth not the Queen of the woods gather
the secrets of futurity when she reads the de-
caying oak leaves, and can she not tell the
young man how to guide his steps in life?”;
i Question of a youth to a weird woman in a fragment
of a fairy story of R. W.E.'s.


JOURNAL IV
THE WIDE WORLD, NO. 2
[EMERSON was now a Senior, seventeen years
old, and with his loved brother, Edward Bliss
Emerson, who had just entered the Freshman
class, occupied room No. 9 Hollis.]
Succe
SA
October, 1820.
I have determined to grant a new charter to
my pen, having finished my commonplace book,
which I commenced in January, and with as much
success as I was ambitious of — whose whole
aim was the small utility of being the exchequer
to the accumulating store of organized verbs,
nouns and substantives, to wit, sentences. It
has been a source of entertainment, and accom-
plished its end, and on this account has induced
me to repeat or rather continue the experiment.
Wherefore, On!
To forget for a season the world and its con-
cerns, and to separate the soul for sublime con-
templation till it has lost the sense of circum-
stances, and is decking itself in plumage drawn
out from the gay wardrobe of Fancy, is a recre-


64
JOURNAL
[Age 17
ation and a rapture of which few men can avail
themselves. But this privilege, in common with
other great gifts of Nature, is attainable if not
inborn. It is denied altogether to three classes at
least of mankind, viz.: the queer, the downright,
and the ungainly. This is by no means a careless
or fanciful classification, although rather a re-
stricted sense belongs to these epithets. By “the
queer” I understand those animals of oddity
whose disgusting eccentricity flows from a con-
ceited character and the lack of common sense.
I characterize “the downright" only as people
who do jobs. And “the ungainly” points exclu-
sively at some quaint lantern countenances who
have at one time and another shocked my nerves
and nauseated my taste by their hideous aspects.
With cautious explanation we advance from these
degraded stages of intellect, this doleful frontis-
piece of creation, to prouder orders of mind. Or-
dinary men claim the intermittent exercise of this
power of beautiful abstraction; but to the souls
only of the mightiest is it given to command the
disappearance of land and sea, and mankind and
things, and they vanish. Then comes the En-
chanter illuminating the glorious vision with hues
from heaven, granting thoughts of other worlds
gilded with lustre of ravishment and delight, till


1820] GEORGE TICKNOR 65 ·
the Hours, teeming with loveliness and Joy, roll
by uncounted. Exulting in the exercise of this
prerogative, the poet, truly called so, has entreated
the reluctant permission.
“ And forever shalt thou dwell
In the spirit of this spell.”
October 6th, 1820
I have listened this evening to an eloquent
lecture of the elegant Professor of French and
Spanish Literature' on the subject of the extent
of the language, a subject which bears on the
face of it dullness and dread — every soul
present warmly acknowledged the force of de-
lineation when the great deluge of the French
language, sweeping down all the feeble barriers
of ephemeral dialects, carried captive the lan-
guages and literature of all Europe, while in the
commotions of politics the German thrones were
dashed to pieces against each other on this great
and wide sea.
When bounding Fancy leaves the clods of earth
To riot in the regions of her birth,
i George Ticknor, Smith Professor of the French and German
Languages and Literature. To this Chair the Corporation and
Overseers added a Professorship of Belles Letters. Longfellow
and Lowell were in turn Mr. Ticknor's successors.


66
[AGE 17
JOURNAL
Where, robed in light, the Genii of the Stars
Launch in refulgent space their diamond cars,
Or in pavilions of celestial pride,
Serene above all influence beside,
Vent the bold joy which swells the glorious soul
Rich with the rapture of secure controul,
Onward, around, their golden visions stray
Till only Glory can their range delay.
Well, I began with prose and have mustered
up ten lines of poetry, which will answer rarely
to lighten the labour of the next theme. It is
half past 10, and time to put away The Wide
World and its concerns, and consign my indolent
limbs to comfortable repose. Ergo cease, my pen,
“ To witch the world with noble penmanship!”
October 12tb.
I should write a theme this morning, but cruel
Destiny forbids the thought of rainbow colours
to rise. I want to write poetry to add to “When
bounding,” etc.
October 15tb.
Different mortals improve resources of hap-
piness which are entirely different. This I find
more apparent in the familiar instances obvious


1820] EVERETT. EXHIBITION 67
ere
at college recitations. My more fortunate neigh-
bours exultin the display of mathematical study,'
while I, after feeling the humiliating sense of
dependence and inferiority, which, like the goad-
ing, soul-sickening sense of extreme poverty,
palsies effort, esteem myself abundantly com-
pensated, if with my pen, I can marshal whole
catalogues of nouns and verbs, to express to
the life the imbecility I felt. ...
Mr. Everett says:— “the shout of admira-
tion is lost ere it reaches the arches of heaven,
but there is an all-seeing eye which looks deep
down into the recesses of the obscurest heart.
It is a small matter to abstain from vice to which
there is no temptation, or to perform a virtue
which is standing by you with crowns for your
head; but it is the obscure, struggling and un-
successful virtue which meets with reward.”
Exhibition night. This tumultuous day is
done. The character of its thought-weather is
1 Just before entering College, the young Emerson wrote to
his elder brother William: “To tell the truth, I do not think it
necessary to understand Mathematicks and Greek thoroughly
to be a good and useful, or even a great man. Aunt Mary
would certainly tell you so, and I think you yourself believe
it, if you did not think it a dangerous doctrine to tell a Fresh-
man. But do not be afraid, for I mean to study them through,
but with equal interest to other studies.”


68
JOURNAL [Age 17
always extremely singular. Fuller than any other
day of great thoughts and poets' dreams, of hope
and joy and pride, and then closed with merri-
ment and wine, evincing or eliciting gay, frater-
nal feeling enough, but brutalized and defiled
with excess of physical enjoyment; leaving the
mind distracted and unfit for pursuits of sober-
ness. Barnwell's Oration contained sublime
images. — One was of great power — a terrible
description of the fire-tempest which over-
shadowed Sodom and Gomorrha—another de-
scription of the waterspout of the Pacific was
noble. A great struggle of ambition is going on
between Barnwell and Upham.' Thundering
and lightning are faint and tame descriptions of
the course of astonishing eloquence. You double
the force of painting if you describe it as it is.
Robert Woodward Barnwell, of South Carolina, later a
United States Senator, and President of South Carolina Col-
lege, was a classmate loved and admired. After the Civil
War, which had greatly reduced his fortunes, his Class sent
him messages of affection, accompanied, I think, with substan-
tial aid (of course unasked), and in this movement Emerson
was active. They died in the same year.
Charles Wentworth Upham of Salem, author of a work on
Salem Witchcraft, and a brother-in-law of Dr. O. W. Holmes,
was much valued by Emerson. They were in the Divinity
School together. He was Mayor of Salem and a member of
Congress.


1820] ELOQUENCE 69
The flashing eye, that fills up the chasms of
language, the living brow, throwing meaning
and intellect into every furrow and every frown;
the stamping foot, the labouring limbs, the des-
perate gesture, these must all be seen in their
strong exercise, before the vivid conception of
their effect can be adequately felt. And then a
man must separate and discipline and intoxicate
his mind before he can enjoy the glory of the
orator, when mighty thoughts come crowding
on the soul; he must learn to harrow up un-
welcome recollections and concentrate woe and
horror and disgust till his own heart sickens; he
must stretch forth his arm and array the bright
ideas which have settled around him till they
gather to forceful and appalling sublimity.
October 24th.
I begin to believe in the Indian doctrine of eye-
fascination. The cold blue eye of — has so
intimately connected him with my thoughts and
visions that a dozen times a day, and as often by
night, I find myself wholly wrapt up in conjec-
tures of his character and inclinations. We have
had already two or three long profound stares at
each other. Be it wise or weak or superstitious,
I must know him.
cara


70
[AGE 17
JOURNAL
Perhaps thy lot in life is higher
Than the Fates assign to me,
While they fulfil thy large desire,
And bid my hopes as visions flee.
But grant me still in joy or sorrow,
In grief or hope, to claim thy heart,
And I will then defy the morrow
Whilst I fulfil a loyal part."
October 25.
I find myself often idle, vagrant, stupid and hol-
low. This is somewhat appalling and, if I do not
discipline myself with diligent care, I shall suffer
severely from remorse and the sense of inferiority
hereafter. All around me are industrious and will
be great, I am indolent and shall be insignificant.
Avert it, heaven! avert it, virtue! I need excite-
ment.
November 1.
My opinion of — was strangely lowered by
hearing that he was “ proverbially idle.” This
was redeemed by learning that he was a “supe-
rior man.” This week, a little eventful in college,
has brought a share of its accidents to him.
1 These verses have a paper over them arranged so that it can
be turned up ; and on the paper is an india ink profile and bust,
presumably a memory-sketch of Gay.



Perhaps the lot in life is higher
Than the fates afside to me
While they fulfee the large desire
And bid my hopes as visions the
But grant me shee in jou or forrow
In grief or hope to clame the heart
And I will then defy the morrow
whilst I fulfil a loyal part.
MEMORY SKETCH OF MARTIN GAY. BY EMERSON
In his Journal for 1821





1820]
ENGRAVING 71
November 2.
What a grand man was Milton! so marked by
nature for the great Epic Poet that was to bear
up the name of these latter times. In “Reason
of Church Government urged against Prelaty,”
written while young, his spirit is already com-
muning with itself and stretching out in its colos-
sal proportions and yearning for the destiny he
was appointed to fulfil.
November 10.
“The Abbot”must be to its author “a source
of unmixed delight and unchastened pride.”
III
November 1o.
A RECIPE!!!
Young Waldo, when in your thick-coming
whims, you feel an itching to engrave, take a
piece of glass and cover it with a thin film of
wax or isinglass and trace the proposed figure
with a steel point. Place this over a vessel con-
taining a mixture of powdered fluor-spar, and
sulphuric acid gently heated. The acid gas com-
ing into contact with the uncovered parts of the
glass combines with and removes the silex, as
well probably as the alkali with which it is united,
and lines more or less deep are thus formed
ore


72
JOURNAL
[Age 17
according to Gorham's Chemistry (Article, Sili-
con), page 265, volume one.
Observe this. Mr. Everett notices that a tem-
perate climate has always been found necessary
to a high national character.
Also, Mr. Waldo, if you would like to find
the sublimest attainable sayings on the destruc-
tion of nations, Vide 4th book of the Sybilline
Collections.
November 18tb.
I shall subjoin some recipes for the terrible
void which ruins ever and anon the mind's peace,
and is otherwise called Unhappiness.
1. Take Scott's Novels and read carefully the
mottoes of the chapters; or, if you prefer read-
ing a novel itself, take the “Bride of Lammer-
moor.”ı
2. Sometimes (seldom) the finest parts of
Cowper's “Task” will answer the purpose. I
refer to the home-scenes.
3. For the same reason that I would take
Scott's mottoes, I would also take an old tragedy
such as Ben Jonson's, Otway's, Congreve's; in
1 Although Mr. Emerson seldom read a novel after his
youth, and cared little for them, especially disliking “ dismal
stories,” he retained through life his early affection for this
novel, forlorn from the beginning, and most tragic in the end.


1820) ELOQUENCE
73
short, any thing of that kind which leads as far
as possible from the usual trains of thought.
4. Make recipes to add to this list.
December 4th, 1820.
Here at Cambridge in my cheerless school-
room.' Sunday Evening I heard Mr. Everett
preach at the Old South a charity sermon -
one of his most (perhaps the most) eloquent
efforts.
December 5th.
It appears to me that it is a secret of the art
of eloquence to know that a powerful aid would
be derived from the use of forms of language
which were generally known to men in their in-
fancy, and which now, under another and un-
known garb, but forcibly reminding them of
early impressions, are likely to be mistaken for
opinions whose beginning they cannot recollect
and therefore suppose them innate. At least, if
by such operation they cannot convince the
i It was then the custom, which continued for nearly forty
years afterward, to allow the poorer students to help them-
selves through College by teaching, often far from Cambridge,
during their college course, presenting themselves at due time
for examinations.


74
JOURNAL [AGE 17
mind, they may serve to win attention by this
awakening but ambiguous charm. By these
forms of language I mean a paraphrase of some
sentence in a Primer or other child's book com-
mon to the country. The spell would be more
perfect, perhaps, if, instead of such a paraphrase,
the words of a sentence should be modulated to
the cadence of the aforesaid infant literature. I
dare not subjoin an example."
nan
e
a
.
LU
The human soul, the world, the universe are
labouring on to their magnificent consumma-
tion. We are not fashioned thus marvellously
for naught. The straining conceptions of man,
the monuments of his reason and the whole
furniture of his faculties is [sic] adapted to
mightier views of things than the mightiest he
has yet beheld. Roll on, then, thou stupendous
Universe, in sublime, incomprehensible solitude,
in an unbeheld but sure path. The finger of God
is pointing out your way. And when ages shall
have elapsed and time is no more, while the stars
shall fall from heaven and the Sun become dark-
ness and the moon blood, human intellect, puri-
1 Here a water-colour of the “ Three Wise men of Go-
shen” [Gotham) at sea in their bowl — all with the " mutton-
chop" whiskers of the day.


1820] SCHOOL. FUTURITY 75.
fied and sublimed, shall mount to perfection of
unmeasured and ineffable enjoyment of know-
ledge and glory. Man shall come to the presence
of Jehovah. (In the manner of Chateaubriand.)
unmeasured in. Man shall.com Chateaubriand.)
December 15th.
I claim and clasp a moment's respite from
this irksome school to saunter in the fields of
my own wayward thought. The afternoon was
gloomy and preparing to snow, — dull, ugly
weather. But when I came out from the hot,
steaming, stoved, stinking, dirty, A-B spelling-
school-room, I almost soared and mounted the
atmosphere at breathing the free magnificent
air, the noble breath of life. It was a delightful
exhilaration; but it soon passed off.
It is impossible that the distribution of re-
wards hereafter should not be in gradation.
How inconsistent with justice would it be that
all the boundless varieties of desert and condi-
tion should be levelled to a single lot — all,
from the agonized martyr, who was sawn asun-
der for the faith, to the deathbed of a modern
Christian, where a soul which was never tempted,
and a sinless innocence which was never tried,
has sighed out a harmless life on beds of down
and accompanied and piloted to heaven by the


76
JOURNAL [AGE 17
prayerful sympathy of the saints on earth. (In
the manner of Everett.)
The other day read Edinburgh Review of
Drummond's “ Academic Questions.” The re-
view and the reviewed are both beautiful speci-
mens of an elegant metaphysical style.
Attended Mr. Ticknor's Lecture on Vol.
taire.
1821
January 9th, 1821.
Have heard to-day another consecrated dis-
play of genius — of the insinuating and over-
whelming effect of eloquent manners and style,
when made sacred and impregnable by the sub-
ject which they are to enforce — Mr. Everett's
sermon before the Howard Benevolent Society.
He told a very affecting anecdote. “I have
known a woman in this town go out to work
with her own hands to pay for the wooden
coffin which was to enclose the dust of her only
child. I prayed with her when there was none
to stand by her but he who was to bear that
dust to the tomb.”
There was a vast congregation, but while he
spoke as silent as death. Unluckily, in the
pauses, however, they shook the house with


1821]
AUNT MARY
77
their hideous convulsions; for when he raised
his handkerchief to his face after a pause in the
sermon, it seemed almost a concerted signal for
the Old South to cough.
Let those now cough who never coughed before,
And those who always cough, cough now the more.
February 7th.
The religion of my Aunt' is the purest and
most sublime of any I can conceive. It appears
to be based on broad and deep and remote prin-
ciples of expediency and adequateness to an end
- principles which few can comprehend and
fewer feel. It labours to reconcile the apparent
insignificancy of the field to the surpassing gran-
deur of the Operator, and founds the benignity
and Mercy of the Scheme on adventurous but
probable comparisons of the condition of other
orders of being. Although it is an intellectual
offspring of beauty and splendour, if that were
all, it breathes a practical spirit of rigid and aus-
tere devotion. It is independent of forms and
ceremonies, and its ethereal nature gives a glow
1 Miss Mary Moody Emerson, his inspiring correspondent
and severe, though loving and secretly proud, critic. His
sketch of her is printed in vol. x (Lectures and Biographical
Sketches of his Works.


78
[AGE 17
JOURNAL
of soul to her whole life. She is the Weird-
woman of her religion, and conceives herself
always bound to walk in narrow but exalted
paths, which lead onward to interminable re-
gions of rapturous and sublime glory.
March 141b.
I am reading Price, on Morals, and intend
to read it with care and commentary. I shall
set down here what remarks occur to me upon
the matter or manner of his argument. On the
56th page, Dr. Price says that right and wrong
are not determined by any reasoning or deduc-
tion, but by the ultimate perception of the
human mind. It is to be desired that this were
capable of satisfactory proof, but, as it is in di-
rect opposition to the sceptical philosophy, it
cannot stand unsupported by strong and suffi-
cient evidence. I will however read more and
see if it is proved or no.— He saith that the
Understanding is this ultimate determiner.
CAMBRIDGE, March 25.
Sabbath.
I am sick — if I should die what would be-
come of me? We forget ourselves and our des-
tinies in health, and the chief use of temporary


1821]
PRAYER
79
sickness is to remind us of these concerns. I
must improve my time better. I must prepare
myself for the great profession I have purposed
to undertake. I am to give my soul to God and
withdraw from sin and the world the idle or
vicious time and thoughts I have sacrificed to
them; and let me consider this as a resolution
by which I pledge myself to act in all variety of
circumstances, and to which I must recur often in
times of carelessness and temptation, to measure
my conduct by the rule of conscience.
CAMBRIDGE, April 1.
• It is Sabbath again, and I am for the most part
recovered. Is it a wise dispensation that we can
never know what influence our own prayers have
in restoring the health we have prayed God to
restore? It has been thought by some that in
these immediate effects they have no influence;
in general, that their good is prospective and that
the world is governed by Providence through
the instrumentality of general laws, which are
only broken on the great occasions of the world
or other portions of the Creator's works. But
what have I wandered from? I think that it in-
finitely removes heavenly dispensations from
earthly ones. This manner of giving gifts with-


80
[AGE 17
JOURNAL
out expressing the reason for which they are be-
stowed, and leaving it to the heart to make the
application, and to discover the giver, is worthy
of a supreme, ineffable intelligence.
Well, I am sorry. ... The anecdote which
I accidentally heard of — shews him more like
his neighbours than I should wish him to be. I
shall have to throw him up after all, as a cheat of
fancy. Before I ever saw him, I wished my friend
to be different from any individual I had seen.
I invested him with a solemn cast of mind, full
of poetic feeling, and an idolater of friendship,
and possessing a vein of rich sober thought.
For a year I have entertained towards him the
same feelings and should be sorry to lose him
altogether before we have ever exchanged above
a dozen words.
May 2.
I am more puzzled than ever with — 's
conduct. He came out to meet me yesterday,
and I, observing him, just before we met, turned
another corner and most strangely avoided him.
This morning I went out to meet him in a dif-
ferent direction, and stopped to speak with a
lounger, in order to be directly in — 's way;
but turned into the first gate and went


1821] EVERETT'S SERMON 81
towards Stoughton. All this [took place (?)]
without any apparent design and as [soberly (?)]
as if both were intent on some tremendous
affair.'
May 1otb.
Huzza for my Magician!he engages me finely."
I am as interested in the tale and as anxious to
know the end as any other reader could be. By
the by, this tale of mine might be told with
powerful effect by a man of good voice and nat-
ural eloquence.
June 10.
Mr. Everett, in his Artillery Election sermon,
to preface his own prophecy that the century
now begun (i. e. third century since the Plym-
outh landing) will be the most important in
determining the future fates of America, told
this story :- In 1417, when Huss was bound to
the stake at Prague, he declared amid his tor-
i All the above paragraph was purposely obscured with
heavy ink-marks. The bracketed words, however, are the only
doubtful ones.
2 This was a romance on which the young Emerson was
for the moment working. In the page or so of it which re-
mains in one of his blotting-books, King Richard Cæur de
Leon, worn out and sick, is confessing to a friar how the pre-
sumptuous sins of his youth have been punished by haunting
remorse.


82
JOURNAL
[AGE 18
tures that after a hundred years a retribution
should be made on papacy. The inhabitants of
Prague wrote his words “Post centum annos"
upon their standard and in their records, and in
1517 the Reformation by Luther began.
Books Lent
Kett's Elements, both vols., to Angier.
Telemaque, to Stackpole 1.
Lacroix, to Gutterson.
Locke, 2. Vol., to Hill.
III and IV Cantoes of Childe Harold, — both
lost.
Guy Mannering, to Lane.
Rhyming Dictionary, to Williams, A. B.
Blair's Rhetoric (abridgement), to Hooper.
Lay of the Last Minstrel, Lothrop.
Lady of the Lake, to Idem.
Adams's Antiquities.
Books Inquirenda
Mather's Magnalia.
Dunlop's History of Fiction.
Mattaire.
Swift. Froissart.
Davy's Chemistry.
Teignmouth's life of Jones.
Simmon's life of Milton. 3 Vol. of Brit. Plutarch.


1821]
BOOKS
Chaucer.
Montaigne's Essays.
Germany (Stael).
Drummond's Academical Questions.
Price, on Morals.
Humboldt's Work on America.
Smith's Virginia.
Robertson's S. America.
History of Philip II.
Life of Shakspeare.
Subjects for Themes
Destruction of a city ; poetry.
(Forensic) Whether Civil Government be
founded on a compact expressed or implied.
The domestic relations as restraints on an ad-
venturous spirit.
Influence of weather on intellectual tempera-
ment.
Character of any fancy portrait, as for instance,
i The hand points to a respectable sketch of a man of a some-
what classic type, his head filleted, and below him a sea-
monster with the feet, just bitten from the man, in his mouth.
In place of these the man has miraculously grown a trifid fish-
tail on which he stands gracefully, and, looking down on
the monster with philosophic scorn, is saying (on a scroll),
“My feet are gone. I am a fish. Yes, I am a fish."


84
[Age 16-18
JOURNAL
AUTHORS OR Books QUOTED OR REFERRED TO
IN JOURNALS OF 1820 AND 1821
Bible, Apocrypha.
Pythagoras; Anaxagoras; Aristotle;
Xenophon's and Plato's accounts of Socrates;
Homer; Æschylus; Sophocles; Euripides;
Aristophanes; Archelaus; Theocritus (apud
Kennet's Greek Poets).
Cicero; Lucretius ; Virgil; Horace ; Epic-
tetus; Arrian; Marcus Antoninus; Epicurus;
Zendavesta, (apud Gibbon);
Arthurian Romances; De Joinville, Chronicle
of St. Louis;
Plays and Masques of Shakespeare, Ben Jon-
son (The Alchymist), Beaumont and Fletcher,
Massinger, Otway;
Bacon, Novum Organum;
Milton, Paradise Lost, Comus, Samson Ago-
nistes;
Rev. Isaac Barrow;
Montaigne, Essays; Montesquieu, Lettres
Persanes; Chateaubriand;
Cowper, Task; Dryden, Absalom and Achi-
tophel ;
Corneille; Racine;
Hobbes; Swift; Sterne; Addison; Pope;
PWCE


1820–21] READING
85
Descartes; Cudworth; Locke; Woolaston;
Shaftsbury;
Mosheim; Hume, Essays; Priestly; Paley;
Dugald Stewart; Dr. Reid; Dr. Price, On Mor-
als; Mellen, On Divine Vengeance; Forsyth,
Principles of Moral Science ; Bishop Hall.
Johnson, Lives of the Poets;
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;
Burke, Regicide Peace; Bissel, Life of Burke ;
Edward Search's [Abraham Tucker] Writ-
ings.
Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics;
Scott, Guy Mannering, Old Mortality, Monas-
tery, and Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ;
Lockhart, Spanish Ballads;
Moore, Lalla Rookb; Campbell, Poems;
Wordsworth, Excursion ; Southey, Curse of
Kebama;
Byron, Manfred, Corsair, and Childe Harold;
Charles Lamb, Essays ;
Maclaurin, Life of Sir Isaac Newton;
Dean Milman, Samor, the Lord of the Bright
City, and Fall of Jerusalem ; .
Hillhouse, Percy's Masque ;
Bryant, Waterfowl, and Murdered Traveller;
Edward Everett's Lectures;
Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews.


86
[Age 16–18
JOURNAL
THE UNIVERSE
[During the years 1820 and 1821 Emerson
kept a Quotation Book, named as above, made
up of passages from his miscellaneous reading in
the College Library or whatever other treasure-
houses of letters were open to him. These pas-
sages are neatly copied in a small hand on folio
sheets, numbered, which were afterwards folded
once and placed in a cover. The range is some-
what remarkable and a list is given below.]
Spenser's View of the State of Ireland, apud
Warton.
Diversions of Queen Elizabeth's maids of
honor; Harrison, apud Hollinsbed's Chronicle.
Verses of Homer, sung by him and a chorus
of boys before the houses of the rich men in
Samos; original Greek and a metrical rendering,
apud Basil Kennet's Lives and Characters of the
Greek Poets, 1697.
Pope Gregory VII's Excommunication of the
Emperor Henry IV, apud Berington's Abelard
and Heloisa.
Queen Elizabeth's infatuation for the Earl of
Leicester, apud Camden's Annales Elizabetbae.
Extract from a scene in Byron's Manfred.
Chaucer's account of his sufferings in prison.


1820–21] READING
87
CSS
Extract from letter of Cicero to Plancus, Mid-
dleton's Cicero.
Extract from poem by Cornwall, describing a
pauper's burial.
Close of the conference between the Jewess
Rebecca and Brian de Bois Gilbert, in Scott's
Ivanboe.
Death and funeral of Spenser, Camden.
Erasmus's (Latin) epigram to Sir T. More,
when he did not return the borrowed horse of
the latter.
Alleged epitaph written by Virgil for him-
self.
The pedantry of the times of Queen Elizabeth,
Warton.
On the Art of Rhetorick, Richard Wilson,
apud Burnett.
On Bessarion, by Marcus Ficinus, apud Hody,
De Graecis Illustribus.
Suppressed passage from Soliloquy of Bertram
in play by Maturin, apud Edinburgh Review.
Passage from Shipwreck in Byron's Don Juan.
Extract from Sermon of Rev. Isaac Barrow,
on comparative ineffectiveness of Human Laws.
Concerning Shakespeare, Ben Jonson's Dis-
coveries.
Concerning Bacon,


88
JOURNAL [AGE 16-18
Collins's Ode, “How sleep the brave.”
Extract from Hebrew Melodies, Byron.
Meg Merrilies' denunciation of the Laird of
Ellangowan. Her prophecy of good to his son.
Guy Mannering.
On shaking off Cupid's yoke, and on Emula-
tion; Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.
Song of Runic Bard [quoted later in “Poetry
and Imagination” in Letters and Social Aims,
p. 59), Godwin.
Sforza's speech on his misfortunes. Duke of
Milan; Massinger.
Meditation on Conscience; Bishop Hall.
Concluding passage of C. W. Upham's Ora-
tion, Exhibition, Aug. 1820.
The shadowing out of Paradise Lost; a long
extract from Milton's Reason of Church Govern-
ment urged against Prelaty, beginning “Although
a poet, soaring in the high region of his fancies,
with his garland and singing robes about him”
etc.
Speech of Sir Bohort over the dead body of
Lancelot. Ellis's Specimens of Early English Ro-
mances.
The Mourning Bride ; Congreve.
The power of Chance in human inventions ;
Bacon's Novum Organum (Part 2 Section II).


1820–21] READING
sert
Epitaph on Pizarro; Southey.
Long Extract from Idealist; Drummond's
Academical Questions.
Reasonings a priori ; Moral Outline, Dugald
Stewart.
The angels the guides of the heavenly bodies;
sermon of Jeremy Taylor.
Dialogue between a tyrant and a Stoic; Arrian,
Priestley's translation.
Favourite passage, beginning “The unearthly
voices ceased” in Scott's Lay of the Last Min-
strel, Canto I.
Dreams, from The Castle of Indolence, Thom-
son.
Extracts from Scenes between Viola and the
Duke, in Twelfth Night, Shakespeare.
Spenser's lamentation; Mother Hubberd's
Tale.
The Nightingale; Thomson's Seasons.
Extract from the Magnalia Christi of Cotton
Mather, as to the number of settlers in Massa-
chusetts Bay.
Lord Bacon's expostulation with Queen Eliza-
beth, in a letter to the Earl of Devonshire.
Song from Gipsies Metamorphosed, Ben Jonson.
“ Ode to Melancholy”; The Passionate Mad-
man, Beaumont and Fletcher.


90
JOURNAL [Age 16–18
Extract from Lord Herries' Complaint, C. K.
Sharpe, apud Drake's Essays.
The Origin of Fable; Éloge de Fontaine.
The Mariner's Dream.
Song of the Clown, Twelfth Night.
The Lombards' loss of opportunity to es-
tablish federated republics; Hallam's Middle
Ages.
Decline of Ecclesiastical Power of Rome;
Hallam's Middle Ages.
The defensive power and successes of feder-
ated republics. Sismondi, Histoire des Répub-
liques Italiens du Moyen Age.
The bad omens attending the commencement
of hostilities when Charles I set up his standard
at Nottingham; Clarendon's History.
The character of Cromwell; Clarendon's His-
tory.
To the berb Rosemary; H. Kirke White.
Preface to one of Elizabeth's costly masques;
Ben Jonson.
To a Waterfowl, William Cullen Bryant.
Close of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire; from Gibbon's Memoirs of his own Life
and Writings.
A student's thought compared to a river which


1820–21] READING
91
one
one undertakes to dam; Tucker's (“ Edward
Search”) Light of Nature.
Deliberation and investigation compared to
the hunting of a hound; Tucker.





JOURNAL
TEACHER





JOURNAL V
THE WIDE WORLD, NO. 3
[Emerson seems to have kept no journal for
the last half of 1821.
He had graduated in the summer of 1821,
number thirty in a class of fifty-nine. His actual
scholarship in the required branches must have
been much lower, for it must be remembered
that any misconduct might remove a greater or
less number of marks for recitations. Hence a
boy of quiet disposition might stand in the end
much higher than a brilliant but disorderly one.
But Emerson, none the less, had, night and day,
been educating himself in his own way. He came
just within the number of those to whom “parts”
at Commencement were assigned, and in those
days they were always delivered. His was the
Character of John Knox, in a Colloquy on Knox,
Penn, and Wesley, in which function he is said
to have been rather negligent. He was Class
Poet, a doubtful honour, as at least six had been
asked before him, and refused.
His brother William, who graduated in 1818,
was doing his best to maintain the family, and it


96
[Age 18
JOURNAL
became Waldo's duty to help, for the case was
urgent. William, aged twenty-two, had recently
opened a finishing school for young ladies, in
Boston, at his mother's house, and now offered
his brother, aged eighteen, the place of assistant.
It was a trying place for a bashful boy, unused to
girls, but he accepted. (See Cabot’s Memoirs,
pages 69–72 and 86.)]
en
Boston, January 12, 1822.
After a considerable interval I am still will-
ing to think that these commonplace books are
very useful and harmless things,-at least suffi-
ciently so, to warrant another trial.
CONTRAST
The principle of Contrast which we find
engraven within —... how came it there,
whence did we derive it? Either the Deity has
written it as one of his laws upon the human
mind, or we have derived it from an observation
of the invariable course of human affairs. ...
In this principle is lodged the safety of human
institutions and human life. For suppose ambi-
tion excite against the peace of the world one of
those incarnate fiends which have, at different pe-
riods, arisen to destroy the peace and good order


1822] AUNT MARY
97
of one community after another, and of nation
after nation. Gradually the lust of excess engen-
dered by sudden prosperity debauches every
virtue and steals away the Moral sense. The in-
solence of power tramples upon the laws of God
and the rights of man. . . . Here, when the
day of triumph burns with consuming splendour
- here, the mind itself pauses to anticipate
change near at hand. The victor must cease.
Else would the very stones cry out. Day and
Night contend against him; the Elements which
he wielded rebel and crush him; the clouds
nurse their thunders to blast him; he is lifted
up on rebellious spears between heaven and
earth unworthy and abhorred of both, to perish.
TNAMURYA'
“When that spell which can only be felt is
thrown over the soul by the magic of genius,
1 Shift the letters of this word about, and they spell “ Aunt
Mary.” Her nephew thus marks the frequent passages from her
letters to him which he copies into his journals. Years later he
wrote a sketch of the life of this remarkable woman, his Sibyl.
She was his father's younger sister, and daughter of William
Emerson, the young minister of Concord in the days of the
Revolution. In her infant ears had rung the noise of the firing
at Concord Fight, close by the Manse. Her letters to her
nephew Ralph, whom she idolized, continued through years


98
[Age 18
JOURNAL
Now lettest thou thy servant depart where all
is boundless genius — or let us tarry forever in
this grave, if thus illuminated,' is the adoring
language of the heart. Is it not a well known
principle of human nature that moments of en-
thusiasm can produce sacrifices which demand no
proportionate virtue to those which never pre-
tend to fame?” ...
RELIGION
The invisible connection between heaven and
earth, the solitary principle which unites intel-
lectual beings to an account and makes of men
moral beings —religion - is distinct and pecul-
iar, alike in its origin and in its end, from all
other relations. It is essential to the Universe.
You seek in vain to contemplate the order of
things apart from its existence. You can no more
banish this than you can separate from yourself
the notions of Space and Duration. Through all
the perverse mazes and shadows of infidelity the
from remote New England towns where she boarded, were one
of the strongest influences of the earlier part of his life, quicken-
ing and enlarging his thoughts and also provoking him to defend
its independence. His deep debt to her he always acknowledged.
See “Mary Moody Emerson,” in his Lectures and Biographi-
cal Sketches."


1822]
RELIGION
99
Light still makes itself visible, until the reluc-
tant mind shudders to acknowledge the eternal
encompassing presence of Deity. If you can ab-
stract it from the Universe, the Soul is bewil-
dered by a system of things of which no account
can be given; instances of tremendous power—
and no hand found to form them; a thousand
creations in a thousand spheres all pointing up-
ward to a single point — and no object there to
see and receive — it is all a vast anomaly. Re-
store Religion and you give to those energies a
sublime object. ...
The History of Religion involves circum-
stances of remarkable interest, and it is almost
all that we are able to trace in the passage of the
remote ages of the world. It is a beautiful pic-
ture, and just as it should be, that in the charac-
ter of Noah, of Abraham, and the early deni-
zens of the world, we trace no feature which
does not belong peculiarly to their religion;-
it was their life. It was natural that when the
mountains were just swelling upward under the
hand of the Creator, when his bow was just built
and painted in the sky, when the stone-tables
were yet unbroken by Moses which now lie
mouldering in fragments upon Sinai — that Men
should walk with God. As we come downward


100
JOURNAL
[Age 18
and leave the immediate precincts of the taber-
nacle, although we become sensible of the pro-
gressive departure from the truth, yet each super-
stition retains the inherent beauty of the first
form, disguised and defaced, in some degree, by
ill-adjusted and needless apparel. Indeed, the
only records by which the early ages of any na-
tion are remembered is their religion. We know
nothing of the first empires which grasped the
sceptre of the earth in Egypt, Assyria, or Persia,
but their modes of worship. And this fact for-
cibly suggests the idea thạt the only true and
legitimate vehicle of immortality, the only bond
of connection which can traverse the long dura-
tion which separates the ends of the world and
unites the first people to the knowledge and sym-
pathy of the last people, is religion.
We have said that the first nations were re-
membered by their religion ; and in tracing down
their history a little farther until the time of writ-
ten languages, we find that the first efforts which
the human genius made to commit its ideas to
permanent signs were exercised upon the great
topic which stood uppermost in an unperverted
mind. Poetry attempted to fashion a probable
picture of the Creation, to explore the character
of Providence, to impress upon mankind the


1822]
RELIGION
IOI
enlightened views of a moral government in the
world which had been disclosed to her own eye.
But the date of writing marks the second age
in the history of Religion, and we have parted
from the more attractive memory of the first.
The naked savage who ascends the mountain,-
because the dusky summit inclines him to be-
lieve that the Great Spirit inhabits there, — and
erects a stone as his simple and sincere tribute
to the Majesty of that being, is an object infi-
nitely more agreeable to our imagination and
feelings than the loftier and more excellent offer-
ing of lettered Science. And although reason
teaches us that the deliberate devotion of a phi-
losophic mind is more worth than the vague fears
of a superstitious one, yet we are apt to inquire
if the pride of learning has not been known to
harden the mind even to the plain proofs of
Divine Providence.
ге у
The difference between the primitive forms of
religion and the second dispensation (and like-
wise the first) consisted in this, that the first were
the voluntary offerings of the imagination and the
understanding to a sublime but unseen Spirit,
and the last were the implicit submissions of


102
JOURNAL
[AGE 18
duty, of custom, of fear. For this reason we sym-
pathize more with the savage.
It is somewhat remarkable that, in the simple
institutions of the barbarous nations, God was
worshipped through sublime and awful images,
and nothing mean and disgusting was attributed
to his character. It were needless to repeat that
Cæsar found the German nations without idols,
deeming it unworthy to build a house for him
that made the Universe ;— or to transcribe the
Indian creed of the Great Spirit, so scrupulously
pure that it rejected what it could not reconcile
of an evil world to a Benevolent Cause, and cre-
ated an opposite active evil Principle on which to
and the storm, pain and death which
beset human life. Such also was the Persian
faith, which thought the Fire no unfit emblem
of Divinity; and if the Druid sacrificed men on
the altar, an oak forest was the temple, and it
was not offered to an ox or an ass, but to an ade-
quate notion of the Supreme Being. In all these
the ways of Providence were traced in the hur-
ricane, the sea, the cloud, or the earthquake,
and therefore the mind must needs be elevated
that would converse with them. But as civilized
life advanced, and civil and social institutions
were erected, and life became more intellectual,


1822]
RELIGION
103
W
devotion was degraded by a profane and vulgar
idolatry ; ... The gods and demigods went
fast below the standard of human respectability,
until the worship of superior beings, the holiest
feeling of which the human soul is capable, and
that perhaps for which it was made, seems to have
almost passed out of repute and name among
honest patriots, and Olympus needed to be
cleaned of its impurities, and the thrones of hea-
ven to be subverted for the peace of society.
This fact, that the seeds of corruption are
buried in the causes of improvement strikes us
everywhere in the political, moral, and national
history of the world. It seems to indicate the
intentions of Providence to limit human perfec-
tibility and to bind together good and evil, like
life and death, by indissoluble connection. ...
The idea of power seems to have been every-
where at the bottom of the Theology; the hu-
man mind has a propensity to refer all its higher
feelings, all its veneration for virtue and great-
ness, to something wherein this attribute is sup-
posed to reside. Cause and Effect is another
name for the direction of this sentiment. ...
What are Honour, Mercy, Pride, Humility,
Revenge—but sensations which have reference
to in-dwelling power? Honour is the worthiness
se


104
JOURNAL
[Age 18
W-
which it gives ; Mercy, the temperate forbear-
ance of its exercise; Pride, the self-respect which
attends its possession ; Humility, the acknow-
ledgement of its existence; Revenge, a barbarous
use to which it is put. It is shared among all
beings, but in all has a limit and a beginning, on
which the mind's eye eagerly fastens, with an
immediate attempt to trace the sources whence
the subtle principle was derived. It is a great
flood which encircles the universe and is poured
out in unnumbered channels to feed the foun-
tains of life and the wants of Creation, but every-
where runs back again and is swallowed up in its
eternal source. That source is God.
Will the disputes upon the Nature of God,
upon Trinitarianism and Unitarianism, never
yield to a purer pursuit and to practical inquiry?
It is possible, for all we know to the contrary,
that God may exist in a threefold Unity; but if
it were so, since it is inconceivable to us, he would
never have revealed to us such an existence which
we cannot describe or comprehend. Infinite
Wisdom established the foundations of know-
ledge in the mind, so that twice two could never
make anything else than four. As soon as this
can be otherwise, our faith is loosened and science
abolished. Three may be one, and one three.
ne


1822]
105
POETRY
OF POETRY
It is the language of the passions which do not
ordinarily find their full expression in the sober
strains of prose. We should rest our argument
on this : that there seems to be a tendency in
the passions to clothe fanciful views of objects
in beautiful language. It seems to consist in the
pleasure of finding out a connection between a
material image and a moral sentiment. Few men
are safe when they begin to describe poetry; they
talk at random, or hardly prevent the ends of
the lines from rhyming, and are like the mimic of
a madman who went mad himself. Poetry never
offers a distinct set of sensations. Science pene-
trates the sky, Philosophy explains its adapta-
tion to our wants, and Poetry grasps at its striking
phenomena and combines them with the moral
sentiment which they naturally suggest. Its im-
ages are nothing but the striking occurrences
selected from Nature and Art and clothed in an
artful combination of sounds. . . . But poetical
expression constitutes to half the world the
beauty of poetry and in this it seems to resem-
ble Algebra, for both make language an instru-
ment and depend solely upon it without having
any abstracted use.


106
[AGE 18
JOURNAL
There are few things which the well-wishers
of American literature have more at heart than
our national poetry. For every thing else, for
science, and morals and art they are willing to
wait the gradual development, but they are in
haste to pluck the bright blossoms from the fair
tree which grows fast by the hill of Parnassus.
For when a nation has found time for the lux-
ury and refinement of poetry it takes off the re-
proach of a sluggish genius and of ignorant
indifference.
Poetical expression serves to embellish dull
thoughts, but we love better to follow the poet,
when the muse is so ethereal and the thought so
sublime that language sinks beneath it.
DRAMA
Saturday Evening, January 19tb.
When a species of composition has been writ-
ten with success in a brilliant period, and in an-
other and remote land has been likewise known,
and after having been discontinued and forgot-
ten is revived in another age and another coun-
try — we have every right to say that such an art
is agreeable to the dictates of nature. This is the
history of the Drama, and it has every reason-


1822]
DRAMA
107
able indication that it will every where flourish
under favourable circumstances. It is easy also to
distinguish between those parts of it which are
unnatural and the forced production of a state
of society, and those which are the genuine off-
spring of the human spirit. In the Mysteries,
the French Drama of the Middle Ages, --such
personages were introduced upon the stage as
“Such,” “Each One,” and “Both,” and per-
formed their parts as gravely and as much to the
satisfaction of a perverted public taste as did
ever the most accomplished Iphigenia, Electra,
Cæsar. Such a folly as this is evidently the ap-
propriate spawn of the age of the Schools and
the pleasantry of confirmed pedantry. It does
not follow that, if anything be out of the com-
mon course of human experience, it is not natural
to the drama and may not talk with ordinary
agents. The representation of the dead consorts
perfectly with the feelings of the most refined
taste, and in every age has formed a part of dra-
matic entertainment. For the belief in unseen
agents is so universal, and indeed is a conse-
quence of a belief in God, that no mind ever
revolts at the idea.
A constituent part of the Drama from its
very invention was the ornament of scenery.


108
JOURNAL
[Age 18
This suggests itself unavoidably as an important
element of the plan which acts altogether by
deceiving the audience into the conviction that
the actors really are the persons whom they re-
present. The illusion could be best promoted
by removing all extraneous circumstances and
affording the imagination the help of all the
senses. Independently of this, it is a high grat-
ification to be suddenly removed from all the
common objects of daily occurrence, and admit-
ted to a spectacle of shining cities, of imposing
mountain scenery, of thrones, and of magnifi-
cent apparel.
May.
I rejoice in Shakspeare's empire as far as it
is reckless of that learning which some dotards
make a merit of; but, as sustained on the sen-
sual, regret and abhor his dominion. It is for a
still brighter era to erase his deformities, and
possibly set a mightier magician over the witch-
eries of fancy. But to me— to his old admirers,
nothing could supply his place. ...
[A VENTURE IN ROMANCE]
I was the pampered child of the East. I was
born where the soft western gale breathed upon
me the fragrance of cinnamon groves, and through


1822]
IDEALISM
109
the seventy windows of my hall the eye fell on
the Arabian harvest. An hundred elephants,
apparelled in cloth of gold, carried my train to
war, and the smile of the Great King beamed
upon Omar. But now—the broad Indian moon
looks through the broken arches of my tower,
and the wing of Desolation fans me with poi-
sonous airs; the spider's threads are the tapestry
which adorns my walls, and the rain of the
night is heard in my halls for the music of the
daughters of Cashmere. Wail, wail for me, ye
who put on honour as gay drapery!
IDEALISM
Deep in the soul a strong delusion dwells,
A curious round of fairly fashioned dreams;
Yet, quietly the pleasant vision swells
Its gay proportions far around, the streams
Of the wide universe their wealth supply,
Their everlasting sources furnish forth
The fabled splendours, whose immortal dye
Colours the scene with hues which mock the summer
sky.
And oh how sweetly in youth's seraph soul,
That vision, like the light of heaven, doth rest.
Its name is Life; its Hours their circle roll
Like angels in the robes of morning drest;


IIO
JOURNAL [AGE 18
And every phantom of the train is blest
Who shakes his plumes upon the odorous air,
Or lights a star upon his azure crest;
And while the lovely beam reposes there,
Joy in the guileless heart his welcome will prepare.
The circle of the sciences is no more firmly
bound together than the circle of the virtues ;
but, in the first, a man cannot hope to be thor-
oughly acquainted with all, for they are in some
degree incompatible; whereas, in the last, his
character will be defective if it do not combine
the whole, and form that harmony which results
from all.


JOURNAL VI
THE WIDE WORLD, NO. 4
DEDICATION
Boston, February 22, 1822.
I have invoked successively the Muse, the
fairies, the witches, and Wisdom to preside over
my creations; I have summoned Imagination
from within, and Nature from without; I have
called on Time, and assembled about the slight
work the Hours of his train — But the Powers
were unpropitious; fate was averse. Some other
spell must be chaunted, some other melody sung.
I will devote it to the dead. The mind shall anti-
cipate a few fleeting hours, and borrow its tone
from what all that have been are, and all that are
will shortly be. All that adorns this world are the
gifts which they left in their passage through it.
To these monuments which they bequeathed,
and to their shades which watch in the universe,
I apply for excitement, and I dedicate my short-
lived flowers.
i The duties to the dead implied in this dedication, however,
seem to have slipped the mind of the young writer, after he
turned the page, until he nearly reached the end of the book.


JOURNAL
[AGE 18
CONTINUATION OF SOME REMARKS UPON
PROVIDENCE
Saturday Eve., February 23.
No elaborate argument can remove the fact
which strikes the senses, and which is the first and
chief difficulty in the way of the belief of an omni-
potent good Principle, namely, the existence of
evil in the world, and next, the great share it has
in the texture of human life, and its successful op-
position to virtue and happiness. If we suppose
the character of the Author to be unmixed Good-
ness, the work must be likewise pure, and an ulti-
mate failure of success subtracts Wisdom and
Omnipotence (if indeed the one be not involved
in the other) from the qualities of the forming
Being, thatis, - demonstrates him not to be God.
Human wisdom sees the imperfection of the part,
and labours to make out the perfection of the
whole from the analogies of the universe which
fall under its eye, from its judgments upon the
language which testimony attributes to this Cre-
ator, and from the intuitive and acquired con-
clusions which it forms upon Nature.
1 This argument, though, after the above paragraph, lead-
ing nowhere and ending conventionally when the young writer
tired of it, is introduced because of the criticism so often made


1822]
PROVIDENCE
113
But another great testimony to which the mind
will naturally turn to confirm or efface its con-
victions of a superintending hand, is History;
to see if Time will fulfil any larger part of that
Justice which should take place than falls under
the life of one man. And this is an evidence
which grows with every year of time, which
could not be open to the primitive races of man-
kind, and which, if its weight be found favour-
able, will develope to the last ages the connecting
bonds which unite the fate of many generations,
- the plan, of ample outline and intricate parts,
on Emerson, that he would not look on the dark side of the
world, on evil, on sin. His attempts to deal with such prob-
lems he later considered as among the diseases of childhood.
In “Spiritual Laws” (Essays, ist Series) he said: “The
intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, if a man will
live the life of nature, and not import into his mind difficulties
which are none of his. No man need be perplexed in his specu-
lations. Let him do and say what strictly belongs to him, and
though very ignorant of books, his nature shall not yield him
any intellectual obstructions and doubts. Our young people are
diseased with the theological problems of original sin, predes-
tination and the like. These never presented a practical diffi-
culty to any man, — never darkened across any man's road
who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are che
soul's mumps and measles and whooping-cough, and those
who have not caught them cannot describe their health or pre-
scribe the cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies."


114
JOURNAL
[AGE 18
which will reveal the obscure relations between
one and another remote scene, whereby a suc-
cession of misfortune and suffering is counter-
balanced by an equal sum of happiness, and the
unnatural success of vice and its undue prepon-
derance over ages and nations of the world, is
set right again by the triumphs of virtue over
other ages and nations. Moralists have regarded
the adjustment of this great and perplexing va-
riety in human condition as the exhibition to the
Universe of a great picture, in which, for the
harmony of the whole, much is encompassed
with deep shade; and the painted figures may not
complain to the Artist because they have been
arranged and coloured in such or such a manner.
But is this a fair view? are free agents nothing
more than painted emblems? are— (but I have
left my proper course of thought and must return
to it again)- I was about to say that it is history
alone which can determine whether the means
answer the end, and whether the design be fully
accomplished in those schemes whose fulfilments
involves many ages; e. g. to discover the typi-
cal and direct relations between the Jewish and
Christian dispensations; and to watch the fulfil-
ment of prophecy. But whether these schemes
be answered or not, the question still recurs --


1822) EXISTENCE OF EVIL 115
why did a good Providence permit at all the ex-
istence of evil, or why does any one individual
suffer from the vice of others, or the sickness and
unhappiness which he did not bring on himself,
but which is incident to his nature? The reply
which each individual finds himself able to make
to this question will go far to doubt or to justify
his idea of Providence.
It may be well by way of solving this ques-
tion to propose and answer two more — What
is evil? and, What is its origin?
What is evil ? There is an answer from
every corner of this globe — from every moun-
tain and valley and sea. The enslaved, the sick,
the disappointed, the poor, the unfortunate,
the dying, the surviving, cry out, It is here.
Every man points to his dwelling or strikes his
breast to say, It is here. An enumeration of
some of the most prominent evils in society will
illustrate the variety and malignity of this disease.
What is its origin? The sin which Adam
brought into the world and entailed upon his
children.
No
Ensuais
contigo
One of the finest chapters in the Old Tes-
tament is the song of Deborah and Barak,
Judges V. q. v. !!


116
(Age 18
JOURNAL
[NOVELS]
The novelist must fasten the skirts of his
tale to scenes or traditions so well known as to
make it impossible to disbelieve, and so obscure
as not to obtrude repugnant facts upon the fin-
ished deception he weaves.
was e
[college Revisited]
I have not much cause, I sometimes think,
to wish my Alma Mater well, personally; I
was not often highly flattered by success, and
was every day mortified by my own ill fate or
ill conduct. Still, when I went today to the
ground where I had had the brightest thoughts
of my little life and filled up the little measure
of my knowledge, and had felt sentimental for
a time, and poetical for a time, and had seen
many fine faces, and traversed many fine walks,
and enjoyed much pleasant, learned, or friendly
society, — I felt a crowd of pleasant thoughts,
as I went posting about from place to place,
and room to chapel.
February 28, 1822.
Few of my pages have been filled so little to
my own satisfaction as these — and why ? -be-
cause the air has been so fine, and my visits so


1822)
ROMANCE
117
pleasant, and myself so full of pleasant social
feelings, for a day or two past, that the mind
has not possessed sufficiently the cold, frigid
tone which is indispensable to become so oracu-
lar as it hath been of late. Etsi mearum cogita-
tionum laus (et bonor? ) non tam magna quam antea
fuit, tamen gaudium voluptatemque majorem ac-
cipit, quoniam sentire principia amoris me credebam.
Vidi amicum etsi veterem, ignotum ; alteram vidi
notam et noscendam; ambo, forsitan, si placet Deo,
partem vitae, partem mei facient. Pænitet mei res
magnas narrare cum verbis qualibus tyro uti solet.
· · · · · · · ·
At mid day in the crowd of care,
The unbidden thought will come,
And force the obedient blush prepare
Reluctant welcome home ;
And in the corners of the heart,
And in the Passions' cell,
It bids my thoughts to battle start,
Which fain would peaceful dwell.
Peace, Pleasure, Pride, and Joy, and Grief,
Awake the chaos wild, —
But worse and cursed the relief
Which sense and strife beguiled. (To-wit,
Indifference.)
So much poetry for peculiar sources of pride,
old and inveterate, and perhaps hereafter un-
.


118
[AGE 18
JOURNAL
intelligible. Still one's feelings are well worth
speculation and I am desirous of remembering
a date. (as that of the last page) ...
A beautiful thought struck mesuddenly, with-
out any connection which I could trace with my
previous trains of thought and feeling. It had
no analogy to any notion I ever remembered to
have formed; it surpassed all others in the energy
and purity in which it clothed itself; it put by
all others by the novelty it bore, and the grasp
it laid upon every fibre; for the time, it absorbed
all other thoughts ; — all the faculties — each in
his cell, bowed down and worshipped before this
new Star. — Ye who roam among the living and
the dead, over flowers or among the cherubims,
in real or ideal universes, do not whisper my
thought !
SOCIAL FEELINGS
... Solitude has but few sacrifices to make,
and may be innocent, but can hardly be greatly
virtuous like Abraham, like Job, like the Roman
Regulus or the apostle Paul. Great actions, from
their nature, are not done in the closet ; they are
performed in the face of the sun, and in behalf
of the world. ...


1822)
VISION
119
Sabbath, Marcb 3.
Animi ardor, de quo supra dixi, non extinctus
est, sed mibi videtur non esse tam potens, tam clarus,
tam magnus quam antea. Timeo ne caderet. Spero
ut viveret.
Marcb 4.
VISION
A breathless solitude in a cottage in the woods
beneath the magnificent splendour of this moon-
light and with this autumnal coolness might drive
one mad with excitement. Precipitous and shad-
owy mountains, thick forests and far winding
rivers should sleep under the light, and add their
charm to the fascination. The silence broken only
by the far cry of the night bird; or disturbed by
the distant shout of the peasant, or, at intervals,
by those melancholy moanings of the wind which
speak so expressively to the ear,— who would
not admire? Let the Hours roll by uncounted,
let the universe sleep on in this grand repose, but
be the spell unbroken by aught of this world,
by vulgar and disquieting cares; by a regret or a
thought which might remind us of aught but Na-
ture. Here is her Paradise, here is her throne.
The stars in their courses roll silently; the oaks
rock in their forests to the voice of the sighing
breeze; the wall flowers on the top of the cliff nod
ro
er


120
JOURNAL [AGE 18
over its giddy edge, and the worshipping enthu-
siast stands at the door of his tent mute and happy,
while the leaves rustle down from the topmost
boughs and cover his feet. A cry in the wilder-
ness! the shriek and sudden sound of desolation!
howl for him that comes riding on darkness
through the midnight; that puts his hand forth
to darken the moon, and quenches all the stars.
Lo! where the awful pageantry rolleth now to
the corners of the heaven; the fiery form shrouds
his terrible brow behind the fragment of a stormy
cloud, and the eyes of Creation gaze after the
rushing chariot. Lo! he stands up in the Uni-
verse and with his hands he parts the firmament
asunder from side to side. And as he trode upon
the dragons, I saw the name which burned under-
neath. Wake, oh wake, ye who keep watch in
the Universe ! Time, Space, Eternity, ye Energies
that live,- for his name is DESTRUCTION!
— who keep the Sceptre of its eternal order, for He
hath reached unto your treasuries, and he feeleth
after your sceptre to break it in pieces. Another
cry went up, like the crash of broken spheres,
the voice of dying worlds. It is night. — An ex-
ceeding noisy vision !
1 The florid oratory then in vogue, especially of the
young Southerners, had, for a time, a great attraction
ex-


1822]
121
GREATNESS
reserv
GREATNESS
Never mistake yourself to be great, or de- -
signed for greatness, because you have been
"visited by an indistinct and shadowy hope that
something is reserved for you beyond the com-
mon lot. It is easier to aspire than to do the
deeds. The very idleness which leaves you
leisure to dream of honour is the insurmount-
able obstacle between you and it. Those who
are fitly furnished for the weary passage from
mediocrity to greatness seldom find time or
appetite to indulge that hungry and boisterous
importunity for excitement which weaker intel-
lects are prone to display. That which helps
them on to eminence is in itself sufficient to
engross the attention of all their powers, and
to occupy the aching void. Greatness never
comes upon a man by surprise, and without
his exertions or consent; No, it is another sort
of Genii who traverse your path suddenly ; it
is Poverty which travels like an armed man; it
is Contempt which meets you in the corners and
for the New England boy. In later years Mr. Emerson
used to recite to his children, imitating the manner, some
fragments of their college oratory which still remained
in his memory.


I22
JOURNAL
(AGE 18
highways with a hiss, and Anger which treads
you down as with the lightning. Greatness is
a property for which no man gets credit too
soon; it must be possessed long before it is
acknowledged. Nor do I think this to be so
absolutely rare and unattainable as it is com-
monly esteemed. This very bope, and panting
after it, which was alluded to, is, in some sort,
an earnest of the possibility of success. God
doubtless designed to form minds of different
mould, and to create distinctions in intellect;
still the extraordinary effects of education attest
a capacity of improvement to an indefinite de--
gree. a
Newton was often at a loss when the conver-
sation turned upon his own discoveries į Shak-
speare was indifferent or opposed to the pub-
lication of his works, and idly left his books,
careless himself, for others, for Britain, or the
world to boast of. It is impossible to make
arithmetical computation of mind. Still this
indifference to trifles, and the sensibility to
them, trace a very broad line of distinction be-
tween the first and second orders. ...
I am not sure but that the highest order of
greatness, that which abandons earthly consan-
guinity, and allies itself to immortal minds, is
je


1822)
BALLAD
123
that which exists in obscurity and is least
known among mankind. For superiour intel-
lects are only drawn out into society by the
action of those inducements which society holds
up to them. If, therefore, there are any who
are above the solicitation of wealth, honour, and
influence, and who can laugh even at the love
of Fame, that last infirmity of noble minds, there
will be nothing left worth offering them, to at-
tract them from their solitudes; they must pass
on through their discipline and education of
life, unsympathized with, unknown, or perhaps,
ignorantly despised. Thus the archangels pass
among us unseen, for, if known, they could not
be appreciated, and having faculties and ener-
gies which our organs can never measure, it is
better that we never meet.
March 7.
BALLAD
The Knight rode up to the castle-gate,
But a grisly hag was there,
She chattered in spite, with muttered threat,
And twisted her thin gray hair.
Her half-bald pate was a sorry sight,
But her eyes went wide askew;
Two long dog-teeth, like dim twilight,
Shone over her lips so blue.


I 24
JOURNAL
(Age 18
« Fair ladye of love !” the Knight exclaimed,
And bent his body low,
“ Thou flower of beauty, widely famed,
Roses feed thee, I trow.
« The boy Cupide attendeth thee,
The Graces thy sisters be ;
Oh give me a lock of thy golden hair
And make a faithful knight of me."
The maiden clenched her shrivelled fist,
And her eyes grew red with rage:-
“ You may mock, Sir Simple, as loud as you list,
But you shall be my (chosen) page.
“I'll give you a lock of the hair that's left,
Three hairs I'll give to thee;
Beëlzebub knows, when I'm bereft,
I will the stronger be.”
She plucked three hairs from her pye-bald head,
And shrieked like a fishhorn loud, -
Straight of those hairs three snakes were made,
* That leaped on the champion good;
And one twined round his armed neck,
And one twined round each hand,
And the tails of the three in a black braid met
In the grisly haggis hand.


1822] SOCIAL FEELINGS
125
And the hag she turned to a dragon green,
With these she flew away, —
And never again those two were seen,
Until the Judgement Day.
This book, in ordinary, is peculiarly devoted
to original ideas, but I cannot resist the pleasure
of setting down, in black and white, verses
which I have repeated so often. It is a charm
in one of Ben Jonson's Masques.
“ The faery beam upon you,
The stars to glister on you,
A moon of light,
In the noon of night,
Till the fire-drake hath oer-gone you.
The wheel of Fortune guide you,
The Boy with the bow beside you
Run aye in the way,
Till the bird of day,
And the luckier lot betide you."
SOCIAL FEELINGS
... It is in itself a most noble and magnifi-
cent subject, and one to which all others seem
tributary, ... how the combined energies of
many millions of co-existent agents may be
brought to act, with their proper infinite influ-
ence, continually in the direction of their sure


126
JOURNAL
[Age 18
interests, for time and eternity; and how the im-
provement which is gained may be kept, and the
separate and conflicting energies may be recon-
ciled, and, that Mind shall reap all the fruits of
the toiling of the body. ...
DEATH
[DEATH]
Marcb 8.
. . . Life is the spark which kindles up a soul
and opens its capacities to receive the great les-
sons which it is appointed to learn of the Uni-
verse—of Good-of Evil —of accountability
- of Eternity; of Beauty, of Happiness. The
inestimable moment in which the history of past
ages is opened, its own relations to the Universe
explained, its dependence and independence
shewn; the time to reach itself the affections, and
to gratify them, to ally itself in kindly bonds
with other beings of like destiny; the time to
educate a citizen of unknown spheres ; the time
to serve the Lord.
And is it good to die? to exchange this pre-
cious consciousness capable of such sublime pur-
poses for an unknown state (of which all that
is seen is appalling); perhaps for a gloomy sleep?
Is it good to be forced away against our will and
through extreme suffering, from the vital body,


1822] DEATH. DRAMA 127
and give up that organ of our enjoyment and
sufferings to the worms, while what shall befall
the soul we cannot tell? We shudder when the
question is made, and terror, terror breaks down
the vain refinements of philosophy, and the fences
of affectation.
Reason bids us ask, who is the being that
forces away the mind into this unknown state?
Nature and Revelation have taught us some-
thing of this being. We are reduced to put our
views of death entirely upon His character and
will, and Death will become more or less ter-
rible according to our notions of the Lord of
Death.
Thus have I fulfilled enough of my design
in this book to authorize my dedication on the
first page. This shall not prevent me from re-
suming the topics upon the slightest indications
of my Noömeter.
DRAMA
March 9.
In connexion with the remarks on the Drama
Wide World, No. 3] it should be further said,
that this art is the most attractive, naturally, of
all. The others speak to man from a distance,
through cold and remote associations. The liter-


128
JOURNAL [Age 18
ature of a generation generally addresses but a
scanty portion of society; of their contempora-
ries, history and poetry are confined to a few
'readers; philosophy and science to still fewer;
but the buskined muse comes out impatient
from these abstractions, to repeat in a popular
and intelligible form the productions of the
closet, to copy the manners of high and low life,
to act upon the heart; and succeeds, by thus
avoiding the haughty port of the Parnassian
queens, to draw the multitude by the cords of
love. Folly wins where wisdom fails; and the
policy of adding to our attractions even at the
cost of some wit, is seldom repented. This is
the excellence of the drama which pretends to
nothing more than to be a true picture of life.
FICTION
The origin of Fiction is buried in the dark-
ness of the remotest ages. If it were a question
of any importance, perhaps its secret springs are
not yet beyond the reach of the inquirer. To
paint what is not should naturally seem less
agreeable to the mind than to describe what is.
“Nothing” (said the author of the Essay on the
Human Understanding) "is so beautiful to the
eye, as truth to the mind.” But if we look again,
Id


1822] FICTION. PROPHECY 129
I apprehend we shall find that the source of
fable, is human misery; that to relieve one hour
of life, by exciting the sympathies to a tale even
of imaginary joy, was accounted a praiseworthy
accomplishment; and honour and gold were due
to him, whose rare talent took away, for the
moment, the memory of care and grief. Fancy,
which is ever a kind of contradiction to life and
truth, set off in a path remote as possible from
all human scenes and circumstances ; and hence
the first legends dealt altogether in monstrous
scenes, and peopled the old mythology, and the
nursery lore, with magicians, griffins, and meta-
morphoses which offend the ear of taste, and could
only win away the credulity of a savage race, and
the simplicity of a child. Reason, however, soon
taught the bard that the deception was infinitely
improved by being reduced within the compass
of probability; and the second fictions introduced
imaginary persons into the manners and dwel-
lings of real life.
PROPHECY
March 10.
No talent is more prized, in society, than that
sagacity which, from passing events draws just and
profound conclusions regarding their future ter-


130
JOURNAL
(Age 18
affairs, to
Feturn. This events, and
mination. The names of Burke, Fox and Pitt
deservedly rank high in the world's esteem from
the success of their political predictions. For it
argues a singular elevation of mind to generalize
so calmly in the conflicting interests and par-
tialities of fortune, to see something inevitable in
the almost fortuitous concurrence of affairs, to
cast a die into the whirl of events, and rest in con-
fidence of its return. This, however, is but a faint
approach to the majesty of that remarkable fore-
sight which was exhibited in the early ages of the
world, and termed Prophecy. For the one is of
inferior origin, and depends altogether upon a
shrewd comparison of present with past events,
and a critical attention to the bias and results of
a form of government, of a national character, of
a popular excitement. The other grasps at indi-
cations which are invisible to other eyes, and pos-
sesses a new faculty of communication with the
universe. It does not follow the general progress
of things to a general result, but singles out, with
admirable distinctness, the one man or event, for
which its lips were opened ; and, entirely desti-
tute of any manifest clue to its knowledge, de-
scribes, with a precision not to be mistaken, the
character, circumstances and use of things which
are buried in a futurity of many ages. It sensibly
IC


1822)
PROPHECY
131
elevates our notions of the human mind, to dis-
cover in it this latent capacity of reaching through
the accidents of time, to ascertain a destiny be-
yond the possibility of cross accidents to change.
It is a capacity which every soul looks to enjoy
hereafter, and its development here is a signal
distinction from the hand of Providence, and
an earnest to the soul of an unclouded vision to
come. ...
[Wide World, No. 5, is missing from the
Journals.]


JOURNAL VII
THE WIDE WORLD, NO. 6
“ Maximus parlus temporis," quoth giggling Vanity.
“Burn the trash,” saith Fear.
There the Northern light reposes
With ruddy Aames in circles bright
Like a wreath of ruby roses
On the dusky brow of night.
DEDICATION
Boston, April 14, 1822.
In aforetime, while to the inhabitants of Europe
the existence of America was yet a secret in the
heart of time, there dwelled a giant upon the
South Mountain Chimborazo, who extended
a beneficent dominion over hills and clouds and
continents, and sustained a communication with
his mother Nature. He lived two hundred
years in that rich land, causing peace and jus-
tice, and he battled with the Mammoths and
slew them. Upon the sumrnit of the moun-
tain, amid the snows of all the winters, was the
mouth of a cave which was lined with golden
ore. This cavity, termed “ The Golden Lips,"
On


1822]
DEDICATION
133
PV
admitted downwards into the centre of the
mountain, which was a vast and spacious tem-
ple, and all its walls and ceilings glowing with
pure gold. Man had never polluted it with
his tools of art. Nature fashioned the mighty
tenement for the bower of her son. At mid-
day, the vertical sun was perpendicular to the
cavity, and poured its full effulgence upon the
mirror floor; its reflected beams blazed on all
sides, from the fretted roof, with a lustre which
eclipsed the elder glory of the temple of Solo-
mon. In the centre of this gorgeous palace,
bareheaded and alone, the Giant Califo per-
formed the incommunicable rite, and studied
the lines of destiny. When the sun arrived at
the meridian, a line of light traced this inscrip-
tion upon the wall:-“A thousand years, a
thousand years, and the Hand shall come, and
shall tear the Veil for all.” Two thousand
years have passed, and the mighty progress of
improvement and civilization have been form-
ing the force which shall reveal Nature to Man.
To roll about the outskirts of this Mystery
and ascertain and describe its pleasing wonders
— be this the journey of my Wideworld. The
Hand shall come; -I traced its outline in the
mists of the morning.


134
(Age 18
JOURNAL
VAIN WORLD
Tuesday Evening, April 16.
It is strange that a world should be so dear
which speculatively and seriously we acknow-
ledge to be so unsatisfying and so dark. Not all
its most glorious array when Nature is appar-
elled in her best, and when Art toils to gratify,
— not the bright sun itself, and the blazing
firmament wherein he stands as chief —can pre-
vent a man, at certain moments, from saying
to his soul —" It is vanity.” No wild guesses,
no elaborate reasoning can surmount this tes-
timony to the familiar truth, that the human
spirit hath a higher origin than matter, a higher
home than the earth ; that it is too capacious to
be always cheated with trifles, and too long-
lived to amalgamate with mortality. ...
It was found by philosophy that luminous
matter wastes itself ever; it is true without a
metaphor of this shining world which goes on
decaying, and still attracting by its false lustre.
[POPULACE]
It is a matter of great doubt to me whether
or not the populace of all ages is essentially the
same in character. I am not a competent judge


1822)
POPULACE
135
to decide if inconsistent institutions will affect
and alter the prominent features of the moral
character. There can be no question that from
both the poles to the Equator, under every sun,
man will be found selfish and comparatively in-
different to the general welfare, whenever it is
put in competition with private interest. But
in China, as in Venice, will faction and cabal
always watch to check the continuance of every
administration, good or bad? Will vulgar blood
always rebel and rail, and against honourable,
virtuous and opulent members of the same
society? Will the good always be in peril from
the misdeeds and menaces of the bad ? In the
answer to these interrogations, truth leads re-
luctantly towards the affirmative. This is cer-
tain— that war is waged in the Universe, with-
out truce or end, between Virtue and Vice; they
are Light and Darkness, they cannot harmonize.
Upon Earth they are forcibly consorted, and the
perpetual struggle which they make, separates
by a distinct line man from man throughout the
world.
answ


136
[Age 18
JOURNAL
MARTYRDOM
Saturday Evening. April.
I rejoice in the full and unquestionable testi-
mony which certifies the sufferings of Martyrs,
as the most undeniable merit of the human race;
it proves the existence of a consistency and force
of character which might else to common minds
appear chimerical. ... In those moments when
a desperate view of the wrong side of society
will sometimes totally unsettle our convictions,
and reason almost leans to doubt and Atheism,
because the world is frail or mad, this saving
recollection comes up like an angel of light to
assure us that men have suffered the fierceness
of the torture, have endured, and died for the
faith. : .. To keep inviolate the divine law,
they have broken over the law of nature and the
native fears of man and have dared to immolate
this mysterious existence and to try the gulfs of
futurity. ....
HABIT
Habit is a thing of compound character which
forges chains for human nature at the same time
that it announces its consistency and independ-
ence. It is a thorough and perfect servitude, but


1822) REFLECTIONS
137
One
Swe
man voluntarily imposed it upon himself. It is
a noble foresight which at once determines upon
actions that will be perpetually proper, and makes
one resolution answer for a thousand, and once
made, binds with divine force. When we con-
sider it as an instrument — put into the hands of
Vice and Virtue, which both may wield to certain,
to vast advantage, we shall have an adequate idea
of its importance in the constitution of human
life. In childhood it is given into the power of
all to make choice between Virtue and Vice, to
whom he will commit the service of this Magic
Wand.
nan
Each movement of the Archangel is perhaps
free and independent of every former one.
Tuesday Evening. May 7.
Amid my diseases and aches and qualms I will
write to see if my brains are gone. For a day or
two past we have had a wind precisely annual;
which I discovered by this, that I have a return
of the identical thoughts and temperament which
I had a year ago. But this sun shines upon, and
these ill winds blow over a changed person in
condition, in hope. I was then delighted with my
recent honours, traversing my chamber (Hollis


138
JOURNAL [Age 18
9) flushed and proud of a poet's fancies, and the
day when they were to be exhibited; pleased with
ambitious prospects, and careless because ignorant
of the future. But now I am a hopeless School-
master, just entering upon years of trade to which
no distinct limit is placed; toiling through this
miserable employment even without the poor
satisfaction of discharging it well, for the good
suspect me, and the geese dislike me. Then again
look at this: there was pride in being a collegian,
and a poet, and somewhat romantic in my queer
acquaintance with — and poverty presented
nothing mortifying in the meeting of two young
men whom their common relation and character
as scholars equalized; But when one becomes a
droning schoolmaster, and the other is advancing
his footing in good company and fashionable
friends, the cast of countenance on meeting is
somewhat altered. Hope, it is true, still hangs
out, though at further distance, her gay banners;
but I have found her a cheat once, twice, many
times, and shall I trust the deceiver again? And
what am I the better for two, four, six years delay?
Nine months are gone, and except some rags of
Wideworlds, half a dozen general notions, etc., I
am precisely the same World's humble servant
that left the University in August. Good people




Alergi
ihan
l
Zo 1 Denen
a herald to fu

yique
.
C
SKETCHES BY EMERSON
In the leaves of his College Journals





1822] MORTIFICATION 139
will tell me that it is a Judgment and lesson for
my character, to make me fitter for the office
whereto I aspire; but if I come out a dispirited,
mature, broken-hearted miscreant,- how will
man or myself be bettered? Now I have not
thought, all this time, that I was complaining at
Fate, although I suppose it amounts to the same;
these are the suggestions only of a disappointed
spirit brooding over the fall of castles in the air.
My fate is enviable contrasted with that of
others; I have only to blame myself who had no
right to build them.
WALDO E.
“And there is a great difference whether the
tortoise gathers herself within her shell hurt or
unhurt.”
I shall bless Cadmus, or Chad, or Hermes,
for inventing letters and written language-you,
my dear little Wideworld, deducing your pedi-
gree from that pretty event.
May 13.
In twelve days I shall be nineteen years old;
which I count a miserable thing. Has any other
educated person lived so many years and lost so
many days? I do not say acquired so little, for
by an ease of thought and certain looseness of


140
JOURNAL
[Age 18
mind I have perhaps been the subject of as many
ideas as many of mine age. But mine approach-
ing maturity is attended with a goading sense of
emptiness and wasted capacity; with the convic-
tion that vanity has been content to admire the
little circle of natural accomplishments, and has
travelled again and again the narrow round, in-
stead of adding sedulously the gems of knowledge
to their number. Too tired and too indolent to
travel up the mountain path which leads to good
learning, to wisdom and to fame, I must be sat-
isfied with beholding with an envious eye the
labourious journey and final success of my fel-
lows, remaining stationary myself, until my in-
feriors and juniors have reached and outgone me.
And how long is this to last? How long shall I
hold the little acclivity which four or six years......
ago I flattered myself was enviable, but which -
has become contemptible now? It is a child's
place, and if I hold it longer, I may quite as well
resume the bauble and rattle, grow old with a
baby's red jockey on my grey head and a picture-
book in my hand, instead of Plato and Newton.
Well, and I am he who nourished brilliant vi-
sions of future grandeur which may well appear
presumptuous and foolish now. My infant im- ..
agination was idolatrous of glory, and thought


1822] MORTIFICATION 141
itself no mean pretender to the honours of those
who stood highest in the community, and dared
even to contend for fame with those who are
hallowed by time and the approbation of ages.
It was a little merit to conceive such animating
hopes, and afforded some poor prospect of the
possibility of their fulfilment. This hope was fed
and fanned by the occasional lofty communica-
tions which were vouchsafed to me with the
Muses' Heaven, and which have at intervals
made me the organ of remarkable sentiments and
feelings which were far above my ordinary train.
And with this lingering earnest of better hope (I
refer to this fine exhilaration which now and then
quickens my clay) shall I resign every aspiration
to belong to that family of giant minds which
live on earth many ages and rule the world when
their bones are slumbering, no matter whether
under a pyramid or a primrose? No, I will yet
a little while entertain the angel.
Look next from the history of my intellect
to the history of my heart. A blank, my lord. I
have not the kind affections of a pigeon. Ungen-
erous and selfish, cautious and cold, I yet wish to
beromantic; have not sufficient feeling to speak a
natural, hearty welcome to a friend or stranger,
and yet send abroad wishes and fancies of a friend-


142
JOURNAL
[Age 18
ship with a man I never knew. There is not in
the whole wide Universe of God (my relations
to Himself I do not understand) one being to -
whom I am attached with warm and entire de-
yotion, - not a being to whom I have joined fate.
for weal or wo, not one whose interests I have
nearly and dearly at heart;—and this I say at -
the most susceptible age of man. Perhaps at the
distance of a score of years, if I then inhabit this
world, or still more, if I do not, these will appear
frightful confessions; they may or may not, -
it is a true picture of a barren and desolate soul."
(Be it remembered that it was last evening that
I heard that prodigious display of eloquence in
Faneuil Hall, by Mr Otis, which astonished and
delighted me above any thing of the kind I ever
witnessed.)
I love my Wide Worlds.
My body weighs 144 pounds. - In a fortnight
I intend, Deo volente, to make a journey on foot.
i These utterances are not to be taken too seriously. The boy's
ascetic life and close confinement at his necessary and his self-
imposed work have wrought their natural result. These are the
first symptoms of the general vital depression which, in the next
five years, nearly cost him his life. For his mother and brothers
he always had a strong affection and loyalty.


1822]
MARATHON
143
Amonth hence I will answer the question whether
the pleasure was only in the hope.
MARATHON
Go hide the shields of war,
The clarion and the spear,
The plume of pride and scimetar,
Vain trophies of a bier.
They have digged a thousand graves
In Marathon today ;
Their dirge is sounded by the waves
Which wash the slain away.
The hearth is forsaken, the Furies are fed, -
Wake, Maidens of Athens ! your wail for the dead.
The Persian's golden car,
And image of the Sun
In Aashing light rolled fast and far
O’er echoing Marathon.
He mourns his quenched beam,
His slain and broken host,
He curses glory's dream
Which lured him to be lost.
His rose-wreath is dyed with a bloody stain
And the Genius of Asia shrieks Shame! to the slain.
Io! Minerva! Hail !
What Argive Harp is dumb ?
The triumph loads the gale,
The laurelled victors come!


144
JOURNAL : [Age 18
There 's a light in Victory's eye
Which none but God can give;
And a name can never die —
Apollo bids it live.
The daughters of Music have learned your name,
And Athens, and Earth, shall reěcho your fame.
May 24, 1822.
And now it is Friday at even, and I am come
to take leave of my pleasant Wideworld, for a
little time, and commence my journey tomorrow.
I look to many pleasures in my fortnight's ab-
sence, but neither is my temperament so vola-
tile and gay, nor my zeal so strong as to make
my expectations set aside the possibility of dis-
appointment. I am so young an adventurer, that
I am alive to regret and sentiment upon so little
an occasion as this parting; though one would
judge from my late whispered execrations of the
school that a short suspension of its mortifica-
tions would be exceedingly delightful. I may also
observe here that I had never suspected myself
of so much feeling as rose within me at taking
leave of Mrs. E. at the water side and seeing
so delicate a lady getting into a boat from those
steep wharf-stairs among sailors and labourers;
and leaving her native shore for Louisiana with-


1822] SHAKSPEARE. NATURE 145
out a single friend or relation attending her to
the shore, and seeing her depart.— For myself
I was introduced to her upon the wharf. Her
husband behaved very well. God speed them!
Mem. Certain lines in Anthony and Cleopatra
about a "hoop of affection so staunch," etc.; find
it.? How noble a masterpiece is the tragedy of
Hamlet: it can only be spoken of and described
by superlatives. There is a deep and subtle wit,
with an infinite variety, and every line is golden.
Sunday Evening, June 9.3
If a man could go into the country but once,
as to some raree-shew, or if it were indulged by
God but to a single individual to behold the
i R. W. E.'s (later) note. She is dead and her hus-
band also, a thousand miles away from their kindred.
2 “If I did know
A hoop to hold us staunch, from edge to edge
O'the world I'd seek it.”
Anthony and Cleopatra.
3 Some account of this walking journey of Ralph and
William is given by the former in a letter to his Aunt Mary
Emerson, printed by Mr. Cabot in the Memoir (vol. I, pages
78–79). They walked to Northborough, found a pretty farm-
house, where they were received as boarders for a week. This
was near Little Chauncey Pond, which they crossed in a boat
and betook themselves to great woods beyond. They enjoyed


146
JOURNAL
[AGE 19
majesty of nature, I think the credit and mag-
nificence of Art would fall suddenly to the
ground. For take away the cheapness and ease
of acquisition which lessen our estimation of its
value, and who could suddenly find himself
alone in the green fields where the whole firma-
ment meets the eye at once, and the pomp of
woods and clouds and hills is poured upon the
mind — without an unearthly animation? Upon
a mountain solitude a man instantly feels a sen-
sible exaltation and a better claim to his rights
in the universe. He who wanders in the woods
perceives how natural it was to pagan imagination
to find gods in every deep grove and by each
fountain head. Nature seems to him not to be
silent but to be eager and striving to break out
into music. Each tree, flower and stone, he in-
vests with life and character; and it is impossible
that the wind which breathes so expressive a
sound amid the leaves — should mean nothing.
... The embowered cottage and solitary farm-
house display to you the same mingled picture
of frankness and meanness, pride and poverty
of feeling, fraud and charity, which are encom-
themselves highly, did little reading or writing, but found rest
and “ an exhilarating Paradise air” which was much better for
them.


1822]
DRAMA
147
passed with brick walls in the city. Every pleas-
ant feature is balanced by somewhat painful. To
the stranger, the simplicity of manners is delight-
ful and carries the memory back to the Arcadian
reign of Saturn; and the primitive custom of
saluting every passenger is an agreeable acknow-
ledgement of common sympathies, and a common
nature. But from the want of an upper class in
society, from the admirable republican equality
which levels one with all, results a rudeness and
sometimes a savageness of manners which is apt
to disgust a polished and courtly man.
mon
DRAMA
June 1o.
There are two natures in man, — flesh and
spirit, — whose tendencies are wide as the uni-
verse asunder, and from whose miraculous com-
bination it arises that he is urged alway by the
1 Mr. Emerson kept up this kindly custom in his walks on
country-roads through his life.
2 This is the latter part of an attack on the Drama for its
depraving quality (everywhere a moral poison disguised and
sweetened by art) ending with a conventional picturing of the
soul at the Judgment Day confounded by the record of misspent
time. Then, as in the earlier passages on the same subject, Emer-
son abruptly turns to praise the theory of the Drama and its pos-
sibilities for good, if reformed.


148
JOURNAL [Age 19
visible eloquent image of Truth, toward immor-
tal perfection, and allured aside from the painful
pursuit by gross but fascinating pleasure. The
worst form under which temptation entices our
weakness, is when it plots to make the soul a pan-
der to the sense, by winning the mind to the plea-
sures of lofty sentiment and sublime fiction, and
insinuating amid this parade of moral beauty its
pernicious incentives to crime, and invitations to
folly. It is a fatal twilight, in which darkness is
sown with light, until the perverted judgment
learns to think that the whole spectacle is more
harmonious, and better accommodated to his
feeble human sense. But be assured, the light
shall grow less and less, and shade shall be added
to shade. ...
The Platonist ... did not widely err who pro-
claimed the existence of two warring principles,
the incorruptible mind, and the mass of malig-
nant matter. This was a creed which was often
damned as heresy by the infallible church; happy
if they had never devised a worse. In their at-
tempts to escape from this inherent corruption,
and correct the imperfection of nature, they
went wrong with delirious zeal; but eternal truth
founded the basis of their belief. ...
The theory of the drama is, in itself, so beauti-


1822]
DRAMA
149
ful, and so well designed to work good, that we
feel forcibly what a pity it is, that its concentrat-
ing interest, its unequalled power of conveying
instruction and the delight inspired by its ordi-
nary decorations should be so miserably perverted
to the service of sin. It might aid Virtue, and lend
its skilful powers to the adornment of truth; its
first form was a hymn to the gods, and a moni-
tory voice to human frailty, and human passion.
Now, it seduces to Pleasure and leads on to Death,
and the shadows of Eternity settle over its termi-
nation.
I think it is pretty well known that more is
gained to a man's business by one half hour's
conversation with his friend, than by very many
letters; for, face to face, each can distinctly state
his own views; and each chief objection is
started and answered; and, moreover, a more
definite notion of one's sentiments and inten-
tions, with regard to the matter, are gathered
from his look and tones, than it is possible to
gain from paper. It is therefore a hint borrowed
from Nature, when a lesson of morals is con-
veyed to an audience in the engaging form of a
dialogue, instead of the silence of a book, or
the cold soliloquy of an orator. When this di-
dactic dialogue is improved by the addition of


150
JOURNAL
[AGE 19
n
pathetic or romantic circumstances, and, in the
place of indifferent speakers, we are presented
with the characters of great and good men, of
heroes and demigods, thus adding to the senti-
ments expressed the vast weight of virtuous
life and character — the wit of the invention is
doubled. Lastly, a general moral is drawn from
an event where all the parts of the piece are
made to tend and terminate ; this is what is
called the distribution of poetical justice, and
is nothing but an inevitable inference of some
great moral truth, which the mind readily makes,
upon the turn of affairs. For greater delight,
we add music, painting and poetry, well aware
that the splendour of embellishment will fix the
eye, after the mind grows weary. These are
the advantages comprehended in the dramatic
art. Truths otherwise impertinent, are told with
admirable effect in this little epitome of life;
and every philosophic Christian must be loth
to lose to religion, an instrument of such tried
powers.
GODI
... Simonides said well, “Give me twice
the time, for the more I think, the more it en-
larges"; and it is only mathematical truth; for
i Extracts from a long passage on this theme.


1822]
GOD
151
when the subject is infinite, it must be, that,
in proportion as discipline enlarges the capa-
city of the powers to comprehend a portion of
the line, so much the more of the line will be
continually discerned, extending above and be-
yond the straining orbs of imagination. It is,
nevertheless, apparent in the munificent en-
dowment of the human intellect, that provi-
sion has been made to enable it to proceed to
some distinct knowledge of this Being whom
in darkness we adore. Witness some of those
admirable demonstrations of the existence and
attributes which various minds in various ages
have fallen upon, and which we record as the
best monuments of human wit. And I regard
this rather as a glimpse and earnest of the light
which shall break upon the soul when its cum-
bering flesh bond is broken, - of the glory that
shall be revealed — than as any solitary or for-
tuitous discovery which may stand unconnected
with the past or the future. For is it not nat-
ural to believe that out of earth, and men of
clay — the Deity is the great engrossing theme
which absorbs the wonder as well as the devo-
tion of the disembodied spirits that people his
creation ? And is it not to be presumed that
the soul will be furnished with some under-


152
JOURNAL
[AGE 19
standing of his strength when she enters on
the scene where his divinity is displayed? The
lisping infant, on earth, stammers the name of
God; and shall the Archangel, whose gigantic
intelligence displays the education of heaven,
stand silent beneath the very Cloud? Man-
kind have naturally conceived the joy of that
spiritual estate to consist in the satisfaction and
delight of certain high intellectual exercises, of
which our best and loftiest contemplations afford
some faint symbol. And this notion is natural
and consistent with their condition; for they
have left the obstruction of a material universe,
and dwell now in the majesty of thought, in a
grand inconceivable dependence of mind upon
the great Source of intelligence, and are there-
fore in a situation to pursue those inquiries
which mocked the researches of finite beings,
but which invite the study of those to whom
the sources of wisdom, and the riches of the
unseen state are laid open. In this state and
with these opportunities, a little meditation will
make it plain, that there can be, in heaven or
earth, no thought which can so concentrate and
absorb the living spirit as the idea of God.
. . . . . . . .
What will divert our attention, and attach our


1822]
GOD
153
affections in the long, long Day wherein the fac- Luiste
ulties shall enjoy an eternal exercise? Perhaps in
the communion of departed wisdom and virtue; in
the society of Socrates, Plato, and St. Paul. Be
it so; it is a rational and authorized hope. We
respect and admire the life and character of these
eminent individuals; they appeared to possess an
intimate familiarity with the profoundest prin-
ciples of philosophy, and at the same time a
power to express them with the most perfect
simplicity in their conversation and in their books. P irms
It is natural to look to these great masters of
mankind as qualified in another state to give us
our introduction to its mysteries and joys.
But consider a moment, if a celestial spirit
could be so besotted as to prefer the little flights
of a spirit which is its peer, to the inconceivable
intellect which kindles all and overwhelms all.
Let it compare for a moment the history of the
two Beings. One lived upon earth its span, and
was then swallowed into the multitude of men,
leaving no trace of its existence, except, perhaps,
a little book, or its name, or its monument. But
if your mind be strung to an elevated tone, try
to comprehend the history of the Other;—A
stream without a source, an age without an in-
fancy, the mind resorts in vain to its highest


154
JOURNAL [Age 19
Junior
antiquity to seek the commencement of the
Ancient of Days. It can only pursue a few days
of his history in the immensity of his works.
In a few days he built the world and the firma-
ment, and in the darkness of the Universe he lit
the sun; he created man and beast; he arranged
the seasons and provided for the preservation of
the Order established; he arched the rainbow
and gathered the clouds, the granaries of his hail,
of the lightning and thunder. That immeasur-
able existence upon such an insignificant portion
of which the eye of all mankind rests with won-
der—we conceive to have been spent in similar
employment throughout his infinite kingdom;
and that Being is well worthy of prostrate adora-
tion to whom we ascribe an eternity, every mo-
ment of which hath been signalized by a scheme
of preserving providence, by a plan of redemp-
tion, by the informing of angelic intellect, or by
the creation of a world. One chief reason why
the human soul is so prone to neglect or avoid
this idea, is because it is so unsatisfactory, being
almost entirely above the attainment of our weak
powers; but, in the upper state, when this weak-
ness is removed, and our faculties are taught to
soar up to the very Throne -I need not ask
if the mind could be so blind as to admire the


1822]
GOD
155
evoktion
spark, in the presence of that fire whence it
came.
Sunday Morn.
On such employments we anticipate the happi-
ness of heaven to depend. That any approxima-
tion to such spiritual elevation can be made on
earth, will be believed by some and denied by
others. The reasons why we are no more strongly
attracted, are plainly seen, and are lodged within
ourselves. [For the mind does not yet exist but
in an infant state, and waits for a development in
another world. But there have been men at vari-
ous intervals, in the world, who by some remark-
able fortune, or remarkable effort, have rendered
themselves less liable to the suggestions of sense,
and have, in a manner, departed from the pur-
suits and habits of men to hold strict conversation
with the attributes of Deity, and, in the emphatic
language of the Hebrew historian, to walk with
God. And there are certain facilities for this
enlarged communion which sometimes occur, to
give direction and aid to the feebleness of nature.
The astronomer who, by reason of the littleness
of the earth, would be able to learn next to nothing
of the distance and magnitudes of the heavenly
bodies, can yet take advantage of its revolutions
around the Sun, and thus move his instruments


156
JOURNAL [Acean -
1816
about in the universe, across the vast orbit oi
planet; so the lapse of ages may sometimes e
ble the devout philosopher to trace the design
Providence, otherwise above his comprehensiT V
by reducing to a miniature view, a magnificer.
course of events.
. . . . . . . in the
The Being which we adore must of necessity'
be adorable. Where gat we the idea — so differ-
ent from our other ideas — of somewhat so tran-
scendant and sublime? ... The only answer
which we are compelled to receive is that the In-
telligence who formed our minds adjusted them
in such manner as to admit suitable notions of
himself from the exhibition of his works, or from
the consciousness of our own existence. What
must be that existence to which every star, every
leaf, every drop in the creation testifies, by their
strange and unaccountable formation! Towards
that object the eyes of all generations have
successively turned, by an universal instinctive
impulse ; and we are actuated by a portion of
the same inspiration when we pronounce the
great name of God. And when the mute crea-
tion with irresistable force points our inquiries to
Him, it becomes a truly admirable spectacle to
behold this wise sympathy throughout nature,


1822]
GOD
157
of imperfect beings consenting to adore per-
fection.
Si ulla fuit genitalis origo
Terrarum et coeli, semperque aeterna fuere,
Cur supra bellum Thebanum, et funera Trojae,
Non alias alii quoque res cecinere poetae ?
Lucretius.
I know nothing more fit to conclude the
remarks which have been made in the last pages
than certain fine pagan strains. )
... “Of dew-bespangled leaves and blossoms bright
Hence ! vanish from my sight,
Delusive pictures! unsubstantial shews !
My soul absorbed, one only Being knows,
Of all perceptions, one abundant source,
Hence every object, every moment Aows,
Suns hence derive their force,
Hence planets learn their course;
But suns and fading worlds I view no more,
God only I perceive, God only I adore !”
[NARAYENA; Sir William Jones's translation.]
DIFFERING RANK OF NATIONS
July 6.
What imparted that impulse to Greece which
may be said to have created literature, which has
been communicated through Rome to the world?


158
[Age 19
JOURNAL
It is a curious spectacle to a contemplative man
to observe a little population of twelve or twenty
thousand men for a couple of generations setting
their minds at work more diligently than men
were accustomed, and effecting something alto-
gether new and strange; to see them lie quietly
down again in darkness, while all the nations
of the world rise up to do them a vain reverence;
and all the wisest among them exhausting their
powers to make a faint imitation of some one
excellence of Greece in her age of glory; to see
this admiration continued and augmented as the
world grows older, and with all the advantages
of an experience of 6000 years to find those
departed artists never paralleled. It certainly is
the most manly literature in the world, being
composed of histories, orations, poems, and dra-
matic pieces, in which no sign of accommodation
is discovered to the whims of fashion or patron-
age. Simplicity is a remarkable characteristic of
the productions of all the ancient masters. Upon
their most admirable statue they were content to
engrave, “Apollodorus the Ephesian made it”;
and we respect the republican brevity which, in
the place of a studied eulogium upon a drama
which had been represented with unbounded ap-
plause, simply wrote, “ Placuit” (it pleased).


1822]
159
LICOÖ
LICOÖ
“Let us plait the garland and weave the chi,
While the wild waves dash on our iron strand;
Tomorrow, these waves may wash our graves,
And the moon look down on a ruined land." ;
The islanders who sung this melancholy song,
presaging the evil fates which waited for them
- have passed away. No girdled chieftain sits
upon their grim rocks to watch the dance of his
tribe beneath the yellow lustre of the Moon; the
moan of the waves is the only voice in their
silent-land; the moan of the waves is the only
requiem of the brave who are buried on the sea-
shore or in the main. But their memory has not
failed from among men; the mournful notes
which foreboded their fall have given it immor-
tality. For there is a charm in poetry, which
binds the world, and finds its effect in the East
and in the West.
me
“Let me not, like a worm, go by the way.”
CHAUCER.
1 This poem, in which Mr. Emerson took delight in his
youth, and often referred to, is printed in his Parnassus under
the title “ Song of the Tonga Islanders”; author unknown.


JOURNAL VIII
THE WIDE WORLD, NO. 7
Ζήτω γαρ την αλήθειαν, υφ' ής ουδείς πώποτε έβλάβη.
Marcus ANTONINUS.
DEDICATION
Boston, July 11, 1822.
I dedicate my book to the Spirit of America.
I dedicate it to that living soul, which doth
exist somewhere beyond the Fancy, to whom
the Divinity hath assigned the care of this bright
corner of the Universe. I bring my little offer-
ing, in this month, which covers the continent
with matchless beauty, to the shrine, which
distant generations shall load with sacrifice, and
distant ages shall admire afar off. With a spark
of prophetic devotion, I hasten to hail the
Genius, who yet counts the tardy years of
childhood, but who is increasing unawares in
the twilight, and swelling into strength, until
the hour when he shall break the cloud, to
shew his colossal youth, and cover the firma-
ment with the shadow of his wings.
2-


1822)
AMERICA
161
Evening.
It is a slow patriotism which forgets to love
till all the world have set the example. If the
nations of Europe can find anything to idolize
in their ruinous and enslaved institutions, we
are content, though we are astonished at their
satisfaction. But let them not ignorantly mock
at the pride of an American, as if it were mis-
placed or unfounded, when that freeman is
giving an imperfect expression to his sense of
his condition. He rejoices in the birthright of
a country where the freedom of opinion and
action is so perfect that every man enjoys exactly
that consideration to which he is entitled, and
each mind, as in the bosom of a family, insti-
tutes and settles a comparison of its powers
with those of its fellow, and quietly takes that
stand which nature intended for it. He points
to his native land as the only one where free-
dom has not degenerated to licentiousness; in
whose well-ordered districts education and in-
telligence dwell with good morals; whose rich
estates peacefully descend from sire to son, with-
out the shadow of an interference from private
violence, or public tyranny ; whose offices of
trust and seats of science are filled by minds of
republican strength and elegant accomplish-


162
(Age 19
JOURNAL
ments." Xenophon and Thucydides would have
thought it a theme better worthy of their powers,
than Persia or Greece; and her Revolution would
furnish Plutarch with a list of heroes. If the
Constitution of the United States outlives a
century, it will be matter of deep congratula-
tion to the human race; for the Utopian dreams
which visionaries have pursued and sages ex-
ploded, will find their beautiful theories rivalled
and outdone by the reality, which it has pleased
God to bestow upon United America.
Saturday Evening, July 13.
(Continued from Wide World, No. 6)
I have proposed to attempt the consideration
of those different aspects, under which we are
accustomed to view the Divinity. I shall en-
deavour first to give some account of his relation
to us as the founder of the Moral law.
It is not necessary to describe that law, other-
wise than by saying that it is the sovereign
necessity which commands every mind to abide
by one mode of conduct and to reject another,
1 Such an one died yesterday. Professor Frisbie will
hardly be supplied by any man in the community. [Levi
Frisbie, Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy
and Civil Polity.] (R. W. E.)


1822)
MORAL LAW
163
is!
areams, it
by joining to the one a perfect satisfaction,
while it pursues the other with indefinite appre-
hensions.
Its divine origin is fully shown by its supe-
riority to all the other principles of our nature.
It seems to be more essential to our constitu-
tion than any other feeling whatever. It dwells
so deeply in the human nature that we feel it to
be implied in consciousness. Other faculties fail,
- Memory sleeps; Judgment is impaired or
ruined; Imagination droops, — but the moral 10:
sense abides there still. In our very dreams, it
wakes and judges amid the Chaos of the rest.
The depths of its foundations in the heart, and
the subtilty of its nature in eluding investiga-
tions into its causes and character, distinguish it
eminently above other principles. If you com-
pare it, for example, with the phenomena of
taste, which also appear to be universal, we shall
readily discern a considerable distinction with-
drawing from the one its transient resemblance.
The judgment which determines a circle to be
more beautiful than a square, or a rose to be
fairer than a clod, is not founded upon aught
existing in the mind independent of the senses,
butis manifestly derived from the humble sources
of the material world. It is nothing but a power


164
JOURNAL
(AGE 19
to decide upon the pleasures of sense. If this be
not the limit of the province of taste, if it ever
rise to the judgment of questions which seem to
involve moral beauty, it is only where it begins
to blend with the moral sense and becomes en-
nobled by its connection. But that sovereign
sense whereof we speak leaves the material world
and its subordinate knowledge to subordinate
faculties, and marshals before its divine tribunal
the motives of action, the secrets of character and
the interests of the universe. It has no taint of
mortality in the purity and unity of its intelli-
gence; it is perfectly spiritual. It sometimes
seems to sanction that Platonic dream, that the
soul of the individual was but an emanation
from the Abyss of Deity, and about to return
whence it flowed. So it seems to predict, on
SUPREME AUTHORITY, that fate which is to be
declared, when Time shall cease. It seems to
be the only human thought which is admitted
to partake of the counsels of the eternal world,
and to give note already to man, of the event
and the sentence to which he is doomed....
GOD
We have one remarkable evidence to the
character, from eternity, of that Being, in the di-


1822) THE RIVER
165
vine determination to make man in the image of
God. In all the insignificance and imperfection
of our nature, in the guilt to which we are liable,
and the calamity which guilt has accumulated, -
man triumphs to remember that he bears about
him a spark which all beings venerate [and] ac-
knowledge to be the emblem of God, which
may be violated, but which cannot be extin-
guished. And we remark with delight the con-
firmations of this belief in the opening features of
human character. And the little joy of the child
who plants a seed and sees himself instrumental
in the creation of a flower, forcibly reminds us
of that beneficence which built the heavens and
the earth, and saw that it was good.
THE RIVER
Among the bulrushes I lay
Which deck the river's murmuring tide;
Upon those banks no men abide,
But swans come sailing in their pride
And graceful float into the quiet bay.
Fast sailed the golden fishes by,
And some leaped out to see the sky,
Nor saw the bird that stooped from high
Until he broke the wave's white crest
And bore the Alapping fish aloft unto his nest.


166
JOURNAL [AGE 19
An April cloud blew o'er the stream
And cast its big drops down,
They oped the lily's covering brown
And shed its steaming perfume round,
And golden insects few unto that Aower supreme.
. . . . . . . .
DRAMA
July.
... The grand object of the Drama is to
claim the affections by awakening ... sympathy.
It represents an accumulation of human wo with
gorgeous pomp to move the pity and indignation
of a susceptible audience. Its triumph is com-
plete, when the passions of the multitude, which
naturally move in unison, at last aid each other
to some general utterance, and consent to the
weakness of feelings, which in an individual
would be ridiculous. From the Theatre, then,
drive out the buyers and sellers of corruption
who have made it a den of vice, and make it an
Oracle of those opinions and sentiments which
multiply and strengthen the bonds of society.
The more we reflect upon the subject, the more
thoroughly we shall be convinced how practi-
cable it is to produce a Theatre of an actively
useful character. It is a mistake to suppose that
only vicious gratification can raise sufficient ex-


1822)
REASON
167
citement to draw men together around a stage.
On the contrary, what an inextinguishable thirst
for eloquence, however rude, exists in every
breast! ...
It is natural that we pant to feel those thrilling
sensations of a most agreeable character which
passionate and powerful declamation never fails
to move. They are akin to the emotions pro-
duced by the sublime, in sense or thought. And
for these, the fictitious distresses of exalted per-
sonages, amid the passage of wonderful events,
such as a pure play will freely admit, seem to afford
every desirable facility. ... Besides we have di-
rect testimony of the certainty of success, in the
instance of the Greek Tragedy, which, without
impurity, was universally popular at Athens ...
sense
REASON
Sunday, September 7.
[As for] that hoary-headed error which consid-
ers Reason as opposed to Scripture, and which
frequently and loudly condemns Reason as an
adversary and a seducer, as unbelieving and pro-
fane. . . . Instead of placing idiots in his uni-
verse, capable only of sensual gratification, able
only to obey instincts, and requiring every mo-


168
JOURNAL
(Age 19
ment a new direction from heaven to prevent
them from grovelling in the dirt, or being de-
stroyed by the beasts, God has peopled it with
images of himself, and kindled within them the
light of his own understanding — a portion of
that ray which illuminates, as it formed, the Crea-
tion. He has communicated to them an intelli-
gence by which they are enabled to see their way
in a universe where other beings are blind; to
behold bim, and their relation to him ; to read
and understand all those communications which
in past or future time he is pleased to make; it
is an intelligence by which they find themselves
distinguished from his other creations. There are
about and amidst them a thousand different pro-
perties; there are hills and waters, trees and flow-
ers, the living forms of nature and the stars of the
firmament; — but they are still and brutish —
there is no eye and voice within them to detect
and declare the stupendous glory which sur-
rounds them; they lack that living spirit which
opens the eyes of man, and without which the
Universe is as if it were not, and the glory of
Deity is darkness. It is an intelligence which soars
above these charms of the material world, and can
contemn them in the comparison with the objects
which it is capable of enjoying. In fine, it is an


1822] . DRAMA
169
intelligence which reveals to man another con-
dition of existence, and a nearer approach to the
Supreme Being. This intelligence is Reason.
Yet some there are who tell you, as if it in-
volved no inconsistency, and certainly no sin,
to avoid profaning the revelations of God by
submitting them to the tribunal of man's rea-
son, who seek to walk implicitly by a law which
they do not and will not understand, because they
refuse to apply to its explanation that light with
which their maker has furnished them. It is not
only a wilful perversion and abuse of a priceless
gift, but it is a most ungrateful neglect of divine
mercy, and a neglect which incurs a tremendous
responsibility. ...
DRAMA (continued)
October.
Selity
In proposing schemes of reformation in so
important a matter as the Drama, one should
be cautious to avoid running into systems too
visionary for popular understanding. The scholar
in his closet must beware lest his poetical imagi-
nations of the beauty of Tragedy lead him into
fields beyond the track of common opinion, and
to render his speculations of no use. Neverthe-
less, it appears to me that the bold and beauti-


170
JOURNAL
[Age 19
ful personification in Milton's Penseroso is not
an unapt description of the true drama:-
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
With sceptred pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes and Pelops' line.
And the tale of Troy divine.
For we wish that Tragedy should take advan-
tage of that weakness, or perhaps virtue, in our
nature which bears such an idolatrous love for
the emblems of royalty, and that its moral les-
sons should be couched in the grand and pa-
thetic fables which antiquity affords. Owing to
the identity of human character in all ages, there
is as much instruction in the tale of Troy as in
the Annals of the French Revolution. ....
There is an embellishment which I would re-
commend, though out of place here. I mean the
introduction of prophecies. The author of Guy
Mannering and the Bride of Lammermoor knew
the value of the charm and has made fine use
of the fascination. It is the most beautiful use
of supernatural machinery in fiction.
ORGAN
October, Thursday Evening.
When I was a lad, said the bearded islander,
we had commonly a kind of vast musical ap-


1822] THE FATAL ORGAN 171
paratus in the Pacific islands which must appear
as fabulous to you as it proved fatal to us. On
the banks of the rivers there were abundance
of siphar trees, which consist of vast trunks per-
forated by a multitude of natural tubes without
having any external verdure. When the roots
of these were connected with the waters of the
river, the water was instantly sucked up by some
of the tubes and discharged again by others, and,
when properly echoed, the operation (was] at-
tended by the most beautiful musical sounds in
the world. My countrymen built their churches
to the Great Zoa upon the margin of the water
and enclosed a suitable number of these trees,
hoping to entertain the ears of the god with this
sweet harmony. Finding however by experience
that the more water the pipes drew the more rich
and various were the sounds of the Organ, they
constructed a very large temple with high walls
of clay and stone to make the echoes very com-
plete, and enclosed a hundred siphars. When
the edifice was complete, six thousand people
assembled to hear the long expected song. After
they had waited a long time and the waters of
the river were beginning to rise, the Instrument
suddenly began to emit the finest notes imagin-
able. Through some of the broader pipes the
nor


172
JOURNAL
(AGE 19
water rushed with the voice of thunder, and
through others with the sweetness of one of
your lutes. In a short time the effect of the
music was such that it seemed to have made all
the hearers mad. They laughed and wept alter-
nately, and began to dance, and such was their
delight, that they did not perceive the disaster
which had befallen their Organ. Owing to the
unusual swell of the River and to some unac-
countable irregularity in the ducts, the pipes be-
gan to discharge their contents within the chapel.
In a short time the evil became but too appar-
ent, for the water rose in spouts from the top
of the larger ducts and fell upon the multitude
within. Meantime the music swelled louder and
louder, and every note was more ravishing than
the last. The inconvenience of the falling water
which drenched them, was entirely forgotten,
until finally the whole host of pipes discharged,
every one, a volume of water upon the charmed
congregation. The faster poured the water, the
sweeter grew the music, and the floor being cov-
ered with the torrent, the people began to float
upon it with intolerable extacies. Finally the
whole multitude swam about in this deluge, hold-
ing up their heads with open months and ears as
if to swallow the melody, whereby they swallowed


1822] THE LAND OF NOT 173
much water. Many hundreds were immediately
drowned and the enormous pipes, as they emp-
tied the river, swelled their harmony to such per-
fection that the ear could no longer bear it, and
they who escaped the drowning died of the ex-
quisite music. Thenceforward there was no more
use of the Siphar trees in the Pacific islands.
that periods which I hail Safely say
THE LAND OF NOT
... It is now nineteen years since I left the
Land of Not, and I may safely say that, in the
countries in which I have passed my time since
that period, it has been invariably true that there
is more crime, misery and vexation in every one
of them, in the course of a single year, than tran-
spires in the peaceful Land of Not in the lapse
of many centuries. Except for the existence of
one single institution which has been estab-
lished from time immemorial, there is no ques-
tion that a vast tide of emigration would rapidly
flow into that country. This institution is a
rigorous Alien Act which ordains that no man
who leaves the limits of the country shall eyer
be permitted to set foot within it again. But, to
my knowledge, many who have left it have often
afterwards looked back to its pleasant abodes,
and desired in vain to return....


174
JOURNAL [Age 19
ou
Saturday Evening, November.
My adventurous and superficial pen has not
hesitated to advance thus far upon these old but
sublime foundations of our faith; and thus, with-
out adding a straw to the weight of evidence or
making the smallest discovery, it has still served
to elevate somewhat my own notions by bring-
ing me within prospect of the labours of the
sages. After the primitive apostles, I apprehend
that Christianity is indebted to those who have
established the grounds upon which it rests; to
Clarke, Butler, and Paley ; to Sherlock, and to
the incomparable Newton. And when it shall
please my wayward Imagination to suffer me to
go drink of these chrystal fountains; or when
my better judgment shall have at last triumphed
over the dæmon Imagination, and shall itself
conduct me thither, - I shall be proud and glad
of the privilege. For the present, I must be con-
tent to make myself wiser as I may, by the same
loose speculations upon divine themes. ..
CONCLUSION
I have come to the close of the sheets which
I dedicated to the Genius of America, and no-
tice that I have devoted nothing in my book to
any peculiar topics which concern my country.


1822]
WEBSTER
175
But is not every effort that her sons make to
advance the intellectual interests of the world,
and every new thought which is struck out from
the mines of religion and morality, a forward
step in the path of her greatness ? Peace be
with her progressive greatness, -and prosperity
crown her giant minds. A victory is achieved to-
day for one,' whose name perchance is written
highest in the volume of futurity.
1 Webster was chosen representative to Congress by a
majority of 1078 votes this morning. (R. W. E.)
Boston, November 4, 1822.


JOURNAL IX
THE WIDE WORLD, NO. 8
DEDICATION
Boston, November 6, 1822.
To glory which is departed, to majesty which
hath ceased, to intellect which is quenched—I
bring no homage, — no, not a grain of gold. For
why seek to contradict the voice of Nature and
of God, which saith over them, “It is finished,”
by wasting our imaginations upon the deaf ear
of the dead? Turn rather to the mighty multi-
tude, the thunder of whose footsteps shakes now
the earth ; whose faces are flushed by the blood
of life; whose eye is enlightened by a living soul.
Is there none in this countless assembly who
hath a claim on the reverence of the sons of
Minerva?
I have chosen one from the throng. Upon
his brow have the Muses hung no garland. His
name hath never been named in the halls of
fashion, or the palaces of state; but I saw Pro-
phecy drop the knee before him, and I hastened
to pay the tribute of a page.


1822)
177
VISION OF SLAVERY
VISION OF SLAVERY'
In my dreams I departed to distant climes and
to different periods, and my fancy presented
before me many extraordinary societies, and
many old and curious institutions. I sat on the
margin of the River of Golden Sands when the
thirsty leopard came thither to drink. It was
just dawn and the shades were chased rapidly from
the Eastern firmament by the golden magnifi-
cence of day. As I contemplated the brilliant
spectacle of an African morning I thought on
1 The slave-trade was abolished by law in the United
States in 1808, but was unlawfully continued until the Civil
War. Massachusetts had no slaves in 1770, but they were
legally held in New York, Rhode Island and Connecticut at
the time this journal was written.
The question had just come to the front in the fruitless oppo-
sition to the admission of Missouri as a slave-state.
The Abolition Movement was not begun by William Lloyd
Garrison until 1831.
Emerson's effort always to consider the object temperately
and fairly appears twenty-two years later in his speech on the
Anniversary of Emancipation in the British West Indies ; and
later, even during the great conflict, in his proposal to compen-
*sate the Southerners for their loss.
Of his presentation of the apologies for Slavery in this jour-
nal it should be said that he had had an agreeable and well-bred
Southerner for his chum, and so heard their point of view.


178
[Age 19
JOURNAL
those sages of this storied land who instructed the
infancy of the world. Meanwhile the sun arose and
cast a full light over a vast and remarkable land-
scape. About the river, the country was green and
its bed reflected the sunbeams from pebbles and
gold. Far around was an ample plain with a soil
of yellow sand, glittering everywhere with dew
and interspersed with portions of forest, which
extended into the plain from the mountains
which surrounded this wide Amphitheatre. The
distant roar of lions ceased to be heard, and I
saw the leopard bathing his spotted limbs and
swimming towards the woods which skirted the
water. But his course was stopped; an arrow from
the wood pierced his head, and he floated lifeless
ashore. I looked then to see whence the slayer
should have come, and beheld not far off a little
village of huts built of canes. Presently I saw a
band of families come out from their habitations;
and these naked men, women and children sung
a hymn to the sun, and came merrily down to
the river with nets in their hands to fish. And
a crimson bird with a yellow crest flew over their
heads as they went, and lighted on a rock in the
midst of the river and sung pleasantly to the sav-
ages while he brushed his feathers in the stream.
The boys plunged into the river and swam


'1822] VISION OF SLAVERY 179
towards the rock. But upon a sudden I saw
many men dressed in foreign garb run out from
the wood where the leopard had been killed;
and these surrounded the fishers, and bound them
with cords, and hastily carried them to their
boats, which lay concealed behind the trees. So
they sailed down the stream, talking aloud and
laughing as they went; but they that were bound
gnashed their teeth and uttered so piteous a howl
that I thought it were a mercy if the river had
swallowed them.
In my dream, I launched my skiff to follow
the boats and redeem the captives. They went
in ships to other lands and I could never reach
them, albeit I came near enough to hear the
piercing cry of the chained victims, which was
louder than the noise of the Ocean. In the
nations to which they were brought they were
sold for a price, and compelled to labour all the
day long, and scourged with whips until they
fell dead in the fields, and found rest in the
grave.
Canst thou ponder the vision, and shew why
Providence suffers the land of its richest pro-
ductions to be thus defiled ? Do human bodies
lodge immortal souls,—and is this tortured life
of bondage and tears a fit education for the


180
JOURNAL
[Age 19
ven
ICICO
DESCnismis
bright ages of heaven and the commerce of
angels? Is man the Image of his Maker, - and
shall this fettered and broken frame, this marred
and brutalized soul become perfect as He is
perfect? This slave hath eat the bread of cap-
tivity and drank the waters of bitterness, and
cursed the light of the sun as it dawned on his
? bed of straw, and worked hard and suffered
long, while never an idea of God hath kindled
in his mind from the hour of his birth to the
hour of his death ; and yet thou sayest that a
merciful Lord made man in his benevolence to
live and enjoy, to take pleasure in his works
and worship him forever. Confess that there are
secrets in that Providence which no human eye
can penetrate, which darken the prospect of
Faith, and teach us the weakness of our Phi-
losophy.
November 8.
At least we may look farther than to the
simple fact and perhaps aid our faith by freer
speculation. I believe that nobody now regards
the maxim “that all men are born equal,” as
any thing more than a convenient hypothesis
or an extravagant declamation. For the reverse
is true, - that all men are born unequal in per-
sonal powers, and in those essential circum-


1822]
SLAVERY
181
حد، هر
IS
:
stances, of time, parentage, country, fortune.
The least knowledge of the natural history of
man adds another important particular to these;
namely, what class of men he belongs to—
European, Moor, Tartar, African? Because !!!
Nature has plainly assigned different degrees of!!!
intellect to these different races, and the barriers
between are insurmountable.
This inequality is an indication of the design
of Providence that some should lead, and some
should serve. For when an effect invariably
takes place from causes which Heaven estab-
lished, we surely say with safety, that Provi-
dence designed that result.
Throughout society there is therefore not only
the direct and acknowledged relation of king
and subject, master and servant, but a secret
dependence quite as universal, of one man
upon another, which sways habits, opinions,
conduct. This prevails to an infinite extent and,
however humbling the analogy, it is neverthe-
less true, that the same pleasure and confidence
which the dog and horse feel when they rely
upon the superior intelligence of man, is felt by
the lower parts of our own species with refer-
ence to the higher.
Now, with these concessions, the question
Onc


182
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(AGE 19
comes to this: whether this known and admitted
assumption of power by one part of mankind over
the other, can ever be pushed to the extent of
total possession, and that without the will of the
slave?
It can hardly be said that the whole difference
of the will divides the natural servitude of which
we have spoken from the forced servitude of
“slavery.” For it is not voluntary, on my part,
that I am born a subject;contrariwise, if my opin-
ion had been consulted, it is ten to one I should
have been the Great Mogul. The circumstances
in which every man finds himself he owes to for-
tune and not to himself. And those men who
happen to be born in the lowest caste in India,
suffer much more perhaps than the kidnapped
African, with no other difference in their lot than
this, that God made the one wretched, and man,
the other. Except that there is a dignity in suf-
fering from the ordinances of Supreme Power —
which is not at all common to the other class —
one lot is as little enviable as the other.
When all this is admitted, the question may
still remain entirely independent and untouched
- apart from the consideration of slavery as agree-
able or contradictory to the analogies of nature-
whether any individual has a right to deprive any


1822]
SLAVERY
183
other individual of freedom without his consent;
or whether he may continue to withhold the free-
dom which another hath taken away?
Upon the first question, whether one man
may forcibly take away the freedom of another,-
the weakness and incapacity of Africans would
seem to have no bearing; though it may affect the
second. Still it may be advanced that the beasts
of the field are all evidently subjected to the do-
minion of man, and, with the single restriction of
the laws of humanity, are left entirely at his will.
And why are they, and how do we acquire this
declaration of heaven? Manifestly from a view of
the perfect adaptation of these animals to the ne-
cessities of man, and of the advantage which many
of them find in leaving the forest for the barnyard.
If they had reason, their strength would be so far
superior to ours, that, besides our inability to use
them, it would be inconsistent with nature. So
that these three circumstances are the foundation
of our dominion; viz. their want of reason; their
adaptation to our wants; and their own advan-
tage (when domesticated). But these three cir-
cumstances may very well apply to the condition
of the Blacks, and it may be hard to tell exactly
where the difference lies. Is it in Reason? If we
speak in general of the two classes, Man and


184
JOURNAL
[Age 19
Ower
Beast, we say that they are separated by the dis-
tinction of Reason, and the want of it; and the
line of this distinction is very broad. But if we
abandon this generalization, and compare the
classes of one with the classes of the other, we
shall find our boundary line growing narrower
and narrower, and individuals of one species
approaching individuals of the other, until the
limits become finally lost in the mingling of the
classes. ...
November 14.
If we pursue a revolting subject to its great-
est lengths, we should find that in all those three
circumstances which are the foundations of our
dominion over the beasts, very much may be
said to apply them to the African species; even
in the last, viz., the advantage which they derive
from our care ; for the slaveholders violently as-
sert that their slaves are happier than the freed-
men of their class; and the slaves refuse often-
times the offer of their freedom. Nor is this
owing merely to the barbarity which has placed
them out of the power of attaining a competence
by themselves. For it is true that many a slave
under the warm roof of a humane master, with
easy labours and regular subsistence, enjoys
more happiness than his naked brethren, parched
ve
مرد ہو کر احلام


1822)
SLAVERY
185
with thirst on a burning sand, or endangered in
the crying wilderness of their native land.
This is all that is offered in behalf of slavery;
we shall next attempt to knock down the hydra.
To establish, by whatever specious argumen-
tation, the perfect expediency of the worst insti-
tution on earth is prima facie an assault upon
Reason and Common Sense. No ingenious soph-
istry can ever reconcile the unperverted mind to
the pardon of slavery; nothing but tremendous
familiarity, and the bias of private interest. Un-
der the influence of better arguments than can
be offered in support of slavery we should sus-
tain our tranquillity by the confidence that no
surrender of our opinion is ever demanded, and
that we are only required to discover the lurk-
ing fallacy which the disputant acknowledges to
exist. It is an old dispute, which is not now
and never will be totally at rest, whether the hu-
man mind be or be not a free agent. And the as-
serter of either side must be scandalized by the
bare naming of the theory that man may impose
servitude on his brother. For if he is himself
free, and it offends the attributes of God to have
him otherwise, it is manifestly a bold stroke of
impiety to wrest the same liberty from his fellow.
And if he is not free, then this inhuman barbar-
surro


186
JOURNAL [Age 19
ity ascends to derive its origin from the author
of all necessity.
A creature who is bound by his hopes of sal-
vation to imitate the benevolence of better be-
ings, and to do all the kindness in his power,
fastens manacles on his fellow with an ill grace.
A creature who holds a little lease of life upon
the arbitrary tenure of God's good pleasure im-
proves his moment strangely by abusing God's
best works, his own peers.
MORAL LAW
Saturday Evening, November 16.
The child who refuses to pollute its little lips
with a lie, and the archangel who refuses with
indignation to rebel in the armies of heaven
against the Most High, act alike in obedience
to a law which pervades all intelligent beings.
This law is the Moral Sense; a rule coëxtensive
and coëval with Mind. It derives its existence
from the eternal character of the Deity, of which
we spoke above; and seems of itself to imply, and
therefore to prove his Existence. ... Whence
comes this strong universal feeling that approves the
or abhors actions? Manifestly not from matter,
which is altogether unmoved by it, and the con-


1822]
MORAL LAW
187
nection of which with it is a thing absurd —
but from a Mind, of which it is the essence.
That Mind is God...
This Sentiment which we bear within us, is so
subtle and unearthly in its nature, so entirely
distinct from all sense and matter, and hence so
difficult to be examined, and withal so decisive
and invariable in its dictates — that it clearly
partakes of another world than this, and looks
forward to it in the end. It is further to be ob-
served of it, that its dictates are never blind, are
never capricious, but, however they may seem to
differ, are always discovered on a close and pro-
found examination to point to a faultless and
unattainable perfection. They seem to refer to
a sublime course of life and action which no-
where exists, or to which we are not privy; and
to be an index of the Creator's character lent
to mankind in vindication or illustration of the
command,“ Be ye perfect as He is perfect.”
This Sentiment differs from the affections of
the heart and from the faculties of the mind.
The affections are undiscriminating and capri-
cious. The Moral Sense is not. The powers of
the intellect are sometimes wakeful and some-
times dull, alive with interest to one subject and
dead to the charm of another. There are no ebbs


188
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JOURNAL
and flows, no change, no contradiction in this.
Its lively approbation never loses its pleasure ;
its aversion never loses its sting. Its oracular
answers might be sounded through the world,
for they are always the same. Motives and
characters are amenable to it; and the golden
rules which are the foundation of its judgments
we feel and acknowledge, but do not under-
stand. i ..
JUSTICE
“Even handed Justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.”
The bold misdoer who transgresses the law
of Justice grapples with he knows not what.
He has offended against an essential attribute of
the Divinity, which will plead against him in-
exorably until it be avenged. His rash hand has
disordered a part of the moral machinery of the
Universe and he is in peril of being crushed by
the mischief he has caused.
... How shall man reconcile his freedom
with that eternal necessary chain of cause and
consequence which binds him and Nature down
to an irreversible decree? How shall he recon-
cile his freedom with that prophetic omniscience
which beheld his end long before the infant en-


1822]
JUSTICE
189
tered on the world ? Perhaps he is a slave –
and men have worn his limbs with irons, and his
soul with suffering; the name of virtue and the
smile of kindness never have stooped to alleviate
his hard and bitter bondage ; but ere his little
day of apathy and distress was done, he cursed
God and died; — hath he descended into hell ?
Or how dost thou reconcile the creation and
destiny of this being with that Infinite and be-
nevolent Justice that would not abuse its Om-
nipotence, and would not create a mind to be
miserable?
Tell not that man of those feelings and
thoughts which give a joy to your existence and
warm your heart to the world; for it will be but
to mock his wretchedness. Tell him not of
the dignity of human nature, of its benevolence
and philanthropy, — he will clank his chains at
the word. He scoffs bitterly at your pictures of
the golden gates of Heaven, for they are closed
on him.
The man is bold who undertakes to answer
beyond a doubt these perplexing questions. But
theology would be a vain science, unworthy of
our attention, if it left them all in their full force,
without notice or solution.
If an ignorant man were carried from his closet
OU


. 190 JOURNAL [Age 19
to the prisons and penitentiaries of a vast king-
dom and shewn a multitude of men confined and
scourged and forced to labour, and informed that
this was the act of the government, if he knew
nothing more of that state and perhaps foolishly
conceived that its limits extended no further than
the walls wherein he stood, it would be a very
plain conclusion that this government was a
savage and outrageous tyranny; while perhaps
at that very moment the government was the
most perfect and beneficent in the world. Our
rash conclusions from the dark side of human
affairs are analogous to these, and like these are
to be corrected by broader views of the system
which we misunderstand.
The questions we have named, are incidental
to the subject, but of such importance, that we
shall digress from the main topic to attempt to
answer them. The endeavour is always laudable
to clear up the darkness which settles around
portions of the system. God in heaven is an-
swerable for his works, to those principles which
he hath set within us to judge of them. To the
discussion of some of them, our nature is in-
competent."
i The young man confesses this inability to satisfactorily
account for all misery when he considers it under the two dis-


1822]
191
BENEVOLENCE
One of the best satires upon women is the
popular opinion of the third century, that they
who took wives were of all others the most sub-
ject to the influence of evil demons. . . . Men's
minds visit heaven as they visit earth, and hence
the Turkish heaven is a Harem; the Scandina-
vian, a hunting field; the Arabian, a place of
wheaten cakes and murmuring fountains. We've
supple understandings and so it comes that a new
religion ever suits itself to the state in which 'tis
born, whether despotism or democracy, as Mon-
tesquieu has remarked.
Four daughters make the family of Time,
But rosy Summer is the darling child.
BENEVOLENCE
Saturday Evening, November 23.
The hours of social intercourse, of gratified
hope, of the festive board, have just now yielded
to quieter pleasures of the closet and the pen.
This tender flesh is warmly clad, the blood leaps
in the vessels of life, Health and Hope write
their results on the passing moment, and these
cussions of Benevolence a few pages farther on. In the latter of
these his favourite doctrine of Compensation appears.


192
JOURNAL
(Age 19
things make the pleasure of a mortal, bodily,
mental being. There are in the world at this
moment one hundred million men whose history
today may match with mine, not counting the
numberless ones whose day was happier. There
are also in existence here a countless crowd of
inferior animals who have had their lesser cup
filled full with pleasure. The sunny lakes reflect
the noonday beams from the glittering tribes
which cover its bottom, rapid as thought in their
buoyant motions, leaping with the elasticity and
gladness of life. The boundless Ocean supports
in its noisy waves its own great population, -
the beautiful dolphin, the enormous whale, and
huge sea-monsters of a thousand families and
a thousand uncouth gambols dash through its
mighty domain in the fulness of sensual enjoy-
ment. The air is fanned by innumerable wings,
the green woods are vocal with the song of the
insect and the bird; the beasts of the field fill
all the lands untenanted by man, and beneath
the sod the mole and the worm take their plea-
sure. All this vast mass of animated matter is
moving and basking under the broad orb of the
sun,- is drinking in the sweetness of the air, is
feeding on the fruits of nature, — is pleased with
life, and loth to lose it. All this pleasure flows


1822) GOD'S BENEVOLENCE
193
from a source. That source is the Benevolence
of God.
This is the first superficial glance at the econ-
omy of the world and necessarily leaves out a
thousand circumstances. Let us take a closer
view, and begin with the human mind. I find
within me a motley array of feelings that have
no connection with my clayey frame, and I call
_them my mind. Every day of my life, this mind
draws a thousand curious conclusions from the
different things which it beholds. With a wanton
variety which tires of sameness, it throws all its
thoughts into innumerable lights, and changes
the fantastic scene by varying its own operations
upon it; by combining and separating, by com-
paring and judging, by remembering and invent-
ing all things. Every one of these little changes
within, produces a pleasure, the pleasure of power
or of sight. But besides the mere fact that the
mind acts, there is a most rich variety in thought,
and I grossly undervalue the gift I possess, if I
limit its capacity to the puny round of every
day's sensations. It is a ticket of admission to an-
other world of ineffable grandeur— to unknown
orders of things which are as real as they are
stupendous. As soon as it has advanced a little
in life it opens its eye to thoughts which tax its


194
JOURNAL
(AGE 19
whole power, and delight it by their greatness
and novelty. These suggest kindred concep-
tions, which give birth to others, and thus draw
the mind on in a path which it perceives is in-
terminable, and is of interminable joy. To this
high favoured intellect is added an intuition that
it can never end, and that with its choice it can
go forward to take the boon of immortal Hap-
piness. These are causes and states of pleasure
which no reason can deny. But this is the true
history of all the individuals of the mighty na-
tions that breathe today. These point also to a
source — which is the Benevolence of God.
But a groan of the dying, a cry of torture from
the diseased, the sob of the mourner, answer to
this thanksgiving of human nature and produce
a discord in our anthem of praise. If God is good,
why are any of his creatures unhappy? ...
Those who consider the foundations of hu-
man happiness find that it is a contrasted and
comparative thing. ... High and multiplied
sources of pleasure are often in our possession,
without being enjoyed, for they never were lack-
ing; God disturbs or removes them for a time;
and he is dull, who sees no wisdom in this mode
of giving them value and sharpening the blunted
edge of appetite. Thus Health and Peace are


1822] PROFESSOR NORTON 195
m-
insipid goods, until you have been able to com-
pare them with the torments of Pain and the
visitation of War. And after this comparison
has once been made, man runs riot in holding
them.
Next, it should be remembered that we wisely
assume the righteousness of the Creator in plac-
ing man in a probationary state. We do not seek
with vain ambition to question the abstruse and
unsearchable ground of this ordination, because
it is plain matter of fact that we are incompetent
to the discussion. This being assumed, there
is no longer any doubt of the Divine Benevo-
lence arising from the existence of evil. Evil is
the rough and stony foundation of human Vir-
tue; weaning man away from the seductive dan-
gers of vicious, transient, destructive pleasures
to a hold and security of Paradise where they
are perpetual and perfect.
Of Professor N., Shakespeare long ago wrote
the good and bad character :
Oh it is excellent
To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.'
i Evidently Andrews Norton, Professor of Sacred Litera-
ture. Mr. Cabot, in his Memoirs of Emerson (p. 334), speaks


196
(AGE 19
JOURNAL
[SOLITARY FANCIES]
Rich in the playful joys of solitude
The peaceful Muse begins her jubilee
When Night's black car, sprinkled with golden stars,
Has chased the Sun's magnificence away.
Pleased with the closet's motley furniture,
And broken shadows, where the elves and gnomes
Fight with the rats for noise or victory,
The Muse roves boldly on her vagrant wing,
Disdains the recent times and days of dwarfs,
And this cold land Apollo never knew ;
Abandons with proud plumes the passing hour,
And follows Fancy through a thousand worlds.
It is a curious spectacle, to see
The panorama of unnumbered hues
That her wild journey marshals round her eye.
But icy Reason scowls upon the shew,—
And its gay battlements and beaming towers
And shining forms all vanish at his frown.
Yet I, who never bowed obedient neck
To Reason's iron yoke, will still rebel
And vex the tyrant in his ancient halls.
I'll ponder pleasantly the changing scenes
And tell their wonders loudly on the lyre.
of him as “ a man of acute intellect and commanding personality
and, I suppose, the foremost theologian of the liberal Chris-
tians.” Sixteen years later, Emerson, after the delivery of his
Divinity School Address, felt the weight of this giant's attack.


1822) THE FRIEND DENIED 197
vas V
November 29, 1822.
The ardour of my college friendship for-
is nearly extinct, and it is with difficulty that I
can now recall those sensations of vivid pleasure
which his presence was wont to waken spontane-
ously for a period of more than two years. To
be so agreeably excited by the features of an in-
dividual personally unknown to me, and for so
long a time, was surely a curious incident in the
history of so cold a being, and well worth a second
thought. At the very beginning of our singular
acquaintance, I noticed the circumstance in my
Wide World, with an expression of curiosity with
regard to the effect which time would have upon
those feelings. To this day, our glanceat meeting
is not that of indifferent persons, and were he not
so thoroughly buried in his martial cares, I might
still entertain the hope of departed hours. Prob-
ably the abatement of my solitary enthusiasm is
owing to the discouraging reports which I have
gathered of his pursuits and character, so entirely
inconsistent with the indications of his face. But
it were much better that our connexion should
stop, and pass off, as it now will, than to have
had it formed, and then broken by the late dis-
covery of insurmountable barriers to friendship.
From the first, I preferred to preserve the terms


198
[AGE 19
JOURNAL
which kept alive so much sentiment rather than
a more familiar intercourse which I feared would
end in indifference.
BENEVOLENCE (continued)
Saturday Evening, November 30.
Heraclitus was a fool, who wept always for the
miseries of human life. Or was he blind and deaf
to beauty and melody? In his day, was the sky
black, and were snakes instead of flowers coiled
in his path? Was his mind reversed in its organ-
ization;—had he Despair for Hope, and Remorse
for Memory? Could his disordered eye discern
a savage Power sitting in this Splendid Universe,
thwarting the good chances of Fortune and pro-
moting the bad, sowing seeds of sorrow for glory,
turning grace and tranquillity to desolation, and
heaven to hell? Then let him weep on. True phi-
losophy hath a clearer sight, and remarks amid
the vast disproportions of human condition a great
equalization of happiness; an intimate intermin-
gling of pleasure with every gradation, down to
the very lowest of all. Pleasant and joyous are
the connexions of our sympathy and affection -
'tis proved by the very tear which marks their
dissolution; and even that pang of separation and
loss is relieved by its own indulgence. ....
in-


1822] GOD'S BENEVOLENCE 199
Happiness lies at our own door. Misery is
further away. Until I know by bitter personal
experience that the world is the accursed seat of es
all misfortunes, and as long as I find it a garden
of delights—I am bound to adore the Benefi- ,
cent Author of my life. . . . No representations
of foreign misery can liquidate your debt to
Heaven. You must join the choral hymn to
which the Universe resounds in the ear of Faith,
and I think, of Philosophy. ...
The mind can perceive a harmonious whole,
combined and overruled by a sublime Necessity,
which embraces in its mighty circle the freedom
of the individuals, and without subtracting from
any, directs all to their appropriate ends. It per-
ceives a purpose to pain, and sees how the in-
struction and perfection of myriads is brought
about by the spectacle of guilt and its punish-
ment. That great and primeval Necessity may
make impossible an Universe without evil, and
perhaps founds happiness everywhere, as here,
upon the contrast of suffering. This question
lies at the sources of things, and we are only in-
dulged with an intimation that may make out
the just goodness of the Deity.
(This connection may be deeper and more in-
timate than we are apt to imagine, and the cir-


200
JOURNAL
(Age 19
cumstances observed just now, seem to indicate
that it is. That connection, which subsists bere
in character, will subsist in condition hereafter.
And some plan will be developed, in which the
good of Evil will be made plain on the general
scale, that cannot be explained upon the partic-
ular.) ...
GREATNESS
Every man who enumerates the catalogue of
his acquaintance is privately conscious, however
reluctant to confess the inferiority, of a certain
number of minds which do outrun and command
his own, in whose company, despite the laws of
good breeding and the fences of affectation, his
own spirit bows like the brothers' sheaves to
Joseph's sheaf. He remembers the soothsayer's
faithful account of Antony's guardian genius
which among other men was high and unmatch-
able, but quailed before Cæsar's. He remembers
also other some of his companions, over whom
his own spirit exercises the same mastery. And
let no man complain of the inequality of such
an ordination, or call Fortune partial in the dis-
tribution of her blessings.


1822)
201
AMERICA
AMERICA
December 21.
There is everything in America's favour, to
one who puts faith in those proverbial pro-
phecies of the Westward progress of the Car of
Empire. Though there may be no more bar-
barians left to overrun Europe and extinguish
forever the memory of its greatness, yet its rot-
ten states, like Spain, may come to their decline
by the festering and inveteracy of the faults of
government. Aloof from the contagion during
the long progress of their decline, America hath
ample interval to lay deep and solid foundations
for the greatness of the New World. And along
the shores of the South Continent, to which the
dregs of corruption of European society had
been unfortunately transplanted, the fierceness
of the present conflict for independence will, no
doubt, act as a powerful remedy to the disease,
by stirring up the slumbering spirits of those in-
dolent zones to a consciousness of their power
and destiny. Here, then, new Romes are grow-
ing, and the Genius of man is brooding over the
wide boundaries of infant empires, where yet are
to be drunk the intoxicating draughts of honour
and renown; here are to be played over again
les
W-


202
JOURNAL
(Age 19
the bloody games of human ambition, bigotry
and revenge, and the stupendous Drama of the
passions to be repeated. Other Cleopatras shall
seduce, Alexanders fight, and Cæsars die. The
pillars of social strength, which we occupy our-
selves in founding thus firmly to endure to
future ages as the monuments of the wisdom of
this, are to be shaken on their foundations with
convulsions proportioned to their adamantine
strength. The time is come, the hour is struck;
already the actors in this immense and tremen-
dous scene have begun to assemble. The doors
of life in our mountain-land are opened, and the
vast swarm of population is crowding in, bearing
in their hands the burden of Sorrow and Sin, of
glory, and science, which are to be mingled in
their future fates. In the events and interests of
these empires, the old tales of history and the
fortunes of departed nations shall be thoroughly
forgotten and the name of Rome or Britain fall
seldom on the ear.
In that event, when the glory of Plato of
Greece, of Cicero of Rome, and of Shakspeare
of England shall have died, who are they that
are to write their names where all time shall
read them, and their words be the oracle of
millions? Let those who would pluck the lot of
a
ICS


1822)
READING
203
Immortality from Fate's Urn, look well to the
future prospects of America.
Friday Evg. Dec. 21, 1822.
AUTHORS OR BOOKS QUOTED OR REFERRED TO
IN JOURNALS OF 1822
Homer; Simonides; Heraclitus; Sophocles,
Electra; Thucydides; Demosthenes;
Bible; Zoroaster;
Cicero; Lucretius; Horace; Plutarch ; Taci-
tus, Germania ; Seneca; Marcus Aurelius;
Mediæval Mystery Plays;
Chaucer; Shakspeare; Ben Jonson ; Bacon;
Milton, Paradise Lost; Boileau ;
Locke, On the Human Understanding ; Wil-
liam Sherlock, Sermon on Faith;
Newton; Burnet, Memorial; Fontenelle;
Pope; Richardson, Novels; Montesquieu ;
Butler, Analogy; Voltaire ;
David Hartley, Observations on Man; Dr.
Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes; Samuel
Clarke; Priestly;
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Em-
pire; Paley; Logan, Yarrow; Speeches of Pitt,
Burke, Fox; Dugald Stewart, Philosophy of the
Mind;


204
JOURNAL [AGE 19
Claudius Buchanan, Christian Researches in
India; Abernethy; Buckminster, Sermons; Ara-
bian Nights;
Scott, The Pirate, Minstrelsy; Byron, Corsair,
Childe Harold ; Fearing, Travels in the United
States; Sismondi, Italian Republics; Leigh Hunt,
Song.


JOURNAL X
THE WIDE WORLD, NO. 9
OD HOPE
“Pass not unblest the Genius of the place."
Saturday Evening, December 21, 1822.
To the Genius of the Future, I dedicate my
page.
« Incipe. Vivendi qui recte prorogat horam, .
Rusticus expectat dum defuat amnis ; at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.”
[GOOD HOPE]
... If the misanthrope take refuge in analogy
- it will fail him. For though we bewail the im-
perfection of sublunary things, yet all things in
the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdom have
a perfection, which, though not attained in the
hundred instances,- is attained in the thousand;
is attained much oftener than not. Man in many
trials has failed ; . . . But now a preparation is
made for another experiment which begins with
infinite advantages. I need not name the daily
blessings which are diffused over the present gen-
eration and distinguish them above antiquity. I
notice only that they possess Christianity and a


206
JOURNAL (Age 19
civilization more deeply ingrafted in the mind
(by reason of the extraordinary aids it derives
from inventions and discoveries) than ever it has
before been. It is the nature of these advantages
to multiply themselves. Providence ordains that
every improvement extend an influence of infi-
nite extent over the face of society. For centuries
back, the progress of human affairs has appeared
to indicate some better era ; and finally when all
events were prepared, God has opened a new the-
atre for this ultimate trial. This country is daily
rising to a higher comparative importance and
attracting the eyes of all the rest of the world to
the development of its embryo greatness,
ALFRED THE GREAT
Christmas, December 25.
If (as saith Voltaire) all that is related of Alfred
the Great be true, I know not the man that ever
lived, more worthy of the gratitude of posterity.
I hope the reservation means nothing. There is
not one incredible assertion made either of his
abilities, his character, or his actions. Besides it
was not an age, nor were Saxon monks the men,
to invent and adorn another Cyropaedia. Sharon
Turner, an ambitious flashing writer, and else-
where a loon, hath done well by Alfred. His


1823]
EVERETT
207
praise rests not upon monkish eulogy or vague
tradition, but upon facts. ...
December 26, 1822.
I have heard this evening and shall elsewhere
record Prof. Everett's lecture upon Eleusinian
mysteries, Dodona, and St. Sophia's temple. ...
Though the lecture contained nothing origi-
nal, and no very remarkable views, yet it was an
account of antiquities bearing everywhere that
“ fine Roman hand,” and presented in the inimi-
table style of our Cicero. “ Bigotry and Philoso-
phy are the opposite poles of the judgment, and
the scepticism of Hume and Gibbon is as differ-
ent as the superstition of the Catholics from the
freedom of the Protestant.” (PROFESSOR E.)
Saturday Evening, January 11.
“My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne";
I cannot distinctly discern the cause; tomorrow
he will sit heavily there; and after a few days more,
he shall cease to be. The connexions which he
nursed with earthly society shall be broken off,
and the memory of his individual influence shall
be obliterated from human hearts. It may chance
that he will resume his thought elsewhere ; that
while the place from whence he passed forgets


208
JOURNAL
[AGE 19
him, he shall nourish the fires of a pure ambition
in some freer sanctuary than this world holds. It
is possible that the infinity of another world may
so crowd his conception, as to divest him of that
cumbrous sense of self that weighs him down,-
until he lose his individual existence in his efforts
for the Universe.
TIME
... The years of infancy fled, and those toys
dwindled away to make room for the splendid
hopes and enthusiastic resolutions of youth.
The sky was not so bright, and alas ! not so
changeable as its promises. It revelled in the
sight of beauty, and the sound of music, in the
motion of the limbs, in the intercourse of
friends, and in all the joys of a pleasant and
gorgeous world. But the crimson flush went
from its cheek and the joyous light from its eye;
its bones hardened into manhood, and its years
departed beyond the flood. Reason watched
them as they departed, and was bitterly morti-
fied to find how insignificant they became in
the view. Those changes and events which had
engaged the mind by their gigantic greatness
sunk now to pigmy dimensions, and so dim
were their images upon the memory that it


1823]
MORAL SENSE
209
was hard to believe they were not altogether a
dream.
After a few more turnings of the globe in its
orbit, manhood, age and life itself will have
passed, and as I advance, that which I have left
behind will continually grow less and less. As
I reach and pass successively the several epochs
of existence, the things of former pursuit will
degenerate in my esteem. All, all, will be un-
remembered as if they had never been. The
mind writes daily, in its recollections of the
past, but one epitaph upon Time “Vanity of
Vanities, all is Vanity !” God forbid that this
be the faithful history of the Universe. ...
MORAL SENSE
... There is one distinction amid these fad-
ing phenomena —one decided distinction which
is real and eternal and which will survive nature
- I mean the distinction of Right and Wrong.
Your opinions upon all other topics, and your
feelings with regard to this world, in childhood,
youth, and age, perpetually change. Your per-
ceptions of right and wrong never change. You
can dismiss the world from your mind, and al-
most abolish in your imagination the dominion


210
JOURNAL
[AGE 19
OU
of sense; but you can never bury in your breast
the sense of offended Justice. ...
The mind may lose its acquaintance with other
minds, and may abandon, without a sigh, this
glorious universe, as a tent of the night to dwell
in; but it cannot part with its moral principle,
by which it becomes akin to the extraordinary
intelligences that are to accompany its everlast-
ing journey to the throne of God. If there be
anything real under heaven, or in heaven, the
perception of right and wrong relates to that
reality. Dogmatists and philosophers may easily
convince me that my mind is but the abode of
many passing shadows by the belief of whose
existence about me I am mocked. I shall not
very sturdily combat this ancient scepticism be-
cause, to my mind and to every mind, it has
often seemed problematical whether or not it was
cheated by an unsubstantial edifice of thought.
But it is in the constitution of the mind to rely
with firmer confidence upon the moral principle,
and I reject at once the idea of a delusion in this.
This is woven vitally into the thinking substance
itself, so that it cannot be diminished or destroyed
without dissipating forever that spirit which it
inhabited. Upon the foundation of my moral
sense I ground my faith in the immortality of


1823]
ENTHUSIASM
211
ce
the soul, in the existence and activity of good
beings, and in the promise of rewards accommo-
dated hereafter to the vicious or virtuous dispo-
sitions which were cultivated here. The great
citizenship of the universe, which all souls par-
take, has this for its common bond and charter,
which none may violate, without taking upon
themselves the peril of losing its infinite privi-
leges. Upon the bounded field of this earth, na-
tions upon nations of men have expired in suc-
cession, and borne to other and unseen countries
the minds that dwelled here for a space; and all
the individuals of this host have consented to-
gether in one respect alone, namely, the acknow-
ledgement of this inward tribunal of thought and
action. They obeyed or disobeyed its law, they
suffered or rejoiced, as they might; but not one
ever escaped from this high, unyielding, univer-
sal thraldom which the Author of Mind has
created upon the mind.
ENTHUSIASM
January 19, 1823.
The ideas of Deity and religious worship read-
ily find admission to the mind, and are readily
abused. The clown on a dunghill can exalt his
capacity to these truths and is delighted and flat-


212
JOURNAL
[AGE 19
tered by this consciousness of a new and tran-
scendent power. God is infinitely above the whole
creation, and he that aspires to worship Him,
feels that his mounting spirit leaves the rest of
the Universe beneath his feet. Enthusiasm is
therefore apt to generate in uncultivated minds
a rash and ignorant contempt for the slow modes
of education and the cautious arts of reasoning
by which enlightened men arrive at wisdom —
because they have themselves acquired this sur-
passing conception without the irksome toil of
the intermediate steps. The boor becomes philo-
sopher at once, and boldly issues the dogmas of
a religious creed from the exuberance of a coarse
imagination. The tumults of a troubled mind are
mistaken for the inspiration of an apostle, and
the strength of excited feelings is substituted for
the dispassionate and tardy induction, the com-
parison of scripture and reason, which sanctions
the devotions of moderate and liberal men.
This has been everywhere found to be the
history of religious error ; not merely in the fa-
naticism of sects, but in the mistakes and super-
stitions of individuals. Every man's heaven is
different; and is coloured by the character and
tone of feeling most natural to his mind. And,
in like manner, his conceptions of the Divine Be-
ne


1823]
PRAYER
213
ing will vary with the narrowness or justness of
his modes of thinking. A mind which is remark-
able for the truth and grandeur of its views in
physical or metaphysical science will seldom be
found the dupe of an unrelenting bigotry in its
religious faith. ... Intellectual habits are not
the sudden productions of an accident, but are
formed slowly, and confirmed from day to day
by the influence of events, until they acquire an
immutable strength that may outlast the period
of this life. We think of God, therefore, as we
think of man. Our views of human nature are
liable to mistake; so are our views of the divine.
PRAYER
... The origin of prayer is no doubt to be
traced in our comparison of finite beings with
the infinite Being. To obtain bread, we prayed
our neighbour to impart from his store. But to
obtain more than bread,—to obtain our health
or the life of a friend, to change the course of
events, is beyond our neighbour's power. Man
remembered in his hour of need that there was
a Power above him, and uttered an ejaculation
of his distress and his hopes, dictated by pre-
cisely the same emotions which moved him to
address his earthly friend. Thus far the analogy


214
JOURNAL
[AGE 19
is unexceptionable, but if pursued farther it fails.
A judge has decreed the death of a criminal;
the father and friends of the unfortunate man
come before the tribunal to pray for his life, and
plead with such importunity and eloquence that
the judge consents to set aside the sentence.
The character of the culprit is not amended,
but the free course of justice is stopped, and
society wronged, by the earnestness of the sup-
plication. (In the ancient Persian religion, it
is forbidden to petition for blessings to them-
selves individually; the prayer must extend to
the whole Persian nation.) In like manner,
men came to their Maker to ask the favour of
a partial event, a particular blessing that will
prove prejudicial to the whole; and reasoning
erroneously from human experience, they con-
cluded that there was a certain force in prayer
that would extend some controul even over the
Mind of Deity. Pity and irresolution in the
human judge triumphed over his knowledge
and his virtue, and the worshipper flattered
himself with the hope that even God might be
induced to hesitate by the offering of heca-
tombs and clamorous petition. The idolatry of
every nation has had a tendency towards this
belief, that the arm of omnipotence could be
men ca
co
101


1823]
PRAYER
215
IN
ins
chained down by sacrifice and entreaty, which
the Hindoo mythology has pursued to extrav-
agant lengths. Prayer and penance by their in-
trinsic virtue will raise the worshipper above
the power of gods and men, until it hurls the
Highest from his throne to make room for the
devout usurper. Such a creed shocks the mind;
but a secret bias to this belief is by no means
uncommon in Christian countries. We are
prone to think that the prayers of righteous
men avail with God to check or change the
course of events, which implies either that those
events were ill-ordered before, or that they will
take a wrong direction now; but both these
hypotheses are inconsistent with our trust in
the superintendence of Providence over human
affairs. ...
The opposition of a General to a Particular
Providence is often implied in prayer. Antiquity
viewed the gods as the Particular, Fate as the
General Providence, and reconciles them by
making Fate absolute in the administration of
the Universe. Our perplexity springs from the
union of both in the hands of One God.
... When God has ordained a change of
events and the aspect of the world, suggesting
the benefits of such a change to the mind, in-


216
JOURNAL [AGE 19
duces man to pray for it, in this case, the event
coincides with the prayer, and is interpreted as
an especial interposition. With this solitary ex-
ception, men's prayers and the succession of
events have no direct connexion at all with each
other. ...
Human curiosity is forever engaged in seek-
ing out ways and means of making a connection
between the mind and the world of matter with-
out, or the world of mind that has subsisted
here, or an uniting bridge which shall join to
future ages our own memory and deeds. This
laudable curiosity should not neglect the forma-
tion of a bond which proposes to unite it, not to
men, to matter, or to beasts, but to the Unseen
Spirit of the Universe. Our native delight in the
intercourse of other beings urges us to cultivate
with assiduity the friendship of great minds.
But there is a Mind to whom all their greatness
is vanity and nothing; who did himself create
and communicate all the intellect that exists;
and there is a mode of intercourse provided by
which we can approach this excellent majesty.
That Mind is God; and that Mode is Prayer.
“And if by prayer
Incessant I could hope to change the will


1823]
HISTORY
217
Of Him who all things can, I would not cease
To weary Him with my assiduous cries.
But prayer against his absolute decree
No more avails than breath against the wind
Blown stilling back on him that breathes it forth.”
Paradise Lost, Book XI.
HISTORY
In reading History it is hard to keep the eye
steadily fixed upon any distinct moral view of
the species, to which we may readily refer all
the facts recorded of individuals. When we lạy
aside the book, and think of man, our habitual
theories regard him as a being in a state of pro-
bation, and we elevate the whole human race to
an exalted equality of condition and destiny.
Resume the page, and you are convinced at
once, that whatever opinions you are yourself
pleased to entertain concerning them,-it never
entered the minds of the majority of mankind in
past ages that any such equality prevailed, or
that they sustained any very sublime rank in the
scale of creation. They have themselves shewn
a melancholy apathy (that is madness in the eye
of a philanthropist) to every supposed noble-
ness of moral or intellectual design ; they -
that is the majority — have uniformly preferred


218
JOURNAL [Age 23
the body to the mind, have permitted the free
and excessive enjoyment of their sensual appe-
tites, and chained down in torpid dreams the
noble appetites of the soul. Instead of eating to
live, men have lived to eat, to drink, and to be
merry; and when ordinary means failed to bring •
about these grand purposes, then the extraordi-
nary means of lies, murder and robbery have
been resorted to. No doubt good men are also
found in the dramatic variety of the tale, to recall
the mind to the theory from which it has wan-
dered; but a good man in the world is aptly re-
presented by a stag in the chase, as the one mark
and victim at whose cost the enjoyment of all the
rest is procured. ... It seems to be a mockery
to send us to this howling wilderness to pluck
roses and fruits. The rose is blooming there and
the wild flowers hanging luxuriantly, but they
cast their perfume in the tiger's den. Fanciful
men, heated by the new wine of their imagina-
tions, have attempted to woo the indignant Rea-
son into a better love of this darkened world;
Epicurean pencils have painted it as perfectly
accommodated to our powers of enjoyment, as
fraught with every luxury, grace and good which
we desire to gain, as the palace of beauty and
love, the vast mart of thought, friendship, so-
ro


1823]
HISTORY
219
ciety and distinction, the home of Virtue and the
End of Hope. So it is pictured, and so we be-
lieve in childhood; but our first mature glance
at the actual state of society falls upon so much
real deformity and such low moral and intellect-
ual turpitude that the fair fabric of the imagina-
tion is speedily undermined. We find it difficult
or impossible to reconcile the phenomena which
we observe with any plausible hypotheses that
heaven or earth have told us of their design;
but humanity always resembles itself, and we
readily recognize the imposture that attempts to
describe better beings than men. For this more
brilliant and seductive faith concerning man and
the earth is deduced from false and partial re-
presentations of human nature, and makes only
momentary converts when it is aided by the gay
exhilaration which nature within and without
awakens in youth, or by the few hours or mo-
ments that happen in a man's life, when the heart
is swelled and imagination is feasted at seasons
of revel, magnificence and public joy. Whereas
the times when the contrary conviction is forced
upon the soul, outnumber these moments a
thousand fold. ....


220
[AGE 2
JOURNAL
HISTORY (continued)
The history of America since the Revolution
is meagre because it has been all that time under
better government, better circumstances of re-
ligious, moral, political, commercial prosperity
than any nation ever was before. History will
continually grow less interesting as the world
grows better. Professor Playfair of Edinburgh,
the greatest, or one of the greatest men of his
time, died without a biography, for there was
no incident in the life of a great and good man
worth recording. Nelson and Bonaparte, men of
abilities without principles, found four or five
biographies apiece.
The true epochs of history should be those
successive triumphs which, age after age, the
communities of men have achieved, such as the
Reformation, the Revival of letters, the progres-
sive Abolition of the slave-trade.
sive Abolitin, the Revival of Taleved, such as the
Whoever considers what kind of a spirit it
is which prompts men to write, will remark the
improbability that a knowledge of the domestic
manners of an ancient people should be trans-
mitted to a remote age, by any but the most
fortuitous event. Literature grew out of the


1823] DOMESTIC MANNERS 221
221
necessity of written monuments, and in its first
expansion into an elegant art, while yet its me-
chanical advantages were rude and poor, it was
devoted only to those great features on the face
of the world which first forced themselves on the
mind of the writer, — to the history of laws, of
colonies, of wars, and of religion. For his illus-
trations, the writer appealed to nature, and upon
the early discovery of the delight given by these
appeals, was formed a new department of the Art
which was called poetry.
h
DOMESTIC MANNERS
... If we had a series of faithful portraits of
private life in Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome,
we might relinquish without a sigh their national
annals. The great passions which move a whole
nation, and the common sense of mankind, are
alike everywhere, and these determine the for-
eign relations and the political counsels of men.
But private life hath more delicate varieties, which
differ in unlike circumstances; ...
... Our vague and pompous outlines of his-
tory serve but to define in geographical and
chronological limits, the faint vestiges we pos-
sess of former nations. But of what mighty mo-


222
JOURNAL
[Age 19
n
ment is it that we know the precise scene of a
Virtue or a Vice? Give us the bare narrative of
the moral beings engaged, the moral feelings con-
cerned, and the result—and you have answered
allour purpose, all the ultimate design which leads
the mind to explore the past. (That is of a specu-
lative mind - apart from all purposes of govern-
ment and policy-for the purposes of another
world, rather than for this.) For the history of
nations is but the history of private Virtues and
Vices collected in a more splendid field, a wider
sky. To little purpose you would shew the cu-
rious philosopher a mighty forest, extending at
a distance its thousand majestic trees; a single
branch, a stem, a leaf, in his hand is of more
value to him for all the purposes of science.
Even the Eternal Geometer, in the fancy of
Leibnitz, deduces the past and present condi-
tion of the Universe from the examination of
the single atom.
SOLITUDE
The gods and wild beasts are both, to a pro-
verb, fond of solitude; thought makes the differ-
ence between the solitude of the god and that
of the lion.


1823]
223
IMAGINATION
[IMAGINATION versus THOUGHT]
In the entry of the saloon there has been con-
siderable bustle; but an individual now stood there
to throw off his blue cloak, whose figure arrested
at once the whole attention of two or three guests
who chanced to be looking towards the door. A
whisper instantly circulated to inform the party
of the presence of a most distinguished and wel-
come guest. Every one rose at his entrance, and
the stranger advanced with an air of dignified ma-
jesty towards the centre of the hall. Franklin sa-
luted him with evident respect and introduced him
to the company as the first American President.
There was no brilliant sparkle in his eye which
attracted notice, nor rapid change of expression
in his countenance; his countenance was com-
posed and a graceful dignity marked every mo-
tion, so that he was rather the Jupiter than the
Apollo of the group. This however was mani-
fest, that from the time of his entrance, during
all that long conference, the first place in that
society was invariably, and of right, as it seemed,
conceded to him. A most melodious voice which
rolled richly on the ear and was that of Cicero,
addressed the last mentioned person. “I esteem
myself happy to stand in the company of one to


224
JOURNAL [Age 19
whom Heaven seems to have united me by a cer-
tain similarity of fortune and the common glory
of saving a state. But the fates have given you
an advantage, O most illustrious man, above my
lot, in granting you an honourable decline and
death amid the regrets of your country, while I
fell by the vengeance of the flagitious Antony."
Gibbon put up his lip at this speech; and Frank-
lin, who sat with his hands upon his knees between
Washington and Gibbon, &c. &c."
“Tush!” he said, “thoughts and imagina-
tions! I tell thee, man, that I, who have got
my bread and fame by informing the world, can
write, in twenty lines, all the thoughts that ever
I had, while the imaginations would fill a thou-
sand fair pages.”
ANIMALS
[Animals]
March 6, 1823.
My brother Edward asks me, Whether I
have a right to make use of animals ? I answer
“Yes,” and shall attempt to give my reasons.
A poor native of Lapland found himself in
midwinter destitute of food, of clothing and
1 The author evidently postponed to another day telling
what Franklin's remark or gesture was, in his cagerness to give
Gibbon the floor.


1823] BODY AND SOUL 225
light, and without even a bow to defend him-
self from the beasts. In this perplexity he met
with a reindeer, which he killed and conveyed
to his hut. He now found himself supplied
with oil to light his lamp, with a warm covering
for his body and with wholesome and strength-
ening food, and with bowstrings withal, where-
by he could again procure a similar supply.
Does any mind question the innocence of this
starving wretch in thus giving life and comfort
to a desolate family in that polar corner of the
world? ...Now there is a whole nation of men
precisely in this condition, all reduced to the
alternative of killing the beasts, or perishing
themselves. Let the tender-hearted advocate of
the brute creation go there, and choose whether
he would make the beasts bis food, or be him-
self theirs. ...
[BODY AND Soul]
March 1o.
The mixture of the body and soul is the
great wonder in the world, and our familiarity
with this puts us at ease with all that is unac-
countable in our condition. Providence, no
doubt, scrupulously observes the proportions
of this mixture, and requires for the soundness


226
JOURNAL
[Age 19
of both, a fixed equilibrium. The gross appe-
tites of the body are sometimes indulged until
the mind by long disuse loses the command
of her noble faculties, and one after another,
star after star, they are gradually extinguished.
Those passages and conduits of thought, of di-
vine construction, through which God intended
that the streams of intellect should flow in
various directions, — because they have never
been used, have fallen to ruin, and are choked
up; Mind, from being the free born citizen of
the Universe and the inheritor of glory, has be-
come the caterer and the pander of sense. Even
the body, from being the upright lord of the
lower creation and the temperate owner of a
thousand pleasures, has abused his liberties,
until he is the slave of those pleasures, and the
imitator and peer of the beasts. This is one
mode of destroying the balance that Nature
fixed in our compound frame. ...
Ascetic mortification and an unintermitting,
livelong martyrdom of all the sensual appetites,
although far more innocent than the contrary
extreme, is nevertheless unwise, because it fails
of its intended effect. Hermits, who believed
that by this merciless crucifixion of the lusts of
the body they should succeed in giving to the


1823] BODY AND SOUL 227
corr
succ
ve
winds the rags and tatters of a corrupt nature,
and elevate and purge the soul in exact propor-
tion to the sufferings of the flesh, have been dis-
appointed in their hopes; at least, if they have
succeeded in deceiving themselves, they have
grievously disappointed the world.' . ..
But these golden dreams of a rapid ameliora-
tion of the world to issue from the prayers and
penances that stormed heaven from these soli-
tudes, vanished away. The solitary man was as
other men are. His sufferings had soured his
temper, or inflamed his pride; the current of
thought had been checked and frozen. His
powers and dispositions were diverted from use-
ful ends and were barren and selfish. Instead of
the blessed plant which they thought had sprung
for the healing of the nations, was a dry and
withered branch; it was sundered from its root;
producing neither blossoms, nor leaves, nor
fruits, 't was fit only for the fire.
March 12.
... But there was an elder scripture, a prior
command; Love thy neighbor; amid your right-
eous war against your passions, forget not that
you are a man; that you are one individual of a
i Here follows a long passage on the hermits of the The-
baid and their temporary repute for their sacrifices.
eoul


228
JOURNAL [AGE 19
great and immortal company, who, with you, are
labouring on to attainment of objects which de-
mand all and more than all their faculties to ap-
preciate and reach; that thousands of these are
fainting or falling by the way, and will task your
utmost benevolence to lend them needful aid.
And when a man has duly considered, ... I
think he will be led to undervalue the precious
qualities of that man's virtue who, like the priest
and the Levite of the parable, goes on the other
side and extricates himself as he can from the
importunity of want or the cries of the dying.
... The earth which supports him upon her
bosom, the common mother of us all, has a right
to ask at his hands some return for her bounties,
and what immunity. it is entitles him to nurse his
own unprofitable existence, without putting his
shoulder to the wheel or bearing his part of the
burden of life; without giving help to the weary
or pouring one drop of balm into the wounded
heart.
I am persuaded that God enforces the law
... to make the perfection of man's nature
consist in a fixed equilibrium of the body and
the mind. Those masters of the moral world,
who have preserved an undisputed lordship over


1823] BODY AND SOUL 229
е
good minds for ages after they themselves have
died, have not gained that rare fortune by any
extraordinary manners of life, or any unseemly
defiance of the elements, or of death. Temper-
ate, unassuming men, they have conformed to
the fashions of the times in which they fell,
without effort or contempt. God, in their minds,
removed the ancient landmarks of thought, or
else gave them strength to overleap the bound-
ary, so that they took in a mightier vision of the
state of man than their fellows had done. In all
this they did not see differently from them, but
saw beyond the common limit. Accordingly it
was no part of their pride to be at discord with
men upon common matters of every day's ob-
servation. Upon trifles of time and sense they
all thought alike. Deeper thoughts and remote
consequences, far beyond the ken of vulgar
judgments, and yet intimately connected with the
progress and destinies of society, were the points
they fixed their eyes upon; and upon the distinct-
ness with which they were able to detect these,
they chiefly valued themselves. It is a delightful
relief in the afflicting history of the world, it is
a crystal fountain gushing in the wilderness -
to remember the men who exercised this peace-
ful and sublime dominion over human hearts not


230
JOURNAL
[AGE 19
cemented by the blood nor shaken by the curses
of enemies. Bound like other men to the com-
plicated machine of society, and their fortunes
perhaps inseparably linked to the greatness of
another house — these minds quietly founded
a kingdom of their own, which should long out-
last the ruins of that transient dynasty in which
it grew.... Men of God they were, - children
of a clearer day, walking upon earth, keeping in
their hands the urns of immortality out of which
there streamed a light which reached to far dis-
tant generations that they might follow in their
track. The Pagan also blest them,
“Pauci quos aequus amavit
Juppiter, aut ardens virtus ad sidera tollit.”
March 13.
And what a motley patchwork of feelings may
be found in the crew of their admirers behind
them. How many brows are knit, how many
hearts yearn, of those who resolve to follow, or
are content to worship them! Upon what meat
did these Cæsars feed, that they have grown
so great? Did God or Man, time, or place, or
chance, sow the immortal seed? And how many
seats at the Table of the Gods are yet vacant?
And the storehouses of genius and goodness from


1823]
MEN OF GOD
231
which each child of the Universe may pluck out
his share-are they yet exhausted or locked up?
And shall those hearts which have throbbed to
the secret urgency of the spirit, (perchance it was
the same spirit that urges all existence) shall they
faint in the outset? Onward, onward, the Sun is
already high over your head! Or fearest thou
because the day is waxed late that time shall lack?
I tell thee, the race is for Eternity. The windows
of heaven are opened, and they whose faces are
as the day, Seraphim and Cherubim, beckon to
the children of Man and bid him “Be bold!”
“ Incipe. Vivendi qui recte prorogat horam,
Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis ; at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.”


JOURNAL XI
THE WIDE WORLD, No. 10
“Optimus ille fuit vindex laedentia pectus
Vincula qui rupit, dedoluitque semel.” 1
[During the period which this Wide World
covers, perhaps in May, Mrs. Emerson and her
sons moved to Canterbury, a part of Roxbury,
where they hired a house in the picturesque re-
gion near the Dedham Turnpike, now a portion
of Franklin Park. Waldo's health as reflected
in portions of this journal, especially the poem
“The Bell,” seems not to have been good. There
is a pleasant letter about the joy he felt in dwell-
ing in the country, written to one of his class-
mates, in Mr. Cabot's Memoirs, vol. i, p. 96.]
DEDICATION
Boston, March 18, 1823.
When God had made the beasts, and prepared
to set over them an intelligent lord, He consid-
ered what external faculty he should add to his
frame, to be the seat of his superiority. Then
He gave him an articulate voice. He gave him
i From Ovid's Remedia Amoris (corrected).


1823]
ELOQUENCE 233
an organ exquisitely endowed, which was inde-
pendent of his grosser parts, —but the minister
of his mind and the interpreter of its thoughts.
It was designed moreover as a sceptre of irre-
sistible command, by whose force the great and
wise should still the tumult of the vulgar million,
and direct their blind energies to a right oper-
ation. The will of Heaven was done, and the
morning and evening gales wafted to the High-
est the harmonious accents of Man. But the gen-
erations of men lived and died, while yet their
expanding powers were constrained by the iron
necessities of infant civilization, and they had
never, with, perchance, a few solitary exceptions,
ascertained the richness of this divine gift. Sud-
denly, in a corner of Europe, the ripe seeds of
Greatness burst into life, and covered the hills
and valleys of Greece with the golden harvest.
The new capacities and desires which burned in
the human breast, demanded a correspondent
perfection in speech, — to body them forth.
Then a voice was heard in the assemblies of
men, which sounded like the language of the
gods; it rolled like music on the ear, and filled
the mind with indefinable longings; it was per-
emptory as the word of kings; or mournful as
a widow wailing; or enkindling as the martial


234
JOURNAL [Age 19
clarion. That voice men called Eloquence, and
he that had it unlocked their hearts, or turned
their actions whithersoever he would. Like sea-
waves to the shore, like mountain sheep to their
shepherd, so men crowded around this com-
mander of their hearts to drink in his accents,
and to mould their passions to his will. The
contagion of new desires and improvements went
abroad, — and tribe after tribe of barbarians up-
lifted the banner of Refinement. This spirit-stir-
ring art was propagated also, and although its
light sunk often in the socket, it was never put
out. Time rolled, and successive ages rapidly de-
veloped the mixed and mighty drama of human
society, and among the instruments employed
therein, this splendid art was often and actively
used. And who that has witnessed its strength,
and opened every chamber of his soul to the
matchless enchanter, does not venerate it as the
noblest agent that God works with in human
hearts ? My Muse, it is the idol of thy homage,
and deserves the dedication of thine outpour-
ings.
TIME
After two moons I shall have fulfilled twenty
years. Amid the fleeting generations of the human
race and in the abyss of years I lift my solitary


1823]
235
TIME
voice unheeded and unknown, and complain unto
inexorable Time:— “Stop, Destroyer, over-
whelmer, stop one brief moment this uncontrol-
lable career. Ravisher of the creation, suffer me a
little space, that I may pluck some spoils, as I
pass onward, to be the fruits and monuments
of the scenes through which I have travelled.”
Fool ! you implore the deaf torrent to relax the
speed of its cataract,
« At ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.”
How many thousands before, have cast up to
Time the same look of fear and sorrow when they
have contemplated the terrible flight of Time.
But this infinite Extinguisher or Changer of being
continues his supreme agency without exception
or interval. Among the undistinguished myriads
thus hurried on and off the stage of mortal life,
a few, parted by long periods asunder, have made
themselves a longer memory in this world, (and
perchance in worlds beyond,) by pouring out all
their strength in the service of their fellow men.
They rightly judged that if a benevolent God
keeps watch in heaven over his family in earth,
the sight would be grateful to Him of patient
study and intense toil accomplished by magnani-
mous minds in behalf of human nature and for
mous


236
JOURNAL [AGE 19
the avowed design of its improvement. Men
grope, they said, in a night of doubts and false-
hoods, for the light of Truth is quenched, or
burns dimly in the midst; come, let us restore
the flame, and feed it with fuel, until it shall grow
up again in a beacon-light blazing broadly and
gloriously to illuminate the world. Then oursons
and our sons' sons shall walk in the brilliant light
and shall pray God to bless us long after we have
gone down to the chambers of death. That glori-
ous company of martyrs who took up the cross
of virtuous denial and gave their days and nights
to study, meditation and prayer, were indeed
“Blessed” of Heaven and earth. God, in the
watches of the starry night, fed their imaginations
with secret influences of divinity, and swelled their
conceptions with showers of healing water from
the fountains of Paradise. They could not con-
tain their joy of these sweet and silent prompt-
ings,- this interview as they deemed it, between
God and man, and they mounted to a constant
elevation of thought which left far below them
the cankering and ignoble pursuits of life. They
have left inscribed in their writings frequent and
bold appeals to the grandeur of the spirit which
lodged in their breasts, confident that what was
writ would justify the truth of their claims. The


1823]
TIME
237
sublimest bard of all — he who sung “ Man's
disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree
which brought death into the world and all our
woe” — felt himself continually summoned and
inspired by a Spirit within him, and which after-
ward, he says, grew daily upon me- to do God's
work in the world by sending forth strains which
after-times would not willingly let die. Not a
work to be finished in the heat of youth or the
vapours of wine; nor yet by invocation of Dame
Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout
prayer to that eternal Spirit who giveth know-
ledge; hereby he hoped to release in some great
measure the hearts of posterity from that har-
lotry of voluptuousness, whereinto he perceived
with grief his own age had fallen. A kindred
genius born for the exaltation of mankind, who
preceded the poet, and who fell (alas for human-
ity!) into a share and ruin for his integrity, did
yet contribute a mighty impulse to the cause of
wisdom and truth. And he also was no wise un-
conscious of the magnitude of the effort and the
power which supported him.


238
[AGE 19
JOURNAL
THE BELL?
I love thy music, mellow bell,
I love thine iron chime,
To life or death, to heaven or hell,
Which calls the Sons of Time.
Thy voice upon the deep
The homebound sea-boy hails,
It charms his cares to sleep,
It cheers him as he sails.
To merry hall or house of God
Thy summons called our sires,
And good men thought thy awful voice
Disarmed the thunder's fires.
And soon thy music, sad Death-bell,
Shall sing its dirge once more,
And mix my requiem with the gale
Which sweeps my native shore.
FREE THINKING
It is often alleged, with a great mass of in-
stances to support the assertion, that the spirit
of philosophy and a liberal mind is at discord
These youthful verses, slightly changed for the better by
Mr. Emerson a few years later, were printed in the Appendix
to the Centenary Edition of the Poems.


1823] FREE THINKING 239
with the principles of religion, so far, at least,
as to imply that hoary error that religion is a
prejudice which statesmen cherish in the vulgar
as a wholesome terror. Those whom Genius
or Education have rescued from the common
ignorance have openly discarded the humble
creeds of men and vaunted their liberty : they
have mounted, it is pretended, to some loftier
prospect of man's dependence or independence
upon God, and have discovered that human
beings foolishly trouble themselves by their
shallow and slavish fear of some great Power in
the Universe who notices and remembers their
actions. For these clearer-sighted intellects have
darted their glance into the secrets of the other
world, and have satisfied themselves, either
that there is no Divinity at all, beyond the vain
names and fantastic superstitions of men, or
else, if there be a sphered and potent Dweller
in the Abyss, he is incurious and indifferent to
the petty changes of the world. In this confi-
dence, therefore, these bold speculators cast off
the fetters of opinion and those apprehensions
which so cleave to our poor nature, and are
willing to survey at ease the gorgeous spectacle
of the Universe, the fabric of society, and the
closet of the Mind; and to make themselves


240
JOURNAL. [Age 19
nes
proud of this birthright of thoughts — this rare
chance -- which fell upon them, they know not
how; and even to vaunt of their incomprehen-
sible immortality, if perchance they shall outlast
the changes of death. This perilous reckless-
ness, I find with regret in many of the intellect-
ual Guides of these latter times. . . . Hume,
Gibbon, Robertson, Franklin, certain Scotch
geniuses of the present day, and the profligate
Byron have expressed more or less explicitly
their dissent from the popular faith. Compos-
ing in themselves a brilliant constellation of
minds variously and richly endowed, they have
taken out its welcome influence from the cause
of good will to men, and set it in the opposite
scale. Like the star seen in the Apocalypse,
they have cast a malign light upon the earth,
turning the sweet waters to bitter.
That there may be a transient pleasure in
such free thinking I will not deny, nor that pride
of opinion has its gratifications. I will not dis-
pute that to a man inclined so to consider it, the
majesty of nature is a puppet-show of rarest en-
tertainment, abounding with devices which will
repay the toil of his curiosity. I will not deny
that this disciple of Democritus may find the
human soul and human society rich sources of


1823] FREE THINKING 241
merriment; but I shall say that laughter in the
mouth of a maniac is, in my judgment, as becom-
ing. Standing, as man stands, with the thunders
of evil fate suspended over him, bound on every
side by the cords of temptation, and uncertainty
sweeping like a dark cloud before his path,
is it for him, if his understanding is strong
enough to appreciate this condition, to acknow-
ledge his melancholy lot by unseasonable mirth?
A sober firmness on his brow, and purity in his
heart, is the best armour he can wear. I believe
nothing is more ungrounded than the assertion,
that scepticism is, in any manner, the natural
fruit of a superior understanding. The legitimate
fruits of a master spirit are a dearer love to vir-
tue, and an ardent and thrilling desire to burst
the bonds of the flesh and begin a perfecter ex-
istence. In those moments which every wise
man counts the best of his life — who hath not
been smitten, with a burning curiosity, to rend
asunder the veil of mortality, and gaze, with
pious violence, upon the unutterable glories be-
yond? The names which I mentioned as apos-
tate weigh nothing against the greater names of
Bacon, Milton, Newton, and the like, whose
hearts cleaved to the divine revelations as the
pledge of their resurrection to eternity. Nor can


242
JOURNAL
[AGE 19
I conceive of any man of sense reading the chap-
ter of Milton ... [Reason of Church Govern-
ment urged against Prelaty, Book 2, c. 1]
without his heart warming to the touch of noble
sentiments; and his faith in God and in the
eternity of virtue and of truth being steadfastly
confirmed. Nothing of human composition is so
akin to inspiration.
Sunday Evening, March 23, 1823.
... One youth among the multitudes of
mankind, one grain of sand on the seashore, un-
known in the midst of my contemporaries, I am
hastening to put on the manly robe. From child-
hood the names of the great have ever resounded
in my ear, and it is impossible that I should be
indifferent to the rank which I must take in the
innumerable assembly of men, or that I should
shut my eyes upon the huge interval which sep-
arates me from the minds which I am wont to
venerate. Every young man is prone to be mis-
led by the suggestions of his own ill-founded
ambition, which he mistakes for the promptings
of a secret Genius. . . . It is not Time, nor
Fate, nor the World, that is half so much his
foe as the demon Indolence within him. A man's
cer


1823] SELF-EXAMINATION 243
enemies are those of his own household. But if
a man shall diligently consider what it is which
most forcibly impedes the natural greatness of
his mind, he will assuredly find that slothful,
sensual indulgence is the real unbroken barrier,
and that when he has overleaped this, God has
set no bounds to his progress. The maxim is
true to an indefinite extent, “Faber quisque for-
tunae suae.” We boast of our free agency. What
is this but to say, God has put into our hands
the elements of our character, the iron and the
brass, the silver and the gold, to choose and to collcgc..
fashion them as we will. But we are afraid of the leto
toil, we bury them in a napkin, instead of mould-
ing them into rich and enduring vessels. This
view is by far the most animating to exertion.
It speaks life and courage to the soul. Mistrust
no more your ability, the rivalry of others, or
the final event. Make speed to plan, to execute,
to fulfil; forfeit not one moment more in the
dalliance of sloth ; for the work is vast, the time
is short, and opportunity is a headlong thing
which tarries for no man's necessities. Habits
of labour are paths to heaven. - It commands
no outward austerities. Do not put ashes on
your head, nor sackcloth on your loins, nor a
belt of iron for your girdle. But mortify the mind,


244
JOURNAL
[Age 19
put on humility and temperance, for ashes, and
bind about the soul as with iron. The soul is a
fertile soil, which will grow rank and to waste,
if left to itself. If you wish, therefore, to see it
bud out abundantly and bring an harvest richer
an hundred and a thousand fold, bind it, bind it
with the restraint of cultivation.
March 26.
It is overgrown with tares and poisons. Suffer
no longer this noisesome barrenness. Harrow it
up with thoughts. Fill it with the joys and whole-
some apprehensions of a reasonable being, in-
stead of the indifference of a brute.
March 28.
These are the clamours with which conscience
pursues and upbraids me— happy if they were
undeserved — happiest could they accomplish
their end! But the inscrutable future comes down
in darkness and finds us in the thrall of the same
old enemies, with all our hopes and full-blown
intentions thick on our heads. For your life,
then, for your life! crawl on a few steps farther
in the next twelvemonth!


1823]
245
PASTORAL
A SHOUT TO THE SHEPHERDS
Freshly, gaily, the rivulet flows
Beside its emerald bank,
Each silver bubble in beauty goes
Adown the stream and briefly glows
Till it reach the broad Aags and the alders dank.
Shepherds, who love the lay
Of untaught bards in oaken shades,
Bright-eyed Apollos of the forest glades,
Hither, hither, turn your way.
Come to the grassy border of the brook,
Here, where the ragged hawthorn dips
His prickly buds of perfume in the wave,
And thence again a costly fragrance sips,
Drinking with each balmy Aoweret's lips
Pure from the Naiad's welling urn,
While overhead the embowering elms
Bow their broad branches and keep out the day.
Hither, hither, turn your way.
[AMERICA A FIELD FOR WORK]
April 8, 1823
Powerful and concentrated motive . . . is
necessary to a man, who would be great; and
young men whose hearts burn with the desire of
distinction may complain perhaps that the paths
in which a man may be usefully illustrious are


246
JOURNAL [Age 19
already taken up, and that they have fallen in
too late an age to be benefactors of mankind.
Truly I wish it were so. ...
Alas! The wildest dreams of poetry have
uttered no such thing. There is a huge and dis-
proportionate abundance of evil on earth. In-
deed the good that is here is but a little island
of light amidst the unbounded ocean. What
mind therefore (that is stirred by ardent feelings)
looks over the great desart of human life with-
out fervently resolving to embark in the cause
of God and man, and without finding puissant
motives calling out the strength of every root
and fibre of his soul? But he finds the field too
spacious and the motive not enough concen-
trated. ... Let the young American withdraw
his eyes from all but his own country, and try
if he can find employment there. . . . Separated
from the contamination which infects all other
civilized lands, this country has always boasted
a great comparative purity. At the same time,
from obvious causes, it has leaped at once from
infancy to manhood; has covered, and is cover-
ing, millions of square miles with a hardy and
enterprizing population. The free institutions'
which prevail here, and here alone, have at-
tracted to this country the eyes of the world. In


1823] AMERICA THE FIELD 247
this age the despots of Europe are engaged in
the common cause of tightening the bonds of
monarchy about the thriving liberties and laws
of men ; and the unprivileged orders, the bulk
of human society, gasping for breath beneath
their chains, and darting impatient glances to-
wards the free constitution of other countries.
To America, therefore, monarchs look with ap-
prehension, and the people with hope. But the
vast rapidity with which the desarts and forests
of the interior of this country are peopled have
led patriots to fear lest the nation grow too fast
for its virtue and its peace. In the raw multi-
tudes who lead the front of emigration, men of
respectability in mind and morals are rarely
found — it is well known. The pioneers are
commonly the off-scouring of civilized society,
who have been led to embark in these enter-
prizes by the consciousness of ruined fortunes or
ruined character, or perchance a desire for that
greater license which belongs to a new and
unsettled community. These men and their
descendants compose the western frontier popu-
lation of the United States and are rapidly ex-
panding themselves. At this day, the axe is laid
to the root of the forest; the Indian is driven
from his hut, and the bison from the plains;-


248
[AGE 19
JOURNAL
en
in the bosom of mountains where white men
never trod, already the voice of nations begins
to be heard — haply heard in ominous and evil
accents. Good men desire, and the great cause
of human nature demands that this abundant
and overflowing richness wherewith God has
blessed this country be not misapplied and made
a curse of; that this new storehouse of nations
shall never pour out upon the world an ac-
cursed tribe of barbarous robbers. Now the
danger is very great that the Machine of Gov-
ernment acting upon this territory at so great
distance will wax feeble, or meet with resistance,
and that the oracles of moral law and intellect-
ual wisdom, in the midst of an ignorant and
licentious people, will speak faintly and indis-
tinctly. Human foresight can set no bounds to
the ill consequences of such a calamity, if it is
not reasonably averted. And, on the contrary,
if the senates that shall meet hereafter in those
wilds shall be made to speak a voice of wisdom
and virtue, the reformation of the world would
be to be expected from America. How to effect
the check proposed is an object of momentous
importance. And in view of an object of such
magnitude, I know not who he is, that can com-
plain that motive is lacking in this latter age,
whereby men should become great. ...


1823]
249
COMPENSATION
In-
COMPENSATION
The balancing and adjustment of human plea-
sures, privileges and graces, so that no man's
share shall outrun all competition, nor be dimin-
ished to an extreme poverty, is so obvious in the
world, as to be a daily topic of conversation.
And the system of compensations takes place as
much in the difference of good, as in the appor-
tioning of evil and good. Thus knowledge is a
good; but it must be acquired in different ways,
and there is no single way which combines the
advantages of all the others. The advantages
which one man enjoys by access to unusual
sources of improvement do, by some necessity,
deprive him of admittance to other sources
equally rare and rich. Is he opulent, and com-
mands the privileges of libraries and schools? he
wants that vigour and eagerness to use them
which Necessity gives. Is he a traveller and borne
by the winds to every foreign clime, and does he
transact affairs amidst the famous ruins of each
continent? — then his taste has been unculti-
vated and he views them all with indifference.
Has he wit and industry sufficient to grasp all
knowledge? – poverty shuts up with iron bars
every avenue to him. Men are alike only in


250
JOURNAL
(AGE 20
infancy; afterwards every man takes a path which
leads out from the common centre, and every
step separates him further from all the rest. ...
MORAL OBLIGATION
. . . . . . . .
To what purpose is this gorgeous firmament
displayed, in such rich and inimitable colours,
with such glorious variety? What is this curtain
of darkness which is hung abroad, unaltered in
its regularity, unrivalled in its grandeur? I stand
in a Paradise. And the pleasant winds of heaven
fan me as they move, and scatter health and
odours through all their outgoings. Custom has
made familiar to me the marvels of the world;
nevertheless its mighty magnificence will some-
times break upon the sense in overpowering
sensations, and fill the mind with unspeakable
conceptions of the Cause and Design, and with
awful shame for its own ingratitude. But men
are much more apt to let their thoughts rest in
the works, to behold Nature without anxiety to
see Nature's God; it is Custom, the tyranness
of fools, that suffers them to gaze vacantly upon
this fair and noble miracle, this sublime and ex-
quisite world, without exacting an unbounded
homage to the Author of it all. But perchance


1823] MORAL OBLIGATION 251
Custom is right, and I owe no homage ; stand
forth now and shew, if thou canst, some grounds
for this superlative claim upon my affections and
life. For, if you say well, then I am checked in
that liberty which I have exercised and in the
full view of my whole hopes) I shall be free to
do right, but I shall no longer be free to do wrong.
For he that is bid to go one way, and a sword
is pointed to his breast, is not free to go another.
Explain to me, then, my obligations, for else I
cannot consent to resign that free and entire
license to go right or to go wrong with which I
hitherto believed I walked in the world's ways.
(Infra, quote 6, 7, 8 verses, xxxv Job.)"
First, then, you are not your own, but belong
to another by the right of Creation. This claim
is the most simple, perfect and absolute of all
claims. Nothing is akin to it in the universe ; we
cannot reason about it from analogy; but when
we think of it, it is the most reasonable and sat-
isfactory of all claims. God animated a clod with
I “If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him ? or if thy
transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him ?
"If thou be righteous, what givest thou him, or what re-
ceiveth he of thine hand?
« Thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art ; and thy
righteousness may profit the son of man.”


252
JOURNAL
[AGE 20
life in a corner of his dominions; by his own
power he first orders it to be,— to hold a passive
existence as a clod, out of nothing; then, he
breathes into it life—and thus from an imparting
of Omnific Virtue, a thing is, which was not;
having come from himself, it is a part of himself;
it takes the tone of existence from him alone;
can aught be said to be so absolutely, inevitably,
unchangeably God's?'...
If we conceive the Divine Being inflicting pain
upon these creatures, we cannot satisfy ourselves
that even persecution authorises their rebellion
against his will. For, he has as close and near an
interest in what he makes from himself as that
which he makes has for itself; and for him to
pain such a creature is to pain himself. . . .
We cannot reason here from analogy, for men
are not creators. . . . If a father abuses his child,
forgets the ties of nature, and encroaches upon
his human rights or seeks his life-the son is
not left without resource- he can renounce those
mutual claims which his sire has refused to re-
I “ A man ... is there to speak for truth; but who is he?
Some clod the truth has snatched from the ground and with
fire has fashioned to a momentary man. Without the truth he
is a clod again.” – “The Sovereignty of Ethics,” Lectures
and Biographical Sketcbes, p. 194.


1823] MORAL OBLIGATION 2531
spect, and divesting himself of all other support
can sustain himself on the simple grounds of
natural rights. ... But the case is radically
different with the creature of God, and with a
son of man. For the former has no ultimate and
primal rights to throw himself back upon, when
he is induced to renounce his submission to God;
for God is his Maker and made those very rights
which he possesses. There is no other being in
the abysses of existence who might erect a hos-
tile standard against the Throne of the Deity
that afflicts him, about which the disaffected
might rally and hope. There is no other sepa-
rate, ultimate resource, for God is within him,
God about him, he is a part of God himself.
Nothing therefore can destroy, nothing abridge,
the claim of obedience which a Creator advances
upon his creatures. Hence, the first ground of
moral obligation is this; that the Being who
ordained it is the Source, the Support and the
Principle of our existence, and it were a kind of
denying our Nature to reject that which is
agreeable to him.
... There is no waste, no period to the
Moral universe. An antiquity that is without
beginning, and a futurity that is without end, is
its history. A principle of life and truth in itself


254
JOURNAL
[Age 20
which it is impossible to conceive of as liable
to death or suspension, or as less than infinite in
the extent of its rule, binding God and man
in its irreversible decree,- is coexistent with
Deity. ...
[DRAMATIC FRAGMENT]
Cawba. When will the plague depart? Will all my
sons
Snuff death from the wild wind, and go away
To the dim land of spirits o'er the hills ?
Seer.
The bisons fed in safety in the valley
Until thy sire set up his wigwam here;
Now they are gone to see the setting sun.
Thy people dwelt in safety in this land,
But they must flee to see the setting sun.
Come let them now dig down the tree of
peace,
Cut reeds from rivers for their poisoned
shafts,
Pluck up keen Aintstones for their toma-
hawks,
And battle with the thunder gods of heaven.
Hear the bald eagle scream amid the clouds;
His voice betokens blood, his eye glares
bright
O’er the great Waters to the misty isles.
Out of the clouds Big Warriors shall come
In swift canoes that Ay on shining wings; —


1823] DRAMATIC FRAGMENT 255
I see them leap like giants on thy shore
With thunder in their hands, and thy Great
Spirit
Is frighted at their Gods, and leaves his skies.
I tell thee, Chieftain, that the coward gods
Fear the white tribe that ride across the deep.
And hide their shamed heads. Ah, Red Men
are few;
They are few and feeble, and the eagle tribes
Must crumble fast away and fall in pieces.
Mas. You sing the deathsong of my tribe. Ah
me!
Now by my father's soul, old Cawba, say
Why are the tall warriors weak? and why
does God
Suffer the wolves to lap his children's blood?
Does the Great Spirit betray, or does he fear?
Seer.
Eagle! He loves his children; feeds them
when
They famish, saves them in the winter's
storm,
And sends the pleasant summer full of joy
Fattening the forest families — for them.
Then see thou blame Him not, for He is
good.
Mas. Sometimes he darts his thunder at my sons;
Can he not kill my enemies ?
Seer.
There are gods
Besides thy God, as other tribes have chiefs


256
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
Mas.
Besides thy own. Eagle, thy God is weak,
Waxing and waning like yon horned moon;
The white man's God, eternal as the sun.
Out on your God ! I'll be my people's god.
Since the Great Spirit is afraid to fight,
They shall not lack an arm strong as his
arm.
And when the white canoes come o'er the
sea,
Oh may their God with me wrestle for life!
Then I will fall upon them like the night,
And sing my war-song in their ears, and kill,
And stain the water-side with crimson foam.
And if my warriors fall, and if the foe
Prevail — then I will die, as the Eagle Chief
Should die — in fight, last of a noble tribe,
And white men's dying groans shall lull my
last sleep.
[Morals, continued]
June 1, 1823.
Great force is given to morals if you consider
the object and integrity they contribute to human
life. They are strong; if they were weak, and but
a faint hint, or indeed no suggestion at all, of
this law were imparted to the mind, life, instead
of being a noble and harmonious order, would
immediately become a wild and terrible dream.


1823]
MORALS
257
Men would ask one of another the cause and
meaning of the unexplained enigma. To what
purpose stand we here? Shall a tremendous event
shut up this troubled scene? These tempestuous
passions of ours — come, let us gratify them,
though we slay each other and ourselves also, to
avoid some darker calamity that uncertain ex-
istence may be storing for us. A Chaos more
frightful than that of nature - the Chaos of
thought would make life an insupportable
curse. The intelligent universe would be de-
prived of the salutary restraint that supports and
prolongs its awful beauty. Rend away the dark-
ness, and restore to man the knowledge of this
principle, and you have lit the sun over the
world and solved the riddle of life. Now man
lives for a purpose. Hitherto was no object upon
which to concentrate his various powers. Now
happiness is his being's end and aim. One course
leads to it, and the prize is secure. The distant
and dark intimation of such an end, which, in case
of total previous privation, we should have hailed
with rapture and have pursued with unconquer-
able diligence, is made to us a rich and majestic
revelation; and can the zeal with which we con-
form to its edicts ever become intemperate?
Never in the eye of God; never in the eye of


258
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
so
Seraphim and Cherubim; but often ill-timed and
intemperate, it would seem, in the eye of men.
So unerring, perhaps, and so judicious is human
sagacity that it is ever loth to enter zealously
into this subject; afraid, it would seem, of jeop-
ardizing some whit the stately dignity of human
nature by falling into a momentary enthusiasm
in this inquiry. Out of this world, all the active
intelligences that move in the heavens are ab-
sorbed in these views, are incessantly pursuing
on the fiery wing of Contemplation the wonders
of God's Providence into the abyss of his works.
Mind, which is the end and aim of all the Di-
vine Operations, feeds with unsated appetite
upon moral and material Nature, that is, upon
the order of things which He has appointed. It
is perpetually growing wiser and mightier by
digesting this immortal food; and, even in our
feeble conceptions of the heavenly hosts, we seek
to fill up the painful chasm that divides God from
his humble creatures upon earth by a magnifi-
cent series of godlike intellects. Worlds like ours
were the cradle of their infancy. Their minds, like
ours, learned the rudiments of thought from the
material creation. There ripened and godlike
understandings revere the law and study the
foundation principles of Morals. But man, in
m


1823]
TRADE
259
his nook of earth, knits his brow at the name
of his Maker, and gravely apprehends that the
discussion of his laws may lead to fanaticism.
It seems to me ardour and enthusiasm are the
appropriate feelings which belong to things of
Eternity and make the habits of Angels; but
Man waxes cold and slow at the word; and fears
to commit himself upon these topics in the pre-
sence of his fellow worms.
June 1, 1823
But this waywardness, in the end, grows to
presumption, and there is a time when slighted
opportunity ceases to return.
« Praise is the salt that seasons right for man
And whets the appetite for moral good.”
“ Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas.”
TRADE
Men so universally draw their characters after
the pattern of their times that great regard is due
to any who, spurning the character and humour
of an ignoble age, act upon principles not ap-
prehended by the vulgar. Upon this ground we
claim veneration for the forefathers of New Eng-
land, who were an association of men that for
once in the history of the world forgot to found


260
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
their plans exclusively upon the interests of trade,
and preferred to trade the finer interests of reli-
gion and literature. Trade was always in the world,
and indeed, to judge hastily, we might well deem
trade to have been the purpose for which the
world was created. It is the cause, the support
and the object of all government. Without it,
men would roam the wilderness alone, and never
meet in the kind conventions of social life. Who
is he that causes this busy stir, this mighty and
laborious accommodation of the world to men's
wants ? Who is he that plants care like a canker
at men's hearts, and furrows their brows with
thrifty calculations ? that makes money for his
instrument, and therewith sets men's passions in
ferment and their faculties in action, unites them
together in the clamorous streets, or arrays them
against each other in war? It is Trade, - Trade
which is the mover of the nations, and the pillar
whereon the fortunes of life hang. All else is
subordinate. Tear down, if you will, the temples
of Religion, the museums of Art, the laborato-
ries of Science, the libraries of Learning-and
the regret excited among mankind would be cold,
alas ! and faint; — a few would be found, a few
enthusiasts in secret places to mourn over their
ruins ; — but destroy the temples of Trade, your


1823]
TRADE
261
wea
stores, your wharves and your floating castles on
the deep; restore to the earth the silver and the
gold which was dug out thence to serve bis pur-
poses; — and you shall hear an outcry from the
ends of the earth. Society would stand still, and
men return howling to forests and caves which
would now be the grave, as [they were] once the
cradle, of the human race. This partial and in-
ordinate success by which this institution of men
wears the crown over all others is necessary; for
the prosperity of trade is built upon desires and
necessities which nourish no distinction among
men; which all, — the high and humble, the weak
and strong, can feel, and which must first be an-
swered, before the imprisonment of the mind can
be broken and the noble and delicate thoughts can
issue out, from which Art and Literature spring.
The most enthusiastic philosopher requires to
be fed and clothed before he begins his analysis
of nature, and scandal has called poetry, taste,
imagination the overflowing phantasms of a high-
fed animal. True, Archimedes forgot for a mo-
ment, in the Sicilian capital, the rigid laws of de-
corum when he found the theory of the tides, and
fiery poets have lived who defied the vile neces-
sities of the flesh and wrote obstinately on, until
they starved; but these are instances rare and


262
JOURNAL
[AGE 20
we
extraordinary and are only quoted in evidence
as miracles by which the reality of these lower
revelations was to be attested. And, in despite
of them all, the scholar is quickly taught the
unwelcome conviction, that his studies are the
later luxuries, which the world can easily forego;
whilst it cannot spare its meat and its drink and
the interests of traffic, which he holds in con-
tempt.
The justice and propriety of this early prefer-
ence to trade we are not so blind as to doubt;
we only lament the poverty of our nature which
makes us heirs to such inconveniences. But we
complain that here we find new instances of the
imperfection of our mind, which — by that uni-
versal misapprehension of the means for the end
-after the wants are gratified, which trade pro-
posed to gratify, continues to pursue with un-
slaked appetite these concerns which have ceased
to be necessary, to the exclusion of those nobler
pursuits which bring honour and greatness upon
our race. This mistake is a sore evil under the
sun, and under some broad form or other offends
us every day. The Merchant said in his heart,
I will amass treasure and then buy me these plea-
sures of refinement and science; when I am free
from the fear of want, I will call the Muses from
sue
n-


1823]
TRADE
263
Helicon and sacrifice at their altars. And he
unfurled his canvas on the sea, and sent men on
his errands of gain to all corners of the earth.
And his purpose seemed good in the eye of the
Genii of the air and the Mermaids of the deep.
His white sails were swelled with favourable
winds, and the Mermaids sung pleasantly to his
mariners to cheer them on their way. Ores of
gold and silver, mines of diamond and shores
of pearl, spice groves of the East and plantations
of the West were ransacked to heap the amount
of his wealth ; but when his will was done and
the progress of years added new accumulations
to his wealth, —in the abundance of his schemes
he forgot his youthful promises for the applica-
tion of his wealth, he forgot to invoke the Muses
and call the Arts and Philosophy to adorn his
dwelling. Alas! he was fast yoked into the thral-
dom of Care, — painfully gathering riches for
another to enjoy, and niggardly denying him-
self the best fruits of his toil. This history of
the individual is the history of the nation. Thou-
sands wished well to the scanty, godlike band
who kindled and bore the torch of improvement
through the darkness of the world and were well
nigh persuaded to abandon their own sordid pur-
suits and ally themselves to their cause. Nations


264
JOURNAL
[ACE 20
ripened into civilization and crowded with an
enlarging population the narrow confines God
gave them to possess, but it was Trade who sent
out the superfluous numbers in colonies to peo-
ple distant territories. Phænicia, Greece and
Rome, vaunting the liberality of their policy,
had no loftier motive than the extension of their
taxes and their trade.
A reading selected from 29 and 30 chapters
of Job, admits of great eloquence. Note the
pauses after “ now” which occur thrice.
TEMPTATION
There is an important view, striking the very
foundation of moral accountability, which I shall
attempt to present. I cannot blame, for I do not
feel, a contradiction to Divine Justice in the
alarming result of God's experiment on earth.
Men have thought, that if a fair and equal elec-
tion of good and ill and their respective rewards
be offered to Man, it cannot be that so huge a
majority of wrong-doers should burden the earth.
Sin, they say, is too strong—it hath too many
pleasures and too many apologies — for our in-
tegrity. God should not have made it so difficult



Fisher Pinx
SOUTH VIEW OF HARVARD COLLEGE YARD FROM CRAIGIE ROAD, 1823





1823]
EPILOGUE
265
-if purity be necessary to my salvation — to
be pure. I answer, If Temptation were tenfold
stronger than it is, I see not, with what face this
poor palliation of guilt could be advanced. For
all the most clamorous invitations that Vice ever
offered, the moment they are brought into close
comparison with the Recompense offered to Vir-
tue, do so shrink into mute and secret insig-
nificance that they lose every shadow of effect,
nothing that ever occurred to man's fiery im-
agination bearing any proportion as a picture
of delight to the promises granted to obedi-
ence. ...
EPILOGUE
June 11.
When Memory rakes up her treasures, her
ingots of thought, I fear she will seldom recur to
the Muse's tenth son; and yet she should have
been able to gather and condense something from
the wealth of fancy which Nature supplies in the
beautiful summer. I have played the enthusiast
with my book in the greenwood, the huntsman
with my gun; have sat upon rocks and mused
o'er flood and fell; have indulged the richest
indolence of a poet, and am therefore a creditor
ture for some brilliant and unusual inspira-
SO


266
JOURNAL
(AGE 20
tion. But the Goddess is slow of payment-or
has forgotten an old bantling. If she was partial
once, she is morose now; for familiarity (if awful
Nature will permit me to use so bold a word)
breeds disgust; and Vinegar is the son of Wine;
peradventure I may yet be admitted to the con-
templation of her inner magnificence, and her
favour may find me, no shrine, indeed, but some
snug niche, in the temple of Time. “Tut,”
says Fortune, -"and if you fail, it shall never be
from lack of vanity.”
Labour is the son of Resolution, and the fa-
ther of Greatness, of Health and Wealth. The
family is a very thriving one, though it is infested
not uncommonly by an execrable Vermin called
Care.


JOURNAL XII
THE WIDE WORLD, NO. II
June, 1823.
[This journal has no dedication. The earlier
part is here omitted. Its pages reflect a state of
depression in the young writer, doubtless due
to poor health and to the mortification that
he felt in not being a better teacher. This was
largely due to his shyness. Yet he was soon
called on to show greater courage, for his bro-
ther William, having established a good name
for his school, was now for the first time at lib-
erty to do something for himself. He went to
Göttingen to study for the ministry, leaving
Waldo in full charge of the school.]


268
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
JOURNAL OF A WALK TO THE CONNECTICUT
August, 1823."
“ Have lights when other men are blind
As pigs are said to see the wind.”
FRAMINGHAM, August 22, 1823.
Friday noon, Warren's Hotel.
After a delightful walk of twenty miles,
I reached this inn before noon, and in the near
recollection of my promenade through Roxbury,
Newton, Needham, Natick, do recommend the
same, particularly as far as the Lower Falls in
Newton, to my friends who are fond of fine
scenery.
To this stage of mine errantry no adventure
has befallen me; no, not the meeting with a
mouse. I both thought and talked a little with
myself on the way, and gathered up and watered
such sprigs of poetry as I feared had wilted in
my memory. I thought how History has a two-
fold effect, viz., intellectual pleasure and moral
pain. And in the midst of a beautiful country
I thought how monotonous and uniform is
Nature; but I found now as ever that, maugre
all the flights of the sacred muse, the profane
i This, though written in a pocket note-book, is inserted
in its proper place in this journal.


1823]
TURNPIKES
269
solicitudes of the flesh elevated the Tavern to
a high rank among my pleasures.
WORCESTER ; evening, 8 o'clock.
I reached Worcester one half hour ago, hav-
ing walked forty miles without difficulty. Every
time I traverse a turnpike, I find it harder to
conceive how they are supported; I met but
three or four travellers between Roxbury and
Worcester. The scenery all the way was fine,
and the turnpike, a road of inflexible principle,
swerving neither to the right hand nor the left,
stretched on before me, always in sight. A
traveller who has nothing particular to think
about is apt to make a very lively personifica-
tion of his Road and to make the better com-
panion of it. The Kraken, thought I, or the
Sea-Worm, is three English miles long; but this
land worm of mine is some forty, and those of
the hugest.
Saturday: Rice's Hotel, BROOKFIELD.
After passing through Leicester, Spencer and
North Brookfield, I am comfortably seated in
South Brookfield, sixty miles from home. In
Leicester, I met with Stephen Elliot in the bar-
room of the inn, on his way, it appeared, to


270
JOURNAL
(AGE 20
Stafford Springs. He guessed with me a few
minutes concerning the design and use of a huge
white building opposite the house, and could not
decide whether it were court house or whether
it were church. But the stageman called, and he
went on his way. The building I found to be an
Academy containing ordinarily eighty students,
— boys and girls. “Not so many girls now,"
added the bar-keeper, “because there is no fe-
male instructor; and they like a woman to teach
them the higher things.” “Ye stars!” thought
1,“if the Metropolis get this notion, the Mogul
and I must lack bread.” At Spencer, I sympa-
thized with a coachman who complained, that,
“ride as far or as fast as he would, the milestones
were all alike and told the same number!” Mr.
Stevens of North Brookfield is an innholder
after my heart. Corpulent and comfortable, hon-
est to a cent, with high opinions of the clergy.
And yet he told me there was a mournful rise
of schisms since he was a boy,- Unitarians and
Universalists, which, he said, he believed were
all one, and he never heard their names till lately.
I asked him the cause of all this frightful heter-
odoxy? The old serpent, he said, was at work
deceiving man. He could not but think people
bebaved about as well now as their fathers did;


1823]
BROOKFIELD
271
but then Mr. Bisby (the Universalist) minister
of Brookfield is a cunning fox, and by and bye
he and his hosts will show what and how bad
they really are. My good landlord's philan-
thropic conclusion was, that there was a monitor
within, and, if we minded that, no matter how we
speculated.
Sunday evening, August 24.
I rested this Sabbath day on the banks of the
Quebog. Mr. Stone, a worthy Calvinist, who
had been already recommended to my respect,
by the hearty praises of my last-named landlord,
preached all day, and reminded me forcibly of
one of my idols, Dr. Nichols of Portland.:
My lord Bacon, my trusty counsellor all the
week, has six or seven choice essays for holy
time. The aforesaid lord knew passing well what
i Rev. Ichabod Nichols, pastor of the First Church (Uni-
tarian) of Portland, from 1809 to 1859. The following is
quoted from a historical sermon by Rev. John C. Perkins,
pastor of the same church : “ This man dominated the best
thought of this city. ... He was a man of great serious-
ness and a fine dignity. . . . He was modest and retiring.
He stood for everything that was substantial and permanent
in human life. He was a scholar with delicate perceptions of
truth. He was a writer who said what his own age needed. Dr.
Channing once said, after listening to an address of his, • I
could not have done that ; he is my superior.'”
X
Or Sev


272
JOURNAL [Age 20
was in man, woman and child, what was in books,
and what in palaces. This possessor of transcend-
ent intellect was a mean slave to courts and a
conniver at bribery. And now, perchance, if men-
tal distinctions give place to moral ones at the
end of life, now this intellectual giant, who has
been the instructor of the world and must con-
tinue to be a teacher of mankind till the end of
time,- has been forced to relinquish his pre-
eminence, and in another world to crawl in the
dust at the feet of those to whom his mounting
spirit was once a sacred guide. One instant suc-
ceeding dissolution will perhaps satisfy us that
there is no inconsistency in this. Till then, I
should be loth to ascribe anything less than
celestial state to the Prince of philosophers.
BELCHERTOWN, Clapp's Hotel:
Monday afternoon.
After noticing the name of Mr. Rice upon
the hat store, upon the blacksmith's shop, and
upon the Inn of South Brookfield, I made in-
quiries of my landlord, and learned that this
omni-trader was he himself, who, moreover,
owned two lines of stages! This morning Phoe-
bus and I set out together upon our respective
journies; and I believe we shall finish them to-


1823]
AMHERST
273
gether, since this village is ten miles from Am-
herst. The morning walk was delightful; and
the sun amused himself and me by making rain-
bows on the thick mist which darkened the coun-
try. After passing through West Brookfield, I
breakfasted among some right worshipful wag-
goners at the pleasant town of Western,'and then
passed through a part of Palmer (I believe) and
Ware to this place. I count that road pleasant
and that air good, which forces me to smile from
mere animal pleasure, albeit I may be a smiling
man; so I am free to commend the road from
Cutler's Tavern in Western, as far as Babcock's
in Ware, to any youthful traveller, who walks
upon a cloudless August morning. Let me not
forget to record here the benevolent landlady
of Ware who offered me her liquors and crackers
upon the precarious credit of my return, rather
than exchange my bills.
Monday evening: Bartlett's, AMHERST.
I sit here ninety miles from home, and three
from the Institution, and have the pleasure and
eke the honour, to waft, on the winged steeds
of a wish, my best regards to the lords and ladye
who sit at home; to the majesty of Tartary,
1 The town has since been named Warren.


274
JOURNAL
[Ags 20
chiefest of men, calling the young satraps to order
from the elbow chair and secretly meditating
golden schemes in an iron age; then to the young
lion of the tribe (to change the metaphor) now
resting and musing on his honourable oars; next
to my loud-voiced and spare-built friend, loving
duty better, oh, abundantly better, than pudding;
last to the medalled youth, the anxious Driver
and Director of the whole establishment; peace
to his Bones. My worthy landlord wishes bless-
ings to the Amherst Institution, which, saith he,
howbeit it may have had a muddy foundation,
yet the Lord hath blessed.
Thursday, August.
Tuesday morning I engaged Mr. Bartlett to
bring me to Mrs. Shepard's, and I think the
worthy man returned with some complacent
i He alludes to his brothers : William (the “ Majesty of
Tartary"), the serious and dignified eldest brother, who,
having given up his school for young ladies to Waldo, was
probably tutoring Boston youth in the months that remained
before his going to study at Göttingen for the ministry.
Edward is the “ lion of the tribe,” brilliant, eager, ambi-
tious and just entering on his senior year. The good but defi-
cient Robert Bulkeley is the “ loud-voiced and spare-built”
one, and Charles, the youngest, always a brilliant scholar, is
the “ medalled youth” at the Latin (?) School.


1823]
AMHERST
275
recollections of the instructions and remarks he
had dropped on the way for the stranger's edifi-
cation. Our wagon ride was somewhat uneasy
from below, but its ups and downs were am-
ply compensated by the richness and grandeur
visible above and around. Hampshire County
rides in wagons. In this pleasant land I found
a house full of friends, –a noble house, very
good friends. In the afternoon I went to the
College. The infant college is an infant Her-
cules. Never was so much striving, outstretch-
ing, and advancing in a literary cause as is
exhibited here.
The students all feel a personal responsibility
in the support and defence of their young Alma
Mater against all antagonists, and as long as
this battle abroad shall continue, the Govern-
ment, unlike all other Governments, will not be
compelled to fight with its students within.
The opposition of other towns and counties
produces, moreover, a correspondent friendship
and kindness from the people in Amherst, and
there is a daily exhibition of affectionate feeling
between the inhabitants and the scholars, which
is the more pleasant as it is so uncommon.
They attended the Declamation and Commence-
ment with the interest which parents usually
Ice-


276
(Age 20
JOURNAL
have any pro
shew at the exhibitions of schools where their
own children are engaged. I believe the affair
was first moved, about three years ago, by the
Trustees of the Academy. When the corner-
stone of the South College was laid, the institu-
tion did not own a dollar. A cartload of stones
was brought by a farmer in Pelham, to begin
the foundation; and now they have two large
brick edifices, a President's house, and consid-
erable funds. Dr. Moore has left them six or
seven thousand dollars. A poor one-legged man
died last week in Pelham, who was not known
to have any property, and left them four thou-
sand dollars to be appropriated to the building
of a chapel, over whose door is to be inscribed
his name, Adams Johnson. William Phillips
gave a thousand, and William Eustis a hundred
dollars, and great expectations are entertained
from some rich men, friends to the Seminary,
who will die without children.
They have wisely systematized this spirit of
opposition, which they have found so lucrative,
and the students are all divided into thriving
opposition societies, which gather libraries, lab-
oratories, mineral cabinets, etc., with an inde-
fatigable spirit, which nothing but rivalry could
inspire. Upon this impulse, they write, speak,
appropriate
in be inscr


1823] THE NEW COLLEGE 277
and study in a sort of fury, which, I think,
promises a harvest of attainments. The Com-
mencement was plainly that of a young college,
but had strength and eloquence mixed with the
apparent “vestigia ruris," and the scholar who
gained the prize for declamation, the evening
before, would have a first prize at any Cam-
bridge competition.
The College is supposed to be worth net
85,000 dollars.
After spending three days very pleasantly at
Mrs. Shepard's, among orators, botanists, min-
eralogists, and above all, ministers, I set off on
Friday morning with Thomas Greenough and
another little cousin in a chaise to visit Mount
Holyoke. How high the hill may be I know
not; for different accounts makeit eight, twelve,
and sixteen hundred feet from the river. The
prospect repays the ascent, and although the
day was hot and hazy, so as to preclude a dis-
tant prospect, yet all the broad meadows in the
immediate vicinity of the mountain through
which the Connecticutt winds make a beautiful
picture, seldom rivalled. After adding our names
in the books to the long list of strangers whom
curiosity has attracted to this hill, we descended
in safety without encountering rattlesnake or


278
JOURNAL [AGE 20
viper that have given so bad fame to the place.
We were informed that about forty people as-
cend the mountain every fair day during the
summer. After passing through Hadley mead-
ows, I took leave of my companions at North-
ampton bridge and crossed for the first time
the far-famed Yankee river. From the hotel in
Northampton I visited Mr. Theodore Strong,
where I have been spending a couple of days of
great pleasure. His five beautiful daughters and
son make one of the finest families I ever saw.
In the afternoon, I went on horseback (Oh,
Hercules !) with Allen Strong to Round Hill,
the beautiful site of the Gymnasium, and to
Shepherd's Factory, about four miles from the
centre of the town. Saturday morning, we went
in a chaise in pursuit of a lead mine said to lie
about five miles off, which we found after great
and indefatigable search. We tied our horse and
descended, by direction, into a somewhat steep
glen, at the bottom of which we found the
covered entrance of a little canal about five feet
wide. Into this artificial cavern we fired a gun
to call out the miner from within. The report
was long and loudly echoed and after a weary
interval we discerned a boat with lamps lighted
in its side issuing from this dreary abode. We


1823] NORTHAMPTON 279
welcomed the miner to the light of the sun, and
leaving our hats without, and binding our heads,
we lay down in the boat and were immediately
introduced to a cave varying in height from four
to six and eight feet, hollowed in a pretty soft
sandstone through which the water continually
drops. When we lost the light of the entrance
and saw only this gloomy passage by the light
of lamps, it required no effort of the imagination
to believe we were leaving the world, and our
smutty ferryman was a true Charon. After sail-
ing a few hundred feet, the vault grew higher
and wider overhead, and there was a considerable
trickling of water on our left; this was the ven-
tilator of the mine and reaches up to the surface
of the earth. We continued to advance in this
manner for goo feet, and then got out of the
boat and walked on planks a little way to the
end of this excavation. Here we expected to find
the lead vein, and the operations of the subter-
ranean man, but were sadly disappointed. He
had been digging through this stone for 12 years,
and has not yet discovered any lead at all. Indi-
cations of lead at the surface led some Boston
gentlemen to set this man at work, in the ex-
pectation that after cutting his dark canal for
1000 feet, he would reach the vein, and the


280
JOURNAL
(AGE 20
canal would then draw off the water which pre-
vented them from digging from above. As yet,
he has found no lead, but, as he gravely ob-
served, “has reached some excellent granite." In
this part of the work he has forty dollars for
every foot he advances and it occupies him ten
days to earn this.
He has advanced 975 feet, and spends his
days, winter and summer, alone in this damp and
silent tomb. He says the place is excellent for
meditation; and that he sees no goblins. Many
visitors come to his dark residence, and pay him
a shilling apiece for the sight. A young man, he
said, came the day before us, who after going in
a little way was taken with terrors and said he
felt faint, and returned. Said miner is a brawny
person, and discreet withal; has a wife and lives
near the hole. All his excavations are performed
by successive blasting.
In the afternoon I set out on my way to
Greenfield, intending to pass the Sabbath with
George Ripley. Mr. Strong insisted on carrying
me to Hatfield, and thence I passed, chiefly on
foot, through Whately and Deerfield over sands
and pine barrens, and across Green River to
Greenfield, and did not arrive there till after ten
o'clock and found both taverns shut up. I should
OT


1823]
GREENFIELD
281
have staid in Deerfield if Mr. S. had not ridiculed
the idea of getting to Greenfield that night. In the
morning I called at Mr. Ripley's, and was sorely
disappointed to learn that his son was at Cam-
bridge. The family were exceedingly hospitable,
and I listened with as great pleasure to a sermon
from Rev. Mr. Perkins of Amherst in the morn-
ing, and in the afternoon rode over to the other
parish with Mr. R. to hear Rev. Lincoln Rip-
ley. After service Mr. L. R. returned with us,
and in the evening we heard another sermon
from Mr. Perkins which pleased me abundantly
better than his matins. He is a loud-voiced,
scripture-read divine, and his compositions have
the element of a potent eloquence, but he lacks
taste. By the light of the evening star I walked
with my reverend uncle, a man who well sus-
tained the character of an aged missionary. It is
a new thing to him, he said, to correspond with
his wife, and he attends the mail regularly every
Monday morning to send or receive a letter.
1 Rev. Lincoln Ripley was Mr. Emerson's step-great-
uncle, as being brother of Dr. Ezra Ripley, minister of Con-
cord, who had married the widow of Rev. William Emerson
of Concord, the builder of the “ Old Manse,” and chaplain
in the army at Ticonderoga. Rev. Lincoln Ripley was minister
of Waterford, Maine.


282
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
SO
After a dreamless night, and a most hospitable
entertainment, I parted from Greenfield and
through an unusually fine country, crossed the
Connecticutt (shrunk to a rivulet in this place
somewhere in Montagu). My solitary way grew
somewhat more dreary, as I drew nearer Wen-
dell, and the only relief to hot sandy roads and
a barren, monotonous region was one fine forest
with many straight, clean pine trees upwards of
a hundred feet high, “fit for the mast of some
great Admiral.”: All that day was a thoughtless,
heavy pilgrimage, and Fortune deemed that such
a crowded week of pleasure demanded a reaction
of pain. At night I was quartered in the mean-
est caravansera which has contained my person
since the tour began. Traveller! weary and jaded,
who regardest the repose of thine earthly tene-
ment; traveller, hungry and athirst, whose heart
warms to the hope of animal gratification; trav-
eller of seven or seventy years, beware, beware,
I beseech you, of Haven's Inn in New Salem.
Already he is laying a snare for your kindness
or credulity in fencing in a mineral spring for
your infirmities. Beware.
1«The tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast
Of some great ammiral”
Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1.


18231
282
THE HOME-STRETCH
From Mr. Haven's garret bed I sallied forth
Tuesday morning towards Hubbardston, but my
cramped limbs made little speed. After dining
in Hubbardston I walked seven miles farther to
Princeton, designing to ascend Wachusett with
my tall cousin Thomas Greenough, if I should
find him there, and then set out for home in the
next day's stage. But when morning came, and
the stage was brought, and the mountain was
a mile and a half away, - learned again an old
lesson, that, the beldam Disappointment sits at
Hope's door. I jumped into the stage and rode
away, Wachusett untrod. At Sterling, I learned
that Oliver Blood studies physic in Worces-
ter. At Boston I saw Nat Wood' on his way
to Amherst, N. H., to study law, his peda-
gogical career being terminated - O fortunate
nimium!
Close-cooped in a stage-coach with a score of
happy, dusty rustics, the pilgrim continued his
ride to Waltham, and alighting there, spent an
agreeable evening at Rev. Mr. Ripley's.2 Home
he came from thence the next morning, right
i Blood and Wood were his classmates.
2 Rev. Samuel Ripley, minister of Waltham, was step-
uncle of the Emerson boys, and always a kind friend and bene-
factor, especially to Waldo.


284
JOURNAL
(AGE 20
glad to sit down once more in a quiet well-fed
family at Canterbury.
CANTERBURY, September, 1823.
I have often found cause to complain that my
thoughts have an ebb and flow. Whether any
laws fix them, and what the laws are, I cannot
ascertain. I have quoted a thousand times the
memory of Milton and tried to bind my think-
ing season to one part of the year, or to one
sort of weather; to the sweet influence of the
Pleiades, or to the summer reign of Lyra. The
worst is, that the ebb is certain, long and fre-
quent, while the flow comes transiently and
seldom.'
Once when Vanity was full fed, it sufficed to
keep me at work and to produce some credit-
able scraps; but alas! it has long been dying of
i So in “The Poet”; Poems (appendix), p. 319:-
Is there warrant that the waves
Of thought, in their mysterious caves,
Will heap in me their highest tide,
In me, therewith beatified ?
Unsure the ebb and flow of thought,
The moon comes back, — the spirit not.
Lectures and Biographical
Also in « The Preacher,"
Sketches, p. 219.


1823) TIDES OF THOUGHT 285
a galloping starvation, and the Muse, I fear me,
will die too. The dreams of my childhood are
all fading away and giving place to some very
sober and very disgusting views of a quiet
mediocrity of talents and condition — nor does
it appear to me that any application of which
I am capable, any efforts, any sacrifices, could at
this moment restore any reasonableness to the
familiar expectations of my earlier youth. But
who is he that repines? Let him read the song
about the linter-goose.
Melons and plums and peaches, eating and
drinking, and the bugle, all the day long. These
are the glorious occupations which engross a
proud and thinking being, running his race of
preparation for the eternal world. Man is a fool-
ish slave who is busy in forging his own fetters.
Sometimes he lifts up his eyes for a moment,
admires freedom, and then hammers the rivets
of his chain. Who does not believe life to be an
illusion when he sees the daily, yearly, livelong,
inconsistency that men indulge, in thinking so
well and doing so ill? ...
S
GOD
... God's works are fruits of his character;
copies (as ancient philosophy expressed it) of


286
JOURNAL
[AGE 20
W
his mind and wishes. One could not venerate
him if he were only good. Who could bow down
before a god who had infinite instincts of beney-
olence, and no thought; in whom the eye of
knowledge was shut; who was kind and good
because he knew no better; who was infinitely
gentle as brutes are gentle? The poor Egyp-
tian plebeian layman might do so, who wor-
shipped a divine Ox, for his gracious tameness ;
but an enlightened Man, with the spirit of
a man, would bid them bring the stake and fire
and make him Martyr, ere he surrendered his
mind and body to such a prostration. Man re-
veres the Providence of God as the benign and
natural result of his omniscience; and expects in
the imperfect image of God an imperfect copy
of the same eternal order.' ...
October 5.
Milord W.2 from Andover let me into his
mystery about Edwards on the Will, and told me,
i Mr. Cabot, in his Memoir (p. 103), gives two letters
on God and Providence, written at this period by Emerson to
his Aunt Mary, who, as he used to say, “ wished everyone to
be a Calvinist but herself.”
2 William Withington, a classmate, who became an Epis-
copalian minister. In the Century Magazine for July, 1883,
are printed several interesting letters written to him by Emerson


1823) LETTERS FROM ANDOVER 287
withal, that the object of the piece was to prove
that President E. has not advanced human
knowledge one step, for his definition includes the
very proposition which the book is designed to
establish. W. saith, moreover, that perchance the
President has done something, albeit his defini-
tions be imprudent and entangled. And, per-
chance, the fault of apparently proving an iden-
tical proposition lies in the nature of the subject
which, though so intricate before as to have ever
been debateable ground, is made so plain by the
able and skilful statements of Edwards, that we
are made to see the truth, and wonder that it
ever was disputed. Waldo E. will please con-
sult upon this topic, on one side Edwards,
Priestley, and Belsham ; on the other, Clarke,
and Stewart (?). Dr. Reid is to be read by me,
quo citius, eo melius ; and Edinburgh Review of
La Place's Calculation of Chances ; also are to
be stated anew the two propositions unanswer-
able concerning Necessity. One of them has
occurred in Wideworld No. 8.'
a year earlier than this entry. By the kind permission of the
Century Company, extracts from these are introduced after
this paragraph.
i Under « Benevolence.”


288
JOURNAL
[Age 19
[In April, 1822, Emerson wrote to Withing-
ton at Andover] “to congratulate you upon
your singular exemption from the general misery
of your compeers, who have rushed into the
tutors' desks of every Minerva's temple in the
country; then, to claim the honour of corre-
sponding with one scholar in the land, -and
to enjoin it upon you as a primal duty to write
a letter from your seat of science to a desponding
schoolmaster.
“I am delighted to hear there is such a pro-
found studying of German and Hebrew, Park-
hurst and Jahn, and such other names as the
memory aches to think of, on foot at Andover.
... What are you studying beside Bibles? Do
you let suns and moons, eclipses and comets
pass without calculation or account? Is there
not time for trigonometry - no, not for a log-
arithm? Or, if all these are forgotten, I hope
you have not sacrificed Johnson and Burke,
Shakespeare and Scott altogether. Books are not
so numerous at Andover but that you will want
the Cambridge Library.” ...
(July, 1822.)
[Emerson praises The Fortunes of Nigel,
which he is reading, as being] “I fear, ex-


1822] LETTER TO CLASSMATE 289
CIS
cluded from your reading Catalogue because it
is so unfortunate as to bear the name of a novel.
Butif masterly, unrivalled genius add any weight
to the invitation for a scholar to step out of his
Greek and Hebrew circle of sad enchantment
that he may pluck such flowers of taste and
fancy as never bloomed before, to deck his
strength withal, — why then he may read Scott,
and particularly the latter novels. . . . Perhaps
it is wasting your time to trouble you with my
lucubrations about novels and poetical idolatry,
but, at the moment, I have it more at heart than
aught else, and if, when you read this, you be
stooping to some musty folio which suffered
under the types of a century ago, you will oblige
me by transferring your solemn thoughts there-
upon on paper to me, yea, if it be a dictionary,
if it be anything earthly but mathematics.”...
?
D.GEN
(November, 1822.)
9 [Emerson speaks of Plato, and goes on ]
“I have read one very useful book of late,
Stewart's Second Dissertation. It saves you a
world of reading by laying open the history of
moral and intellectual philosophy since the Re-
vival of Letters. . . . It is a beautiful and in-
structive abridgment of the thousand volumes


290
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
of Locke, Leibnitz, Voltaire, Bayle, Kant and
the rest. ... The next books on my table are
Hume, and Gibbon's Miscellanies. I shall be on
the high road to ruin presently with such com-
panions, but I cannot help admiring the genius
and novelty of the one, and the greatness and
profound learning of the other, maugre the
scepticism and abominable sneers of both. - If
you read Gibbon and Hume, you have to think,
and Gibbon wakes you up from slumber to wish
yourself a scholar and resolve to be one." ...
DR. CHANNING
Sunday, October, 1823.
I heard Dr. Channing deliver a discourse
upon Revelation as standing in comparison
with Nature. I have heard no sermon approach-
ing in excellence to this, since the Dudleian
Lecture. The language was a transparent
medium, conveying with the utmost distinct-
ness the pictures in his mind to the mind of
the hearers. He considered God's word to be
the only expounder of his works, and that Na-
ture had always been found insufficient to teach
men the great doctrines which Revelation in-_
culcated. Astronomy had in one or two ways
i Also by Dr. Channing.


1823]
CHANNING
291
an
ilverse
an unhappy tendency. An universe of matter
in which Deity would display his power and
greatness must be of infinite extent and com-
plicate relations, and, of course, too vast to be
measured by the eye and understanding of man.
Hence errors. Astronomy reveals to us [an]
infinite number of worlds like our own, accom-
modated for the residence of such beings as we
of gross matter. But to kindle our piety and
urge our faith, we do not want such a world as
this, but a purer, a world of morals and of spirits.
La Place has written in the mountain album of
Switzerland his avowal of Atheism. Newton had
a better master than suns and stars. He heard
of heaven ere he philosophized, and after trav-
elling through mazes of the universe he returned
to bow his laurelled head at the feet of Jesus of
Nazareth. Dr. Channing regarded Revelation
as much a part of the order of things as any
other event. It would have been wise to have
made an abstract of the Discourse immediately.
O keep the current of thy spirits even;
If it be ruffled by too full a flood,
'T is turbid; or, if drained, goes dry. The mind,
In either case obeys the animal pulse,
And weeps the loss of unreturning time.


292
JOURNAL [AGE 20
Mr. Hume's Essay upon Necessary Connection
proves that events are conjoined, and not con-
nected ; that we have no knowledge but from
experience. We have no experience of a Creator
and there [fore] know of none. The constant
appeal is to our feelings from the glozed lies
of the deceived [deceiver?], but one would feel
safer and prouder to see the victorious answer
to these calumnies upon our nature set down in
impregnable propositions.
Pride carves rich emblems on its seals,
And slights the throng that dogs its heels.
Fair Vanity hath bells on cap and shoes,
And eyes his moving shadow as he goes.
We put up with Time and Chance because it.
costs too great an effort to subdue them to our
wills, and minds that feel an embryo greatness
stirring within them let it die for want of nour-
ishment. Plans that only want maturity, ideas
that only need explanation to lead the thinker
on to a far nobler being than now he dreams
of, good resolutions whose dawning was like
the birth of gods in their benevolent promise,
sudden throbs of charity and impulses to good-
ness that spake most auspicious omens, are


1823] READING. LOVE 293
suffered to languish and blight in hopeless bar-
renness. ...
December 13, 1823.
Edinburgh Review has a fine eulogy of New-
ton and Dr. Black, etc., in the first article of the
3d Volume. No. xxxvI contains a review of Mrs.
Grant on Highlanders, and, in it, good thoughts
upon the progress of Manners. “A gentleman's
character is a compound of obligingness and
self-esteem.” The same volume reviews Alison,
and gives an excellent condensed view of his
theory. The charm of all these discussions is
only a fine luxury, producing scarce any good,
unless that of substituting a pure pleasure for
impure. Occasionally this reading helps one's
conversation ; but seldom. The reason and
whole mind is not forwarded by it, as by history.
The good in life that seems to be most REAL,
is not found in reading, but in those successive
triumphs a man achieves over habits of moral
or intellectual indolence, or over an ungenerous
Spirit and mean propensities.
LOVE
December.
Love is a holy passion, and is the instrument
of our connexion with Deity; and when we


294
JOURNAL
[Age 20
drop the body, this, perhaps, will constitute the
motive and impulse to all the acquisitions of an
immortal education. As we are instinctively
ashamed of selfishness, we venerate love, the
noble and generous nature of which seeks an-
other's good. . . . Embryo powers of which
we were not hitherto conscious are nursed into
the manhood of mind. A powerful motive is to
the character what a skilful hypothesis is to the
progress of science; it affords facility and room
for the arrangement of the growing principles
of our nature. What lay in chaos and barren
before, is now adjusted in a beautiful and use-
ful order, which exposes to the light numberless.
connexions and relations and fine issues of .
thought, not easily perceived until such a sys.-
tem is laid. A motive thus powerful and of
such benignant fruits is love. ... It bears many
forms, but is love. It is the attachment to truth,
to a sentiment, to our country, to a fellow being
or to God, that has won and worn the crown
of martyrdom, and that has stirred up in men's
minds all the good which the earth has seen.
Indeed pure love is too pure a principle for
human bosoms; and, were it not mixed with the
animal desires of our nature, would not meet.
that unqualified and universal honour it now.


1823]
FEAR
295
sensu-
finds among men. ... What does the sensu-
alist know of love? of such love as exists be-
tween God and man, and man and God; of such
love as the pure mind conceives for moral
grandeur, for the contemplation of which it was
made?
FEAR
Love has an empire in the world, but Fear
has an empire also. And I wish, on the com-
parison, this palsied, leprous principle be not
found to have the larger sway. The conven-
tions, as they are called, of civilized life, the
artificial order and conversation of society, are.
propped on this miserable reed. Now and then,
there are minds of such indomitable independ-
ence as to overleap the wretched restraints of
fashion, and who let the Universe hear the true
tones of their Voice ; unpractised to “ the tune
of the time," unembarrassed by fear; who ven-
ture to speak out, and to treat their fellow
creature as their peer, and the Deity as God.
Such men embrace, in their apprehension, a
larger portion of existence than their weaker
brethren in the shackles of prudence. By cast-
ing a glance on the future they discriminate be-
tween trifles and magnificent things, and learn
to weigh the world in a true scale, and to


296
(Age 20
JOURNAL
undervalue what is called greatness below. I
would not be understood to cast imputation on
good-breeding in the human throng; it is cer-
tainly a convenient, perhaps a necessary thing;
and its absence could not be borne. But in the
higher connexions of which I speak, it is to be
treated merely as a convenient thing, and when
it pretends to higher claims it is to be treated
with contempt. Shall the fear which an expand-
ing mind entertains of the eye or tongue of
each insignificant man and woman in its way
interfere with its progress towards the ripe excel-
lence of its being? There are times in the his-
tory of every thinking mind, when it is the
recipient of uncommon and awful thought,
when somewhat larger draughts of the Spiritual
Universe are let in upon the soul; and it
breathes eloquent ejaculations to God, and
would cease to be the plaything of petty
events, and would become a portion of that
world in which it has sojourned. But that mind
returns into the company of unsympathising
minds, and the humble routine of their small
talk is little akin to the revelations opening
upon his soul; and must what is called Good
Manners freeze the tongue that should drop
heaven's wisdom to dumbness; and must the


1823]
RELIGION
297
eye struck with the glory of Paradise be lev-
elled to the earth ?
SHAKSPEARE
When merry England had her virgin queen,
And Glory's temple in the isle was seen,
On Avon's bank a child of earth was born
In meads where fairies wind the midnight horn.
The tiny dancers leaped in frolic wild
And o’er the cradle blessed the sleeping child.
RELIGION
There is danger of a poetical religion from the
tendencies of the age. There is a celebrated pas-
sage in the prose works of the great Christian
bard which is precious to the admirers of Milton.
I refer to the 2d Book of Reason of Church Gov-
ernment, etc. There is probably no young man
who could read that eloquent chapter without
feeling his heart warm to the love of virtue and
greatness, and without making fervent resolu-
tions that his age should be made better, because
he had lived. Yet these resolutions, unless dili-
gently nourished by prayer and expanded into
action by intense study, will be presently lost in
the host of worldly cares; but they leave one


298
(AGE 20
JOURNAL
fruit that may be poisonous: they leave a self-
complacency arising from having thought so
nobly for a moment, which leads the self-de-
ceiver to believe himself better than other men.
AUTHORS OR Books QUOTED OR REFERRED TO
IN JOURNALS OF 1823
Bible; Democritus; Socrates; Plato; Horace;
Norse Saga on Eric's voyage to Greenland;
Roger Bacon; Luther; Galileo;
Shakspeare; Bacon; Milton; Waller; Cowley;
Newton, Principia ; Leibnitz; Pope; Neal,
History of the Puritans; Edwards, On the Will;
Johnson; Franklin; Reid; Hume, Essays; Bos-
covich;
William Robertson; Playfair; Laplace, apud
Edinburgh Review;
Mrs. Anne Grant, On the Highlanders, apud
Edinburgh Review;
Alison, The Nature and Principles of Taste;
Stewart, Philosophical Essays, etc.; Byron, Childe
Harold;
Sharon Turner, History of the Saxons ;
Dr. Channing; Edward Everett, Lecture on
Greek Literature;
Hindu Mythology and Mathematics, Edin-
burgh Review.


JOURNAL XIII
THE WIDE WORLD, No. 12
12.
Δός που στο
SAMENESS
CANTERBURY, December 14, 1823.
The world changes its masters, but keeps its
own identity, and entails upon each new family
of the human race, that come to garnish it with
names and memorials of themselves, — certain
indelible features and unchanging properties.
Proud of their birth to a new and brilliant life,
each presumptuous generation boasts its domin-
ion over nature; forgetful that these very spring-
ing powers within, which nurse this arrogance,
are part of the fruits of that Nature, whose se-
cret but omnipotent influence makes them all
that they are. The world which they inhabit they
call their servant, but it proves the real master.
Moulded of its clay, breathing its atmosphere,
fed of its elements, they must wear its livery, the
livery of corruption and change, and obey the
laws which all its atoms obey.


300
JOURNAL
(AGE 20
... The lively fancy of some men has in-
duced them to entertain fanciful anticipations
of the progress of mankind, and of radical revo-
lutions in their manners, passions, and pursuits,
already forming in the womb of ages. But the
quiet wisdom of history, as she winds along her
way through sixty centuries, speaks of no won-
ders, and of little glory. Noah awoke from his
wine as the sensualist awakes to-day, but without
the Patriarch's excuse. Nimrod, long of yore,
hunted man and beast from the same furious im-
pulses that drove Alexander and Cæsar and
Buonaparte over Europe. No vices, that we ever
heard of, have grown old and died. (They are
a vampire brood and live upon those whom they
destroy.) They outlast the pyramids, and laugh
at Destruction. The same topics which the eldest
moralist urged are repeated by our preachers
now, and received with the same repugnance by
the first and last offender. Suffering and sickness
are the same thing now as of old. No one pas-
sion has become extinct. Joy has not altered its
nature, nor learned to last. Man has died as a
leaf. Families and nations have mouldered; but
all the traits of their nature have been faithfully
transmitted without an irregularity.
There is a much vaunted progress in the


1823]
SELF-ESTEEM
301
world, from the rudeness of savage habits to the
prosperous refinement of civilized nations. But
the change is very short from the barbarian to
the polished gentleman; at least, what is cast
aside is very insignificant compared with what
remains of the dull, unmoveable nature. The
world, I said, holds more dominion than it
yields — both the natural and moral system. ...
SELF-ESTEEM
I see no reason why I should bow my head
to man, or cringe in my demeanour. When the
soul is disembodied, he that has nothing else but
a towering independence has one claim to re-
spect; whilst genius and learning may provoke
our contempt for their supple knees. When I
consider my poverty and ignorance, and the
positive superiority of talents, virtues and man-
ners, which I must acknowledge in many men,
I am prone to merge my dignity in a most un-
comfortable sense of unworthiness. But when I
reflect that I am an immortal being, born to a
destiny immeasurably high, deriving my moral
and intellectual attributes directly from Almighty
God, and that my existence and condition as his
child must be forever independent of the con-
troul or will of my fellow children,- I am ele-


302
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
vated in my own eyes to a higher ground in life
and a better self-esteem. But, alas, few men hold
with a strong grasp the sceptre of self-govern-
ment and can summon into exercise, at will, what-
ever set of feelings suits their judgment best.
One is apt, when in society, to be tormented
with this odious abasement, to wonder reluc-
tantly with a foolish face of praise, and to con-
sent, with bitter inward reproaches, to things
and thoughts he cannot combat; and, in solitude
only, to be uplifted by this manly but useless
independence. A vigorous resolution is not
enough to conquer this abominable habit. A
humble Christian would not wallow in his hu-
mility. His reverence for the Creator precludes
an extravagant deference to the creature.
an
IC
re.
ROMANCE
Romance grows out of ignorance, and so is
the curse of its own age, and the ornament of
those that follow. Romance is never present,
always remote; not a direct, but reflected ray.
It is things cruel and abominable in act that be-
come romantic in memory. Unprincipled ban-
dits are Red Cross Knights, and Templars and


1823]
ROMANCE
303
Martyrs even, in the Song of this Century. In
individual history, disagreeable occurrences are
remembered long after with complacency. A
Romantic Age, properly speaking, cannot exist.
Eating and drinking, cold and poverty, speedily
reduce men to vulgar animals. Heaven and earth
hold nothing fanciful. As mind advances, all be-
comes practical. Knowledge is a law-giver,-as
fancy is an abolisher of laws, -and introduces
order and limit, even into the character of Deity.
Nevertheless Romance is mother of Know-
ledge — this ungrateful son that eats up his
parent. It is only by searching for wonders that
they found truth. Omne ignotum pro magnifico; if
the unknown was not magnified, nobody would
explore. Europe would lack the regenerating
impulse, and America lie waste, had it not been
for El Dorado. The history of all science is alike,
– men guess, and to verify their guesses they go
and see, and are disappointed, but bring back
truth. That fables should abound, seems not
to indicate any especial activity of mind, for,
though Greece had many, stupid Indostan has
more. It may be that theirs are the traditionary
ingenuity of that supposed ancient parent people
i In Greece, such a person was a hero in the second gen-
cration, a giant in the third, and a god in the fourth. (R.W.E.)
eems


304
JOURNAL
(AGE 20
of Asia, that Bailey wrote of. She that is not gay
or gaudy, pitiful or capricious, 'that liveth and
conquereth forevermore, that is 'the strength
and the wisdom, the power and majesty of all
ages'' is Truth. .
[CROSSING]
A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well
till it is engraffed with a foreign stock.
[EAST INDIAN MYTHOLOGY]
The Indian Pantheon is of prodigious size;
330 million Gods have in it each their heaven,
or rather each their parlour, in this immense
“ goddery.” “In quantity and absurdity their
superstition has nothing to match it, that is or
ever was in the world.” (See two articles on
Hindu Mathematics and Mythology in Vol. 29
of the Edinburgh Review.)
BEAUTY
The theory of Mr. Alison, assigning the
beauty of the object to the mind of the be-
holder, is natural and plausible. This want of
uniformity is useful. It prevents us all from
falling in love with the same face, and as the
1 Esdras iv, 38, 40..


1823]
BEAUTY
305
associations are accidental, enables them to hope
and to succeed, to whose form and feature par-
tial Nature has been niggard of her ornaments.
A homely verse of blessed truth in human his-
tory saith :-
« There lives no goose so gray, but soon or late,
She finds some honest gander for her mate."
Byron's fine verses are conformable to this
theory: —
« Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,
And fevers into false creation,” etc.
December 31, 1823.
I bear no badge, no tinsel star
Glistens upon my breast,
Nor jewelled crown nor pictured car
Robs me of rest.
I am not poor, but I am proud
Of one inalienable right,
Above the envy of the crowd -
Thought's holy light.
Better it is than gems or gold,
And oh, it cannot die,
But thought will glow when the Sun grows cold
And mix with Deity.


306
(AGE 20
JOURNAL
1824
A Merry New Year to the Wide World!
IMPULSE OF THE PURITAN MOVEMENT
The theory of the strong impulse is true, I
believe, nor does it matter at all what sort of
being or event impart it. Religion was always
one of the strongest. Few bodies or parties have
served the world so well as the Puritans. From
their irreverent zeal came most of the improve-
ments of the British Constitution. It was they
who settled North America. Bradford and
Winthrop and Standish, [the] Mathers and
Jonathan Edwards, Otis, Hawley, Hancock,
Adams, Franklin, and whatever else of vigorous
sense, or practical genius this country shews, are
the issue of Puritan stock. The community of
language with England has doubtless deprived
us of that original, characteristic literary growth
that has ever accompanied, I apprehend, the
first bursting of a nation from the bud. Our
era of exploits and civilization is ripe enow, and,
had it not been dissipated by the unfortunate
rage for periodical productions, our literature
should have been born and grown ere now to
a Greek or Roman stature. Franklin is such a
era


1824) THE PURITANS
307
fruit as might be expected from such a tree.
Edwards, perhaps more so. The Puritans had
done their duty to literature when they be-
queathed it the Paradise Lost and Comus; to
science, by
to legislation, by!
; to all the great interests of hu-
manity, by planting the New World with their
thrifty stock. If there be such a thing as the
propagation of moral and intellectual character
for many generations, the prosperity of America
might have been safely foretold. The energy of
an abused people, whose eyes the light of books
and progress of knowledge had just opened, has
a better title to immortality than that vulgar
physical energy which some nations are supposed
to inherit from Gothic or Scandinavian sires.
Family pride engrafted on a pedigree of a thou-
sand nobles yields to the pride of intellectual
power, the pride of indomitable purpose. A few
stern leaders of that stern sect nourished in their
bosoms settled designs of reform, and gave to
the design such shape and impulse, that when
they slept in the earth, the hope failed not. It
was the nursling of an iron race. Their prayers,
thoughts and deeds were brothers to the senti-
ment. It grew and throve mightily in England.
1 These blanks occur in the original.


308
JOURNAL
[AGE 20
Its tremendous activity outwent, doubtless, the
expectations of its early friends and the appre-
hensions of its enemies. The old courses into
which national feeling runs were broken up.
Wise men were aghast at the fury of the con-
vulsion, and abandoned in so wild a tempest
the helm which no human hand could provi-
dently hold.
Bear witness England and France in their
Regicide Revolutions. Nameless and birthless
scoundrels climbed up in the dark, and sat in
the seat of the Stuarts and Bourbons. Crom-
well and Napoleon plucked them down when the
light returned, and locked their own yoke round
the necks of mankind.
-
A SCHOOL
Men are not aware, and pedagogues least of
all, how much truth is in that tritest of common-
places, ‘that one may study human nature to
advantage in a school. When a man has been
reading or hearing the history of politic men, of
insinuating contrivance which neutralized hos-
tility; of arts that brought the sturdiest pre-
judices to parley ; of men whose eye and tongue
got them that ascendency over other men's


1824)
A SCHOOL
309
minds which the sword cannot give— from Per-
icles, through Augustus Cæsar and unnumbered
Italians, down to Charles II, and to Aaron Burr
even, he is often stung with the desire of being
himself a cunning workman in that art of arts —
human nature. But when he looks around on
his acquaintances in search of materials, the force
of habit is so strong that he cannot strip himself
i In connection with these almost Machiavellian aspira-
tions of the young schoolmaster, now labouring alone with the
administrative difficulties of « lifting the truncheon against the
fair-haired daughters of this raw city,” a few words may be
quoted said by him, nearly fifty years later, to some of them :
“ My brother was early old . . . at eighteen he offered him-
self as a grave and experienced professor, who had seen much
of life, and was ready to give the overflowing of his wisdom and
ripe maturity to the youth of his native city. His mind was
method ; his constitution was order ; and, though quiet and
amiable, the tap of his pencil, you will remember, could easily
enforce a silence which the spasmodic activity of other teachers
cannot often command. I confess to an utter want of this same
virtue. I was nineteen (on joining William, two years later);
had grown up without sisters, and, in my solitary and secluded
way of living, had no acquaintance with girls. I still recall my
terrors at entering the school : my timidities at French, the in-
firmities of my cheek, and my occasional admiration of some of
my pupils, – absit invidia verbo, — and the occasional vexa-
tion when the will of the pupils was a little too strong for the
will of the teacher.” - Cabot's Memoir, p. 70.


310
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
ur-
of the old feelings that always arise at the sight
of those well-known persons, nor come to con-
sider them as mere subjects to work upon. He
cannot, if he try, keep on, nay, can seldom put
on, the iron mask he would assume. Nature will
speak out, in spite of his grimace, in the old
vulgar frankness of a man to his fellow. All his
projected artificial greatness, his systematic cour-
tesy, which, under the guise of kindness, pride
devises to keep men at bay, his promised self
controul, his wisdom that should drop only
aphorisms, all falls quite down. Ambition will
drop asleep, and the naked mediocrity of the man
is seen as it was wont, and he says and does or-
dinary things in a very ordinary way, and his
influence, which was to be so enormous, is quite
insignificant. Before these disappointments oc-
curred, the experiment wore a very practicable
air, and afterwards he always attributes the fail-
ure, not to any absurdity or impossibility in the
scheme itself, but to the unconquerable opposi-
tion he had to encounter, in the strength of the
habits he long before formed. This in many in-
stances gives rise to the expression of a wish to
go among strangers. The aspirant very naturally
believes that he shall get rid of the associations by
escaping from their objects. It may be he cheats
set
as W


1824] ARISTOCRACY 311
himself. He does not know that the feelings he
blushes for are his feelings towards the species
and not towards individuals. But if there be any
hope for the experiment, and I sometimes think
there is a great deal, it is in the theatre of a
school. The artificial character and deportment
assumed, the unstooping dignity which in all
ages mark out the pedagogue to the reverence or
ridicule of mankind, is eminently propitious to
this attempt.
ARISTOCRACY
Aristocracy is a good sign. Aristocracy has
been the hue and cry in every community where
there has been anything good, any society worth
associating with, since men met in cities. It must
be everywhere. ’T were the greatest calamity to
have it abolished. It went nearest to its death in
the French Revolution, of all time. And if, to-
night, an earthquake should sink every patrician
house in the city, to-morrow there would be as
distinct an aristocracy as now. The only change
would be that the second sort would have be-
come first, but they would be as unmingling, as
i Compare « Lecture on the Times,” Nature, Ad-
dresses, etc., p. 261; “ Manners,” Essays, 2d series, p. 129;
“ Aristocracy,” Letters and Biographical Sketches, p. 31.


312
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
much separated from the lower class, as ever the
rich men of to-day were from them. No man
would consent to live in society if he was obliged
to admit every body to his house that chose to
come. Robinson Crusoe's island would be better
than a city if men were obliged to mix together
indiscriminately, heads and points, with all the
world. Envy is the tax which all distinction must
pay.
GENIUS versus KNOWLEDGE
January 25, 1824.
Profound knowledge is good, but profound
genius is better, because, though one obtains
with greater ease all the thoughts of all wise
men, which the other obtains slowly by adding,
himself, conclusion to conclusion, yet in the
end, when both have arrived at the same amount
of knowledge, the latter is much the richest.
... They have not only a certain sum of
intelligence to get, but a great expedition to
perform. No petty, circumscribed offices to
discharge, whose narrow details daily return; no
functions wherein mechanical adroitness avails
more than acquaintance with principles, but im-
mortal life in an unbounded universe. They are
both to be shortly introduced into the immense


1824]
GENIUS
313
storehouse of eternal truth. Their faculties are
to be tasked to solve the secret enigmas of sci-
ence by whose successive development the his-
tory of Nature is to be explained. The universe,
to the eyes of ignorance, is but a shining chaos.
And when the veil of flesh is rent, and the eyes
of the spirit open, human perception will shrink
from the splendour of the spiritual world. But
there will be no comparison between the fitness
of one and the other of the pilgrims who are to
go on that heavenly road, from knowledge to
knowledge. He who has sharpened his faculties
by long and painful thought enters, in a mighty
sphere, but upon an accustomed task. Education
has armed him in the panoply of thought. He
moves gracefully, like one at home in that etherial
country. But his companion, whose habits have
not been similar, though he recognizes some
bright forms in the scenery, is a stranger to the
customs and the tongue of that glorious land, and
must walk among its wonders in stupid amaze-
ment long ere their order is seen, and must
forever loiter at a distance from the other. Con-
sidered with relation to our whole existence, that
habits of thought are better than knowledge-
was the original position of my rhetoric.
· · · · · · · ·
CO
e
m


314
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
FRIENDSHIP
Sympathy is the wine of life. A man has com-
fort in a friend when he is absent and when he
is nigh. “The panic of physical strength rein-
forceth the onset,” and so is the society of two
men dearer to them for the interval of interrup-
tion. Friends fill that interval with pleasant
thoughts which borrow their charm from the
magic of this gentle sentiment. They treasure
up the occurrences and thoughts, the times and
chances that were mixed in their cup of life, to
regale each other with the feast of memory.
Words may be free, thought may be free, and
the heart laid bare to your friend, but, neverthe-
less, the freedom, even of friendship, hath a limit,
and beware how he passes it. ...
SOCIETY
Men pay a price for admission to the civiliza-
tion of society. Some pay twenty, thirty, forty,
or fifty hundred dollars a year to be permitted to
take certain high and higher seats therein. My
mother and I might subsist on two hundred [dol-
lars], but we are willing to buy with twelve or
thirteen times as much a more convenient and
reputable place in the world. Every man who


1824]
BEGINNINGS
315
S SO Z
values this bargain which he drives so zealously
must give the whole weight of his support to the
public, civil, religious, literary institutions which
make it worth his toil. Keep the moral fountains
pure. Open schools. Guard the Sabbath, if you
be a member or lover of civil society, as you
would not tremble at the report of its earthquake
convulsions, and be shocked at the noise of its
fall.
BEGINNINGS
It is excellent advice both in writing and in
action to avoid a too great elevation at first. Let
one's beginnings be temperate and unpretend-
ing, and the more elevated parts will rise from
these with a just and full effect. We were not
made to breathe oxygen, or to talk poetry, or to
be always wise. We are sorry habitants of an
imperfect world, and it will not do for such beings
to take admiration by storm. One who would
take his friend captive by eloquent discourse
must forego the vulgar vanity of a great outset,
which cannot last, but dwindles down to flatness
and disgust. He must lull the suspicion of art
asleep by the unambitious use of familiar com-
monplaces. He must be willing to say, “How do
you do?” and “What's the news ?” He must


316
JOURNAL [Age 20
not disdain to be interested in the weather or the
time of day. And when the talk has gradually
got into those channels where he wished to lead
it, knowledge that is in place and fervour that is
well-timed will have their reward.
ACTION AND THOUGHT
Forms are not unimportant in society. It is
supremely necessary that you regulate men's con-
duct, whether you can affect their principles or
no. For the thoughts of the mass of men are
ever in a crude, ungrown, unready state, but
their actions regular and ready. They must act;
but there is no compulsion to think. Therefore,
when the understanding is sluggish and indicates
no course of conduct, they are forced to obey
example, and surrender the whole ordering of life
to the judgments of other men. Thus a whole
community go to church; acquiesce in the ex-
istence of a certain law, or in the government of
a certain ruler, while, if their hearts were all read,
it might appear that these institutions had but
a few strong favourers, and that, for the rest,
each man leaned on his neighbour; nay, a critical
inquiry should make it plain that the majority of
opinions rebelled in secret against the custom
complied with, but that doubts were too shadowy


1824] DEARTH OF THOUGHT 317
and unformed to venture to challenge an old
established mode.
Men, in fact, so openly borrow their common
modes of thinking, i.e. those outside modes on
which their actions depend (for, when they act in
a certain way, they commonly go armed with
some obvious reason, whether they believe it or
no) that it is surprising how small an amount of
originality of mind is required to circulate all the
thought in a community. The common conver-
sation that has place in a city for a year does not
embrace more intelligence than one vigorous
thinker might originate; and one who carefully
considers the flow and progress of opinion from
man to man and rank to rank through society,
will soon discover that three or four masters pre-
sent the people with all that moderate stock of
conclusions upon politics, religion, commerce,
and sentiment which goes current. The kingdom
of thought is a proud aristocracy.
BURKE, FOX, PITT
England had three great names in her parlia-
ment (1790] — Burke, Fox, and Pitt. The
two latter interest us by the engaging shew of
youthful might. They seem to be beardless
boys, abandoning their college with youthful


318
JOURNAL [AGE 20
impatience to mix with men; they come among
the gray-haired statesmen, who are aghast at
the storm which gathers around, and fearlessly
grasp and hurl the thunderbolts of power with
graceful majesty. Fox took his seat in parlia-
ment at nineteen years of age. Pitt was prime
minister of England at twenty-four. Burke, who
lacked the aristocratical interest to back him,
which Fox, who descended from Henry IV of
Navarre, and Pitt, who was son of Chatham,
could muster — was somewhat later. The two
former were friends ; true-hearted and noble
friends, so matched as the world hath seldom
seen, and so parted as we would hardly have
had it otherwise. They were two large and
philosophical understandings, both lit with the
fire of eloquence. Fox, with tears in his eyes,
lamented in parliament that an uninterrupted
friendship of twenty-three years should be
invaded by the intemperance of a debate, and
that his friend should have applied such violent
and angry epithets to his name. Burke said he
did not recollect any epithets. The reply of Fox
was in the spirit of a gentleman. “My honour-
able friend has forgotten the epithets, they are
out of his mind, and they are out of mine for-
ever.”


1824] BURKE, PITT, AND FOX 319
Burke's principle was dearer to him even than
his friend, and he broke with a stoic's heart
his ancient attachment. Burke said afterwards
of Fox,"he was a man made to be loved.” And
Goldsmith said of Burke,
IS
« Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.”
It is not easy, for a common mind, perhaps
it is not possible, to appreciate this magnani-
mous sacrifice (of his friendship). No man per-
haps was ever fitter to enjoy fully this best and
purest of pleasures. F[ox] and B[urke] agreed
upon the American [question], and their fore-
sight triumphed over their adversaries, who
laughed at the “vagrant Congress, one Han-
cock, one Adams, and their crew," who spurned
them, when they “might have been led,” as
Franklin told them, “by a thread,” until they
broke chains and scattered armaments like flaxen
strings. In the dark tempest of the French
Revolution, Pitt was “the pilot that weathered
the storm.” Fox, in Westminster Abbey, lies
eighteen inches from Pitt, and close by Chatham.
Pitt, Fox, Burke:—since one was in office,
one in favour, and one in neither, perhaps it is
just to say, Pitt was a practical statesman, Fox, a


320
JOURNAL [AGE 20
theoretical statesman, and Burke, a philosophic
statesman.
FRANKLIN
Franklin was political economist, a natural
philosopher, a moral philosopher, and a states-
man; invests and dismisses subtle theories (e. g.
of the Earth) with extraordinary ease. Uncon-
scious of any mental effort in detailing the pro-
foundest solutions of phenomena, and therefore
makes no parade. He writes to a friend when
[aged] 80, “I feel as if I was intruding among
posterity when I ought to be abed and asleep.
I look upon death to be as necessary to the
constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in
the morning.” “Many,” said he, “ forgive in-
juries, but none ever forgave contempt.” (See
Edinburgh Review.) That age abounded in
greatness, — Carnot, Moreau, Bonaparte, etc.;
Johnson, Gibbon, etc.; Washington, etc.
Institutions are a sort of homes. A man may
wander long with profit, if he come home at
last, but a perpetual vagrant is not honoured.
Men may alter and improve their laws, so they
fix them at last.


1823] MISCELLANEOUS
321
“Humanity does not consist in a squeamish
ear.” Fox.
Men in this age do not produce new works,
but admire old ones; are content to leave the
fresh pastures awhile and to chew the cud of
thought in the shade.
“A great empire, like a great cake, is most
easily diminished at the edges.” FRANKLIN.
[A fëw extracts from entries, made by Emer-
son in 1823 in his Blotting Book XVIII (2d),
are appended here. These entries are largely
his notes on his reading, or quotations from
the authors. The verse which follows is, how-
ever, original.]
When Fortune decks old Learning's naked shrine
And bids his cobwebbed libraries be fine,
Young Merit smooths his aspect to a smile,
And fated Genius deigns to live awhile.
The Prophet, speaking of the Egyptians,
says—“Their strength is to sit still.” This is
a profound remark in its application to certain
states and the characters of individuals. It may
be added in confirmation of the prophet's asser-


322
[Age 20
JOURNAL
tion, that it was proverbially impossible (in the
III century) to extort a secret from an Egyp-
tian by torture.'
THE FARMER
CA
“We may talk what we please of lilies and
lions rampant, and spread eagles in fields d'or
or d'argent; but if heraldry were guided by
reason, a plough in a field arable would be the
most noble and ancient arms.” Cowley.
Agriculture is the venerable Mother of all
the arts, and compared with the pastoral or the
hunting life is certainly friendly to the mind; it
is next to commerce in this respect, but must
necessarily precede commerce in the growth of
society. Virtue and good sense and a contempla-
tive turn are universally characteristic of an agri-
cultural people. In the city, “those who think
must govern those who toil”; in the country,
the labourers both toil and govern.
i This proverb was a favourite of Mr. Emerson's through
life, variously applied. When it was proposed to him to make
a visit, perhaps, or to venture some unusual experiment on the
farm, or unwonted household expenditure, he would smile and
say, “ The strength of the Egyptians is to sit still.”


1823]
323
FORTUNATE IMAGES
len
PHILOSOPHIC IMAGINATION
Buckminster was remarkable for a “philoso-
phic imagination.”: It is the most popular and
useful quality which a modern scholar can pos-
sess to become a favourite in society. It imparts
a spirit of liberal philosophy which can impress
itself by the applying of beautiful images. Its
advantage is owing to the circumstance that
moral reflections are vague and fugitive, whereas
the most vulgar mind can readily retain a strik-
ing image from the material world. Many men
might say “that the labours of the mind must
be occasionally relaxed,” and it was easily for-
gotten, but when one said “Non semper arcum
tendit Apollo,” it served to imprint the truth,
and is ever remembered. That “great minds are
unlike each other and do not appear twice in
the world,” — men might hear and forget, until
it was established by the adage that “Nature has
broken the mould in which she made them.”
It is better for popularity than scientific sagacity,
for it is more easily appreciated. One is at a
1 Probably the younger Buckminster (Joseph Stevens), the
pastor of the Brattle Street Church, contemporary and friend
of Mr. Emerson's father, and associated with him in the An-
thology, the first important literary magazine of New England.


324
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
loss to say if Bacon had it or no; he is not pre-
cisely the mind at which the term points, because
he had more of the philosopher than the poet,
which is the reverse of Everett, Buckminster,
Bancroft — and is superior to them.
LUXURY
Saw you ever luxury? He is not attired in
gold, but in green, and his diadem is not of
gems, but of wild flowers.
LETTER TO HIS AUNT, MARY MOODY EMERSON
CANTERBURY, November 11, 1823.
As to metaphysical difficulties that stagger
us,— does not the Divinity make himself amen-
able, at least in those works and laws that come
under our eye, to the (cultivated) reason which
he has lit up in his creatures? If his material
operations be irregular, as in the promulgation
of gospel, we say, it is to aid some mighty
moral design. But if his moral operations be
irregular (or appear so to our profoundest
study); if justice be mixed with injustice ; if
unequal conditions be yoked under the same
decree; what shall his creatures do? Can they
affix an unshaken and accurate sense to moral
distinctions, when from the insecure and unsatis-
mo


1823] REASON IN RELIGION 325
Metere
factory tenure by which we hold all our ideas, our
firmest faith in intellectual and moral truths some-
times passes away like the morning cloud before
the queries of the sceptic? It was one of my
youngest thoughts that God would not confound
the weak-eyed understandings of his children
whilst they read on earth the alphabet of morals.
Do people feel firmer or fainter in their faith
as they grow older and think more? ... Does
not the philosophy of moments ever tamper
with the faith of years? Does not the solid
universe, Memory, the economy of matter, the
economy of mind, sometimes so fade into a false
mist that it is possible it may indeed be no more
substantial? There seem to be two ways of
shaking off this nightmare, viz., a larger ac-
quaintance with matter, or with mind. ...
... An acquaintance with mind, indefatiga-
ble pursuit and accumulation of all demonstrable
truths ; science, deep and high and broad as
Newton's, may ally consciousness to so many
certain truths ; may extend our vantage ground
of existence so widely and tie it with so many
fast knots to such a various multitude of thoughts
as to confirm our hold. A man with one pro-
position can hardly go far in its illustration or
defence, and his knowledge increases in a far


326
JOURNAL (AGE 20
faster proportion than the number of single
propositions he amasses, because he continu-
ally discerns new connexions and inferences
growing out of and between them. And New-
ton's bright eye, which glanced in every direc-
tion into the vast Universe, and saw each
fact corroborated by correspondencies spring-
ing up on every side, was perhaps wholly ab-
sorbed in the extent, the consistency and beauty
of the show, too much absorbed to have leisure
or inclination to doubt. Not to be despised was
that grave, modest, profound old man, that ape
whom angels shew ;2 he is a compensation to
the race for many generations of darkness, and
countries of barbarism. We can set Newton
over against Juggernaut. — Nevertheless, ad-
miration is the foible of ignorant and sanguine
minds : admiration paid by a few gazers to ono
sage's intellectual supremacy will hardly be
counted in the eye of the Philanthropists any
1 V. Stewart. (R. W. E.)
2 The expression « ape whom angels shew" is probably a
quotation from his Aunt's letter, original, or borrowed by her.
Her rhetoric was daring. In a later letter from her, speaking
of angels, she writes, “They may shew a Newton as an ape
of their knowledge, but these sublime feelings are of their very
nature.”


1823] METRIC SYSTEM 327
atonement for the squalid and desperate igno-
rance of untold millions who breathe the breath
of misery in Asia, Africa, yea, in the great
globe. Why is this?
S
ere
METRIC SYSTEM
Weights and measures are made interesting
by the philosophical radicalism with which the
French Revolutionary authorities took up the
subject, and by Mr. Adams's report. After in-
specting a decimal system, the mere recitation -
of one of the vulgar tables (of Long Measure
for example) is ridiculous. . . . The ancient
systems which were arbitrary like ours, cannot
be now accurately ascertained. But if such an
order were once established as this, it would be
easy to perpetuate it through any political con-
vulsions, and to recover it if lost. But so in-
veterate is men's prejudice for a pound, and so
shocking is the innovation of a barbarous kilo-
metre, that this philanthropic plan is premature.
A Salem merchant who traded with the na-
tives of one of the East India islands for spices
is said to have made some thousands in this
manner. The natives had no pound weight
to measure their spices with. “Oh,” said the
American, “my foot weighs just a pound,” and
lea


328
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
put it on the scale. As may be supposed, he
got 5 lb. weight or more at the price of each
pound.
Earl Carnarvon's speech (before the House
of Peers, Dec. 23, 1678) is a curious piece of
English history:'-
“My Lords, I don't know Latin, but I do
know English, and I know something of Eng-
lish history; and I know also what has become
of those who have charged themselves with im-
peachments. I will begin no farther back than
the latter part of Queen Elizabeth's time. Sir
Walter Raleigh, your Lordships all know, ran
down the Earl of Essex; and you all know what
became of Sir Walter Raleigh. Chancellor
1 The version given in the journal is from memory and
full of errors and omissions. So I give it in the form he gave
it (in his book of Extracts, T), altered by him to make it ef-
fective as a declamation, for which purpose he taught it to me.
His note on the speech is as follows : “It was proposed to
impeach the Earl of Danby. While the House of Peers were
deliberating on this subject, the Earl of Carnarvon entered,
having just come from a drunken revel, where he had sworn
over his claret, that, although he had never spoken before in
the House, he would go there directly and make a speech
upon whatever subject should happen to be before the house."
(E. W. E.)


1823] CARNARVON’S SPEECH 329
Bacon, you all know, ran down Sir Walter
Raleigh; and your Lordships all know what
became of the Chancellor. The Duke of Buck-
ingham ran down Lord Bacon; and you all
know what became of the Duke of Bucking-
ham. Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Earl
of Strafford, ran down the Duke of Bucking-
ham; and you all know what became of him.
Sir Harry Vane ran down the Earl of Strafford;
and your Lordships all know what became of
Sir Harry Vane. Sir Edward Hyde ran down
Sir Harry Vane; and your Lordships all know
what became of Sir Edward Hyde. The Earl
of Danby ran down Sir Edward Hyde ; and
what will become of the Earl of Danby your
Lordships only can tell. But let the man dare
to present himself who will run down the Earl
of Danby,—and we shall soon see what will
become of that man.”
i Mr. Emerson refers for the speech to Cobbett's Parlia-
mentary History of England, vol. iv, page (or rather, col-
umn) 1073, where, in the record of this impeachment, it is
referred to as “the Earl of Carnarvon's remarkable speech
thereon.” Cobbett states that the Earl had, at the revel, been
“excited to display his abilities by the Duke of Buckingham,
who meant no favour to the Treasurer, but only ridicule."
So, at the end, “ this being pronounced with a remarkable
humour and tone, the Duke of Buckingham, both surprised
ULIC


330
(AGE 20
JOURNAL
CHAUNCY AND WHITEFIELD
“Where are you going, Mr. Whitefield?”
said Dr. Chauncy. “I'm going to Boston, Sir.”
“I'm very sorry for it,” said Dr. C. “So is the
Devil,” replied the eloquent preacher."
EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER FROM HIS AUNT
MARY
... “Is the Muse become faint and mean?
Ah well she may, and better, far better, leave
you wholly than weave a garland for one whose
destiny leads to sensation rather than to senti-
ment; whose intervals of mentality seem rather
spent in collecting facts than energising itself
-in unfolding, imperating, its budding powers
and disappointed, cried out, • The man is inspired ! and claret
has done the business. The majority, however, was against
the commitment.”
i Rev. Charles Chauncy, pastor of the First Church, was
a divine respected and beloved in Boston in the latter half of
the eighteenth century. It seems that the popular excitement
wrought by George Whitefield, the eloquent English revivalist,
with his reactionary influence towards Calvinism, troubled the
good Doctor, and moreover the emotional and sensational
quality of his preaching disturbed his Boston sensibilities.
Mr. Emerson, in his Essay on “Old Age" (Society and
Solitude), gives the testimony of President John Adams as to
Whitefield's eloquence.


1823] MISS EMERSON'S LETTER 331
after the sure yet far distant glories of what
Plato, Plotinus, and such godlike worthies, who,
in the language of St. Austin, showed that none
could be a true philosopher that was not ab-
stracted in spirit from all the effects of the body,
etc., etc., more than I dare to impose. Yet it is
verily valuable to find the principles of the hu-
man constitution the same, when developed by
philosophy in all ages and nations—to find that,
after all its dissections, at bottom is an insatiable
thirst for what they denominate 'a state of mind
being unable to stay, after its highest flights, till
it arrive at a being of unbounded greatness and
worth !' O, would the Muse forever leave you
till you had prepared for her a celestial abode.
Poetry, that soul of all that pleases —the philo-
sophy of the world of sense—yet the Iris— the
bearer of the resemblances of uncreated beauty !
Yet with these gifts you flag—your Muse is mean
because the breath of fashion has not puffed her.
You are not inspired in heart, with a gift for im-
mortality, because you are the nurseling of sur-
rounding circumstances. You become yourself
a part of the events which make up the ordinary
life-even that part of the economy of living
which relates, in the order of things, necessarily
to private and social affections, rather than to pub-


332
JOURNAL (AGE 20
lic and disinterested. Still, there is an approach-
ing period I dread worse than this sweet stagna-
tion, when the Muse shall be dragged into éclat.
... Then will be the time when the guardian
angel will tremble. In case of failing, of becoming
deceived and vain, there will yet remain a hope
that your fall may call down some uncommon
effort of mercy, and you may rise from the love
of deceitful good to that of real. Had you been
placed in circumstances of hard fare for the belly
-labour and solitude-it does seem you would
have been training for those most insidious ene-
mies which will beset your public life on every
hand. How little you will be armed with the
saying of a French divine of highest order, 'that
it is safest for a popular character to know but
part of what is said.'
You provoke me to prose by eulogising Cæsar
and Cicero. True, the speech you quote (I be-
lieve-‘You bear Cæsar and his fortune') is
sublime, and instanced by Christians, but for him,
for that tyrant (whose only charm, the love of
letters, was not accompanied by enthusiasm) it
was mere rant, or he was thinking of the egg
from which Venus sprung (which was preserved
by fishes and hatched by doves) to whom he
was a most debauched devotee. As to Cicero,


1823] AN AUNT'S CRITICISM 333
one wants to admire him, but different accounts
forbid—tho' none are favourable enow ever to
place him one moment beyond the imperious
controul of passing events. Dejected in adver-
sity, and without any respite from age or expe-
rience — pursuing, begging, other people to let
him be praised. Is not this enough to neutralize
those effects for the public, as we know not their
motive to be beyond emulation? His eloquence,
it is true, is glorious, but himself remains an ob-
ject of pity, and the only apology for becoming
the meanest of scavengers is that in company
with genius is the love of fame, and he knew of
no object hereafter to feed it. Such are the men
you are more excited by than by your heroic
ancestor!' 'Pomp of circumstance.' Merciful
Creator! this child, so young, so well born and
bred, yet so wedded to sounds and places where
human passions triumphed! When he knows
that spots, the most famous even by thine own
appearances, are swept out of record! ...
i Rev. William Emerson, the young minister of Concord.
This eager and eloquent “Son of Liberty,” at the outbreak of
the Revolution, served as chaplain in the Provincial Camp at
Cambridge, and later was regularly appointed chaplain of a
Massachusetts regiment at Ticonderoga, where he contracted
the fever of which he died.


334
JOURNAL
[AGE 20
Whoever wants power must pay for it. How
unnatural - one man asks another to give him
up his rights; this is the nakedness of the traffic,
and if there be ever so much fraud and violence,
after ages produce slaves enow to celebrate their
conquerors. As to words or languages being so im-
portant — I'll have nothing of it. The images,
the sweet immortal images are within us — born
there, our native right, and sometimes one kind
of sounding word or syllable awakens the instru-
ment of our souls, and sometimes another. But
we are not slaves to sense any more than to
political usurpers, but by fashion and imbecility.
Aye, if I understand you, so you think.
Sorry you meditate a reform in drama, which
will oblige you to go thro' such bogs and fens and
sloughs of passion and crime. True, one ought
to sacrifice himself to the public, but how long
and poisonous the execution compared to that
of other martyrs ! Still, if by plucking up those
principles of human nature which have made
dramas agreeable to the populace, and which
have been sometimes considered as drains to
human vices, or preventatives to worse places,
—if you pull down old establishments which
have found place in almost every age and nation
of cultivated or semi-barbarous life, why may


1823] AN AUNT'S CRITICISM 335
Denny
ve
you not undertake it? To men in general, it
would seem gigantic. And to me, who am, if
possible, more ignorant on the history and char-
acter of drama than any other subjects [it] seems
a less useful exercise, as respects the reformer,
than any scientific or literary pursuit. Mathe-
matics and languages remain with one for use
and ornament, and all the universe of facts which
are connecting will some time or other prove
something; and if they don't, they are apologies
for higher. The picture of a bud is better than
the idle jokes and saturnine gossip of ordinary
society.
There is one idea of dramatic representation
interesting, that of Eichhorn respecting the
Apocalypse of St. John. The learned German,
you know, believes all passed in Patmos in
scenic order. And why may not this be a key to
many revelations? In the infancy of the world,
men were taught by signs. It would seem that
the higher and last-made instructions from
Heaven applied to Reason as well as sentiment,
and I am glad to escape from all sorts of earthly
dramas.”
PRIESTCRAFT
Men are so essentially alike, that, if you do
not radically alter their institutions, you will find


336
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
the same habits recurring monotonously from
century to century. Friars and monks of the Ro-
man priesthood very closely resemble the coun-
try clergy of New England, notwithstanding the
very considerable progress of public opinion
through a score of generations. The town clergy,
no doubt, are a vast many degrees higher, but
they may perhaps fitly represent the eminent
abbots whom public admiration elevated to the
episcopal and archiepiscopal thrones of Rome,
Constantinople, Paris, and London. If one be
curious enough to notice the topics and turn of
conversation, and the ability wherewith 't is man-
aged by clergymen in mixed or chosen com-
pany, I think he will not be struck with any dis-
tinct marks of excellence, or see that thoughts
are broached to-day which might not be sug-
gested in the tea-table talk of a thousand years
ago.
Whitefield was as good and as bad as Peter
the Hermit; Mr. Channing, and Mr. Norton,
and Mr. Buckminster make good the place of
Athanasius, St. Cyril, and Bernard (the name, I
think, of the hermit of Abelard's time), and Mr.
Everett will serve for many a polite and digni-
fied archbishop who staid at home and kept his
choice rhetoric for the ear of kings. ...


1823] “ PRIESTCRAFT”
337
No doubt beneficent and devout hearts have
in humble spheres regenerated generations and
the world. But I complain of the great multi-
tude of the laxer sort. ... But all the world
complains. “Let each,” said Franklin, “take
care to mend one." I add, 't is worth while to
notice how the black coats wind their way into
the foremost ranks of the proudest company.
What can the reason be why a priest of what-
ever god, under whatever form, should in every
clime and age be open to such liberal abuse,
and to ineradicable suspicion? Is the reason to
be found in Ecclesiastical History? Question-
less this has been very bad. The pious profess-
ors have been outrageous rogues in a thousand
temples from Memphis to Boston. Or is its
origin deeper fixed in the nature of the pro-
fession? ...


JOURNAL XIV
THE WIDE WORLD, NO. 13
« Bonus vir tempore tantum a Deo differt.”
SENECA.
« Nor fetch my precepts from the Cynic's tub."
CANTERBURY, February 17, 1824.
“ La nature,” says Pascal, “confond les pyr-
rhoniens, et la raison confond les dogmatistes."
And Sir J. Mackintosh calls the sentence the
sublimest of human composition. It is fortunate
and happy, but a sublimity not difficult to gain,
as it did not occur to Pascal when he first re-
volved the subject, but is the last generalization
at which he arrives. And it is easier to build up
one subject into a cone with a broad base of ex-
amples narrowing up into a formula expressing
a general truth, than to detach subtle facts from
subjects partially known. ...
PRAISE
“Please to praise me” is the ill disguised re-
quest of almost all literary men. All men are
cheered by applause and vexed by censure:


1824)
339
PRAISE
...“Nihil est quod credere de se
Non possit.”
JUVENAL.
But literary men alone cannot do without it.
The reason is obvious. Other men toil for
gold and get gold for their toil, but scholars
cannot get gold, and appetite in them craves
another food. They are no more insatiable for
their proper reward than are the pursuers of
Mammon for theirs. But why are the askers of
praise ridiculous, and not the askers of silver?
(Minor negatur.)
ICIS
In education it seems to be safer to praise
than to censure abundantly. For myself, I have
ever been elated to an active mind by flattery
and depressed by dispraise. Perhaps a Muse
that soared on a stronger wing would scorn to
be so slightly disheartened. I like the lines —
“ Praise is the salt that seasons right in man
And whets the appetite of moral good.”
YOUNG.
It is noticeable how much a man is judged of
by the praise he gives. It is best not to be too
inflammable, not to be lavish of your praise on
light occasions, for it will be remembered long


340
JOURNAL
[AGE 20
after your fervent admiration has cooled into
disgust. Milton was very frugal of his praise.
A man is not more known by the company he
keeps. Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura colum-
bas — is a decisive index of perverted character.
[Inventions]
Pliny's uncle had a slave read while he eat.
In the progress of Watt and Perkins's' philo-
sophy, the day may come when the scholar shall
be provided with a Reading Steam-Engine; when
he shall say “ Presto," and it shall discourse elo-
quent history, and “Stop, Sesame," and it shall
hush to let him think. He shall put in a pin,
and hear poetry; and two pins and hear a song.
That age will discover Laputa.
ASIA. ORIGIN
February 20.
“Tout commence,” says Father Bossuet, of the
first ages. All has the air of beginning. They
form societies, devise arts, polish manners, and
make laws. This return to the cradle is useful.
Now, when all things are tried and trite, when
Jacob Perkins, the ingenious American (1766-1849) who
invented the nail-making machine, improvements in engraving,
the steam-gun (self-feeding), and other machines.


1824)
ASIA
341
Shem, Ham, and Japhet have strayed from their
paternal tent as far as the limits of the globe will
let them, and on the mind of each is writ in
indelible lines his character, now the Spirit of
Humanity finds it curious and good to leave the
armchair of its old age and go back to the scenes
of Auld Lang Syne, to the old mansion house of
Asia, the playground of its childhood, the land
of distant but cherished remembrance. That
spot must needs be dear where the faculties first
opened, where youth first triumphed in the elas-
ticity of strength and spirits, and where the ways
of civilization and thought (then deemed infinite)
were first explored.
It brings the mind palpable relief, to withdraw
it from the noisy and overgrown world to these
peaceful primeval solitudes. For this reason,
perhaps, there is a species of grandeur in Premier
Epoque of Bossuet, though it relates a thread bare
tale. It may be, this emotion will be only occa-
sionally felt, for though the grandeur is real, it
is ever present, as the firmament is forever mag-
nificent, but is only felt to be so when our own
spirits are fresh (and buoyant). Asia, Africa, Eu-
rope, old, leprous and wicked, have run round
the goal of centuries till we are tired and they
1 "We” means, beings better than we. (R. W. E.)


342
JOURNAL
[AGE 20
are ready to drop. But now a strong man has
entered the race and is outstripping them all.
Strong man! youth and glory are with thee. As
thou wouldst prosper, forget not the hope of
mankind. Trample not upon thy competitors,
though unworthy. Europe is thy father, bear him
on thy Atlantean shoulders. Asia, thy grand-
sire, — regenerate him. Africa, their ancient,
abused bondsman,-give him his freedom. ...
AULD LANG SYNE
In the beginning, which I spake of a few
lines above, there was some good. Would it not
have been well to have lived in Nineveh, or to
have been the mighty hunter, or to have floated on
the Deluge, or have been dead before? Hope,
at least, would have been a contemporary. Now
she has long been dead or doating — as good
as dead. Moreover, men's thoughts were their
own then. Noah was not dinned to death with
Aristotle and Bacon and Greece and Rome.
The patriarchs were never puzzled with libraries
of names and dates, with First ages and Dark
ages; and Revivals, and upper empires and lower
empires; with the balance of power and the bal-
ance of trade; with fighting chronologies and
dagger-drawing creeds. Life is wasted in the


1824) THE LATTER DAYS 343
necessary preparation of finding which is the
true way, and we die just as we enter it. An
Antediluvian had the advantage — an advan-
tage that has been growing scarce as the world
has grown older - of forming his own opinion
and indulging his own hope, without danger of
contradiction from Time that never had elapsed,
or observation that never had been made.
NOWADAYS. EDUCATION
Unknown troubles perplex the lot of the
scholar whose inexpressible unhappiness it is to
be born at this day. He is born in a time of war.
A thousand religions are in arms. Systems of
education are contesting. Literature, Politics,
Morals, and Physics are each engaged in loud
civil broil. A chaos of doubts besets him from
his outset. Shall he read, or shall he think?
Ask the wise. The wise have not determined.
Shall he nourish his faculties in solitude or in
active life? No man can answer. He turns to
books—the vast amount of recorded wisdom,
but it is useless from its amount. Hecannot read
all;' no, not in Methuselah's multiplied days;
— but how to choose — boc opus est. Must he
1 One had need read as Pliny elder, to accomplish any-
thing. (R. W. E.)


344
JOURNAL (Age 20
en
read History and neglect Morals; or learn what
ought to be, in ignorance of what has been? Or
must he slight both in the pursuit of (physical)
science; or all, for practical knowledge and a pro-
fession? Must he, in a last alternative, abandon
all the rest, to be profoundly skilled in a single
branch of art, or, understanding none, smatter
superficially in all?
A question of equal moment to each new citi-
zen of the world is this: shall I subdue my mind
by discipline, or obey its native inclinations?
govern my imagination with rules, or cherish its
originality. Shall I cultivate Reason or Fancy,
educate one power with concentrated diligence
or reduce all to the same level? ...
These and similar questions are a real and
recurring calamity. I do not know that it were
extravagant to say that half of the time of most
scholars is dissipated in fruitless and vexatious
attempts to solve one or another of (such ques-
tions] in succession. It is an evil oftener felt than
stated. It is an evil that demands a remedy. It
requires that what master minds have done for
some of the Sciences, should be done for Edu-
cation. Teach us no more arts, but how those
which are already should be learned.


1824)
345
MORAL BEAUTY
MORAL BEAUTY
February 20.
Material beauty perishes or palls. Intellectual
beauty limits admiration to seasons and ages;
hath its ebbs and flows of delight. . . . But
moral beauty is lovely, imperishable, perfect. It is
dear to the child and to the patriarch, to Heaven,
Angel, Man. ... None that can understand
Milton's Comus can read it without warming
to the holy emotions it panegyrizes.
I would freely give all I ever hoped to be,
even when my air-blown hopes were brilliant
and glorious, - not as now — to have given
down that sweet strain to posterity to do good
in a golden way. ... The service that such
books as this, and the Prelaty and Bunyan, &c.,
render, is not appreciable, but it is immense.
These books go up and down the world on the
errand of charity. ... They pluck away the
thorn from Virtue's martyr crown and plant
the rose and amaranth instead. Of this I am
glad. I am glad to find at least one unfading,
essential, beneficent principle in human nature
— the approval of right; and that it is so strong
and ineffaceable. . . . Popular preachers ...
have won the understanding by getting on the


346
JOURNAL (AGE 20
right side of the heart. I am ignorant if, in
saying this, I analyze Bancroft's eloquence.
His sermon on Temperance was of powerful
effect, but it seemed to reach the practice
through an appeal to this moral poetry. Thus,
one fine sentiment in it, that was calculated to
produce much fasting, was the representation
of the body as the corruptible and perishable
channel, through which flowed for a season
the streams of immortal thought.'
re
SENTIMENT
Canterbury, February 22, 1824.
The war between sentiment and reason is the
perpetual wonder that fasts the “ nine days” of
** human life. When we calmly think and precisely
reason, our life (ever enigmatical enow) has most
of sense and design ; there is an arrangement
perceived in education, and a growth in mind.
But when we feel strongly, when we love woman
or man, when we hope, or fear, or hate, or
i Perhaps this was the origin of the early poem, beginning,
O what are heroes, prophets, men,
But pipes, through which the breath of God doth blow
A momentary music ?
Later, Mr. Emerson chose the classical form, and substituted
“ Pan,” for “God.” See poem “Pan,” Poems, Appen-
dix.


1824]
SENTIMENT
347
Oquenas
CORE
TO
aspire with vehemence, the strength of a senti-
ment is so engrossing and exclusive that it
throws all memory and habit for the moment
into a remote background; the delusion waxes
so strong that it alone remains real, and all
else shows as strong delusion. An educated
man, when he is star-gazing or vividly consid-
ering for a moment his relations as an eternal
being to the world, frequently undervalues, as
nugatory, the time and diligence bestowed by
him on science and art; forgetting that to this
very cultivation he owes that elevation of thought
which disgusts him with this world's unsatisfac-
toriness. ...
A melancholy dream it is, this succession of
rolling weeks, each, like the last, in peevish dis-
satisfaction and in diminished hope.
“ By pain of heart now checked and now impelled,
The intellectual power through words and things
Went sounding on a dim and perilous way.”
118
SETE
НО."
ܐ 88ܐ
CANTERBUR
ginen
[CANTERBURY, February, 1824.]
Goodbye, proud world, I'm going home :
Thou’rt not my friend and I'm not thine.
Long I've been tossed like the salt sea foam,
All day mid weary crowds I roam,-
And O my home, O holy home!


348
(AGE 20
JOURNAL
Goodbye to Flattery's fawning face,
To Grandeur with his wise grimace,
To upstart Wealth's averted eye,
To supple Office, low and high,
To frozen hearts and hasting feet,
To noisy Toil, to Court and Street,
To those who go, and those who come;
Goodbye, proud World ! I'm going home.
I'm going to my own hearthstone,
Bosomed in yon green hills alone;
Sweet summer birds are warbling there."
Metaphysicians are mortified to find how en-
tirely the whole materials of understanding are.
derived from sense. No man is understood, who
speculates on mind or character, until he borrows
the emphatic imagery of sense. A mourner will
try in vain to explain the extent of his bereave-
ment better than to say, a chasm is opened in
society. I fear the progress of metaphysical
philosophy may be found to consist in nothing
1 The rest of these verses, the “Goodbye,” occurs, two
months later in date, in this journal. Mr. Emerson sent an
improved version, in 1839, to gratify his friend James Freeman
Clarke, who published them in The Western Messenger.
What Mr. Emerson said of them may be found in the letter
which he sent with them, in Dr. Holmes's Memoir of him.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Men of Letters Series, p.
129.)


1824) THE IMAGERY OF SENSE 349
else than the progressive introduction of oppo-,
site metaphors. Thus the Platonists congratu-' .'
lated themselves for ages upon their knowing
that Mind was a dark chamber whereon ideas y'van
like shadows were painted. Men derided this
as infantile when they afterwards learned that
the Mind was a sheet of white paper whereon
any and all characters might be written. Almost
everything in language that is bound up in your
memory is of this significant sort. Sleep, the
cessation of toil, the loss of volition, etc., what
is that? but
“Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of Care”
a betet
preness
is felt. Life is nothing, but the lamp of life that
blazes, flutters, and goes out, the bill of life which
is climbed and tottered down, the race of life
which is run with a thousand competitors and
for a prize proposed, — these are distinctly un-
derstood. “We love tellers of good tidings” is
faint, but “How beautiful upon the mountains
are their feet” is excellent. “The world is the
scaffold of Divine Justice,” said Saurin.
32
I nothing
OLTES I
Suckers
jes Free
Vestiging
? -: ܩܐ
103
[Country]
How do you do, Sir? Very well, Sir. You
have a keen air among your rocks and hills. Yes,


350
JOURNAL
[AGE 20
a
Sir. I never saw a country which more delighted
me. A man might travel many hundred miles
and not find so fine woodlands as abound in this
neighbourhood. But the good people who live
in them do not esteem them. It is people born
in town who are intoxicated with being in the
country. It certainly is a good deal like being
drunk, the feelings of a cit in the hills. In Cam-
bridge there is some wild land called Sweet
Auburn, upwards of a mile from the Colleges,
and yet the students will go in bands over a flat
sandy road, and in summer evenings the woods
are full of them. They are so happy they do not
know what to do. They will scatter far and wide,
too, among some insignificant whortleberry
bushes, pricked with thorns and stung by mus-
quetoes for hours, for the sake of picking a pint
of berries; occasionally chewing a bug of inde-
scribable bad relish. You count it nothing more
to go among green bushes than on the roads, but
those who have been educated in dusty streets
enjoy as much sauntering here as you would in
the orange groves and cinnamon gardens of the
East Indies.
They say there is a tune which is forbidden to
be played in the European armies because it
makes the Swiss desert, since it reminds them


1824) COUNTRY JOYS 351
ü
ndes
sie
ed se
Comen
so forcibly of their hills and home. I have heard
many Swiss tunes played in college. Balancing
between getting and not getting a hard lesson, a
breath of fragrant air from the fields coming in
at the window would serve as a Swiss tune and
make me desert to the glens from which it came.
Nor is that vagabond inclination wholly gone
yet. And many a sultry afternoon, last summer,
I left my Latin and my English to go with my
gun and see the rabbits and squirrels and robins
in the woods. Goodbye, Sir. Stop a moment. I
have heard a clergyman of Maine say that in his
Parish are the Penobscot Indians, and that when
any one of them in summer has been absent for
some weeks a-hunting, he comes back among
them a different person and altogether unlike
any of the rest, with an eagle's eye, a wild look,
and commanding carriage and gesture; but after
a few weeks it wears off again into the indolent
dronelike apathy which all exhibit. Good day,
Sir.
over at
he meno
er dos
and ai
prilie
I
would
7s of
THE PURITANS; MELIORATION OF THE TYPE
Such a change as Hume remarks to have taken
place in men's minds, about the reign of James I,
may be found also, perhaps, in a complete obser-
vation of the early and later books of this coun-
bidden
saus
ds the


352
JOURNAL
[Age 20
ace
we
- 37 mpya
try. The race who fought the Revolution out
were obviously not of the same temper and man-
ners as the first comers to the wilderness. They
had dropped so much of the puritanism of their
sires, that they would hardly have been acknow-
ledged by them as sound members of their rig-
orous society. This nation is now honourably
distinguished above all others for greater moral
hi purity. But the constant intercourse with Eu-
rope constantly lessens the distinction; and lib-
erality of religious and political sentiment gains
ground rapidly. The great men of our first
age were Bradford, Standish, Cotton, Winthrop,
Phipps, and Underwood; of our second, the
Mathers, John Eliot, Witherspoon, and Presi-
dent Edwards; and of the third, Otis, Adams,
Washington, Franklin. Smith of Virginia would
not have been admitted to the Plymouth doors,
unless, perchance, on account of the slaughter
of the three Saracens. Liberality of religion and
of politics do not always go hand in hand. For
the same Puritans who framed the English Con-
stitution persecuted the Quakers and hanged the
witches. The adventurous spirit which distin-
guished the settlers was begotten by the fanati-
cism of the Reformation, a spirit which confides
in its own strength for the accomplishment of its


1824]
THE BLACKBIRD
353
pie
not
ackout
103174
ends, and disdains to calculate the chance of fail-
ure. It is strange, gratifying, to see how faithfully
the feelings of one generation may be propagated
to another amid the adverse action of all outward
circumstances, poverty, riches, revolution. From
the close of Elizabeth's reign, the intolerance
and bigotry of the Puritans continued and mul-
tiplied until the outbreak in England in 1640 (?),
and, in the branch of the stock in America, in
the ecclesiastical tyranny. After that efferves-
cence, men corrected the faults of inexperience,
and the following generation here were more
marked by good sense. Gibbon said 'twas as rare
as genius.
THE BLACKBIRD
The blackbird's song is in my ear,
A summer sound I leap to hear;
Day breaks through yonder dusky cloud
O’er well-known cliffs, those giants proud;
And I am glad the day is come
To greet me in my ancient home.
2
Rejoice with me, melodious bird,
Whose merry note my childhood heard ;
For I've come back again to see
The wildwoods of mine infancy;
For, O my home, I thought no more —
Hot


354
JOURNAL
(Age 20
I love the voice of the bird,
And the tree where he builds his nest,
And the grove where man's mirth and man's grief are
unheard.
Ye are my home, ye ancient rocks,
Who lift ’mid cedar shades, your rugged crest;
The flowers, like Beauty's golden locks,
Adorn your brow and droop upon your breast.
Mountain and cliff and lake, I am your child ;
Ye were the cradle of mine infancy,
The playground of my youth.'
He who frequents these scenes, where Nature
discloses her magnificence to silence and solitude,
will have his mind occupied often by trains of
thought of a peculiarly solemn tone, which never
interrupted the profligacy of libertines, the
money-getting of the miser, or the glory-getting
of the ambitious. In the depths of the forest,
where the noon comes like twilight, on the cliff,
in the cavern, and by the lonely lake, where the
The imagery of rock and cedar shows that this outburst
of joy in Spring was inspired by the rougher parts of Rox-
bury, where Emerson for the time dwelt, and whither, as a
boy, he had made excursions. As for mountains, Blue Hill
was the nearest approach to one, but the young poet felt free
to include all wild Nature in his description. Wordsworth's
influence seems to appear in the last lines.


1824] TEMPLE OF NATURE 355
sounds of man's mirth and of man's sorrow were
never heard, where the squirrel inhabits and the
voice of the bird echoes, —is a shrine which few
visit in vain, an oracle which returns no ambig-
uous response. The pilgrim who retires hither
wonders how his heart could ever cleave so
mightily to the world whose deafening tumult he
has left behind. What are temples and towered
cities to him? He has come to a sweeter and
more desirable creation. When his eye reaches
upward by the sides of the piled rocks to the
grassy summit, he feels that the magnificence of
man is quelled and subdued here. The very leaf
under his foot, the little flowers that embroider
his path, outdo the art, and outshine the glory
of man. ... Things here assume their natu-
ral proportions, before distorted by prejudice.
What, in this solitude, are the libraries of learn-.
ing? The scholar and the peasant are alike in the
view which Nature takes of them. The barriers
of artificial distinction are broken down. So-
ciety's iron sceptre of ceremony is dishonoured
here, — here in the footsteps of the invisible,
in the bright ruins of the original creation, over
which the Morning stars sang together, and
where, even now, they shed their sweetest light.
Whatsoever beings watch over these inner cham-
ve
ciers


356
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
bers of Nature, they have not abandoned their
charge. Nature never tires of ber house, and
each year its glorious tapestry is newly hung. ...
[YOUNG AMERICA'S JUDGMENTS]
Youth is not the fault nations soonest mend,
and it may be very long before the world's
experience can be any wise pronounced mature.
What are we who sit in judgment upon our
fathers, as if upon a remote and foreign race?
Their stripling progeny; inhabiting their hearths,
covered with the dust of their prejudices, dressed
in their robes and using their wealth. When
hundreds of ages shall have rolled away and the
scholar's eye shall combine the entire history of
a thousand nations in one view, it will be less
immodest and more easy to pronounce on the
merits of their respective literatures. It will cor-
rect our vain pretensions to read often Frank-
lin's scrap called “Ephemeris.”
FROM A LETTER TO MISS EMERSON
March 21, 1824.
No fashion is so frantic as to depreciate
thought. No change of times or minds has ever
occurred to throw too much intellect on the
market. The world is very poor amidst the


1824]
LETTERS
357
rich library of all knowledge its vaunting chil-
dren have bequeathed it. Now, in its ripe and
learned old age, come I, its docile child, to be
pleased and instructed by its abundant wisdom;
but when I open its accepted gospels of thought
and learning, its sages and bards, I find they
were all fain to spin a spider thread of intellect,
to borrow much of each other, to arrive at few
results, and to hide or supply meagreness by
profuse ornament. I am therefore curious to
know what living wit (not perverted by the vul-
gar rage of writing a book) has suggested or
concluded upon the dark sayings and sphinx
riddles of philosophy and life; I do beseech your
charity not to withhold your pen. I have one
more calculation with which I please myself,
that if my gross body outlive you, you will
bequeath me the legacy of all your recorded
thought. I know not to what purpose you
should think and write so many years (pardon
the coarseness of the phrase) if you design to
burn or bury your books, like Prospero. 'Tis
counted good in the Greek and the Roman to
have planted so many fair flowers of fancy on
the open road of poetry, for the use and plea-
sure of all subsequent travellers. He who makes
one addition to the stock of thought in circula-
CO


358
(AGE 20
JOURNAL
tion among men is a benefactor to an unknown
amount, and has not lost his day. If you are
too proud to expose the mind's wealth to the
vulgar voice of fame (as De Staël has done),
you do philanthropy a wrong, and friendship a
wrong, to withhold it from men and from a
friend. And what will you want of it where you
go? Says Faith: If you are to lie for a season in
cold obstruction, it will rot by your side. If you
wake in glorified existence, you will cease to
value these rudiments of the soul. But cast your
bread on the waters and you will find it after
many days; you may find it in other worlds
bearing fruit, and multiplying, as is the nature
of thought. Why is the fruit of knowledge sor-
row? I have, it may be, a pleasant poetical cast
of thought — because I am ignorant. I had a
pleasanter and more romantic existence (for such
is childhood) whilst I thought the rainbow a
symbol and an arch in heaven, and not necessary
results of light and eyes, whilst I believed that
the country had some essential sacredness, some
nobler difference from the town than that one
was builded, ť other not. A flower and a butter-
fly lose every charm when poring science dis-
closes lobes and stomachs, acids and alkalies in
their delicate beauty. I dislike to augment my


1824) TO MISS EMERSON 359
slender store of chemistry and astronomy, and
I think I could have helped the monks to be-
Tabour Galileo for saying the everlasting earth
moved. Now these few lines are an epitome of
the history of knowledge. Every step Science
has made — was it not the successive destruc-
tion of agreeable delusions which jointly made
up no mean portion of human happiness? In
metaphysics, “the gymnastics of the soul,”
what has reason done since Plato's day but rend
and tear his gorgeous fabric. And how are we
the wiser? Instead of the unmeasurable theatre
which we deemed was here opened to the range
of the understanding, we are now reduced to a
little circle of definitions and logic round which
we may humbly run. And how has Faith fared?
Why, the Reformer's axe has hewed down idol
after idol, and corruption and imperfection, un-
til Faith is bare and very cold. And they have
not done stripping yet, but must reach the
bone. The old fable said Truth was by gods or
men made naked. I wish the gods would help
her to a garment or make her fairer. From
Eden to America the apples of the tree of
knowledge are but bitter fruit in the end.


360
(AGE 20
JOURNAL
MYSELF
Sunday, April 18, 1824.
“ Nil fuit unquam sic dispar sibi."
HORACE.
I am beginning my professional studies. In a
month I shall be legally a man. And I deliber-
ately dedicate my time, my talents, and my hopes
to the Church. Man is an animal that looks be-
fore and after ; and I should be loth to reflect at
a remote period that I took so solemn a step in
my existence without some careful examination
of my past and present life. Since I cannot alter,
I would not repent the resolution I have made,
and this page must be witness to the latest year
of my life whether I have good grounds to war-
rant my determination.
I cannot dissemble that my abilities are below
my ambition. And I find that I judged by a
false criterion when I measured my powers by
my ability to understand and to criticize the in-
tellectual character of another. For men graduate
their respect, not by the secret wealth, but by the
outward use; not by the power to understand,
but by the power to act. I have, or had, a strong
imagination, and consequently a keen relish for
the beauties of poetry. The exercise which the


1824] SELF-EXAMINATION 361
SO
practice of composition gives to this faculty is
the cause of my immoderate fondness for writ-
ing, which has swelled these pages to a volumi-
nous extent. My reasoning faculty is proportion-
ably weak, nor can I ever hope to write a Butler's
Analogy or an Essay of Hume. Nor is it strange
that with this confession I should choose the-
ology, which is from everlasting to everlasting
“debateable ground.” For, the highest species of
reasoning upon divine subjects is rather the fruit
of a sort of moral imagination, than of the “Rea-
soning Machines,” such as Locke and Clarke
and David Hume. Dr. Channing's Dudleian
Lecture is the model of what I mean, and the
faculty which produced this is akin to the higher
flights of the fancy. I may add that the preach-
ing most in vogue at the present day depends
chiefly on imagination for its success, and asks
those accomplishments which I believe are most
within my grasp. I have set down little which
can gratify my vanity, and I must further say
that every comparison of myself with my mates
that six or seven, perhaps sixteen or seventeen,
years have made, has convinced me that there
exists a signal defect of character which neutral-
izes in great part the just influence my talents
ought to have. Whether that defect be in the


362
(AGE 20
JOURNAL
address, in the fault of good forms, - which,
Queen Isabella said, were like perpetual letters-
commendatory — or deeper seated in an absence
of common sympatbies, or even in a levity of the
understanding, I cannot tell. But its bitter fruits
are a sore uneasiness in the company of most
men and women, a frigid fear of offending and
jealousy of disrespect, an inability to lead and
an unwillingness to follow the current conversa-
tion, which contrive to make me second with all
those among whom chiefly I wish to be first.
Hence my bearing in the world is the direct
opposite of that good-humoured independence
and self-esteem which should mark the gentle-
man. Be it here remembered that there is a de-
cent pride which is conspicuous in the perfect
model of a Christian man. I am unfortunate
also, as was Rienzi, in a propensity to laugh, or
rather, snicker. I am ill at ease, therefore, among
men. I criticize with hardness; I lavishly ap-
plaud; I weakly argue; and I wonder with a
“foolish face of praise.”
Now the profession of law demands a good
deal of personal address, an impregnable confi-
dence in one's own powers, upon all occasions
expected and unexpected, and a logical mode of
thinking and speaking, which I do not possess,
се
IOUS


1824] SELF-EXAMINATION 363
-18, -
etullo
In an de
Jerzτα:
Fender
co leads
CONTO
ado
hty
the
and may not reasonably hope to obtain. Medi-
cine also makes large demands on the practitioner
for a seducing mannerism. And I have no taste
for the pestle and mortar, for Bell on the bones,
or Hunter, or Celsus.
Butin Divinity I hope to thrive. I inherit from
my sire a formality of manner and speech, but
I derive from him, or his patriotic parent, a pas-
sionate love for the strains of eloquence. I burn
after the “ aliquid immensum infinitumque" which
Cicero desired. What we ardently love we learn
to imitate. My understanding venerates and my
heart loves that cause which is dear to God and
man—the laws of morals, the Revelations which
sanction, and the blood of martyrs and trium-
phant suffering of the saints which seal them. In
my better hours, I am the believer (if not the
dupe) of brilliant promises, and can respect
myself as the possessor of those powers which
command the reason and passions of the mul-
titude. The office of a clergy man is twofold:
public preaching and private influence. Entire
success in the first is the lot of few, but this I
am encouraged to expect. If, however, the indi-
vidual himself lack that moral worth which is to
secure the last, his studies upon the first are idly
spent. The most prodigious genius, a seraph's
autori


364
JOURNAL
(AGE 20
eloquence, will shamefully defeat its own end, if
it has not first won the heart of the defender to
the cause he defends. But the coolest reason
cannot censure my choice when I oblige myself
professionally to a life which all wise men freely
and advisedly adopt. I put no great restraint on
myself, and can therefore claim little merit in a
manner of life which chimes with inclination
and habit. But I would learn to love virtue for
her own sake. I would have my pen so guided
as was Milton's when a deep and enthusiastic
love of goodness and of God dictated the Comus
to the bard, or that prose rhapsody in the Third
Book of Prelaty. I would sacrifice inclination
to the interest of mind and soul. I would re-
member that
“Spare Fast oft with Gods doth diet,”
that Justinian devoted but one out of twenty-
four hours to sleep, and this week (for instance)
I will remember to curtail my dinner and sup-
per sensibly and rise from table each day with
an appetite, till Tuesday evening next, and so
see if it be a fact that I can understand more
clearly.
I have mentioned a defect of character; per-
haps it is not one, but many. Every wise man


1824]
365
NATURAL DEFECTS
aims at an entire conquest of himself. We ap-
plaud, as possessed of extraordinary good sense,
one who never makes the slightest mistake in
speech or action; one in whom not only every im-
portant step of life, but every passage of conver-
sation, every duty of the day, even every move-
ment of every muscle— hands, feet, and tongue,
are measured and dictated by deliberate reason.
I am not assuredly that excellent creature. A
score of words and deeds issue from me daily,
of which I am not the master. They are begot-
ten of weakness and born of shame. I cannot
assume the elevation I ought,— but lose the in-
fluence I should exert among those of meaner
or younger understanding, for want of sufficient
bottom in my nature, for want of that confidence
of manner which springs from an erect mind
which is without fear and without reproach. In
my frequent humiliation, even before women
and children, I am compelled to remember the
poor boy who cried, “ I told you, Father, they
would find me out.” Even those feelings which
are counted noble and generous take in me the
taint of frailty. For my strong propensity to
friendship, instead of working out its manly
ends, degenerates to a fondness for particular
casts of feature, perchance not unlike the doting
are


366
(AGE 20
JOURNAL
SS
"55
of old King James. Stateliness and silence hang
very like Mokannah's suspicious silver veil, only
concealing what is best not shewn. What is
called a warm heart, I have not.
The stern accuser Conscience cries that the
catalogue of confessions is not yet full. I am a
lover of indolence, and of the belly. And the
good have a right to ask the neophyte who wears
this garment of scarlet sin, why he comes where
all are apparelled in white? Dares he hope that
some patches of pure and generous feeling, some
bright fragments of lofty thought, it may be of
divine poesy, shall charm the eye away from all
the particoloured shades of his character? And
when he is clothed in the vestments of the priest,
and has inscribed on his forehead “ Holiness to
the Lord,” and wears on his breast the breast-
plate of the tribes, then can the Ethiopian change
his skin, and the unclean be pure? Or how shall
I strenuously enforce on men the duties and
habits to which I am a stranger? Physician,
heal thyself; I need not go far for an answer to
so natural a question. I am young in my ever-
lasting existence. I already discern the deep dye
of elementary errors, which threaten to colour its
infinity of duration. And I judge that if I devote
my nights and days in form, to the service of


1824] DUPE OF HOPE 367
God and the War against Sin, I shall soon be
prepared to do the same in substance.
I cannot accurately estimate my chances of
success, in my profession, and in life. Were it
just to judge the future from the past, they would
be very low. In my case, I think it is not. I have
never expected success in my present employ-
ment. My scholars are carefully instructed, my
money is faithfully earned, but the instructor is
little wiser, and the duties were never congenial
with my disposition. Thus far the dupe of
Hope, I have trudged on with my bundle at my
back, and my eye fixed on the distant hill where
my burden would fall. It may be I shall write
dupe a long time to come, and the end of life
shall intervene betwixt me and the release. My
trust is that my profession shall be my regenera-
tion of mind, manners, inward and outward
estate; or rather my starting-point, for I have
hoped to put on eloquence as a robe, and by
goodness and zeal and the awfulness of Virtue
to press and prevail over the false judgments,
the rebel passions and corrupt habits of men.
We blame the past, we magnify and gild the fu-
ture, and are not wiser for the multitude of days.
Spin on, ye of the adamantine spindle, spin on,
my fragile thread.


368
(AGE 20
JOURNAL
[CONTINUATION OF “GOODBYE, PROUD WORLD”]
I'm going to my own hearthstone,
Bosomed in yon green hills alone,
A secret shrine in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned ;
Their twilight shade, each summer day
Echoes the blackbird's roundelay,
And vulgar crowds have never trod
A spot that is sacred to Mind and God.
O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome ;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools and the learned clan;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet.
TODAY
I rake no coffined clay, nor publish wide
The resurrection of departed pride ;
Safe in their ancient crannies, dark and deep,
Let kings and conquerors, saints and soldiers sleep.
Late in the world — too late perchance for fame -
Just late enough to reap abundant blame —
I choose a novel theme, a bold abuse
Of critic charters, an unlaurelled Muse.


1824] MARY MOODY EMERSON 369
Old mouldy men and books and names and lands
Disgust my reason and defile my hands;
I had as lief respect an ancient shoe
As love old things for age, and hate the new.
I spurn the Past, my mind disdains its nod,
Nor kneels in homage to so mean a god.
I laugh at those who, while they gape and gaze,
The bald antiquity of China praise.
Youth is (whatever cynic tubs pretend)
The fault that boys and nations soonest mend.
The following extracts from letters written
by Miss Mary Emerson to her nephew, and his
to her in reply, should properly be introduced
here. They are taken from his journal or extract-
book No. XVIII, 2d.
Mr. Emerson in his account of his revered
Aunt (Lectures and Biographical Sketches), says:
“She had the misfortune of spinning with a
greater velocity than any of the other tops” in
ordinary motion, in conversation, in thought. So
in her writing, her thought leaves her expression
far behind. She often leaves out letters from
words, words from sentences, and does not tarry
to finish her thought. Hence her letters and
journals are often hard to make out.]


370
(AGE 20
JOURNAL
MISS EMERSON TO R. W. E.
[WATERFORD, Maine,] April 13, 1824.
“Imagination will always revolt at the loss
of the butterfly's beauty, and the rude waste of
the rich dew of the welkin from its own azure
cups, — but be patient. There are many who are
forced to creep thro’ the entrails of reptiles and
roots to find an infinite Designer. Never dislike
their little lobes and [sic], and all their capa-
cities to enjoy the raptures of sense, for they
afford so much comfort to those who seek for
analogies, and who are otherwise [rather:] re-
lated to the amiable instincts of animals than to
the lofty relations of reason and principle in the
higher orders. The longer you live, the more you
will have to endure the elementary existence of
society, and your premature wisdom will distaste
quiescence, when the old become gay and the
young grave at the portraiture of a fly and the
Galen dissection of a flower. Then you find no
necessary sacredness in the country. Nor did
Milton, but his mind and his spirit were their
own place and came when he called them in the
solitude of darkness. Solitude, which to people
not talented to deviate from the beaten track is
the safe ground of mediocrity, without offending,
asol


1824) MISS EMERSON'S LETTER 371
is to learning and genius the only sure labyrinth,
tho' sometimes gloomy, to form the eagle wing
that will bear one farther than Suns and Stars.
Byron and Wordsworth have there best, and
only intensely, burnished their pens. Would to
Providence your unfoldings might be there-
that it were not a wild and fruitless wish that you
could be disunited from travelling with the souls
of other men, of living and breathing, reading
and writing with one vital time-sated idea —
their opinions! So close was this conjunction that
a certain pilgrim lived for some months in an
eclipse so monotonous as scarcely to discern the
disk of her own particular star. Could a mind
return to its first fortunate seclusion, where it
opened with its own peculiar colours and spread
them out on its own rhymy pallette [sic], with its
added stock, and spread them beneath the cross,
what a mercy to the age! That religion so poetical,
so philosophical, so adapted to unfold the under-
standing, when studied 'where sublime senti-
ments and actions spring from the desire which
Genius always possesses of breaking those
bounds which circumscribe the imagination. The
heroism of morals, the enthusiasm of eloquence,
the love of an eternal fame are supernatural
enjoyments allotted only to minds which are
me


372
JOURNAL
(AGE 20
at once exalted and melancholy, and wearied
and disgusted with everything transitory and
bounded. This disposition of mind is the source
of every generous passion and philosophical dis-
covery.' Would this description of character,
which I have copied from a glorious author, suit
even our boasted Everett? Is he not completely
enveloped in foreign matters and an artificial
character? I am glad that his notice has fallen
on Edward, who will be for flinging his light on
a civil profession (rather] than on another des-
tiny. ... Those ‘gospels of thought and wis-
dom' which you find so gossamer, –... two
or three old books contain everything grand for
me. Yet you call this age the ripest. Where are
its Martyrs? Where was an age since Chris-
tianity, when the public mind had less hold of
the strongest of all truths? The mass will ever
be in swaddlings, and there ever have been great
minds, so I cannot see clearly the comparison
between infancy and age. The arts not equalled;
and even Milton casting an eye toward Ovid
and Virgil, which seems less bearable than to-
wards Homer.
... I would remind your Grace — tho' but
an Abbess of a humble Vale— that the triple
bow was never seen before the Deluge; nor is it


1824] MISS EMERSON'S LETTER 373
were no
or no
a legend. There were no rains in those regions,
or none heavy enow to give the binding of that
flowery verge, before the alteration the flood
caused. St. Pierre favours this. Rich as is the
triple bow of promise (and it has been seen
bending on the grave of long buried friendship)
it would lose its best beauty, even if the Com-
mentators' restoring it as a Covenant bow were
just. I am glad to spew out a scrap of learning
to your science-ship in revenge for your speak-
ing of my moral scrawls and Sybilline scraps.
In truth I have nothing of the old Eld but as
many sands which I fear. The better part of
the flattering letter I receive as a token of kind-
ness. It was ingeniously done to write so well
on my old almanacks. And I never reject hand-
some compliment, for the only thing would
occur to you, what possible interest would any
one have in flattering me. Yet in solitude it
is not necessary, as in society, where even the
oars of life can hardly be kept in motion without.
But if you tax me with any payment in the
course of this letter, why, take it as debt or due
to merit, for it is always passable in the best
society.” ...
OCC


374
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
R. W. E. TO MISS EMERSON
April 30, 1824.
... Is not life merely a sort of perpetual
motion? One identical restlessness in all the
individuals, but applied by the artist to many
works, – as steam will turn a spit, or propel a
man of war? Different trades thrive at different
periods, and capital is converted occasionally
from one to the other. Ten centuries ago, the
human machines in Europe were all busy as
wheels can be in killing man, destroying libra-
ries, extirpating art, justice, and mercy. Today,
with the same reckless activity, good is done,
books are written and read, useful and elegant
institutions reared, manners are polished and
morals revered. Colleges take the place of
schools, a sage of an hero. German, Saxon, Hun,
Dane, in dusty gowns and darkened cloisters,
by an odd revolution of fortune are at this mo-
ment exploring with critical acumen the rude
antiquity, the manners, origin, and the war-path
of their ancestors, and evincing, it may be, as
much intrepidity and unconquerable pride in
pedant argument as did their forefathers when
they clashed their bucklers in the tented field.
No change of manners leaves Heaven without a


1824] TO MISS EMERSON 375
witness, and Luitprand and St. Gregory and St.,
etc., are represented today by Dr. Channing,
Dr. Chalmers, etc. But for cannibal Saracens,
have come up critical scholars ; for paynim giants
locking their dungeons, have come up Howards,
opening the dungeon doors. The use of the
safety-lamp, of the compass and of the press
supersede the talismans and charlatanry of su-
perstition. For Attila has come Wilberforce,
and for Alaric, Franklin.
The religious spirit was the excess of that day,
and Europe was depopulated in seven unsuc-
cessful crusades. Spirit of liberty is the fashion
of this age, and we have had our unsuccessful
crusades. Naples, Spain and Greece are the
coveted holy lands of modern chivalry. I am
glad to remark how much more Reason is the
friend of our hopes than of theirs.
Is man the result of men, or a mushroom ex-
otic in every land? Was Dr. Franklin (one of
the most sensible men that ever lived) as likely
to be born elsewhere as at Boston and in 17–?
Don't you admire (I am not sure you do) the
serene and powerful understanding which was
so eminently practical and useful, which grasped
the policy of the globe, and the form of a fly,
with like felicity and ease; which seemed to be a


376
JOURNAL (Age 20
transmigration of the Genius of Socrates — yet
more useful, more moral, and more pure, and
a living contradiction of the buffoonery that
mocked a philosophy in the clouds? Franklin
was no “Seraphic Doctor,” no verbal gladiator
clad in complete mail of syllogisms, but a sage
who used his pen with a dignity and effect
which was new, and had been supposed to be-
long only to the sword. He was a man of that
singular force of mind (with which in the course
of Providence so few men are gifted) which
seems designed to effect by individual influence
what is ordinarily done by the slow and secret
work of institutions and national growth. One
enjoys a higher conception of human worth in
measuring the vast influence exercised on men's
minds by Franklin's character than even by
reading books of remote ages. Homer has in-
deed triumphed over time, but a poem is, at
best, a work of art, and is seen ever with the
same cold eyes that survey a marble statue or
Italian painting. Whoever found, of all the gen-
erations of the readers of Homer — where is the
madcap? — that his conduct in life was ruled or
biassed one moment after merry boyhood by the
blind bard's genius? I own I have read some-
where (perchance in Foster's Essays) such an


1824] CHOICE OF PROFESSION 377
opinion avowed, but it smacked of extravagance
then, and smacks now. But many millions have
already lived and millions are now alive who
have felt through their whole lives the powerful
good effect both of Franklin's actions and his
writings. His subtle observation, his seasonable
wit, his profound reason and his mild and
majestic virtues made him idolized in France,
feared in England, and obeyed in America.
Providence seemed to send him in our hour of
need, qualified extraordinarily for an extraordi-
nary service. Nor is it easy to limit the fame of
the influence of those who thus mightily act on
society. His good offices reach through a thou-
sand years to posterity unborn, who will bless
the builders of this Doric temple of liberty.
Moses and Aaron, priests and Levites, led out
the people into the appointed land, but, long
after, God anointed a wise king, the wisest of
men, to settle the foundations of civil prosperity
and erect an altar to Himself. ...
MYSELF (continued)
May 2d, 1824.
It puzzles and mortifies the bounding spirit
to be brought so soon to a goal. A choice of
three professions, in either of which but a small


378
[AGE 20
JOURNAL
portion of time is professedly devoted to the
analysis of those high relations which unite us
to God, and those inexplicably curious cords that
fasten us to matter. Men's creeds can never, at
least in youth, set the heart entirely at ease.
They strike the eye ever and anon as fine-spun
textures through which rebellious doubt is im-
patient, sometimes desperate, to plunge. There
is a dreaminess about my mode of life (which
may be a depravity) which loosens the tenacity
of what should be most tenacious — this my
grasp on heaven and earth. I am the servant
more than the master of my fates. They seem
to lead me into many a slough where I do no
better than despond. And as to the life I lead,
and the works and the days, I should blush to
recite the unprofitable account. But prophets
and philosophers assure me that I am immortal,..
and sometimes my own imagination goes into a
fever with its hopes and conceptions. Tell me,
my soul, if this be true, if these indolent days
and frivolous nights, these insignificant accom-
plishments, this handful of thought, this pittance
of virtues, are to form my trust and claim on an
existence as imperishable as my Maker's. There
is no such thing accorded to the universal prayer
of man as satisfactory knowledge. Metaphysics
com-


1824)
379
METAPHYSICS
teach me admirably well what I knew before;
setting out in order particular after particular,
bone after bone, the anatomy of the mind. My
knowledge is thus arranged, not augmented.
Morals, too, — the proud science which departs
at once from the lower creation about which
most of man's philosophy is conversant, and
professes to deal with his sublimest connexions
and separate destiny,-morals are chiefly occu-
pied in discriminating between what is general
and what is partial, or in tying rules together by..
a thread which is called a system or a princi-
ple. But neither metaphysics nor ethics are more
than outside sciences. They give me no insight
into the nature and design of my being, and the
profoundest scholar in them both is as far from
any clue to the Being and the work behind the
scenes, as the Scythian or the Mohawk. For
Morals and Metaphysics, Cudworth and Locke
may both be true, and every system of religion
yet offered to man wholly false. To glowing
hope, moreover, 't is alarming to see the full and
regular series of animals from mites and worms
up to man; yet he who has the same organiza-
tion and a little more mind pretends to an insu-
lated and extraordinary destiny to which his
fellows of the stall and field are in no part ad-


380
JOURNAL
[AGE 21
mitted, nay are disdainfully excluded.' . . . But
for myself, wo is me! these poor and barren
thoughts are the best in my brain-
“The glow
That in my spirit dwelt is Auttering faint and low."
I am ambitious not to live in a corner, or, which
is tenfold perdition, to be contemptible in a
corner. Meantime my prospect is no better;
my soul is dark or is dead. I will hope “ She is
not dead, but sleepeth.”
ASIA
Sleep on, ye drowsy tribes whose old repose
The roaring oceans of the East enclose;
Old Asia, nurse of man, and bower of gods,
The dragon Tyranny with crown and ball
Chants to thy dreams his ancient lullaby.
LETTER TO PLATO
The voice of antiquity has proclaimed, most
venerable Shade, that if the Father of the Gods
should converse with men he would speak in
the language of Plato. In cloisters and colleges,
lovers of philosophy are found to this day who
repeat this praise. But the revolution of ages has
1 This is, perhaps, the first hint of his coming interest in
Evolution.


1824] LETTER TO PLATO 381
introduced other tongues into the world and the
dialect of Attica is well-nigh forgotten. Rome
succeeded to the honours of Greece ; Italy,
France and England to the power and refine-
ment of Rome, and the children of the proud
republicans who disgraced Xerxes, defied Asia,
and instructed all Europe, are now cooped up
in a corner of their patrimony, making a des-
perate stand for their lives against a barbarous
nation whose bondmen they have been. In these
circumstances, the pillars of the Porch have been
broken and the groves of the Academy felled to
the ground. Philosophy discourses in another
language, and, though the messages of Deity
are brought to men, they come in terms, as well
as on topics, to which you, illustrious Athe-
nian(?), were a stranger. In this old age of the
world, I shall therefore speak to the spirit of
Plato in a new language, but in one whereinto
has long been transfused all the wealth of
ancient thought, enriched, and perchance out-
weighed, by productions of modern genius. I
may add that I live in a land which you alone
prophesied to your contemporaries, where is
founded a political system more wise and suc-
cessful than Utopia or the Atlantis.
You have now dwelled in the land of souls


382
JOURNAL
(AGE 21
upwards of twenty centuries, and in the mean-
time mightier changes than those to which I
have already alluded have appeared on earth. I
have no design to interrupt your serene repose
with the weary annals of political convulsion..
These were always alike, and the fortunes of ages
may be told from an infancy as brief as man's
life. The desperate state of the Greek Republic
concerns me not; it has long ceased to touch
yourself. I write of higher revolutions and vaster
communities. I write of the moral and religious
condition of man.
As the world has grown older, the theory of
life has grown better, while a correspondent im-
provement in practice has not been observed.
Eighteen hundred years ago a Revelation came
down from heaven which distinctly declared the
leading principles of ethics, and that in so clear
and popular a form that the very terms in which
they were conveyed served the most illiterate as
well as the great and wise for a manual, a Rule
of life. The book which contains this divine
message has done more than any other to sap
the authority — I might say, to sweep away the
influence — of Socrates and his disciple. Men
still commend your wisdom, for indeed, Plato,
thou reasonest well, but Christ and his apostles


1824) LETTER TO PLATO 383
UC-
infinitely better, - not through thy fault, but
through their inspiration. Thus a religious revo-
lution has taken place in the midst of civilized
nations, more radical and extensive than any
other which ever came, be it religious, scientific
or political. Men are now furnished with creeds,
animated by all the motives a gospel offers, and
they look back with pity on the proud attain-
ments of the pagan Plato and his emulous suc-
cessors, and around upon the living pagan na-
tions of the East and West. This Dispensation
of the Supreme Being is expounded and enforced
to all classes of men by a regular priesthood.
. That priesthood finds riddles in their vocation
hard to solve, wonders not easy to digest. They
examine with curious inquiry public annals and
private anecdotes of your age to ascertain the
just level to which human virtue had then arisen;
to find how general were integrity, temperance,
and charity; to find how much the gods were
reverenced; and then to compare accurately the
result with the known condition of modern
Europe and America. For it is not believed
possible by those living under the influence of
such new and puissant principles as our gospel
hath erected, that any high standard could have
obtained of thought or action under the patron-
WN


384
JOURNAL
(AGE 21
age of your gaudy and indecent idolatry. But
now and then a scholar whose midnight lamp is
regularly lit to unfold your spirit, appeals from
the long mythology which the poets forged, to
your own lofty speculations on the nature of the
Gods and the obligations to virtue—which
Christianity hath rather outstripped than con-
tradicted; when a scholar appeals from that to
these for the true belief of good men, your con-
temporaries, he is told that the mass of men re-
garded your pages as fine-spun theories, unsanc-
tioned, unpractical, untrue; that you, Plato, did
not know if there were many gods or but One;
that you inculcated the observance of the vulgar
superstitions of the day. If the law of the uni-
verse admitted of exception, and it were allowed
me to depart to your refulgent shores and com-
mune with Plato, this is the information I should
seek at your hands. How could those parts of
the social machine whose consistency and just
action depends entirely upon the morality and
religion sown and grown in the community, how
could these be kept in safe and efficient arrange-
ment under a system which, besides being friv-
olous, was the butt of vulgar ridicule?
Is it necessary that men should have before
them the strong excitement of religion and its


1824) LETTER TO PLATO 385
was acc
thrilling motives? One who was accustomed to
constant pressure of their yoke would pronounce
it indispensable. It was so specially made for man
and blends so intimately with his nature and
habits that it is difficult for the believer to con-
ceive of unbelief. Nay, the influence seems to
spread a great deal wider and to affect all those
who belong to a religious country, though the
predominance of these feelings be no part of
their character. But 'tis very possible that this
may be illusory and it seems to me if we study
the particular actions making up the aggregate
which we call character, and abandon generalities,
we shall find that there is a great self-deception
practised daily in society where gospels are pro-
mulged, and that the proneness of men to judge
of themselves by their best moments, combining
with that unqualified approbation which every
moral being must needs yield to a system so
pure, leads men to suspect that the deeds they
do from a broad view of their interest, they do
from religious motives and a powerful bias to
Virtue.
It is a favourite point, Plato, with our divines,
to argue from the misery and vice anciently pre-
valent in the world, a certain necessity of the
Revelation. Of this Revelation I am the ardent
m


386
[AGE 21
JOURNAL
ne
friend. Of the Being who sent it I am the child,
and I trust I am disposed from reason and affec-
tion with the whole force of my understanding,
the warmth of my heart, and the constant atten-
tion of all my life, to practise the duties there
enjoined and to help its diffusion throughout the
globe. But I confess it has not for me the same
exclusive and extraordinary claims it has for
many. I hold Reason to be a prior Revelation,
and that they do not contradict each other. I
conceive that the Creator addresses his messages
to the minds of his children, and will not mock
them by acting upon their moral character by
means of motives which are wild and unintelli-
gible to them. The assent which fear and su-
perstition shall extort from them to words or
rites or reasons which they do not understand,
since it makes a ruin of the mind, can please
none but a cruel and malicious divinity. The
belief of such a god and such sublime depravity
is absurd. His house is divided against itself.
His house, his universe, cannot stand. The er-
rand which the true God sends, which men have
hoped to receive, which philosophers waited for
in your Porches and Schools, – must be worthy
of him, or it will be rejected as a mountebank's
tales and wonders. What we do not apprehend,


1824) LETTER TO PLATO 387
tilet
the de
the
alms 13
For Rea
cada
This is
we first admire, and then ridicule. Therefore I
scout all these parts of the book which are reck-
oned mysteries.
But one of the greatest of these is of external,
rather than internal, character, by which the
Revelation is made but a portion of a certain
great scheme planned from eternity in heaven to
be slowly developed on earth. It is made essen-
tial to the economy of Providence and necessary
to the welfare of man. I need not inform you in
all its depraved details of the theology under
whose chains Calvin of Geneva bound Europe
down; but this opinion, that the Revelation had i
become necessary to the salvation of men through
some conjunction of events in heaven, is one of
its vagaries. This is one which, from whatever
cause, has lingered in men's minds after the rest
of that family of errors disappeared. And sober
and sensible theologians speak of the ages pre-
ceding the event as a long preparation for it, and
of the whole history of man as only relative to
it. The cases are so few in which we can see
connexion and order in events, by reason of the
narrow field of our vision, that we are glad in
our vanity if we can solder with our imagina-
tions into a system, things in fact unconnected,
can turn the ravishment of devotion or poetry
nde


388
JOURNAL (AGE 21
into prophecies, by searching up and down in the
great garner of history for an event that will
chime with a prediction.
THE GREEKS
... The Grecian genius did not start into
life with the victories of Salamis and Platæa, but
was born and disciplined before Homer sang.
AMERICA
When this country is censured for its fool-
hardy ambition to take a stand in its green years
among old and proud nations, it is no reproach
and no disqualification to be told, But you have
no literature. It is admitted we have none. But
we have what is better. We have a government
and a national spirit that is better than poems or
histories, and these have a premature ripeness
that is incompatible with the rapid production
of the latter. We should take shame to our-
selves as sluggish and Boeotian if it were right-
eously said that we had done nothing for
ourselves, neither in learning, nor arts, nor gov-
ernment, nor political economy. But we see and
feel that in the space of two generations this
nation has taken such a start as already to out-
strip the bold freedom of modern speculation


1824)
MANNERS
389
which ordinarily (universally, but for this case)
is considerably in advance of practice. No man
calls Mr. Hume an old-fashioned and short-
sighted politician, yet many pages of his history
have lost their credit already by the practical
confutation of their principles. 'Tis no disgrace
to tell Newton he is no poet, nor America even.
- $227
Pizza
Tror de
Done
Treme
POS
MANNERS'
Pericles, Cæsar, Chesterfield, Henry IV of
France. It certainly is worth one's while, who
considers what sway elegant manners bear in
society, and how wealth, genius and moral worth,
all extrinsic and intrinsic good in men, do, in
society, feel their empire,- it becomes a clear
command of reason to cultivate them. There are
some men, wittily called Nature's Gentlemen,
who need no discipline, but grow straight up
into shape and grace and can match the proud-
est in dignified demeanour and the gentlest in
courtesy. Of these the line in the old song is a
thousand times quoted,
“My face's my fortune, Sir, she said.”
... I speak here of no transient success in
i Compare the Motto to essay on Behaviour" (Conduct
of Life), also printed in Poems.
2 10.
ere regio
ل هو م
TORS
arbeit


390 . JOURNAL [AGE 21
tying a neckcloth aright, and making a fashion-
able bow, and speaking in the precise nick of
time, and the just length, but of manners of a
sensible man when they become the chief chan-
nel in which a man's sense runs; of those which
are the plain index of fine sense and fine feelings,
which impress all and offend none. The speci-
mens of this sort are to be searched for in the
summits of society,— for these manners are in-
variably successful, - or among the young, not
yet advanced. They had better be observed in
youth, for there is nothing in art or nature so
charming as the brilliant manners of one of these
candidates for eminence before adulation has got
to be an old song with him, while hope and love
dazzle him. Their address is marked by an alac-
rity of manner arising from elasticity of spirits
and of limbs that no eye can watch unmoved.
The spectacle these afford is a perfect tonic in
its physical effect, like light, or like wine. It
imparts an impulse of cheerfulness not easily
withstood to all within their influence; it effaces
for a moment the omnipresent consciousness of
sin, sickness, sorrow. It is an attractive subject.
...“Many men,” said Montaigne, “ I have
known of supercelestial opinions and subterra-
nean manners.” ...,


1824),
MANNERS
391
... Manners is a fourth fine art, and, like
Painting, Poetry and Sculpture, is founded on
fiction. It is a mask worn by men of sense to
deceive the vulgar, ape the conduct of every
superior intelligence. Thus I know models who
affect to drop carelessly the most subtle wit or
profound thought. Every virtue is spoken of
with respect, even those to which their private
life bears little love. Every event is treated
with its exact measure of interest, — sickness
and death, a balloon and a butterfly, being dis-
cussed with the same cool philosophy.
In the practice of these wise masters I know
different theories of manners prevail, and are as
many as the systems of philosophy — for this is
a species of second philosophy, and may be
termed the philosophy of life. Thus the sect of
the Stoics will have their mannerists who would
command in good company by inflexible recep-
tion of good and ill. Democritus has many, even
Heraclitus a few. Socrates has some disciples,
who use plain speech and practical as J. L., but
the predominant sect are those who hold fast
with the Epicureans, - independent and good-
humoured.


392
(AGE 21
JOURNAL
BOOKS
... Apart from the vastness of transitory
volumes which occasional politics or a thousand
ephemeral magnalia elicit, . . . there is another
sort of book which appears now and then in the
world, once in two or three centuries perhaps, and
which soon or late gets a foothold in popular es-
teem. I allude to those books which collect and
embody the wisdom of their times, and so mark
the stages of human improvement. Such are
the Proverbs of Solomon, the Essays of Mon-
taigne, and eminently the Essays of Bacon. Such
also (though in my judgment in far less degree)
is the proper merit of Mr. Pope's judicious
poems, the Moral Essays and Essay on Man,
which, without originality, seize upon all the
popular speculations floating among sensible
men and give them in a compact graceful form
to the following age. I should like to add an-
other volume to this valuable work. I am not
so foolhardy as to write Sequel to Bacon on my
title-page; and there are some reasons that in-
duce me to suppose that the undertaking of this
enterprise does not imply any censurable arro-
gance. ... It may be made clear that there may
be the Wisdom of an Age, independent of and


1824)
CONCLUSION
393
above the Wisdom of any individual whose life is
numbered in its years. And the diligence rather
than the genius of one mind may compile the
prudential maxims, domestic and public maxims
current in the world and which may be made to
surpass the single stores of any writer, as the
richest private funds are quickly exceeded by a
public purse.
CONCLUSION
Why has my motley diary no jokes? Because
it is a soliloquy and every man is grave alone.
1. There is no royal road to Learning.
II. Let not your virtue be of the written or
spoken sort, but of the practised.
III. The two chief differences among men
(touching the talents) consist, 1, in the different
degrees of attention they are able to command ;
2, in the unlike expression they give to the same
ideas.
IV. There is time enough for every business
men are really resolved to do.
V. Obsta principiis. Take heed of getting
cloyed with that honeycomb which Flattery
tempts with. 'Tis apt to blunt the edge of
appetite for many wholesome viands, and rob
you of many days of health.
ome


394
JOURNAL
(AGE 21
Let no man flatter himself with the hope of
true good or solid enjoyment from the study of
Shakspeare or Scott. Enjoy them as recreation.
You cannot please yourself by going to stare at
the moon; 't is beautiful when in your course it
comes.
END OF VOLUME I




















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