sion of labor. See "Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England," Lectures and Biographical Sketches.

Page 237, note 1. Mr. Emerson had neither the aptitude nor the training for carrying on a farm, or even a large garden, but, especially in his early years as a Concord householder, he took some care of his garden, and preferably of his orchard. But in household matters he disliked to be served by others, especially to call upon servants. He liked the verse from Horace: At mihi succurrit pro Ganymede manus

(My own right hand my cup-bearer shall be),

and a proverb, perhaps from the Persian,

The king's servant is the king himself.

Page 238, note I. His respect for labor was great, and is told in Oriental form in the verses,

Said Saadi, When I stood before

Hassan the camel-driver's door, etc.

Fragments on the Poet," Poems, Appendix.

Page 240, note I.

George Herbert in his

This passage suggests the lines of
Church Porch:

Some great estates provide, but not

A mastering mind; so both are lost thereby.

Page 248, note 1. A motto for those days in New England might have been the words put in Rob Roy's mouth by Wordsworth :—

Of old things all are over old,

Of good things none are good enough;
We'll show that we can help to frame
A world of other stuff.

Page 249, note I. In Mr. John Albee's excelle membrances of Emerson, speaking of the many youn whom his voice reached in the most obscure and pected places," he says that Mr. Emerson "received u and all with his unfailing suavity and deference. His man wards young men . . . I know no word for but expect as if the world-problem was now finally to be solyed, a were the beardless Edipuses for whom he had been fait waiting. . . . His magnanimous spirit soothed and reas us, and to the little we brought he added a full store, ins a silver cup in our coarse sacks of common grai that we returned to our brethren with gladness and prais

Page 251, note I. Omar the caliph, Mahomet's di cousin and second successor, who, first warring against later became converted. During his reign the Moslems everywhere victorious. He was rigorously ascetic in his its. This passage suggests two recent parallels, the of General Gordon of going into the bloody battles of Chinese war with only a cane in his hand, and the as ishing feat of the religious fanatics, followers of the Mal who, armed with sword and shield and some primitive f arms, broke the square of the English, furnished with the modern arms, at Tel-el-Kebir, in daylight and open count Page 252, note I. The relation of employer and serva (at that period almost invariably New Englanders from neig boring towns) seemed to Mr. Emerson to put the parties so false a position that, with his wife's concurrence, the h were invited to sit at the same table at meals. The mat was quickly solved from the kitchen side, for the woman w waited on table explained that the cook was shy and unwilli to eat with Mr. and Mrs. Emerson, and that she herself d not wish to leave the cook alone.

Page 253, note I. Treatise of Synesius on Providence, translated by Thomas Taylor and printed with his Select Works of Plotinus, London, 1817. Synesius was later a convert to Christianity and became Bishop of Cyrene; he lived in the early part of the Fifth Century.

Page 256, note 1.

Times wore he as his clothing-weeds,

He sowed the sun and moon for seeds.

"The Poet," Poems, Appendix.

Sun and moon must fall amain

Like sower's seeds into his brain,

There quickened to be born again.

"Fragments on the Poet," Poems, Appendix.

THE TIMES

This was the Introductory Lecture of a course of eight lectures on "The Times" given by Mr. Emerson at the Masonic Temple in Boston, in the winter of 1841-42. The others were "The Conservative," "The Poet,” “The Transcendentalist," "Manners,' "Character," "Relation to Nature," "Prospects."

"The Times," "The Conservative" and "The Transcendentalist," also included in this volume, were printed in the Dial (July, 1842, October, 1842, January, 1843). "The Poet," in part, is printed in "Poetry and Imagination," in Letters and Social Aims, "Manners " and also "Character," in part, in Essays, Second Series.

Page 259, note 1. This image of godlike days humbly

she wrion af nine and ine."

Page 242, unter. In his me he next pages appears the ancent toctrine of the Fowing, but applied to be human stream slowly ascending, as it more and more informs the day.

Page 263, note 1. From his boyiced up, Mr. Emerson delighted in oratory. The brilliant, if forid, declamations of some wadenta in college, especially John Everett and certain youths from the South, had a charm which caused their words to remain in his memory from those days, hard to conceive of now, when the whole college flocked to hear the Seniors declaim. As a youth he would walk far to hear Webster's mighty speech, and keenly enjoyed the graceful and studied eloquence of Edward Everett. He admired the elegant bearing, cool mastery of speech, and cutting denunciation of Wendell Phillips, who was never fully himself until challenged or menaced.

Mr. Emerson's own delivery was agreeable, his voice flexible, admirably modulated, especially in reading poetry, and of unexpected power at the right moment. Mr. N. P. Willis, in an amusing article (Hurrygraphs, New York, 1851), describes his first hearing of Emerson, and, among other things, says this of the surprise of his voice: "A heavy and vase-like blossom of a magnolia with fragrance enough to perfume a whole wilderness, which should be lifted by a whirlwind and dropped into a branch of an aspen, would not seem more as if it never could have grown there than Emerson's voice seems inspired, and foreign to his visible and natural body.”

Page 267, note 1. In Mr. Emerson's copy of Taylor's translation of Plotinus, he marked the definition of time by Archytas the Pythagorean, a continued and indivisible flux

of hours.

Page 271, note 1. It should be remembered that this lecture was written in the days when New England bristled with reforms; and their advocates, striving to outdo one another in the radical quality or the refinements of their schemes, flocked to Mr. Emerson because of his well-known hospitality to thoughts. Therefore his combination of good sense with sympathy, of good temper and of humor with just criticism, and his ability to look on these crowding causes with a due perspective, is remarkable.

Page 274, note 1. Mr. Emerson valued highly the prose as well as the poetry of Milton, especially the Areopagitica.

Page 277, note 1. Of this paragraph Dr. Holmes says: "All this and much more like it would hardly have been listened to by the ardent advocates of the various reforms, if anybody but Mr. Emerson had said it. He undervalued no sincere action except to suggest a wiser and better one. The charm of his imagination and the music of his words took away all the sting from the thoughts that penetrated to the very marrow of the entranced listeners."

Page 280, note 1. When the Dial was under consideration, Mr. Emerson wrote in his diary, "It ought to contain the best advice on the topics of Government, Temperance, Abolition, Trade and Domestic Life. It might well add such poetry and sentiment as will now constitute its best merit."