BY PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & CO. AND RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Copyright, 1883, BY EDWARD W. EMERSON. All rights reserved. HARVARD The Riverside Press, Cambridge: 7211 51.20 PREFATORY NOTE. THE first eight volumes of the present edition of Mr. Emerson's writings contain his collected Essays as he left them, except some revision of the punctuation and the correction of obvious mistakes. The ninth volume comprises the pieces chosen by Mr. Emerson from the "Poems" and "May-Day' to form the "Selected Poems," with the addition of some poems which were omitted in that selection, and some that have remained unpublished. In many instances emendations which were pencilled in the margin by Mr. Emerson, but were not adopted in the "Selected Poems," are now introduced, upon the ground that, as they seem to have suggested themselves at the time when his powers were in their fullest vigor, it may fairly be supposed that he would, upon reconsideration, have admitted them. The tenth and eleventh volumes consist of lectures hitherto unprinted, and of "Occasional Addresses" and other prose-writings which have appeared separately or in periodicals. The selection from Mr. Emerson's MSS. has vi PREFATORY NOTE. been made in pursuance of the authority given in his will to me, as his literary executor, acting in co-operation with his children, to publish or withhold from publication any of his unpublished pa pers. The portrait in the first volume was etched by Mr. Schoff from a photographic copy of a daguerreotype taken in 1847 or 1848, probably in England. J. E. CABOT. THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, Aug. 31, 1837 81 LITERARY ETHICS. An Oration delivered before the Liter- ary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838 . THE METHOD OF NATURE. An Oration delivered before the Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine, |