that the culminating period of good in Nature and the world is at just that moment of transition, when the hairy juices still flow plentifully from Nature, but their astringency and acidity is got out by ethics and humanity. It was at such a period that Greece attained her apogee; but our experience, I think, must needs be different. Our story is not of birth, but of regeneration, a far more subtile and less obvious transaction. The Homeric California, of which Bret Harte is the reporter, is not, in the closest sense, American. "A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont," says Emerson, "who in turn tries all the professions, -who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not studying a 'profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives it already." That is poignantly said; and yet few of the Americans whom we recognize as great have had such a history; nor, had they had it, would they on that account be any the more American. On the other hand, the careers of men like Jim Fiske and Jay Gould might serve well as illustrations of the above sketch. If we must wait for our national character until our geographical advantages and the absence of social distinctions manufacture it for us, we are likely to remain a long time in suspense. When our foreign visitors begin to evince a keener interest in Beacon Hill and Fifth Avenue than in the Mississippi and the Yellowstone, we may infer that we are assuming our proper stature relative to our physical environinent. "The Land," says Emerson, "is a sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come." Well, when we are virtuous we may, perhaps, spare our own blushes by allowing our topography symbolically to celebrate us, and when our admirers would worship the purity of our intuitions, refer them to Walden Pond; or to Mount Shasta, when they would expatiate upon our lofty idealism. Meanwhile, it is perhaps true that the chances of leading a decent life are greater in a palace than in a pigsty. But this is holding the poet too strictly to the letter of his message; and at any rate the Americanism of Emerson is better than anything that he has said in its vindication. He is the champion of the Republic; he is our future living in our present, and showing the world, by anticipation, what sort of excellence we are capable of. A nation that has produced Emerson, and can recognize in him flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone, and, still more, spirit of her spirit, that nation may look forward with security. But he has done more than to prophesy of his country he is electric, and stimulates us to fulfil our destiny. To use a phrase of his own, we cannot hear of personal vigor of any kind great power of performance without fresh resolution. Emerson helps us most in provoking us to help ourselves. After Concord Fight, it is Emerson who has made Concord's reputation, or, rather, its reputation has been he. More victorious even than the embattled farmers of a century ago, he attracted invaders instead of repelling them. No one can take his place, now that he is gone; but the memory of him, and the purity and vitality of the thoughts and of the example with which he has enriched the world, will abide longer than many lifetimes, and will renew again and again, before an ever-widening audience, the summons to virtue and the faith in immortality which were the burden and the glory of his song. The pleasantest kind of revenge is that which we can sometimes take upon great men in quoting of themselves what they have said of others. easy to be so revenged upon Emerson, because he has been so broadly generous and cordial in his appreciation of human worth. "If there should appear in the company," he observes, "some gentle soul who knows little of persons and parties, of Carolina or Cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which checkmates every false player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence on any conditions of country, or time, or human body, that man liberates me. I am made immortal by apprehending my possession of incorruptible goods." Who can state the mission and effect of Emerson more tersely and aptly than in those words? But he does not need eulogiums, and it seems half ungenerous to force them upon him now that he can no longer defend himself. So I will conclude by repeating a passage, characteristic of him both as a man and as an American, which perhaps conveys a sounder and healthier criticism, both for us and for him, than any mere nerveless admiration. For great men are great only in so far as they liberate us; and in courting their tyranny we undo their work. The passage runs thus: "Let me remind you that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all things: no facts to me are sacred, none profane. I simply experiment,— an endless Seeker, with no Past at my back!" IV. A FRENCH VIEW OF EMERSON. BY M. RENÉ DE POYEN BELLEISLE. "Le poète inspiré, lorsque la terre ignore, Ressemble à ces grands monts que la nouvelle aurore Et qui, longtemps vainqueurs de l'ombre, MESDAMES, MESSIEURS: Si je débute par ces vers de Victor Hugo, c'est que je trouve qu'il y a admirablement exprimé l'idée que je me fais du poëte; et, que si un mot, un seul, pouvait exprimer mon opinion sur Emerson; je dirai: c'est un poëte. Mais il ne s'agit pas de le comparer ici avec d'autres poëtes ni d'examiner ce qu'il n'a pas fait ou ce qu'il aurait pu faire. La méthode critique la plus simple et la plus sûre quand on se trouve en présence d'un poète à étudier, c'est de rechercher d'abord quelle était sa conception générale de son art et en second lieu comment il s'y est conformé. En ce qui concerne Emerson, la première partie de cette étude est facile, car dans ses Essais il a plus d'une fois et longuement exposé ses vues sur la poésie. Ce qu'il y a de mieux à faire c'est donc de |