dowed a college at Oxford for seventy fellows for ever; and he established a house in the neighbourhood of Winchester to provide a measure of beer and a sufficiency of bread to every one who asked it for ever. Emerson was curious to test this good man's credit, and knocked at the door, preferred his request, and received his measure of beer and bread, though its donor had been dead seven hundred years!

When Emerson was last in England there was much desire that he should give lectures at the Royal Institution and at Oxford. This, however, he declined. His only public appearance in England was at the Working-Men's College in London, Thomas Hughes being beside him. That extemporaneous address I heard, and when he spoke of the "pathetically noble" effort of English scholars to educate their humbler brethren, there was before us another "pathetically noble" sight in the figure of the white-haired sage beaming his last farewell, and uttering his last animating word to the class that received him as prophet at the dawn of a closing generation.

When tidings came that Emerson's house was burnt down there was a strong desire in England to help to rebuild it. "Will you please say," he wrote me, "to any such benevolent friend, that whilst I am surprised and gratified at such a good-will, I will have no such thing done, as my friends at home have already taken care to more than indemnify me for my material losses by the fire. Not the less hearty thanks to these English friends."

In the spring of 1873, when Emerson was on his way from the South to England, I had also to convey to

him a request to accept a banquet in London, but this he declined. "I desire to thank them heartily for their generous good-will, but say to them that they must forgive me for declining the banquet, much preferring to meet new and old friends on more simple and private terms." This note was written from Paris, March 31, and at the close of the week Emerson was in London.

To observe the various men that gathered around Emerson in England, one might say that concord, as a virtue, was organised in and around the Sage of Concord. Carlyle, Dean Stanley; Professors Tyndall, Newman, Huxley, Carpenter, Sayce, Ruskin; Alexander Ellis, J. A. Froude, Lord Houghton, Allingham, Edward Sterling, the Amberleys, Prince Leopold, Max Müller (with whom he stayed in Oxford), these, and many others, gathered around him with fraternal or filial devotion, and would have had him pass the rest of his life in their homes. He visited the Irelands at Manchester, Dr. William Smith and other friends in Edinburgh, Lord and Lady Amberley at Tintern, and the Crawshays at Cyfarthfa Castle. He also visited again the Flowers at Stratford-on-Avon.

His eldest daughter accompanied him on this journey, and was already beginning to be needed as "his memory." In meeting with new persons his failing memory was noticeable, but his friends of twenty-five year before thought him even nobler and sweeter than in the old times. It was during this last visit, I suppose, that Emerson visited Stratford Church with James Walter on a Sunday morning, and remained beside Shakespeare's grave during the service and sermon.

and re

The Englishman was ashamed of the sermon, lieved when Emerson asked naïvely, "Did he preach?" To which his English friend answered, "Who? Shakespeare?" "Yes!"

My wife and I had the pleasure of being guests with him and his daughter at Cyfarthfa Castle (Merthyr Tydfil). Mrs. Crawshay told me that she was afraid such a devotee of nature might not enjoy her forced strawberries, and rather evaded his question concerning their season in Wales. The Welsh spring might well break forth into earlier strawberries in honour of his visit. At a dinner-party given at Cyfarthfa Castle the most cultivated people of the neighbourhood were invited, but among them was a gentleman more familiar with the antiquities of Wales than with Emerson. At any rate, after the ladies had retired, when Emerson asked him whether traces of Merlin in his prison of air survived in the neighbourhood, he said, Yes, but that he had passed the place at all times and never heard the legendary sighs, nor did he believe the story. "You must be a bold man," said Emerson in his sweetest voice, but with the old twinkle in his eye.

In Wales I had opportunities of walking alone with Emerson, and conversing with him on those great subjects which had been the theme of his teaching in the sacred years at Concord. I discovered, however, that he had become more inclined than formerly to hesitate about stating religious opinions. These opinions he declared unchanged since we had conversed in former years. He was even more optimistic after twenty years, and advised me to trust more to time than destructive criticism in the combat with error. He held

his old sentiment about prayer, and said, "If I saw a man on his knees, I should not like to tell that man to get up." Even the attitude of reverence for something above self he thought to be of some value, and suggested that it was a sort of witness against the notion of mediation.

Max Müller dedicated his work on the "Science of Religion" to "Ralph Waldo Emerson, in memory of his visit to Oxford in May, 1873, and in acknowledgment of constant refreshment of head and heart derived from his writings during the last twenty-five years."

Emerson's friends in England "marked round with vermilion" that festal year when he visited the homes he had made nobler and happier; and many were the children brought to him that they might say to their children and children's children, "This hand has been kept purer because it was once touched by Ralph Waldo Emerson."

SOME

XXIX.

THE DIADEM OF DAYS.

OME years ago Emerson was asked by a friend which of his own poems he most valued. He replied, "Days." This piece of eleven lines, as printed in May-Day," begins "Damsels of Time; prefer the original word.

"Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,

" but I

Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,

Forgot my morning wishes, hastily

Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,

Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn."

Rare if not imaginary must have been the " day" that did not bear fruit in Emerson's garden. Let us record here the list of his works:

Right Hand of Fellowship at the Ordination of H. B. Goodwin. February 17, 1830.

Sermon and Letter, to the Second Church, Boston. 1832. (Reprinted in "Frothingham's Transcendentalism," 1876.)