goes nearer to our hearts than either literary decoration or rhetorical unction."-John Morley. "The epithet 'sun-accustomed' is applied to Emerson's piercing eye by one, a woman and a poet, who marked the effect of his noble profile. I, too, remember him in this wise and as the most serene of men : one whose repose, whose tranquillity, was not the contentment of an idler housed in worldly comforts, but the token of spiritual adjustment to all the correspondences of life as the bravest and most deferential, the proudest in self-respect, yet recognizing in deep humility the supremacy of universal law."—E. C. Stedman. "The cast of his character was majestic. The order of his mind was majestic. It was morally impossible for him to descend from the high plane of his thought and life to any lower levels; so that when he came to the act of written expression he must present high thinking' in high forms and illustrate in every line and page that elevation of spirit and sentiment on which Longinus so insists. If dignity of style is essentially literary, Emerson furnished it beyond measHis demeanor was marked by a kind of classical decorum-by that lofty urbanity' of presence and bearing which subdued all that was unrefined and gave a courtly character to the place and hour."-T. W. Hunt. ure. 6 ILLUSTRATIONS. "What is so excellent as strict relations of amity when they spring from this deep root? The sufficient reply to the skeptic, who doubts the power and the furniture of man, is in that possibility of joyful intercourse with persons which makes the faith and practice of all reasonable men. I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfactory as the profound good understanding which can subsist, after much exchange of good offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics and commerce and churches cheap. For when men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a shower of stars clothed with thoughts, with deeds, with accomplishments, it should be the festival of nature which all things announce."-Essay on Character. "The entire end of friendship is a commerce the most strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any of which we have experience. It is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of life and death. It is fit for serene days and graceful gifts and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and persecution. It keeps company with the sallies of wit and the trances of religion. We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man's life and embellish it by courage, wisdom, and unity. It should never fall into something usual and settled, but should be alert and inventive and add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery."-Essay on Friendship. "The farmer's office is precise and important, but you must not try to paint him in rose-color; you cannot make pretty compliments to fate and gravitation, whose minister he is. He represents the necessities. It is the beauty of the great economy of the world that makes his comeliness. He bends to the order of the seasons, the weather, the soils and crops, as the sails of a ship bend to the wind. He represents continuous hard labor, year in, year out, and small gains. He is a slow person, timed to nature and not to city watches. He takes the pace of seasons, plants, and chemistry. Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work."-Essay on Farming. II. Dignified Irony." He has subtle and kindly irony. No satirist ever saw shortcomings and absurdities more clearly than he did or exposed them more courageously. When he sees the meanness,' as he calls it, of American politics, he congratulates Washington on being long already happily dead,' on being wrapped in his shroud and forever safe.' With what subtle though kind irony he follows the gradual withdrawal in New England, in the last half century, of tender consciences from the social organizations-the bent for experiments such as that of Brook Farm and the like,-follows it in all its dissidence . of dissent and Protestantism of the Protestant religion!' He loves even to rally the New Englander on his philanthropic activity and to find his beneficence and its institution a bore."-Matthew Arnold. "Even when provocation was great, his satire was so gentle and genial that it warmed even its object."-C. J. Woodbury. "In judging of works of immensely less importance [than Goethe's Faust'], which only excited his ridicule, his irony was often delicious."-E. P. Whipple. ILLUSTRATIONS. "Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature. They must do what they can."-Essay on Politics. "What did the preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in the present life? Was it that houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and despised; and that a compensation is to be made to these last hereafter by giving them the like gratifications another day,--bank-stock and doubloons, venison and champagne ? This must be the compensation intended; for what else? Is it that they are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve men? Why, that they can do now. The legitimate inference the disciple would draw was, 'We are to have such a good time as the sinners have now ; '—or, to push it to its extreme import,-- You sin now, we shall sin by-and-by; we would sin now, if we could; not being successful, we expect our revenge to-morrow.'"-Essay on Compensation. "When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and are, and not turn sourly on the angel and say, 'Crump is a better man with his grunting resistance to all his native devils.” ” -Essay on Spiritual Laws. "The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings of a base prudence, which is a devotion to matter; as if we possessed no other faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes, which gives never, which lends seldom, and asks but one question of any project-Will it bake bread? This is a disease like a thickening of the skin until the vital organs are destroyed. But culture, revealing the high origin of the apparent world and aiming at the perfection of the man as the end, degrades everything else, as health and bodily life, into means." -Essay on Prudence. LOWELL, 1819-1881 66 Biographical Outline.-James Russell Lowell, born at Cambridge, Mass., February 22, 1819; father a Congregational minister, and both parents of English descent; in 1827 Lowell enters the school of William Wells, near Elmwood,” as Lowell's home was called; he enters Harvard College as a Freshman in 1834; forms there an intimate friendship with George B. Loring; is only a fair student, but evinces an early love for literature, especially poetry; becomes secretary of the Hasty Pudding Club," whose records were then kept in verse; is suspended for several months during his Senior year for neglect of studies; passes the interval studying under a tutor at Concord, where he meets Emerson and Thoreau ; writes the poem for Class Day in 1838 (a satire on the Abolitionists and the Concord Transcendentalists), but is not allowed to read it because of his suspension, then in effect; it is printed in pamphlet form for the class; Lowell passes his final examinations and takes A.B. with his classmates in June, 1838; first thinks seriously of entering the ministry and then takes up the law; by October, 1838, he is reading Blackstone "with as good a grace and as few wry faces as I may; " he plans a dramatic poem on Cromwell, and regrets "being compelled to say farewell to the muses; in 1839 he writes, "I am schooling myself and shaping my theory of poetry ; " during 1839 he writes verses ("pottery") for the Boston Pest and for the Advertiser; in December, 1839, meets Miss Maria White, who knows more poetry than anyone I am acquainted with;" receives LL.B. from the Harvard Law School in the summer of 1840; takes up the law more seriously because of 66 |