CORRESPONDENCE.

EMERSON: A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE.

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."3

SIR,—The celebration of the centenary of Emerson's birth recalls vividly to my mind the impression he made upon me when I met him in Boston more than thirty years ago. I was spending the years of 1867-68 travelling in America, and in June of 1867 I visited Boston. Amongst the notes of introduction I took with me there, one was to Oliver Wendell Holmes from Dr. John Brown, author of " Rab and his

Friends," another was from George Gallen, of Dundee, to Emerson. Soon after my arrival I had a note from Wendell Holmes asking me to meet him at his inaugural lecture to the students at Harvard.

It was in the library behind the lecture hall where I went in response to this invitation that I got my first sight of Emerson. He was standing under one of the lofty windows in conversation with the famous savant, Professor Louis Agassiz. I was struck with the contrast in the appearance of the two men. Agassiz was a big, massive, genial-looking man, with a white waistcoat, and looking more like a jovial English squire than a devotee of science. Emerson was tall, gaunt, long-limbed, dressed in high-collared surtout,—his piquant New England face peering down over the old-fashioned black kerchief that swathed his long thin neck. He stood in an easy, contemplative attitude, with his hands loosely folded in front, and his head slightly inclined. At the moment I caught sight of him a smile of childlike sweetness and simplicity was arching his thin face, and drawing deep curves down the cheek. Eyes, too, he had full of sparkling geniality, yet in a moment turning cold, clear, and searching like the eyes of a god. I remember, when introduced to him, how kindly he took my hand, and with that smile still upon his face peered deep with those calm blue eyes into mine. When the hour arrived we went into the lecture-room, which was densely crowded with students, who cheered loudly as Holmes, Emerson, and Agassiz took their seats. During the brilliant lecture that followed Emerson sat listening, and at every joke and sally of wit—and there were many of them—that

• queer smile of his effervesced into a silent laugh which seemed to ran up into his eyes, and quiver at the corners of his eyebrows, like sunlight in the woods.

At the close of the lecture, Emerson, finding that I was • anxious to hear him, told me that he was to lecture next night at Roxbury, a suburb of Boston, and invited me to meet him at his hotel and go down with him. Talk- ing of education in America as compared with Britain, he • mid: "The Americans read more, and are more extensively educated than your people." He scouted the idea that more • education would make people dissatisfied with humble life. "People look," he said, "to what makes bread. A man will rather live as a storekeeper than starve as a doctor." Referring to British politics and the Reform Bill which had been carried in the British Parliament, he said: "Your Government lasts because it has learned to bend when it would otherwise break." He asked about Sterling,—" the Scotch Hegelian," as he called him. He had read his book. It was "good gymnastics," and showed fine metaphysical insight. He spoke of Robertson of Brighton, and was anxious to know what influence his sermons were producing on the popular theology. Speaking of the men who were most famous in America at that time on the lecture platform, he said: "John B. Gough can draw vast audiences everywhere. He is a great actor as well as a great speaker. Henry Ward Beecher is a flame of fire. But Wendell Phillips is the man who has most power of bringing others at the moment to think with him. People go to hear him who detest his ideas, and come away applauding."

Next night I went down with him to Roxbury, the philo- sopher, with characteristic homeliness, carrying his manuscript under his arm, wrapped in a bit of newspaper. There was a crowded audience in the Mechanics' Institute, and when the chairman introduced the lecturer with the extreme brevity which is the etiquette in America, the gaunt man, simple and homely in his appearance, rose, took off his overcoat, laid it across the back of a chair, took his place at the desk and began to adjust his manuscript, which, made up of sheets and scraps of every size, age, and hue, looked like a handful of invoices taken from a merchant's file. When he stood up there was still some buzz of conversation and movement of pecple coming in. Emerson stood waiting with head inclined, and his calm, deep, thoughtful eyes passing dreamily over the sea of faces till there was perfect silence. Then he began : "The first lesson of Nature is perpetual ascension." He paused, as if to let the keynote of his lecture be distinctly caught. "Man," he resumed, "brings in the element of reason. There goes reason to the boiling of an egg, to the fighting of battles, to the making of an alphabet. It is a long scale from the gorilla to the gentleman, —to Plato, to Aristotle, to Shakespeare. But there is always an accelerated march. There are many kinds of men,—men of horses and guns, men of scrip and stock, men of dinners and dancing- parties, men with power reaching as far as the pop of a cham- pagne-cork and then they are done. But I want to see men of many thoughts, men of resource. Heroes are they who can serve themselves at a pinch. Peter the Great would learn to build

ships. Napoleon said If there is no gunpowder, I will manufacture it ; if there are no gun-carriages, I will make them ; if no bridge, I will construct one.' Truly a com- petent man, who, throw him as you will, always fell upon his feet."

Emerson went on thus for an hour and a half, his thin, piquant face full of kindly light, and a slow, wise smile continually stealing over it. He spoke with great deliberation, —occasionally dwelling upon a word, and then hurling out the next like a thunderbolt. Here are two or three passages from his lecture of which I made a note, and which were specially appreciated by the audience :—" I want the American," he said, " to be dipped in the Styx of universal experience. The youth should learn to row, to fish, to hunt, to camp in the woods, to work equations. I happened to be at West Point once attending an examination. After the examination was over I saw a bed rolled up. I said to the cadet: 'Who makes your bed ?' He said: 'I do.'—` Who cooks your food P'—' I do.'—` Who blacks your boots ?'—` I do.' Here was the capable man, able to do for

himself The man of science must find out the cause of ill and the cure We must say : Mr. Professor of Entomology, can you tell us what insect this is that has been destroying our fruit trees these eight years? If not, make way for one who

can.' In the Swedish dockyards there was a rot in the timber. The Ring sent for Linmeus to examine it. Linmeus found in it an insect which laid its eggs in April. He said : Let the logs be kept submerged from March till May.' It was done, and the rot ceased." "Fame truly attaches to the man who thinks, not to those who make money of it. The man who thinks is the king ; all else are journeymen. The mob cheer the publisher, not the author ; they do not see the house in the plan. But when it makes ten, twenty, fifty per cent., they say: It is the

voice of God !' Common-sense is far from common. In India the Duke of Wellington sent guides to find a ford for his troops. They said: There is none nearer than so many miles above.' The Duke said : 'Here is a town on this side ; there is a town on that side; there must be a ford here,' and took his men across. So Lord Palmerston, when he was asked by the city of Edinburgh to proclaim a fast because of the cholera, made

reply : Clean your drains.' I like to see the singing and dancing master penetrating into the• prairie. It is nothing in itself; but the more piano the less wolf; the more of dancing-

master the less of bear and wilderness Morality is the object of government; not democracy or monarchy, but a state of things in which crime shall not pay.'

One could not listen long to Emerson without feeling that though an impressive speaker, he was more of a thinker than an orator. He was himself interested deeply in his subject; but often his interest seemed more that of one looking at his own thought than of one who has to impress his thought upon others. In this one detected the student, the man of books and solitary habits. In so far as he spoke to the audience, he was curt, aphoristic, oracular. There was no arguing, no explaining, no bridging the gaps for little feet or unaccustomed limbs ; the giant hurled his stepping-stones into the river-bed and strode across, seldom looking back to see if others could follow. "If you blow your nose," said one gentleman, "you may lose him, and never be able to pick him up again the whole night." I think it was the Marquis of Lorne, now the Duke of Argyll, who compared one of Emerson's lectures to a number of propositions written on separate pieces of paper, shaken up in a hat, and read just as they happened to come out ! And yet there was an indescribable power about the man that attracted great audiences wherever he went, and sent every listener away richer than he came, if only by so many splinters of glittering ore. That night a few in the audience were listless—one or two even asleep—before the philosopher was done; but the mass of the people listened with steady attention to the close,—though with what degree of comprehension it would be hazardous to say. As we were dispersing I asked a man beside me what he thought of the lecture. "Why," said he, "I suppose it's very fine, because it is Emerson • but darned if I know what it's been all about." Others were full of enthusiasm about it,— having, let us hope, a deeper apprehension of its meaning.

We returned to Boston together, and spent the rest of the evening at the Union Club, to which Emerson introduced me, where a supper was just finishing which Longfellow's publishers had given in connection with the publication of his translation of Dante's "Inferno." The poet of course was there; so was old Dana, with his snow-white hair and patriarchal look ; Oliver Wendell Holmes, sprightly, nervous, and lively ; Lowell, with his classic head, brown curling beard and moustache, and hyaeinthine locks ; Agassiz, big, genial, and ruddy ; and Fields, the publisher, with one or two of his partners,—all now gone ! They were the bright particular stars of that glorious constellation of genius which made Boston forty years ago the strong intellectual centre of the New World,—" the hub of the universe," as it was some- times proudly called. When I revisited the city four years since, I felt the great blank. The city had no doubt many men of brilliance and power, but none excepting John Fiske of world- wide celebrity; and now Fiske also has passed away. The intellectual life of America seems to be moving westward like a wave, gathering in strength and volume as it goes ; and in the Western centres of population, where fifty or a hundred years ago there was nothing but boundless prairie and buffalo and Indian wigwam, great Universities are springing up which are going to have a mighty influence on the future of America and of the world.