BOOKS.

EMERSON'S CONDUCT OF LIFE.* WREN Mr. Emerson's new volume was announced for publica- tion, we thought it possible that we should find embodied there the ripe results of a rich experience. We thought it possible that the great moral principles, and the personal duties and social obligations, which should preside over all action, might here be ascertained, verified, and reduced to system. Somewhat later, we indulged in half serious, half sportive speculation on the subject of the contents of a book, bearing the plain but promising title, The Conduct of Life. Life, we had learned with Wordsworth, "requires an art to which our souls must bend." How to be- lieve, in these days of intellectual anarchy and social complica- tion, was growing increasingly difficult ; but here was the Wise Man coming from the West, bringing with him a grand importa- tion of Transatlantic and transcendental science, Europeanized, simplified, brought home to the bosoms and business of common- place stupid Englishmen like ourselves. Now, at length, we should know how to behave ; what to do ; what to avoid ; what to believe ; what to doubt and deny. Well ; The Conduct of Lffe came ; we read it ; we re-read some passages; we have done our best to derive illumination from the great Occidental star ; but, if the truth must be told, we are quite as much in the dark as we were before ; we haven't been behaving any better, and we have no reason to think, that we ever shall, as far as the influence of Mr. Emerson's book is concerned.

About a quarter of a generation has passed since we first met with the writings of this courageous and accomplished man. We read them with loving admiration. There was poetry, grace, suggestion, sweet natural human speech, and what Mr. Carlyle designates, "sharp gleams of insight," in them. We found in them, too, what the same authority calls a breath as of the green country ; of " the authentic green earth," " with her mountains, rivers, with her mills and farms." We have turned to some of these writings again, and though we have outgrown much of their theo- sophic and fanciful speculation, have resisted a priori methods and intuitional processes, we can still feel that our more youthful ad- miration was not quite misplaced ; that in many a page in the earlier essays and lectures, there is a moral grace, a poetical charm, a pregnant wisdom.

We wish we could think Mr. Emerson had obeyed his own law of natural melioration and progression ; that he had attained to nobler moral proportions, and higher intellectual stature. We regret to say that we see no such melioration, no such growth. His utterance in these essays is more abrupt than ever it wes be- fore. We think we once heard Mr. Emerson say, in a public lec- ture room, " the children of the Gods never reason." Mr. Emer- son may "read his title clear " to this celestial parentage. lithe absence of ratiocination is a characteristic of the sons of Olympus, no living author of any eminence has a better right than he to regard himself as a true and legitimate son of Olympian Jove. There is neither logic, analysis, nor method, save of the most superficial kind, in these new ratiocinations.

If they are deficient in logic, they are equally deficient in music. We miss the old rhythm, the tender tunefulness of expression which the essayist once commanded. Great master of language though he be, Mr. Emerson's style was never perfect. His sen- tences were often fitful, and monotonously brief. In his present volume, we have to complain of a succession of short, sharp, asser- tions, which read like so many memoranda out of a cynical Blue- stocking's pocket-book. For melodious methodical exposition of a subject, you are treated with an incessant reverberation of pop- gun explosions. Mr. Emerson's wit and wisdom seem to split up and fly off into innumerable squibs and crackers, with here and there a tremendously busy Catherine-wheel, or an ambitious Ro- man candle, affronting and exasperating the eyes and ears of in- offensive men.

There is little new matter in these oracular memoranda from the

American Delphi. Mr. Emerson or Mr. Carlyle has told us nearly all before. Of the nine Essays which the volume contains, we hardly know which is the best. In the first, which treats of " Fate," we have no attempt at philosophical elucidation. There is a tendency in thinking persons of the present age to regard the phenomena of the spiritual as well as of the material world as re- ducible to law. In this tendency, Mr. Emerson seems to share. He traces " Fate in matter, mind, and morals,—in race, in retar- dations of strata, and in thought and character as well." He affirms that law rules throughout existence ; that relation and connexion are everywhere, and always. Yet, with at least a seem- ing inconsistency, he declares thot Fate has its load ; that it is but one fact in the dual world, power being the residuary second fact. We see trust in this assertion ; and we could readjust Mr. Emerson's nomenclature, so as to accept many of his dicta on necessity and freewill ; but, as the Essay is now written, it is inexact and un- scientific, and can be satisfactory, we should presume, to no one perplexed or unperplexed with the problem of law and vo- lition.

We have spoken harshly, hitherto, of these new Essays. It would be wrong, however, to assert that there is nowhere music

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or beauty, or wisdom in them. There is something noble and. inspiring in words like these- " The right use of Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature 'Tis the best use of Fate to teach a fatal courage. Go face • The Conduct of Life. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. Published by Smith, Eld4r. and Co.

the fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend's house, or the burglar in your own, or what danger lies in the way of duty, knowing that you are guarded by the cherubim of Destiny. If_you believe in Fate to your harm, believe it at least for yourgood. For if Fate is so prevailing, man also is part of it, and can confront fate with fate."

In the Essay on " Behaviour," there are two or three good anec- dotes, and some passages worth reading. Among the latter, we may number the following- ' I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty : that give the like exhilaration and refine us like that, and in memorable experiences they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly.

" But they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show control ; you shall not be facile, apo- logetic, or leaky, but king over your word ; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. They must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behaviour, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us."

In a somewhat similar spirit, Emerson says, in " Considerations by the Way "—

The best part of health is fine disposition. It is more essential than talent, even in the works of talent. Nothing will supply the want of sun- shine to peaches ; and to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever you are sincerely pleased, you are nourished. The joy of the spirit indicates its strength. All healthy things are sweet-tempered. [?] Genius works in sport, and goodness smiles to the last ; and, for the reason, that whoever sees the law which distributes things does not despond, but is animated to great desires and endeavours. He who desponds betrays that he has not seen it."

There is good sense and good counsel in these passages from the same essay-

" Few people discern that it rests with the master or the mistress what service comes from the man or the maid; that this identical hussy was a tutelar spirit in one house and a harridan in the other. All sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the terms of it fair. If you are proposing only your own, the other party must deal a little hardly by you. If you deal generously, the other, though selfish and un- just, will make an exception in your favour, and deal truly with you When I asked an iron-master about the slag and cinder -in railroad iron—' Oh ! ' he said, there's always good iron to had ; if there's cinder in the iron, 'tis because there was cinder in the pay.' "

THE SECRET OP CULTURE

is to learn that a few great points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the obscurest farm and in the miscellany of metropolitan life, and that these few are alone to be regarded—the escape from all false ties ; courage to be what we are ; and love of what is simple and beautiful ; independence and cheerful relation—these are the essentials—these and the wish to serve—to add somewhat to the wellbeing of men."

In the essay on " Beauty," there is no attempt to explain the genesis or essence of the esthetic element. But we have instead comments on certain mythological texts, with an enumeration of I some of its qualities. Beauty, we are told, is the pilot of the young soul ; Beauty was born of the foam of the sea ; Beauty rides on a lion. A beautiful woman is said to be a practical poet, and a story is cited of "Pauline de Iriguiere, a virtuous and ac- oomplished maiden, who so fired the enthusiasm of her contem- poraries [in the fifteenth century], by her enchanting form, that the citizens of her native city of Toulouse obtained the aid of the civil authorities to compel her to appear publicly on the balcony at least twice a week ; and, as often as she showed herself, the crowd was dangerous to life." Proclaiming some of the conditions of Beauty, Emerson says- " Veracity, first of all, and for ever. Rien de beau que le vrai. In all design, art lies in making your object prominent, but there is a prior art in choosing objecta.that are prominent. The fine arts have nothing casual but spring from the instincts of the nations that created them."

" But the Sovereign attribute remains to be noted "— " Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome ; but until they speak to the imagination, not beautiful, [for beauty] is properly not in the form but in the mind. It instantly deserts possession, and flies to an ob- ject in the horizon. If I could put my hand on the North star, would it be as beautiful ? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it the beauty for- sakes all the near water. For the imagination and senses cannot be gra tified at the same time. . . . . The new virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful, is a certain eosmical virtue, or a power to suggest relation to the whole world, and so lift the object out of a pitiful individuality. Every natural feature—sea, sky, rainbow, flowers, musical tone—has in it some- what which is not private, but universal, speaks of that central benefit which is the soul of Nature, and thereby is beautiful."

We have quoted some of the more amiable passages from the Conduct of Life. Our author has a certain intellectual hardness, which we will not undertake to justify, but which, divested of its exaggerated rigidity, we think susceptible of justification. Health, he tells us, is the one thing needful; sickness he pictures as " a pale wailing distracted phantom, absolutely selfish," and he complains, whimsically enough, that the sick and dying are not sick, and don't die " to any purpose," but are " as frivolous as the rest, and sometimes much more frivolous." The majority he de- scribes as unripe though not wicked. " Masses !" he exclaims, the calamity is the masses— "Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and in- fluence, and need not to be flattered but to be schooled. I wish not to con- cede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them. The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving." "If government knew how," he continues, "I should like to see it check not multiply the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential. Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the con- siderate vote of single men spoken on their honour and their conscience." One of the lectures in Mr. Emerson's new volume is entitled " Worship." There is nothing in it ; and most of that nothing we already knew through his Essay on "Montaigne." The au- thor, if we understand him rightly, believes in an intelligence, neither personal nor impersonal, but super-personal, whatever that may be. He thinks, as regards the doctrine of immortality, that " the question of our duration is the question of our de- serving." "Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he who would be a great soul in future, must be a great soul now." This sort of particularismus, or favouritism in theology, was the creed of a greater man than Mr. Emerson, the poet Goethe ; but even the authority of that illustrious name does not recommend it to us. The Essayist gives us a gloomy representa- tion of the present divorce between morality and religion. The churches, he says, are staggering backwards into the mummeries of the dark ages. " By the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold ; " the dogma of Christ's mystic offices being gone, "'tie impossible to maintain the old emphasis of his personality." Instead of faith in the moral and intellectual universe, we have, it seems, " know- nothing religions or churches that proscribe intellect ; " scorta- tory, slave-holding, and slave-trading religions. In Italy, our author reminds us, that it has been said proverbially, of the late King of Naples, "he has erected the negation of God into a sys- tem of government." As to France—" When Paul Leroux offered his article Dieu to the conductor of a leading French journal, he replied, La question de Dieu manque d'actualite.' "

Taking a mere general view through the Emersonian telescope, we find that-

" In creeds, never was such levity ; witness the heathenisms in Chris- tianity, the periodic revivals,' the millennium mathematics, the peacock ritualism, the retrogression to Popery, the maundering of Mormons, the squalor of mesmerism, the deliration of rappings, the rat and mouse reve- lation, thumps in table drawers, and black art."

This is not a cheerful picture of the religious world. Neither does Mr. 'Emerson give us cheerful pictures of existence. Per- haps we have no right to ask them of him. He advises us to be rich, healthy, and wise ; to be loving, humble, and believing ; to rally, when we are ground to powder by the vice of our race, on our relation to the Universe, which our ruin benefits, to take sides with the Deity, who secures universal benefit by our pain- " Providence," he says, " has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge mixed in- strumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt, and white neckcloth of a student in divinity." Yet if Mr. Emerson can give us no new theology now, he at least predicts the arrival of a new religion. " The scientific mind," he says, " must have a faith which is science "-

"There will be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical law, the church of men to come, without ebawms, or psaltery, or sackbut ; but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters; science for symbol and illustration ; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry."

Such is the Emersonian Church of the Future ; the Cathedral of Immensity in which the "Coming Ages" are to worship.