"Emerson, by his principle, is delivered from the alarm of the religious man, who has a creed to defend, and from the defiance of the scientific man, who has creeds to assail. For the scientific method he professes no deep respect; for the scientific assumption none whatever. He begins with the opposite end. They start with matter; he starts with mind. They feel their way up; he feels his way down. They observe phenomena; he watches thoughts. They fancy themselves to be gradually pushing away as illusions the so-called entities of the soul; he dwells serenely with those entities, rejoicing to see men paying jubilant honor to what they mean to overturn. The facts they bring in-chemical, physiological, biological: Huxley's facts, Helmholtz's, Darwin's, Tyndall's, Spencer's, the ugly facts which theologians dispute he accepts with eager hands, and uses to demonstrate the force and harmony of the spiritual laws."

All this seems to us to be a partial and onesided view of Emerson's philosophy, which to us is in its main aspects most essentially practical. Using the word in a good sense, it is wholly a "this world" philosophy. Of the future life, as future, he takes little account. He finds the universe thus and so. Nature is what it is; man is what he is. All are but parts of one mighty whole; and it is man's place to know nature and to put himself into harmony with it. In his view, the life that now is, and each day of it, is a part of the eternal now; not merely a preparation for some unknown future. Youth exists for itself, manhood for itself, age for itself. There

never will be a day longer than the one which is now passing; there will never be a moment more full of duty and obligation than the one in which we are drawing our present breath. To be at this moment, and at all future moments, what he ought to be; that is, in other words, to live in perpetual harmony with the immutable laws of nature-laws which are, because they could not be otherwise, being the outgrowth of the inmost being of the Divine Mind-this, in our view, is not only the central core but the sum and substance of Emerson's entire philosophy, no matter in what varying forms it may clothe itself, or how it may be tinged with hues reflected from Buddha or Plato, from Swedenborg or Confucius, from Zoroaster or Jesus. We shall try to elucidate still further our idea of the man and his teachings by passing in review over his successive works.

Considering that an interval of fully forty years elapsed between the composition of the earliest and the latest of Emerson's books, he is by no means a voluminous writer. His prose works as finally collected by himself are now issued in several shapes. In their most compact form they are comprised in three moderate volumes, each containing about as much matter as one of Dickens's large novels. The poems would make another volume somewhat smaller. The prose works are here arranged in the order of their

publication, which is not always coincident with that of their composition.

"Nature" (1836); "Miscellanies," consisting of nine collegiate addresses and public lectures, most of which had already been printed in "The Dial," and were in 1849 gathered into a volume which also included "Nature"; "Essays," in two volumes (1841 and 1847). These, revised and corrected, constitute the first volume of his prose works, brought together in 1869.

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"Representative Men" (1850), English Traits" (1856), "Conduct of Life" (1860). These constitute the second volume of his prose works, brought together in 1869.

"Society and Solitude" (1870), "Letters and Social Aims" (1875). These, with the addition of some minor pieces, constitute the third volume of the prose works. Besides these, he furnished, in 1852, several valuable chapters for the "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli," which are not contained in the collection of his works.

His poetical works are "Poems by R. W. Emerson (1846), and "May-day, and Other Pieces" (1867). These poems were mostly written at intervals between 1840 and 1867. Most of

them are short. The longest are The longest are "Woodnotes," of about five hundred lines; "May-day," of about six hundred, "Monadnock," of about five hundred, and "The Adirondacks," of about four

hundred lines. In all, there are about one hundred and forty pieces, ranging from four lines upward, few of them exceeding fifty lines.

VII.

NATURE.

"NATURE," the earliest of Emerson's books, was published in 1836. It was a small volume of some two hundred pages, openly printed, and containing less than half as much matter as this little book. While, perhaps, not the greatest of his works, it is to us the most delightful. Mr. Whipple has said that "Emerson seldom indulges in sentiment, and in his nature emotion seems to be less the product of the heart than of the brain." This remark does not hold good in respect to "Nature," which is replete with the deepest sentiment and the liveliest emotion. In it the heart predominates over the brain. The style is glowing rather than austere, rising not unfrequently to a lofty pitch of eloquence. It is inspired throughout by a glad spirit born of recovered health, a happy new-found home, and pleasant domestic and social surroundings. Than Concord no more fitting residence could be found for a man like him. The place itself was, and

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still is, of the quietest. A half-hour's walk would place him in complete solitude; but there were within sight of his door the abodes of men and women of culture, enough to furnish congenial society, while a ride of a couple of hours would bring him to the doors of his literary friends in Boston and Cambridge, and to the alcoves of the great libraries there. But the book, created under such happy auspices, fell almost still-born from the press. We are told that it took twelve years to dispose of an edition of five hundred copies. Like Wordsworth, he had to bide his time, and "create the taste by which he was to be enjoyed"; and, like Wordsworth, he has not waited in vain.

We shall speak at some length of this bookthe first fruits of his genius, the "first crushings" of the grapes of his intellectual vineyardfor the reason that in it he more or less developed the germs of most of his speculations and theories. We shall also bring together passages from his later writings bearing upon the same or kindred topics, which explain, confirm, and in some degree modify the views therein propounded. In a brief Introduction, he sets forth the general design and aim of the book.

THE END OF NATURE.

"Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers; it writes biographies, histories, and criti