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child and man, from infancy.' When Mr. J. Q. Adams's age was mentioned, he said: 'He is now fifty-eight, or will be in July'; and remarked, 'all the Presidents were of the same age. General Washington was about fiftyeight, I was about fifty-eight, and Mr. Jefferson, and Mr. Madison, and Mr. Monroe.' We inquired when he expected to see Mr. Adams. He said: 'Never; Mr. Adams will not come to Quincy, except to my funeral. It would be a great satisfaction to me to see him; but I don't wish him to come on my account.'"

The interview lasted about an hour, the conversation touching upon a great variety of topics.

"He spoke of Mr. Lechmere, whom he 'well remembered to have seen come down daily, at a great age, to walk in the old town-house'; adding, 'he was collector for the customs for many years under the Royal Government.' Edward said, 'I suppose, sir, you would not have taken his place, even to have walked as well as he.' 'No,' he answered, 'that was not what I wanted.'

"He talked of Whitefield, and remembered, when he was a freshman at college, to have come into town to the Old South Church to hear him, but could not get into the house. 'I, however, saw him,' he said, 'and distinctly heard all. He had a voice such as I never heard before or since. He cast it out so that you could hear it at the meeting-house-pointing toward the Quincy Meetinghouse, and he had the grace of a dancing-master, of an actor of plays.'—' And were you pleased with him, sir?' -'Pleased! I was delighted beyond measure.' We asked if at Whitefield's return the same popularity continued. 'Not the same fury,' he said, 'not the same wild enthusiasm as before; but a greater esteem, as he became

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more known. He did not terrify, but was admired.' He spoke of the new novels of Cooper, and 'Peep at the Pilgrims,' and 'Saratoga,' with praise, and named with accuracy the characters in them.

"He speaks very distinctly for so old a man; enters bravely into long sentences, which are interrupted by want of breath; but carries them invariably to a conclusion, without correcting a word. He likes to have a person always reading to him, or company talking in his room; and is better next day after having visitors in his chamber from morning to night."

This chapter closes with the following general summation of the attainable blessings of old age:

OLD AGE AFTER A WELL-SPENT LIFE.

"When life has been well-spent, age is a loss which it can well spare-muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years; and, dropping off obstructions, leaves, in happy subjects, the mind purified and wise. I have heard that whoever loves is in no condition old. I have heard that whenever the name of man is mentioned, the doctrine of immortality is announced; it cleaves to the constitution. The mode of it baffles our wit, and no whisper comes to us from the other side. But the inference from the intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving skill-at the end of life just ready to be born-affirms the inspirations of affection and of the moral sentiment."

XIII.

LETTERS AND SOCIAL AIMS.

IN 1875 Emerson published a volume entitled "Letters and Social Aims." It consists of eleven chapters, and is really the fifth series of his "Essays." Probably the date of publication indicates `only approximately that when they were composed. Some of the chapters bear evident impresses of an earlier period. Some of them read like stray waifs which had lain hidden in his portfolios and note-books. Some seem to have been carefully elaborated, and only awaited the time of publication. Among the latter class is the thoughtful essay on "Immortality" which closes the volume. Of this we have spoken at some length in a preceding chapter. But the position given to it seems to indicate that, with all its doubts and questionings, it embodies Emerson's maturest thoughts and convictions upon this subject. In the essay on "Poetry and Imagination," Emerson gives his idea of what essentially constitutes poetry:

POETRY.

"Poetry is the perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of the thing; to pass the brute body, and search the life and reason which cause it to exist; to see that

the object is always flowing away, whilst the spirit or necessity which causes it subsists. Its essential mark is that it betrays in every word instant activity of mind, shown in new uses of every fact and image; in preternatural quickness or perception of relations. All its words are poems. It is the presence of mind that gives a miraculous command of all means of uttering the thought and feeling of the moment. The poet squanders on the hour an amount of life that would more than furnish the seventy years of the man that stands next him.

"The thoughts are few, the forms many; the large vocabulary or many-colored coat of the indigent Unity. In the presence and conversation of a true poet, teeming with images to express his enlarging thought, his person, his form, grows larger to our fascinated eyes. And thus begins that deification which all nations have made of their heroes of many kind-saints, poets, law-givers, and warriors. Our best definition of poetry is one of the oldest sentences, and claims to have come down from the Chaldæan Zoroaster, who wrote it thus: 'Poets are standing transporters, whose employment consists in speaking to the Father and to matter; in producing apparent imitations of apparent natures, and inscribing things unapparent in the apparent fabrication of the world.'"

This is the ideal of what poetry should be; an ideal seldom realized fully in the greatest of poets, and then only in the very greatest of parts of their best poems. But there are certain adjuncts to poetry which are so general that they may be regarded as indispensable. Among these are:

MELODY AND FORM.

"Music and rhyme are among the earliest pleasures of the child, and, in the history of literature, poetry precedes prose. Every one may see, as he rides on the highway through an uninteresting landscape, how a little water instantly relieves the monotony, no matter what objects are near it—a gray rock, a grass-patch, an alder-bush, a stake-they become beautiful by being reflected. It is rhyme to the eye, and explains the charm of rhyme to the ear. Shadows please us as still finer rhymes. Architecture gives the like pleasure by the repetition of equal parts in a colonnade, in a row of windows, or in wings; gardens, by the symmetric contrasts of the beds and walks. In society you have this figure in a bridal company, where a choir of white-robed maidens gives the charm of living statues; in a funeral procession, where all wear black; in a regiment of soldiers in uniform."

RHYME AND RHYTHM.

“The universality of this taste is proved by our habit of casting our facts into rhyme to remember them better, as so many proverbs may show. Who would hold the order of the almanac so fast, but for the ding-dong 'Thirty days hath September,' etc.; or of the zodiac, but for 'The ram, the bull, the heavenly twins,' etc.? We are lovers of rhyme and return, period and musical reflection. The babe is lulled to sleep by the nurse's song. Sailors can work better for their 'Yo-heave-o!' Soldiers can march better for the drum and the trumpet."

METRE.

"Metre begins with pulse-beat, and the length of lines in songs and poems is determined by the inhalation

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