not very great-was quite worth the attention of the thinker, and affords topics worthy to be discoursed of by him. In default of any other special profession, he had entered successfully upon the pursuit of the lecturer. The New England "lyceum" system was introduced into Great Britain, and in 1847 Emerson made his second visit to England-this time as a public lecturer. From this visit resulted the writing of "English Traits," which, although not published as a book until 1856, was really the production of several years before. In the interval (in 1850) he had published a volume entitled, "Representative Men."

The English Traits" was really the earlier work; it will be first considered.

IX.

ENGLISH TRAITS.

EMERSON describes the very practical motives which induced him to make this visit. In Lancashire and Yorkshire the "Mechanics' Institutes" had formed a "Union," which embraced twenty or thirty towns, and presently extended into the Middle Counties, and northward into Scotland. "I was invited," he said, "on liberal terms, to read a series of lectures before them all.

The remuneration was equivalent to the fees at that time paid in this country for the like services. At all events, it was sufficient to cover my traveling expenses; and the proposal offered an excellent opportunity of seeing the interior of England and Scotland, by means of a home and a committee of intelligent friends awaiting me in every town." The invitation was not at once accepted; but, continues Emerson, "the invitation was repeated and pressed at a moment of more leisure, and when I was a little spent by some unusual studies. I wanted a change and tonic, and England was proposed to me. Besides, there were at least the dread attraction and salutary influences of the sea. I did not go very willingly. I am not a good traveler, nor have I found that long journeys yield a fair share of reasonable hours." However, the resolve was made, and in the autumn of 1847 he sailed from Boston in a packet-ship, thus entering upon what he had not long before stigmatized as the "fool's paradise" of traveling, which was certainly no such thing to him, but was, on the contrary, productive of great and lasting benefits.

With the exception of the chapter in which the visit of Emerson to Stonehenge in company with Carlyle has already been quoted, there is in the "English Traits" hardly a bit of any special information as to individuals or places. It is in no sense a book of travel or incident, but

an attempt to seize and emphasize the characteristics of the English people and mind. The land and the people who inhabit it are not treated from any ideal point of view. It is nowhere intimated that either of them may be a mere appearance; but they are throughout represented as actual existences, quite worthy of being studied even though the study took a hundred years. Only a few pages can be devoted to some of the topics treated of.

PHYSICAL ENGLAND.

"As soon as you enter England, which, with Wales, is no larger than the State of Georgia, this little land stretches by an illusion to the dimensions of an empire. The innumerable details, the crowded succession of towns, cities, cathedrals, castles, and great and decorated estates, the number and power of the guilds, the military strength and splendor, the multitude of rich and remarkable people, the servants and the equipages—all these catching the eye, and never allowing it to pause, hide all boundaries by the impression of magnitude and endless wealth. It is stuffed full, in all corners, with towns, towers, churches, villas, palaces, hospitals, and charity houses. In the history of art it is a long way from a cromlech to York Minster, yet all the intermediate steps may still be traced in this all-preserving island.

"The territory has a singular perfection. The climate is warmer by many degrees than it is entitled to by latitude. Neither hot nor cold, there is no hour in the whole year when one cannot work. Here is no winter, but such days as we have in Massachusetts in No

vember a temperature which makes no exhausting demands on human strength, but allows the attainment of the largest stature. Charles the Second said: 'It invites men abroad more days in the year and more hours in the day than another country.' Then England has all the materials of a working country except wood. The constant rain—a rain with every tide in some parts of the island-keeps its multitude of rivers full, and brings agricultural production up to the highest point. It has plenty of water, of stone, of potter's clay, of coal, of salt, and of iron. The land naturally abounds with game, and the shores are enlivened by water-birds. The rivers and the surrounding sea spawn with fish. In the northern lochs the herring are in innumerable shoals. At one season the country people say, 'The lakes contain one part water and two parts fish.'

"Factitious climate, factitious position. England resembles a ship in its shape; and, if it were one, its best admiral could not have worked it or anchored it in a more judicious or effective position. England is anchored at the side of Europe, and right in the heart of the modern world. The sea, which, according to Virgil's famous line, divided the poor Britons utterly from the world, proved to be the ring of marriage with all nations. On a fortunate day, a wave of the German Ocean burst the old isthmus which joined Kent and Cornwall to France, and gave to this fragment of Europe its impregnable sea-wall, cutting off an island eight hundred miles in length, with an irregular breadth reaching to three hundred miles; a territory large enough for independence, so near that it can see the harvests of the continent, and so far that who would cross the strait must be a mariner, ready for tempests."

COMMERCIAL ADVANTAGES.

"As America, Europe, and Asia lie, these Britons have precisely the best commercial position on the whole planet, and are sure of a market for all the goods they can manufacture. And to make these advantages avail, the river Thames must dig its spacious outlet to the sea from the heart of the kingdom, giving road and landing to innumerable ships, and all conveniency to trade. When James the First declared his purpose of punishing London by removing his court, the Lord Mayor replied that, 'in removing his royal presence from his lieges, they hoped he would leave them the Thames.'"'

This and much more of like import was written a generation ago. Since then, by availing themselves of natural advantages, supplementing these by artificial means, the relative superiority of England to the rest of the world has been largely diminished, not to say overcome. We judge that, within a time not very far remote, New York, and the other cities which line the banks of its harbor and bay, will come to be the center and entrepôt of the world's busy life. But, in any case, it is not so much the physical structure and position of England which have made that country what it is, as the race of men who have held and now hold it. On this general matter of race, Emerson has much to say. We extract a few sentences, omitting the connecting passages which bind the whole together: