with him, and the religion of a gentleman. So far is he from attaching any meaning to the words, that he believes he has done almost the generous thing, and that it is very condescending in him to pray to God. A great duke said, on the occasion of a victory, that he thought the Almighty God had not been well used by them, and that it would become their magnanimity, after so great successes, to take order that a proper acknowledgement be made."

THE CHURCH OF THE RICH.

"It is a church of the gentry, and not a church of the poor. The operatives do not own it; and gentlemen lately testified in the House of Commons, that in their lives they never saw a poor man in a ragged coat inside a church. The torpidity on the side of religion of the vigorous English understanding shows how much wit and folly can agree in one brain."

Here, once more, we find a marked example of the lofty way in which Emerson is wont to deal with facts. He forms the widest generalizations from a few instances, in no wise typical. If an English gentleman, when he enters the chapel of the British embassy abroad, puts his face into his hat for silent prayer, what right has Mr. Emerson to suppose that he is "far from attaching any meaning to the words," even though that hat be a well-brushed one? Quite likely also, the gentlemen testified truly in Parliament that they

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never saw a poor mån in a ragged coat inside a church"; but to our mind this merely shows that

even the poor men who attend public worship have a coat that is not ragged. In a certain sense the Anglican Church is the church of the rich; and it is well that it is so. But it is a stretch of statement to say that "it is not the church of the poor" also. Else how does it happen that this Church has such "strength in the agricultural districts," where the majority of the people certainly can not be rich?

In writing of the Church of Old England, Mr. Emerson reiterates, in substance, what he had said almost twenty years before, in his "Divinity Address," of the Churches of New England. The burden of all is the decay of worship. This decay, if it exist at all, has existed a long time-as far back as the seventeenth century, in Mr. Emerson's judgment. If this were so, in the middle of the nineteenth century the consequences of this "wasting unbelief" of which he spoke would by this time have come to bo apparent : "When all things go to decay genius leaves the temple to haunt the senate or the market. Literature becomes frivolous. Science is cold. The eye of youth is not lighted by the hope of other worlds, and age is without honor. Society lives to trifles, and when men die we do not mention them." Does England present this aspect, upon Mr. Emerson's own showing?

Emerson is apparently sensible that these "traits" do not cover the broad field of English

national character, for in the closing chapter, entitled "Results," he says:

ENGLISH RESULTS.

"England is the best of actual nations. It is no ideal framework; it is an old pile, built in different ages, with repairs, additions, and makeshifts; but you see the poor best you have got. The power of performance has not been exceeded-the creation of value. The English have given importance to individuals, a principal end and fruit of every society. 'Magna Charta,' said Rushmore, 'is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign.' By this sacredness of individuals, they have in seven hundred years evolved the principles of freedom. It is the land of patriots, martyrs, sages, and bards; and if the ocean out of which it emerged should wash it away, it will be remembered as an island famous for immortal laws, for the announcements of original right, which make the stone tables of liberty."

Shortly after Emerson's arrival in England, late in 1847, he was a guest at the annual dinner given by the Manchester Athenæum, and was invited, among others, to address the assemblage. The times wore a gloomy outlook. There was great commercial disaster and unwonted distress. He recognized all this, and yet, as was to be expected on such an occasion, his remarks took a hopeful turn. But as he has appended this address to the " English Traits," we may assume that it represents the real views held by him after an interval of nearly ten years. He says:

HAIL AND FAREWELL TO ENGLAND.

"Holiday though it be, I have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates real and not pretended joys; and I think it just, in this time of gloom and disaster, of affliction and beggary in these districts, that, on these very accounts I speak of, you should not fail to keep your literary anniversary. I seem to hear you say that 'for all is come and gone, we will not reduce by one chaplet, or by one oak leaf, the braveries of our annual feast.'

“For I must tell you, I was given to understand in my childhood, that the British Island from which my forefathers came was no lotus garden, no paradise of serene sky, and roses and music and merriment all the year round: no, but a cold, foggy, mournful country, where nothing grew well in the open air but robust men and virtuous women, and these of a wonderful fiber and endurance; that their best parts were slowly revealed; they did not strike twelve the first time; good lovers and good haters, and you could know little about them till you had seen them long, and little good of them until you had seen them in action; that in prosperity they were moody and dumpish, but in adversity they were grand.

"Is it not true, sir, that the wise ancients did not praise the ship parting with flying colors from the port, but only that brave sailer which came back with torn sheets and battered sides, stripped of her banners, but having ridden out the storm. And so, gentlemen, I feel in regard to this aged England, with the possessions, honors, and trophies, and also with the infirmities, of a thousand years gathering around her; irretrievably committed, as she now is, to many old customs which can

not be suddenly changed; pressed upon by the transitions of trade, and new and all incalculable modes, fabrics, machines, and competing populations. I see her, not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before; indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day; and that in storm and calamity she has a secret vigor, and a pulse like a cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit, but young, and still daring to believe in her power of endurance and expansion.

"Seeing all this, I say all hail! mother of nations, mother of heroes, with strength and skill equal to the time; still wise to entertain and swift to execute the policy which the mind and heart of mankind requires in the present hour; and thus only hospitable to the foreigner, and truly a home to the thoughtful and generous who are born on her soil. So be it! So let it be! If it be not so; if the courage of England goes with the chances of a commercial crisis, I will go back to the capes of Massachusetts, and to my own Indian stream, and say to my countrymen, 'The old race are all gone, and the elasticity and hopes of mankind must henceforth remain on the Alleghany ranges or nowhere.'"

X.

REPRESENTATIVE MEN.

IN 1850 Emerson published a volume entitled "Representative Men," which, Mr. Whipple says,