the wind drives over the surface of the water."-Essay on Nominalist and Realist, p. 156.

Now here, according to our impression, the Emerson of the former volume would have been apt to stop-or rather, not to stop at all, but to go on pouring out a flood of clever argument and illustration to prove how men were for the most part columns, brigades, regiments, bodies, having a felt existence in the mass, but mere nonentities in the individual. All this with much truth; unless, indeed, he had happened to enunciate the precisely opposite principle, and then he would have combatted for the individuality of man, we know with how much power. But he could scarcely have induced himself to have sacrificed so much of the plaintiff's cause (whichever side he might think was the plaintiff's) as to admit any evidence on the other side. But our improved Emerson goes on thus:

"But this is flat rebellion. Nature will not be Buddhist. She resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million of fresh particulars. It is all idle talking: as much as a man is a whole, so is he also a part: and it were partial not to see it."

Thus, instead of a stimulating and interesting lie, we have a calm and philosophical truth.

There is another change in Mr. Emerson, or it may be unsafe to talk of Mr. Emerson as changed; and we ought rather to say, there is another change in the side of himself, which Mr. Emerson chooses in this series to present to his readers. We hear less of men and more of gentle-> men, than we did. His page is more redolent of the drawing-room and society than of yore. Our wild colt has been groomed, though without losing any of his native fire and spirit, and independence. He has become the apologist, an able, entertaining, and philosophic one,—of social caste and exclusion. The rationale of these things is well understood, but we never happened to see it put in print so truly and openly, as in the admirable Essay on Manners. Mr. Emerson eschews the mere vulgarities of gentility-the mere pride and power of exclusion. The seat of the gentleman is in the heart and character. Nothing can be so ungentlemanly as to talk of what is gentlemanly, and nothing on earth is so vulgar as to talk

of who or what is genteel. Gentle feeling and bearing can have but one source, and that lies within.

"The word gentleman," says Mr. Emerson, "which, like the word Christian, must hereafter characterize the present and the few preceding centuries, by the importance attached to it, is a homage to personal and incommunicable properties. Frivolous and fantastic additions have got associated with the name; but the steady interest of mankind in it must be attributed to the valuable properties which it designated. An element which unites all the most forcible persons of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other, and is somewhat so precise, that it is at once felt if an individual lack the masonic sign, cannot be any casual product, but must be an average result of the character and faculties universally found in men.”—P. 80.

"The manners of this class are observed and caught with devotion by men of taste. The association of these masters with each other, and with men intelligent of their merits, is mutually agreeable and stimulating. The good forms, the happiest expressions of each, are repeated and adopted. By swift consent, every thing superfluous is dropped, everything graceful is renewed. Fine manners show themselves formidable to the uncultivated man. They are a subtler science of defence to parry and intimidate: but once matched by the skill of the other party, they drop the point of the sword,-points and fences disappear, and the youth finds himself in a more transparent atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome game, and not a misunderstanding arises between the players. Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space."-P. 84.

In one of the above extracts the author speaks of the gentlemanly as an element that unites all the most forcible persons of every country; and again, he speaks of the class as having the "most vigour," and "taking the lead in the world of this hour." But he speedily rectifies this evident mistake, and, with that comprehensiveness of induction and judgment which we have spoken of as rendering the present series of his Essays superior to the former, puts the matter on its true basis. Speaking of fashion, he says:

It is virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous honour. It does not often caress the great, but the children of the great;

it is a hall of the Past. It usually sets its face against the great of this hour. Great men are not commonly in its halls they are absent in the field: they are working, not triumphing. Fashion is made up of their children; of those, who through the value and virtue of somebody, have acquired lustre to their name, marks of distinction, means of cultivation and generosity; and, in their physical organization, a certain health and excellence, which secures to them, if not the highest power to work, yet high power to enjoy. The class of power, the working heroes, the Cortez, the Nelson, the Napoleon, see that this is the festivity and permanent celebration of such as they; that fashion is funded talent; is Mexico, Marengo, and Trafalgar, beaten out thin ;-that the brilliant names of fashion run back to just such busy names as their own, fifty or sixty years ago. They are the sowers, their sons shall be the reapers; and their sons, in the ordinary course of things, must yield the possession of the harvest to new competitors, with keener eyes and stronger frames. The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and exploded long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday, that is city and court to-day.”—P. 85.

And again :

"The persons who constitute the natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or, only on its edge; as the chemical energy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum."-P. 95.

Here is an excellent receipt for sore people, who must live in somebody or other's smiles, and to whom the sunshine of God and their own hearts suffice not.

For the present distress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer from the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To remove your residence a couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the most extreme susceptibility. For, the advantages which fashion values, are plants, which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of this precinct, they go for nothing,-are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue."

And so, such people are Ahabs sitting on thrones, but sighing for a trim garden.

But we are all this time forgetting what is the first thing that will strike the reader on opening this volume.

It is an unrivalled oddity. Mr. Carlyle's Preface to the former series had a half-laughing, half-patronizing air about it, not destitute of offensiveness, by means of which, had it been proposed to introduce even our humble selves to the British Public, we should have requested to stand excused. In it Mr. Emerson was "the brave Emerson," who had however still hanging about him some theological nonsense, which, when he grew older and wiser, he would most likely discard. In the present Prefatory Notice Mr. Carlyle enacts a different part-not so much that of Patron, as that of Beggar's Boy. He holds out his hat to the English Nation, and says to each reader, "Sixpence, if you please, for Mr. Emerson!" He strikes a well-dealt blow at the Pirates, and proclaims the Author, "worthy to be left the exiguous sixpence, which falls to his share in the adventure"-although, lest our commiseration should be too much excited by this plaintive prayer, he considerately apprizes us, that "very happily the Author is not, in his economics, dependent on this claim now made for him, or any such." We are not such novices as to be ignorant that Serjeant Talfourd's Tariff deals with realities, as much as Sir Robert Peel's, and that the sweat of a man's brain should should go for as much as the sweat of his brow; but except in introducing an "object" to the Public, we never saw this fact put with such staggering plainness, and we hope we never shall again. It is very proper to scour the sea of Pirates-but we would leave the part of Pompey, for the future, to the Publisher. A man who is, as Mr. Emerson is known in private to be, frugal and abstemious to himself, but generous and munificent to others, deserves every sixpence that he has; but he had need of all his "bravery" to bear this notice. We attach no insignificant value to the imprimatur of Thomas Carlyle.. He would not edite or patronize a fool. But as the object seems to be to get his name within the covers of the volume, we would suggest that in future Mr. Emerson leave his card with the English public, with the simple words "introduced by Mr. T. Carlyle," upon it. This will be sufficient to secure him a gracious reception from those who have not as yet the privilege of his acquaintance, and then we shall be spared the sorry sight of one author, and that the magnanimous, high-spirited Carlyle, introducing

another, and that the magnanimous, high-spirited Emerson, as begging for sixpences.

The first Essay in the volume is entitled the Poet, the word being adopted in its etymological rather than its conventional sense, as the Пoinτns, the Maker, or Originator. This is properly placed first, for it is the connecting link, the transition-essay, between the former and the present series, the former and the present Emerson-full of his best thoughts, marred by the remnants of his old conceits. There must be some very occult attraction in the number three to Mr. Emerson's mind, which allies him very closely with both ancient and modern Pagans.

"The Universe-he tells us has three children born at one time, which reappear, under different names, in every system of thought, whether they be called cause, operation, and effect; or more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or theologically, the Father, the Spirit, and the Son ;" and therefore they must reappear in Mr. Emerson's system of thought, and his Trinity is, "the Knower, the Doer, and the Sayer"-who are of course different beings, persons, and powers; the Knower having only to do with Truth, the Doer with Good, and the Sayer with Beauty. But our author is as much confounded in the distribution of parts and provinces among the persons of his Trinity, as divines have been in reference to a better known one. Thus the Poet starts with being the Sayer, but all through he is also, as might have been expected, the Knower and the Doer. Distribution is an awkward and invidious operation : and in spite of the adherence of our author, we anticipate the time when in all systems of mind, nature and divinity, homogeneity will get the better of trilogies; and when we shall be as ready to say that the material universe has three children, gravity, electricity, and mesmerism, as that the spiritual universe had three children, the Knower, Doer, and Sayer.

But when Mr. Emerson deals with realities, how truthful, how profound, how eloquent we find him :

"For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organised that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite