ministry, and shows his intense love of nature, and the devoutness of his mind."

concluding lines:

Here are the

I am going to my own hearth-stone,
Bosomed in yon green hills alone,-
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green, the live-long day,
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,

And vulgar feet have never trod

A spot that is sacred to Thought and God.
O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,

I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan ;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,

When man in the bush with God may meet?

After his resignation his health broke down, and he was advised to take a sea voyage. Unable to appear in the pulpit again, he addressed an affectionate letter of farewell to his congregation, dated 22nd December, 1832.* His health did not improve during the winter, and he embarked early in the spring of 1833 for Europe. He sailed up the

*The Sermon and Letter here alluded to contain so much that is characteristic of Emerson, even at this early period of his life, that extracts from both are given at the end of the volume. They will be read with interest by students of his mind and character.

Mediterranean in a vessel bound for Sicily, and went as far eastward as Malta. Returning through Italy, where he dined with Walter Savage Landor in Florence-finding him "noble and courteous, living in a cloud of pictures at his villa Gherardesca❞— "If Goethe had been still living, I might have wandered into Germany also. Besides those I have named, Coleridge, Wordsworth, De Quincey, and Carlyle (for Scott was dead), there was not the man living whom I cared to behold, unless it were the Duke of Wellington, whom I saw in Westminster Abbey at the funeral of Wilberforce." He visited France, and in July reached London. He called on Coleridge, whom he describes in his "English Traits." In August of the same year (1833) he made a pilgrimage to Scotland. He remained some days in Edinburgh, and delivered a discourse in the Unitarian Chapel there, recollections of which happily still survive. Desirous of personally acknowledging to Carlyle his indebtedness for the spiritual benefit he had derived from certain of his writings-notably the concluding passage in the article on German Literature, and the paper entitled "Characteristics"-he found his way, after many hindrances, to Craigenputtock, among the desolate hills of the parish of Dunscore, in Dumfriesshire, where Carlyle was then living with his bright and

accomplished wife in perfect solitude, without a person to speak to, or a post office within seven miles. There he spent twenty-four hours, and became acquainted with him at once. They walked over miles of barren hills, and talked upon all the great questions which interested them most. The meeting is described in his

English Traits," published twenty-three years afterwards, and the account of it there given is reprinted by Mr. Froude in his "Life of Carlyle," &c., lately issued. Carlyle and his wife often afterwards spoke of that visit, "when that supernal vision, Waldo Emerson, dawned upon us," as if it had been the coming of an angel. They regarded Emerson as a "beautiful apparition" in their solitude. A letter exists (reprinted in this volume), addressed to the present writer, a few days after the visit, giving an account of it, as well as of one to Wordsworth. This letter, written on the spur of the moment, and not intended for publication, contains some details not to be found in the more elaborate and carefully-prepared account of these two visits which he gave to the public so many years later. Mr. Froude says of this visit: "The fact itself of a young American having been so affected by his writings as to have sought him out on the Dunscore moors, was a homage of the

kind which he (Carlyle) could especially value and appreciate. The acquaintance then begun to their mutual pleasure ripened into a deep friendship, which has remained unclouded in spite of wide divergencies of opinion throughout their working lives, and continues warm as ever at the moment when I am writing these words (June 27, 1880), when the labours of both of them are over, and they wait in age and infirmity to be called away from a world to which they have given freely all that they had to give.”

Emerson has the distinction of having been the first eminent literary man of either continent to appreciate and welcome "Sartor Resartus." The book was written in 1831 at Craigenputtock, but could find no publisher for two years. At last it appeared in "Fraser's Magazine" in successive chapters, in 1833-4 (Carlyle having to accept reduced remuneration); and it was not till 1838 that it appeared as a volume in England. While subscribers were complaining of the "intolerable balderdash" appearing from month to month in the magazine, under the title of "Sartor Resartus," "sentences which might be read backward or forward, for they are equally intelligible either way"and threatening to withdraw their subscriptions if "that clotted nonsense" did not speedily cease,

C

Emerson was quietly collecting the successive numbers with a view to its publication on completion. In 1836 the American edition of the work appeared in Boston, and was sufficiently successful to yield a profit of £150, which Emerson sent to Carlyle the most important sum which he had, up to that time, received for any of his works. In Emerson's modest preface to the book (on its first appearance in the shape of a volume), occur these memorable words-the earliest cordial recognition of the originality and power of this now famous work :

:

We believe, no book has been published for many years, written in a more sincere style of idiomatic English, or which discovers an equal mastery over all the riches of the language. The author makes ample amends for the occasional eccentricity of his genius, not only by frequent bursts of pure splendour, but by the wit and sense which never fail him. But what will chiefly commend the book to the discerning reader is the manifest design of the work, which is a Criticism upon the Spirit of the Age,—we had almost said, of the hour, in which we live; exhibiting, in the most just and novel light, the present aspects of Religion, Politics, Literature, Arts, and Social Life. Under all his gaiety, the writer has an earnest meaning, and discovers an insight into the manifold wants and tendencies of human nature, which is very rare among our popular authors. The philanthropy and the purity of moral sentiment, which inspire the work, will find their way to the heart of every lover of virtue.

A similar service was done by Emerson some years later in a few prefatory remarks to the