most other human beings, is nobility. He is a born nobleman. I have seen before two other men born with this stamp upon them-his excellency W- -r, in Sweden, and is the second, Emerson the third which has it, and perhaps in a yet higher degree; and added thereto that deep intonation of voice, that expression so mild yet so elevated at the same time. I could not but think of Maria Lowell's words, 'If he merely mention my name, I feel myself ennobled.'

"I enjoyed Emerson's conversation, which flowed as calmly and easily as a deep and placid river. It was animating to me both when I agreed and when I dissented; there is always a something important in what he says, and he listens well and comprehends and replies well also. But whether it was the weariness of the spirit or whether a feeling of esteem for his peace and freedom, I know not, but I did not invite his conversation. When it came it was good, when it did not come it was good also, especially if he were in the His presence was agreeable to me. He was amiable in his attention to me and in his mode of entertaining me as a stranger and guest in his house.

room.

"This is what I wished to say to Emerson, what I endeavoured to say, but I know not how

I did it. I cannot usually express myself either easily or successfully until I become warm and get beyond or through the first thoughts; and Emerson's cool, and as it were circumspect, manner prevented me from getting into my own natural region. I like to be with him, but when with him I am never fully myself. I do not believe that I now expressed myself intelligibly to him. He listened calmly, and said nothing decidedly against it, nor yet seemed inclined to give his views as definite. He seemed to me principally to be opposed to blind or hypocritical faith. 'I do not wish,' said he, 'that people should pretend to know or to believe more than they really do know and believe. The resurrection, the continuance of our being, is granted,' said he also; 'we carry the pledges of this in our own breast. I maintain

merely that we cannot say in what form or in what manner our existence will be continued.' If my conversation with Emerson did not lead to anything very satisfactory, it led, nevertheless, to my still more firm conviction of his nobility and love of truth. He is faithful to the law in his own breast, and speaks out the truth which he inwardly recognises. He does right. By this means he will prepare the way for a more true comprehension of religion and of life.

For when once this keen

glance, seeing into the innermost of everything, once becomes aware of the concealed human form in the tree of life-like Napoleon's in the tree of St. Helena-then will he teach others to see it too, will point it out by such strong, new, and glorious words that a fresh light will spring up before many, and people will believe because they see.”

THE YOUNG PREACHER.

Mr. Charles T. Congdon, a veteran American journalist, in a series of papers in the New York "Tribune" in 1879, entitled "Reminiscences of a Journalist," gives some recollections of Emerson before he had abandoned his ministerial connection with the Unitarian body:-"It is curious that I should first have heard the lovable voice of Ralph Waldo Emerson, when he was the Rev. Waldo Emerson. One day there came into our pulpit the most gracious of mortals, with a face all benignity, who gave out the first hymn and made the first prayer as an angel might have read and prayed. Our choir was a pretty good one, but its best was coarse and discordant after Emerson's voice. I remember of the sermon only that it had an indefinite charm of simplicity, quaintness, and wisdom, with occasional illustrations from nature,

which were about the most delicate and dainty things of the kind which I had ever heard. I could understand them, if not the fresh philosophical novelty of the discourse. Mr. Emerson preached for us for a good many Sundays, lodging in the home of a Quaker lady, just below ours. Seated at my own door, I saw him often go by, and once in the exuberance of my childish admiration I ventured to nod to him and to say 'Good morning!' To my astonishment, he also nodded. and smilingly said 'Good morning!' and that is all the conversation I ever had with the sage of Concord not enough, decidedly, for a reminiscent volume about him after he has left a world, which he has made wiser and happier. He gave us afterward two lectures based upon his travels abroad, and was at a great deal of trouble to hang up prints, by way of illustration. There was a picture of the tribune in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, painted by one of our townsmen, and I recall Mr. Emerson's great anxiety that it should have a good light, and his lamentation when a good light was found to be impossible. The lectures themselves were so fine-enchanting we found them-that I have hungered to see them in print, and have thought of the evenings upon which they were delivered as 'true Arabian nights.''

EMERSON HISSED. WHILE SPEAKING AGAINST "THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW."

In all Emerson's experience as a lecturer there was only one occasion when he received that tribute to a radical orator's timely eloquence which is expressed in hisses. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law stirred him into unwonted moral passion and righteous wrath. He accepted an invitation to deliver a lecture in Cambridgeport, called for the purpose of protesting against that infamous anomaly in jurisprudence and insult to justice which had the impudence to call itself a law. Those who sympathised with him were there in force; but a score or two of foolish Harvard students came down from the college to the hall where the lecture was delivered determined to assert "the rights of the South," and to preserve the threatened Union of the States. They were the rowdiest, noisiest, most brainless set of young gentlemen that ever pretended to be engaged in studying "the humanities" at the chief university of the country. Their only arguments were hisses and groans whenever the most illustrious of American men of letters uttered an opinion which expressed the general opinion of the civilised world. If he quoted Coke, Holt, Blackstone, Mansfield, they hissed all these sages