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which should never fade away! On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language-nobles by the right of an 70 earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged-on whose slightest actions the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest-who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy 75 a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen and flourished and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the 80 evangelist and the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, and the dead had arisen, 85 that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God!

4. Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the 90 dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-67-71. On the rich... hand. Analyze this fine sentence. What is its structure-periodic, or loose?—Point out in detail how the statement in the first member is carried out in the second.-Observe the ef fective use made of the technical terms “creation” and “imposition.”

72-77. The... away. What adjective clauses modify the word “being?” 79-81. For... prophet. What is the figure of speech?-Would this sentence be as effective if expressed as follows: "For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the evangelist and the prophet?" Give reasons for your opinion.

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81, 82. He... foe. Is the repetition of the word " common to be con demned? Why not?-Substitute a synonym for the last "common," and see if the sentence remains equally artistic in its structure.

82-87. He... God. Explain the allusions.-Does this passage partake of hyperbole ?

88-92. Thus... king. What is the figure of speech? (See Def. 18.)

king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions and groans and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or 95 woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid his face from him. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous work- 100 ings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field 195 of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every 110 other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from 115

96. Vane, Sir Henry, was on the Parlia- | 98. Fleetwood, Charles, a conspicuous

mentary side during the English
Civil War, and was a member

of the Council of State.

figure in the English Civil War; he was a son-in-law of Cromwell.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-92, 93. In... tears.

Remark on the conjunctions.

93, 94. glorious or terrible illusions. Point out in detail how this is amplified in the next two sentences. And observe, in the succeeding two sentences, the art with which the thought is enforced by examples.

99-101. But... them. What kind of sentence rhetorically?

104-106. But... battle. Change the order of this sentence so as to bring the adjective clause next to the subject, and observe how much less effective the sentence becomes.

106-123. These fanatics... barrier. In these sentences point out examples of antithesis. Of balanced sentences.

every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling 120 with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.

119. Sir Artegal's iron man Talus.

By

Spenser (Faerie Queene, canto
v.) Talus is thus represented:
"His name was Talus, made of yron mould,
Immovable, resistless, without end,

Who, in his hand, an yron flail doth hold,
With which he threshed out falsehood and did
truth unfold."

In Spenser, Talus appears as the attendant of "the Champion of True Justice, Artegal;" but in Grecian mythology he is a brazen man, made by Vulcan, to guard the island of Crete.

XXX.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

1803.

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RW Emerson

CHARACTERIZATION BY A. BRONSON ALCOTT.'

1. Poet and moralist, Emerson has beauty and truth for all men's edification and delight. His works are studies. And

1 From Concord Days, by A. Bronson Alcott. It should be stated that in the above extract some changes have been made in the order in which the paragraphs stand in Mr. Alcott's fine paper.

any youth of free senses and fresh affections shall be spared years of tedious toil, in which wisdom and fair learning are, for the most part, held at arm's length, planet's width, from his grasp, by graduating from this college. His books are surcharged with vigorous thoughts, a sprightly wit. They abound in strong sense, happy humor, keen criticisms, subtile insights, noble morals, clothed in a chaste and manly diction, fresh with the breath of health and progress.

2. We characterize and class him with the moralists who surprise us with an accidental wisdom, strokes of wit, felicities of phrase-as Plutarch, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Saadi, Montaigne, Bacon, Selden, Sir Thomas Browne, Cowley, Coleridge, Goethe-with whose delightful essays, notwithstanding all the pleasure they give us, we still plead our disappointment at not having been admitted to the closer intimacy which these loyal leaves had with their owner's mind before torn from his note-book, jealous even at not having been taken into his confidence in the editing itself.

3. We read, never as if he were the dogmatist, but a fair speaking mind, frankly declaring his convictions, and committing these to our consideration, hoping we may have thought like things ourselves; oftenest, indeed, taking this for granted as he wrote. There is nothing of the spirit of proselyting, but the delightful deference ever to our free sense and right opinion.

4. Consider how largely our letters have been enriched by his contributions. Consider, too, the change his views have wrought in our methods of thinking; how he has won over the bigot, the unbeliever, at least to tolerance and moderation, if not acknowledgment, by his circumspection and candor of statement.

"His shining armor,

A perfect charmer;

Even the hornets of divinity
Allow him a brief space,

And his thought has a place

Upon the well-bound library's chaste shelves,
Where man of various wisdom rarely delves."

5. Emerson's compositions affect us, not as logic linked in syllogisms, but as voluntaries rather-as preludes, in which one is not tied to any design of air, but may vary his key or note at

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