Confessions and Criticisms

ecognize an Englishman or German when we meet; but we Americans are not, to the same extent as these, limited by geographical and physical boundaries. The origin of America was not like that of the

omehow. And, in fact, how many Puritans, for how many ages previous, had been trying to find standing-room in the world, and failed! They called themselves by many names; their voices were heard in many countries; the time had not yet come for them to be born-to touch their earthly inheritance; but, meantime, the latent impetus was accumulating, and the Mayflower was driven across the Atlantic by it at last. Nor is this all-the Mayflower is sailing still between the old world and the new. Every day it brings new settlers, if not to our material harbors-to our Boston Bay, our Castle Garden, our Golden Gate-at any rate, to our mental ports and wharves. We cannot take up a European newspaper without finding an American idea in it. It is said that a great many of our countrymen take the steamer to England every summer. But they come back again; and they bring with them many who come to stay. I do not refer specially to the occupants of the steerage-the literal emigrants. One canno

shall disappear and not be missed, for an American will take my place. It is not altogether a luxurious position to find yourself in. You cannot sit still and hold your hands. All manner of hard and unpleasant things are expected of you, which you neglect at your peril. It is like the old fable of the mermaid. She loved a mortal youth, and, in order that she mig

. Indeed, I am sometimes tempted to think that that little band of original Mayflower Pilgrims has not greatly multiplied since their disembarkation. However it may be with their bodily offspring, their spiritual progeny are not invariably found in the chair of the Governor or on the floor of the Senate. What are these Irish fellow-creatur

f bringing the impoverished population of those countries down upon us in the shape of emigrants. They shared our crops and went on the poor-rates, and so we did not gain so much after all. One cannot help wishing that America would assume the loftiest possible ground in her political and commercial relations. With all due respect to the sagacity and ability of our ruling demagogues, I should not wish them to be quoted as typical Americans. The domination of such persons has an effect which is by no means measurable by their personal acts. What they can do is of infinitesimal importance. But the mischief is that they incline every one of us to bel

with as patriotic or virtuous intentions as the promoters themselves; nay, under more favorable circumstances, they might themselves have become promoters. Virtue and patriotism are not private property; at certain times any one may possess them. And, on the other hand, we have seen examples enough, of late, of persons of the highest respectability and trust turning out, all at once, to be very sorry scoundrels. A man changes according to the person with whom he converses; and though the outlook is rather sordid to-day, we have not forgotten that during the Civil War the air seemed full of heroism. So that these two Americas-the real and the ideal-far apart though they may be in one sense, may, in another sense, be as near together as our right hand to our left. In a g

mation and concentration of what is good in them; and the selection and grouping of the elements are such that he is a typical figure. Indeed, he is all type; which is the same as saying that there is nobody like him. And, mentally, he produces the impression of being all force; in his writings, his mind seems to have acted immediately, without natural impediment or friction; as if a machine should be run that was not hindered by the contact of its parts. As he was physically lean and narrow of figure, and his face nothing but so many features welded together, so there was no adipose tissue in his thought. It is pure, clear, and accurate, and has the fault of dryness; but often moves in forms of exquisite beauty. It is not adhesive; it sticks to nothing, nor anything to it; after ranging

gain does he prove without proving it. We confess, over and over, that the truth which he asserts is indeed a truth. Even his own variations from the truth, when he is betrayed into them, serve to confirm the rule. For these are seldom or never intuitions at first hand-pure intuitions; but, as it were, intuitions from previous intuitions-deductions. The form

me under that. By so doing we sacrifice to consistency at least the half of truth. Thence we come to examine our intuitions, and ask them, not whether they are true in themselves, but what are their tendencies. If it turn out that they will lead us to stultify some past conclusion to which we stand committed, we drop them like hot coals. To Emerson, this behavior appeared the nakedest personal vanity. Recognizing that he was fi

problem of the universe; he solves nothing; but he does what is far more useful-he gives a direction and an impetus to lofty human endeavor. He does not anticipate the lessons and the discipline of the ages, but he shows us how to deal with circumstances in such a manner as to secure the good instead of the evil influence. New conditions, fresh discoveries, unexpected horizons opening before us, will, no doubt, soon carry us beyond the scope of Emerson's surmise; but we shall not so easily improve upon his aim and attit

would refer every subject to each paragraph. And so he cannot treat, no matter what subject, without incorporating in his statement the germs at least of all that he has thought and believed. In this respect he is like light-the presence of the general at the particular. And, to confess the truth, I find

h and blood, it is true, and semi-translucent; but still it completes the man for us: he would have remained too problematical without it. Those who have never personally known him may finish and solidify their impressions of him here. He likes England and the English, too; and that sympathy is beyond our expectation of the mind that evolved "Nature" and "The Over-Soul." The grasp of his hand, I remember, was firm and stout, and we perceive those qualities in the descriptions and cordiality of "English Traits." Then, it is an objective book; the eye looks outward, not inward;

en of New York and Boston? Then you may as well die!" He does not spare our tendency to spread-eagleism and declamation, and having quoted a shrewd foreigner as saying of Americans that, "Whatever they say has a little the air of a speech," he proceeds to speculate whether "the American forest has refreshed some weeds of old Pictish barbarism just ready to die out?" He finds the foible especially of American youth to be-pretension; and remarks, suggestively, that we talk much about the key of the age, but "the key to all ages is imbecility!" He cannot reconcile himself to the mania for going abroad. "There is a restlessness in our people that argues want of character.... Can we never extract this tapeworm of Europe from the brain of our countrymen?" He finds, however, this involuntary compensation in the practice-that, practically "we go to Europe to be Americanized," and has faith that "one day we shall cast out the passion for Europe by the passion for America." As to our political doings, he can never regard them with complacency. "Politics is an afterword," he declares-"a poor patching. We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education." He sympathizes with Lovelace's theory as to iron bars and stone walls, and holds that freedom and sl

ect, believing that, with the progress of enlightenment, such coarse constructions of human rights will adjust themselves. He concedes the sagacity of the Fultons and Watts of politics, who, noticing that the opinion of the million was the terror of the world, grouped it on a level, instead of piling it into a mountain, and so contrived to make of this terror the most harmless and energetic form of a State. But, again, he would not have us regard the State as a finality, or as relieving any man of his individual responsibility for his actions and purposes. We are to confide in God-and not in our money, and in the State because it is gu

the heart is to come in. We are too pettifogging and imitative in our legislative conceptions; the Legislature of this country should become more catholic and cosmopolitan than any other. Let us be brave and strong enough to trust in humanity; strong natures are inevitable patriots. The time, the age, what is that, but a few prominent persons and a few active persons who epitomize the times? There is a bribe possible for any finite will; but the pure sympathy with universal ends is an infinite force, and cannot be bribed or bent. The world wants saviors and religions; society is servile from want of will; but there is a Destiny by which the human race is guided, the race never dying, the individual never spared; its law is, you shall have everything as a member, nothing to yourself. Referring to the communities of various kinds, which were so much in vogue some years ago, he holds such to be valuable, not for what they have done, but for the indication they give of the revolution that is on the way. They pla

e globe, every family of men, every point of climate, has its distinguishing virtues. This being admitted, however, Emerson will yield in patriotism to no one; his only concern is that the advantages we contribute shall be the most instead of the least possible. "This country," he says, "does not lie here in the sun causeless, and though it may not be easy to define its influence, men feel already its emancipating quality in the careless self-reliance of the manners, in the freedom of thought, in the direct roads by which grievances are reached and redressed, and even in the reckless and sinister politics, not less than in purer expressions. Bad as it is, this freedom leads onward and upward to a Columbia of thought and art, which is the last and endless end of Columbus's adventure." Nor is this poet of virtue and philosophy ever more truly patriotic, from his

ack to the creed outworn of medieval feudalism and aristocracy, and say, of the land that yields us its produce, "'Tis mine, my children's, and my name's"? Earth laughs in flowers at our boyish boastfulness, and asks "How am I theirs if they cannot hold me, but I hold them?" "When I heard 'The Earth Song,' I was no longer brave; my avarice cooled, like lust in the child of the grave" Or read "Monadnoc," and mark the insight and the power with which the significance and worth of the great facts of nature are interpreted and stated. "Complement of human kind, having us at vantage still, our sumptuous indigence, oh, barren mound, thy plenties fill! We fool and prate; thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense the constant mountain doth dispense; shedding on

are heirs of memories and traditions reaching far beyond the times and the confines of the Republic. We cannot assume the splendid childlikeness of the great primitive races, and exhibit the hairy strength and unconscious genius that the poet longs to fin

eeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet-is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not studying a 'profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already." That is stirringly said: but, as a matter of fact, most of the Americans whom we recognize as great did not have such a history; nor, if they had it, would they be on that account more American. On the other hand, the careers of men like Jim Fiske and Commodore Vanderbilt might serve very well as illustrations of the above sketch. If we must wait for our character until our geographical advantages and the absence of social distinctions manufacture it for us, we are likely to remai

lence we are capable of attaining. A nation that has produced Emerson, and can recognize in him bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh-and, still more, spirit of her spirit-that nation may look toward the coming age with security. But he has done more than thus to prophesy of his country; he is electric and stimulates us to fulfil

s little of persons and parties, of Carolina or Cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which checkmates every false player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence

ting a passage characteristic of him both as a man and as an American, and which, perhaps, conveys a sounder and healthier criticism, both for us and for him, than any m

st discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all things.