Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works

Theodore Parker and to Thoreau.-Address on the Emancipation Proclamation.-Publication of "The Conduct of Lif

e influence of Oriental poetry on Emerson's verse. In many of the shorter poems and fragments published since "May-Day," as well as in t

hearers was Mr. Lowell, who says of it that "every word seemed to have just dropped down to him from the clouds." Judge Hoar, who was another of his hearers, says, that though he has heard many of the chief orators of his time, he never witnessed such an effect of speech upon men. I was myself present on that occasion, and underwent the same fa

essed to a lady of high intellectual gifts, who was one of the e

, May 1

first, and ropes afterwards! and the witch has the prisoner when once she has put her eye on him, as securely as after the bolts are drawn.-Yet I and all my little company watch every token from you, and coax Mrs. H. to read us letters. I learned with satisfaction that you did not like Germany. Where then did Goethe find his lovers? Do all the women have bad noses and bad mouths? And will you stop in England, and bring home the author of "Counterparts" with you? Or did--write the novels and send them to London, as I fancied when I read them? How strange that you and I alone to this day should have his secret! I thin

. But 'tis almost chemistry at last, though a meta-chemistry. I remember you were such an impatient blasphemer, however musically, against the adamantine identities, in your youth, that you should take your turn of resignation now, and be a preacher of peace. But there is a little raising of the eyebrow, now and then, in the most passive acceptance,-if of an intellectual turn. Here comes out around me at this moment the new June,-the leaves say June, though the calendar says May,-and we must needs

s fill the sails

EME

s in the Music Hall to Mr. Parker's society after his death. In 1862, he lost his friend Thoreau, at whose funeral he delivered an address which was published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for August of

ivered in Boston in September, 1862. The feeling tha

e old, who see Nature purified before they depart. Do not let the dying die; hold them back to this world, until you hav

now crown them

laims olives o

ell as what he is to be and to suffer, is so largely predetermined for him, that his will, though formally asserted, has but a quest

ual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character.-We are sure, that, though we know not how, necessi

stery of volition, as on the striking and brilliant way in which the limit

apers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,-these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs. You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity,-expensive races,-ra

inst the danger of the doctrine

f destiny, their birt

ane, and invite th

orously than Emerson, who dearly loves a picturesque statement, has given it in these words, which have a d

ing destination: and I suppose, with high magnifiers, Mr. Fraunhofer or Dr. Carpenter might

Emerson has to

believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a wea

mbecility in the vast majority of men at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of grav

in carrying on the world, and though rarely found in the right state for an article of commerce, but oftener in the supernatural or excess, w

example, and he also lays down some good, plain, practical rules which "Poor Richard" would have cheerfully approved. He might hav

rn; in a good double-wick lamp, and three meals; in a horse or locomotive to cross the land; in a boat to cross the sea; in tools to work with; in books to read; and so, in giving, on all sides, by tools and

t of admission to the masterwo

uld take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush

crets come out as we read these Essays of Emerson's. We know something of his friends and disciples who gathered round him and sat at his feet.

such as we see in the sexual attraction. The preservation of the species was a point of such necessity that Nature has secured it at all hazards by immensely overlo

quaintance with the world, with men of merit, with classes of society, with travel, with eminent pers

s to him who can best do without them. Keep the town for occasions, but the habits should be formed to retirement. Solitude, the safeguard o

as the smooth. Rough water can teach lessons worth knowing. Don't be so tender at makin

ounds at least. But he refused his hand to one who had spoken ill of a friend whom he respected. It was "the hand of Dougla

good sayings ab

an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a

speaks of "Manners" in his

ners is self-reliance.

s more vulga

's measure, when the

every time

his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The

p," Emerson ventures th

l be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical law, the church of men to come, without shawms

ast reach it in their onward movement? It may be remarked that he now speaks of science more respectfully than of old. I suppose this Essay was of later date than "Beauty," or "Illusions."

uch in common with the plain practical intelligence of Franklin that it is a pleasure to

begin upon a thing, but, meeting with a difficulty, they fly from

ll-remembered lecture. Our republican philosopher is clearly enough outspoken on this matter of the vox populi. "Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, per

re was no great necessity for Emerson's returning to the subject of "Beauty," to which he had devoted a chapter of "Nature," and of which he had so often discoursed incidentally. But he says so many things worth reading in the Essay thus entitled in the "Conduct of Life" that we need not trouble ourselves about repetitions. The Essay is

of these effects is produce

s. All the facts in Nature are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of the eternal language. Every word has a double, treble, or centuple use and meaning. What! has my stove and pepper-pot a false bottom? I cry you mercy, good shoe-box! I did not know you were a jewel-case. Cha

apt, if often repeated, to run into visions of rodents and reptiles. A coarser satirist than Emerson indulged his fancy in "Meditations on a Broomstick," which My Lady Berkeley heard seriously and t

ur, come upon one of these passages and shut the book up as wanting in sanity. Without a certain sensibility to the humorous, no one should venture upon Emerson. If he had seen the lecturer's smile as he delive

hich we have not met with, or shall n

tlantic Monthly," and several to "The Dial," a second periodical of that name pub