1822.] 501 [Ames. 



lent against institutions ; lie lienors their real merits and services ; but he 

 trusts wholly to vital energies for impi'ovements and reconstructions. 



The total effect of his work has been to disclose our undeveloped re- 

 sources, to make us aware that Ave are born to an inheritance of infinite 

 richness, and that no man need hesitate to avail himself of all the advan- 

 tages which the universe offers. At the same time, his writings operate as 

 a continual rebi>lve of self-consciousness, cowardice, cupidity, weak indul- 

 gence and pretence. To read Emerson sympathetically is to be enlarged, 

 liberated, shamed out of mean, self-regard, and lifted into universal fel- 

 lowships. 



Not the least notable trait is a certain comprehensiveness, nurtured by 

 his philosophy. His writings abound in allusions which show his mental 

 omnivorousness, his quick sympathy with the thought of all ages and 

 times, his hospitality to "many men of many minds," his ability to grasp 

 and reconcile contrarieties, and the ease with which he found a place for 

 all sorts of fects. Bevelling in the abstruse, and living much on the 

 mountain-top where he could catch and report downward to mortals the 

 wandering whispers of the upp^ air, he j^et joined with Bacon in honor- 

 ing "the studies that are for delight, for ornament, and for ability," and 

 held in high appreciation the men of affairs and the masters of action. 



A tone of playfulness testifies to tlie health of his spirit. There is no 

 trace of moodiness or indigestion in his writings, no sour eructations, no 

 narcotized imaginings, no sore-headedness nor skin-blotches, nor any sign 

 of the itch for praise. He makes it easier to believe in miracles of heal- 

 ing : virtue goes out of him for the driving away of sad and surly hu- 

 mors and the rectifying of small insanities. 



The material of his poetry is too much like that of his prose to address 

 a different class of minds. The ideas of his essays set themselves to music 

 and mount on wings. Nature supplies imagery and vehicle ; for in na- 

 ture, as in God, he lived and moved and had his being. There is a subtle, 

 never-dying charm in this clear-obscure where earth and heaven meet. 

 The verse, whose theme flames up toward the infinite, yet smells of the 

 soil and the breath of kine ; it smacks of tree-sap and sea-salt ; the 

 country-brook glides into the lines ; one hears the wind-harp and the 

 bird-song ; the "dedicated blocks " of granite build the mountain into an 

 altar from whose top the cloud-rack flows like incense. And nothing goes 

 on in leaf or shell, in chemic eddies or solemn march of constellations, in 

 the little life of the insect or the grand sweeps of history, but lo ! these 

 are parts of the ways of the all -perfect Over-Soul — the mystery ever dis- 

 closed yet ever hidden. 



Manjr random readers receive the impression that there is nothing like 

 unity or method in Emerson's mind ; that his works are but a heap of 

 brilliant, unrelated fragments. True, he lacks literary unity, and is care- 

 less of logical construction ; and he despises the charge of inconsistency 

 as "the bugbear of little minds. " But once grasp his larger meanings. 



