INTRODUCTION. xv 



that the apostle of nature may have been something of a char 

 latan. &quot;This egotism of his is a Stylites pillar after all, a 

 seclusion which keeps him in the public eye. He squatted on 

 another man s land ; he borrows an axe ; his boards, his nails, 

 his bricks, his mortar, his books, his lamp, his fish-hooks, his 

 plough, his hoe all turn state s evidence against him as an 

 accomplice in the sin of that artificial civilisation which alone 

 rendered it possible that such a person as Henry D. Thoreau 

 should exist at all.&quot; Yet, having so fairly hit this blot, Mr. 

 Lowell reconciles himself to his author, and dismisses him with 

 a benediction. &quot;Emerson the Lecturer&quot; helps one, in some 

 degree, to understand the magnetism exercised by Emer 

 son on men who, as is evidently the case with Mr. Lowell 

 himself, had but slight intellectual affinity with him. Without 

 being precisely told so, we are made to understand that, for a 

 large class of highly-cultivated minds, Emerson was rather a 

 great personality than a great teacher ; while it is not denied 

 that to many, differently constituted, he was the bearer of a 

 gospel. 



Carlyle naturally succeeds Emerson, and forms a connecting 

 link between the young genius of America and the classic 

 poetry of England which forms the theme of most of Mr. 

 Lowell s remaining essays. The circumstances under which 

 this particular disquisition was penned were unpropitious both 

 for author and subject. Carlyle had certainly been most unfor 

 tunate in his treatment of the American Civil War. Everything 

 had conspired to put him wrong. He was prejudiced against 

 philanthropy, he was prejudiced against popular institutions, he 

 was merciless to shiftlessness and incapacity. Philanthropy and 

 liberalism were undoubtedly for the North, and, misled by the 

 English newspapers and the unreasonable complaints of the 

 Federalists themselves, Carlyle early adopted the welcome 

 theory that the South had a monopoly of wisdom and valour. 

 For a champion of the North, for a man absorbed heart and 

 soul in the great struggle, Mr. Lowell s reply is wonderfully 

 moderate. From the point of view of a purely objective criti 

 cism, it is much too severe. To retort effectively upon Carlyle 



