156 EMERSON THE LECTURER. 



above the subtler meaning of style. He would prefer 

 Donne, I suspect, to Spenser, and sometimes mistakes the 

 queer for the original. 



To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, 

 gift of life ; yet there are some of us who would hardly 

 consent to be young again, if it were at the cost of our 

 recollection of Mr. Emerson s first lectures during the con 

 sulate of Van Buren. We used to walk in from the 

 country to the Masonic Temple (I think it was), through 

 the crisp winter night, and listen to that thrilling voice of 

 his, so charged with subtle meaning and subtle music, as 

 shipwrecked men on a raft to the hail of a ship that came 

 with unhoped-for food and rescue. Cynics might say what 

 they liked. Did our own imaginations transfigure dry 

 remainder-biscuit into ambrosia 1 ? At any rate, he brought 

 us life, which, on the whole, is no bad thing. Was it all 

 transcendentalism ? magic-lantern pictures on mist 1 As 

 you will. Those, then, were just what we wanted. But it 

 was not so. The delight and the benefit were that he put 

 us in communication with a larger style of thought, 

 sharpened our wits with a more pungent phrase, gave us 

 ravishing glimpses of an ideal under the dry husk of our 

 New England ; made us conscious of the supreme and ever 

 lasting originality of whatever bit of soul might be in any 

 of us } freed us, in short, from the stocks of prose in which 

 we had sat so long that we had grown well-nigh contented 

 in our cramps. And who that saw the audience will ever 

 forget it, where everyone still capable of fire, or longing to 

 renew in them the half-forgotten sense of it, was gathered ? 

 Those faces, young and old, agleam with pale intellectual 

 light, eager with pleased attention, flash upon me once 

 more from the deep recesses of the years with an exquisite 

 pathos. Ah, beautiful young eyes, brimming with love 

 and hope, wholly vanished now in that other world we call 

 the Past, or peering doubtfully through the pensive gloam 

 ing of memory, your light impoverishes these cheaper days ! 

 I hear again that rustle of sensation, as they turned to 

 exchange glances over some pithier thought, some keener 



