378 EMERSON THE LECTURER. 



know perfectly well what we are to expect from Mr. Em 

 erson, and yet what he says always penetrates and stirs 

 us, as is apt to be the case with genius, in a very un 

 looked-for fashion. Perhaps genius is one of the few 

 things which we gladly allow to repeat itself, one of 

 the few that multiply rather than weaken the force of 

 their impression by iteration ] Perhaps some of us hear 

 more than the mere words, are moved by something 

 deeper than the thoughts 1 If it be so, we are quite 

 right, for it is thirty years and more of " plain living 

 and high thinking " that speak to us in this altogether 

 unique lay-preacher. We have shared in the beneficence 

 of this varied culture, this fearless impartiality in criti 

 cism and speculation, this masculine sincerity, this sweet 

 ness of nature which rather stimulates than cloys, for a 

 generation long. If ever there was a standing testi 

 monial to the cumulative power and value of Character, 

 (and we need it sadly in these days,) we have it in this 

 gracious and dignified presence. What an antiseptic 

 is a pure life ! At sixty-five (or two years beyond his 

 grand climacteric, as he would prefer to call it) he has 

 that privilege of soul which abolishes the calendar, and 

 presents him to us always the unwasted contemporary 

 of his own prime. I do not know if he seem old to his 

 younger hearers, but we who have known him so long 

 wonder at the tenacity with which he maintains himself 

 even in the outposts of youth. I suppose it is not the 

 Emerson of 1868 to whom we listen. For us the whole 

 life of the man is distilled in the clear drop of every 

 sentence, and behind each word we divine the force of a 

 noble character, the weight of a large capital of think 

 ing and being. We do not go to hear what Emerson 

 says so much as to hear Emerson. Not that we per 

 ceive any falling-off in anything that ever was essential 

 to the charm of Mr. Emerson's peculiar style of thought 



