380 EMERSON THE LECTURER. 



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 everlasting originality of 

 whatever bit of soul might be in any of us ; freed us, 

 in short, from the stocks <5f prose in which we had sat 

 so long that we had grown wellnigh contented in our 

 cramps. And who that saw the audience will ever for- 

 get it, where every one still capable of fire, or longing 

 to renew in them the half-forgotten sense of it,. was 

 gathered 1 ? 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 gloaming 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 flash of that 

 humor which always played about the horizon of his 

 mind like heat-lightning, and it seems now like the sad 

 whisper of the autumn leaves that are whirling around 

 me. But would my picture be complete if I forgot that 



ample and vegete countenance of Mr. R of W , 



how, from its regular post at the corner of the front 

 bench, it turned in ruddy triumph to the profaner audi- 

 ence as if he were the inexplicably appointed fugleman 

 of appreciation 1 I was reminded of him by those hearty 

 cherubs in Titian's Assumption that look at you as who 

 should say, "Did you ever see a Madonna like that? 

 Did you ever behold one hundred and fifty pounds of 

 womanhood mount heavenward before like a rocket ? " 



To some of us that long-past experience remains as the 

 most marvellous and fruitful we have ever had. Emerson 



