lo L. A. Sherman, 



provement open. Searching for those who shall evince it by 

 the test of sentence-shortening as before, we are brought to 

 the group of the New England Transcendentalists. Here in 

 Emerson we find larger meaning and less sentence, the aver- 

 age of the Divinity College Address being 20.92. Emerson 

 at least tries hard to keep the whole law of rhetorical single- 

 ness and simplicity, but he also lapses at times egregiously. 

 There is still a promise which is unfulfilled. Following the 

 track of progress further, we are led on through Alcott and 

 find at last the present limit of evolution and the literary 

 sentence-minimum in Bartol. Here there is perhaps some- 

 what of laconism, but it is wholly in the thought — not at all 

 in the sentence-forms. Channing would have expressed the 

 same meaning in sentences equally concise- with never the 

 suggestion of staccato effect, and as a matter of fact often 

 runs through a series of periods as short as Bartol's without 

 jolt or jar. The following is an average sample of the latter's 

 style : " He belonged to no class. He was not, for any 

 system of theology or philosophy, either leader or led. He 

 will be identified with no dogma or reform other or less than 

 of the way of regarding and treating those whom he served. 

 He is the sailor's representative. Those other great ones 

 were landsmen. He stands for the sea. He is the great 

 delegate from the waves to the congress of intellect. In 

 thousands of ships, by almost millions of mariners, to whom 

 by baptism of the Holy Ghost he was father who christened 

 their babes, his fame was borne to every port. The sailor 

 says he has been where the United States has not been heard 

 of, but never where Father Taylor had not. How did a man, 

 — no discoverer in the kingdom of ideas, no martyr of principle, 

 nor marshal of opinion, — so touch the common mind .'' " ^ 

 But note the difference in Channing : " To one who reflects, 

 there is something very shocking in these decorations of war. 

 If men must fight, let them wear the badges which become 

 their craft. It would shock us to see a hangman dressed out 



1 Radical Problems, pp. 324, 325. 

 128 



