the ring of oracles, can quite compare
with Emerson. Mr. Arnold, in a sonnet
written nearly forty years ago, on Emer-
son's essays, said:

A voice oracular has pealed to day;
To-day a hero's banner is unfurled.

And the first line at least was true, what-
ever may be said of the second. No man
has compressed more authoritative insight
into his sentences than Emerson.

He

much more often reminds one of the atcrees. For example, take this, on the tempts of a seeress to induce in herself the dangers of the much-vaunted life of acecstasy which will not spontaneously visit tion: "A certain partiality, headiness, her. Yet the prose, both of Carlyle and of and want of balance is the tax which all Emerson, falls at times into that poetic action must pay. Act if you like, but you rhythm which indicates the highest glow of do it at your peril;" or this, on the dana powerful imaginative nature, though of gers of speculation: "Why should I vapor such passages the present writer, at least, and play the philosopher, instead of balcould produce many more from Carlyle lasting the best I can this dancing balthan from Emerson. We should say that loon;" or this, on the dangers of heroa little of Emerson's verse is genuine po- worship: "Every hero becomes a bore etry, though not of the highest order, and at last. We balance one man with his that none of Carlyle's is poetry at all; opponent, and the health of the State debut that some of Carlyle's prose is as pends upon the see-saw; or this, on the touching as any but the noblest poetry, Time-spirit: "We see now events forced while Emerson never reaches the same on which seem to retard or retrograde profound pathos. Nor is this the only the civility of ages. But the World-spirit side on which these two contemporary is a good swimmer, and storms and waves thinkers resemble each other. As think- cannot drown him." There is no thinker ers, both were eager transcendentalists, of our day who, for sentences that have and at the same time, rationalists too. Both were intended for divines, and both abandoned the profession, though Emerson filled a pulpit for a year or two, while Carlyle never even entered on the formal study of theology. Both, again, were in their way humorists, though Emerson's humor was a much less profound constituent of his character than Carlyle's. And finally, both would have called themselves the spokesmen of "the dim, common populations," the enemies of all self-discerns character more truly than Car ish privilege, of all purely traditional distinctions between man and man, of all the artificial selfishness of class, of all the tyranny of caste, and the cruelty of custom. Yet Emerson and Carlyle were in their way very remarkable contrasts. Emerson was as benignant and gentle as Carlyle was arrogant and bitter. Mr. Ruskin has asked, "What can you say of Carlyle, except that he was born in the clouds, and struck by lightning?" Of Emerson, it might, perhaps, be also said that he was born in the clouds, but assuredly not that he was struck by lightning. There is nothing scathed or marred about him, nothing sublime, though something perhaps better, a little of the calm of true majesty. He has the keen kindliness of the highest New England culture, with a touch of majesty about him that no other New England culture shows. He has the art of saying things with a tone of authority quite unknown to Carlyle, who casts his thunderbolt, but never forgets that he is casting it at some unhappy mortal whom he intends to slay. That is not Emerson's manner; he is never aggressive. He has that regal suavity which settles a troublesome matter without dispute. His sentences are often like de

lyle, though he does not describe with half the fervent vigor. Carlyle worships Goethe blindly, but Emerson discerns the very core of the poet. "Goethe can never be dear to men. His is not even the devotion to pure truth, but to truth for the sake of culture." And again, Goethe, he says, "has one test for all men: What can you teach me?" Hear him of Goethe as artist: "His affections help him, like women employed by Cicero to worm out the secrets of conspirators." Or take this, as summing up Goethe as a poet: "These are not wild, miraculous songs, but elaborate poems, to which the poet has confided the results of eighty years of observation. . . . Still, he is a poet of a prouder laurel than any contemporary, and under this plague of microscopes (for he seems to see out of every pore of his skin), strikes the harp with a hero's strength and grace." There is something far more royal and certain in Mr. Emerson's insight, than in all the humorous brilliance of Carlyle.

Still, if we were to compare the two as transcendental thinkers, we should not hesitate to declare Carlyle much the greater of the two. Emerson never seems to us so little secure of his ground as he

hope materially to change the great stream of tendencies which contains us; and he made us feel, as hardly any other has made us feel, how, in spite of all this array of immensities in which we are hardly a distinguishable speck, the Spirit whose command brings us into being requires of us the kind of life which defies necessity, and breathes into the order of our brief existence the spirit of impassioned right and indomitable freedom. This was but a narrow aim, compared with that of Mr. Emerson's philosophy, but it succeeded, while Emerson's did not. The various philosophic essays in which Emerson tried to assert the absolute unity of the material and spiritual laws of the universe, have always seemed to us,

is in uttering his transcendentalisms,
Carlyle never so secure. Emerson on
"Nature," Emerson on the "Over-Soul,"
Emerson on the law of "Polarity," Em-
erson on "Intuition," does not seem to
us even instructive. He aims too wide,
and hits only the vague. When he tells
us, in his "Representative Men," that
"animated chlorine knows of chlorine,
and incarnate zinc of zinc," he attempts
to state his peculiar pantheism in words
which not only do not make it more intel-
ligible, but rather illustrate the untruth
of the general assertion that only like can
perceive like. "Shall we say," he adds,
"that quartz mountains will pulverize into
innumerable Werners, Von Buchs, and
Beaumonts, and that the laboratory of the
atmosphere holds in solution I know not though decidedly interesting, yet unques
what Berzeliuses and Davys? a questionable failures. You can drive a coach
tion to which the present writer, at least, and six through almost any one of the
would reply with a most emphatic "No," generalizations which pass for philosophy,
if, at least, the object be, as it no doubt is, in these vague and imaginative, but un-
to explain discoverers by their latent real speculations.
affinity with the thing discovered. Sup- Inferior in genius, -
- as a man Emer-
pose we put it thus, "Animated bacteria son will compare favorably with Carlyle.
know of bacteria, incarnate lymph of vac- He certainly possessed his soul in pa-
cine: "who would not see the absurd-tience, which Carlyle never did. He had
ity? Is there really more of the bacteria a magnanimity in which Carlyle was alto-
in Professor Pasteur or Professor Koch,
than there is in the cattle inoculated by
the former, or the consumptive patients
who die from the presence of tubercular
bacteria, according to the teaching of the
latter, that Professors Pasteur and Koch
discover their presence, while the pa-
tients themselves discover nothing of the
nature of their own complaints? Of
course, Emerson would have said that he
did not mean his statements to be thus
carnally understood. Very likely not;
but have they any real meaning at all, un-at
less thus carnally construed? Mr. Emer-
son's transcendental essays are full of
this kind of dark and vague symbolism,
which carries weight only in proportion to
the extent of our ignorance, not to the
extent of our knowledge. Now, Carlyle,
so far as he was a transcendentalist, stuck
to the very truth and reality of nature.
He showed us how small a proportion of
our life we can realize in thought; how
small a proportion of our thoughts we can
figure forth in words; how immense is
the difference between the pretensions of
human speech and the real life for which
it stands; how vast the forces amidst
which the human spirit struggles for its
little modicum of purpose; how infinite
the universe, both in regard to space and
time, on which we make our little appear-
ances only to subside again before we can

gether wanting. He sympathized ardently with all the greatest practical movements of his own day, while Carlyle held contemptuously aloof. Emerson was one of the first to strike a heavy blow at the institution of slavery. He came forward to encourage his country in the good cause, when slavery raised the flag of rebellion. He had a genuine desire to see all men really free, while Carlyle only felt the desire to see all men strongly governed,

which they might be without being free all. Emerson's spirit, moreover, was much the saner and more reverent of the two, though less rich in power and humor. His mind was heartily religious, though his transcendentalism always gave a certain air of patronage to his manner in speaking of any of the greater religions. One of his youthful sermons was thus described by a lady who heard it: "Waldo Emerson came last Sunday, and preached a sermon, with his chin in the air, in scorn of the whole human race." That is caricature, but whenever Emerson spoke on any religion which claims a special revelation, even in later life, his chin seemed to be “in the air" still. He had the democratic transcendentalist's jealousy of any one who claimed to be nearer God than the race at large. He was contemptuous of the pretensions of special access to God, and this, to our ears at

least, always spoils his tone, when he | pigeons, however different in appearance speaks of Christ and Christianity. But and even in anatomy, remained "essentowards man, he is always reverent- tially pigeons." This is the stupidity which Carlyle seldom is - and he is al- against which the gods themselves fight ways reverent, too, in relation to the in vain; and it was fitting and congruous Divine Mind itself. "I conceive a man that the same intellect should perceive in as always spoken to from behind," he Emerson nothing but a second-rate and once wrote, "and unable to turn his head eccentric essayist. As Darwin vexed the and see the speaker. In all the millions souls of those good naturalists who had who have heard the voice, none ever saw cut up the boundless continuity of nature the face. As children in their play run into little bits, and safely classed and behind each other, and seize one by the stowed away general and species, as they ears, and make him walk before them, so thought, each to remain so labelled on its is the Spirit our unseen pilot." Those proper shelf till the end of the world, so are the words of a truly reverent mind, did Emerson plague and confound the though of a mind as jealously devoted to good orderly souls for whom every man a sort of false spiritual democracy, as it is who deals in thoughts must have his reverent in its attitude and poetic in its proper shelf too, and be assignable to inmost thought. some recognized class of the writing variety of man, on pain of being set down as a deceiver and babbler out of season.

From The Saturday Review.
MR. EMERSON.

ON this side of the Atlantic we were still newly mourning for the greatest of English leaders in science, when it was told us that another life had fallen of one no less widely held in reverence by English-speaking men; the life of the only man, perhaps, if comparison may be made between fields of action so widely different, who exercised on the ideas of a generation younger than his own an influence comparable in its depth and penetration to Mr. Darwin's. In one way, at least, the parallel is not fanciful. Some of those who have been forward in taking up and advancing the impulse given by Darwin, not only on the special ground whence it started, but as a source of energy in the wider applications of scientific thought, have once and again openly declared that they owe not a little to Emerson. The parallel holds, again, in the sort of people who failed to appreciate the power of the great men whom America and England have jointly lost; we say jointly, not severally, for the loss to either nation is the loss of both. It is needless to refute the shallow criticism which affected to treat Emerson as an imitator of Carlyle; but we met with it not many years ago, and it proceeded, strangely enough, from a person who had taken on himself at the meeting of some obscure society to refute Darwinism in a nutshell. Mr. Darwin's observations on the variation of domesticated animals proved nothing in this learned gentleman's opinion; for, when all was said, all the artificial breeds of

There would be nothing more difficult, as there is happily nothing more needless, than to specify with what kind of authors Emerson ought to be ranked. He was neither the follower nor the founder of any school. He learnt from many and owed allegiance to none, and he taught without making disciples. Even in his lightest work he was always many-sided and unexpected; not for the sake of being unexpected, but because the natural working of his mind led him in paths that were not as other men's. If he criticised, it was with a certain ardor of practical application and looking to things to be done in life. If he exhorted, it was with a tempered edge of criticism barely concealed. He was discursive with dominant ideas, and spread out oracular axioms into a train of epigrams. He philosophized like a poet, and wrote poetry like a philos opher; wherefore specialists in both kinds are disappointed with him. Yet for this very reason his work has a higher strain and a subtler charm than faultless verse or rigorous dialectic often attains. As for those who go seeking after definite precepts, Emerson is their despair. All he has to say to them, if perchance they would hear it, is that they are not even beginning to seek rightly, and will have to begin over again. He is a more deadly enemy to formulas than Carlyle, because a profounder one. The resemblance be tween their thoughts (as between their styles, in so far as there is any) lies only on the surface. Carlyle taught men to mock at formulas, Emerson to rise above them. Carlyle's prophesyings and testimonies became at last a string of opposi tion formulas after their own kind, and

just as easy, when a man had learnt them, | good word for the sceptics, and celebrated
to make intellectual counters of as the old Montaigne as their patron saint. If it
ones. We greatly doubt if any one ever were not evident that he never wanted a
succeeded in extracting a formula from system, we might say that he would not
Emerson. This fluent quality of his afford himself one, thinking the best of
thought makes him first repulsive and possible systems too dear at the price of
then fascinating. There is nothing pro- narrowing the mind's activity and the
posed, no argument; you cannot see what play of intellectual sympathies. And yet
the man is driving at. No more can one his difference from the philosophers in a
see what the wind and the cloud-fleeces in stricter sense is less than it seems. All
a sunny sky are driving at. But the sun of them who have preserved a lasting
and air chase cobwebs out of the brain, power have done it by something which
and leave the senses in better harmony transcends their systems, and is more
with the world; and Emerson leaves one vital than the theories in which it is
with a serener belief in the nature of clothed. Emerson has this something
things and the hopefulness of man's es- without any pretence of a system at all.
tate, combined with a modest, but not In Emerson's later work he was more
abject, resignation to the imperfection of condescending to the plainer sort of read-
all individual achievement. The happy ers, and even allowed himself to become
composition of spiritual forces by which didactic. These essays of his old age are
this is brought about is precisely the good by way of a gentle introduction to
secret of Emerson, and it is incommuni- his manner, which has to be learnt and
cable. He would have said himself that fallen in with; but we miss in them the
the only clue to it is to go about one's full and unique power of the man. What
own business, and work altogether in Emerson has to say on the reading of
one's own way; and that if we find no books, for example, is the advice of a wise
successful issue in this, we cannot have and ripe scholar; but it has the unreality
been in earnest, or must have been de- that clings to all specific advice of that
luding ourselves all the time, and really sort. A fixed rule never to read a book.
working in somebody else's way.
less than a year old is not only imprac-
Reason and usage demand that Emer- ticable, but a derogation from Emerson's
son should be called a philosopher; and own best mood. If a new book be good,
yet he was a philosopher standing alone. why not now? If not, why a year hence?
He imbued himself with speculation, but But there remained always the clear con-
stripped it of its forms. The student of templation, the condensed and pointed
philosophy who comes back to Emerson words, and the fresh sincerity of manner.
finds himself walking in a familiar air, but Originality is one of the attributes most
cannot make out the landmarks. No commonly ascribed to Emerson, and just-
modern writer is fuller of the philosophi- ly. Nevertheless, like most men of crea-
cal spirit, or less explicit on particular tive mind, he thought very meanly of
philosophical questions. Perhaps Emer-originality in the popular sense. One
son had an opinion on the technical merits cannot imagine him, if questions of prior-
of the Nominalist and Realist controversy. ity had been possible in his line of work,
But whether he had, or what it was, are disputing one with anybody. Neither did
the last things his essay called "Nominal- his speculative turn exclude practical
ist and Realist" will tell us. He contem- activities. He was a powerful and attrac-
plated not only without dogmatizing, but tive speaker; Mr. Lowell has preserved a
without criticising in the ordinary sense. record of the impression he used to make
He found Plato's greatness not so much in that quality. What is more, he could
in his eloquence or intellectual subtilty as speak effectively on questions of urgent
in his being "a balanced soul," "a man political interest, and so as to command
who could see two sides of a thing." He the respectful ear of a hostile audience.
relished the Oriental mystics, and enjoyed | This contemplator was no dreamer; like
the active life of the modern world; not the ideal Athenian described by Pericles,
alternately, or as correctives one to the
other, but at the same time, and with full
consciousness of both being good in their
kind and embodying truth. Emerson is
called a transcendentalist, and so he was.
But he did not regard transcendental sys-
tems as exhausting the world and man
more than any other systems. He had a

to Bea

are

he was in no wise unmanned by philoso phy. Emerson, in fine, was a man of notable and singular power in English letters; a thinker the operation of whose works is more easily reflected on than described, more easily felt than reflected on, and goes deeper than that of instruc tors who make more formal professions.

From Public Opinion.
THE LITERATURE OF TIFLIS.

geographers and philologists, to show what a useful literary activity the RusTIFLIS, SO distant from the two capitals sians have shown in their new provinces. of Russia, from the two centres of intel- Many good papers are published in Tiflis, lectual life of that vast country, seems several of which contain great stores of hardly the place from whence to expect information concerning the ethnology of the publication of original works in the that part of Asia. A few years ago there Russian language; for of all towns Tiflis had been a sort of revival of the Georgian appears to be the least Russian. In the literature. A group of noble-minded and old, narrow, and tortuous streets of the devoted young men had gathered together ancient capital of Georgia, in the dark round the native gazette, Droéba (the passages of the immense buildings called Times), and the magazine, Krébonii, and bazaars, at every step one is struck with employed all their varied talents to extend the Asiatic manners and costumes of the the knowledge of the native literature, people. In the lanes down near the banks which could boast of so many masterly. of the Kura, or even higher up, near the poets in ancient times; they have pub steps leading to St. David's Mountain lished many fine works, especially poems and the famous monastery where now rest and tales (for instance, "Katsi Adamia the remains of the celebrated poet Gri- ni," by Prince Tchavtchavadze), and some boyédov, killed by the Persians, nowhere works of George Sand. Unfortunately does the Russian type prevail, except in the Georgian nobility, the only people the new part of the town, near the palace likely to protect that attempt, were either of the viceroy. Throughout the town too vain, too fond of pleasure, and stranone hears a medley of all sorts of lan- gers to any noble feelings of pride and guages: here the guttural and energetic love of their small but magnificent counsounds of the Georgian are intermingled try, or else too engrossed in paying their with the sonorous and broad sounds of respects to the Russian government, in the Armenian, in which the shopkeepers order to get some decorations or situaaddress one; there the active Persians (the tions, to condescend to take any notice of water-carriers, builders, in short, the gen- that attempt to bring about a renaissance eral workers of those countries) speak in of their own language; and though Droéba their soft, sweet, and poetic language, or still exists, it has not the influence it dein the rougher Aderbedjan Tartar. The serves to have. The Georgian and Arme mountaineers of the chain of the Caucasus nian authors (whose organ is the Mshak) discuss the news in their innumerable have been overpowered by their more dialects, Ossetian, Lugoush, Koomik, powerful and more fortunate competitors, Kazikoomik, Karaboolak, Adighe, etc., the Russian journalists. Among many and hundreds of others belonging to dif- Russian newspapers Tiflis possesses also ferent families, like the Ossetian to the a caricature journal well worthy of attenArian, and the Avar and its many dialects tion. The Russians have always been to the Turcoman. In that continual mix- fond of caricature, and in spite of the ture of languages, belonging to all sorts fetters imposed upon the press by the of races, it seems hardly possible that the censure, the oppressive laws, and the adRussian language, which is really only ministrative wrongs, they manage to have spoken by the Russian officials and trades- perhaps a larger number of caricature men, and by the young native noblemen papers than any nation in Europe, some and students, should be actively culti- of which bear comparison with the best vated, and that many books should be of the sort. Yet it was not without appreprinted there. Yet this is not the case. hension that we took up the Goosli (this is There is at Tiflis a very active book trade, the name of the Tiflis journal). Georgia though it is not promoted or kept up by is so different from Russia, their manners any college or university. The local are so opposed, that one feared the carigeography and ethnology have been espe- cature would fall short of expectations, cially studied of late years, and most fruit- that what the French call a fausse note ful works have been published. We need would be heard. We were soon reasonly name the "Sbopnik svédénié o Kav-sured however. The Goosli (goosli or kazskikh gortsakh" (recueil of informa- goozli is the ancient Slavonian's harp) is tion about the Caucasian mountaineers), or the numerous monographs of Generals Ooslar and Berget, the "Journal of the Caucasian Geographical Society," all of which have rendered immense services to

full of a true, honest, and humane humor. It is not full of nonsensical conundrums or puns, all the wit of which consists in the repetition of a word or a syllable to be taken in a wrong sense-jeux de mots