THE genius of America seems hitherto dis- | stated the gloomy and repulsive doctrines posed to manifest itself rather in works of of master with an unrivalled force of logic. reason and reflection than in those displays Such is the reputation which Edwards on of poetic fervor which are usually looked the Will enjoys; and we are contented to for in a nascent literature. And a little speak from reputation. The doctrine of consideration would lead us, probably, to necessity, even when intelligently applied expect this. America presents itself upon to the circle of human thoughts and pasthe scene, enters into the drama of the sions, is not the most inviting tenet of phiworld, at a time when the minds of men are losophy. It is quickly learned, and what generally awakened and excited to topics little fruit it yields is soon gathered. But of grave and practical importance. It is when combined with the theological dogma, not a great poem that mankind now want wrung from texts of scripture, of predestior look for; they rather demand a great nation; when the law of necessity, supposed work, or works, on human society, on the to regulate the temper and affairs of the momentous problems which our social pro- human being in this little life, is converted gress, as well as our social difficulties, alike into a divine sentence of condemnation to give rise to. If on a new literature a pecu- a future and eternal fate-it then becomes liar mission could be imposed, such would one of the most odious and irrational of probably be the task assigned to it. tenets that ever obscured the reason or clouded the piety of mankind. We confess, therefore, that we are satisfied with re-echoing the traditional reputation of Jonathan Edwards, without earning, by perusal of his work, the right to pronounce upon its justice. The energetic and ceaseless industry of the people of America, the stern and serious character of the founders of New England, the tendency which democracy must necessarily encourage to reason much and boldly on the interests of the community, would all lead us to the same anticipation; so far as any anticipation can be warranted, regarding the erratic course and capricious development of literary genius. The first contribution, also, which America made to the amount of our knowledge, was of a scientific character, and, moreover, the most anti-poetical imaginable. As The first contribution, we believe, our such, at least, it must be described by those libraries received from America, was the who are accustomed to think that a peculiar half theological, half metaphysical Treatise mystery attached to one phenomenon of on the Will, by Jonathan Edwards. This nature more than another, is essentially follower of Calvin is understood to have poetic. Several poets, our Campbell VOL. XIII. No. II. 10 amongst the number, have complained that antiquity, of great nations, or of great the laws of optics have disenchanted the names. It is remarkable," he says, that rainbow; but the analysis of Newton is involuntarily we always read as superior poetry itself compared to that instance of beings. Universal history, the poets, the the daring and levelling spirit of science romancers, do not, in their stateliest picwhich Franklin exhibited, when he proved tures, in the sacerdotal, the imperial pathe lightning to be plain electricity; took laces, in the triumphs of will or of genius, the bolts of Jupiter, analyzed them, bottled anywhere make us feel that we intrude, that them in Leyden jars, and experimented on this is for our betters, but rather is it true them as with the sparks of his own electri- that in their grandest strokes, there we feel cal machine. most at home. All that Shakspeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy that reads in the corner, feels to be true of himself." As the first efforts of American genius were in the paths of grave and searching inquiry, so, too, at this present moment, if we were called upon to point out amongst the works of our trans-Atlantic brethren, our compatriots still in language, the one which above all others, displayed the undoubted marks of original genius,-it would be a prose work, and one of a philosophical character we should single out ;-we should point to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emer son. The Americans are frequently heard to lament the absence of nationality in their literature. Perhaps no people are the first to perceive their own character reflected in the writings of one of their countrymen; this nationality is much more open to the observation of a foreigner. We are quite sure that no French or German critic could read the speculations of Emerson, without tracing in them the spirit of the nation to which this writer belongs. The new democracy of the New World is apparent, he would say, in the philosophy of one who yet is no democrat, and, in the ordinary sense of the word, no politician. For what is the prevailing spirit of his writings? Self-reliance, and the determination to see in the man of to-day, in his own, and in his neighbor's mind, the elements of all greatness. Whatever the most exalted characters of history, whatever the most opulent of literatures, has displayed or revealed, of action or of thought, the germ of all lies within yourself. This is his frequent text. What does he say of history? I have no expectation that any man will read history aright, who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing to-day." He is, as he describes himself, an endless seeker of truth, with no past at his back." He delights to raise the individual existing mind to the level, if not above the level, of all that has been thought or enacted. He will not endure the imposing claims of Neither do the names of foreign cities, any more than of ancient nations, overawe or oppress him. Of travelling, he says, "I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old, even in youth, among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. Tra He carries ruins to ruins. velling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go." In a still higher strain he writes, "There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same, and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought he may think; what a saint has felt he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind, is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent." This passage is taken from the commencement of the Essay on History, and the Essay entitled "Nature," opens with a similar sentiment. He disclaims the retrospective spirit of our age that would "put the living generation into masquerade out of the faded wardrobe of the past." He will not see through the eyes of others, "Why should not we also," he demands, "enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight, and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? The sun shines to-day also? Let us demand our own works, and laws, and worship." new Western World, is felt in the tone and spirit of Emerson's writings; we do not intend to intimate that the opinions expressed in them are at all times such as might be anticipated from an American. Far from it. Mr. Emerson regards the world from a peculiar point of view, that of an idealistic philosophy. Moreover, he is one of those wilful, capricious, though powerful thinkers, whose opinions it would not be very easy to anticipate, who balk all prediction, who defy augury. For In the Essay on Self-reliance-a title which might over-ride a great portion of his writings he says: "Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic in history, our imagi- For instance, a foreigner might naturally nation makes fools of us, plays us false. expect to find in the speculations of a New Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, England philosopher, certain sanguine and are a gaudier vocabulary than private John enthusiastic views of the future condition and Edward in a small house and common of society. He will not find them here. day's work: but the things of life are the Our idealist levels the past to the present, same to both the sum total of both is the but he levels the future to the present also. same. Why all this deference to Alfred, If with him all that is old is new, so also and Scanderberg, and Gustavus? Suppose all that is new is old. It is still the one they were virtuous: did they wear out vir- great universal mind-like the great ocean tue?" And in a more sublime mood he ebbing, flowing, in tempest now, and now proceeds: "Whenever a mind is simple, in calm. He will not join in the shout that and receives a divine wisdom, then old sees a new sun rising on the world. things pass away,-means, teachers, texts, ourselves (albeit little given to the too santemples fall. Whence, then, this worship guine mood), we have more hope here than of the past? The centuries are conspirators our author has expressed. We by no means against the sanity and majesty of the soul. subscribe to the following sentence. The Man is timid and apologetic. He measure of truth it expresses-and so well is no longer upright. He dares not say 'I expresses-bears but a small proportion to think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or the whole truth. "All men plume themsage. He is ashamed before the blade of selves on the improvement of society, and grass or the blowing rose. These roses un- no man improves. Society never advances. der my window make no reference to former It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on roses, or to better ones; they are for what the other. It undergoes continual changes: they are; they exist with God to-day. it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianThere is no time to them. There is simply the rose,-perfect in every moment of its existence. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong, until he, too, lives with nature in the present, above time." Surely these quotations alone-which we have made with the additional motive of introducing at once to our readers the happier style and manner of the American philosopher-would bear out the French or German critic in their views of the nationality of this author. The spirit of the New World, and of a self-confident democracy, could not be more faithfully translated into the language of a high and abstract philosophy than it is here. We say that an air blowing from prairie and forest, and the ized, it is rich it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a peneil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under. But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that his aboriginal strength the white man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but loses so much support of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost A Or this "Why should we make it a point to disparage that man we are, and that form of being assigned to us? A good man is contented. I love and honor Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. I hold it more just to love the world of this hour, than the world of his hour. Nor can you, if I am true, excite me to the least uneasiness by saying he acted and thou sittest still.' I see action to be good, when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. Epaminondas, if he was the man I take him for, would have sat still the skill to tell the hour by the sun. Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases the number of accidents; it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity (entrenched with joy, and peace, if his lot had been in establishments and forms) some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?" mine. Heaven is large, and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. Why should we be busy-bodies, and super-serviceable? Action and inaction are alike to the true. Besides, why should we be cowed by the name of action? 'Tis a trick of the senses,—no more. We know that the ancestor of every action is a thought. The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature. To think is to act.” Or, if one were to put down the name of Sir Thomas Brown as the author of such a sentence as the following, are there many who would detect the cheat? "I like the silent church, before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary; so let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood?" A French critic has designated Emerson the American Montaigne, struck, we presume, by his independence of manner, and a certain egotism which when accompanied by genius is as attractive, as it is ludicrous without that accompaniment. An English reader will be occasionally reminded of the manner of Sir Thomas Brown, author of the "Religio Medici." Like Sir Thomas, he sometimes startles us by a curiosity of reflection fitted to suggest and kindle thought, although to a dry logician it may seem a mere futility, or the idle play of imagination. Of course this similarity is to be traced only in single and detached passages; but we think we could select several quotations from the American writer which should pass off as choice morsels of Sir Thomas Brown, with one who was familiar with the strain of thought of the old Englishman, but whose memory was not of that formidable exactness as to render vain all attempt at imposition. Take the following for an instance :-"I hold our actual knowledge very cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, see the lizard on the fence, the fungus under foot, the lichen on the log. What do I know sympathetically, morally, of either of these worlds of life? As long as the Caucasian man-perhaps longer-quence. these creatures have kept their council beside him, and there is no record of any word or sign that has passed from the one to the other. I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our socalled history is. How many times we must say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople. What does Rome know of rat or lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being?" But Emerson is too original a mind to be either a Montaigne or a Sir Thomas Brown. He lives, too, in quite another age, and moves in a higher region of philosophy than either of them. The utmost that can be said is, that he is of the same class of independent, original thinkers, somewhat wayward and fitful, who present no system, or none that is distinctly and logically set forth, but cast before us many isolated truths expressed in vivid, spontaneous elo This class of writers may be described as one whose members, though not deficient in the love of truth, are still more conspicuous for their love of thought. They crave intellectual excitement; they have a genuine, inexhaustible ardor of reflection. They are not writers of systems, for patience would fail them to traverse the more arid parts of their subject, or those where they have nothing new, nothing of their own tọ put forth. The task of sitting and arrang |