book, he
writes, is growing in him, though not to begin until his spring
lectures are over (which begin in May). Your sister Sarah was kind
enough to carry me the other day to see some pencil sketches done
by Stuart Newton when in the Insane Hospital. They seemed to me to
betray the richest invention, so rich as almost to say, why draw any
line since you can draw all? Genius has given you the freedom of the
universe, why then come within any walls? And this seems to be the
old moral which we draw from our fable, read it how or where you
will, that we cannot make one good stroke until we can make every
possible stroke; and when we can one, every one seems superfluous. I
heartily thank you for the good wishes you send me to open the year,
and I say them back again to you. Your field is a world, and all men
are your spectators, and all men respect the true and great-hearted
service you render. And yet it is not spectator nor spectacle that
concerns either you or me. The whole world is sick of that very ail,
of being seen, and of seemliness. It belongs to the brave now to
trust themselves infinitely, and to sit and hearken alone. I am glad
to see William Channing is one of your coadjutors. Mrs. Jameson's
new book, I should think, would bring a caravan of travellers,
aesthetic, artistic, and what not, up your mighty stream, or along
the lakes to Mackinaw. As I read I almost vowed an exploration, but
I doubt if I ever get beyond the Hudson.

Your affectionate servant, R.W. EMERSON.

On the 24th of July, 1838, a little more than a week after the delivery
of the Address before the Divinity School, Mr. Emerson delivered an
Oration before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College. If any rumor
of the former discourse had reached Dartmouth, the audience must have
been prepared for a much more startling performance than that to
which they listened. The bold avowal which fluttered the dovecotes of
Cambridge would have sounded like the crash of doom to the cautious
old tenants of the Hanover aviary. If there were any drops of false or
questionable doctrine in the silver shower of eloquence under which
they had been sitting, the plumage of orthodoxy glistened with unctuous
repellents, and a shake or two on coming out of church left the sturdy
old dogmatists as dry as ever.

Those who remember the Dartmouth College of that day cannot help s