. The first Essay in the
volume bears the same name as the volume itself.

In this first Essay Emerson is very fair to the antagonistic claims
of solitary and social life. He recognizes the organic necessity of
solitude. We are driven "as with whips into the desert." But there is
danger in this seclusion. "Now and then a man exquisitely made can live
alone and must; but coop up most men and you undo them.--Here again, as
so often, Nature delights to put us between extreme antagonisms, and
our safety is in the skill with which we keep the diagonal line.--The
conditions are met, if we keep our independence yet do not lose our
sympathy."

The Essay on "Civilization" is pleasing, putting familiar facts in a
very agreeable way. The framed or stone-house in place of the cave or
the camp, the building of roads, the change from war, hunting,
and pasturage to agriculture, the division of labor, the skilful
combinations of civil government, the diffusion of knowledge through the
press, are well worn subjects which he treats agreeably, if not with
special brilliancy:--

"Right position of woman in the State is another index.--Place the
sexes in right relations of mutual respect, and a severe morality
gives that essential charm to a woman which educates all that
is delicate, poetic, and self-sacrificing; breeds courtesy and
learning, conversation and wit, in her rough mate, so that I have
thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of
good women."

My attention was drawn to one paragraph for a reason which my reader
will readily understand, and I trust look upon good-naturedly:--

"The ship, in its latest complete equipment, is an abridgment and
compend of a nation's arts: the ship steered by compass and chart,
longitude reckoned by lunar observation and by chronometer, driven
by steam; and in wildest sea-mountains, at vast distances from
home,--

"'The pulses of her iron heart
Go beating through the storm.'"

I cannot be wrong, it seems to me, in supposing those two lines to be
an incorrect version of these two from a poem of my own called "The
Steamboat:"

"The beating of her restless heart
Still sounding through the storm."

It is never safe to quote poetry from memory, at least while the writer
lives, for he is ready to "cavil on the ninth part of a hair" where his
verses are concerned. But extreme accuracy was not one of Emerson's
spe