fter all our criticisms, our selections, our analyses, our comparisons,
we have to recognize that there is a charm in Emerson's poems
which cannot be defined any more than the fragrance of a rose or a
hyacinth,--any more than the tone of a voice which we should know from
all others if all mankind were to pass before us, and each of its
articulating representatives should call us by name.

All our crucibles and alembics leave unaccounted for the great mystery
of _style_. "The style is of [a part of] the man himself," said Buffon,
and this saying has passed into the stronger phrase, "The style is the
man."

The "personal equation" which differentiates two observers is not
confined to the tower of the astronomer. Every human being is
individualized by a new arrangement of elements. His mind is a safe with
a lock to which only certain letters are the key. His ideas follow in
an order of their own. His words group themselves together in special
sequences, in peculiar rhythms, in unlooked-for combinations, the
total effect of which is to stamp all that he says or writes with
his individuality. We may not be able to assign the reason of the
fascination the poet we have been considering exercises over us. But
this we can say, that he lives in the highest atmosphere of thought;
that he is always in the presence of the infinite, and ennobles the
accidents of human existence so that they partake of the absolute and
eternal while he is looking at them; that he unites a royal dignity
of manner with the simplicity of primitive nature; that his words and
phrases arrange themselves, as if by an elective affinity of their own,
with a _curiosa felicitas_ which captivates and enthrals the reader who
comes fully under its influence, and that through all he sings as in all
he says for us we recognize the same serene, high, pure intelligence and
moral nature, infinitely precious to us, not only in themselves, but as
a promise of what the transplanted life, the air and soil and breeding
of this western world may yet educe from their potential virtues,
shaping themselves, at length, in a literature as much its own as the
Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi.

CHAPTER XV.

Recollections of Emerson's Last Years.--Mr. Conway's Visits.--Extracts
from Mr. Whitman's Journal.--Dr. Le Baron Russell's Visit.--Dr. Edward
Emerson's Account.--Illness and Death.--Funeral Services.

Mr. Conway gives the following account of two visits to Emerson