iative criticisms of Emerson's Lectures, and Mr. Lowell drew the
portrait of the New England "Plotinus-Montaigne" in his brilliant "Fable
for Critics," to the recent essays of Mr. Matthew Arnold, Mr. John
Morley, Mr. Henry Norman, and Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, Emerson's
writings have furnished one of the most enduring _pieces de resistance_
at the critical tables of the old and the new world.

He early won the admiration of distinguished European thinkers and
writers: Carlyle accepted his friendship and his disinterested services;
Miss Martineau fully recognized his genius and sounded his praises; Miss
Bremer fixed her sharp eyes on him and pronounced him "a noble man."
Professor Tyndall found the inspiration of his life in Emerson's
fresh thought; and Mr. Arnold, who clipped his medals reverently but
unsparingly, confessed them to be of pure gold, even while he questioned
whether they would pass current with posterity. He found discerning
critics in France, Germany, and Holland. Better than all is the
testimony of those who knew him best. They who repeat the saying that
"a prophet is not without honor save in his own country," will find an
exception to its truth in the case of Emerson. Read the impressive words
spoken at his funeral by his fellow-townsman, Judge Hoar; read the
glowing tributes of three of Concord's poets,--Mr. Alcott, Mr. Channing,
and Mr. Sanborn,--and it will appear plainly enough that he, whose fame
had gone out into all the earth, was most of all believed in, honored,
beloved, lamented, in the little village circle that centred about his
own fireside.

It is a not uninteresting question whether Emerson has bequeathed to the
language any essay or poem which will resist the flow of time like "the
adamant of Shakespeare," and remain a classic like the Essays of Addison
or Gray's Elegy. It is a far more important question whether his thought
entered into the spirit of his day and generation, so that it modified
the higher intellectual, moral, and religious life of his time, and, as
a necessary consequence, those of succeeding ages. _Corpora non agunt
nisi soluta_, and ideas must be dissolved and taken up as well as
material substances before they can act. "That which thou sowest is not
quickened except it die," or rather lose the form with which it was
sown. Eight stanzas of four lines each have made the author of "The
Burial of Sir John Moore" an immortal, and endowed the language with a
classic,