are to be annoyed with them in the next world is the
doubt. Some of them are most worthy people, and capital Christians,
and cannot be kept out of Paradise; but will they be allowed to
torment the elect there?"

Probably the title of the Great American could be as fittingly applied
to Bryant as to any man our nation has produced. He has been happily
called the Puritan Greek; and this epithet applies equally well to his
life and to his writings. If he was a Stoic in his earlier years, he was
as unmistakably a Christian in later life. During both periods he was
pure as ice, lofty in thought, noble in deed,--an inspiration toward the
True Life to all who watched his course. No errors of passion or of
overheated blood did he have to mourn over, even in youth; yet he was
not cold or unimpassioned, as his deep devotion throughout life to the
woman of his choice proved. He led emphatically the intellectual life,
with as little admixture of the flesh as possible; yet the warm currents
of feeling were never dried up in his nature, but bubbled up freshly to
the end. He lived largely on the heights of life, yet he was not
uncharitable to the weaknesses and follies he saw everywhere about him,
but rather looked upon them with a half-pitying tenderness; and he
dropped a tear occasionally where the integrity of his own nature
counselled a stern reproof.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

"I have seen Emerson, the first man I have ever seen," wrote George
Eliot in her diary many years ago. Carlyle uses similar expressions in
his letters at least a score of times. Sentences like the following
appear very often:--

"It remains true and will remain, what I have often told you, that
properly there is no voice in this world which is completely human
to me but your voice only."

Again:--

"In the whole world I hardly get to my spoken human word any other
word of response that is authentically _human_. God help us, this
is growing a very lonely place, this distracted dog-kennel of a
world."

Indeed, the personality of Emerson seems to have produced a very marked
effect upon all the great men and women with whom he came in contact. We
find that he was often described as an angel in appearance in his
younger days. Here are one or two instances: Of his appearance to them
in their stony solitude at Craigenputtoch Carlyle afterwards wrote to
Emerson:--