ns, or assents
through good-nature, or goes abroad; who is not afraid of giving
offense; "who answers you without supplication in his eye,"--in fact,
who stands like a granite pillar amid the slough of life. You may
wrestle with this man, he says, or swim with him, or lodge in the same
chamber with him, or eat at the same table, and yet he is a thousand
miles off, and can at any moment finish with you. He is a sheer
precipice, is this man, and not to be trifled with. You shrinking,
quivering, acquiescing natures, avaunt! You sensitive plants, you
hesitating, indefinite creatures, you uncertain around the edges, you
non-resisting, and you heroes, whose courage is quick, but whose wit is
tardy, make way, and let the human crustacean pass. Emerson is moulded
upon this pattern. It is no mush and milk that you get at this table. "A
great man is coming to dine with me; I do not wish to please him; I wish
that he should wish to please me." On the lecture stand he might be
of wood, so far as he is responsive to the moods and feelings of his
auditors. They must come to him; he will not go to them: but they do not
always come. Latterly the people have felt insulted, the lecturer showed
them so little respect. Then, before a promiscuous gathering, and in
stirring and eventful times like ours, what anachronisms most of his
lectures are, even if we take the high ground that they are pearls
before swine! The swine may safely demand some apology of him who offers
them pearls instead of corn.

Emerson's fibre is too fine for large public uses. He is what he is, and
is to be accepted as such, only let us _know_ what he is. He does not
speak to universal conditions, or to human nature in its broadest,
deepest, strongest phases. His thought is far above the great sea level
of humanity, where stand most of the world's masters. He is like one of
those marvelously clear mountain lakes whose water-line runs above
all the salt seas of the globe. He is very precious, taken at his real
worth. Why find fault with the isolation and the remoteness in view of
the sky-like purity and depth?

Still I must go on sounding and exploring him, reporting where I touch
bottom and where I do not. He reaps great advantage from his want of
sympathy. The world makes no inroads upon him through this channel. He
is not distracted by the throng or maybe the mob of emotions that find
entrance here. He shines like a star undimmed by current events. He
speaks as fro