ntellectual; it is deeper and better than that. Walter
Scott carried such a fund of sympathy and goodwill that even the animals
found fellowship with him, and the pigs understood his great heart.

It was the large endowment of Whitman, in his own character in this
respect, that made his services in the army hospitals during the war
so ministering and effective, and that renders his "Drum-Taps" the
tenderest and most deeply yearning and sorrowful expression of the human
heart in poetry that ever war called forth. Indeed, from my own point
of view, there is no false or dangerous tendency among us, in life or in
letters, that this poet does not offset and correct. Fret and chafe as
much as we will, we are bound to gravitate, more or less, toward this
mountain, and feel its bracing, rugged air.

Without a certain self-surrender there is no greatness possible in
literature, any more than in religion, or in anything else. It is always
a trait of the master that he is not afraid of being compromised by
the company he keeps. He is the central and main fact in any company.
Nothing so lowly but he will do it reverence; nothing so high but he
can stand in its presence. His theme is the river, and he the ample and
willing channel. Little natures love to disparage and take down; they
do it in self-defense; but the master gives you all, and more than your
due. Whitman does not stand aloof, superior, a priest or a critic: he
abandons himself to all the strong human currents; he enters into and
affiliates with every phase of life; he bestows himself royally upon
whoever and whatever will receive him. There is no competition between
himself and his subject; he is not afraid of over-praising, or making
too much of the commonest individual. What exalts others exalts him.

We have had great help in Emerson in certain ways,--first-class service.
He probes the conscience and the moral purpose as few men have done, and
gives much needed stimulus there. But, after him, the need is all the
more pressing for a broad, powerful, opulent, human personality to
absorb these ideals, and to make something more of them than fine
sayings. With Emerson alone we are rich in sunlight, but poor in
rain and dew,--poor, too, in soil, and in the moist, gestating earth
principle. Emerson's tendency is not to broaden and enrich, but to
concentrate and refine.

Then, is there not an excessive modesty, without warrant in philosophy
or nature, dwindling us in thi