yson did not monopolize conversation. He
wished to know what other people thought, and therefore to hear them
state it, that he might understand their position and ideas. But in
all his talk on great problems, he at once got to their essence,
sounding their depths with ease, or, to change the illustration, he
seized the kernel, and let the shell and fragments alone. There was a
wonderful simplicity allied to his clear vision and his strength. He
was more child-like than the majority of his contemporaries, and along
with this there was--what I have already mentioned--_a great reserve
of power_. His appreciation of other workers belonging to his time was
remarkable. Neither he nor Browning disparaged their contemporaries,
as Carlyle so often did, when he spotted their weaknesses, and put
them in the pillory. From first to last, Tennyson seemed to look
sympathetically on all good works, and he had a special veneration for
the strong silent thinkers and workers.

"Tennyson appreciated the work of Darwin and Spencer far more than
Carlyle did, and many of the ideas and conclusions of modern science
are to be found in his poetry. Nevertheless he knew the limitation of
science, and he held that it was the noble office of poetry,
philosophy, and religion combined to supplement and finally to
transcend it."

XXXI

EMERSON ON CARLYLE AND TENNYSON

On Christmas day, 1832, Emerson sailed out of Boston harbor to pay a
visit to Europe. His health needed a change of work and scene. His
wife had died, he had separated from his congregation, he manifestly
was in need of some recreation, and so his friends had advised him to
take a trip abroad. On the 2d of February he landed at Malta. From
there he traveled through Italy and finally entered England, ready to
make the acquaintance of English celebrities whom he had long admired.

He writes in his journal: "Carlisle in Cumberland, Aug. 26. I am just
arrived in merry Carlisle from Dumfries. A white day in my years. I
found the youth I sought in Scotland, and good and wise and pleasant
he seems to me, and his wife a most accomplished, agreeable woman.
Truth and peace and faith dwell with them and beautify them. I never
saw more amiableness than is in his countenance."

This passage, of course, refers to his visit to Carlyle, to visit whom
Emerson had driven over from Dumfries to Craigenputtock, where Carlyle
had been living for the last five years. In this connection it is
in