r. Let the heavens fall--what matters it to me? his look seemed to
say.

Emerson's face had in it more of what we call the divine than had that
of any other author of his time--that wonderful, kindly, wise
smile--the smile of the soul--not merely the smile of good nature, but
the smile of spiritual welcome and hospitality.

Emerson had quality. A good Emersonian will recognize any passage from
the Sage in a book of quotations, even if no name is appended.

We speak of Emerson as outgrown, yet only yesterday I saw in J. Arthur
Thomson's recent Gifford Lectures on "The System of Animate Nature,"
repeated quotations from Emerson, mainly from his poetry. I think he
is no more likely to be outgrown than are Wordsworth and Arnold. Yet I
do not set the same value upon his poetry that I do upon that of
Wordsworth at his best.

Emerson is the last man we should expect to be guilty of
misinterpreting Nature, yet he does so at times. He does so in this
passage: "If Nature wants a thumb, she makes it at the cost of the
arms and legs." As if the arm were weaker or less efficient because of
the thumb. What would man's power be as a tool-using animal without
his strong, opposable thumb? His grasp would be gone.

He says truly that the gruesome, the disgusting, the repellent are not
fit subjects for cabinet pictures. The "sacred subjects" to which he
objects probably refer to the Crucifixion--the nails through the hands
and feet, and the crown of thorns. But to jump from that fact to the
assertion that Nature covers up the skeleton on the same grounds, is
absurd. Do not all vertebrates require an osseous system? In the
radiates and articulates she puts the bony system on the outside, but
when she comes to her backbone animals, she perforce puts her osseous
system beneath. She weaves her tissues and integuments of flesh and
skin and hair over it, not to hide it, but to use it. Would you have a
man like a jellyfish?

The same want of logic marks Carlyle's mind when he says: "The drop by
continually falling bores its way through the hardest rock. The hasty
torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace
behind." But give the "hasty torrent" the same time you give the drop,
and see what it will do to the rock!

Emerson says, "A little more or a little less does not signify
anything." But it does signify in this world of material things. Is
one man as impressive as an army, one tree as impressive as a forest?
"Scoop