ten evidently by a man of genius. It
reveals a nature compelling respect,--a Shelley, and yet a sort of
Yankee Shelley, who is mad only when the wind is nor'-nor'west; a mature
nature which must have been nourished for years upon its own thoughts,
to speak this new language so eloquently, to stand so calmly on its
feet. The deliverance of his thought is so perfect that this work adapts
itself to our mood and has the quality of poetry. This fluency Emerson
soon lost; it is the quality missing in his poetry. It is the
efflorescence of youth.

"In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing
a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky,
without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good
fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the
brink of fear. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the
snake his slough, and at what period soever of life is always a
child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of
God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed,
and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand
years.... It is the uniform effect of culture on the human mind, not
to shake our faith in the stability of particular phenomena, as
heat, water, azote; but to lead us to regard nature as phenomenon,
not a substance; to attribute necessary existence to spirit; to
esteem nature as an accident and an effect."

Perhaps these quotations from the pamphlet called Nature are enough to
show the clouds of speculation in which Emerson had been walking. With
what lightning they were charged was soon seen.

In 1837 he was asked to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration at Cambridge.
This was the opportunity for which he had been waiting. The mystic and
eccentric young poet-preacher now speaks his mind, and he turns out to
be a man exclusively interested in real life. This recluse, too tender
for contact with the rough facts of the world, whose conscience has
retired him to rural Concord, pours out a vial of wrath. This cub puts
forth the paw of a full-grown lion.

Emerson has left behind him nothing stronger than this address, The
American Scholar. It was the first application of his views to the
events of his day, written and delivered in the heat of early manhood
while his extraordinary powers were at their height. It moves with a
logical progression of which he soon lost the habit. T