up." He
traveled extensively on his lecturing tours, even going as far as
England. In _English Traits_ he has recorded his impressions of what
he saw of English life and manners.
Oliver Wendell Holmes has described him in this wise: "His personal
appearance was that of the typical New Englander of college-bred
ancestry. Tall, spare, slender, with sloping shoulders, slightly
stooping in his later years, with light hair and eyes, the scholar's
complexion, the prominent, somewhat arched nose which belongs to many
of the New England sub-species, thin lips, suggestive of delicacy, but
having nothing like primness, still less of the rigidity which is
often noticeable in the generation succeeding next to that of the men
in their shirt-sleeves, he would have been noticed anywhere as one
evidently a scholarly thinker astray from the alcove or the study,
which were his natural habitats. His voice was very sweet, and
penetrating without any loudness or mark of effort. His enunciation
was beautifully clear, but he often hesitated as if waiting for the
right word to present itself. His manner was very quiet, his smile was
pleasant, but he did not like explosive laughter any better than
Hawthorne did. None who met him can fail to recall that serene and
kindly presence, in which there was mingled a certain spiritual
remoteness with the most benignant human welcome to all who were
privileged to enjoy his companionship."
Emerson died April 27, 1882, after a few days' illness from pneumonia.
Dr. Garnett in his excellent biography says: "Seldom had 'the reaper
whose name is Death' gathered such illustrious harvest as between
December 1880 and April 1882. In the first month of this period George
Eliot passed away, in the ensuing February Carlyle followed; in April
Lord Beaconsfield died, deplored by his party, nor unregretted by his
country; in February of the following year Longfellow was carried to
the tomb; in April Rossetti was laid to rest by the sea, and the
pavement of Westminster Abbey was disturbed to receive the dust of
Darwin. And now Emerson lay down in death beside the painter of man
and the searcher of nature, the English-Oriental statesman, the poet
of the plain man and the poet of the artist, and the prophet whose
name is indissolubly linked with his own. All these men passed into
eternity laden with the spoils of Time, but of none of them could it
be said, as of Emerson, that the most shining intellectual glory and
th
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