resting one, but
for that I must refer the reader to the article mentioned. Her character
and intellectual traits are what we are most concerned with. "Her early
reading was Milton, Young, Akenside, Samuel Clarke, Jonathan Edwards,
and always the Bible. Later, Plato, Plotinus, Marcus Antoninus, Stewart,
Coleridge, Herder, Locke, Madam De Stael, Channing, Mackintosh, Byron.
Nobody can read in her manuscript, or recall the conversation of
old-school people, without seeing that Milton and Young had a religious
authority in their minds, and nowise the slight merely entertaining
quality of modern bards. And Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus,--how venerable
and organic as Nature they are in her mind!"

There are many sentences cited by Mr. Emerson which remind us very
strongly of his own writings. Such a passage as the following might have
come from his Essay, "Nature," but it was written when her nephew was
only four years old.

"Malden, 1807, September.--The rapture of feeling I would part from
for days devoted to higher discipline. But when Nature beams with
such excess of beauty, when the heart thrills with hope in its
Author,--feels it is related to Him more than by any ties of
creation,--it exults, too fondly, perhaps, for a state of trial. But
in dead of night, nearer morning, when the eastern stars glow, or
appear to glow, with more indescribable lustre, a lustre which
penetrates the spirits with wonder and curiosity,--then, however
awed, who can fear?"--"A few pulsations of created beings, a few
successions of acts, a few lamps held out in the firmament, enable
us to talk of Time, make epochs, write histories,--to do more,--to
date the revelations of God to man. But these lamps are held to
measure out some of the moments of eternity, to divide the history
of God's operations in the birth and death of nations, of worlds. It
is a goodly name for our notions of breathing, suffering, enjoying,
acting. We personify it. We call it by every name of fleeting,
dreaming, vaporing imagery. Yet it is nothing. We exist in eternity.
Dissolve the body and the night is gone; the stars are extinguished,
and we measure duration by the number of our thoughts, by the
activity of reason, the discovery of truths, the acquirement of
virtue, the approval of God."

Miss Mary Emerson showed something of the same feeling towards natural
science which may be noted i