British men and women, but he doubts
whether he is much and favorably known in any one city, except perhaps
in London. It proved, however, that there was a very widespread desire
to hear him, and applications for lectures flowed in from all parts of
the kingdom.

From Liverpool he proceeded immediately to Manchester, where Mr. Ireland
received him at the Victoria station. After spending a few hours with
him, he went to Chelsea to visit Carlyle, and at the end of a week
returned to Manchester to begin the series of lecturing engagements
which had been arranged for him. Mr. Ireland's account of Emerson's
visits and the interviews between him and many distinguished persons
is full of interest, but the interest largely relates to the persons
visited by Emerson. He lectured at Edinburgh, where his liberal way of
thinking and talking made a great sensation in orthodox circles. But he
did not fail to find enthusiastic listeners. A young student, Mr. George
Cupples, wrote an article on these lectures from which, as quoted by Mr.
Ireland, I borrow a single sentence,--one only, but what could a critic
say more?

Speaking of his personal character, as revealed through his writings, he
says: "In this respect, I take leave to think that Emerson is the most
mark-worthy, the loftiest, and most heroic mere man that ever appeared."
Emerson has a lecture on the superlative, to which he himself was never
addicted. But what would youth be without its extravagances,--its
preterpluperfect in the shape of adjectives, its unmeasured and
unstinted admiration?

I need not enumerate the celebrated literary personages and other
notabilities whom Emerson met in England and Scotland. He thought "the
two finest mannered literary men he met in England were Leigh Hunt and
De Quincey." His diary might tell us more of the impressions made upon
him by the distinguished people he met, but it is impossible to believe
that he ever passed such inhuman judgments on the least desirable of
his new acquaintances as his friend Carlyle has left as a bitter legacy
behind him. Carlyle's merciless discourse about Coleridge and Charles
Lamb, and Swinburne's carnivorous lines, which take a barbarous
vengeance on him for his offence, are on the level of political rhetoric
rather than of scholarly criticism or characterization. Emerson never
forgot that he was dealing with human beings. He could not have long
endured the asperities of Carlyle, and that "loud shout of