erend manners which make
what is called a gentleman of the old school, so called under an
impression that the style is passing away, but which, I suppose, is
an optical illusion, as there are always a few more of the class
remaining, and always a few young men to whom these manners are
native."

The single verse I quote is compendious enough and descriptive enough
for an Elizabethan monumental inscription.

"With beams December planets dart
His cold eye truth and conduct scanned;
July was in his sunny heart,
October in his liberal hand."

Emerson's "English Traits," forming one volume of his works, was
published in 1856. It is a thoroughly fresh and original book. It is not
a tourist's guide, not a detailed description of sights which tired
the traveller in staring at them, and tire the reader who attacks the
wearying pages in which they are recorded. Shrewd observation there is
indeed, but its strength is in broad generalization and epigrammatic
characterizations. They are not to be received as in any sense final;
they are not like the verifiable facts of science; they are more or less
sagacious, more or less well founded opinions formed by a fair-minded,
sharp-witted, kind-hearted, open-souled philosopher, whose presence
made every one well-disposed towards him, and consequently left him
well-disposed to all the world.

A glance at the table of contents will give an idea of the objects which
Emerson proposed to himself in his tour, and which take up the principal
portion of his record. Only one _place_ is given as the heading of a
chapter,--_Stonehenge_. The other eighteen chapters have general titles,
_Land, Race, Ability, Manners_, and others of similar character.

He uses plain English in introducing us to the Pilgrim fathers of the
British Aristocracy:--

"Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings. These founders of the
House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy
and ferocious pirates. They were all alike, they took everything
they could carry; they burned, harried, violated, tortured, and
killed, until everything English was brought to the verge of ruin.
Such, however, is the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent
and dignified men now existing boast their descent from these filthy
thieves, who showed a far juster conviction of their own merits by
assuming for their types the swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, a