re held by some just woman, who maintains
By spinning wool her household,--carefully
She poises both the wool and weights, to make
The balance even, that she may provide
A pittance for her babes."--

As to the charm of his lectures all are agreed. It is needless to handle
this subject, for Mr. Lowell has written upon it. Of their effect on
his younger listeners he says, "To some of us that long past experience
remains the most marvellous and fruitful we have ever had. Emerson
awakened us, saved us from the body of this death. It is the sound of
the trumpet that the young soul longs for, careless of what breath may
fill it. Sidney heard it in the ballad of 'Chevy Chase,' and we in
Emerson. Nor did it blow retreat, but called us with assurance of
victory."

There was, besides these stirring notes, a sweet seriousness in
Emerson's voice that was infinitely soothing. So might "Peace, be
still," have sounded from the lips that silenced the storm. I remember
that in the dreadful war-time, on one of the days of anguish and terror,
I fell in with Governor Andrew, on his way to a lecture of Emerson's,
where he was going, he said, to relieve the strain upon his mind. An
hour passed in listening to that flow of thought, calm and clear as the
diamond drops that distil from a mountain rock, was a true nepenthe for
a careworn soul.

An author whose writings are like mosaics must have borrowed from many
quarries. Emerson had read more or less thoroughly through a very wide
range of authors. I shall presently show how extensive was his reading.
No doubt he had studied certain authors diligently, a few, it would
seem, thoroughly. But let no one be frightened away from his pages by
the terrible names of Plotinus and Proclus and Porphyry, of Behmen or
Spinoza, or of those modern German philosophers with whom it is not
pretended that he had any intimate acquaintance. Mr. George Ripley, a
man of erudition, a keen critic, a lover and admirer of Emerson, speaks
very plainly of his limitations as a scholar.

"As he confesses in the Essay on 'Books,' his learning is second hand;
but everything sticks which his mind can appropriate. He defends the use
of translations, and I doubt whether he has ever read ten pages of
his great authorities, Plato, Plutarch, Montaigne, or Goethe, in the
original. He is certainly no friend of profound study any more than
of philosophical speculation. Give him a few brilliant and suggestive
glimpses, a