ring the nine or ten years that I spent
there, in this solitary way, I doubt whether so much as twenty people
in the town were aware of my existence."

Such was the solitariness of the youthful Hawthorne. Is it surprising
that in the fiction of the mature man there should be a pervading
sense of remoteness, of silences that fascinate, of mysteries that
charm?

LV

MAX MUeLLER'S RECOLLECTIONS OF EMERSON, LOWELL, AND HOLMES

Living at Oxford, writes Max Mueller, I have had the good fortune of
receiving visits from Emerson, Dr. Wendell Holmes, and Lowell, to
speak of the brightest stars only. Each of them stayed at our house
for several days, so that I could take them in at leisure, while
others had to be taken at one gulp, often between one train and the
next. Oxford has a great attraction for all Americans, and it is a
pleasure to see how completely they feel at home in the memories of
the place. The days when Emerson, Wendell Holmes, and Lowell were
staying with us, the breakfasts and luncheons, the teas and dinners,
and the delightful walks through college halls, chapels and gardens
are possessions forever....

I do not wonder that philosophers by profession had nothing to say to
his (Emerson's) essays because they did not seem to advance their
favorite inquiries beyond the point they had reached before. But there
were many people, particularly in America, to whom these rhapsodies
did more good than any learned disquisitions or carefully arranged
sermons. There is in them what attracts us so much in the ancients,
freshness, directness, self-confidence, unswerving loyalty to truth,
as far as they could see it. He had no one to fear, no one to please.
Socrates or Plato, if suddenly brought to life in America, might have
spoken like Emerson, and the effect produced by Emerson was certainly
like that produced by Socrates in olden times.

What Emerson's personal charm must have been in earlier life we can
only conjecture from the rapturous praises bestowed on him by his
friends, even during his lifetime.... And his influence was not
confined to the American mind. I have watched it growing in England. I
can still remember the time when even experienced judges spoke of his
essays as mere declamations, as poetical rhapsodies, as poor
imitations of Carlyle. Then gradually one man after another found
something in Emerson which was not to be found in Carlyle,
particularly his loving heart, his tolerant spirit, his