sis for it. But the formula of the author
of Christabel was the pure exponent of his creed. The terror of
metaphysics vanished as the oft-repeated words met the eye of the wary
and suspicious investigator. 'World--God = 0: God--world = Reality
Absolute. The world without God is nothing: God without the world is
already, in and of himself, absolute perfection, absolute authority.'

Thus, while Carlyle, bold, versatile, shrewd, untrammeled, worked upon
the Unitarian element in America, Coleridge, evangelical, polished, yet
adventurous, leavened the Congregationalists and other shades of
orthodox Christians with the same result. But the first literary
outgrowth and original product of the Transcendental movement in America
was Emerson's Essay on Nature, which appeared in 1838, forming a nucleus
for the writings of the Dial-ists, and proving a sort of _prolegomena_
to the new edition of Hermetic Philosophy. '_Non est philosophus nisi
fingit et pinxit_,' said the great pioneer. Here Emerson does both,
proving, by inversion, his claim to the title. Whatever may be the
negative virtues of this preliminary essay, it undoubtedly possesses the
positive one of having given a strong impulse to the study and love of
Nature. True, the man who is to grasp its details, sympathies,
significations, to hear, in all their grand harmony, its various
discordant symphonies and fugues, to see its marvelous associations,
needs to be Briarean-armed, Israfel-hearted and Argus-eyed, as perhaps
none in our imperfect day and generation can claim to be. But at least
this 'Nature' of Emerson's insinuated, dimly and dreamily, in spite of
its positive air, an occult relation between man and Nature. It invested
rock and sky and air with new and startling attributes. The deep thinker
might even draw upon its pages some _pays-de-Cocagne_ landscape, flowing
indeed with milk and honey, but in Tantalian distance. Nature's true
heart is invested with a pericardium so thick that it resists the
scalpel of the skillful critics, to whom the stethoscope alone betrays
the healthful throb of vitality beneath. With portly arguments, Emerson
bars the door to the simple but earnest-hearted. That Nature, whose
prophet he is, gleams, bright and unloving, down from a cold,
unsympathizing heaven.

'Not every one doth it beseem to question
The far-off, high Arcturus.'

And we, the lazzaroni on the piazza, can not even see the sky for the
mist of 'mottoes Italianate an