atment of his friend, Judge
Hoar. One hardly knows whether to be pleased at Emerson for showing a
human weakness, or annoyed at him for not being more of a man. The
anecdote is valuable in both lights. It is like a tiny speck on the
crystal of his character which shows us the exact location of the orb,
and it is the best illustration of the feeling of the times which has
come down to us.

If by "asceticism" we mean an experiment in starving the senses, there
is little harm in it. Nature will soon reassert her dominion, and very
likely our perceptions will be sharpened by the trial. But "natural
asceticism" is a thing hardly to be distinguished from functional
weakness. What is natural asceticism but a lack of vigor? Does it not
tend to close the avenues between the soul and the universe? "Is it not
so much death?" The accounts of Emerson show him to have been a man in
whom there was almost a hiatus between the senses and the most inward
spirit of life. The lower register of sensations and emotions which
domesticate a man into fellowship with common life was weak. Genial
familiarity was to him impossible; laughter was almost a pain. "It is
not the sea and poverty and pursuit that separate us. Here is Alcott by
my door,--yet is the union more profound? No! the sea, vocation,
poverty, are seeming fences, but man is insular and cannot be touched.
Every man is an infinitely repellent orb, and holds his individual being
on that condition.... Most of the persons whom I see in my own house I
see across a gulf; I cannot go to them nor they come to me."

This aloofness of Emerson must be remembered only as blended with his
benignity. "His friends were all that knew him," and, as Dr. Holmes
said, "his smile was the well-remembered line of Terence written out in
living features." Emerson's journals show the difficulty of his
intercourse even with himself. He could not reach himself at will, nor
could another reach him. The sensuous and ready contact with nature
which more carnal people enjoy was unknown to him. He had eyes for the
New England landscape, but for no other scenery. If there is one supreme
sensation reserved for man, it is the vision of Venice seen from the
water. This sight greeted Emerson at the age of thirty. The famous city,
as he approached it by boat, "looked for some time like nothing but New
York. It is a great oddity, a city for beavers, but to my thought a most
disagreeable residence. You feel always in pris