mates a somewhat fuller shape, remaining more
abstract in the younger generation, but bringing home to all of us the
notion of a spirit indescribably precious. The form that so lately
moved upon these streets and country roads, or awaited in these fields
and woods the beloved Muse's visits, is now dust; but the soul's note,
the spiritual voice, rises strong and clear above the uproar of the
times, and seems securely destined to exert an ennobling influence over
future generations.

What gave a flavor so matchless to Emerson's individuality was, even
more than his rich mental gifts, their singularly harmonious
combination. Rarely has a man so accurately known the limits of his
genius or so unfailingly kept within them. "Stand by your order," he
used to say to youthful students; and perhaps the paramount impression
one gets of his life is of his loyalty to his own personal type and
mission. The type was that of what he liked to call the scholar, the
perceiver of pure truth; and the mission was that of the reporter in
worthy form of each perception. The day is good, he said, in which we
have the most perceptions. There are times when the cawing of a crow,
a weed, a snowflake, or a farmer planting in his field become symbols
to the intellect of truths equal to those which the most majestic
phenomena can open. Let me mind my own charge, then, walk alone,
consult the sky, the field and forest, sedulously waiting every morning
for the news concerning the structure of the universe which the good
Spirit will give me.

This was the first half of Emerson, but only half; for genius, as he
said, is insatiate for expression, and truth has to be clad in the
right verbal garment. The form of the garment was so vital with
Emerson that it is impossible to separate it from the matter. They
form a chemical combination--thoughts which would be trivial expressed
otherwise, are important through the nouns and verbs to which he
married them. The style is the man, it has been said; the man
Emerson's mission culminated in his style, and if we must define him in
one word, we have to call him Artist. He was an artist whose medium
was verbal and who wrought in spiritual material.

This duty of spiritual seeing and reporting determined the whole tenor
of his life. It was to shield this duty from invasion and distraction
that he dwelt in the country, that he consistently declined to entangle
himself with associations or to encumber him