FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   >>  
osephine wrote to him words of consolation, offering to share his exile. She died not long after--on the Second of June, Eighteen Hundred Fourteen. After viewing that gaudy tomb at the Invalides, and thinking of the treasure in tears and broken hearts that it took to build it, it will rest you to go to the simple village church at Ruel, a half-hour's ride from the Arc de Triomphe, where sleeps Josephine, Empress of France. MARY W. SHELLEY Shelley, beloved! the year has a new name from any thou knowest. When Spring arrives, leaves that you never saw will shadow the ground, and flowers you never beheld will star it, and the grass will be of another growth. Thy name is added to the list which makes the earth bold in her age, and proud of what has been. Time, with slow, but unwearied feet, guides her to the goal that thou hast reached; and I, her unhappy child, am advanced still nearer the hour when my earthly dress shall repose near thine, beneath the tomb of Cestius. --_Journal of Mary Shelley_ [Illustration: MARY SHELLEY] When Emerson borrowed from Wordsworth that fine phrase about plain living and high thinking, no one was more astonished than he that Whitman and Thoreau should take him at his word. He was decidedly curious about their experiment. But he kept a safe distance between himself and the shirt-sleeved Walt; and as for Henry Thoreau--bless me! Emerson regarded him only as a fine savage, and told him so. Of course, Emerson loved solitude, but it was the solitude of a library or an orchard, and not the solitude of plain or wilderness. Emerson looked upon Beautiful Truth as an honored guest. He adored her, but it was with the adoration of the intellect. He never got her tag in jolly chase of comradery; nor did he converse with her, soft and low, when only the moon peeked out from behind the silvery clouds, and the nightingale listened. He never laid himself open to damages. And when he threw a bit of a bomb into Harvard Divinity School it was the shrewdest bid for fame that ever preacher made. I said "shrewd"--that's the word. Emerson had the instincts of Connecticut--that peculiar development of men who have eked out existence on a rocky soil, banking their houses against grim Winter or grimmer savage foes. With this Yankee shrewdness went a subtle and sweeping imagination, and a fine appreciation of the excellent things that men have said and done
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   >>  



Top keywords:
Emerson
 

solitude

 

SHELLEY

 
Shelley
 

Thoreau

 

savage

 

thinking

 

regarded

 

grimmer

 

library


houses

 
Beautiful
 

banking

 
looked
 
wilderness
 

Winter

 

orchard

 

sweeping

 

imagination

 

experiment


curious

 

decidedly

 

things

 

excellent

 

appreciation

 
subtle
 

Yankee

 

honored

 

sleeved

 

distance


shrewdness

 

adoration

 
Harvard
 

Divinity

 

existence

 

School

 

shrewdest

 

peculiar

 

Connecticut

 

instincts


development
 
preacher
 

damages

 

comradery

 

converse

 
adored
 

shrewd

 
intellect
 
nightingale
 

listened