against seven hundred for Disraeli; an amazing number to be received by an American. As late as 1880, when he was seventy-seven, he delivered his one-hundredth lecture before the Concord Lyceum, on "New England Life and Letters"; but his memory was failing, and only as his faithful daughter Ellen was near and aided him could the tired mind do its work. "Letters and Social Aims" was now published. Societies asked in vain for more lectures; the day was drawing to its close. I shall never forget a visit made to him a little before this time. The mind had lost something of the power I used to feel when I heard him lecture, but the voice had the same sweetness, the deep blue eyes were as blue as ever, and the ineffable smile one could never forget. As we talked of education for a boy, my own beloved son in mind, he giving advice, he said, modestly, "After all, I do not feel competent to judge." Who not, if not he, who had stood before the students of nearly every college, and knew their aims and methods by heart? He showed me a picture of Carlyle, and spoke of their abiding friendship. The library was a place of special interest. Of course, one found there his favorite books, Homer, Plato, Plutarch, of whom he had said, "He cannot be spared from the smallest library; first, because he is so readable, which is much; then, that he is medicinal and invigorating"; Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, Bacon, Montaigne, Scott, Goethe, and others, a generous number, on high, plain shelves. His habits of work were simple: work in the morning; walk and thought in the afternoon, jotting down in his little note-books, which he always carried with him, any thought or quotation which pleased him. He once wrote Carlyle: "I dot evermore in my endless journal a line on every knowable in nature; but the arrangement loiters long, and I get a brick-kiln instead of a house." His mind failed more and more. At Longfellow's funeral, Mr. Conway says Emerson remarked, after looking in the coffin, the coffin, "That gentleman was a sweet, beautiful soul, but I have entirely forgotten his name." A little later, he took a severe cold, and the end came shortly. "When the evening star was near its setting," says Mr. Conway, "for a moment his mind wandered, and he asked to be taken home. Then he beheld his grandchildren, blessed them with his smile, and his words, Good boy!' 'Good little girl!' 6 He passed away quietly, April 27, 1882, lacking only a few days of eighty years of age. A child again, he had been taken to the other home, to learn to walk the streets of the celestial city, and be taught the alphabet of angels. At the funeral, at the house, the only flowers were in three vases on the mantel, lilies-of-the valley, red and white roses, and arbutus. At the church, in front of the pulpit, were boughs of pine, and in the centre a harp of yellow jonquils, sent by Louisa M. Alcott. On either side of the pulpit were white and scarlet geraniums, with a laurel-wreath upon the wall, while on the coffinlid was a cluster of richly colored pansies and a small bouquet of roses. After impressive services, the procession took its way to the cemetery, the houses along the way being heavily draped with black. The grave was made beneath a tall pine tree, not far from the graves of Hawthorne and Thoreau, and completely lined with hemlock boughs. And there they laid him to rest. Mr. Emerson's unpublished work is as great, probably, as his published. He pruned carefully for the press, and retained much which mankind would like to possess. To the world who loved him he will always be a great prose-poet, but not the singer. Most of us must have melody, or the song is not for us. Miss Peabody says, "He once said to me, 'I am not a great poet· but whatever is of me is a poet'"; and yet, of him and Longfellow Edmund Clarence Stedman well says, "They are of the very few whom we now recognize as the true founders of an American literature. . . . He is not the minstrel for those who would study men in action and suffering, rather than as heirs to knowledge and the rap tured mind. He is not a warrior, lover, raconteur, dramatist, but an evangelist and seer. The greatest poet must be all in one.” Emerson himself said, "The world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle with Shakspeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act with equal inspiration." Best of all, back of the noble writing was a noble life; beautiful in domestic relations, magnanimous to those who opposed him, strong under most trying circumstances, unselfish, of whom Higginson says, "Beyond almost all literary men on record, his life has been worthy of his words." Carlyle called his "the cleanest mind now living," and said that "amid all the smoke and mist of this world," a letter from Emerson was always as a window flung open to the azure." 66 He never forgot to be genuinely courteous. Toward the last, when some one apologized for having taken possession of his study for a little time, he answered, "It will be all the brighter that you have thought it worth coming to." To have left an unblemished reputation is the best fame. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. CHARLES HARLES KINGSLEY said, "I do not think I ever saw a finer human face." I remember having much the same feeling when I saw for the first time the famous poet, in his home at Cambridge. His thick, fine hair was snowy white, his eyes blue and kindly, his voice melodious, and his whole bearing gentle and refined. The study where he sat was well filled with books, one case having his own manuscripts in substantial bindings; the table where he wrote was covered with letters; the quaint inkstand which he used once belonged to Coleridge, when he wrote the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner "; on the wall hung portraits of three noble friends, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Sumner. Out of the windows we looked upon the lilacs in blossom, the green meadows, and, beyond, the River Charles. "River! that in silence windest Through the meadows, bright and free, |