I feel may arouse the tenderest suscep- who had made, who had shared that tibilities of your nature." happiness, had died on a stretcher in the street- -no one beside her! She who had so loved luxury, and care, and tenderness, and affection! Laverdac looked at him a moment, then signed to the waiter to bring another glass of the fashionable liquor. "Speak," he said, "Citizen Grégoire." He had an air of indifference, which disconcerted his visitor. "The man," he thought, "is clearly not prepared for what he is to hear." "It concerns the Citoyenne Laverdac," he began. Laverdac in one moment was all attention. He gave a sudden involuntary cry. He had not supposed Grégoire could have anything to tell him about Emilie. The dear little creature! Had she happily escaped the general fate? Ah! he was glad. He was thankful. What a weight was lifted from his heart! Then he turned very pale. He listened in silence, with clenched teeth. There was not much to tell, but Citizen Grégoire put it into many words. Not many days later Laverdac was in the Forest of Mendon and walking rapidly. Through the branches of the trees, early losing their leaves that year, by reason of the great drought of the summer, he caught sight of the apple orchards of Vélizy, a place Manette had once described to him as a spot she loved. There was red fruit still ungathered on the trees. He followed a green lane which led him to the village; on his right hand was the large farmhouse belonging to Manette, with all its out-buildings, on his left the church. He soon saw where a door pierced the white wall of the garden. It was there within that wall -in that quaint house, that he would find her. He pushed open the door, it was not locked, and entered a flower garden. Citizen Andrey was sitting on a bench under a tree, but Laverdac did not observe him. He looked only towards the house, where on a porch sat the figure of a woman, all in black, with some apples and some wild flowers in her lap. She seemed to be toying with them with her thin, white hands. Manette but, ah! how changed! how pale! how wasted! But the greatest change was in her eyes, where the bright light of intelligence had fled forever. Emilie was dead. She had died on a stretcher in the street as they were carrying her from the prison of La Force to the National Hospital. No one was near her as she drew her last breath, poor, timid little creature, no one but the men who bore her through the fog and darkness, and delivered their burden to the doctor in charge. There was no official record of her death. She had died in no prison. Her husband would have sought any trace of her in vain, had not the kind physician, touched by the beauty of her lifeless form as it lay before him on the stretcher, copied the écrou, or prison document forwarded with cach sick prisoner. This had told him her name, and her age. Her crime was that her father was an emigré. As She turned and fled into the house. Citizen Grégoire ended, Laverdac rose. A cold dew stood upon his forehead. "Come and see me, citizen," he said. "I lodge at the Hotel d'Aligre, cidecant Rue d'Orleans. Excuse me; I can bear no more to-day." He left the café. The vision now before him was one of only happiness; so charming, so tender, so complete for the period it lasted! Little Emilie, Laverdac came up to the porch. Manette saw him, and gave a sharp cry. The fruits and flowers that had been lying in her lap fell at his feet. He would have followed her, but Citizen Andrey was at his side and prevented him. "Go, Citizen Laverdac," he said. "It is cruel to disturb by your presence the calmer state into which our care has brought her. She is as happy now as we can ever hope she will be. She is here among her trees, and fruits, and flowers. If you rouse her it will only be to revive terrible reminis- | There were circumstances, too, which cences. Leave her in peace. In pity, stay away." -aided by that reciprocal indifference -might have kept these two distinguished men separate forever. Emerson early became a hermit in the solitudes of New England - not to escape from the sight and pressure of Nature to complain cynically of the ways of his brother men, as compared with the grandly simple ongoings of the material phenomena around and above him! for he had withdrawn from human crowds and circles in perfect amity and sympathy. He first slipped his pulpit-chain, and left the Though Laverdac, looking on events from his own point of view, hated the Revolution, he was a Frenchman, and his country was at that moment imper-social ills, or in the presence of Mother illed by foreign invasion. He did what in times of war and tumult most men do who have lost heart, and hope, and all home ties. He joined the army of the North under General Pichegru, and shared in the brilliant campaigns of the next two years, which drove back the Austrians. He had had previously a slight acquaintance with his general, congregation which followed him as and won his way to his confidence and his regard. When Pichegru was summoned to Paris by the Convention to break up the power of the sections, Laverdac was on his staff, and had the happiness of taking part in the street fights of the 12th Germinal (April, 1795) when the sections were defeated, and their power broken. Later, when Pichegru became involved in a conspiracy to restore the Bourbons, Laverdac was in his confidence, and shared his plans, and when Pichegru was banished to Cayenne with twenty of his officers, Laurent de Laverdac was one of them. preacher and pastor; he next retired from the groups that had been drawn to him by his magnetic talk; and so complete was the seclusion which then received him, that, stretching backwards, it broke down and obliterated his former environments, clerical and social, and gave to his whole life the single aim of communing with nature and his own soul, as the best interpreters of humanity. In his fortieth year he thus wrote to Carlyle: "Almost all my life has been passed alone; but within three or four years I have been drawing nearer to a few men and was There he died of the climate. Had In old England, De Quincey — born he lived to escape with his commander eighteen years before Emerson he would, in all probability, have been both a more youthful and a more comconcerned with him and Georges Ca-plete specimen of the hermit,—for in doudal in the conspiracy of 1803 against infancy and boyhood he was Napoleon, and have perished on the scaffold. self involved, and sought to live, if not away, at least aside from the world; and the juvenile solitary, after running off from school and home, grew into a conscious alien, went to Oxford, where From Blackwood's Magazine. his "college residence," instead of beEMERSON'S MEETING WITH DE QUINCEY. ing an alternation of intellectual and THE interview which took place at of athletic competition with the very Edinburgh, in the beginning of 1848, flower of young England for the unibetween the great American and for versity honors that reward distinction variety of powers and acquirements, in study and sport, was solitary conand for versatility in their use the finement, in which his only companstill greater Englishman, was not brought about by mutual attraction or by the inclination of either. There was in them as little of a bias to meet as there is in two parallel straight lines. ions were books, and such books as had never been handled or looked into by students. And thenceforward, to the day of his death in old age, he continued to lead an isolated and hidden life, shunning human fellowship, giving no heed to the admiration which his brilliant literature had won, or to the sympathy which his sorrows had excited, and trusting, like a pariah, to find chance shelter somewhere. shared, along with De Quincey, in the tourist's neglect, those front-rank heroes being deemed too mean to merit a call from the stranger! Scotland was then still warm with the footsteps and all aglow with the memories of her greatest son, recently deceased; yet there is nothing to indicate that Emerson would have prized a meeting with Sir Walter Scott. The most original and valuable of De Quincey's writings must have been read by Emerson, yet he had no desire to know their author! Those two recluses, scheming to be lost-one in the recesses of the New World, the other in those of the Oldhow are they to come together? Both were universal, though not omnivorous, readers, tasting rather than devouring; yet almost all the books which they perused carefully, excited in them no Nor was De Quincey as yet deeply curiosity about the authorship. De impressed by his few glances at EmerQuincey's fertility of genius and of son's first essays, or affected by curischolarship, being coincident with Em- osity about his personality. He was erson's youth and manhood, might heard depreciating Emerson as the have had a strong fascination for the palimpsest of a small Thomas Carlyle American, and constrained him to ask upon the Yankee copy of a Martin specially about the man who produced Tupper, and to say that the Tupper such extraordinary works; whereas proverbs were often legible through De Quincey had reached his sixtieth the Carlyle pictures. The master of year before the first streaks of Emer- style was offended at the simple strucson's dawn were above the horizon, ture of Emerson's sentences-so mosuch as might be hailed by young eyes, notonously short. In going through but miss the "ken" of sexagenarians them, he felt that he was crossing a who are engrossed in viewing the lights weary succession of stepping-stones, that have already risen to fame. The and not marching along the continuity Englishman of sixty might, without of a well-laid road. He ridiculed those blame, be slow and cold in appreciating sentences as having the structure of the literary first-fruits of the compara- worms, and not of nobler organisms. tively young American, who was not Thus Emerson's apparent insensibilthen acknowledged by his own country-ity to De Quincey's genius met with men; but it was less excusable for that American to fail to recognize the brilliant veteran, and to be interested in his many remarkable productions. "a tit for tat" in the slighting criticism which De Quincey passed on the American's early "Essays " and " Orations." This criticism only came out in his Emerson occasionally modified his talk, and though uttered in the interval hermit habits, exchanging them for between Emerson's first visit to Scotthose of a pilgrim. In summer and land in 1834 and his second visit in winter he gave some of his secluded 1848, it was yet after Carlyle, in an hours to the writing of lectures which, elaborate preface, had introduced to in the following winter and spring, he the "British Public" his American publicly read in several American friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, as havcities; yet in a lecture-room he seemed ing, amid the "universal babblement" as impersonal as a book, while hearers sounding in our island, "the voice of and committee-men were kept aloof the one truth-seeker" and "the one from his individuality. He ventured truth-speaker! De Quincey had a in 1834, when he was thirty years of special glee in pricking such a swollen age, on a longer pilgrimage, crossing claim as this. He treated the message the Atlantic to see Wordsworth, Lan- of that "voice as consisting of asthdor, and Carlyle; but Thomas De matic sayings worthy of a place in the Quincey was not in all his thoughts. gossip round the "historic teapot of A company of unequivocally great men Boston ! " "Carlyle," he said, we can tolerate as Elijah; but until his | years, and with William Robertson for second become his successor, and re- a much longer time, and as he had often i ceive his mantle, we delay to hail met De Quincey, and in 1848 was daily Elisha." As it turned out, the elder in the company of Emerson, who, durprophet was so slow to depart that the ing his sojourn in Edinburgh for weeks younger had become an aged man who in the beginning of that year, was the could make no use of the bequeathed guest of Samuel Brown, he thinks it mantle ! better, in the narrative, to make use of e what De Quincey called the " perpen-F dicular pronoun taking care that this egotism will not grow into a forest of I's. There were, at the time, none who had such a knowledge of, and control over, De Quincey's erratic movements as the pair named. Brown's rare gift of talk had a special charm for the It is pertinent here to say that there is no record or floating rumor that Emerson ever met, or sought to meet, his own brilliant countryman, Edgar Allan Poe, or that he ever spoke or wrote a word about the strange poems, tales, and essays, and the still stranger history, of that gifted but unfortunate mian. Once an intimate friend ventured to put a question to him about silver-tongued Englishman, whom he Poe. "Whom do you mean?" asked Emerson, with an astonished stare; and on the name being repeated with extreme distinctness, 66 Ah, the jingle man!" returned Emerson, with a contemptuous reference to the "refrains" in Poe's sad lyrics. We shall not try to imagine what equally offensive method of detraction Emerson may have adopted when De Quincey's name was pressed upon his notice. Silence about a great contemporary is better than a nickname. called "the Confessor." Still earlier was Robertson's friendship. De Quincey long resided, with many brief absences, in the house of one of Robertson's relatives, and a casual meeting led to the formation of a strong, mutual attachment, and brought on an extended course of frank interviews. Well do I remember with what a triumph Robertson, on the day after his first evening with De Quincey, and in the class-room during a professor's lecture, informed me of his splendid luck How, then, were the two recluses, in getting free access to the very imEmerson and De Quincey-separated personation of reason, learning, and by the Atlantic, and mutually indiffer- genius. Robertson, like Brown, could. ent, if not repellent- to be brought at any time discover the wanderer's together? The meeting was to be whereabouts; and the sound of his effected by a young Scot, Dr. Samuel voice, with the pleasant burr, was a Brown, who was held by many to have sesame which opened the door from given abundant promise of gaining the within. Willie Robertson and Samuel highest reputation either in science or Brown were the most skilful and loving literature, though he had hitherto been" detectives" for pouncing upon the mainly devoted to chemistry; and he was aided in his plan for the meeting by another brilliant young Scot, his friend Willie Robertson, afterwards One evening which I spent with Dr. well known as the Rev. Dr. William Samuel Brown (who had apartments. Robertson of Irvine, the poet-preacher. for himself and his occasional guests in Of those two distinguished Scotsmen, Edinburgh, while his laboratory was at one of whom, Samuel Brown, died Portobello) towards the close of the when still young, there have been biog-summer of 1847, was memorable for raphies and critiques; but much that is new might yet be told, if this were the place and time. As the writer of this paper had already been in close intimacy with Samuel Brown for several shy one, who was subject to imaginary scares, and to start up into flight "when no man pursued." two reasons. First, he then read to 1 e gave to the dramatis persona a vitality | the view and into the fellowship of and an individuality which I afterwards Emerson, that, face to face, they might failed to find on a perusal of the printed know each other-and this one was work. Next, exchanging his impas- Thomas De Quincey. He communisioned tones for such as were pleas-cated his purpose to William Robertson, antly familiar, he yet startled me with who was by this time a clergyman in the unexpected intelligence: "Emer- Irvine, and who entirely assented, and Son is coming here to be my guest, and promised the most cordial co-operation. will take up his quarters in these Assistance was proffered by another rooms, though there are stately abodes friend, John Nichol, the Glasgow pro-belonging to Calvinists even - that fessor of astronomy, to whose house in would readily open to accommodate the the observatory De Quincey occasionPantheist. Mine, however, was the ally retreated, saying, "I seek a refuge first offer of hospitality, given some among your stars !" though he was years ago when he was asked to the oftener found on the library floor with Burns Commemoration in Ayr, and a heap of curious French books beside lately repeated when it was proposed him than on the "specular mount," that he should extend into Scotland his whence, through the large telescope he lecturing tour in England. Yes; Em- could look into the stellar spaces. erson will stay with me in February, when he reads four lectures to the 'Edinburgh Philosophical."" February came, and also the evening on which Emerson was to give the first of his four lectures in Edinburgh. The Queen Street Hall was packed with an audience that had an unusually large sprinkling of distinguished citizens, whose presence obviously deepened. the general hush of expectation. Eight o'clock struck, and instead of the lecturer an official appeared, who intimated that, according to a telegram just received, the train in which Mr. Emerson travelled from Newcastle was some minutes late. But before the an Brown had learned that the secretaries of some institutes in Lancashire were negotiating with Emerson that he should lecture in several large English towns during winter and spring; and Brown at once corresponded both with Emerson and those secretaries, expressing the desire of Edinburgh to share the privilege of hearing the lecturer. The desire was to be gratified, and Brown's hospitable invitation was also accepted. He was quick in devis-nouncement could be weighed, Emering ways and means for enabling Em- son himself stepped upon the platform. erson to get the most varied pleasure His person was tall and comely, but from a visit to the Scottish capital, and neither plump nor lath-like; and his also for allowing his own large circle of eyes, though large and clear, were not friends to have opportunities of seeing flashing. All that had been said by the eminent American. The chief enthusiasts about the "spiritual exquestion which he had to consider was, pression," the "supernal radiance," Who were the men to whom Emerson and the effusion of the over-soul" should be introduced? And who were that transfigured his face, was unverithe men who might be introduced to fied. It was not a (6 'fulgent head" Emerson? Who were the great men and countenance which suddenly came to whom Emerson should be taken, into view! In audible, clean-cut tones both to see and to be seen by them? Emerson gave forth his opening senAnd who were the less notable and tencea shining proverb-and asy-going friends who might be in- continued to the end,- a lecture of his vited to come and see Emerson? being altogether like one of his essays. Among all the great men who ever His reading neither marred his compoOccurred to Samuel Brown's mind as sition nor helped it. His voice was eligible for a meeting with Emerson, simply to the ear what good print is to there was one whom he was invariably the eye. There was in his lectures, as xious, nay, resolute, to bring within in his essays, a general want not only |