interests of society from the transcendental point of view. Channing's great theme was the "Dignity of Man," but here seemed to be a new school teaching the divinity of

man.

It

About this time a Transcendental Club was formed. first met in the house of George Ripley, in Boston, on the 9th of December, 1836, and afterward in Boston and various places in the vicinity. Emerson attended nearly all the meetings. Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Peabody, Thomas J. Stone, Bronson, Alcott and Margaret Fuller were among the early members. Dr. Channing and George Bancroft were frequent visitors. Out of the Transcendental Club, grew the Dial, a little quarterly journal, edited by Margaret Faller. It lasted only four years. With much sublimated trash, it contained articles of rare merit and undeniable power. At the end of the second year Emerson became the sole editor, and some of his most remarkable essays and many of his best poems were printed in its pages. Another outcome of the Transcendental Club was the Brook Farm Community, about which so much has been written.

It is impossible for the younger writers of the present generation to appreciate the enthusiasm with which the followers of the Transcendental school rallied around their high priest, or the ridicule heaped upon it by the community generally. It may be compared to that showered upon the present school of asthetes. It was quite the same way in England. People suggested they might understand Emerson better if they stood on their heads. The London Punch poked its fun at the Transcendentals without stint. Among other nonsense, it discovered in the Emersonian sentence, "Plant yourself on your instincts and the world will come round to you," a valuable suggestion to drink sherry cobblers in the hot weather, in which case the world might at least go round with you. The proverbial remark of Boston gentlemen at the time was, "We do not understand it, but our daughters do."

Emerson's residence became the Mecca for those who were the children of his illumination, and the comers and goers kept the peaceful town of Concord in a perpetual flurry. Nathaniel Hawthorn, who had gone to reside at the Old Manse in Concord with his young wife, has given us a graphic description of the "comeouters," as they were called, who came thither on pilgrimage:

"There were circumstances around me which made it difficult to view the world precisely as it exists; for, severe and sober as was the Old Manse, it was necessary to go but a little way beyond its threshold before meeting with stranger moral shapes of men than might have been encountered elsewhere in a circuit of a thousand miles. These hobgoblins of flesh and blood were attracted thither by the wide-spreading influence of a great original thinker, who had his earthly abode at the opposite extremity of our village. His mind acted upon other minds of a certain constitution with wonderful magnetism, and drew many men upon long pilgrimages to speak with him face to face. Young visionaries, to whom just so much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them, came to seek the clew that should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Grayheaded theorists, whose systems had finally imprisoned them in an iron framework, traveled painfully to his door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own thraldom. People that had lighted on a new thought, or a thought they fancled new, came to Emerson, as the finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to ascertain its quality and value. Uncertain, troubled, earnest wanderers, through the midnight of the moral world, beheld his intellectual fire as a beacon burning on a hilltop, and climbing the difficult ascent, looked forth into the surrounding obscurity more hopefully than hitherto. The light revealed objects unseen before-mountains, gleaming lakes, glimpses of a creation amid the chaos-but also, as was unavoidable, it attracted bats and owls, and the whole host of nightbirds, which flapped their dusky wings against the gazer's eyes, and sometimes were mistaken for fowls of angelic feather."

It was in the midst of this excitement that I first met Mr. Emerson. It was in the Summer of 1838, when he delivered an address before the literary societies of Dartmouth College on the "American Scholar." It was nearly identical with one he had given the year previous before the Phi Beta Kappa of Harvard. The scope of this address is that there should be an abandoment by the thinking man of the New World of the empty ways of classic and European traditions. The scholar must not live in the world of books alone, but in the world of men, also. On this occasion he excited intense interest among the students of Dartmouth, who gathered about him at the levees given during commencement week. At one of these, while conversing with some ladies about his visit to Scotland, I ventured to ask him if he went to Abbotsford. "No," he languidly replied, "the man was not there." I said at once to myself, "This is either sheer affectation or Emerson has no imagination." Later I made up my mind that he had none.

Meantime Emerson's writings were beginning to attract the attention of men of thought in Europe. We bave already noticed how Carlyle was impressed. In 1841 the first series of essays was published. It fell into the hands of Edgar Quinet, while he was giving his lectures at the Collège de France. "A new philosophy," he said, in one of them, "might be expected to come forth from those virgin forests sooner or later, and already it begins to raise its head." Herman Grimm, in Germany, was equally pronounced in his judgment of Emerson. The authori ties of Harvard University, who had condemned him as a heretic some years before, appointed him a lecturer in the same institution. In this instance the world had certainly "come round" to him.

The publication of "Nature" was, as we have stated, in 1836. In the same year he prepared for the press Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus," from Fraser's Magazine. He afterward edited an edition of the "French Revolution," the proceeds of which he sent to Carlyle. He then collected from the English reviews, and published in three volumes Carlyle's miscellaneous works. Most emphatic testimony of the repute in which Emerson held Carlyle.

Between 1838 and 1841 Mr. Emerson published several orations, essays and lectures, and in the latter year his first volume of essays. His second series of essays appeared in 1844, followed by a small volume of poems in 1847. In that year he revisited Europe, and gave numerous lectures in London, Manchester and other places in England, and in Edinburgh. They consisted of those afterward published under the titles "Representative Men," "Powers and Laws of Thought," "Tendencies and Duties of Men of Thought," "Politics and Socialism," "Poetry and Eloquence," "Natural Aristocracy," "Naroleon,' ," "Genius of the Present Age" and "The Humanity of Science." These lectures produced a remarkable impression upon the English mind, and brought their author in contact with the leading literary men of the time.

On his return to America Emerson gave the lectures, afterward printed in a volume entitled "English Traits." Also a lecture on the French, with a pleasant account of his sojourn in Paris. He from time to time rewrote and collected in volumes a large number of lectures delivered in varions parts of the United States. These were severally entitled "The Conduct of Life," "Society and Solitude," "Letters and Social Aims." In 1867 Emerson's second volume of verses appeared, "Mayday and Other Poems." These volumes had but a limited circulation. It was because Emerson was not a poet. His poems are mainly philosophical thoughts in verse, and are greatly

borders of the grave the wise man looks forward with equal elasticity of mind and hope, and why not after millions of years on the verge of still newer existence? For it is the nature of intelligent beings to be for ever new to life."

The reader will observe there is no mention of Christ in the above paragraph. The whole is like a phantasy, soothing to shallow minds who want to believe something. Mr. Emerson was not an inventor; he was, however, marvelous in his power to set people thinking. He never undertook to give us machinery for a new school, nor did he propose new systems or new creeds. Several years ago I asked him when he intended giving us a system of his own. "Oh," he replied, "that is not my vocation. That is for the man who comes after me." He spoke as he always spoke, with sincerity. What his writings greatly lacked was heart. We search in vain for evidence of the affections. The man seemed to be a thinking egomet. All is cold, clear, colorless. He tears down the church where we are accustomed to worship, and erects in its place a beautiful but cold and gloomy mausoleum. After reading some of his exalted disquisitions on God and Nature, we are strongly tempted to exclaim, with the gentle Marguerite, when replying to the transcendental ravings of Faust, "Thus taken it may pass, but for all that there is something wrong about it, for thou hast no Christianity."

cross.

We come to what, to us, is the brightest phase of Emerson's character. Of all men, he was sturdily independent, and his convictions and conduct were for the right in all practical matters, whether of public or of every day life. He was the first scholar who dared to sympathize publicly with the despised Abolitionists, and opened his church for their speeches in 1831, when to do so was to run great risk of his church being destroyed and he himself mobbed. In an address to his townsmen on the anniversary of West Indian emancipation, in 1844, he uttered warnings against the encroachments of slavery. When John Brown was in prison in Virginia for his armed attack on slavery, Emerson exclaimed, "Fools! who can only cry 'Madman' when a hero passes," and declared, if he should be executed, Brown would make his "gallows glorious like a 3." It was about this time that, answering the remark of a politician that the principles of equality in the Declaration of Independence were but glittering generalities, Emerson exclaimed, "They are blazing ubiquities." When the Civil War had begun he said to those who were hoping or fearing that slavery would survive it, "The war is a conflagration which will not be staid until it has consumed all that is wood or stubble. The iron will alone remain." When the war had ended, Emerson addressed an audience of five thousand in Boston, and declared the result as the unfaltering verdict of the United States against national disruption. In conclusion he said:

"America means opportunity. freedom, power. The genius of

this country has marked out her true policy-opportunity; doors wide open-every port open. If I could, I would have free trade with all the world, without toll or Custom House. Let us invite every nation, every race, every skin-white man, black man, red man, yellow man. Let us offer hospitality, a fair fleld, and equal laws to all. The land is wide enough, the soil has food enough for all. Let us educate every soul."

Louisa Tucker, of Boston, and in September, 1835, to Mr. Emerson was twice married; in 1829 to Miss Ellen Miss Lydia Jackson, of Plymouth, who survives him. Of four children, three, one son and two daughters, are also living.

6

"What do you

WHAT "WIFE" MEANS.-Says Ruskin : think the beautiful word wife' comes from? It is the great word in which the English and Latin languages conquered the French and Greek. I hope the French will some day get a word for it instead of that femme. But what do you think it comes from? The great value of the Saxon words is that they mean something. Wife means 'weaver.' You must either be house-wives cr house-moths, remember that. In the deep sense, you must either weave men's fortunes and embroider them, or feed upon and bring them to decay. Wherever a true wife comes, home is always around her. The stars may be over her head, the glow-worm in the night's cold grass may be the fire at her feet, but home is where she is, and for a noble woman it stretches far around her, better than houses ceiled with cedar or painted with vermilionshedding its quiet light for those who else are homeless. This, I believe, is the woman's true place and power."

HATE idleness and curb all passions. Be true in all words and actions. Deliver not your opinion unnecessarily; but when you do, let it be just, well-considered and plain. Be charitable, and ever ready to forgive injuries done to yourself.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT COLOR-BLINDNESS.

In the year 1790 Mr. John Dalton, the principal of a well-known school at Kendal, England, then about twentyseven years of age, an acute and vigorous observer and thinker, walked into his garden and gathered a bunch of geraniums and roses, with which he set off into the town. On his way a party of young ladies complimented him on the beauty and brilliancy of his flowers, but were rather facetious as to their arrangement.

"You have got," they said, "all the reds and greens so curionsly mixed; and you a botanist, too."

"For my part," said Mr. Dalton, "the whole bunch appears to be pretty much of one color; though some of the leaves which you call light-green seem to me rather more like white; while the dark ones would match with a stick of red sealing-wax."

Mr. Dalton was suffering from color-blindness, then an unknown word, but now beginning to be talked about as something more than a curious and rare infirmity of vision. It is hard to understand the possibility of a boy's climbing into a cherry-tree laden with ripe fruit, and seeing no difference between the color of the cherries and the green leaves that hide them. Yet Dalton not only did this, but when grown to manhood actually walked down "The High" at Oxford in the red gown of a D.C.L., totally unconscious of his flaming appearance in the eyes of all who passed him.

Recent statistics prove that nearly sixteen in every thousand sighted persons may actually do what Dalton did, as a boy in the cherry-orchard, or as an illustrious doctor at Oxford. Taking the population of the United States as about 50,000,000, this will give about 800,000 who are color-blind; any one of whom may innocently put a patch of crimson on a garment of sable, or choose a plume of red ostrich feathers for the hearse of his departed spouse. If a gallant captain in the navy, he may select scarlet unmentionables to match his uniform of blue; if a clerk, he may unconsciously write half his letter in red ink and the rest in black; if an artist, clothe his green trees in glowing red, and his azure sky in pink; or if a cook, compound a salad without detecting a shade of difference between ruddy lobster and cucumber of green.

Such mischances may seem trivial, but when one remembers that a similar infirmity may befall the enginedriver of the "Flying Dutchman," or the pilot of a "homeward-bound" up Channel, the matter is a very different one. "Red" (danger), says the signal—“Green (safety), says the driver. "Starboard," says the red light -"Ay, ay, Larboard it is," says the man at the helm, with a thousand souls on board! One pilot in every twenty-five may be color-blind.

All such contingencies, however, were undreamed of in the days of Dalton, although before then it had been reported to the Royal Society that one Harris, of Mary port, Cumberland, having picked up a scarlet stocking, could see no reason for calling it red any more than calling unripe cherries green. But as years went by, Mr. J. Dalton, by this time famous as a scientific chemist, thinking more deeply of the tricks his eyes played him, laid before the Manchester Philosophical Society (1794) a paper on extra. ordinary facts relating to vision of colors, in which he wondered how such amazing differences of vision as his own and Harris's could have so long existed without notice. Whatever the Manchester philosophers thought of this, after a few years the subject happily fell under the ken of Sir J. Herschel. The problem of semi-blindness at once attracted him. He sent to Mr. Dalton a variety of different-colored skeins of silk, not naming any, but

asking him to match such as seemed alike, and note all points of dissimilarity. This was exactly what Dalton wanted, and on the data thus furnished Herschel founded that theory now generally accepted, of which we will try to give a brief summary.

Dalton, looking at the solar spectrum, saw in it only two varieties of color-yellow and blue, as he called them; red seeming to him only as a shade, or defect of light-a strange peculiarity which Herschel regarded not as a question of defective vision, but of pure sensation.

People possessed of normal sight have, it seems, "three" primary sensations as to color, whereas the colorblind have but "two." To these "three," red, yellow and blue, we sighted people refer all colors; the others being but various mixtures of the three primary tints. To the eyes of the color-blind all the other tints seem referable to but "two" primaries, "which," says Herschel to Dalton, "I shall call A and B ; the equilibrium of which two produce your white, their negation your black, and their mixture in various proportions all your compound tints. What sort of sensation," he adds, "A and B afford to the color-blind, we can no more tell than they can tell what our a, b, r (red, yellow, blue) afford to us."

To this strangely limited form of vision-admitting only two tints, blue and yellow-Herschel gave the apt name of "dichromic"; and his theory, having been amply verified by succeeding investigation, is now generally (with some slight modification) accepted. Whatever other peculiarities, therefore, the vision of the color-blind may possess, its compass must be of the most limited kind. If yellow and blue be to them the only visible tints, all the wondrous and beautiful combinations of orange, green, red and violet must be unknown; and the charm that lies hidden under such words as the rainbow, springtide, dawn and sunset, and speaks with living power to the inner heart of the rest of the world, to the color-blind carries but a broken message. The beauty of earth, sea and sky, as it appeals to us in all the full mystery of blended, contrasted and harmonized color, is simply beyond their conception. A partially deaf man may, indeed, gather somewhat from the broad roll of the deep, full-toned choir; a faint echo of its mighty volume of sound as a whole; but of its softer and more delicate nuances, its tiny waves of melody, its lights and shadows, the cadence, the dying fall, or the gradual resurrection into the stormy rapture of a full diapason, he can know nothing.

Scarcely less hapless, as regards the glowing world of color, is the condition of the 480,000 color-bliud, to most of whom the countless images of grace and beauty that speak to the world from the flowery mead, the dying glory of Autumn, the expanse of azure sea, the flush of dawn along the mountain-tops, or of ruddy sunset against the peaks of eternal snow, are simply accents in an unknown tongue.

But the whole question of color-blindness opens up to points of wider importance. First, color-blindness, it would seem, is not to be regarded as curable, or, indeed, as itself a disease, though possibly a symptom of diseased retina. Dalton's eyes, after his death, were carefully examined (one actually dissected) for the purpose of ascertaining the cause of "his anomalous vision"; his idea being that such faulty sight was owing to the fact that one of the humours of his eyes was a colored medium, probably some modification of blue. But the post-mortem proved beyond a doubt the fallacy of this theory, the vitreous humours being found absolutely free from color,

But though not a positive disease, color-blindness would seem to be widely inherited-four brothers in one family

being thus afflicted; of whom, oddly enough, three were clever wood-engravers, and the fourth, stil more oddly, a painter in water-colors, which, however, he was obliged to have labeled for him in his daily work.

Statistics, too, however imperfect, clearly prove this much-that the tendency to color-blindness may be staid by good diet, and a healthy exercise of body, brain and sight, as a single fact may help to show. Out of 18,000 persons examined by the English Ophthalmological Society, 5,000 were members of the Metropolitan Police, among whom color-blindness prevailed to the extent of 4.5 per cent., while among the keen, intelligent youngsters in the playing-fields at Eton, this ratio sank to 2.5 per cent. And if the skeins of colored silk could have been applied to the young maidens of a well-known girls' school (seven or eight hundred in number) it would have failen still lower, probably to about 0.4 per cent. ; the ratio of colorblindness among women as compared with men being twelve times less. This wide difference between the sexes is natural enough, when one remembers the earlier development and swifter intelligence of little Mary, who learns and rejoices to dress her doll or herself in the gayest colors, while her brother Jack cares little or nothing whether his breeches are scarlet or green, as long as they have good big pockets in them.

One more point has yet to be noted among the statistics of color-blindness; the singular fact that the three classes most liable to this anomalous vision are deaf-mutes, Jews and Quakers. As regards the first of these, if it be true that freedom from the calamity depends largely on the perfect and healty condition of body and brain, the low status of the deaf-mute is at once a sufficient cause. The great majority of deaf-mutes belong to a low and debased class, for whom, until recent times, little has been done. Scrofula, an inherited disease, is too often the cause of their special calamity, which again they bequeath by close intermarriage to their children, thus furnishing more inhabitants for the strange world into which neither sound nor color finds true entrance.

Why the descendants of the house of David, who, as a whole, are deficient neither in power, intelligence nor culture, should be especial victims of color-blindness is not so clear. But even among them close intermarriage is the rule rather than the exception, with its inevitable fruits.

A LADY'S PET FISHES.

MRS. BURGESS, residing on the borders of one of the most beautiful lakes in America, has been in the habit, once or twice a day for a considerable period, of feeding the fish in this lake, and my friend was favored with an invitation to witness this novel feast. She first splashed the water with her hand, when in a moment there was

seen approaching from every direction, hundreds of large shiners; then eels, varying in size from one to about three feet in length, swimming very cautiously. Next turtles appeared on the surface, ten, twenty and thirty feet away, their necks stretched apparently to see whether it is friend or foe who is disturbing the waters.

In less than three minutes these various species had collected directly before her, and as she commenced to feed, the water was fairly alive with them. They take bread directly from her hands, the turtles would allow her to take them entirely out of the water, and while she held them in one hand, they would eat with the greatest voracity from the other.

But the eels were the most amusing. There was one she called Quinn, measuring about three feet in length,

that repeatedly came to the surface, and would glide back and forth through her hands, and several times she lifted him partially out of the water, but he was careful to keep his head under. He seemed to feel that she would take no undue liberties with him so long as his head was in its natural element, but the moment he saw daylight, he would dart back with rapidity. Another small one, about a foot in length, seemed to be particularly fond of her caresses, and could be handled about as she pleased, it being understood, though, that he was to remain under water.

LOVE AND MONEY.

BY SARAH DOUDNEY.

"Love is potent, but money is omnipotent." OUT in the twilight, alone in the lane, All the old sweetness steals o'er me again; All the old longing, forgotten of late, Stirs in my heart as I stand at her gate; Silent and dim is the cottage to-night, Smothered in roses, cream-tinted and white; Jasmine blossoms besprinkle the sod, Dusky and still are the paths that she trod. Oh, for one moment to meet her, and see Just the old look, that shone only for me! Why am I sighing here what can I do? "L'amour fait beaucoup, mais l'argent fait tout."

Little white Rose, there were true knights of old-
Heroes, who counted Love dearer than gold;
Men with strong arms, who could fight for their way;
Why were we born in this world of to-day?
Why does society smite with a sneer
Wretches who wed on three hundred a year?
Why But a truce to these follies of mine!
I am no knight of the days of lang syne;
Only a lounger with duns at his heels,
Only a dreamer who maunders and feels,
Only a trifler who sighs after you;
"L'amour fait beaucoup, mais l'argent fait tout.”

Safe in the cottage that nobody knows,
Sleep, and forget me, my little white Rose!
Heartsick and weary, I turn from your gate,
Tired of the strife betwixt passion and Fate;
There will be parting and pain if we meet;
Better to leave you than grieve you, my sweet;
Ay, it is true, as some poets can tell,
Love is best proved by a silent farewell.
Out in the starlight I wander again,
Through the deep gloom of the oak-shadowed lane,
Back to the crowd that cares nothing for you;
"L'amour fait beaucoup, mais l'argent fait tout."

CITIZENSHIP.-Just as each member of a household should regard his own family as a distinct unit, of which he is a component part, and from which he can by no means separate himself, whose joys and whose sorrows, whose character and whose reputation are all his, so should each citizen regard his own nation. He should feel a just pride in its virtues and delight in its prosperity, a just grief in its disasters and shame in its follies, but throngh all so intense a oneness with it that he will neither wish to boast of the former nor to expose the latter.

"SPEECH was given to the ordinary sort of men," says South, "whereby to communicate their mind, but to wise men whereby to conceal it." "The true use of speech," says Goldsmith, "is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them." Voltaire, who probably borrowed the thought from Goldsmith, says, "Men use words to dis guise their thoughts.