was a Swiss girl, an Indian squaw, a negro of the Jim Crow order, one or two foresters, and several people in christian attire, besides children of all ages. There followed childish games, in which the grown people took part with mirth enough, while I, whose nature it is to be a mere spectator both of sport and serious business, lay under the trees and looked on. Meanwhile, Mr. Emerson and Miss Fuller, who arrived an hour or two before, came forth into the little glade where we assembled. Here followed much talk. The ceremonies of the day concluded with a cold collation of cakes and fruit. All was pleasant enough, - an excellent piece of work,'would 'twere done!' It has left a fantastic impression on my memory, this intermingling of wild and fabulous characters with real and homely ones, in the secluded nook of the woods. I remember them, with the sunlight breaking through overshadowing branches, and they appearing and disappearing confusedly, perhaps starting out of the earth, as if the everyday laws of Nature were suspended for this particular occasion. There were the children, too, laughing and sporting about, as if they were at home among such strange shapes, and anon bursting into loud uproar of lamentation when the rude gambols of the merry archers chanced to overturn them. And apart, with a shrewd, Yankee observation of the scene, stands our friend Orange, a thick-set, sturdy figure, enjoying the fun well enough, yet rather laughing with a perception of its nonsensicalness than at all entering into the spirit of the thing."

And now let us turn to the memories of Margaret Fuller.

"All Saturday I was off in the woods. In the evening we had a general conversation, opened by me, upon education in its largest sense, and on what we can do for ourselves and others. I took my usual ground:—The aim is perfection, patience the road. The present object is to give ourselves and others a tolerable chance. Let us not

be too ambitious as to our hopes as to immediate results. Our lives should be considered as a tendency, an approximation only. Parents and teachers expect to do too much,"

"Sunday. A glorious day; the woods full of perfume. I was out all the morning. In the afternoon Mrs. R. and I had a talk. I said my position would be too uncertain here, as I could not work. said they would all like to work for a person of genius. where would be my repose when judging whether I was worth it or not?'

'Yes,' I told her, but they were always to be

"All Monday morning in the woods again. Afternoon out with the drawing party. I felt the evils of the want of conventional refinement in the impudence with which one of the girls treated me. She has since thought of it with regret, I notice.

"Here I have passed a very pleasant week. The tone of society is much sweeter than when I was here a year ago. There is a prevailing spirit of mutual tolerance and gentleness, with great sincerity. There is no longer a passion for grotesque feats of liberty; but a disposition, rather, to study and enjoy the liberty of law. The great development of mind and character observable in several instances persuades me that this state of things affords a a fine studio for the soul-sculptor.

"My hopes might lead to association too-an association, if not of efforts, yet of destinies. In such a one I live with several already, feeling that each one, by acting out his own, casts light upon a mutual destiny, and illustrates the thought of a master-mind. It is a constellation, not a phalanx, to which I would belong."

XXII.

LESSONS FOR THE DAY.

I HAVE a letter by Emerson, found among the papers of a friend in Cincinnati, now dead, with an inscription showing that it was written in answer to an inquiry concerning his religious opinions. It is dated at Concord in the October of 1838, and contains the following statement of his outlook while the storm was raging over his Divinity College address, delivered three months before :

"I hasten to say that I read these expressions of an earnest character-of your faith, of your hope-with extreme interest; and if I can contribute any aid by sympathy or suggestion to the solution of those great problems that occupy you, I shall be very glad. But I think it must be done by degrees. I am not sufficiently master of the little truth I see to know how to state it in forms so general as shall put every mind in possession of my point of view. We generalise and rectify our expressions by continual efforts from day to day, from month to month, to reconcile our own light with that of our companions. So shall two inquirers have the best mutual action on each other. But I should never attempt a direct answer to such questions as yours. I have no language that could shortly present my state of mind in regard to each of them with any fidelity; for my state of mind in each is in no way final and detached, but tentative, progressive, and strictly connected with the whole circle of my thoughts. It seems to me that to understand any man's thoughts respecting the Supreme Being we need an insight into the general habit and tendency of his specula

tions, for every man's idea of God is the last or most comprehensive generalisation at which he has arrived. But besides the extreme difficulty of stating our results on such questions in a few propositions, I think, my dear sir, that a certain religious feeling deters us from the attempt. I do not gladly utter any deep conviction of the soul in any company where I think it will be contestedno, nor unless I think it will be welcome. Truth has already ceased to be itself if polemically said; and if the soul would utter oracles, as every soul should, it must live for itself-keep itself right-minded, observe with such awe its own law as to concern itself very little with the engrossing topics of the hour, unless they be its own. I believe that most of the speculations and difficulties that infest us we must thank ourselves for-that each mind, if true to itself, will, by living for the right and not importing into itself the doubts of other men, dissolve all difficulties, as the sun at midsummer burns up the clouds.

"Hence I think the aid we can give each other is only incidental, lateral, and sympathetic. If we are true and benevolent, we reinforce each other by every act and word; your heroism stimulates mine, and your light kindles mine. The end of all this is, that I thank you heartily for the confidence of your letter, and beg you to use your earliest leisure to come and see me. It is very possible that I shall not be able to give you one definition; but I will show you with joy what I strive after and what I worship, as far as I can. Meantime I shall be very glad to hear from you by letter.-Your friend and R. W. EMERSON."

servant,

"Yew," said Confucius, "permit me to tell you what is knowledge. What you are acquainted with, consider that you know it; what you do not understand, consider that you do not know it: this is knowledge." This definition. is in startling contrast with the tone of nearly all other founders of religions and philosophies. The student

speedily discovers that the most commonplace attribute of this class is omniscience. Long before charts of land or sea were made, the invisible heavens and hells were mapped and reported in detail. The seven or seventy hells, the nine celestial spheres, twenty-eight heavens, twenty chiliocosms, four dhyānas, four orders of being, three energies, six days of creation, eleven avatars, three dispensations, two dispensations, and a thousand other arrangements of the universe into sixes and sevens, meet us at every turn in the cosmogonies and scriptures which still command the faith of the majority of mankind. These exact statements concerning things beyond the scope of human faculties, while they escaped the criticism of the ordinary human understanding by soaring above the objects with which it could deal, indulged a very general weakness of the human mind, and there is little reason to wonder that the every-day rules and moral maxims of Confucius were overshadowed by the clear and positive splendours of Buddhism. The scholar of the present day notes this speculative precision as a sign of the infancy of philosophy, and measures the antiquity of a religion by the boldness of its assumptions of particular knowledge in the realm of the unknowable. Nevertheless, one has only to look around to perceive how large a part of mankind is still prone to follow the teachers who approximate most nearly the attitude of omniscience. Swedenborg gossiping with the angels; Comte assigning love and thought their grooves; Fourier pigeon-holing the universe in his French cabinet; mediums interviewing departed spirits at their tea-tables, and fairly slapping the shades of heroes and prophets on the back with joyous familiarity; the popular divines bringing all mysteries down to a rhetorical zodiac around their pulpits: these are the recognised builders of the only new sects and systems of which our age can boast. With the bones of theories and explanations bleaching all along the track by which the human mind has journeyed, we still find the multi