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his diaries was edited by his wife under the title of Note Books; among his papers was also found Septimus Felton, or the Elixir of Life, some chapters of an unfinished book, The Dolliver Romance, and Dr. Grimshawe's Secret.

EMERSON AND THE EMERSONITES.

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 which should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theorists, whose systems-at first air-had finally imprisoned them in a fiery framework, travelled painfully to his door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own thralldom. People that had lighted upon a new thought-or thought that they fancied 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 upon a hill-top, and climbing the difficult ascent, looking forth into the surrounding obscurity more hopefully than hitherto. The light revealed objects unseen before :-mountains, gleaming lakes, glimpses of a creation among the chaos: but also, as was unavoidable, it attracted bats and owls and the whole host of nightbirds, which flapped their husky wings against the gazer's eyes, and sometimes were

mistaken for fowls of angelic feather. Such delusions always hover nigh whenever a beacon-fire of truth is kindled.

For myself there had been epochs of my life when I too might have asked of this prophet the master-word that should solve me the riddle of the universe; but now, being happy, I felt as if there were no question to be put; and therefore admired Emerson as a poet of deep beauty and austere tenderness, but sought nothing from him as a philosopher. It was good, nevertheless, to meet him in the wood-paths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure, intellectual gleam diffused about his presence, like the garment of a shining one; and he so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man alive as if expecting to receive more than he could impart. And in truth, the heart of many a man had, perchance, inscriptions which he could not read. But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling more or less the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought, which in the brains of some people wrought a singular giddiness-new truth being as heady as new wine.

Never was a poor little country village infected with such a variety of queer, strangely-dressed, oddlybehaved mortals, most of whom took upon themselves to be important agents of the world's destiny, yet were simply bores of the first water. Such, I imagine, is the invariable character of persons who crowd so closely about an original thinker as to draw in his unuttered breath, and thus become imbued with a false originality. This triteness of novelty is enough to make any man of common sense blaspheme at all ideas of less than a century's standing, and pray that the world may be petrified and rendered immovable in precisely the worst moral and physical state that it has ever yet arrived at rather than be benefited by such schemes of such philosophers.-Mosses from an Old Manse.

THE ROMANCE AND THE NOVEL.

When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to

be writing a Novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity not merely to the possible but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience. The former-while as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart-has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances to a great extent of the writer's own choosing or creation. If he think fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen or enrich the shadows of the picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a very moderate use of the privileges here stated, and especially to mingle the Marvellous rather as a slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor, than as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public. He can hardly be said, however, to commit a literary crime even if he disregard this caution.

In the present work the author has proposed to himself but with what success, fortunately, it is not for him to judge-to keep undeviatingly within his immunities. The point of view in which this tale comes under the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us. It is a legend prolonging itself from an epoch now grown gray in the distance, down to our own broad daylight, and bringing along with it some of its own legendary mist, which the reader, according to his pleasure, may either disregard, or allow it to float almost imperceptibly about the characters and events for the sake of a picturesque effect. The narrative, it may be, is woven of so humble a texture as to require this advantage, and at the same time to render it the more difficult of attainment.

Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose at which they profess to aim their works. Not to be deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself with a moral-the truth, namely, that the wrong-doing of one generation lives into successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief; and he would feel it a singular gratification if this Romance might effectually convince mankind-or indeed any one

man-of the folly of tumbling down an avalanche of illgotten gold, or real-estate, on the heads of an unfortunate posterity, thereby to maim and crush them until the accumulated mass shall be scattered abroad in its original atoms. In good faith, however, he is not sufficiently imaginative to flatter himself with the slightest hope of this kind. When Romances do really teach anything, so as to produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtle process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral, as with an iron mask-or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly, thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first.

The reader may perhaps assign an actual locality to the imaginary events of this narrative. If permitted by the historical connection-which, though slight, was essential to his plan the author would very willingly have avoided anything of this nature. Not to speak of other objections, it exposes the Romance to an inflexible and exceedingly dangerous species of criticism, by bringing his fancy-pictures almost into positive contact with the realities of the moment. It has been no part of his object, however, to describe local manners, nor in any way to meddle with the characteristics of a community for whom he cherishes a proper respect and a natural regard. He trusts not to be considered as unpardonably offending, by laying out a street that infringes upon nobody's private rights, and appropriating a lot of land which had no visible owner, and building a house of materials long in use for constructing castles in the air. The personages of the tale-though they give themselves out to be of ancient stability and considerable prominence-are really of the author's own making, or, at all events, of his own mixing; their virtues can shed no lustre, nor their defects redound in the remotest degree to the discredit of the venerable town of which they

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profess to be inhabitants. He would be glad, therefore, if especially in the quarter to which he alludes-the book may be read strictly as a Romance, having a great deal more to do with the clouds overhead than with any portion of the actual soil of the County of Essex.-The House of the Seven Gables.

THE FIRST EVENING AT BLITHEDALE.

And now we were seated by the brisk fireside of the old farm-house. There we sat, with the snow melting out of our hair and beards, and our faces all ablaze with the past inclemency and present warmth. It was indeed a right good fire that we found awaiting us. A family of the old Pilgrims might have swung their kettle over precisely such a fire as this; and contrasting it with my coal-grate, I felt so much the more that we had transported ourselves a world-wide distance from the system. of society that shackled us at breakfast-table.

Good, comfortable Mrs. Foster (the wife of stout Silas Foster, who was to manage the farm, at a fair stipend, and be our tutor in the art of husbandry), bade us a hearty welcome. At her back appeared two young women, smiling most hospitably, but looking rather awkward withal, as not well knowing what was be their position in our new arrangement of the world. We shook hands affectionately all round, and congratulated ourselves that the blessed state of brotherhood and sisterhood at which we aimed, might fairly be dated from that moment, for greetings were hardly concluded when the door opened, and Zenobia, whom I had never before seen, entered the parlor.

This was not her real name. She had assumed it in the first instance as her Magazine signature; and as it accorded well with something imperial which her friends attributed to this lady's figure and deportment, they half-laughingly adopted it in their familiar intercourse with her. She took the appellation in good part, and even encouraged its common use; which, in fact, was thus far appropriate, that our Zenobia, however humble looked her new philosophy, had as much native pride as any queen would have known what to do with. Zenobia bade us welcome in a fine, frank, mellow voice, and gave

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