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and lived for a year by himself on what he could raise by his hands from a sterile acre. Here he wrote his "Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," and accumulated the material for his "Walden." He died quite early from the New England scourge, consumption, and some verse and several other volumes of wood life were published after his death.

Thoreau imitated Emerson's style, but yet has ideas and manner enough of his own to free him from a charge of servile copying, and on the other hand his powers of noting the minute phenomena and shy beauties of nature undoubtedly widened Emerson's knowledge of the wild life of New England and enriched Emerson's pages with many an apposite illustration. Thoreau is the literary parent of those charming writers on outdoor life, John Burroughs, Olive Thorne Miller, Maurice Thompson, William Hamilton Gibson, and the rest, who know animals and birds and insects personally, and are interested in their characters and habits rather than in their anatomy or their scientific names. "Walden" still remains one of the most interesting books of its class.

Elisha Mulford, 1833-1885.

Mulford was born in Montrose, Pennsylvania, and prepared for Yale at the old academy at Homer, New York He entered Yale in the class of 1855, and after graduation spent some time abroad and subsequently read theology and was ordained in the Episcopal Church. His life was passed in literary and philosophical study, first in a retired home in Susquehanna County, and afterward at Cambridge. Our Civil War made a deep impression on him, and his elaborate philosophical work the "Nation" is inspired by a lofty belief in the sacred character of the republic as an organi

zation destined by God to endure because charged with a mission in the development of humanity. In many passages his style reaches a triumphant elevation like that of the Jewish prophets, and in others possesses a singular poetic beauty. It is a book which lays broad the bases of a religious patriotism and should be read by all young men. Mr. Mulford's other book, the "Republic of God,” is a profound investigation into the foundations of religious belief marked in places by the spiritual elevation of the great religious teachers of the early church. Both these books are metaphysics, illuminated by a poetical conception of life and humanity, and are written in a spirit of lofty faith and contain thought of rare beauty.

At the time of his death Mr. Mulford had projected several works. The "Nation" is the greatest book, both in plan and execution, called out by the war.

Emerson, 1803-1882.

Emerson, oldest of the New England group of the nineteenth century, was born in Boston, and, as Dr. Holmes Ralph Waldo says in his admirable biography, his birthplace and that of Benjamin Franklin "were within a kite string's distance of each other," rather an uncertain measure now that kites are sent three miles up into the air. Dr. Holmes says, too, that he was from one of the families who constitute what may be called the "Academic Races," the descendants of the intellectual, philosophic, cultured men among the old Puritans, whose names may be found in the early catalogues of Harvard and the lists of eminent ministers. Of this aristocracy of character and mind Emerson is the consummation and flower, for his father was the pastor of the First Church in Boston. The boy was prepared for Harvard in the Latin School, and was graduated from college in 1821, a

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reading and reflecting rather than a laborious student. His father had died when he was eight years old, and he was obliged to add to his slender resources by tutoring and acting as waiter at the college commons. After taking his degree he taught school for some time in Boston, and afterward entered the Harvard Divinity School, by which he was "approbated to preach" in 1826. In 1829 he became the minister of the North Church in Boston. In 1832 he resigned his charge because his views as to the celebration of the Lord's Supper were more radical than those of his Unitarian congregation, and thereafter he supported himself by writing and lecturing. At that period the lecture was a recognized medium of popular education, and every town had its Lyceum in which courses on literary, philosophical, and scientific subjects were given in the winter. Authorship had hardly developed into a profession to which it was safe for a man to trust himself. Emerson was one of the best-liked lecturers, though on the platform with him were Dr. Holmes, Dr. Cheever, Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, John B. Gough, the temperance orator, and many other brilliant speakers.

Before resigning his pulpit Emerson had married and lost his wife. Almost immediately after his resignation he went to Europe, crossing the ocean in a small sailing vessel, landing in Italy, and proceeding to England. He met Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle, and with the last formed a lifelong friendship embalmed in their published correspondence. He came back toward the end of 1833 and settled in Concord, now almost as famous as his home for fifty years as it is for having witnessed the first conflict of the Revolution. In 1835 he married a second time. In 1836 his first book, "Nature," was

published, and in 1837 he delivered an oration on the "American Scholar" before the Phi Beta Kappa society of Harvard. Lowell calls this "our literary Declaration of Independence," and it is not often that an address has had so far-reaching an influence among educated young men. He edited for some time the Dial, an organ of those who are rather loosely grouped under the name of "Transcendentalists," some of whom undertook the experiment of living in a community at Brook Farm. Emerson did not join them, but Hawthorne did, and later embodied his impressions in the "Blithedale Romance."

In 1841 and 1844 Emerson published volumes of “Essays," most of which had been used as lectures. In 1846 he published a volume of "Poems." His reputation was now well established, and he was invited to lecture in England. In 1847 he made his second voyage to England and was very well received. The lectures he delivered in England made his next book, "Representative Men," published in 1850, but the valuable result of his journey was his account of his voyage and impressions contained in the volume "English Traits," the most illuminating book ever written about England. Three more volumes of Emerson's essays were published before his death, "Society and Solitude," "Conduct of Life," and "Letters and Social Aims." He died peacefully, nearly seventy-nine years of age, and is buried in the quiet cemetery of Concord, not far from the grave of Hawthorne. Emerson is the most important figure in our literature because he has had the widest influence on He deals almost thought of any American. entirely in metaphysical questions; the relation of the visible world to the soul of the individ

Characteristics of Emerson's Writings.

ual, the reality of the spiritual element in nature, the

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