sent it to him with a letter, the kindness and true Christian spirit of
which were only what were inseparable from all the thoughts and feelings
of that most excellent and truly apostolic man.

To this letter Emerson sent the following reply:--

CONCORD, October 8, 1838.

"MY DEAR SIR,--I ought sooner to have acknowledged your kind letter
of last week, and the sermon it accompanied. The letter was right
manly and noble. The sermon, too, I have read with attention. If it
assails any doctrine of mine,--perhaps I am not so quick to see it
as writers generally,--certainly I did not feel any disposition
to depart from my habitual contentment, that you should say your
thought, whilst I say mine. I believe I must tell you what I think
of my new position. It strikes me very oddly that good and wise men
at Cambridge and Boston should think of raising me into an object of
criticism. I have always been--from my very incapacity of methodical
writing--a 'chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to
rail,--lucky when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed
near enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the
notice of the masters of literature and religion. I have appreciated
fully the advantages of my position, for I well know there is no
scholar less willing or less able than myself to be a polemic. I
could not give an account of myself, if challenged. I could not
possibly give you one of the 'arguments' you cruelly hint at, on
which any doctrine of mine stands; for I do not know what arguments
are in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in
telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it
is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. I do not even see