elimination of the worst as the law of being; all this and much more may
be found in the poetic utterances of this slender Essay. It fell like an
aerolite, unasked for, unaccounted for, unexpected, almost unwelcome,--a
stumbling-block to be got out of the well-trodden highway of New England
scholastic intelligence. But here and there it found a reader to whom it
was, to borrow, with slight changes, its own quotation,--

"The golden key
Which opes the palace of eternity,"

inasmuch as it carried upon its face the highest certificate of truth,
because it animated them to create a new world for themselves through
the purification of their own souls.

Next to "Nature" in the series of his collected publications comes "The
American Scholar. An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society
at Cambridge, August 31, 1837."

The Society known by these three letters, long a mystery to the
uninitiated, but which, filled out and interpreted, signify that
philosophy is the guide of life, is one of long standing, the
annual meetings of which have called forth the best efforts of many
distinguished scholars and thinkers. Rarely has any one of the annual
addresses been listened to with such profound attention and interest.
Mr. Lowell says of it, that its delivery "was an event without any
former parallel in our literary annals, a scene to be always treasured
in the memory for its picturesqueness and its inspiration. What crowded
and breathless aisles, what windows clustering with eager heads, what
enthusiasm of approval, what grim silence of foregone dissent!"