living features." Emerson's journals show the difficulty of his
intercourse even with himself. He could not reach himself at will, nor
could another reach him. The sensuous and ready contact with nature
which more carnal people enjoy was unknown to him. He had eyes for the
New England landscape, but for no other scenery. If there is one supreme
sensation reserved for man, it is the vision of Venice seen from the
water. This sight greeted Emerson at the age of thirty. The famous city,
as he approached it by boat, "looked for some time like nothing but New
York. It is a great oddity, a city for beavers, but to my thought a most
disagreeable residence. You feel always in prison and solitary. It is as
if you were always at sea. I soon had enough of it."

Emerson's contempt for travel and for the "rococo toy," Italy, is too
well known to need citation. It proceeds from the same deficiency of
sensation. His eyes saw nothing; his ears heard nothing. He believed
that men travelled for distraction and to kill time. The most vulgar
plutocrat could not be blinder to beauty nor bring home less from Athens
than this cultivated saint. Everything in the world which must be felt
with a glow in the breast, in order to be understood, was to him
dead-letter. Art was a name to him; music was a name to him; love was a
name to him. His essay on Love is a nice compilation of compliments and
elegant phrases ending up with some icy morality. It seems very well
fitted for a gift-book or an old-fashioned lady's annual.

"The lovers delight in endearments, in avowals of love, in comparisons
of their regards.... The soul which is in the soul of each, craving a
perfect beatitude, detects incongruities, defects, and disproportion in
the behavior of the other. Hence arise surprise, expostulation, and
pain. Yet that which drew them to each other was signs of loveliness,
signs of virtue; and these virtues are there, however eclipsed. They