spontaneous that it would seem as if the most illiterate person with a
scrap of common-sense would have made the same.... We become wiser
with them, and know not how the difficult appears easy and the
involved plain.

"Emerson possesses this noble manner of communicating himself. He
inspires me with courage and confidence. He has read and seen but
conceals the labor. I meet in his works plenty of familiar facts, but
he does not employ them to figure up anew the old worn-out problems:
each stands on a new spot and serves for new combinations. From
everything he sees the direct line issuing which connects it with the
focus of life....

".... Emerson's theory is that of the 'sovereignty of the individual.'
To discover what a young man is good for, and to equip him for the
path he is to strike out in life, regardless of any other
consideration, is the great duty to which he calls attention. He makes
men self-reliant. He reveals to the eyes of the idealist the
magnificent results of practical activity, and unfolds before the
realist the grandeur of the ideal world of thought. No man is to allow
himself, through prejudice, to make a mistake in choosing the task to
which he will devote his life. Emerson's essays are, as it were,
printed sermons--all having this same text.... The wealth and harmony
of his language overpowered and entranced me anew. But even now I
cannot say wherein the secret of his influence lies. What he has
written is like life itself--the unbroken thread ever lengthened
through the addition of the small events which make up each day's
experience."

Froude in his famous "Life of Carlyle" gives an interesting description