intellectual life of the young men of New England; and of old England,
too, where, in Manchester, there were regular weekly meetings at which
his works were read. What he said long ago in his preface to the
American edition of Carlyle's _Miscellanies_, that they were papers
which had spoken to the young men of the time "with an emphasis that
hindered them from sleep", is strikingly true of his own writings. His
first slim, anonymous duodecimo, _Nature_, was as fair and fascinating
to the royal young minds who met it in the course of their reading, as
Egeria to Numa wandering in the grove. The essays, orations, and poems
followed, developing and elaborating the same spiritual and heroic
philosophy, applying it to life, history, and literature, with a vigor
and richness so supreme that not only do many account him our truest
philosopher, but others acknowledge him as our most characteristic poet.

It would be a curious inquiry how much and what kind of influence the
placid scenery of Concord has exercised upon his mind. "I chide
society, I embrace solitude," he says; "and yet I am not so ungrateful
as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded, as from time
to time they pass my gate." It is not difficult to understand his
fondness for the spot. He has been always familiar with it, always
more or less a resident of the village. Born in Boston upon the spot
where the Chauncey Place Church now stands, part of his youth was
passed in the Old Manse, which was built by his grandfather and in
which his father was born; and there he wrote _Nature_. From the
magnificent admiration of ancestral England he was glad to return two
years since to quiet Concord and to acres which will not yield a
single arrowhead. The Swiss sigh for their mountains; but the Nubians,
also, pine for their desert plains. Those who are born by the sea long
annually to return and to rest their eyes upon its living horizon. Is
it because the earliest impressions, made when the mind is most