Some people will tell you that Emerson’s poetry, indeed, is too abstract, and his philosophy too vague, but that his best work is his _English Traits_. The _English Traits_ are beyond question very pleasant reading. It is easy to praise them, easy to commend the author of them. But I insist on always trying Emerson’s work by the highest standards. I esteem him too much to try his work by any other. Tried by the highest standards, and compared with the work of the excellent markers and recorders of the traits of human life,—of writers like Montaigne, La Bruyère, Addison,—the _English Traits_ will not stand the comparison. Emerson’s observation has not the disinterested quality of the observation of these masters. It is the observation of a man systematically benevolent, as Hawthorne’s observation in _Our Old Home_ is the work of a man chagrined. Hawthorne’s literary talent is of the first order. His subjects are generally not to me subjects of the highest interest; but his literary talent is of the first order, the finest, I think, which America has yet produced,—finer, by much, than Emerson’s. Yet _Our Old Home_ is not a masterpiece any more than _English Traits_. In neither of them is the observer disinterested enough. The author’s attitude in each of these cases can easily be understood and defended. Hawthorne was a sensitive man, so situated in England that he was perpetually in contact with the British Philistine; and the British Philistine is a trying personage. Emerson’s systematic benevolence comes from what he himself calls somewhere his ‘persistent optimism’; and his persistent optimism is the root of his greatness and the source of his charm. But still let us keep our literary conscience true, and judge every kind of literary work by the laws really proper to it. The kind of work attempted in the _English Traits_ and in _Our Old Home_ is work which cannot be done perfectly with a bias such as that given by Emerson’s optimism or by Hawthorne’s chagrin. Consequently, neither _English Traits_ nor _Our Old Home_ is a work of perfection in its kind.