ways of arriving at the same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive.’ ‘Nature does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds and wars. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition convention, or the Temperance meeting, or the Transcendental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us: “So hot, my little sir?”’ Yes, truly, his insight is admirable; his truth is precious. Yet the secret of his effect is not even in these; it is in his temper. It is in the hopeful, serene, beautiful temper wherewith these, in Emerson, are indissolubly joined; in which they work, and have their being. He says himself: ‘We judge of a man’s wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth.’ If this be so, how wise is Emerson! for never had man such a sense of the inexhaustibleness of nature, and such hope. It was the ground of his being; it never failed him. Even when he is sadly avowing the imperfection of his literary power and resources, lamenting his fumbling fingers and stammering tongue, he adds: ‘Yet, as I tell you, I am very easy in my mind and never dream of suicide. My whole philosophy, which is very real, teaches acquiescence and optimism. Sure I am that the right word will be spoken, though I cut out my tongue.’ In his old age, with friends dying and life failing, his tone of cheerful, forward-looking hope is still the same. ‘A multitude of young men are growing up here of high promise, and I compare gladly the social poverty of my youth with the power on which these draw.’ His abiding word for us, the word by which being dead he yet speaks to us, is this: ‘That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness and courage, and the endeavour to realise our aspirations. Shall not the heart, which has received so much, trust the Power by which it lives?’