Much as we love and revere Emerson, and immeasurable as his service has been, especially to the younger and more penetrating minds, I think it will not do at all to say, as one of our critics (Mr. Stedman) has lately said, that Emerson is as "far above Carlyle as the affairs of the soul and universe are above those of the contemporary or even the historic world." Above him he certainly was, in a thinner, colder air, but not in any sense that implies greater power or a farther range. His sympathies with the concrete world and his gripe upon it were far less than Carlyle's. He bore no such burden, he fought no such battle, as the latter did. His mass, his velocity, his penetrating power, are far less. A tranquil, high-sailing, fair-weather cloud is Emerson, and a massive, heavy-laden storm-cloud is Carlyle. Carlyle was never placidly sounding the azure depths like Emerson, but always pouring and rolling earthward, with wind, thunder, rain, and hail. He reaches up to the Emersonian altitudes, but seldom disports himself there; never loses himself, as Emerson sometimes does; the absorption takes place in the other direction; he descends to actual affairs and events with fierce precipitation. Carlyle's own verdict, written in his journal on Emerson's second visit to him in 1848, was much to the same effect, and, allowing for the Carlylean exaggeration, was true. He wrote that Emerson differed as much from himself "as a gymnosophist sitting idle on a flowery bank may do from a wearied worker and wrestler passing that way with many of his bones broken."