But his shrewdness of perception was exquisite. He did not take dross because he hoped for gold. His reproof was as sure and incisive as the stroke of a delicate Damascus blade. When a young man, hearing Emerson say that everybody ought to read Plato, followed his advice, and read, he thought, with the audacity of youth, that he detected faults in Plato, and wrote an essay to set them forth. He asked Emerson to read it, and when he returned it to the youth, Emerson said, pleasantly, "My boy, when you strike at the king, you must kill him." One day he sat at dinner with a distinguished company of statesmen. He was by far the most famous man at the table; but he modestly followed the conversation, turning from each guest who spoke, to the next, with the old sweet gravity of earnest expectation. When all the notable company had gone, a guest who remained said to him: "I saw you talking with the English Minister. He is a brilliant man, and I hope that you found him agreeable." "A very pleasant gentleman," replied Emerson; "but he does not represent the England that I know." Despite this sharp apprehension, however, Emerson was sometimes unable to find any charm in writings which have apparently taken a permanent place in literature. He could see nothing interesting or valuable in Shelley. "When I read Shelley," he once said, "I am like a man who thinks that he sees gold at the bottom of a stream. He reaches for it, but his hands come up cold, with a little common sand in them." The waywardness and disorder of Shelley's life may have troubled him. But this would not have affected his intellectual judgment. His acute intellect was supremely independent and absolutely courageous. "He must embrace solitude as a bride," he said of the scholar; "he must have his glees and his glooms alone." When as a young man he quietly closed his pulpit door, and declined to preach any more, because he no longer felt any value in certain religious rites, there was no protest, nor ostentation, nor newspaper "sensation." It was simply the closing of a book that he had read, and the amazement and censure and grief of others could not possibly persuade him to do, or to say, or to affect, the thing that was not true. Emerson's moral and intellectual integrity was transparently simple, but it was sublime. It was not expressed in stormy self-assertion nor cynical contempt. It spoke in tranquil and beautiful affirmation, perfectly courteous, but absolutely sincere.