So anxious was Mr. Alcott that his work on Emerson should some day be given to the world, that after his paralytic shock, when his memory had lost its grasp of many things, and among others, of his recent labors on his newly published book,—a copy of which he had not seen,—he still remembered his former earnest wish that it should be made public. And to one of his friends, who spent several hours with him each week, he remarked with much excitement, on two or three occasions, that his essay must be brought out at once; insisting that it should be published in the philosophical magazine which his friend edited. Finally a copy of the book was brought to him, greatly to his astonishment and delight. This is all the more touching an incident of his friendship for the great Emerson, when it is remembered that the latter more than once said that “it would be a pity if Alcott survived him, since he alone possessed the means of showing to the world what Alcott really was.”—(Cabot’s Memoir of Emerson, vol. i. p. 281.) The book also contains Alcott’s “Ion: a Monody,”—read by him at the Concord School of Philosophy, and to which Mr. John Albee, in “The New-York Tribune,” paid the following high praise: “It continues for us that tender strain bequeathed by Moschus’s ‘Lament for Bion,’ Milton’s ‘Lycidas,’ and Shelley’s ‘Adonais;’ but it has a pathos and beauty all its own, ... faultless in tone and in art.” Mr. Sanborn’s ode to Emerson, “The Poet’s Countersign,” also read at the Concord School, completes the volume, and makes a worthy addition to that lofty form of verse that has enriched the literatures of all ages, from Pindar to Tennyson. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PORTRAIT OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON _Frontispieces_ PORTRAIT OF A. BRONSON ALCOTT „ EMERSON’S HOUSE AT CONCORD 1 EMERSON’S SUMMER HOUSE 56 THE SUMMER SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY 59 MR. ALCOTT’S STUDY 67 BRIDGE AT CONCORD 81 CONTENTS. PAGE. ESSAY 1 MONODY 59 ODE 71