I do not think Emerson hits on the true explanation of why man feeding is not an attractive subject for the painter. It is not that the diet is base and is hidden in caves and cellars, or that the world is not present at the feast. It is because eating is a purely selfish animal occupation; there is no touch of the noble or the idyllic or the heroic in it. In the act man confesses his animal nature; he is no longer an Emerson, a Dante, a Plato--he is simply a physiological contrivance taking in nutriment. The highest and the lowest are for the moment on the same level. The lady and her maid, the lord and his lackey are all one. Eating your bread on a mountain-top or in the camp of lumbermen or with a beautiful maiden in the wilderness adds a new element. Here the picture has all nature for a background and the imagination is moved. The rye and the oatcake now become a kind of heavenly manna, or, as Fitzgerald has it, under such conditions the wilderness is Paradise enow. The simple act of feeding does not now engross the attention. Associate with the act of eating any worthy or noble idea, and it is at once lifted to a higher level. A mother feeding her child, a cook passing food to the tramp at the door or to other hungry and forlorn wayfarers, or soldiers pausing to eat their rations in the field, or fishermen beside the stream, or the haymakers with their lunch under a tree--in all such incidents there are pictorial elements because the least part of it all to the looker-on is the act of eating. In Da Vinci's "Last Supper" the mere animal act of taking food plays no part; the mind is occupied with higher and more significant things. A suggestion of wine or of fruit in a painting may be agreeable, but from a suggestion of the kitchen and the cook we turn away. The incident of some of Washington's officers during the Revolution entertaining some British officers (an historical fact) on baked potatoes and salt would appeal to the artistic imagination. All the planting and reaping of the farmers is suggestive of our animal wants, as is so much of our whole industrial activity; but art looks kindly upon much of it, shows us more or less in partnership with primal energies. People surrounding a table after all signs of the dinner have been removed hold the elements of an agreeable picture, because that suggests conversation and social intercourse--a feast of reason and a flow of soul. We are no longer animals; we have moved up many degrees higher in the scale of human values. Emerson's deep love and admiration for Carlyle come out many times in the Journals. No other literary man of his times moved and impressed him so profoundly. Their correspondence, which lasted upwards of forty years, is the most valuable correspondence known to me in English literature. It is a history of the growth and development of these two remarkable minds.