when so many thoughts are forgotten, buried beneath affectation and verbiage, his gain in brilliancy and value as time goes on; and in an age of ephemeral literature his books find new readers, his mind exerts wider sway. That his philosophy can be recommended as a sound rule to live by for ordinary practitioners may be questioned. It is better as inspiration than as prescription. For maxims it were wiser to go to Bentham, Mill or Bain. The plodders had best keep to the beaten road. But for them who need an atmosphere for wings, who require the impulse of great motives, the lift of upbearing aspirations--for the imaginative, the passionate, the susceptible, who can achieve nothing unless they attempt the impossible--Emerson is the master. A single thrill sent from his heart to ours is worth more to the heart that feels it, than all the schedules of motive the utilitarian can offer. X. THE MYSTIC. If among the representatives of spiritual philosophy the first place belongs to Mr. Emerson, the second must be assigned to Mr. Amos Bronson Alcott,--older than Mr. Emerson by four years (he was born in 1779), a contemporary in thought, a companion, for years a fellow townsman, and, if that were possible, more purely and exclusively a devotee of spiritual ideas. Mr. Alcott may justly be called a mystic--one of the very small class of persons who accept without qualification, and constantly teach the doctrine of the soul's primacy and pre-eminence. He is not a learned man, in the ordinary sense of the term; not a man of versatile mind or various tastes; not a man of general information in worldly or even literary affairs; not a man of extensive commerce with books. Though a reader, and a constant and faithful one, his reading has been limited to books of poetry--chiefly of the meditative and interior sort--and works of spiritual philosophy. Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Jamblichus, Pythagoras, Boehme, Swedenborg, Fludd, Pordage, Henry More, Law, Crashaw, Selden, are the names oftener than any on his pages and lips. He early made acquaintance with Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and never ceased to hold it exceedingly precious, at one period making it a rule to read the volume once a year. His books are his friends; his regard for them seems to be personal; he enjoys their society with the feeling that he gives as well as receives. He loves them in part because they love him; consequently, in all his quoting of them, his own mind comes in as introducer and voucher as it were. His indebtedness to them is expressed with the cordiality of an intimate, rather than with the gratitude of a disciple. His own mind is so wakeful and thoughtful, so quick and ready to take the initiative, that it is hard to say in what respect even his favorite and familiar authors have enriched him. What was not originally his own, is so entirely made his own by sympathetic absorption, that the contribution which others have made is not to be distinguished from his native stores.