The Conduct of Life.  By R.W.  EMERSON Boston:  Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. 288.

It is a singular fact, that Mr. Emerson is the most steadily attractive lecturer in America.  Into that somewhat cold-waterish region adventurers of the sensation kind come down now and then with a splash, to become disregarded King Logs before the next season.  But Mr. Emerson always draws.  A lecturer now for something like a quarter of a century, one of the pioneers of the lecturing system, the charm of his voice, his manner, and his matter has never lost its power over his earlier hearers, and continually winds new ones in its enchanting meshes.  What they do not fully understand they take on trust, and listen, saying to themselves, as the old poet of Sir Philip Sidney,—­

  “A sweet, attractive, kind of grace,
  A full assurance given by looks,
  Continual comfort in a face,
  The lineaments of gospel books.”

We call it a singular fact, because we Yankees are thought to be fond of the spread-eagle style, and nothing can be more remote from that than his.  We are reckoned a practical folk, who would rather hear about a new air-tight stove than about Plato; yet our favorite teacher’s practicality is not in the least of the Poor Richard variety.  If he have any Buncombe constituency, it is that unrealized commonwealth of philosophers which Plotinus proposed to establish; and if he were to make an almanac, his directions to farmers would be something like this:—­“OCTOBER:  Indian Summer; now is the time to get in your early Vedas.”  What, then, is his secret?  Is it not that he out-Yankees us all? that his range includes us all? that he is equally at home with the potato-disease and original sin, with pegging shoes and the Over-soul? that, as we try all trades, so has he tried all cultures? and above all, that his mysticism gives us a counterpoise to our super-practicality?

There is no man living to whom, as a writer, so many of us feel and thankfully acknowledge so great an indebtedness for ennobling impulses,—­none whom so many cannot abide.  What does he mean? ask these last.  Where is his system?  What is the use of it all?  What the deuse have we to do with Brahma?  Well, we do not propose to write an essay on Emerson at the fag-end of a February “Atlantic,” with Secession longing for somebody to hold it, and Chaos come again in the South Carolina teapot.  We will only say that we have found grandeur and consolation in a starlit night without caring to ask what it meant, save grandeur and consolation; we have liked Montaigne, as some ten generations before us have done, without thinking him so systematic as some more eminently tedious (or shall we say tediously eminent?) authors; we have thought roses as good in their way as cabbages, though the latter would have made a better show in the witness-box, if cross-examined as to their usefulness; and as for Brahma, why, he can take care of himself, and won’t bite us at any rate.