calibre among those I have known, but as one of absolute transparency of intellect, perfect receptivity, and devotion to the truth.  In the days of persecution and martyrdom Emerson would have gone to the stake smiling and undismayed, but questioning all the time, even as to the nature of his own emotions.  It was this serene impassibility in his study of human nature which gave the common impression of his coldness,—­an impression which is shown, by the anecdote I have elsewhere recorded of Longfellow, to have been shared by one who might have been supposed to know him well for years.  But Emerson was not cold or disposed to make mere subjects of analysis of his friends, as Longfellow thought; he was an eager student of men as of nature, but superficial men he tired of and dropped, nothing being to be learned from them, though where he found what he looked for in a character he never tired of it.  His friendships were of the most constant because of this temper, and it was only their serenity and almost impersonality that made them seem frigid to those whose temperament was widely different.  Wrong, injustice to man or beast, roused his warmth in indignation,—­he could be hot enough on occasion; though the quiet warmth of his affection for his friends was like the sun of May.  But undoubtedly his greater passion was for the truth in whatever form he could find it.

Of all the mental experiences of my past life nothing else survives with the vividness of my summers in the Adirondacks with Emerson.  The last sight I had of him was when, on his voyage to Egypt, he came to see me at my home in London, aged and showing the decay of age, but as alert and interrogative as ever with his insatiate intellectual activity.  And as I look back from the distance of years to the days when we questioned together, he rises above all his contemporaries as Mont Blanc does above the intervening peaks when seen from afar, not the largest in mass, but loftiest in climb, soaring higher if not occupying the space of some of his companions, even in our little assemblies.  Emerson was the best listener I ever knew, and at the other meeting-place where I saw him occasionally, the Saturday Club, his attention to what others were saying was far more notable than his disposition to enter into the discussions.  Now and then he flashed out with a comment which lit up the subject as an electric spark might, but in general he shone unconsciously.  I remember that one day when, at the club, we were discussing the nature of genius, some one turned to Emerson and asked him for a definition of the thing, and he instantly replied, “The faculty of generalizing from a single example;” and nobody at the table could give so good and concise a definition.  There is a portrait of him by Rowse, who knew and loved him well, which renders this side of Emerson in a way that makes it the most remarkable piece of portraiture I know, the listening Emerson.