“The farmer’s office is precise and important, but you must not try to paint him in rose-color; you cannot make pretty compliments to fate and gravitation, whose minister he is.—­This hard work will always be done by one kind of man; not by scheming speculators, nor by soldiers, nor professors, nor readers of Tennyson; but by men of endurance, deep-chested, long-winded, tough, slow and sure, and timely.”

Emerson’s chemistry and physiology are not profound, but they are correct enough to make a fine richly colored poetical picture in his imaginative presentation.  He tells the commonest facts so as to make them almost a surprise:—­

“By drainage we went down to a subsoil we did not know, and have found there is a Concord under old Concord, which we are now getting the best crops from; a Middlesex under Middlesex; and, in fine, that Massachusetts has a basement story more valuable and that promises to pay a better rent than all the superstructure.”

In “Works and Days” there is much good reading, but I will call attention to one or two points only, as having a slight special interest of their own.  The first is the boldness of Emerson’s assertions and predictions in matters belonging to science and art.  Thus, he speaks of “the transfusion of the blood,—­which, in Paris, it was claimed, enables a man to change his blood as often as his linen!” And once more,

“We are to have the balloon yet, and the next war will be fought in the air.”

Possibly; but it is perhaps as safe to predict that it will be fought on wheels; the soldiers on bicycles, the officers on tricycles.

The other point I have marked is that we find in this Essay a prose version of the fine poem, printed in “May-Day” under the title “Days.”  I shall refer to this more particularly hereafter.

It is wronging the Essay on “Books” to make extracts from it.  It is all an extract, taken from years of thought in the lonely study and the public libraries.  If I commit the wrong I have spoken of, it is under protest against myself.  Every word of this Essay deserves careful reading.  But here are a few sentences I have selected for the reader’s consideration:—­

    “There are books; and it is practicable to read them because they
    are so few.—­

    “I visit occasionally the Cambridge Library, and I can seldom go
    there without renewing the conviction that the best of it all is
    already within the four walls of my study at home.—­

    “The three practical rules which I have to offer are, 1.  Never read
    any book that is not a year old. 2.  Never read any but famed books.
    3.  Never read any but what you like, or, in Shakspeare’s phrase,—­

      “’No profit goes where is no pleasure ta’en;
        In brief, Sir, study what you most affect.’”