type:  Saladin, Sapor, the Cid, Julius Caesar, Scipio, Alexander, Pericles, and the lordliest personages.  They sat very carelessly in their chairs, and were too excellent themselves to value any condition at a high rate.—­I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws than with a sloven and unpresentable person.—­The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight.—­I esteem it a chief felicity of this country that it excels in woman.”

So writes Emerson, and proceeds to speak of woman in language which seems almost to pant for rhythm and rhyme.

This essay is plain enough for the least “transcendental” reader.  Franklin would have approved it, and was himself a happy illustration of many of the qualities which go to the Emersonian ideal of good manners, a typical American, equal to his position, always as much so in the palaces and salons of Paris as in the Continental Congress, or the society of Philadelphia.

“Gifts” is a dainty little Essay with some nice distinctions and some hints which may help to give form to a generous impulse:—­

“The only gift is a portion of thyself.  Thou must bleed for me.  Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.”

“Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.—­Fruits are acceptable gifts, because they are the flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic values being attached to them.”

“It is a great happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning from one who has had the ill-luck to be served by you.  It is a very onerous business, this of being served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap.”

Emerson hates the superlative, but he does unquestionably love the tingling effect of a witty over-statement.

We have recognized most of the thoughts in the Essay entitled “Nature,” in the previous Essay by the same name, and others which we have passed in review.  But there are poetical passages which will give new pleasure.

Here is a variation of the formula with which we are familiar:—­ “Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas.  The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping again into the state of free thought.”

And here is a quaint sentence with which we may take leave of this Essay:—­