Was he thinking of his relations with Carlyle?  It is a curious subject of speculation what would have been the issue if Carlyle had come to Concord and taken up his abode under Emerson’s most hospitable roof.  “You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house.”  How could they have got on together?  Emerson was well-bred, and Carlyle was wanting in the social graces.  “Come rest in this bosom” is a sweet air, heard in the distance, too apt to be followed, after a protracted season of close proximity, by that other strain,—­

  “No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole! 
  Rise Alps between us and whole oceans roll!”

But Emerson may have been thinking of some very different person, perhaps some “crude and cold companion” among his disciples, who was not equal to the demands of friendly intercourse.

He discourses wisely on “Prudence,” a virtue which he does not claim for himself, and nobly on “Heroism,” which was a shining part of his own moral and intellectual being.

The points which will be most likely to draw the reader’s attention are the remarks on the literature of heroism; the claim for our own America, for Massachusetts and Connecticut River and Boston Bay, in spite of our love for the names of foreign and classic topography; and most of all one sentence which, coming from an optimist like Emerson, has a sound of sad sincerity painful to recognize.

“Who that sees the meanness of our politics but inly congratulates Washington that he is long already wrapped in his shroud, and forever safe; that he was laid sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity not yet subjugated in him.  Who does not sometimes envy the good and brave who are no more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite nature?  And yet the love that will be annihilated sooner than treacherous has already made death impossible, and affirms itself no mortal, but a native of the deeps of absolute and inextinguishable being.”

In the following Essay, “The Over-Soul,” Emerson has attempted the impossible.  He is as fully conscious of this fact as the reader of his rhapsody,—­nay, he is more profoundly penetrated with it than any of his readers.  In speaking of the exalted condition the soul is capable of reaching, he says,—­

“Every man’s words, who speaks from that life, must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same thought on their own part.  I dare not speak for it.  My words do not carry its august sense; they fall short and cold.  Only itself can inspire whom it will, and behold! their speech shall be lyrical and sweet, and universal as the rising of the wind.  Yet I desire, even by profane words, if I may not use sacred, to indicate the heaven of this deity, and to report