Emerson’s quality has changed a good deal in his later writings.  His corn is no longer in the milk; it has grown hard, and we that read have grown hard, too.  He has now ceased to be an expansive, revolutionary force, but he has not ceased to be a writer of extraordinary gripe and unexpected resources of statement.  His startling piece of advice, “Hitch your wagon to a star,” is typical of the man, as combining the most unlike and widely separate qualities.  Because not less marked than his idealism and mysticism is his shrewd common sense, his practical bent, his definiteness,—­ in fact, the sharp New England mould in which he is cast.  He is the master Yankee, the centennial flower of that thrifty and peculiar stock.  More especially in his later writings and speakings do we see the native New England traits,—­the alertness, eagerness, inquisitiveness, thrift, dryness, archness, caution, the nervous energy as distinguished from the old English unction and vascular force.  How he husbands himself,—­what prudence, what economy, always spending up, as he says, and not down!  How alert, how attentive; what an inquisitor; always ready with some test question, with some fact or idea to match or to verify, ever on the lookout for some choice bit of adventure or information, or some anecdote that has pith and point!  No tyro basks and takes his ease in his presence, but is instantly put on trial and must answer or be disgraced.  He strikes at an idea like a falcon at a bird.  His great fear seems to be lest there be some fact or point worth knowing that will escape him.  He is a close-browed miser of the scholar’s gains.  He turns all values into intellectual coin.  Every book or person or experience is an investment that will or will not warrant a good return in ideas.  He goes to the Radical Club, or to the literary gathering, and listens with the closest attention to every word that is said, in hope that something will be said, some word dropped, that has the ring of the true metal.  Apparently he does not permit himself a moment’s indifference or inattention.  His own pride is always to have the ready change, to speak the exact and proper word, to give to every occasion the dignity of wise speech.  You are bartered with for your best.  There is no profit in life but in the interchange of ideas, and the chief success is to have a head well filled with them.  Hard cash at that; no paper promises satisfy him; he loves the clink and glint of the real coin.

His earlier writings were more flowing and suggestive, and had reference to larger problems; but now everything has got weighed and stamped and converted into the medium of wise and scholarly conversation.  It is of great value; these later essays are so many bags of genuine coin, which it has taken a lifetime to hoard; not all gold, but all good, and the fruit of wise industry and economy.