his many descendants, some in the garb of antique babyhood, and others in the bloom of feminine beauty or manly prime, or saddened with the wrinkles of frosty age. Had we the secret of that mirror, we would gladly sit down before it, and transfer its revelations to our page. But there was a story, for which it is difficult to conceive any foundation, that the posterity of Matthew Maule had some connection with the mystery of the looking-glass, and that, by what appears to have been a sort of mesmeric process, they could make its inner region all alive with the departed Pyncheons; not as they had shown themselves to the world nor in their better and happier hours, but in doing over again some deed of sin, or in the crisis of life's bitterest sorrow. The popular imagination, indeed, long kept itself busy with the affair of the old Puritan Pyncheon and the wizard Maule; the curse, which the latter flung from his scaffold, was remembered, with the very important addition, that it had become a part of the Pyncheon inheritance. If one of the family did but gurgle in his throat, a bystander would be likely enough to whisper, between jest and earnest,-"He has Maule's blood to drink!" The sudden death of a Pyncheon, about a hundred years ago, with circumstances very similar to what have been related of the Colonel's exit, was held as giving additional probability to the received opinion on this topic. It was considered, moreover, an ugly and ominous circumstance, that Colonel Pyncheon's picture-in obedience, it was said, to a provision of his will -remained affixed to the wall of the room in which he died. Those stern immitigable features seemed to symbolize an evil influence, and so darkly to mingle the shadow of their presence with the sunshine of the passing hour, that no good thoughts or purpose could ever spring up and blossom there. To the thoughtful mind, there will be no tinge of superstition in what we figuratively express, by affirming that the ghost of a dead progenitor-perhaps as a portion of his own punishment-is often doomed to become the Evil Genius of his family.

The Pyncheons, in brief, lived along, for the better part of two centuries, with perhaps less of outward vicissitude than has attended most other New England families, during the same period of time. Possessing very distinctive traits of their own, they nevertheless took the general characteristics of the little

community in which they dwelt; a town noted for its frugal, discreet, well-ordered, and home-loving inhabitants, as well as for the somewhat confined scope of its sympathies; but in which, be it said, there are odder individuals, and, now and then, stranger occurrences, than one meets with almost anywhere else. During the Revolution, the Pyncheon of that epoch, adopting the Royal side, became a refugee; but repented, and made his reappearance, just at the point of time to preserve the House of the Seven Gables from confiscation. For the last seventy years, the most noted event in the Pyncheon annals had been likewise the heaviest calamity that ever befell the race; no less than the violent death-for so it was adjudged of one member of the family, by the criminal act of another. Certain circumstances, attending this fatal occurrence, had brought the deed irresistibly home to a nephew of the deceased Pyncheon. The young man was tried and convicted of the crime; but either the circumstantial nature of the evidence, and possibly some lurking doubt in the breast of the executive, or, lastly, an argument of greater weight in a republic than it could have been under a monarchy,—the high respectability and political influence of the criminal's connections, had availed to mitigate his doom from death to perpetual imprisonment. This sad affair had chanced about thirty years before the action of our story commences. Latterly, there were rumors (which few believed, and only one or two felt greatly interested in) that this long-buried man was likely, for some reason or other, to be summoned forth from his living tomb.

EMERSON, dying in 1882, a few months after Longfellow, had lived seventy-nine years; his first essay, "Nature," the matrix of all the subsequent ones, was published as early as 1836; his literary activity continued till within a few years of the end, yet his published works at the time of his death would have filled little more than a dozen volumes, and much of them was practically repetition of leading ideas in his philosophy. That philosophy, however, had made him the leader of elevated thought in this country; and he stands to-day as one of the few really original figures in the literature of modern times.

Mary Moody Emerson, his aunt, and Miss Sarah Bradford prepared him for college; but he would have his own way with books, and was never remarkable as a student; nor did outdoor exercise attract him. From a long line of New England Puritan clergymen he inherited a refined and sinless nature and extraordinary spiritual insight; his value to his fellow-men lay not in worldly experience nor in logic, but in his luminous intuitions; he comprehended without effort a large and lofty region of thought or perception, and caused glimpses of it to irradiate others. But his faculty lay in stating what he perceived, not in explaining it; he could not successfully argue or draw deductions, and as soon as he attempts to do so he becomes obscure and ceases to convince us. He was not fully understood, partly because he did not understand himself-he did not realize how different from other men he was. Men who came to him for counsel were impressed and exalted, but not

definitely instructed; Emerson gave them what he had, but what he had was significant rather to the disincarnate intelligence than to the incarnate, every-day human being. Thus we finally recognize a certain disappointment in Emerson; but for youth he is a stimulating and invaluable companion. Contemplating the conceivable powers of the ideal man, he exaggerates the faculty of the actual individual; hopes thus aroused may help the young to rise higher than otherwise they might, but do not console age for failure.

Emerson read Plato and Swedenborg, and studied the lives of great men; he looked at modern science broadly and synthetically, catching its drift and its relations to spiritual life. He placed the goal of civilization at a high point, yet flattered man by regarding him as the potential peer of Christ, to whom he denied special divinity. Some of his insights have never been surpassed by a mortal intelligence; but some of his errors, proceeding, generally, from attempts to reason upon premises intuitively attained, are dreary lapses from his proper level. He made his impression upon the world by his essays; they are unique structures. They are not a woven tissue of consistent argument, but a collection of separate sayings upon given subjects, arranged in such order as seemed to their author naturally consecutive. There is no gradual induction into comprehension of the topic, but you begin and end on the same plane. Emerson was a seer, but not an artist. You may start at any point in his prose writings, and understand as much or as little as if you had commenced with the first page of “Nature.”

It is probable that Emerson's poems, few comparatively though they are, will outlive his prose, and the poetry of most of his contemporaries. In these, in spite of their ruggedness of outward form, there is inspiration of the finest sort, and a spiritual music of ineffable beauty and purity. They present the essence of his best philosophy in terse and profound metrical form; they thrill with divine vitality. Strange to say, Emerson distrusted his own faculty in this direction: his ideal was too high, and he recognized his occasional failure to give perfect incarnation to his thought. But the thought is so exquisite and uplifting that the outward roughness is a relief, enabling us to endure the better what would else be almost intolerable beauty.

Emerson was twice married, his second wife surviving him. He twice visited Europe, and the friendship between him and Carlyle is historical. One of his most interesting books to the ordinary reader is "English Traits," in which he gives a singularly just and keen account of English character. His life was spent in Concord, near Boston; and he, during his lifetime, and his memory since his death, have helped to make it the Mecca of all travelers who regard whatever is purest and worthiest in human life and thought.

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR.

Mr. President and Gentlemen,

more.

I GREET you on the recommencement of our literary year. Our anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough of labor. We do not meet for games of strength or skill, for the recitation of histories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient Greeks; for parliaments of love and poesy, like the Troubadours, nor for the advancement of science, like our contemporaries in the British and European capitals. Thus far, our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any As such it is precious as the sign of an indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions that around us are rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can doubt that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one day be the pole-star for a thousand years?

In this hope I accept the topic which not only usage but the nature of our association seem to prescribe to this day,the AMERICAN SCHOLAR. Year by year we come up hither to read one more chapter of his biography. Let us inquire