"Poisoning the tea!" I repeated; "how may that be ?”—

"There is nothing easier," said the child-like figure. "I myself can do no harm to the plant which is consecrated to me, and which I love so well, else I had long since destroyed the possession of my tormentor. He must do the mischief himself. Hast thou never observed a singular greenish light playing about his face ?"

I answered that I had indeed often noticed and wondered at it.

"That greenish glimmer is nothing less than a subtle poison, which pervades his whole system. He inherits it through his descent from an old metal king, who once reigned in China. The legitimate descendants of this ancient monarch have gold and silver in their bodies; but those whose blood is tainted, or corrupted by vicious alliances, copper, iron, tin, and other inferior metals. My tormentor is baseborn, as were his ancestors; and the copper he derives from them mingling with his impure blood, has generated a bitter poison, which renders even his caresses baneful. His breath distils venom; his eyes invest objects with a sickly greenish hue; and his tears poison the ground on which they fall. Thou hast not failed to observe, whenever he works among the tea plants, how carefully he covers his hands and face,, that no noxious breath may touch the precious leaves! -If thou couldst only manage, while the plants are in bloom, to make him approach them without his mask! The subtle poison will quickly spread over the whole plantation. He can find no help for what will ensue. Canst thou do this, he will be forced to set me at liberty."

"It shall be done, beautiful fairy!" I cried, resolved to devote myself to her service.

Ere the moon had changed, I had redeemed my promise. Tim-li-tim was one day at work in his plantation-the young plants were in bloom. I came up behind him with stealthy step, threw myself suddenly upon him, and tore the mask from his face, with the covering he always wore over his shoulders. He fell down among the plants, and I saw the white flowers close over his head. A disagreeable brassy odor diffused itself around the spot, and a greenish mist spread through the air. The mandarin raised himself quickly, and

felt for his handkerchief; but I had fled with that also. His rage and despair were indescribable: tears fell from his eyes, and the ground drank the poisonous moisture. The deleterious influence diffused itself far and wide. The delicate blossoms and leaves imbibed it; and exhibited that peculiar green color, and that sharp metallic taste observable to this day in what is called green tea.

Language would fail to depict the despair of Tim-li-tim, as he saw the mischief thus wrought. His plants immediately sank more than half in value; for nobody cared to drink his green tea. It was rumored that the tea of the mandarin Tim-li-tim was poisoned. The unhappy man saw nothing but ruin and imprisonment, perhaps death, before him. In his extremity, as the fairy had foreseen, he promised her instant freedom if she would remove the curse. The lovely prisoner consented to undertake it. One bright moonlight night, the wide fields of his plantation might have been seen covered with a white veil, as of silvery mist. Under this dewy and shining covering, millions of little winged sprites were floating and at work. They hung on the white flowers and sucked the poison from their delicate cups. The greenish hue with which they had been tainted, grew paler and paler, but did not vanish entirely. The little sprites performed their task so faithfully, sucking the poison, that some of them perished on the spot; others reeled away giddily and sick; in short, the work of restoration could be but half done. The mandarin, however, was obliged to keep his word; he broke the bell, and the liberated fairy returned to her former poet-love. Her blessing, as before, soon made his fields plenteous; and the black tea that was sent forth to the world after the reunion of the pair, was pronounced the most delicious that had ever been tasted. But as this same world often prefers the piquant and unnatural even to the wholesome and genial-it will not be wondered at that the wicked Tim-li-tim did not fall into bankruptcy. He found purchasers for his crops-who thought his deleterious green tea even more delightful than the fresh, innocent beverage blessed by the loving and happy fairy. All those, however, whose tastes were not vitiated, and who prized health and cheerfulness, adhered to the black tea, and found their reward in doing so.

The chronicle further mentions, that the narrator of the above adventure escaped the wrath of the mandarin, and returned home loaded with gifts from the grateful fairy. His sister, the belle with the long nail, was married. He

often visited the tea merchant who was beloved by the fairy, and witnessed his prosperity. The chronicle ends with a wish that all enemies of the Celestial Empire may drink nothing but green tea.

IT has been said that "the office of criticism is to bridge over the waters that separate the prophet from the people-to compass the distance that divides the understanding in the auditor from the intuition of the utterer," -an office more easily indicated than fulfilled; and one which few persons have attempted to perform, for one of the most profound thinkers and inspired seers of our time: perhaps because the partition waters were too wide-the intervening gulf too deep.

Carlyle, who has lovingly unfolded to his countrymen the pure and cloistral genius of Novalis, the profound significance of Goethe and the intricate opulence of Jean Paul, has, in presenting them with the evangel of our western prophet, left them to solve the problem as they may.

His preface to the English edition of the Essays, imports that the name of Ralph Waldo Emerson is not entirely unknown in England. Distinguished travellers, he says, "have carried thither tidings of such a man-fractions of his writings have found their way into the hands of the curious: fitful hints that there is, in New England, some spiritual notability, called Emerson, glide through Reviews and Magazines." For himself, he finds that "the words of this man, such words as he finds it good to speak, are worth attending to, and that by degrees, a small circle of living souls, eager to hear, are gathered. And in these few words, he has, perhaps, said all that the critic can effectually say in his office of Mediator between

the prophet and the people. He cannot induct his readers with the "aura of an author's genius, he can only point them to the source from which it emanates. He may say much that will be received with delight by those who are already the participators or recipients of the new revelation, but he cannot construct any bridge or thoroughfare by which "understanding of the populace shall

pass to the intuition of the Seer." No mechanical aids can avail us here. The wings of love and faith can alone bear us to those serene heights whence the prophet overlooks the universe.

Authority decides in the circle of the sciences, but intuition alone, a fine inner sense assumed by all, and possessed by few, judges of the true and the beautiful, of poetry and philosophy, the two foci in the intellectual ellipse." For the highest act of philosophy also, is a divination-an intuition and not an inference.

Bulwer, in his preface to the translations from Schiller, says that the chief aim of the poet, with that of the orator on the husting, should be to make himself intelligible to the multitude; but Bulwer has little insight of the subject on which he writes; else would he know that the poet never troubles himself with thoughts like these. sings as the bird sings, because his soul is o'erburthened with love and beauty. He casts the fertilizing flowerdust of his heart to the winds of heaven, nor asks if they have borne it to a fitting receptacle.

He

The most profound thinker cannot de

fend his faith in the inner world, nor the poet his vision thereof from the vapid gain-saying of the scoffer. Not the Seer, but the Savant is honored of the world. Spinoza had not a single follower in the age in which he lived, and it has been said that there are not at any time ten men on the earth who read Plato.

The great philosopher and poet is he, who understands the spirit of his age. To do this, he must transcend the existing order of things, overlooking it from a point of view above the level of his contemporaries, and attainable as a common standpoint, only to succeeding generations; and just in proportion as he transcends the popular level, is his speech an enigma or a reproach to the multitude, who, regarding their own minds as the normal measure of human intelligence, oppose themselves with sullen determination to the new revelation, and groan, like the mandrake, when a new idea threatens to uproot them from the soil in which they vegetate.

There is no paradox so absurd, no heresy so dangerous, that men will not sooner forgive it than a truth prematurely enunciated. And no man excites such pious horror, such unmitigated reprobation, as the promulgator of such truth. The effect of a resisting medium becomes perceptible only as the planet approaches its perihelion.

The world, unwillingly aroused from its slumbers, thinks, like the silly housemaids in Æsop, by wringing the neck of poor Chanticleer to retard the dawn! "Beware," says Emerson, "when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet, then all things are at riskthe very hopes of man, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind are all at the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization is always a new influx of the Divinity into the mind." But to see things under this new law, they must be seen from the same level, and through the same medium. The results of the synthetic intellect cannot be reached through any critical or analytical process.

A man of Emerson's large faith and intuitive reason, who has drunk deep at the fontal truths of being, and sent his plummet to the ocean-depths of thought, cannot accommodate his free unchartered utterance to the limited apprehension of men who, engrossed by the narrow arts of detail, have no capacity for the wis

dom of the complex. Yet, perhaps few persons could so command the rapt attention of a popular audience, to thoughts so abstruse, expressed in language so delphic and poetic. The charm of his presence is pervasive, like music. He commands the attention of his audience, and constrains their sympathy by a power which they cannot analyze, by a spell that transcends their knowledge.

Severe truthfulness characterizes every look, tone, and gesture. He speaks from the commanding and regal attitude of one who reposes firmly on his convictions. Those earnest eyes seem to hold commune with soul, and regardless of the world's penalties and rewards, make their direct appeal to the inner tribunal of the conscience. Their look of profound repose, or concentrate thought deepening at times beneath a frown (severe, yet beautiful in its passionless, rebuke) which can hardlyfail to remind one of the austere majesty in the countenance of the angel sent to expel Heliodorus from the temple, one of the finest of Raphael's inimitable heads. At such moments our prophet might, with Heraclitus, be compared to the Sybil, who "speaking with inspired mouth, inornate and severe, pierces through centuries by the power of the God."

The spell of his immediate influence is felt and acknowledged by the most uncultivated audience, yet we hear a constant reference to his obscurity and vagueness. Men complain that no intelligible ideas have been gained, no definite notions acquired. They were charmed while they listened, but when they seek to explain and seize the charm, its secret escapes them. They cannot analyze it-they cannot appropri ate it. It is a fairy gift that turns to dross in the handling. In return for their time and money, they have brought away nothing positive and available-nothing that can be weighed and measured and turned to useful account.

But what went ye forth for to see? A partizan? a polemic? an exponent of creeds and doctrines? a propounder of articles of faith, and theories of civil polity? Verily ye have sought in vain! Yet somewhat have ye heard that stirred your stagnant souls, but what, ye know not. A wild, mysterious music, as of the winds of paradise, mur

muring afar off through the Tree of Life. An improvisation, as it were, of the central laws of being. The oracular enunciation of a mystic and sublime Theosophy. Ye hear the sound thereof, yet know not whence it cometh nor whither it goeth. It is as the heavenly manna which cannot be heaped or hoarded, but which refreshes the pilgrim on his weary life-path, and imparts new strength to bear the burthen of the way. Emerson's speech is affirmative and oracular. We must be satisfied to receive from him the enunciation of the idea, we cannot hope to hear it demonstrated, or explained. We find no attempt at a formal, scientific statement of truth, but rather an oriental dogmatism, an apostolic yea and nay. His mind betrays a quick apprehension of logical sequence, yet he renders no account of the actual process by which he arrives at results. He attacks no creed, convinces no sceptic, but he gives adequate and beautiful expression to the most profound and cherished convictions -to the most earnest and devout aspirations of the age. To some of the loftiest minds and purest spirits of the nineteenth century, his voice is as "the voice of their own souls, heard in the calm of thought."

His novel statements of the most familiar phenomena of life, have often a strange force and directness, and startle us by their simple verity, like the naive cadences of a child's voice heard amid the falsetto tones of the conventicle or the theatre.

No man is better adapted than Emerson to comprehend the spirit of the age and to interpret its mission. His insight is marvellously clear, and though less conversant than many others with concrete, special instances, he yields to none in the synthetic grasp of his intellect, and in a comprehensive and generic classification of the facts of experience. He looks not so much at that aspect of things, often partial, trivial and grotesque, which they bear to time, as at that solemn and serene, which faces eternity. The earth is to him not one of Gardiner's globes, mapped off into petty divisions of province and empire, state and territory, but one of the more recent planets of our system, moving on its destined path through space and harmoniously fulfilling its part in the grand diapason of the universe. He sees not so much the things in which

man differs from man as those grand features common to humanity.

Life is viewed by him from no parish belfry, but from an "exceeding high mountain, from whence he can behold all the kingdoms of the world and the glories thereof." Seen from these serene altitudes, all conventional distinctions fade into insignificance, and Satan cannot tempt the soul even to a momentary deviation from its worship of essential truth and beauty.

With the same synthetic glance, he looks at inanimate nature; and, with Novalis, studies her not in her isolated phenomena, but in her essential unity. To him she is not the chance playmate of an hour, but the fair bride of the spirit, and its destined companion through eternity,-reflecting back from her loving and gentle eyes all that the soul hopes or fears, enjoys or suffers. He lives with her in sweet and intimate communion, as one who has won from her the heart of her mystery," and divined the last word of her secret, or rather as one who has learned that she has no "last word," but like the fair raconteur of the Arabian tale, improvises from day to day, from year to year, from age to age, an interminable romance-a series of inventions, the last of which has still some mysterious connection with the first, elucidating and carrying forward but never ending her wondrous story. "To the intelligent Nature converts herself into an infinite promise."

Nor is this view of Nature, as the inseparable companion and counterpart of spirit, contradictory to the Berkeleyan idealism which frequently manifests itself in Emerson's writings, particularly in the earlier Essays. For in proportion as matter is divested of its rigid positiveness and substantial objectivity, do we the more readily conceive of it as a permanent mode of existence, capable of infinite adaptation to the wants of the spiritual intelligences that are associated with it. "The vast picture which God paints on the instant eternity of the soul." The inferences of modern science in relation to this subject are pregnant with results of the highest importance to spiritual and mental philosophy. But while science is slowly collecting facts, inducting theories and deducing results, the poet, with a surer instinct, suggests the true idea of nature, divines her mission and

indicates her method. His sentient and mobile being faithfully transmits all her influences. In all her aspects and changes, he perceives a significant beauty and a mysterious sympathy with humanity. In her presence he feels not weariness, nor fears satiety: he knows that her resources are inexhaustible, and that, elastic, ductile, and permeable to spirit, she reforms herself for ever in conformity with the soul's infinitely expanding ideal.

Like Gray, Emerson delights to hear the gnarled and hoary forest-trees droning out their old stories to the storm. He listens to the song of the winds in the pine-tree and

There is an absence of that vivid sense of personality-that intense individualism which so often manifests itself in the morbid and jealous sensitiveness, peculiar to what is called the "temperament of genius." Instead of this, we find a cheerful, inflexible courage, an Oriental quietude. We might fancy him dreaming away his life with the Sacontala, among the Lotus flowers that border the Ganges, or like the starry Magian evoking from night and silence their eternal mysteries. The words of Plotinus in relation to the supersensual portion of the triune soul, might aptly be applied to him-"Remaining free from all solicitude, not seeking to modify the world in accordance with the discursive reason, nor to transform anything in its own nature, but by the vision of that which is prior to itself informing the world with an infinite beauty."

This severity has been termed by his critics, " a vice of temperament," "an undue preponderance of the intellectual

faculty," "a want of harmonious development," of " generous sympathy with humanity." I do not so understand it, nor can I assent to the criticism of a rare contemporary genius when, in speaking of these essays, he says “They are truly noble, reportting a wisdom akin to that which the great and good of all time have lived and spoken; yet the author neither warms nor inspires me he writes always from the intellect to the intellect, and hence some abatement from the depth of his insight, purchased always at the cost of vital integrity. But this is the tax on all pure intellect."

Can we then so separate the functions and faculties of our nature, as to believe that an intellect whose product is "a wisdom akin to that which the great and good of all times have lived and tal integrity? A sufficiency of lifespoken," is developed at the cost of via true vital integrity-would enable us to transcend these pernicious distinctions, and to see that love and wisdom are inseparable. Can the contemplacold and void? Is not the holy energy tion of eternal verities leave the heart of true love ever sagacious, far-sighted and prophetic? Truth is not isolated: it is not a part, but the whole. It is love, and beauty, and joy. The wise man does not believe and opine, but he knows and is the very truth which he utters. His thought is action: his knowledge is love.

It is very common to hear persons speak of the mind as if reason, imagination and sensibility constituted different and distinct portions of it, though the consciousness speaks, ex cathedra, of a living unity. This is in part attributable to the popular empirical psychology which bears the same relation to the true, as the Grecian Theology to the Mosaic. And as the Hellenic deities make war upon each other, so in the popular psychology the faculties are represented as antagonistic, as a profound intellect and a loving heart. Yet, all great philosophers and theosophists have been devout and good men

else were their theories as profitless as their lives. Do not the bard and the prophet offer sacrifice at the same altar? Must the laurel crown extinguish the pure flame of the saintly aureole? The greatest thinker of modern Europe, who united the poetic insight of Plato with the exact method of Aristotle,