In spite of the difficulties which Brahma" presented to many minds, and the ridicule which it excited, it presented no difficulty to others who had no Oriental knowledge except that of the New Testament. A little school-girl was bidden by her teacher to learn some verses of Emerson. Next day she recited Brahma." The astonished teacher asked why she chose that poem. The child answered that she tried several, but could n't understand them at all, so learned this one," for it was so easy. It just means God everywhere.'

Mr. Emerson, much amused when people found" Brahma puzzling, said to his daughter, "If you tell them to say Jehovah instead of Brahma they will not feel any perplexity."

NEMESIS. Page 196. This poem, from May-Day, called 66 Destiny" in the verse-books, is here restored.

FATE. Page 197, note 1. "The reason why this or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man; that is all anybody can tell you about it.

Second Series.

Character," Essays,

"He [man] thinks his fate alien because the copula is hidden. But the soul contains the event that shall befall it."

FREEDOM. Page 198. In the autumn of 1853 Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal the beginnings of this poem expressing his feeling that no muse would help should he attack in song African Slavery, the doleful theme that recurred each morning when he woke. But in life and his private and public speech he was true to Freedom.

In the first form, the lines, after the fourth, ran thus:

But the God said, Not so;

Theme not this for lyric flow,
Keep thy counsel soft and low;
Name too holy to be said,
Gift too precious to be prayed,
Counsel not to be exprest,

But by will of glowing breast.

But the power by heaven adored,

With Truth and Love the Triune Lord,

When it listed woke again

Brutish millions into men,' etc.

The last line appears also in the forms,

Right thou feelest rashly do," or, "instant do."

ODE. Page 199. Mr. Emerson was reluctant to mount Pegasus to war against the enemies of Freedom; but when, as he said in his speech on the Fugitive Slave Law (Miscellanies), it required him to become a slave-hunter, he was stirred to plead her cause in verse, of which this and the two following poems are examples.

The occasion on which this was sung was a breakfast in the Town Hall, on the holiday morning, to raise money for the improvement of the new cemetery in Sleepy Hollow.

BOSTON HYMN. Page 201. In January, 1862, in an address called "American Civilization" given before the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, Mr. Emerson had earnestly urged the emancipation of the slaves. On the first day of the next year, when President Lincoln's Proclamation went into effect, Mr. Emerson read this poem at a great celebration of the event in Boston. It was published in the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1863.

Page 204, note 1. In an address before the Anti-Slavery Society in New York in 1855, Mr. Emerson had urged the buying by the people of the whole slave property of the South:

"I say, Buy! never conceding the right of the planter to own, but acknowledging the calamity of his position, and willing to bear a countryman's share in relieving him, and because it is the only practical course and is innocent. .. We shall one day bring the States shoulder to shoulder, and the citizens man to man, to exterminate slavery. It was said a little while ago that it would cost a thousand or twelve hundred millions, now it is said it would cost two thousand millions; such is the enhancement of property. Well, was there ever any contribution that was so enthusiastically paid as this will be? The United States will be brought to give every inch of their public lands for a purpose like this. Every State will contribute its surplus revenue. Every man will bear his part. We will have a chimney tax. We will give up our coaches and wine and watches. The church will melt her plate. The father of his country shall wait, well pleased, a little longer for his monument; Franklin will wait for his; the Pilgrim Fathers for theirs; and the patient Columbus, who waited all his mortality for justice, shall wait a part of immortality also. . . . The rich shall give of their riches; the merchants of their commerce; the mechanics of their strength; the needlewomen will give, and children can have a Cent Society. If, really, the thing could come to a negotiation and a price were named, I do not think that any price, founded upon an estimate that figures could fairly represent, would be unmanageable. Every man in this land would give a week's work to dig away this accursed mountain of slavery, and force it forever out of the world."

VOLUNTARIES. Page 205. This poem was printed in the Atlantic Monthly for October, 1863.

Page 207, note 1. In July, 1863, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who in face of a half-hostile public opinion had given. up his commission in a favorite Massachusetts regiment to take command of one of the first enlisted colored regiments, largely made up of ex-slaves, had been killed with many of his officers and men on the slopes of Fort Wagner. This poem may be regarded as their dirge.

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Mrs. Ednah Cheney describes a meeting, during the Civil War, presided over by Father Taylor, of the friends of this regiment. She says that, during the meeting, " Mr. Emerson came in from the ante-room with his face on fire with indignation, as I never saw it on any other occasion, and announced to the audience that he had just learned that South Carolina had given out the threat that colored soldiers, if captured, should not be treated as prisoners, but be put to death. What answer does Massachusetts send back to South Carolina?' he said. Two for one!' shouted voices in the audience. • Is that the answer that Massachusetts sends?' he asked; and the audience responded with applause. He retired from the platform, it seemed to me a little appalled at the spirit he had raised.”

Page 208, note 1. The last four lines of the stanza were added by Mr. Emerson in Selected Poems.

Page 209, note 1. The last stanza suggests the following passages, the first being from the journal of January, 1861, three months before the outbreak of war.

The furious slaveholder does not see that the one thing he is doing by night and by day is to destroy slavery. They who help and they who hinder are all equally diligent in hastening its downfall. Blessed be the inevitabilities.'

"The word Fate, or Destiny, expresses the sense of man

kind . . that the laws of the world do not always befriend, but often hurt and crush us. Fate, in the shape of Kinde or Nature, grows over us like grass.

Through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams." - Representative Men, pp. 177, 185, 186.

LOVE AND THOUGHT. Page 210. With this poem may be compared the seventh verse in " My Garden," and passages in "Love" (Essays, First Series, pp. 175-177) and in "Manners" (Essays, Second Series, pp. 150, ̊151).

UNA. Page 210. The solution of the pleasing riddle Una," restored here to the place it held in the volume May-Day, cannot be given with authority. It might be the sense of the general beauty refreshed in a poetical mind by new scenes and friends met in travel the momentary opening of new vistas of promise.

BOSTON. Page 212. Although this poem did not come to its birthday until December 16, 1873, when Mr. Emerson read it in Faneuil Hall, on the Centennial Celebration of the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor, it was conceived years before. Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal in 1842:

--

"I have a kind of promise to write, one of these days, a verse or two to the praise of my native city, which in common days we often rail at, yet which has great merits to usward. That too, like every city, has certain virtues, as a museum of the arts. The parlors of private collectors, the Athenæum Gallery, and the college become the city of the city. Then a city has this praise, that as the bell or band of music is heard outside beyond the din of carts, so the beautiful in architecture,