ly THE literary event which fig 8 most largely in both this and last mail's papers the death of Ralph Waldo Emerson. This is a logs to the literary world fully as groat as the death of Carlyle, a writer with whom Emerson has been very generally compared. But while there was much in common between the two men there can be but one opinion as to who was the more amiable and better man. Where Carlyle was arrogant and bitter, Emerson benignant and gentle, Whereas one wa a crabbed misanthrope, the other was a natural and sincere philanthropist. With regard to rheic respective writings, the Spectator offers some very just and pregnant remarks, 'It is remarkable enough that Garlyle and Emerson both had in them that imaginative gift which made them aim at poety, and both that ineapacity for rhythm or' music which rendered their regular verse too rugged, and too much possessed with the sense of effort, to sink as verse should sink into the hearts of men. Carlyle's verse is like the heav; rambleofa van without springs; Emersou's, which now and then reaches something of the sweetness of poetry, much more often reminds one of the attempts of a seeress to induce in herself the ecstasy which will not spontaneously visit her. Yet the prose, both of Carlyle and of Emerson, fall at times into that poetic rhythm which indicates the highest glow of a powerful ima gi native nature." The following remarks upon Emerson's religious attitude are worth reproduction He had the democratic transcendentalls! jealousy of any ous who claimed to be nearer God than the race at large. He was con+ temptuous of the pretensions of apectal noc to God, and this, to our ears at least, always spoile his tone, when he speaks of El and Christianity. "But towards man, he is always snt—which Carlyle seldom ie—and he la always reverent, too, in relation to the Divine Mind iteolf, "T conceive " mau as always spoken to from behind," he once wrote, ' and unable to turn his head and see the speaker. In all the millions who have heard the voice, none ever saw the face, As children in their play run behind each other, and seize one care, and make him walk' before them, so the Spirit our unseen pilot." Those are the words of a truly reverent mind, though of mind as jealously devoted to a sort of fal spiritual democracy, as it is reverent in ite attitude and poetic in ite inmost thought, The Suturday's article on Mr, Emerson regards him from a somewhat different standpoint. The writer enlarges upon Emerson's many sidedness. He philosophised like a post, and wrote pastry like a philosopher. Ho was the despair of all roaders who wont to him seeking after definite precepts, He was a more deadly enemy to form than Carlyle, because a profounder one, The resemblance between the two is only superficial. And why? Because Carlyle taught men to mock at for Emerson to rise above them.—Carlyle's pro-phossyings and testimonies became at Inst a string of opposition formulas after their own kind, and just as any, when a man had learnt them, to mal intellectual counters of the old ones.
We groatly doubt if any one extracting formula from Phis fluent quality of his thought makes him firet repulsive and then fascinate ing. There is nothing proposed, no argument; you cannot seo what the man ix driving at, No more can one seo what the wind and the sloudifleeces in a sunny ay are driving Bat the sun and air chase cobwebs out of the brain, and leave the oonses in better harmon with the world ud Emeraon leaves one wit! the nature of things and of man's estate, combined the imperfection of all individual ment.
The happy composition of. spiritual forces by which this is brought about is precisely the secret of Emerson, and it in incom.
He would ha the only clue to it is to go about one's own b and work altogether in on way; and that if we find no successful in this, we cannot have been in earnest, or must have been deluding, civrselves all: the time, and really working in somebody. way.
The most interesting article, however, on Emerson, is the obituary notice of him in the Times; and this no doubt has been read by all who are interested in the subject. 'We revert to the Spectator, who we find a very elaborately worked-out arti-clo on 'M. Pasteur and M. Renan on Religious Belief.' The writer thinks that M. Pasteur's repudiation of the Positivism of M. Littré has been seized on by religious men with more of eagerness—one might almost say of greediness—than is seemly, "No doubt, French society is, for the time, surfeited with doubt, and regards a great spokesman of science who still avows his faith in God, very much as the crow of the Ark must have regarded the first visible spot of dry ground after weeks of down pour. But on one who reads the two ad-Aresses carefully, the elaborate and artistic scepticism of MI. Renan... will probably make moroliteraty impression than thermore manly but less dexterous theism of M. Pasteur." This is the keynote of the arti-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.