RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
420
I extend the
unreal.
geniuses
Channing, quence,
remark
American
to all the
Bryant, Greenough, Everett, even Webster, in his recorded elo-
Irving,
:
—
—
all
lack nerve and dagger.
"Our virtue runs in a narrow rill we have never freshet. One would like to see Boston and :
a
Massachusetts agitated like a wave with some gen-
mad for learning, for music, for philan; thropy, for association, for freedom, for art. erosity
We
only we But, as the doctor said
have sensibility and insight enough,
had constitution enough.
if
my boyhood, You have no stamina.' What a company of brilliant young persons I have seen, with so much expectation The sort is very good, '
in
!
but none
is
good enough of his
sort.
" Yet the poorness or recentness of our experience must not deter us from affirming the law of
Nay, although there never was any life which in any just manner represented it, yet we are bound to say what would be if man kept the divine
the soul.
law,
— nay, what
already
is,
and
is
explained and
demonstrated by every right and wrong of ours ; though we are far enough from that inward health
which would make order of our lives."
this true order
appear to be the
(Journal, 1839-43.)