Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Edited by Edward Waldo Emerson
and Waldo Emerson Forbes. Vols. vii. and viii. (Constable and Co. 6s. net each.)—Two further volumes of Emerson's " Journals " have been published. They cover the years from 1845 to 1855, and are as full of interest as their pre- decessors. We quote at random some sentences written during a visit to England in 1848: "The Englishman is finished like a sea- shell. After the spires and volutes are all formed, or with the formation, the hard enamel varnishes every part. Pope, Swift, Johnson, Gibbon, Goldsmith, Gray—it seems an indemnity to the Briton for his precocious maturity. He has no generous darin,, in this age. The Platonism died in the Elizabethan. He is shut up in French limits." This is a singular comment upon the soul of the Early Victorian Englishman. A corresponding failure of perspicacity in a less spiritual question may also be produced : "St. Paul's is, as I remember it, a very handsome, noble archi- tectural exploit, but singularly unaffecting. When I formerly came to it from the Italian cathedrals I said, Well, hero is New York."
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