Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/195

 poetry which can be said to represent the mind of our world. The poet of America is not yet come. When he comes he will sing quite differently!”

A critic who stands so high that he can look down upon himself,—yes, that is excellent! One is glad to be criticised by such an one.

Emerson is at this moment regarded as the head of the transcendentalists in this portion of America. A kind of people are they who are found principally in the States of New England, and who seem to me like its White Mountains, or Alps; that is to say, they aim at being so. But as far as I have yet heard and seen, I recognise only one actual Alp, and that is Waldo Emerson. The others seem to me to stretch themselves out, and to powder themselves, merely to look lofty and snow-crowned: but that does not help them. They have more pretension than power. Their brows are in the clouds instead of towering above them. A—— has lived for fifteen years on bread and fruit, and has worn linen clothes, because he would not appropriate to himself the property of the sheep—the wool—and has suffered very much in acting up to his faith and love. C—— built himself a hut on the western prairies, and lived there as a hermit for two years; he has, however, returned to every-day life and every-day people. F—— went out into the wild woods and built himself a hut and lived there—I know not on what. He also has returned to common life, is employed in a handicraft trade, and writes books which have in them something of the freshness and life of the woods—but which are sold for money. Ah! I wonder not at these attempts by unusual ways to escape from the torment of common life. I have myself made my attempts by these ways, and should have carried them out still more had I not been fettered. But they, and Emerson himself, make too much of these attempts, because, in themselves, they are nothing uncommon, nor