Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/384

Rh mood. I was to leave the following morning. He opposed this, however, most decidedly.

“Oh, no, no! You must not think of that!” said he, “I have been proposing to myself to drive you to one of our beautiful little forest lakes in the neighbourhood, and then you must see my mother, and receive her blessing!”

I do not know whether I have told you that Emerson has a mother, in whose countenance may be seen many features resembling those of her son. The old mother was now confined to her bed in consequence of a fall, by which she had broken her leg.

I could not resist Emerson's kindness and these words.

The following day, therefore, he called for me in a cabriolet, which he himself drove, and took me by the loveliest forest road to a little lake which lay in the bosom of the forest, like a clear, oval mirror, in a dark green frame. The place looked like a sanctuary of the kindly divinities of nature.

We talked a deal by the way; for I am always excited to conversation with Emerson in a calm and agreeable manner. Of our conversation on this occasion, I principally remember Emerson's reply to my question, whether he considered the intellectual culture of the New England States to have attained its acme, and if we might not see in these a type of the perfected American community? ”

“By no means,” replied he; “there are at this time a number of Germanisms and other European ideas, nay, even ideas from Asia, which are now for the first time finding their way into the life of mind, and which will there produce new developments!”

Emerson evidently considers America intended to present under a higher metamorphosis those ideas which during the course of ages have been prefigured in other parts of the world.

As regarded the late political concessions which the Northern States made to the Slave States, the right of