be converted into poetry, vibrations in the air into music, and stone into sculpture and architecture. The art resides, observes Emerson, in the model, the plan, and the harmonious arrangement of the material the artist uses. As with the useful arts, nature dominates the artist; the artist is the organ through which the universal mind acts. Believing in a moral universe, Emerson sees all great works of art as attuned to moral nature.

The reader may sense, regarding “Eloquence,” that Emerson devoted more space than he needed to this theme. He seeks a distinction between the eloquent person and the mere speaker, and he describes the interrelationships between the speaker and the audience. Much that he says seems rather obvious, the sort of thing a public-speaking teacher might use to begin a course. The orator plays on the audience as a master pianist plays the piano. The audience influences the speaker by its reaction. The consummate speaker has, to begin with, a robust and radiant physical health. The speaker, Emerson states, is personally appealing, and the speaker’s eloquence illustrates the magic of his or her ascendancy over the audience. The speaker must have the fact and know how to reveal it; reaching higher, however, the speaker must state the law above the fact and must be the means through which the moral law of the universe is revealed.

“Domestic Life” is one of the most pleasing essays in the volume, but one is inclined to wonder what Emerson’s wife thought of the piece. It begins with an amusing picture of the infant despot for whom all services are performed. “All day,” says Emerson, “between his three or four sleeps, he coos like a pigeon-house, sputters and spurs and puts on his faces of importance; and when he fasts, the little Pharisee fails not to sound his trumpet before him.” The home belongs to the adults as well as the child. It must be managed by a wise economy that shall witness that human culture is its end. When visitors come, they shall not be simply fed and put in soft, warm beds; they shall see that here all deeds flow from truth and love, honor and courtesy. Although those who inhabit the home are not themselves divine, they should through their characters reveal that in each nature has laid foundations of a divine structure upon which the soul may build. Finally, the household should cherish the beautiful arts and the sentiment of veneration. It should not, however, attempt to be a museum but only a small work of art itself, nor a church but only an intimate sanctuary for those who dwell there and for their friends who come in.

“Farming” makes some pleasant statements about the occupation, but it is by a man who was better at talking about it than at being a farmer even on a half-acre scale. The farmer, says Emerson, lives by nature’s schedule, because no person can speed nature up. The farmer is the trustee of health and wealth and is the progenitor of the city dwellers, who, in manufacture and trade, give to the world the products of the farm. The farmer is a continuous benefactor, a minder of nature, who provides not for one generation but for all. The farmer lives in the presence of nature and is ennobled by it.

“Works and Days” opens with a brief survey of the scientific and mechanical tools for labor and leisure newly available to the people of Emerson’s day. Emerson observes that humanity, already having much, will have more of these tools; he even predicts, nearly a half century before World War I, that the next war would be fought in the air.

Emerson is more interested in people than in things, and it means much to him how people spend their days. As he says, “Works and days were offered us, and we took works.” Several of the best sentences in the essay are a prose rendering of the famous sonnet “Days,” which precedes the essay. Like his younger friend, Henry David Thoreau, Emerson laments that humanity wastes its days on trivia when it should write on its heart that every day is the best day in the year and is also doomsday. The measure of a person, says Emerson, is his or her “apprehension of a day.”

“Books” was praised by Oliver Wendell Holmes in his biography of Emerson, but its appeal to later readers is limited. Much of it is devoted to recommending particular authors and books to be read, and these are drawn from Emerson’s lifetime of reading. Memorable are Emerson’s rules for choosing one’s reading: “1. Never read any book that is not a year old. 2. Never read any but famed books. 3. Never read any but what you like.”

“Clubs” has much about conversation but little about clubs, where conversation abounds, or should in Emerson’s estimation. Emerson prizes conversation because it takes a person out of him- or herself and brings the person into relation with others. Each talker kindles the mind of another or others. Emerson cares little for those who must be masters of the group, the gladiators who must always win an argument, or the egotists who wish to be heard, not to listen. Emerson sees conversation as “the Olympic games whither every superior gift resorts to assert and approve itself . . . with the rest.” He closes with the comment that when discourse rises highest and searches deepest, it is between two only.

In “Courage,” Emerson observes that three qualities attract the wonder and reverence of humanity: disinterestedness, practical power, and courage. Courage is thought to be common, he says, but the immense esteem in which it is held proves it to be rare. Fear is based on ignorance, and knowledge is its antidote. The sailor loses fear when he can control sails and spars and steam; the frontiersman when he can aim surely with his rifle. Courage consists in being equal to whatever one faces, in the conviction that the opposition does not excel one in strength of resources or spirit. Each person has his or her own kind of courage, one a fury of onset, another a calm endurance. True courage does not show itself off, and it is a bond of union even between enemies who respect it in each other.

“Success” begins with comments on the multitudinous achievements of Americans and their smug self-satisfaction with what they have done. To show that this is the way of the world, Emerson cites the individual superiority of persons in other countries and other times. What rouses his hate is the American passion for quick and effortless success, and what rouses his scorn is the boasting when one has succeeded. Drop the brag and advertisement, says Emerson, and following Michelangelo’s course in life, confide in yourself and be something of worth and value. Then, as if he were rephrasing a passage from his earlier “Self-Reliance,” Emerson remarks, Self-trust is the first secret of success, the belief that if you are here the authorities of the universe put you here, and for cause, or with some task strictly appointed you in your constitution, and so long as you work at that you are well and successful.

“Old Age,” which closes Emerson’s book, is one of the best essays in the collection. “The essence of age,” he says, “is intellect,” and experience ripens slowly. Elderly people have been honored in many lands and ages because of what they knew. Age has its benefits: It has weathered the capes and shoals of life’s sea; it has the felicity of having found expression in living; it sets its house in order and finishes its works, and humanity is ready to be born again in this new and final home.