impertinence, and all the men and women running to and fro in the streets mere pictures.' Love may generate illusions; but it makes the strong gentle and gives the coward heart. The lover becomes a 'new man, with new perceptions, new and keener purposes, and a religious solemnity of character and aims.' And thus love, which is 'the deification of persons, becomes more impersonal every day'; and the passion of Romeo for Juliet 'puts us in training for a love which knows not sex nor person nor partiality, but which seeks virtue and wisdom to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom.'
I do Emerson injustice in taking a few sentences out of his fine rapture; and it would be out of place to consider the cold-blooded criticism that a Romeo sometimes fails to develop in this desirable fashion. I only refer to it to indicate the process by which, as I think, the prosaic person may get some profit even from Emerson's mysticism. It may be unintelligible or false if taken as a solid philosophy. It reveals, at any rate, the man himself, the pure, simple-minded, high-feeling man, made of the finest clay of human nature; the one man who to Carlyle uttered a genuine human voice, and soothed the profound
