’April 19, 1840.—­Things go on pretty well, but doubtless people will be disappointed, for they seem to be looking for the Gospel of Transcendentalism.  It may prove as Jouffroy says it was with the successive French ministries:  “The public wants something positive, and, seeing that such and such persons are excellent at fault-finding, it raises them to be rulers, when, lo! they have no noble and full Yea, to match their shrill and bold Nay, and so are pulled down again.”  Mr. Emerson knows best what he wants; but he has already said it in various ways.  Yet, this experiment is well worth trying; hearts beat so high, they must be full of something, and here is a way to breathe it out quite freely.  It is for dear New England that I want this review.  For myself, if I had wished to write a few pages now and then, there were ways and means enough of disposing of them.  But in truth I have not much to say; for since I have had leisure to look at myself, I find that, so far from being an original genius, I have not yet learned to think to any depth, and that the utmost I have done in life has been to form my character to a certain consistency, cultivate my tastes, and learn to tell the truth with a little better grace than I did at first.  For this the world will not care much, so I shall hazard a few critical remarks only, or an unpretending chalk sketch now and then, till I have learned to do something.  There will be beautiful poesies; about prose we know not yet so well.  We shall be the means of publishing the little Charles Emerson left as a mark of his noble course, and, though it lies in fragments, all who read will be gainers.’

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’1840.—­Since the Revolution, there has been little, in the circumstances of this country, to call out the higher sentiments.  The effect of continued prosperity is the same on nations as on individuals,—­it leaves the nobler faculties undeveloped.  The need of bringing out the physical resources of a vast extent of country, the commercial and political fever incident to our institutions, tend to fix the eyes of men on what is local and temporary, on the external advantages of their condition.  The superficial diffusion of knowledge, unless attended by a correspondent deepening of its sources, is likely to vulgarize rather than to raise the thought of a nation, depriving them of another sort of education through sentiments of reverence, and leading the multitude to believe themselves capable of judging what they but dimly discern.  They see a wide surface, and forget the difference between seeing and knowing.  In this hasty way of thinking and living they traverse so much ground that they forget that not the sleeping railroad passenger, but the botanist, the geologist, the poet, really see the country, and that, to the former, “a miss is as good as a mile.”  In a word, the tendency of circumstances has been to make our people superficial, irreverent, and more anxious