was Mr. Emerson's word for the hour to his countrymen: "This country has its proper glory, though now shrouded and unknown. We will let it shine. Let us set American free will against Asiatic fate; the American wilderness of capabilities and idealistic tendency, against the adamantine grooves of law and custom in which European thought travels.
"In my judgment the best use of Europe to our people is, its warnings to us, or we go to Europe to be Americanized."
BOOKS
That the value which Mr. Emerson set on books was a trait that had long characterized the family, the following extract from the will of his ancestor, the founder of Concord, will show:—
"I, Peter Bulkeley, … give to my son Edward certain books in my library; 1. Tarnovius on the Minor Prophets. 2. Piscator's Commentary. 3. Dr. Owen against the Arminians. 4. Dr. Willet on Exodus & Leviticus. 5. English Annotations. 6. Mr. Ainsworth's notes on 5 Books of Moses.
"To my son Eliazur, a hundred acres of land lying at the near end of the great meadow & 20 acres at the far end."
In 1835, when Mr. Emerson had just come back to the ancestral town to live there the life of a scholar, he wrote in his journal a sentence which he later turned for amusement into a rude rhyme:—
When shall I be tired of reading?When the moon is tired of waxing and waning,When the cloud is tired of raining,When the sea of ebbing and flowing,
