suffered, when the low breeding of a man came to the surface in contemptible squeals of joy. This repugnance was so strong that, although Mr. Emerson took much pleasure in Hogg's ballad The Witch of Fife, he hated the lines:—
"But the auld man's laughe came on the galeWith a lang and a loud guffaw."
Page 163, note 1. The neighborhood at the Saturday Club of Dr. Holmes and some other members was sometimes a little hard for Mr. Emerson to bear, much as he enjoyed them, because of his helplessness before their irresistible wit.
Page 171, note 1. This suggests, in recent years, Kipling's neat version of the Venus Anadyomene for a perennial society beauty as the Venus Anno Domini.
Page 174, note 1. At dinner parties in England Mr. Emerson seems to have had more than enough of stories and jokes, and this mood thus found expression in his journal just after crossing the Channel for his short visit to Paris:—
May 15, 1848. "The one thing odious to me now is joking. What can the brave and strong genius of C. himself avail? What can his praise, what can his blame avail me, when I know that if I fall or rise, there still awaits me the inevitable joke? The day's Englishman must have his joke, as duly as his bread. God grant me the noble companions whom I have left at home, who value merriment less, and virtues and powers more. If the English people have owed to their House of Commons this damnable derision, I think they have paid an overprice for their liberties and empire.
"But when I balance the attractions of good and evil, when I consider what facilities, what talents a little vice would furnish, there rise before me not these laughers, but the dear and comely forms of honour and genius and piety in my distant
