Book Description
Emerson traveled broadly in England and Scotland in 1833 and again on lecture tour fifteen years later. Drawing on his experiences there as well as his wide reading in British history, he set forth in English Traits his view of the English as a nation. Published in 1856, this was one of his most popular books, perhaps because of its playfulness and wit and clarity of style.

English Traits is a searching and distinctive portrayal of English culture that today offers a revealing perspective on American viewpoints and preoccupations in the mid-nineteenth century. It is notable, too, for revealing an interesting side of Emerson's complex character; here we find Emerson the practical Yankee, analyzing English power, resourcefulness, determination, and materialism.

In his historical introduction to this fullscale critical edition, Philip Nicoloff places English Traits in the context of Emerson's career and travels, and discusses the book's contemporary reception. Robert Burkholder provides a treasury of helpful information in his explanatory notes. This is the definitive scholarly edition of English Traits. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Pre-Inflation
These days, celebrity authors earn thousands of dollars for a speech, but back in the 1880s, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the first American author known to receive payment for delivering a talk, was paid $5 and oats for his horse. ... Read more

Book Description
The most comprehensive collection ever assembled gathers every poem Emerson published during his lifetime along with the best of the unpublished verse from his manuscripts, journals, and notebooks to offer readers for the first time the full range of his astonishing poetry. Includes poems hitherto available only in specialized scholarly versions, as well as revealing translations of mystical, sensuous Persian poems and of Dante's "Vita Nuova." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The poetry of mind is only sometimes soulful
The aphoristic, enigmatic, cryptic, verse of Emerson is collected here in its entirety. Much comes from his notebooks and journals. Emerson was criticized among others by Mathew Arnold for lacking ' the soul' of the poet. And it is true that the music of his verse is often a rough, awkward, intellectual one. And that what is memorable in it comes as a line here or there which could well come from his essays.
Nonetheless there are memorable lines and a few poems which enter the heart and mind, perhaps because once read in childhood anthology they remain as part of one's inner landscape. For me Emerson as a poet is primarily isolated like the most memorable Emerson of all,
" By the rude bridge/ that arched the flood/ their flag the April breeze unfurled /Here once the embattled farmers stood and fired' "The shot heard round the world".
In another sense Emerson appreciated Poetry and was the patron , and capable of recognizing the great value of , arguably, the ur- American poet, Whitman.
Reading the poetry is often a quite complicated intellectual exercise. But it is also one which yields new ideas, though perhaps those ideas are not felt as deeply as poetry should make us feel.
... Read more

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--Los Angeles Times

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Book!
This book somewhat gives a different view of what Emerson was like away from being the literature giant that he is...if that sounds interesting to you then you should get this book. ... Read more

Book Description

"At first reading, Representative Men seems the most alien of Emerson's books. First published in 1850 (having taken form over the five preceding years as a series of lectures intended as 'winter evening entertainments'), it was inspired by the romantic belief that there exists a 'general mind' that expresses itself with special intensity through certain individual lives. It was an appreciation of genius as a quality distributed to the few for the benefit of the many. When, according to Longfellow, Emerson began to speak on these themes in Boston in 1845, the Odeon theater was jammed with 'old men and young, bald heads and flowing transcendental locks, matrons and maidens, misanthropists and lovers.' The crowds were rapt and grateful, as were their counterparts two years later in England where the lecture series continued...

This edition of Representative Men is reproduced from the fourth volume of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, text established by Douglas Emory Wilson.

Customer Reviews (2)

Emerson's 'great man'
Great men are those who inspire new greatmen into being. So Emerson understood in his seven portraitsof human greatness. The poet Shakespeare and the philosopher Plato, the skeptic Montaigneand the mystic Swedenborg,the man of the world Napoleon and the writer Goethe.
Of great men he said,"Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious..... We call our children and our lands by their names. Their names are wrought into the verbs of language, their works and effigies are in our houses, and every circumstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them."
It is interesting that of Emerson's great men two would certainly be in question today. Swedenborg does not have the followers in our day that he had in Emerson's.Napoleon today can be considered in these terms only if we are also willing to discuss the horrible aspect of conqueror-great- men and the millions of dead that come with the conquests.
Emersonasublime argument for his conception of ' the great man', of the unique character who makes a gift to Mankind no one else has or can .

ripoff
this is one of my favorite Emerson works.It opens itself up to so much, talking about his theories of influence, precursing everything from queer theory and gender transitivity to Harold Bloom, and it is a poem, too. It's beautiful.It offers his thoughts on the most diverse materials, gets into the most detail on his Hindu readings, gets very brave in "Swedenborg." But ... for a 165-page book?Delbanco's intro is boring and useless. Don't even READ it before you read the book.It'll be like watching an educational video on yeast infections before watching a porno.The index is a kind of neat feature; it's cool to see how many men are mentioned how many times.For example, the most obvious 'omission' in the book, JESUS, is mentioned only 5 times in the book, but he lurks throughout in so many ways.I love the book, but think the edition is a huge ripoff.However, it is difficult to find all these essays in one volume without buying a "complete works" or something, and they are ALL good and work together as a complete 'book,' one essay building off the prior in subject and time, going from B.C. to the nineteenth century, from Plato to Napoleon and Goethe. ... Read more

Book Description

The first book of its kind to pair the writings of Emerson and Fuller, this text plays a major role in illuminating the contributions of both men and women to American Transcendentalism. In addition to a generous selection of Emerson's essays, the complete text of Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and a selection of Fuller's dispatches from Europe, the volume contains copious contextualizing footnotes and an excellent introduction. Readers also explore the struggles of both writers to change their views in response to political changes of the times.

Book Description
“Richard Geldard has written a magnificent book through which Emerson's teaching becomes again an instigator. Is Geldard the last of Emerson's great disciples—or the first of a new generation? This book deserves to be widely read; it contains our own best thoughts” (Roger Lipsey, editor and biographer of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, author of "An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art").

“Through Geldard's book, Emerson shows a new generation of Americans that it is possible and necessary to bring to the spiritual search an open heart joined to a critical mind” (Jacob Needleman, author of "The Heart of Philosophy").

No one who has felt the life-changing pull of Emerson's enormous planetary mind has ever doubted his power or his greatness, though we are often puzzled to know whether he is primarily a poet, an essayist or a philosopher. Richard Geldard is not puzzled at all by this; he has written a book that plainly shows the essential Emerson to be a teacher, the Socrates of Concord, a man with a message that we need to hear today. Previous generations “beheld God and nature face to face,” Emerson says, and he adds, provocatively, that we moderns seem able only to see those things through the eyes of the earlier generations. “Why,” he asks — and the question is intended to shatter our complacency — “Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”

Emerson's life was devoted to showing how one may still attain an original, that is to say, an authentic, relation to the universe, and Geldard's book aims to focus and distill the famously dispersed Emerson and put his central teachings into the modern reader's hand. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Not What I Expected
I was looking for a collection of Emerson's spiritual writings. This is more of the author talking about Emerson's spiritual writings. Not what I was looking for.

What an inspiration
Emmerson can be difficult to read in his original text, so I really appreciated Geldard breaking it down for me in a style that sort of translates Emmersons style for me.After reading this I now can read Emmerson on my own and get much more out of it.

Emmerson is truely one of my heros and I am grateful for this book to bring even more of his philospy to me and those I share it with!

"Some Books Make Us Free"- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I was first introduced to Ralph Waldo Emerson in High School. I was a bored and frustrated teenager who really had no idea what life was about...show me a teenager who does? But I had a really great English teacher who tossed a copy of RWE's essays on my desk. She said with a rather droll smile, "You might find something of interest in here..."

And when I first started reading these essays, I was bewildered why this woman thought I might enjoy this kind of stuff. It was awkward and difficult and my mind repeatedly got tripped up to what he was trying to get across. And then in the midst of all this confusion, something profound would stick out. He'd say something like:

"All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen." and I would have to stop and think about that. I would have no other choice but to come to the clear realization that all that I saw had to have come from all that I could not see.

With each and every essay, I could feel my heart and my mind coming together as One. I could feel my soul leaping with joy over the profound Truths that I would continually stumble across:

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

"Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff..."

"People only see what they are prepared to see..."

I never read anything like Emerson in my whole life. He was on a wavelength that I wanted so much to be on. At the end of the year, I placed that copy of Emerson's essays on my teacher's desk and she looked up at me and said, "No, John...it's for you."

I just remember thinking that I never received a greater gift and even though I had yet to make the leap from reading inspirational stuff, to embodying it, the foundation work was being laid down and when I finally became aware that I was truly on a Spiritual path and that I have always been on one, I thought of that morning in 1982 when Emerson's essays were tossed on my desk.

This is a great read for those who are familiar with Emerson and for those who are not. I have a friend that insists that Emerson is good for "cute one liners..." But he underestimates Emerson's power to literally take the reader on a journey of transcendence. Even though I didn't fully understand what I was reading when I was a teen, I knew that after I was through reading him I was in a better place if even if for a little while.

And that is how I exxplain Spiritual Growth to people. People want growth to come fully orbed and they don't want to engage in the seemingly mundane aspect of cultivating their spirituality. But I tell them that spiritual growth comes glimpse by glimpse by precious glimpse. And yes, there are breaks in between the glimpses, but even the breaks can contain glimpses of Light in them if you are willing to look at it right.

Emerson said that we become what we think about all day long. What are you thinking about right now because I've got news for you, you will manifest what you are predominantly thinking about so take a deep breath in...and take a deep breath out...affirm that you are a center of good and that only good can come to you and only good can come through you...feel this, affirm this throughout the day, be expectant of this good to rush in at your slightest invitation and good will come into your life because it has to. You've decreed it and so now it must be.

I don't know what I was thinking that day when I was blessed enough to meet Ralph waldo Emerson for the first time, but that dear, sweet teacher (who has long since made her passing) saw something in me and knew I was ready for a deeper understanding of life.

Here's knowing that you are, too.

Peace and Blessings,
john, "the Light Coach"

From Emerson to Now
For those not familiar with Emerson's spiritual teachings, this book is a useful guide into the crux of the message. Those who have thoroughly read Emerson might ponder the question of what he would say if he were living today? An answer is suggested in the section "The Nature of Consciousness," beginning on page 166. There is also a courteous but strong criticism of Sigmund Freud's limited view of consciousness.

an american spiritual treasure
yes, go ahead, hit your one-click order button now. for anyone interested in the life, thought, ideals and teachings of a GREAT american original, this is a book you want and need. brilliant, beautiful, eternal, this book will not go out of date. universal wisdom is timeless and Emerson was a master. he was an avid admirer of the wondrous Bhagavad Gita and his writings reflect that. he had an understanding of the need for each self to connect with the eternal Self or spirit, to use his americanized way of saying it. his teaching keeps pointing the reader right back to the very heart of himself or herself: the place divinity lives, the place where God is found. shortly after resigning as a minister of the unitarian church, he wrote, "i will not live out of me. i will not see with other's eyes. my good is good, my evil ill. i would be free---i cannot be, while i take things as others please to rate them. i dare attempt to lay out my own road, that which myself delights in shall be good. that which i do not want--indifferent. that which i hate is bad, that's flat. henceforth, please God, forever i forgo the yoke of men's opinions. i will be lighthearted as a bird and live with God".o k, hit that button a couple of times, this book makes a wonderful gift and you ain't gonna wanna give up your copy!!! ... Read more

Amazon.com
An abundance of little-known details and disclosures graces Carlos Baker's last work of literary criticism, bringing to life not only Ralph Waldo Emerson the man, but also a whole cultural milieu known for its brilliance, artistic flowering, and progressive thinking. The portrait of Emerson emerges as if through a mosaic. We see him primarily through the eyes of others--their letters and journal entries--reminding readers that Emerson did not exist in a vacuum. The eccentrics of the title include such Concord transcendentalists as Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Bronson Alcott, as well as many prominent intellectuals of the day (Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman, and the abolitionist John Brown). Many will find the details of this venerable American life familiar--the impoverished boyhood and physical fragility, the breaking from orthodoxy as a clergyman, and the tragic loss of a spouse--but most readers will enjoy the complex picture of the man pieced together through his friendships. Emerson's prickly but persevering relationship with Margaret Fuller is described in both of their letters and journals, rounding out an often one-sided account. Fuller was a brilliant, self-assured, thoroughly modern woman--a trait that would continue to repel and baffle Emerson throughout the long life of their friendship; for that, he seemed never quite able to forgive her.

Still, Emerson redeemed himself with his revolutionary break from European culture and the calcified thoughts of those who preceded him. His was a unique and inimitable independence that would come to characterize American intellectualism; however, the stubborn optimism that would taint Emersonian philosophy still lingers.

Famed literary critic Carlos Baker, who died in 1987, has left a substantial yet thoroughly engaging antidote to our often craven, corrupt, corporate-driven world. Emerson Among the Eccentrics recreates both the voices and visions of one of America's most distinguished and accomplished cultural periods.Book Description
* Chosen by the editors of The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of 1996.Ralph Waldo Emerson's circle included many of the most brilliant and original minds of his day: Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Amos Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller. Together this eccentric group helped establish Concord, Massachusetts, as a mecca for progressive thinking, including women's rights and religious tolerance.Carlos Baker's indefatigable research included reviewing the journals and correspondence of all the central characters to reconstruct, minutely, entire days. The result is a vivid and textured mosaic not just of the group's interactions but of their daily lives--what they ate, wore, discussed, read, and cared about. All of this brings Emerson vividly to life in his quotidian relationships--as young man and old; father, husband, and son; preacher, lecturer and editor; farmer, guest and friend. It is by far the most intimate portrait we have of the Sage of Concord and his remarkable entourage. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A scholarly work on one of America's greatest philosophers
In the Epilogue, Carlos Baker writes, "Biography is the study of the whole man in the context of time." Strange, then, that Baker's biography of Emerson begins when Emerson was already in his late twenties. One wonders what happened to Emerson during his first three decades. Nevertheless, Emerson Among the Eccentrics is well worth your time.

In Chapter 31, Baker describes the decision, by Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, and W. H. Channing to write a biography of the late Margaret Fuller, "America's first feminist," who drowned at sea on a return tour of Europe. Emerson, writes Baker, "was certain that whoever undertook the task must pay the closest attention to the personalities who had surrounded Margaret. 'Leave them out,' said he, 'and you leave our Margaret.'"

Emerson's perceptive insight about writing Margaret Fuller's biography is taken to heart by Carlos Baker. His thesis is that one cannot know Ralph Waldo Emerson without paying the closest attention to the personalities who had surrounded him. Therefore, Emerson Among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrait is a biography not only of Emerson, but also of numerous others with whom he associated, such as Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Ellery Channing, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Bronson Alcott, Jones Very, Theodore Parker, and Herman Melville.

The most famous of the New England "Transcendentalists," Emerson resigned his position as a clergyman when his first wife died. He believed that ethics, not theology, metaphysics, or religious doctrine, was the heart of Christianity, and he argued throughout his long life (1803-1882) for self-reliance, nonconformity to superannuated dogmas and liturgies, and for the "priesthood" of the lone individual who needs no mediator between himself and the "World-Soul." He proclaimed that "God" was immanently accessible both in nature and in man's soul.

Emerson's writings are brilliantly provocative, but one often is puzzled by the obscurity of his metaphysics. What exactly IS the "World-Soul"? Although Emerson spoke often of "God," one gets the feeling that his concept of deity was more radically "protestant" than often believed. Was it pantheism, or perhaps even atheism in clever disguise? He certainly rejected traditional forms of faith and praxis.

Indeed, one might ask, To what extent was Emerson truly a "Transcendentalist"? Was this a brand of philosophical idealism, a la the "two-worlds" dichotomy of Platonism? Or was it more like Paul Tillich's "God above the god of theism"? ... a humanistic seeking for wisdom, truth, love, and justice that was more anthropocentric than theocentric? Different readers of Emerson will doubtless come to quite different conclusions.

Carlos Baker, who is perhaps best known for his biography and criticism of Ernest Hemingway, died in 1987. Emerson Among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrant is his swan song, and a beautiful volume it is, a fitting tribute to one of the greatest thinkers, moralists, and philosophers that America has produced.

Excellent for all who love great literature & great minds
I read this book after final exams for some reason Emerson and the whole American Renassiance mystic was calling to me...I finished the novel packed my bags and drove straight to Concord, Mass...The tour guides at thevarious sites I visited where perplexed by my numerous inquires...This bookdrove such a desire in me to learn and love literature from thatperiod...Well worth the time and the read...and make every effort to visitConcord when your done it adds to the experience...

Lots to amuse and inform
As its title suggests, this scrupulously researched tome portrays Emerson as perhaps the most stable and secure (and kindly) among a group of eccentric, sometimes borderline crazy writers and thinkers. A must for anyinterested in the transcendental movement, or in perhaps its mostdistinguished man of letters. ... Read more

Book Description
In this original and fascinating book, Peter S. Field argues that Ralph Waldo Emerson is America's first democratic intellectual. Field contends that Emerson was a democrat in two senses: his writings are imbued with an optimistic, confident ethos, and more importantly, he acted the part of the democrat by bringing culture to all Americans. In Ralph Waldo Emerson, Field connects Emerson and his remarkable creativity to the key political issue of the day: the nature of democracy and the role of intellectuals within a democratic society. ... Read more

Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson is intended to provide a critical introduction to Emerson's work.The tradition of American literature and philosophy as we know it at the end of the twentieth century was largely shaped by Emerson's example and practice.This volume offers students, scholars, and the general reader a collection of fresh interpretations of Emerson's writing, milieu, influence, and cultural significance.All essays are newly commissioned for this volume, written at an accessible yet challenging level, and augmented by a comprehensive chronology and bibliography. ... Read more

Book Description
As we approach the bicentennial of Emerson's birth, God in Concord returns us to the power and purity of Emerson's vision. Geldard shows in the private journals the path Emerson took to his revolutionary position as America's seer. He gives us an Emerson who hears the moaning of the human heart and responds, taking us beyond romantic notions or sentimental attachments. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Part II
Another beautiful book on the works of Emerson by Geldard. Geldard's commentary on the spiritually oriented themes of Emerson is sober and more important, intelligent. Geldard's books bring dignity to the discussion of a topic that is so often sugar coated with self-help tactics and exotic new age remedies. His commentary is selfless, almost seamless with the works discussed and never takes center stage. This book is truly one that adds quality to an already magnificent Emerson. ... Read more

Book Description
This critical analysis identifies the different rhetorical strategies and techniques that Emerson used first as a traditional New England preacher and then as he became a widely renowned public lecturer. Ten texts illustrating his different kinds of speeches on a wide array of subjects, such as prayer, manners, eloquence, the American scholar, "the genuine man," and the fugitive slave law, accompany the analysis. A speech chronology and bibliography pointing to important primary and secondary materials further enrich this Great American Orators reference tool for students, scholars, and professionals in rhetoric, history, and American studies. ... Read more

Book Description

In faithfully reproducing all of Emerson's handwritten journals and notebooks, this edition is succeeding in revealing Emerson the man and the thinker. The old image of the ideal nineteenth-century gentleman, created by editorial omission of his spontaneous thoughts, is replaced by the picture of Emerson as he really was. His frank and often bitter criticisms of men and societym his "nihilizing," his views of women, his ideas of the Negro, of religion, of God--these and other expressions of his private thought and feeling, formerly deleted or subdued, are here restored. Restored also is the full evidence needed for studies of his habits of composition, the developement of his style, and the sources of his ideas. Canceled passages are reproduced, misreadings are corrected, and hiterto unpublished manuscripts are now printed.

Here is the twelfth volume, which makes available nine of Emerson's lecture notebooks, covering a span of twenty-seven years, from 1835 to 1862, from apprenticeship to fame.

These notebooks contain materials Emerson collected for the composition of his lectures, articles, and essays during those years, a complex mixture of indexlike surveys of his journals, lists of possible topics and titles, salvaged journals passages and revisions, new drafts ranging from brief paragraphs to several pages in length, notes and translations from his reading, working notes, and partial outlines. In them we see Emerson at work, balancing his aspirations as orator and writer against the practicalities of deadlines, finances, and audiences.

Book Description

The pages of these five journals covering the years 1843 to 1847 are filled with Emerson's struggle to formulate the true attitude of the scholar to the vexing question of public involvement. Pulled between his belief that a disinterested independence was a requisite for the writer and the public demands heaped upon him as a leading intellectual figure, he notes to himself that he "pounds...tediously" on the "exemption of the writer from all secular works."

Although Emerson concluded his editorship of The Dial in 1844, he was continually beset by calls for public service, most of which drew their impetus from the reformist syndrome of the 1840's. In response to such issues as the Temperance Movement, the utopian communities, and Henry Thoreau's experiment in self-reliance at Walden Pond, Emerson exercised sympathetic skepticism and held a growing conviction that the society of the day was not the lost cause many of his contemporaries believed it to be.

These journals record Emerson's optimistic attitudes and show how later they existed side by side with concerns that, under the impulse of abolition, Texas, and the Mexican War, led him to some bitter conclusions about the state of the nation. Thoreau's refusal to pay his poll tax in dem onstration against slavery and the war particularly horrified him, and he confides in his journal that Thoreau's action diverted attention from the possibility of real reform.

The moral ambivalence and cynicism of the day strengthened Emerson's belief that the self-reliant individual was the only answer. These individuals--men like Garrison, Phillips, and Carlyle--were, in Emerson's estimation, destined to set the standards by which society would be judged. Encouraged by the prospective publication of his first volume of poetry in 1846, Emerson also spent much of this period composing verse. Among the poems in these journals are "Uriel," "Merlin," "Ode to Beauty," and a section from "Initial, Daemonic, and Celestial Love."

In anticipation of his second visit to Europe, Emerson began preparing a lecture series on "Mind and Manners of the Nineteenth Century." In these lectures he would take to the Old World his observations on the complexities of the times.

Book Description

Emerson's journals of 1847-1848 deal primarily with his second visit to Europe, occasioned by a British lecture tour that began at Manchester and Liverpool in November of 1847, took him to Scotland in the following February, and concluded in London during June after he had spent a month as a sightseer in Paris. The journals of these years, alogn with associated notebooks and letters, recorded the materials for lectures that Emerson composed while abroad, for additional lectures on England and the English that he wrote shortly after his return to Concord, and ultimately, for English Traits, the book growing out of his travels that he was to publish in 1856.

Travel abroad provided a needed change for Emerson in 1847 as it had done on previous occasions, though with his usual discounting of the values of mere change of place he was slow in deciding to make the trip. Discouragement with the prevailing political climate at the time of the Mexican War and the old uncertainty about his own proper role in the "Lilliput" of American society were much on his mind as the year began. In March he thought of withdraing temporarily "from all domestic & accustomed relations"--preferably to enjoy "an absolute leisure with books," thought he also recognized the want of some "stated task" to stimulate his flagging vitality; in July he finally agreed to accept a long-standing invitation to visit England as a lecturer. As matters turned out, a full schedule of lectures and travel, unexpectedly heavy social engagements along the way, and proliferating correspondence left Emerson little time for reading but did not prevent him from filling his journals with sharp observations on the passing scene.

As Emerson moved about England his acknowledged admiration for the English rose every day, though he was careful to distinguish their less admirable qualities.

The Englishman's "stuff or substance seems to be the best of the world," he told Margaret Fuller. "I forgive him all his pride. My respect is the more generous that I have no sympathy with him, only an admiration." He took a wry amusement from the new experience of being lionized by his hosts. In his journals are lively portraits of those who entertained him, such as Richard Monckton Milnes, his particular sponsor in the society of London and Paris, and sketches of literary notables including Rogers, Dc Quincey, Wilson, Tennyson, and Dickens. He renewed acquaintance with Wordsworth and recorded in detail the pronouncements of his old friend Carlyle. Settling in London in March and April of 1848, he divided his time between work at his desk, visits to nearby points of interest, and the mixed pleasures of a busy social life. In May he went to France just as an abortive uprising against the new provisional government was brewing. Four weeks in Paris served to correct his old "prejudice" against the French, who on closer acquaintance rose in his estimation just as the English had done. In June he returned to London to lecture, and in July, after visiting Stonehenge with Carlyle, he sailed home. As the journals reveal, he reached Concord refreshed and renewed by the change of scene, the new acquaintance, and the generous reception that the trip had brought him, and with an enlarged perspective that revealed to him once again the "proper glory" of his own country.