Note 4 — RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

Apart from philosophical and theological agitation in America, great additions were made to our general literature by translations from French and German, and their influence upon our younger writers is visible at the present day in almost every newspaper article. This task of translating and editing was accomplished—for the time—on a grand scale and in a scholarly manner. Chief among those who devoted themselves to it was George Ripley, who, in his excellent Library of Foreign Standard Literature, gave the public the choicer gems of French and German philosophy, poetry, or lighter prose. C. S. Henry, then professor of philosophy in the University of New York, embraced with zeal the teachings of Cousin, translated his Psychology,—there had been a version of the 'Lectures' published in 1838,—and wrote, for the use of students, a small but comprehensive History of Philosophy, which would have been perfectly 'eclectic' had it not devoted a somewhat unfair proportion of its pages to eclecticism. Translations of minor German lyrics into English, in most instances surpassing their rivals of British origin, were made by several young Unitarian clergymen, among which those by Cranch, Peabody, and Brooks, were, we believe, preëminent. The Dial, by its criticisms of foreign literature and art, guided many to the originals, while the Orthodox onslaught, in reviews or in lectures, by Murdoch and others, in which German philosophy was carefully traced from Lucifer down to Hegel, gave to hungry and inquiring neophytes many valuable hints. As, with the majority of its friends, 'Transcendentalism' assumed a deeply religious form, there resulted, of course, a grand revival of pietistic, mystical, and magical reading. Even the polemics of the early Quakers were un-dusted, while Swedenborg was soon found to be a rich mine. In due time, the works of Jung-Stilling, and other occult seers of the Justinus Kerner school, were translated, and contributed, in common with the then new wonders of animal magnetism and clairvoyance, to prepare the public for 'spiritualism.' The appearance, in 1841, of a translation of the Heinrich von Ofterdingen of Novalis, by a student of Cambridge, named Stallknecht, was one of the works of the day which increased the interest in foreign literature, and made its study fashionable. This mystical romance, called by its author the 'Apotheosis of Poetry,' was distinguished by a simple pathos, an ultra-refinement of thought, an almost womanly delicacy of expression, and a deeply religious sentiment. Such works fascinated many who had been proof against the sterner allurements of the more practical Goethe or the aristocratic Schiller, and added a new regiment to the army that was assailing with vehemence the fortress of German literature.