Ralph Waldo Emerson’s diary, 1847

It is now said that the Mexican War is al- ready paid for in the enhanced value of cotton and breadstuffs now to be sold by our people; and chiefly of cotton, a…

The best feat of Genius is to make an audi- ence of the mediocre and the dull.' . . .

On the seashore at Nantucket I saw the play of the Atlantic with the coast. Here was wealth ; every wave reached a quarter of a mile along shore as it broke. There…

The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry…

An Orientalist, who was a Hercules among the bugs and curculios, recommended to me a Per- sian experiment of setting a lamp under the plum tree in a whitewashed tub…

Pear trees this morning in high prosperity. Hardly a tough, dry, wormy dwarf in all the garden but is forced to show a bud or a shoot to-day. Flemish Beauty…

Of Alcott it is plain to see that he never loses sight of the order of things and thoughts before him. The thought he would record is some- thing, but the place,…

Mem. M. Alexandre Vattemare brings me compliments, etc., from M. Ravaisson, maitre des requetes, etc., au ministere de T instruction pub- lique, — to which address…

Channing wished we had a better word than Nature to express this fine picture which the river gave us in our boat yesterday. Kinde was the old word, which, however,…

Everything in England bespeaks an immense population. The buildings are on a scale of size and wealth out of all proportion to ours, the co- lossal masonry of the…

' Yet I hear nothing lately of our friends F. and W. and E, and A. The goods of that country (America) are original and' incommu- nicable to this (England) ; I see…

Dined at Mr. Swanwick's, Chesterfield, with George Stephenson.* One quarter of a pound of coke will carry one ton one mile.

I went over Worcester Cathedral, part of which has stood nine hundred years (?). I saw the tomb of King John ; of Prince Arthur, son of Henry VII; and especially,…