Poems By Ralph Waldo Emerson Author:Ralph Waldo Emerson PREFACE. I FEEL that the printing of my lectures brings with it a certain difficulty. Lectures intended to be read within the Museum, with a continual reference, implied and often expressed, to the place, the objects gathered within it and their associations, must have had a certain fifaess which will be more or less diminished when they come to... more » be read under different conditions. Moreover, they were written and spoken with an idea always present in my mind that I had a class of students whom I was addressing, and that my other auditors stood in a more remote relation to me. Certain appeals to my teaching, certain dlusions to the practice of the students and to their position of relative de- pendence and inferiority of age or acquaintance with the world, of little or no significance to my readers, are thus explained. I have not seen any way of so modifying these lectures as to suit my feelings and wishes in the present nor could I have found the time to do so had I seen my way clearly to that end. Even the time that I gave to their prepam tion for the Museum course had to be taken out of the horns of personal teaching and they bear the mark of a more temporary considemtion on my part than would suit me had I from the first thought of publishing them. At the same time, there is always something in work done for a special practical purpose which through its very contexture makes a practical answer to many questions and I have hoped that with some slight modifications and explanations I may manage to make my readers feel that these lectures are for them. I need not add, I think, that there is little in these pages that pretends to be novel. Indeed, I should like to apped to the memories stored in the consciousness of my readers, and ask if their own observation does not bear me out in mine....« less