America [hoping for copyright, and promising half profits]. .... The request was so timely, since I was not only printing a book, but also a pamphlet, that I came to town yesterday and hastened the printers, and have now sent him proofs of all the Address, and of more than half of the book." He requests Carlyle to have an eye to its correct reproduction, to which his friend faithfully attended. Page 100, note . It was characteristic of Mr. Emerson that, as a corrective to the flush of righteous wrath that man should be capable of laying hands on another To coin his labor and sweat, came his sense of justice, and the power of seeing the planter's side, born into such a social and political condition, by breeding and climatic conditions unable to toil, and with his whole inheritance vested in slaves. In a speech in New York in 1855, Mr. Emerson urged emancipation with compensation to the owners, by general sacrifices to this great end by old and young throughout the North, not as the planters due, but as recognizing their need and losses. Yet with all due consideration for the planters' misfortune of condition, he said, on the main question, " It is impossible to be a gentleman and not be an abolitionist.” Page 103, note I. Sole estate his sire bequeathed, And his chain when life was done. These lines from Voluntaries" in the Poems, and the stanza which there follows them, are recalled by this passage. I Page 106, note 1. Granville Sharp (1734-1813) was a broad-minded scholar and determined philanthropist. He left the study of law to go into the ordnance office, which he left, when the American Revolution came on, disapproving of the course of the government. In the case of one of the slaves whom he defended, the Lord Mayor discharged the negro, but his master would not give him up. The case then went before the Court of Kings Bench, and the twelve judges decided in 1772 that a man could not be held in, or transported from, England. In June, 1787, Sharp with Clarkson and ten others, nine of whom were Quakers, formed a committee « for effecting the abolition of the slave trade;" Sharp was chairman. Defeated in Parliament in 1788 and 1789, they were joined by Pitt and Fox in 1790. In 1793 the Commons passed an act for gradual abolition of the trade, which was rejected by the Peers. This occurred again in 1795 and 1804. In 1806, the Fox and Grenville Ministry brought forward abolition of the trade as a government measure. It was carried in 1807. Then the enemies of slavery began to strive for its gradual abolition throughout the British dominions, Clarkson, Wilberforce and Buxton being the principal leaders. The course of events, however, showed that immediate emancipation would be a better measure. The government brought this forward in 1823, modified by an apprenticeship system. The bill with this feature and some compensation to owners was passed in 1833. 1 Page 108, note 1. In the essay on Self-Reliance Mr. Emerson said: "An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson.” Page 112, note I. The *** prædials" seem to have been the slaves born into captivity, as distinguished from imported 1 Page 115, note I. Emancipation in the West Indies: A Six Months' Tour in Antigua, Barbadoes and Jamaica, in the year 1837. By J. A Thome and J. H. Kimball, New York, 1838.b ganto al nad edi Page 120, note . This was very soon after the corona tion of the young Queen Victoria, which occurred in the previous year.m no,ut it dire 1 i Page 125, note F. All things are moral, and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. Therefore is nature glorious with form, color and motion; that every globe in the remotest heaven, every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life. every animal function from the sponge up to Hercules; shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the Ten Commandments. Nature, Addresses and Lectures, p. 40. See also the last sentence in ❝ Prudence,'' Essays, First Series.y " גין Page 131,note 1. For he [a ruler] is the minister of God to thee, for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." Epistle to the Romans, xiiis 4. Loutko a 5581 " Page 132, note E. The cause for Mr. Emerson's indignation was great and recent. His honored townsman, Samuel Hoar, Esq., sent by the State of Massachusetts as her commissioner to South Carolina to investigate the seizures; imė prisonments, punishments, and even sale of colored citizens of Massachusetts who had committed no crime, had been expelled with threats of violence from the city of Charleston. (See Samuel Hoar," in Lectures and Biographical Sketches.) Page 133, note г. 1867 A union then of honest men, ! Or union never more again. Boston." Poems. Page 134, note 1. John Quincy Adams, who, though disapproving, as untimely, the legislation urged on Congress by the abolitionists, yet fought strongly and persistently against he rules framed to check their importunity, as inconsistent with the right of petition itself. Page 144, note 1. Here comes in the doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest that appears in the "Ode inscribed to W. H. Channing," but, even more than there, tempered by faith in the strength of humanity. See the Lecture on the Times," given in 1841 (Nature, Addresses and Lectures, p. 220), for considerations on slavery more coolly philosophical than Mr. Emerson's warm blood often admitted of, during the strife for liberty in the period between the Mexican and Civil Wars." Page 146, note 1. In the early version of the ❝ Boston Your town is full of gentle names, By patriots once were watchwords made; WAR In the winter and early spring of 1838, the American Peace Society held a course of lectures in Boston. This lecture was the seventh in the course. Mr. Alcott wrote in his diary at that time: "I heard Emerson's lecture on Peace, as the closing discourse of a series delivered at the Odeon before the American Peace Society. After the lecture I saw Mr. Garrison, who is at this time deeply interested in the question of Peace, as are many of the meekest and noblest souls amongst us. He expressed his great pleasure in the stand taken by Mr. Emerson and his hopes in him as a man of the new age. This great topic has been brought before the general mind as a direct consequence of the agitation of the abolition of slavery." The lecture was printed in 1849 in Esthetic Papers, edited by Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody. Although the chronicles of the campaigns and acts of prowess of the masterly soldiers were always attractive reading to Mr. Emerson, much more acts of patriotic devotion in the field, - and he was by no means committed as a nonresistant, he saw that war had been a part of evolution, and that its evils might paverit the way for good, as flowers spring up next year on a field of carnage. He knew that evolution required an almost divine patience, yet his good hope was |