dark days before the war were praising the patriots of "seventy-six;" yet showing themselves apostates to their great principles, applicable as ever to the problems of 1858. An omitted sheet, from the lecture, runs as follows: "Greatness is to live in the present, to magnify the present, to know its duties and carry up the present knot of affairs over Greece, or Rome, or Palestine. But we live as these paltry politicians live; we are absurdly historical: we neglect the plain duty of the moment, to honor the memory of some dead duty,—of some dead body in some dead moment. We praise Washington, but perform Lord North. We keep the fourth of July, and our eyes always nailed on mouldering escutcheons. I dreamed I stood in a city of beheaded men, where the decapitated trunks continued to walk."
Page 164, note 1.
It cannot conquer folly,—Time-and-space-conquering steam,—And the light-outspeeding telegraphBears nothing on its beam."The World-Soul," Poems.
Page 164, note 2.
"Wealth is the conjurer's devil, Whom when he thinks he hath, the devil hath him." George Herbert, "The Church Porch."
Page 165, note 1. Mr. Emerson, like others, was feeling the "hard times" of the great financial panic of 1857.
Page 167, note 1. His poem "Days" Mr. Emerson once spoke of as the one which he thought the best. It is not unlikely that he meant it for the purpose for which it is used in this edition, as motto to this essay, but, as he was hurried in preparing the book, could not write mottoes for all
