year in the
great cities of the land, seeking always to manufacture manhood of a
good quality. He became himself our finest example of the power and
influence of the scholar in the Republic. And when the end came, he
received from his fellow countrymen the admiration and the love that he
had deserved. And the friends who knew him best were not surprised that
the last words on his lips were the words of his friend James Russell
Lowell, that summarized the ideal that Wendell Phillips had pursued for
thirty years.

"New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our _Mayflower_, and steer boldly through the desperate winter
sea,
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key."

IV

CHARLES SUMNER: THE APPEAL TO EDUCATED MEN

In every country and time, the era of national peril has been the
creative era for the intellect. The eloquence of Greece was at its best
when Philip attacked Athens and Demosthenes defended its liberties.
Dante's poems were born of the collision between the despots who sought
to enslave Florence, and the patriots who dreamed of democracy. Milton's
songs were written during the English Revolution, when the Puritan,
seeking to diffuse the good things of life, and the Cavalier, who wished
to monopolize the earth's treasure, came into a deadly collision.

In accordance with that principle it seems natural to expect that the
scholars of the Republic should do their best work during the era of
agitation, when the national intellect was white hot, and public
excitement burned by day and night. The anti-slavery epoch, therefore,
was the Augustan Era of American literature, when the historians, poets
and philosophers lent distinction to American literature. At that time
Motley was writing his "History of the Netherlands"; Prescott, his
"History of Mexico and Spain"; Whittier, his songs of slavery and
freedom; Lowell was the satirist of the debate, and was writing his
"Biglow Papers," and Emerson, the philosopher, was undermining the
foundations and shaking the principles of slavery, even as Samson pulled
down the temple of the olden time.

Emerson, the philosopher, did the thinking, and furnished the
intellectual implements to the abolitionists. Beginning his career as a
preacher, he resigned his positi