nd bad manners and at the dunce part, and leap to the
suggestions and finger-pointings of the gods, which, above the
understanding, feed the hopes and guide the wills of men?' These
finger-pointings Emerson did not mistake. He spoke up for Garrison. John
Brown was several times in Concord, and found a hearty welcome in
Emerson's house. When Brown made his raid at Harper's Ferry, and the
crisis became gradually sharper, Emerson felt that the time had come,
and his voice was raised in clear tones. After the sword is drawn, it is
deeds not words that interest and decide; but whenever the word of the
student was needed Emerson was ready to give the highest expression to
all that was best in his countrymen's mood during that greatest ordeal
of our time. The inward regeneration of the individual had ever been the
key to his teaching, and this teaching had been one of the forces that,
like central fire in men's minds, nourished the heroism of the North in
its immortal battle.

The exaltation of national character produced by the Civil War opened
new and wider acceptance for a great moral and spiritual teacher, and
from the close of the war until his death in 1882, Emerson's ascendency
within his own sphere of action was complete, and the public recognition
of him universal. Of story, there is no more to tell. He pursued his old
way of reading, meditating, conversing, and public lecturing, almost to
the end. The afternoon of his life was cloudless as the earlier day, and
the shades of twilight fell in unbroken serenity. In his last years
there was a partial failure of his memory, and more than one pathetic
story is told of this tranquil and gradual eclipse. But 'to the last,
even when the events of yesterday were occasionally obscured, his memory
of the remote past was unclouded; he would tell about the friends of his
early and middle life with unbroken vigour.' So, tended in his home by
warm filial devotion, and surrounded by the reverent kindness of his
village neighbours, this wise and benign man slowly passed away (April
27, 1882).[4]

[Footnote 4: The reader who seeks full information about Emerson's life
will find it scattered in various volumes: among them are--

_Ralph Waldo Emerson_; by George Willis Cooke (Sampson Low & Co.,
1882)--a very diligent and instructive work.

_R.W.E._; by Alexander Ireland (Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. 1882),
described by Carlyle, and known by others, as 'full of energy and broad
sagacity a