The green fields on my way home were too
fresh and fair, and forbade me to go again."

It was with profound grief that he witnessed the decline of Webster's
political career, owing to his truckling to the Southern proslavery
element, and to his increasing intemperance. To see the placid,
transcendental Emerson "fighting mad," flaring up in holy wrath, read
his criticisms of Webster, after Webster's defection--his moral
collapse to win the South and his support of the Fugitive Slave Law.
This got into Emerson's blood and made him think "daggers and
tomahawks." He has this to say of a chance meeting with Webster in
Boston, at this period: "I saw Webster on the street--but he was
changed since I saw him last--black as a thunder-cloud, and
careworn.... I did not wonder that he depressed his eyes when he saw
me and would not meet my face."

In 1851 he said that some of Webster's late speeches and state papers
were like "Hail Columbia" when sung at a slave-auction; then he
follows with the terrible remark: "The word _liberty_ in the mouth of
Mr. Webster sounds like the word _love_ in the mouth of a courtezan."

The prizes or fancied prizes of politics seem to have corrupted all
the great men of that day--Webster, Choate, Foote, Clay, Everett.
Their "disgusting obsequiousness" to the South fired Emerson's wrath.

XI

The orthodox brethren of his time, and probably of our time also, I
fancy, could make very little of Emerson's religion. It was the
religion of the spirit and not of the utilitarian and matter-of-fact
understanding. It identified man with God and made all nature
symbolical of the spirit. He was never tired of repeating that all
true prayers answered themselves--the spirit which the act of prayer
begets in one's self is the answer. Your prayer for humility, for
charity, for courage, begets these emotions in the mind. The devout
asking comes from a perception of their value. Hence the only real
prayers are for spiritual good. We converse with spiritual and
invisible things only through the medium of our own hearts. The
preliminary attitude of mind that moves us to face in this direction
is the blessing. The soldier who, on the eve of battle, prays for
courage, has already got what he asks for. Prayer for visible,
material good is infidelity to the moral law. God is within you, more
your better self than you are. Many prayers are a rattling of empty
husks. Emerson says the wise man in the storm prays God, not f