ed nothing for
belles-lettres. The consequence is that he stands above his age like a
colossus. While he lived his figure could be seen from Europe towering
like Atlas over the culture of the United States.

Great men are not always like wax which their age imprints. They are
often the mere negation and opposite of their age. They give it the lie.
They become by revolt the very essence of all the age is not, and that
part of the spirit which is suppressed in ten thousand breasts gets
lodged, isolated, and breaks into utterance in one. Through Emerson
spoke the fractional spirits of a multitude. He had not time, he had not
energy left over to understand himself; he was a mouthpiece.

If a soul be taken and crushed by democracy till it utter a cry, that
cry will be Emerson. The region of thought he lived in, the figures of
speech he uses, are of an intellectual plane so high that the
circumstances which produced them may be forgotten; they are
indifferent. The Constitution, Slavery, the War itself, are seen as mere
circumstances. They did not confuse him while he lived; they are not
necessary to support his work now that it is finished. Hence comes it
that Emerson is one of the world's voices. He was heard afar off. His
foreign influence might deserve a chapter by itself. Conservatism is not
confined to this country. It is the very basis of all government. The
bolts Emerson forged, his thought, his wit, his perception, are not
provincial. They were found to carry inspiration to England and
Germany. Many of the important men of the last half-century owe him a
debt. It is not yet possible to give any account of his influence
abroad, because the memoirs which will show it are only beginning to be
published. We shall have them in due time; for Emerson was an outcome of
the world's progress. His appearance marks the turning-point in the
history of that enthusiasm for pure democracy which has tinged the
political thought of the world for the past one hundred and fifty years.
The youths of England and Germany may have been surprised at hearing
from America a piercing voice of protest against the very influences
which were crushing them at home. They could not realize that the chief
difference between Europe and America is a difference in the rate of
speed with which revolutions in thought are worked out.

While the radicals of Europe were revolting in 1848 against the abuses
of a tyranny whose roots were in feudalism, Emerson,