lae.

"The foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the moral
sentiment.

"Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any
material force, that thoughts rule the world.

"Periodicity, reaction, are laws of mind as well as of matter."

And most encouraging it is to read in 1884 what was written in
1867,--especially in the view of future possibilities. "Bad kings and
governors help us, if only they are bad enough." _Non tali auxilio_, we
exclaim, with a shudder of remembrance, and are very glad to read these
concluding words: "I read the promise of better times and of greater
men."

In the year 1866, Emerson reached the age which used to be spoken of as
the "grand climacteric." In that year Harvard University conferred upon
him the degree of Doctor of Laws, the highest honor in its gift.

In that same year, having left home on one of his last lecturing trips,
he met his son, Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, at the Brevoort House, in New
York. Then, and in that place, he read to his son the poem afterwards
published in the "Atlantic Monthly," and in his second volume, under the
title "Terminus." This was the first time that Dr. Emerson recognized
the fact that his father felt himself growing old. The thought, which
must have been long shaping itself in the father's mind, had been so far
from betraying itself that it was a shock to the son to hear it plainly
avowed. The poem is one of his noblest; he could not fold his robes
about him with more of serene dignity than in these solemn lines. The
reader may remember that one passage from it has been quoted for a
particular purpose, but here is the whole poem:--

TERMINUS.

It is time to be old,
To take in sail:--
The god of bounds,
Who sets to seas a shore,
Came to me in his fatal rounds,
And said: "No more!
No farther shoot
Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.
Fancy departs: no more invent;
Contract thy firmament
To compass of a tent.
There's not enough for this and that,
Make thy option which of two;
Economize the failing river,
Not the less revere the Giver,
Leave the many and hold the few,
Timely wise accept the terms,
Soften the fall with wary foot;
A little while
Still plan and smile,
And,--fault of novel germs,--
Mature the unfallen fruit.
Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,
Bad husbands of their fires,
Who when they gave thee breath,
Failed to bequeath