he immortality than we can give grounds for.
The real evidence is too subtle, or is higher than we can write down
in propositions, and therefore Wordsworth's 'Ode' is the best modern
essay on the subject."

Wordsworth's "Ode" is a noble and beautiful dream; is it anything more?
The reader who would finish this Essay, which I suspect to belong to an
early period of Emerson's development, must be prepared to plunge
into mysticism and lose himself at last in an Oriental apologue. The
eschatology which rests upon an English poem and an Indian fable belongs
to the realm of reverie and of imagination rather than the domain of
reason.

On the 19th of April, 1875, the hundredth anniversary of the "Fight at
the Bridge," Emerson delivered a short Address at the unveiling of the
statue of "The Minute-Man," erected at the place of the conflict, to
commemorate the event. This is the last Address he ever wrote, though he
delivered one or more after this date. From the manuscript which lies
before me I extract a single passage:--

"In the year 1775 we had many enemies and many friends in England,
but our one benefactor was King George the Third. The time had
arrived for the political severance of America, that it might play
its part in the history of this globe, and the inscrutable divine
Providence gave an insane king to England. In the resistance of the
Colonies, he alone was immovable on the question of force. England
was so dear to us that the Colonies could only be absolutely
disunited by violence from England, and only one man could compel
the resort to violence. Parliament wavered, Lord North wavered, all
the ministers wavered, but the king had the insanity of one idea; he
was immovable, he insisted on the impossible, so the army was sent,
America was instantly united, and the Nation born."

There is certainly no mark of mental failure in this paragraph, written
at a period when he had long ceased almost entirely from his literary
labors.

Emerson's collected "Poems" constitute the ninth volume of the recent
collected edition of his works. They will be considered in a following
chapter.

CHAPTER XIII.

1878-1882. AET. 75-79.

Last Literary Labors.--Addresses and Essays.--"Lectures and Biographical
Sketches."--"Miscellanies."

The decline of Emerson's working faculties went on gently and gradually,
but he was not condemned to entire inactivity. His f