s to no one town or province or continent;
he is the common property of mankind; and yet we love to think of him
as breathing the same air and treading the same soil that we and our
fathers and our children have breathed and trodden. So it pleases us
to think how fondly he remembered his birthplace; and by the side of
Franklin's bequest to his native city we treasure that golden verse of
Emerson's:--

"A blessing through the ages thus
Shield all thy roofs and towers,
GOD WITH THE FATHERS, SO WITH US,
Thou darling town of ours!"

Emerson sympathized with all generous public movements, but he was not
fond of working in associations, though he liked well enough to attend
their meetings as a listener and looker-on. His study was his workshop,
and he preferred to labor in solitude. When he became famous he paid the
penalty of celebrity in frequent interruptions by those "devastators of
the day" who sought him in his quiet retreat. His courtesy and kindness
to his visitors were uniform and remarkable. Poets who come to recite
their verses and reformers who come to explain their projects are
among the most formidable of earthly visitations. Emerson accepted
his martyrdom with meek submission; it was a martyrdom in detail, but
collectively its petty tortures might have satisfied a reasonable
inquisitor as the punishment of a moderate heresy. Except in that one
phrase above quoted he never complained of his social oppressors, so far
as I remember, in his writings. His perfect amiability was one of his
most striking characteristics, and in a nature fastidious as was his in
its whole organization, it implied a self-command worthy of admiration.

* * * * *

The natural purity and elevation of Emerson's character show themselves
in all that he writes. His life corresponded to the ideal we form of him
from his writings. This it was which made him invulnerable amidst all
the fierce conflicts his gentle words excited. His white shield was so
spotless that the least scrupulous combatants did not like to leave
their defacing marks upon it. One would think he was protected by some
superstition like that which Voltaire refers to as existing about
Boileau,--

"Ne disons pas mal de Nicolas,--cela porte malheur."

(Don't let us abuse Nicolas,--it brings ill luck.) The cooped-up
dogmatists whose very citadel of belief he was attacking, and who had
their hot water and boiling pitch and flaming br