ed, and Emerson spoke
of his life and labors at the meeting held at the Music Hall to do honor
to his memory. Emerson delivered discourses on Sundays and week-days in
the Music Hall to Mr. Parker's society after his death. In 1862, he lost
his friend Thoreau, at whose funeral he delivered an address which was
published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for August of the same year. Thoreau
had many rare and admirable qualities, and Thoreau pictured by Emerson
is a more living personage than White of Selborne would have been on the
canvas of Sir Joshua Reynolds.

The Address on the Emancipation Proclamation was delivered in Boston
in September, 1862. The feeling that inspired it may be judged by the
following extract:--

"Happy are the young, who find the pestilence cleansed out of the
earth, leaving open to them an honest career. Happy the old, who see
Nature purified before they depart. Do not let the dying die; hold
them back to this world, until you have charged their ear and heart
with this message to other spiritual societies, announcing the
melioration of our planet:--

"'Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And Peace proclaims olives of endless age.'"

The "Conduct of Life" was published in 1860. The chapter on "Fate" might
leave the reader with a feeling that what he is to do, as well as what
he is to be and to suffer, is so largely predetermined for him, that
his will, though formally asserted, has but a questionable fraction in
adjusting him to his conditions as a portion of the universe. But let
him hold fast to this reassuring statement:--

"If we must accept Fate, we are not less compelled to affirm
liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty,
the power of character.--We are sure, that, though we know not how,
necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world,
my polarity with the spirit of the times."

But the value of the Essay is not so much in any light it throws on the
mystery of volition, as on the striking and brilliant way in which the
limitations of the individual and the inexplicable rule of law are
illustrated.

"Nature is no sentimentalist,--does not cosset or pamper us. We must
see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a
man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust.--The
way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider,
the sna