Riverside Edition LECTURES AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES BEING VOLUME X. OF EMERSON’S COMPLETE WORKS LECTURES AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON BOSTON HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY NEW YORK: 11 EAST SEVENTEENTH STREET The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1884 Copyright, 1883, BY EDWARD W. EMERSON. _All rights reserved._ _The Riverside Press, Cambridge_: Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. NOTE. OF the pieces included in this volume the following, namely, those from the “Dial,” “Character,” “Plutarch,” and the biographical sketches of Dr. Ripley, of Mr. Hoar, and of Henry Thoreau, were printed by Mr. Emerson before I took any part in the arrangement of his papers. The rest, except the sketch of Miss Mary Emerson, I got ready for his use in readings to his friends or to a limited public. He had given up the regular practice of lecturing, but would sometimes, upon special request, read a paper that had been prepared for him from his manuscripts, in the manner described in the preface to “Letters and Social Aims,”--some former lecture serving as a nucleus for the new. Some of these papers he afterwards allowed to be printed; others, namely, “Aristocracy,” “Education,” “The Man of Letters,” “The Scholar,” “Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England,” “Mary Moody Emerson,” are now published for the first time. J. E. CABOT. CONTENTS. PAGE DEMONOLOGY 7 ARISTOCRACY 33 PERPETUAL FORCES 69 CHARACTER 91 EDUCATION 123 THE SUPERLATIVE 157 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS 175 THE PREACHER 207 THE MAN OF LETTERS 229 THE SCHOLAR 247 PLUTARCH 275 HISTORIC NOTES OF LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW ENGLAND 305 THE CHARDON STREET CONVENTION 349 EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 355