In 1863, during the dark days of the Civil War, before the tide had fully turned in the field, while disaffection showed itself in the North, and England and France threatened intervention, Mr. Emerson gave a hopeful lecture, the basis of the present discourse, on the Fortune of the Republic. After the war it was adapted to the new and happier conditions. On the 30th of March, 1878, six years after Mr. Emerson had withdrawn from literary work, and but four years before his death, he was induced to read the lecture in the Old South Church, in a course planned by the committee, to save the venerable building. The church was filled, Mr. Emerson’s delivery was good, and he seemed to enjoy the occasion. It was probably his last speech in public, and so fitly closes the volume. [228] _Page 513, note 1._ This passage occurred in the early lecture:— “It is the distinction of man to think, and all the few men who, since the beginning of the world, have done anything for us were men who did not follow the river, or ship the cotton, or pack the pork, but who thought for themselves. What the country wants is personalities,—grand persons,—to counteract its materialities, for it is the rule of the universe that corn shall serve man, and not man, corn.” [229] _Page 519, note 1._ Here followed: “What we call ‘Kentucky,’ or ‘Vallandigham,’ or ‘Fernando Wood’ is really the ignorance and nonsense in us, stolid stupidity which gives the strength to those names.... It is our own vice which takes form, or gives terror with which these persons affect us.” [230] _Page 520, note 1._ This refers to a young Massachusetts scholar, of promise and beauty, whom Mr. Emerson had been pleased with, as a fellow voyager. He soon was corrupted by politics. Coming up, at a reception, to shake hands with Mr. Emerson he was thus greeted: “If what I hear of your recent action be true, I must shake hands with you under protest.” Soon after, this aspirant for power attended the dinner given to Brooks after his cowardly assault on Sumner; but the moment the Emancipation Proclamation had been approved by the people, he became an ornamental figurehead at Republican and reform gatherings. [231] _Page 520, note 2._ From the last scene of _Cynthia’s Revels_, by Ben Jonson. [232] _Page 521, note 1._ “The one serious and formidable thing in Nature is a will.”—“Fate,” _Conduct of Life_, p. 30. See also “Aristocracy,” in _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_, p. 50. [233] _Page 524, note 1._ Ben Jonson, _The Golden Age Restored_. [234] _Page 526, note 1._ She spawneth men as mallows fresh. “Nature,” II., _Poems_. See also the “Song of Nature,” in the _Poems_. [235] _Page 526, note 2._ In the earlier lecture was this passage:— “The roots of our success are in our poverty, our Calvinism, our thrifty habitual industry,—in our snow and east wind, and farm-life and sea-life....