In this country Mr. Emerson led the dance of the hours. He was our poet, our philosopher, our sage, our priest. He was the eternal man. If we could not go where he went, it was because we were weak and unworthy to follow the steps of such an emancipator. His singular genius, his wonderful serenity of disposition inherited from an exceptional ancestry and seldom ruffled by the ordinary passions of men, his curious felicity of speech, his wit, his practical wisdom, raised him above all his contemporaries. His infrequent contact with the world of affairs, his seclusion in the country, his apparitions from time to time on lecture platforms or in convention halls, gave a far-off sound to his voice as if it fell from the clouds. Some among his friends found fault with him for being bloodless and ethereal, but this added to the effect of his presence and his word. The mixture of Theism and Pantheism in his thoughts, of the personal and the impersonal, of the mystical and the practical, fascinated the sentiment of the generation, while the lofty moral strain of his teaching awakened to increased energy the wills of men. His speech and example stimulated every desire for reform, turning all eyes that were opened to the land of promise that seemed fully in sight. How much the anti-slavery conviction of the time, along with every other movement for the purification of society, owed to him we have always been fond of saying with that indefiniteness of specification which communicates so much more than it tells. This must be said, that, in the exhilaration of the period, they that worked hardest felt no exhaustion, and they that sacrificed most were conscious of no self-abnegation, and they that threw their lives into this cause had no sentiment but one of overflowing gratitude and joy. The anti-slavery agitation was felt to be something more than an attempt to apply the Beatitudes and the Parables to a flagrant case of inhumanity--it was regarded as a new interpreter of religion, a fresh declaration of the meaning of the Gospel, a living sign of the purely human character of a divine faith, an education in brotherly love and sacrifice; it was a common saying that now, for the first time in many generations, the essence of belief was made visible and palpable to all men; that Providence was teaching us in a most convincing way, and none but deaf ears could fail to understand the message.