power. The novelty of the Biglow Papers is as wonderful as their
world-old naturalness. They take rank with greatness, and they were the
strongest political tracts of their time. They imitate nothing; they are
real.

Emerson himself was the only man of his times who consistently and
utterly expressed himself, never measuring himself for a moment with the
ideals of others, never troubling himself for a moment with what
literature was or how literature should be created. The other men of his
epoch, and among whom he lived, believed that literature was a very
desirable article, a thing you could create if you were only smart
enough. But Emerson had no literary ambition. He cared nothing for
belles-lettres. The consequence is that he stands above his age like a
colossus. While he lived his figure could be seen from Europe towering
like Atlas over the culture of the United States.

Great men are not always like wax which their age imprints. They are
often the mere negation and opposite of their age. They give it the lie.
They become by revolt the very essence of all the age is not, and that
part of the spirit which is suppressed in ten thousand breasts gets
lodged, isolated, and breaks into utterance in one. Through Emerson
spoke the fractional spirits of a multitude. He had not time, he had not
energy left over to understand himself; he was a mouthpiece.

If a soul be taken and crushed by democracy till it utter a cry, that
cry will be Emerson. The region of thought he lived in, the figures of
speech he uses, are of an intellectual plane so high that the
circumstances which produced them may be forgotten; they are
indifferent. The Constitution, Slavery, the War itself, are seen as mere
circumstances. They did not confuse him while he lived; they are not