Emerson's work as a lecturer coincided with the rise of that
Lyceum system which brought most of the American authors, for
more than a generation, into intimate contact with the public,
and which proved an important factor in the aesthetic and moral
cultivation of our people. No lecturer could have had a more
auspicious influence than Emerson, with his quiet dignity, his
serene spiritual presence, his tonic and often electrifying
force. But if he gave his audiences precious gifts, he also
learned much from them. For thirty years his lecturing trips to
the West brought him, more widely than any New England man of
letters, into contact with the new, virile America of the great
Mississippi valley. Unlike many of his friends, he was not
repelled by the "Jacksonism of the West"; he rated it a
wholesome, vivifying force in our national thought and life. The
"Journal" reveals the essential soundness of his Americanism.
Though surrounded all his life by reformers, he was himself
scarcely a reformer, save upon the single issue of anti-slavery.
Pages:
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156