Immediately on my arrival in Boston I heard that Mr. Emerson was going to lecture at the Tremont Hall on the subject of the war, and I resolved to go and hear him.  I was acquainted with Mr. Emerson, and by reputation knew him well.  Among us in England he is regarded as transcendental and perhaps even as mystic in his philosophy.  His “Representative Men” is the work by which he is best known on our side of the water, and I have heard some readers declare that they could not quite understand Mr. Emerson’s “Representative Men.”  For myself, I confess that I had broken down over some portions of that book.  Since I had become acquainted with him I had read others of his writings, especially his book on England, and had found that he improved greatly on acquaintance.  I think that he has confined his mysticism to the book above named.  In conversation he is very clear, and by no means above the small practical things of the world.  He would, I fancy, know as well what interest he ought to receive for his money as though he were no philosopher, and I am inclined to think that if he held land he would make his hay while the sun shone, as might any common farmer.  Before I had met Mr. Emerson, when my idea of him was formed simply on the “Representative Men,” I should have thought that a lecture from him on the war would have taken his hearers all among the clouds.  As it was, I still had my doubts, and was inclined to fear that a subject which could only be handled usefully at such a time before a large audience by a combination of common sense, high principles, and eloquence, would hardly be safe in Mr. Emerson’s hands.  I did not doubt the high principles, but feared much that there would be a lack of common sense.  So many have talked on that subject, and have shown so great a lack of common sense!  As to the eloquence, that might be there or might not.

Mr. Emerson is a Massachusetts man, very well known in Boston, and a great crowd was collected to hear him.  I suppose there were some three thousand persons in the room.  I confess that when he took his place before us my prejudices were against him.  The matter in hand required no philosophy.  It required common sense, and the very best of common sense.  It demanded that he should be impassioned, for of what interest can any address be on a matter of public politics without passion?  But it demanded that the passion should be winnowed, and free from all rodomontade.  I fancied what might be said on such a subject as to that overlauded star-spangled banner, and how the star-spangled flag would look when wrapped in a mist of mystic Platonism.