“If the good counsel prevailed, the sneaking counsel did not fail to be suggested; freedom and virtue, if they triumphed, triumphed in a fair field.  And so be it an everlasting testimony for them, and so much ground of assurance of man’s capacity for self-government.”

What names that plain New England town reckons in the roll of its inhabitants!  Stout Major Buttrick and his fellow-soldiers in the war of Independence, and their worthy successors in the war of Freedom; lawyers and statesmen like Samuel Hoar and his descendants; ministers like Peter Bulkeley, Daniel Bliss, and William Emerson; and men of genius such as the idealist and poet whose inspiration has kindled so many souls; as the romancer who has given an atmosphere to the hard outlines of our stern New England; as that unique individual, half college-graduate and half Algonquin, the Robinson Crusoe of Walden Pond, who carried out a school-boy whim to its full proportions, and told the story of Nature in undress as only one who had hidden in her bedroom could have told it.  I need not lengthen the catalogue by speaking of the living, or mentioning the women whose names have added to its distinction.  It has long been an intellectual centre such as no other country town of our own land, if of any other, could boast.  Its groves, its streams, its houses, are haunted by undying memories, and its hillsides and hollows are made holy by the dust that is covered by their turf.

Such was the place which the advent of Emerson made the Delphi of New England and the resort of many pilgrims from far-off regions.

On his return from Europe in the winter of 1833-4, Mr. Emerson began to appear before the public as a lecturer.  His first subjects, “Water,” and the “Relation of Man to the Globe,” were hardly such as we should have expected from a scholar who had but a limited acquaintance with physical and physiological science.  They were probably chosen as of a popular character, easily treated in such a way as to be intelligible and entertaining, and thus answering the purpose of introducing him pleasantly to the new career he was contemplating.  These lectures are not included in his published works, nor were they ever published, so far as I know.  He gave three lectures during the same winter, relating the experiences of his recent tour in Europe.  Having made himself at home on the platform, he ventured upon subjects more congenial to his taste and habits of thought than some of those earlier topics.  In 1834 he lectured on Michael Angelo, Milton, Luther, George Fox, and Edmund Burke.  The first two of these lectures, though not included in his collected works, may be found in the “North American Review” for 1837 and 1838.  The germ of many of the thoughts which he has expanded in prose and verse may be found in these Essays.