234
RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND.
overcome or
sink.
But
in the distance overseas he
glimpses rescue.
The Address was delivered in Emerson s home town, which had taken into its head to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the emancipation of the West India slaves by British act of Parliament. A pecu temper of the time and place such a celebration
liar
shows doubtless it sprang from the antagonism to the Annexation of Texas, and to the election of Polk, which took place this year (1844). The pro;
movement seemed triumphant new United States the unfree, hence
slavery
in the free lying,
dis
graceful country behold in contrast the true love of ;
and the magnanimity of old monarchic Great Britain! Some such feeling must have in spired the occasion, and also Emerson s speech, which echoes it, at times with a good deal of pasdon for him, usually the- dispassionate. Moreover he .will now avert his look from the West, which al most unanimously favors that vast increase of Tex an territory, and which is filled with its truly Occi liberty
dental aspiration Yes,,
Emerson
known as "manifest destiny. now turn even for hope to
will not
ward ;
the youngest States but toward even across the Atlantic.
.the
oldest,
The speech
first gives a lengthy historic recital of Emancipation, .when it suddenly leaps up with the cry Fellow-citizens The orator then While begins spinning a warm personal thread
-the act of
"
:
!
:
have not been able to working up this history, read a page of it without the most painful compar"I