Ralph
Waldo Emerson Home Page
previous
--All rights reserved--
Web Site designed by
© 1998 Jim Manley
jim@rwe.org
Hosted by
WebToast.Com
All documents written by Ralph Waldo Emerson can be
copied, printed
and redistributed as they are available in the Public Domain.
Literary Intelligence
from Uncollected Prose, Dial Essays 1843
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The death of Dr. Channing at Bennington in Vermont, on the 2d October, is an
event of great note to the whole country. The great loss of the community is
mitigated by the new interest which intellectual power always acquires by the
death of the possessor. Dr. Channing was a man of so much rectitude, and such
power to express his sense of right, that his value to this country, of which he
was a kind of public _Conscience_, can hardly be overestimated. Not only his
merits, but his limitations also, which made all his virtues and talents
intelligible and available for the correction and elevation of society, made our
Cato dear, and his loss not to be repaired. His interest in the times, and the
fidelity and independence, with which, for so many years, he had exercised that
censorship on commercial, political, and literary morals, which was the
spontaneous dictate of his character, had earned for him an accumulated capital
of veneration, which caused his opinion to be waited for in each emergency, as
that of the wisest and most upright of judges. We shall probably soon have an
opportunity to give an extended account of his character and genius. In most
parts of this country notice has been taken of this event, and in London also.
Beside the published discourses of Messrs. Gannett, Hedge, Clarke, Parker,
Pierpont, and Bellows, Mr. Bancroft made Dr. Channing's genius the topic of a
just tribute in a lecture before the Diffusion Society at the Masonic Temple. We
regret that the city has not yet felt the propriety of paying a public honor to
the memory of one of the truest and noblest of its citizens.
