So the orders of a field-marshal are carried to
the generals of division, and from these pass onward till every
private-soldier feels the impulse of a single will. Perhaps the time
will come when he will be better appreciated. The future historian of
our literature cannot well neglect so independent and original a
thinker, and perhaps Americans of the next century may find him more
congenial to their modes of thought than do those of the present era. If
he lives at all, it is likely he will outlive every other writer of his
time. One may read Plato or Bacon or Goethe, and then return to Wasson
and still find something new and instructive in his essays--something we
did not know before.
WENDELL PHILLIPS
If Hawthorne was the antipodes of Emerson, Wendell Phillips was of
Wasson. One might form a proportion out of these four, in which Phillips
and Hawthorne would be the extremes, and Emerson and Wasson the mean
terms. He was, in his way, as perfect an artist as Hawthorne, while he
differed from him as the sea does from the land. He was more like
Emerson in his mental methods, and was a man of action. While he took
the same interest in public affairs as Wasson, the slavery question was
the only point on which the two could ever agree. One was an ardent and
unreflecting revolutionist; the other a systematic thinker and
conservative supporter of the general order of affairs.
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