H. from the first, and confirmed him
all through. One must not be dominated by the man's almost absurd
saturation in cut and dried biblical phraseology, and in ways, talk,
and standard, regardful mainly of the one need he dwelt on, above all
the rest. This main need he drove home to the soul; the canting and
sermonizing soon exhale away to any auditor that realizes what E.H.
is for and after. The present paper, (a broken memorandum of his
formation, his earlier life,) is the cross-notch that rude wanderers
make in the woods, to remind them afterward of some matter of
first-rate importance and full investigation. (Remember too, that E.H.
was _a thorough believer in the Hebrew Scriptures_, in his way.)
The following are really but disjointed fragments recall'd to
serve and eke out here the lank printed pages of what I commenc'd
unwittingly two months ago. Now, as I am well in for it, comes an old
attack, the sixth or seventh recurrence, of my war-paralysis, dulling
me from putting the notes in shape, and threatening any further
action, head or body. _W.W., Camden, N.J., July, 1888_.
To begin with, my theme is comparatively featureless. The great
historian has pass'd by the life of Elias Hicks quite without glance
or touch. Yet a man might commence and overhaul it as furnishing
one of the amplest historic and biography's backgrounds. While the
foremost actors and events from 1750 to 1830 both in Europe and
America were crowding each other on the world's stage--While so
many kings, queens, soldiers, philosophs, musicians, voyagers,
litterateurs, enter one side, cross the boards, and disappear--amid
loudest reverberating names--Frederick the Great, Swedenborg, Junius,
Voltaire, Rousseau, Linnaeus, Herschel--curiously contemporary with
the long life of Goethe--through the occupancy of the British throne
by George the Third--amid stupendous visible political and social
revolutions, and far more stupendous invisible moral ones--while the
many quarto volumes of the Encyclopaedia Francaise are being published
at fits and intervals, by Diderot, in Paris--while Haydn and
Beethoven and Mozart and Weber are working out their harmonic
compositions--while Mrs.
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