We do
not, therefore, affect to thank you."
In his reply Kossuth appealed to Emerson to give to him and to his
cause the aid of his philosophical analysis, and to impress the
conviction upon the public mind that the Revolution, of which Concord
was the preface, was full of a higher destiny,--of a destiny as broad
as the world, as broad as humanity itself.
In that speech he anticipated Matthew Arnold in the remark, "One thing
I may own, that it is, indeed, true, everything good has yet been in
the minority; still mankind went on, and in going on to that destiny
the Almighty designed, when all good will not be confined to the
minority, but will prevail amongst all mankind." His speech at Concord
was not of his best, and there are indications that his estimate of
Emerson's supremacy as a philosopher and thinker subjected him to a
degree of restraint which he could not overcome.
Only once, as far as I know, did Kossuth speak of himself, except as
the chosen and legitimate representative of down-trodden Hungary, and
that was in his parting speech in Faneuil Hall, May 14, 1852: "Some
take me here for a visionary. Curious, indeed, if that man who, a
poor son of the people, has abolished an aristocracy of a thousand
years old, created a treasury of millions out of nothing, an army
out of nothing, and directed a revolution so as to fix the attention
of the whole world upon Hungary, and has beaten the old, well-provided
power of Austria, and crushed its future by its very fall, and
forsaken, abandoned, alone, sustained a struggle against two empires,
and made himself in his very exile feared by czars and emperors, and
trusted by foreign nations as well as his own,--if that man be a
visionary therefor, so much pride I may be excused, that I would like
to look face to face into the eyes of a practical man on earth.
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