| Biography |
| Contents |
| Responses to Lyceum Lectures |
Wall's diary contains descriptions of nature and the things that he saw while on long walks to Leicester, Massachusetts to attend monthly Quaker meetings. Wall also reports of the lectures that he heard at the Worcester Lyceum. Some of the men that Wall talks about include Horace Mann and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The diary also includes astrological observations, details of annual exhibitions at Leicester Academy and, halfway through the journal, Wall writes short essays, poetry and a description of the Worcester area.
Wall hears Horace Mann's lecture on education on November 21, 1840. Wall explains that education is the subject "which is the favorite of those who ardently feel for instruction and regeneration of their species, and who would see the whole of mankind pursuing this only road to happiness. The subject was remarkably well treated and illustrated by friend Mann, who showed himself worthy of the glorious cause in which he has been engaged. He dwelled mostly on the capability of our minds for receiving truth, and of the adaptation of external nature to the exercise of all our faculties, physical, intellectual, and moral, and illustrated by forcible instances the unspeakable advantages resulting from this exercise, as well as the degradation of which must accompany the neglect of it."
Wall later hears Ralph Waldo Emerson
lecture in December of 1840, about domestic life. Wall explains
that,
"Ralph Waldo Emerson, frequently a clergyman but who had
since withdrawn himself from all religious church organizations.
Subject, Domestic Life. It commenced with a beautiful and graphic
description of Infancy, which he followed up to the growth of
manhood. The lecturer's ideas seemed to be most engaged on a thorough
reformation of the present mode of social life, so that a greater
degree of equality could be maintained between the different orders
of society. His language was some of it rather mystified, following
the new philosophy of which he is a leader, which has received
from others the name of Transcendentalism. Emerson's ideas were
in general, correct, although he might have interfered greatly
with some, especially with the "favored few" who are
allowed to enrich themselves at the expense of the many. He may
also have received the curses of some others, who worship idols
in the shape of towering spires and velvet pulpits."