Query (Emerson)

Toward the end of "Education," Emerson says:

Every mind should be allowed to make its own statement in action, and its balance will appear. In these judgments one needs that foresight which was attributed to an eminent reformer, of whom it was said "his patience could see in the bud of the aloe the blossom at the end of a hundred years."

Does anyone have any ideas about the source of that quotation, or who the "eminent reformer" might be?