Section 2. First Series of Essays published.--Contents: History,

Self-Reliance, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Love, Friendship, Prudence,

Heroism, The Over-Soul, Circles, Intellect, Art.--Emerson's Account

of his Mode of Life in a Letter to Carlyle.--Death of Emerson's

Son.--Threnody

CHAPTER VI.

1843-1848. AET. 40-45.

"The Young American."--Address on the Anniversary of the Emancipation

of the Negroes in the British West Indies.--Publication of the

Second Series of Essays.--Contents: The Poet.--Experience.

--Character.--Manners.--Gifts.--Nature.--Politics.--Nominalist

and Realist.--New England Reformers.--Publication of Poems.--Second

Visit to England

CHAPTER VII.

1848-1853. AET. 45-50.

The "Massachusetts Quarterly Review."--Visit to

Europe.--England.--Scotland.--France.--"Representative Men" published.

I. Lives of Great Men. II. Plato; or, the Philosopher; Plato; New

Readings. III. Swedenborg; or, the Mystic. IV. Montaigne; or, the

Skeptic. V. Shakespeare; or, the Poet. VI. Napoleon; or, the Man of the

World. VII. Goethe; or, the Writer.--Contribution to the "Memoirs of

Margaret Fuller Ossoli"

CHAPTER VIII.

1853-1858. AET. 50-55.

Lectures in various Places.--Anti-Slavery Addresses.--Woman. A Lecture

read before the Woman's Rights Convention.--Samuel Hoar. Speech at

Concord.--Publication of "English Traits."--The "Atlantic Monthly."--The

"Saturday Club"

CHAPTER IX

1858-1863. AET. 55-60.

Essay on Persian Poetry.--Speech at the Burns Centennial

Festival.--Letter from Emerson to a Lady.--Tributes to Theodore Parker

and to Thoreau.--Address on the Emancipation Proclamation.--Publication

of "The Conduct of Life." Contents: Fate; Power; Wealth; Culture;

Behavior; Considerations by the Way; Beauty; Illusions

CHAPTER X.

1863-1868. AET. 60-65.

"Boston Hymn."--"Voluntaries."--Other Poems.--"May-Day and other

Pieces."--"Remarks at the Funeral Services of President Lincoln."--Essay

on Persian Poetry.--Address at a Meeting of the Free Religious

Association.--"Progress of Culture." Address before the Phi Beta

Kappa Society of Harvard University.--Course of Lectures in

Philadelphia.--The Degree of LL.D. conferred upon Emerson by Harvard

University.--"Terminus".

CHAPTER XI.

1868-1873. AET. 65-70.

Lectures on the Natural History of the Intellect.--Publication of

"Society and Solitude." Contents: Society and Solitude.

--Civilization.--Art.--Eloquence.--Domestic Life.--Farming.

--Works and Days.--Books.--Clubs.--Courage.--Success.--Old Age.--Other

Literary Labors.--Visit to California.--Burning of his House, and the

Story of its Rebuilding.--Third Visit to Europe.--His Reception at

Concord on his Return

CHAPTER XII

1873-1878. AET. 70-75.

Publication of "Parnassus."--Emerson Nominated as Candidate for the

Office of Lord Rector of Glasgow University.--Publication of

"Letters and Social Aims." Contents: Poetry and Imagination.--Social

Aims.--Eloquence.--Resources.--The Comic.--Quotation and Originality.

--Progress of Culture.--Persian Poetry.--Inspiration.--Greatness.

--Immortality.--Address at the Unveiling of the Statue of "The

Minute-Man" at Concord.--Publication of Collected Poems

CHAPTER XIII.

1878-1882. AET. 75-79.

Last Literary Labors.--Addresses and Essays.--"Lectures and Biographical

Sketches."--"Miscellanies"

CHAPTER XIV.

Emerson's Poems

CHAPTER XV.

Recollections of Emerson's Last Years.--Mr. Conway's Visits.--Extracts

from Mr. Whitman's Journal.--Dr. Le Baron Russell's Visit.--Dr. Edward

Emerson's Account.--Illness and Death.--Funeral Services

CHAPTER XVI.

EMERSON.---A RETROSPECT.

Personality and Habits of Life.--His Commission and Errand.--As a

Lecturer.--His Use of Authorities.--Resemblance to Other Writers.--As

influenced by Others.--His Place as a Thinker.--Idealism and

Intuition.--Mysticism.--His Attitude respecting Science.--As an

American.--His Fondness for Solitary Study.--His Patience and

Amiability.--Feeling with which he was regarded.--Emerson and

Burns.--His Religious Belief.--His Relations with Clergymen.--Future of

his Reputation.--His Life judged by the Ideal Standard

INTRODUCTION.

"I have the feeling that every man's biography is at his own expense. He

furnishes not only the facts, but the report. I mean that all biography

is autobiography. It is only what he tells of himself that comes to be

known and believed."

So writes the man whose life we are to pass in review, and it is

certainly as true of him as of any author we could name. He delineates

himself so perfectly in his various writings that the careful reader

sees his nature just as it was in all its essentials, and has little

more to learn than those human accidents which individualize him

in space and time. About all these accidents we have a natural and

pardonable curiosity. We wish to know of what race he came, what were

the conditions into which he was born, what educational and social

influences helped to mould his character, and what new elements Nature

added to make him Ralph Waldo Emerson.

He himself believes in the hereditary transmission of certain

characteristics. Though Nature appears capricious, he says, "Some

qualities she carefully fixes and transmits, but some, and those the

finer, she exhales with the breath of the individual, as too costly to

perpetuate. But I notice also that they may become fixed and permanent

in any stock, by painting and repainting them on every individual, until

at last Nature adopts them and bakes them in her porcelain."

* * * * *

We have in New England a certain number of families who constitute what

may be called the Academic Races. Their names have been on college

catalogues for generation after generation. They have filled the learned

professions, more especially the ministry, from the old colonial days to

our own time. If aptitudes for the acquisition of knowledge can be

bred into a family as the qualities the sportsman wants in his dog are

developed in pointers and setters, we know what we may expect of a

descendant of one of the Academic Races. Other things being equal, he

will take more naturally, more easily, to his books. His features will

be more pliable, his voice will be more flexible, his whole nature more

plastic than those of the youth with less favoring antecedents. The

gift of genius is never to be reckoned upon beforehand, any more than

a choice new variety of pear or peach in a seedling; it is always a

surprise, but it is born with great advantages when the stock from which

it springs has been long under cultivation.

These thoughts suggest themselves in looking back at the striking record

of the family made historic by the birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was

remarkable for the long succession of clergymen in its genealogy, and

for the large number of college graduates it counted on its rolls.

A genealogical table is very apt to illustrate the "survival of the

fittest,"--in the estimate of the descendants. It is inclined to

remember and record those ancestors who do most honor to the living

heirs of the family name and traditions. As every man may count two

grandfathers, four great-grandfathers, eight great-great-grandfathers,

and so on, a few generations give him a good chance for selection. If

he adds his distinguished grandmothers, he may double the number of

personages to choose from. The great-grandfathers of Mr. Emerson at the

sixth remove were thirty-two in number, unless the list was shortened by

intermarriage of relatives. One of these, from whom the name descended,

was Thomas Emerson of Ipswich, who furnished the staff of life to the

people of that wonderfully interesting old town and its neighborhood.

His son, the Reverend Joseph Emerson, minister of the town of Mendon,

Massachusetts, married Elizabeth, daughter of the Reverend Edward

Bulkeley, who succeeded his father, the Reverend Peter Bulkeley, as

Minister of Concord, Massachusetts.

Peter Bulkeley was therefore one of Emerson's sixty-four grandfathers

at the seventh remove. We know the tenacity of certain family

characteristics through long lines of descent, and it is not impossible

that any one of a hundred and twenty-eight grandparents, if indeed the

full number existed in spite of family admixtures, may have transmitted

his or her distinguishing traits through a series of lives that cover

more than two centuries, to our own contemporary. Inherited qualities

move along their several paths not unlike the pieces in the game of

chess. Sometimes the character of the son can be traced directly to that

of the father or of the mother, as the pawn's move carries him from one

square to the next. Sometimes a series of distinguished fathers follows

in a line, or a succession of superior mothers, as the black or white

bishop sweeps the board on his own color. Sometimes the distinguishing

characters pass from one sex to the other indifferently, as the castle

strides over the black and white squares. Sometimes an uncle or aunt

lives over again in a nephew or niece, as if the knight's move were

repeated on the squares of human individuality. It is not impossible,

then, that some of the qualities we mark in Emerson may have come from

the remote ancestor whose name figures with distinction in the early

history of New England.

The Reverend Peter Bulkeley is honorably commemorated among the worthies

consigned to immortality in that precious and entertaining medley of

fact and fancy, enlivened by a wilderness of quotations at first or

second hand, the _Magnolia Christi Americana_, of the Reverend Cotton

Mather. The old chronicler tells his story so much better than any one

can tell it for him that he must be allowed to speak for himself in a

few extracts, transferred with all their typographical idiosyncrasies

from the London-printed, folio of 1702.

"He was descended of an Honourable Family in _Bedfordshire_.--He was

born at _Woodhil_ (or _Odel_) in _Bedfordshire_, _January_ 31st,

1582.

"His _Education_ was answerable unto his _Original_; it was

_Learned_, it was _Genteel_, and, which was the top of all, it was

very _Pious_: At length it made him a _Batchellor_ of _Divinity_,

and a Fellow of Saint _John's_ Colledge in Cambridge.--

"When he came abroad into the World, a good benefice befel him,

added unto the estate of a Gentleman, left him by his Father; whom

he succeeded in his Ministry, at the place of his Nativity: Which

one would imagine _Temptations_ enough to keep him out of a

_Wilderness_."

But he could not conscientiously conform to the ceremonies of the

English Church, and so,--

"When Sir _Nathaniel Brent_ was Arch-Bishop _Laud's_ General, as

Arch-Bishop _Laud_ was _another's_, Complaints were made against Mr.

_Bulkly_, for his Non-Conformity, and he was therefore Silenced.

"To _New-England_ he therefore came, in the Year 1635; and there

having been for a while, at _Cambridge_, he carried a good Number of

Planters with him, up further into the _Woods_, where they gathered

the _Twelfth Church_, then formed in the Colony, and call'd the Town

by the Name of _Concord_.

"Here he _buried_ a great Estate, while he _raised_ one still,

for almost every Person whom he employed in the Affairs of his

Husbandry.--

"He was a most excellent _Scholar_, a very-_well read_ Person, and

one, who in his advice to young Students, gave Demonstrations, that

he knew what would go to make a _Scholar_. But it being essential

unto a _Scholar_ to love a _Scholar_, so did he; and in Token

thereof, endowed the Library of _Harvard_-Colledge with no small

part of his own.

"And he was therewithal a most exalted _Christian_--In his Ministry

he was another _Farel, Quo nemo tonuit fortius_--And the observance

which his own People had for him, was also paid him from all sorts

of People throughout the Land; but especially from the Ministers of

the Country, who would still address him as a _Father_, a _Prophet_,

a _Counsellor_, on all occasions."

These extracts may not quite satisfy the exacting reader, who must be

referred to the old folio from which they were taken, where he will

receive the following counsel:--

"If then any Person would know what Mr. _Peter Bulkly_ was, let him read

his Judicious and Savory Treatise of the _Gospel Covenant_, which has

passed through several Editions, with much Acceptance among the People

of God." It must be added that "he had a competently good Stroke at

Latin Poetry; and even in his Old Age, affected sometimes to improve it.

Many of his Composure are yet in our Hands."

It is pleasant to believe that some of the qualities of this

distinguished scholar and Christian were reproduced in the descendant

whose life we are studying. At his death in 1659 he was succeeded, as

was mentioned, by his son Edward, whose daughter became the wife of the

Reverend Joseph Emerson, the minister of Mendon who, when that village

was destroyed by the Indians, removed to Concord, where he died in the

year 1680. This is the first connection of the name of Emerson with

Concord, with which it has since been so long associated.

Edward Emerson, son of the first and father of the second Reverend

Joseph Emerson, though not a minister, was the next thing to being one,

for on his gravestone he is thus recorded: "Mr. Edward Emerson, sometime

Deacon of the first church in Newbury." He was noted for the virtue of

patience, and it is a family tradition that he never complained but

once, when he said mildly to his daughter that her dumplings were

somewhat harder than needful,--"_but not often_." This same Edward was

the only break in the line of ministers who descended from Thomas of

Ipswich. He is remembered in the family as having been "a merchant in

Charlestown."

Their son, the second Reverend Joseph Emerson, Minister of Malden for

nearly half a century, married Mary, the daughter of the Reverend Samuel

Moody,--Father Moody,--of York, Maine. Three of his sons were ministers,

and one of these, William, was pastor of the church at Concord at the

period of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War.

As the successive generations narrow down towards the individual whose

life we are recalling, the character of his progenitors becomes more and

more important and interesting to the biographer. The Reverend William

Emerson, grandfather of Ralph Waldo, was an excellent and popular

preacher and an ardent and devoted patriot. He preached resistance to

tyrants from the pulpit, he encouraged his townsmen and their allies to

make a stand against the soldiers who had marched upon their peaceful

village, and would have taken a part in the Fight at the Bridge, which

he saw from his own house, had not the friends around him prevented

his quitting his doorstep. He left Concord in 1776 to join the army at

Ticonderoga, was taken with fever, was advised to return to Concord and

set out on the journey, but died on his way. His wife was the daughter

of the Reverend Daniel Bliss, his predecessor in the pulpit at Concord.

This was another very noticeable personage in the line of Emerson's

ancestors. His merits and abilities are described at great length on his

tombstone in the Concord burial-ground. There is no reason to doubt that

his epitaph was composed by one who knew him well. But the slabs

which record the excellences of our New England clergymen of the past

generations are so crowded with virtues that the reader can hardly help

inquiring whether a sharp bargain was not driven with the stonecutter,

like that which the good Vicar of Wakefield arranged with the

portrait-painter. He was to represent Sophia as a shepherdess, it will

be remembered, with as many sheep as he could afford to put in for

nothing.

William Emerson left four children, a son bearing the same name, and

three daughters, one of whom, Mary Moody Emerson, is well remembered as

pictured for us by her nephew, Ralph Waldo. His widow became the wife

of the Reverend Ezra Ripley, Doctor of Divinity, and his successor as

Minister at Concord.

The Reverend William Emerson, the second of that name and profession,

and the father of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born in the year 1769, and

graduated at Harvard College in 1789. He was settled as Minister in the

town of Harvard in the year 1792, and in 1799 became Minister of the

First Church in Boston. In 1796 he married Ruth Haskins of Boston. He

died in 1811, leaving five sons, of whom Ralph Waldo was the second.

The interest which attaches itself to the immediate parentage of a man

like Emerson leads us to inquire particularly about the characteristics

of the Reverend William Emerson so far as we can learn them from his own

writings and from the record of his contemporaries.

The Reverend Dr. Sprague's valuable and well-known work, "Annals of the

American Pulpit," contains three letters from which we learn some of

his leading characteristics. Dr. Pierce of Brookline, the faithful

chronicler of his time, speaks of his pulpit talents as extraordinary,

but thinks there was not a perfect sympathy between him and the people

of the quiet little town of Harvard, while he was highly acceptable in

the pulpits of the metropolis. In personal appearance he was attractive;

his voice was melodious, his utterance distinct, his manner agreeable.

"He was a faithful and generous friend and knew how to forgive an

enemy.--In his theological views perhaps he went farther on the liberal

side than most of his brethren with whom he was associated.--He was,

however, perfectly tolerant towards those who differed from him most

widely."

Dr. Charles Lowell, another brother minister, says of him, "Mr. Emerson

was a handsome man, rather tall, with a fair complexion, his cheeks

slightly tinted, his motions easy, graceful, and gentlemanlike, his

manners bland and pleasant. He was an honest man, and expressed himself

decidedly and emphatically, but never bluntly or vulgarly.--Mr. Emerson

was a man of good sense. His conversation was edifying and useful; never

foolish or undignified.--In his theological opinions he was, to say the

least, far from having any sympathy with Calvinism. I have not supposed

that he was, like Dr. Freeman, a Humanitarian, though he may have been

so."

There was no honester chronicler than our clerical Pepys, good, hearty,

sweet-souled, fact-loving Dr. John Pierce of Brookline, who knew the

dates of birth and death of the graduates of Harvard, starred and

unstarred, better, one is tempted to say (_Hibernice_), than they did

themselves. There was not a nobler gentleman in charge of any Boston

parish than Dr. Charles Lowell. But after the pulpit has said what it

thinks of the pulpit, it is well to listen to what the pews have to say

about it.

This is what the late Mr. George Ticknor said in an article in the

"Christian Examiner" for September, 1849.

"Mr. Emerson, transplanted to the First Church in Boston six years

before Mr. Buckminster's settlement, possessed, on the contrary, a

graceful and dignified style of speaking, which was by no means without

its attraction, but he lacked the fervor that could rouse the masses,

and the original resources that could command the few."

As to his religious beliefs, Emerson writes to Dr. Sprague as follows:

"I did not find in any manuscript or printed sermons that I looked

at, any very explicit statement of opinion on the question between

Calvinists and Socinians. He inclines obviously to what is ethical

and universal in Christianity; very little to the personal and

historical.--I think I observe in his writings, as in the writings of

Unitarians down to a recent date, a studied reserve on the subject of

the nature and offices of Jesus. They had not made up their own minds on

it. It was a mystery to them, and they let it remain so."

Mr. William Emerson left, published, fifteen Sermons and Discourses, an

Oration pronounced at Boston on the Fourth of July, 1802, a Collection

of Psalms and Hymns, an Historical Sketch of the First Church in Boston,

besides his contributions to the "Monthly Anthology," of which he was

the Editor.

Ruth Haskins, the wife of William and the mother of Ralph Waldo

Emerson, is spoken of by the late Dr. Frothingham, in an article in the

"Christian Examiner," as a woman "of great patience and fortitude, of

the serenest trust in God, of a discerning spirit, and a most courteous

bearing, one who knew how to guide the affairs of her own house, as long

as she was responsible for that, with the sweetest authority, and knew

how to give the least trouble and the greatest happiness after that

authority was resigned. Both her mind and her character were of a

superior order, and they set their stamp upon manners of peculiar

softness and natural grace and quiet dignity. Her sensible and kindly

speech was always as good as the best instruction; her smile, though it

was ever ready, was a reward."

The Reverend Dr. Furness of Philadelphia, who grew up with her son,

says, "Waldo bore a strong resemblance to his father; the other children

resembled their mother."

Such was the descent of Ralph Waldo Emerson. If the ideas of parents

survive as impressions or tendencies in their descendants, no man had

a better right to an inheritance of theological instincts than this

representative of a long line of ministers. The same trains of thought

and feeling might naturally gain in force from another association of

near family relationship, though not of blood. After the death of the

first William Emerson, the Concord minister, his widow, Mr. Emerson's

grandmother, married, as has been mentioned, his successor, Dr. Ezra

Ripley. The grandson spent much time in the family of Dr. Ripley, whose

character he has drawn with exquisite felicity in a sketch read before

The Social Circle of Concord, and published in the "Atlantic Monthly"

for November, 1883. Mr. Emerson says of him: "He was identified with the

ideas and forms of the New England Church, which expired about the same

time with him, so that he and his coevals seemed the rear guard of the

great camp and army of the Puritans, which, however in its last days

declining into formalism, in the heyday of its strength had planted and

liberated America.... The same faith made what was strong and what was

weak in Dr. Ripley." It would be hard to find a more perfect sketch of

character than Mr. Emerson's living picture of Dr. Ripley. I myself

remember him as a comely little old gentleman, but he was not so

communicative in a strange household as his clerical brethren, smiling

John Foster of Brighton and chatty Jonathan Homer of Newton. Mr. Emerson

says, "He was a natural gentleman; no dandy, but courtly, hospitable,

manly, and public-spirited; his nature social, his house open to all

men.--His brow was serene and open to his visitor, for he loved men, and

he had no studies, no occupations, which company could interrupt. His

friends were his study, and to see them loosened his talents and his

tongue. In his house dwelt order and prudence and plenty. There was

no waste and no stint. He was open-handed and just and generous.

Ingratitude and meanness in his beneficiaries did not wear out his

compassion; he bore the insult, and the next day his basket for the

beggar, his horse and chaise for the cripple, were at their door." How

like Goldsmith's good Dr. Primrose! I do not know any writing of

Mr. Emerson which brings out more fully his sense of humor,--of the

picturesque in character,--and as a piece of composition, continuous,

fluid, transparent, with a playful ripple here and there, it is

admirable and delightful.

Another of his early companionships must have exercised a still more

powerful influence on his character,--that of his aunt, Mary Moody

Emerson. He gave an account of her in a paper read before the Woman's

Club several years ago, and published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for

December, 1883. Far more of Mr. Emerson is to be found in this aunt of

his than in any other of his relations in the ascending series, with

whose history we are acquainted. Her story is an interesting one, but

for that I must refer the reader to the article mentioned. Her character

and intellectual traits are what we are most concerned with. "Her early

reading was Milton, Young, Akenside, Samuel Clarke, Jonathan Edwards,

and always the Bible. Later, Plato, Plotinus, Marcus Antoninus, Stewart,

Coleridge, Herder, Locke, Madam De Staël, Channing, Mackintosh, Byron.

Nobody can read in her manuscript, or recall the conversation of

old-school people, without seeing that Milton and Young had a religious

authority in their minds, and nowise the slight merely entertaining

quality of modern bards. And Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus,--how venerable

and organic as Nature they are in her mind!"

There are many sentences cited by Mr. Emerson which remind us very

strongly of his own writings. Such a passage as the following might have

come from his Essay, "Nature," but it was written when her nephew was

only four years old.

"Malden, 1807, September.--The rapture of feeling I would part from

for days devoted to higher discipline. But when Nature beams with

such excess of beauty, when the heart thrills with hope in its

Author,--feels it is related to Him more than by any ties of

creation,--it exults, too fondly, perhaps, for a state of trial. But

in dead of night, nearer morning, when the eastern stars glow, or

appear to glow, with more indescribable lustre, a lustre which

penetrates the spirits with wonder and curiosity,--then, however

awed, who can fear?"--"A few pulsations of created beings, a few

successions of acts, a few lamps held out in the firmament, enable

us to talk of Time, make epochs, write histories,--to do more,--to

date the revelations of God to man. But these lamps are held to

measure out some of the moments of eternity, to divide the history

of God's operations in the birth and death of nations, of worlds. It

is a goodly name for our notions of breathing, suffering, enjoying,

acting. We personify it. We call it by every name of fleeting,

dreaming, vaporing imagery. Yet it is nothing. We exist in eternity.

Dissolve the body and the night is gone; the stars are extinguished,

and we measure duration by the number of our thoughts, by the

activity of reason, the discovery of truths, the acquirement of

virtue, the approval of God."

Miss Mary Emerson showed something of the same feeling towards natural

science which may be noted in her nephews Waldo and Charles. After

speaking of "the poor old earth's chaotic state, brought so near in its

long and gloomy transmutings by the geologist," she says:--

"Yet its youthful charms, as decked by the hand of Moses'

Cosmogony, will linger about the heart, while Poetry succumbs to

science."--"And the bare bones of this poor embryo earth may give

the idea of the Infinite, far, far better than when dignified with

arts and industry; its oceans, when beating the symbols of countless

ages, than when covered with cargoes of war and oppression. How

grand its preparation for souls, souls who were to feel the

Divinity, before Science had dissected the emotions and applied its

steely analysis to that state of being which recognizes neither

psychology nor element."--"Usefulness, if it requires action, seems

less like existence than the desire of being absorbed in God,

retaining consciousness.... Scorn trifles, lift your aims; do

what you are afraid to do. Sublimity of character must come from

sublimity of motive."

So far as hereditary and family influences can account for the character

and intellect of Ralph Waldo Emerson, we could hardly ask for a better

inborn inheritance, or better counsels and examples.

* * * * *

Having traced some of the distinguishing traits which belong by descent

to Mr. Emerson to those who were before him, it is interesting to note

how far they showed themselves in those of his own generation, his

brothers. Of these I will mention two, one of whom I knew personally.

Edward Bliss Emerson, who graduated at Harvard College in 1824, three

years after Ralph Waldo, held the first place in his class. He began

the study of the law with Daniel Webster, but overworked himself and

suffered a temporary disturbance of his reason. After this he made

another attempt, but found his health unequal to the task and exiled

himself to Porto Rico, where, in 1834, he died. Two poems preserve his

memory, one that of Ralph Waldo, in which he addresses his memory,--

"Ah, brother of the brief but blazing star,"

the other his own "Last Farewell," written in 1832, whilst sailing out

of Boston Harbor. The lines are unaffected and very touching, full of

that deep affection which united the brothers in the closest intimacy,

and of the tenderest love for the mother whom he was leaving to see no

more.

I had in my early youth a key furnished me to some of the leading traits

which were in due time to develop themselves in Emerson's character and

intelligence. As on the wall of some great artist's studio one may find

unfinished sketches which he recognizes as the first growing conceptions

of pictures painted in after years, so we see that Nature often

sketches, as it were, a living portrait, which she leaves in its

rudimentary condition, perhaps for the reason that earth has no colors

which can worthily fill in an outline too perfect for humanity. The

sketch is left in its consummate incompleteness because this mortal life

is not rich enough to carry out the Divine idea.

Such an unfinished but unmatched outline is that which I find in the

long portrait-gallery of memory, recalled by the name of Charles Chauncy

Emerson. Save for a few brief glimpses of another, almost lost among my

life's early shadows, this youth was the most angelic adolescent my eyes

ever beheld. Remembering what well-filtered blood it was that ran in the

veins of the race from which he was descended, those who knew him in

life might well say with Dryden,--

"If by traduction came thy mind

Our wonder is the less to find

A soul so charming from a stock so good."

His image is with me in its immortal youth as when, almost fifty years

ago, I spoke of him in these lines, which I may venture to quote from

myself, since others have quoted them before me.

Thou calm, chaste scholar! I can see thee now,

The first young laurels on thy pallid brow,

O'er thy slight figure floating lightly down

In graceful folds the academic gown,

On thy curled lip the classic lines that taught

How nice the mind that sculptured them with thought,

And triumph glistening in the clear blue eye,

Too bright to live,--but O, too fair to die.

Being about seven years younger than Waldo, he must have received much

of his intellectual and moral guidance at his elder brother's hands.

I told the story at a meeting of our Historical Society of Charles

Emerson's coming into my study,--this was probably in 1826 or

1827,--taking up Hazlitt's "British Poets" and turning at once to a poem

of Marvell's, which he read with his entrancing voice and manner. The

influence of this poet is plain to every reader in some of Emerson's

poems, and Charles' liking for him was very probably caught from Waldo.

When Charles was nearly through college, a periodical called "The

Harvard Register" was published by students and recent graduates. Three

articles were contributed by him to this periodical. Two of them have

the titles "Conversation," "Friendship." His quotations are from Horace

and Juvenal, Plato, Plutarch, Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Shakespeare, and

Scott. There are passages in these Essays which remind one strongly of

his brother, the Lecturer of twenty-five or thirty years later. Take

this as an example:--

"Men and mind are my studies. I need no observatory high in air to

aid my perceptions or enlarge my prospect. I do not want a costly

apparatus to give pomp to my pursuit or to disguise its inutility.

I do not desire to travel and see foreign lands and learn all

knowledge and speak with all tongues, before I am prepared for my

employment. I have merely to go out of my door; nay, I may stay at

home at my chambers, and I shall have enough to do and enjoy."

The feeling of this sentence shows itself constantly in Emerson's poems.

He finds his inspiration in the objects about him, the forest in which

he walks; the sheet of water which the hermit of a couple of seasons

made famous; the lazy Musketaquid; the titmouse that mocked his weakness

in the bitter cold winter's day; the mountain that rose in the horizon;

the lofty pines; the lowly flowers. All talked with him as brothers and

sisters, and he with them as of his own household.

The same lofty idea of friendship which we find in the man in his

maturity, we recognize in one of the Essays of the youth.

"All men of gifted intellect and fine genius," says Charles Emerson,

"must entertain a noble idea of friendship. Our reverence we are

constrained to yield where it is due,--to rank, merit, talents. But

our affections we give not thus easily.

'The hand of Douglas is his own.'"

--"I am willing to lose an hour in gossip with persons whom good

men hold cheap. All this I will do out of regard to the decent

conventions of polite life. But my friends I must know, and,

knowing, I must love. There must be a daily beauty in their life

that shall secure my constant attachment. I cannot stand upon the

footing of ordinary acquaintance. Friendship is aristocratical--the

affections which are prostituted to every suitor I will not accept."

Here are glimpses of what the youth was to be, of what the man who long

outlived him became. Here is the dignity which commands reverence,--a

dignity which, with all Ralph Waldo Emerson's sweetness of manner and

expression, rose almost to majesty in his serene presence. There was

something about Charles Emerson which lifted those he was with into

a lofty and pure region of thought and feeling. A vulgar soul stood

abashed in his presence. I could never think of him in the presence

of such, listening to a paltry sentiment or witnessing a mean action

without recalling Milton's line,

"Back stepped those two fair angels half amazed,"

and thinking how he might well have been taken for a celestial

messenger.

No doubt there is something of idealization in all these reminiscences,

and of that exaggeration which belongs to the _laudator temporis acti_.

But Charles Emerson was idolized in his own time by many in college and

out of college. George Stillman Hillard was his rival. Neck and neck

they ran the race for the enviable position of first scholar in the

class of 1828, and when Hillard was announced as having the first part

assigned to him, the excitement within the college walls, and to some

extent outside of them, was like that when the telegraph proclaims the

result of a Presidential election,--or the Winner of the Derby. But

Hillard honestly admired his brilliant rival. "Who has a part with ****

at this next exhibition?" I asked him one day, as I met him in the

college yard. "***** the Post," answered Hillard. "Why call him _the

Post_?" said I. "He is a wooden creature," said Hillard. "Hear him and

Charles Emerson translating from the Latin _Domus tota inflammata erat_.

The Post will render the words, 'The whole house was on fire.' Charles

Emerson will translate the sentence 'The entire edifice was wrapped in

flames.'" It was natural enough that a young admirer should prefer the

Bernini drapery of Charles Emerson's version to the simple nudity of

"the Post's" rendering.

* * * * *

The nest is made ready long beforehand for the bird which is to be bred

in it and to fly from it. The intellectual atmosphere into which a

scholar is born, and from which he draws the breath of his early mental

life, must be studied if we would hope to understand him thoroughly.

When the present century began, the elements, thrown into confusion

by the long struggle for Independence, had not had time to arrange

themselves in new combinations. The active intellects of the country had

found enough to keep them busy in creating and organizing a new order of

political and social life. Whatever purely literary talent existed was

as yet in the nebular condition, a diffused luminous spot here and

there, waiting to form centres of condensation.

Such a nebular spot had been brightening in and about Boston for a

number of years, when, in the year 1804, a small cluster of names became

visible as representing a modest constellation of literary luminaries:

John Thornton Kirkland, afterwards President of Harvard University;

Joseph Stevens Buckminster; John Sylvester John Gardiner; William Tudor;

Samuel Cooper Thacher; William Emerson. These were the chief stars of

the new cluster, and their light reached the world, or a small part of

it, as reflected from the pages of "The Monthly Anthology," which very

soon came under the editorship of the Reverend William Emerson.

The father of Ralph Waldo Emerson may be judged of in good measure by

the associates with whom he was thus connected. A brief sketch of these

friends and fellow-workers of his may not be out of place, for these

men made the local sphere of thought into which Ralph Waldo Emerson was

born.

John Thornton Kirkland should have been seen and heard as he is

remembered by old graduates of Harvard, sitting in the ancient

Presidential Chair, on Commencement Day, and calling in his penetrating

but musical accents: "_Expectatur Oratio in Lingua Latina_" or

"_Vernacula_," if the "First Scholar" was about to deliver the English

oration. It was a presence not to be forgotten. His "shining morning

face" was round as a baby's, and talked as pleasantly as his voice did,

with smiles for accents and dimples for punctuation. Mr. Ticknor speaks

of his sermons as "full of intellectual wealth and practical wisdom,

with sometimes a quaintness that bordered on humor." It was of him

that the story was always told,--it may be as old as the invention of

printing,--that he threw his sermons into a barrel, where they went to

pieces and got mixed up, and that when he was going to preach he fished

out what he thought would be about enough for a sermon, and patched the

leaves together as he best might. The Reverend Dr. Lowell says: "He

always found the right piece, and that was better than almost any of

his brethren could have found in what they had written with twice the

labor." Mr. Cabot, who knew all Emerson's literary habits, says he used

to fish out the number of leaves he wanted for a lecture in somewhat the

same way. Emerson's father, however, was very methodical, according

to Dr. Lowell, and had "a place for everything, and everything in its

place." Dr. Kirkland left little to be remembered by, and like many of

the most interesting personalities we have met with, has become a very

thin ghost to the grandchildren of his contemporaries.

Joseph Stevens Buckminster was the pulpit darling of his day, in Boston.

The beauty of his person, the perfection of his oratory, the finish of

his style, added to the sweetness of his character, made him one of

those living idols which seem to be as necessary to Protestantism as

images and pictures are to Romanism.

John Sylvester John Gardiner, once a pupil of the famous Dr. Parr, was

then the leading Episcopal clergyman of Boston. Him I reconstruct from

scattered hints I have met with as a scholarly, social man, with a

sanguine temperament and the cheerful ways of a wholesome English

parson, blest with a good constitution and a comfortable benefice. Mild

Orthodoxy, ripened in Unitarian sunshine, is a very agreeable aspect of

Christianity, and none was readier than Dr. Gardiner, if the voice of

tradition may be trusted, to fraternize with his brothers of the liberal

persuasion, and to make common cause with them in all that related to

the interests of learning.

William Tudor was a chief connecting link between the period of the

"Monthly Anthology," and that of the "North American Review," for he was

a frequent contributor to the first of these periodicals, and he was the

founder of the second. Edward Everett characterizes him, in speaking of

his "Letters on the Eastern States," as a scholar and a gentleman, an

impartial observer, a temperate champion, a liberal opponent, and a

correct writer. Daniel Webster bore similar testimony to his talents and

character.

Samuel Cooper Thacher was hardly twenty years old when the "Anthology"

was founded, and died when he was only a little more than thirty. He

contributed largely to that periodical, besides publishing various

controversial sermons, and writing the "Memoir of Buckminster."

There was no more brilliant circle than this in any of our cities.

There was none where so much freedom of thought was united to so much

scholarship. The "Anthology" was the literary precursor of the "North

American Review," and the theological herald of the "Christian

Examiner." Like all first beginnings it showed many marks of immaturity.

It mingled extracts and original contributions, theology and medicine,

with all manner of literary chips and shavings. It had Magazine

ways that smacked of Sylvanus Urban; leading articles with balanced

paragraphs which recalled the marching tramp of Johnson; translations

that might have been signed with the name of Creech, and Odes to

Sensibility, and the like, which recalled the syrupy sweetness and

languid trickle of Laura Matilda's sentimentalities. It talked about

"the London Reviewers" with a kind of provincial deference. It printed

articles with quite too much of the license of Swift and Prior for the

Magazines of to-day. But it had opinions of its own, and would compare

well enough with the "Gentleman's Magazine," to say nothing of "My

Grandmother's Review, the British." A writer in the third volume (1806)

says: "A taste for the belles lettres is rapidly spreading in our

country. I believe that, fifty years ago, England had never seen a

Miscellany or a Review so well conducted as our 'Anthology,' however

superior such publications may now be in that kingdom."

It is well worth one's while to look over the volumes of the "Anthology"

to see what our fathers and grandfathers were thinking about, and how

they expressed themselves. The stiffness of Puritanism was pretty well

relaxed when a Magazine conducted by clergymen could say that "The

child,"--meaning the new periodical,--"shall not be destitute of the

manners of a gentleman, nor a stranger to genteel amusements. He shall

attend Theatres, Museums, Balls, and whatever polite diversions the town

shall furnish." The reader of the "Anthology" will find for his reward

an improving discourse on "Ambition," and a commendable schoolboy's

"theme" on "Inebriation." He will learn something which may be for his

advantage about the "Anjou Cabbage," and may profit by a "Remedy for

Asthma." A controversy respecting the merits of Sir Richard Blackmore

may prove too little exciting at the present time, and he can turn for

relief to the epistle "Studiosus" addresses to "Alcander." If the lines

of "The Minstrel" who hails, like Longfellow in later years, from "The

District of Main," fail to satisfy him, he cannot accuse "R.T. Paine,

Jr., Esq.," of tameness when he exclaims:--

"Rise Columbia, brave and free,

Poise the globe and bound the sea!"

But the writers did not confine themselves to native or even to English

literature, for there is a distinct mention of "Mr. Goethe's new novel,"

and an explicit reference to "Dante Aligheri, an Italian bard." But

let the smiling reader go a little farther and he will find Mr.

Buckminster's most interesting account of the destruction of Goldau.

And in one of these same volumes he will find the article, by Dr. Jacob

Bigelow, doubtless, which was the first hint of our rural cemeteries,

and foreshadowed that new era in our underground civilization which is

sweetening our atmospheric existence.

The late President Josiah Quincy, in his "History of the Boston

Athenaeum," pays a high tribute of respect to the memory and the

labors of the gentlemen who founded that institution and conducted the

"Anthology." A literary journal had already been published in Boston,

but very soon failed for want of patronage. An enterprising firm of

publishers, "being desirous that the work should be continued, applied

to the Reverend William Emerson, a clergyman of the place, distinguished

for energy and literary taste; and by his exertions several gentlemen

of Boston and its vicinity, conspicuous for talent and zealous for

literature, were induced to engage in conducting the work, and for this

purpose they formed themselves into a Society. This Society was not

completely organized until the year 1805, when Dr. Gardiner was elected

President, and William Emerson Vice-President. The Society thus formed

maintained its existence with reputation for about six years, and issued

ten octavo volumes from the press, constituting one of the most lasting

and honorable monuments of the literature of the period, and may be

considered as a true revival of polite learning in this country after

that decay and neglect which resulted from the distractions of the

Revolutionary War, and as forming an epoch in the intellectual history

of the United States. Its records yet remain, an evidence that it was a

pleasant, active, high-principled association of literary men, laboring

harmoniously to elevate the literary standard of the time, and with a

success which may well be regarded as remarkable, considering the little

sympathy they received from the community, and the many difficulties

with which they had to struggle."

The publication of the "Anthology" began in 1804, when Mr. William

Emerson was thirty-four years of age, and it ceased to be published in

the year of his death, 1811. Ralph Waldo Emerson was eight years old at

that time. His intellectual life began, we may say, while the somewhat

obscure afterglow of the "Anthology" was in the western horizon of the

New England sky.

The nebula which was to form a cluster about the "North American Review"

did not take definite shape until 1815. There is no such memorial of

the growth of American literature as is to be found in the first half

century of that periodical. It is easy to find fault with it for uniform

respectability and occasional dulness. But take the names of its

contributors during its first fifty years from the literary record of

that period, and we should have but a meagre list of mediocrities, saved

from absolute poverty by the genius of two or three writers like Irving

and Cooper. Strike out the names of Webster, Everett, Story, Sumner, and

Cushing; of Bryant, Dana, Longfellow, and Lowell; of Prescott, Ticknor,

Motley, Sparks, and Bancroft; of Verplanck, Hillard, and Whipple; of

Stuart and Robinson; of Norton, Palfrey, Peabody, and Bowen; and,

lastly, that of Emerson himself, and how much American classic

literature would be left for a new edition of "Miller's Retrospect"?

These were the writers who helped to make the "North American Review"

what it was during the period of Emerson's youth and early manhood.

These, and men like them, gave Boston its intellectual character. We

may count as symbols the three hills of "this darling town of ours,"

as Emerson called it, and say that each had its beacon. Civil liberty

lighted the torch on one summit, religious freedom caught the flame and

shone from the second, and the lamp of the scholar has burned steadily

on the third from the days when John Cotton preached his first sermon to

those in which we are living.

The social religious influences of the first part of the century

must not be forgotten. The two high-caste religions of that day were

white-handed Unitarianism and ruffled-shirt Episcopalianism. What called

itself "society" was chiefly distributed between them. Within less than

fifty years a social revolution has taken place which has somewhat

changed the relation between these and other worshipping bodies. This

movement is the general withdrawal of the native New Englanders of both

sexes from domestic service. A large part of the "hired help,"--for

the word servant was commonly repudiated,--worshipped, not with their

employers, but at churches where few or no well-appointed carriages

stood at the doors. The congregations that went chiefly from the

drawing-room and those which were largely made up of dwellers in the

culinary studio were naturally separated by a very distinct line of

social cleavage. A certain exclusiveness and fastidiousness, not

reminding us exactly of primitive Christianity, was the inevitable

result. This must always be remembered in judging the men and women

of that day and their immediate descendants, as much as the surviving

prejudices of those whose parents were born subjects of King George in

the days when loyalty to the crown was a virtue. The line of social

separation was more marked, probably, in Boston, the headquarters of

Unitarianism, than in the other large cities; and even at the present

day our Jerusalem and Samaria, though they by no means refuse dealing

with each other, do not exchange so many cards as they do checks and

dollars. The exodus of those children of Israel from the house of

bondage, as they chose to consider it, and their fusion with the mass of

independent citizens, got rid of a class distinction which was felt even

in the sanctuary. True religious equality is harder to establish than

civil liberty. No man has done more for spiritual republicanism than

Emerson, though he came from the daintiest sectarian circle of the time

in the whole country.

Such were Emerson's intellectual and moral parentage, nurture, and

environment; such was the atmosphere in which he grew up from youth to

manhood.

CHAPTER I.

Birthplace.--Boyhood.--College Life.

1803-1823. To _AET_. 20.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 25th of

May, 1803.

He was the second of five sons; William, R.W., Edward Bliss, Robert

Bulkeley, and Charles Chauncy.

His birthplace and that of our other illustrious Bostonian, Benjamin

Franklin, were within a kite-string's distance of each other. When

the baby philosopher of the last century was carried from Milk Street

through the narrow passage long known as Bishop's Alley, now Hawley

Street, he came out in Summer Street, very nearly opposite the spot

where, at the beginning of this century, stood the parsonage of the

First Church, the home of the Reverend William Emerson, its pastor, and

the birthplace of his son, Ralph Waldo. The oblong quadrangle between

Newbury, now Washington Street, Pond, now Bedford Street, Summer Street,

and the open space called Church Green, where the New South Church was

afterwards erected, is represented on Bonner's maps of 1722 and 1769 as

an almost blank area, not crossed or penetrated by a single passageway.

Even so late as less than half a century ago this region was still a

most attractive little _rus in urbe_. The sunny gardens of the late

Judge Charles Jackson and the late Mr. S.P. Gardner opened their flowers

and ripened their fruits in the places now occupied by great warehouses

and other massive edifices. The most aristocratic pears, the "Saint

Michael," the "Brown Bury," found their natural homes in these sheltered

enclosures. The fine old mansion of Judge William Prescott looked out

upon these gardens. Some of us can well remember the window of his

son's, the historian's, study, the light from which used every evening

to glimmer through the leaves of the pear-trees while "The Conquest of

Mexico" was achieving itself under difficulties hardly less formidable

than those encountered by Cortes. It was a charmed region in which

Emerson first drew his breath, and I am fortunate in having a

communication from one who knew it and him longer than almost any other

living person.

Mr. John Lowell Gardner, a college classmate and life-long friend of Mr.

Emerson, has favored me with a letter which contains matters of

interest concerning him never before given to the public. With his kind

permission I have made some extracts and borrowed such facts as seemed

especially worthy of note from his letter.

"I may be said to have known Emerson from the very beginning. A very

low fence divided my father's estate in Summer Street from the field

in which I remember the old wooden parsonage to have existed,--but

this field, when we were very young, was to be covered by Chauncy

Place Church and by the brick houses on Summer Street. Where the

family removed to I do not remember, but I always knew the boys,

William, Ralph, and perhaps Edward, and I again associated with

Ralph at the Latin School, where we were instructed by Master Gould

from 1815 to 1817, entering College in the latter year.

"... I have no recollection of his relative rank as a scholar, but it

was undoubtedly high, though not the highest. He never was idle or a

lounger, nor did he ever engage in frivolous pursuits. I should say

that his conduct was absolutely faultless. It was impossible that

there should be any feeling about him but of regard and affection.

He had then the same manner and courtly hesitation in addressing you

that you have known in him since. Still, he was not prominent in the

class, and, but for what all the world has since known of him,

his would not have been a conspicuous figure to his classmates in

recalling College days.

"The fact that we were almost the only Latin School fellows in the

class, and the circumstance that he was slow during the Freshman

year to form new acquaintances, brought us much together, and an

intimacy arose which continued through our College life. We were in

the habit of taking long strolls together, often stopping for repose

at distant points, as at Mount Auburn, etc.... Emerson was not

talkative; he never spoke for effect; his utterances were well

weighed and very deliberately made, but there was a certain flash

when he uttered anything that was more than usually worthy to be

remembered. He was so universally amiable and complying that my

evil spirit would sometimes instigate me to take advantage of his

gentleness and forbearance, but nothing could disturb his

equanimity. All that was wanting to render him an almost perfect

character was a few harsher traits and perhaps more masculine vigor.

"On leaving College our paths in life were so remote from each other

that we met very infrequently. He soon became, as it were, public

property, and I was engrossed for many years in my commercial

undertakings. All his course of life is known to many survivors. I

am inclined to believe he had a most liberal spirit. I remember that

some years since, when it was known that our classmate ---- was

reduced almost to absolute want by the war, in which he lost his two

sons, Emerson exerted himself to raise a fund among his classmates

for his relief, and, there being very few possible subscribers, made

what I considered a noble contribution, and this you may be sure was

not from any Southern sentiment on the part of Emerson. I send you

herewith the two youthful productions of Emerson of which I spoke to

you some time since."

The first of these is a prose Essay of four pages, written for a

discussion in which the Professions of Divinity, Medicine, and Law were

to be weighed against each other. Emerson had the Lawyer's side to

advocate. It is a fair and sensible paper, not of special originality or

brilliancy. His opening paragraph is worth citing, as showing the same

instinct for truth which displayed itself in all his after writings and

the conduct of his life.

"It is usual in advocating a favorite subject to appropriate all

possible excellence, and endeavor to concentrate every doubtful

auxiliary, that we may fortify to the utmost the theme of our

attention. Such a design should be utterly disdained, except as far

as is consistent with fairness; and the sophistry of weak arguments

being abandoned, a bold appeal should be made to the heart, for

the tribute of honest conviction, with regard to the merits of the

subject."

From many boys this might sound like well-meaning commonplace, but in

the history of Mr. Emerson's life that "bold appeal to the heart," that

"tribute of honest conviction," were made eloquent and real. The

boy meant it when he said it. To carry out his law of sincerity and

self-trust the man had to sacrifice much that was dear to him, but he

did not flinch from his early principles.

It must not be supposed that the blameless youth was an ascetic in his

College days. The other old manuscript Mr. Gardner sends me is marked

"'Song for Knights of Square Table,' R.W.E."

There are twelve verses of this song, with a chorus of two lines. The

Muses and all the deities, not forgetting Bacchus, were duly invited to

the festival.

"Let the doors of Olympus be open for all

To descend and make merry in Chivalry's hall."

* * * * *

Mr. Sanborn has kindly related to me several circumstances told him by

Emerson about his early years.

The parsonage was situated at the corner of Summer and what is now

Chauncy streets. It had a yard, and an orchard which Emerson said was as

large as Dr. Ripley's, which might have been some two or three acres.

Afterwards there was a brick house looking on Summer Street, in which

Emerson the father lived. It was separated, Emerson said, by a brick

wall from a garden in which _pears grew_ (a fact a boy is likely to

remember). Master Ralph Waldo used to _sit on this wall_,--but we cannot

believe he ever got off it on the wrong side, unless politely asked to

do so. On the occasion of some alarm the little boy was carried in his

nightgown to a neighboring house.

After Reverend William Emerson's death Mrs. Emerson removed to a house

in Beacon Street, where the Athenaeum Building now stands. She kept some

boarders,--among them Lemuel Shaw, afterwards Chief Justice of the State

of Massachusetts. It was but a short distance to the Common, and Waldo

and Charles used to drive their mother's cow there to pasture.

* * * * *

The Reverend Doctor Rufus Ellis, the much respected living successor of

William Emerson as Minister of the First Church, says that R.W. Emerson

must have been born in the old parsonage, as his father (who died

when he was eight years old) lived but a very short time in "the new

parsonage," which was, doubtless, the "brick house" above referred to.

* * * * *

We get a few glimpses of the boy from other sources. Mr. Cooke tells us

that he entered the public grammar school at the age of eight years, and

soon afterwards the Latin School. At the age of eleven he was turning

Virgil into very readable English heroics. He loved the study of Greek;

was fond of reading history and given to the frequent writing of verses.

But he thinks "the idle books under the bench at the Latin School" were

as profitable to him as his regular studies.

Another glimpse of him is that given us by Mr. Ireland from the "Boyhood

Memories" of Rufus Dawes. His old schoolmate speaks of him as "a

spiritual-looking boy in blue nankeen, who seems to be about ten years

old,--whose image more than any other is still deeply stamped upon my

mind, as I then saw him and loved him, I knew not why, and thought him

so angelic and remarkable." That "blue nankeen" sounds strangely, it may

be, to the readers of this later generation, but in the first quarter

of the century blue and yellow or buff-colored cotton from China were a

common summer clothing of children. The places where the factories and

streets of the cities of Lowell and Lawrence were to rise were then open

fields and farms. My recollection is that we did not think very highly

of ourselves when we were in blue nankeen,--a dull-colored fabric, too

nearly of the complexion of the slates on which we did our ciphering.

Emerson was not particularly distinguished in College. Having a near

connection in the same class as he, and being, as a Cambridge boy,

generally familiar with the names of the more noted young men in College

from the year when George Bancroft, Caleb Cushing, and Francis William

Winthrop graduated until after I myself left College, I might have

expected to hear something of a young man who afterwards became one of

the great writers of his time. I do not recollect hearing of him except

as keeping school for a short time in Cambridge, before he settled as a

minister. His classmate, Mr. Josiah Quincy, writes thus of his college

days:--

"Two only of my classmates can be fairly said to have got into

history, although one of them, Charles W. Upham [the connection of

mine referred to above] has written history very acceptably. Ralph

Waldo Emerson and Robert W. Barnwell, for widely different reasons,

have caused their names to be known to well-informed Americans. Of

Emerson, I regret to say, there are few notices in my journals. Here

is the sort of way in which I speak of the man who was to make so

profound an impression upon the thought of his time. 'I went to the

chapel to hear Emerson's dissertation: a very good one, but rather

too long to give much pleasure to the hearers.' The fault, I

suspect, was in the hearers; and another fact which I have mentioned

goes to confirm this belief. It seems that Emerson accepted the duty

of delivering the Poem on Class Day, after seven others had been

asked who positively, refused. So it appears that, in the opinion of

this critical class, the author of the 'Woodnotes' and the 'Humble

Bee' ranked about eighth in poetical ability. It can only be because

the works of the other five [seven] have been 'heroically unwritten'

that a different impression has come to prevail in the outside

world. But if, according to the measurement of undergraduates,

Emerson's ability as a poet was not conspicuous, it must also be

admitted that, in the judgment of persons old enough to know better,

he was not credited with that mastery of weighty prose which the

world has since accorded him. In our senior year the higher classes

competed for the Boylston prizes for English composition. Emerson

and I sent in our essays with the rest and were fortunate enough to

take the two prizes; but--Alas for the infallibility of academic

decisions! Emerson received the second prize. I was of course much

pleased with the award of this intelligent committee, and should

have been still more gratified had they mentioned that the man who

was to be the most original and influential writer born in America

was my unsuccessful competitor. But Emerson, incubating over deeper

matters than were dreamt of in the established philosophy of

elegant letters, seems to have given no sign of the power that was

fashioning itself for leadership in a new time. He was quiet,

unobtrusive, and only a fair scholar according to the standard of

the College authorities. And this is really all I have to say about

my most distinguished classmate."

Barnwell, the first scholar in the class, delivered the Valedictory

Oration, and Emerson the Poem. Neither of these performances was highly

spoken of by Mr. Quincy.

I was surprised to find by one of the old Catalogues that Emerson

roomed during a part of his College course with a young man whom I well

remember, J.G.K. Gourdin. The two Gourdins, Robert and John Gaillard

Keith, were dashing young fellows as I recollect them, belonging to

Charleston, South Carolina. The "Southerners" were the reigning College

_elegans_ of that time, the _merveilleux_, the _mirliflores_, of their

day. Their swallow-tail coats tapered to an arrow-point angle, and the

prints of their little delicate calfskin boots in the snow were objects

of great admiration to the village boys of the period. I cannot help

wondering what brought Emerson and the showy, fascinating John Gourdin

together as room-mates.

CHAPTER II.

1823-1828. AET. 20-25.

Extract from a Letter to a Classmate.--School-Teaching.--Study of

Divinity.--"Approbated" to Preach.--Visit to the South.--Preaching in

Various Places.

We get a few brief glimpses of Emerson during the years following his

graduation. He writes in 1823 to a classmate who had gone from Harvard

to Andover:--

"I am delighted to hear there is such a profound studying of German

and Hebrew, Parkhurst and Jahn, and such other names as the memory

aches to think of, on foot at Andover. Meantime, Unitarianism will

not hide her honors; as many hard names are taken, and as much

theological mischief is planned, at Cambridge as at Andover. By the

time this generation gets upon the stage, if the controversy will

not have ceased, it will run such a tide that we shall hardly

he able to speak to one another, and there will be a Guelf and

Ghibelline quarrel, which cannot tell where the differences lie."

"You can form no conception how much one grovelling in the city

needs the excitement and impulse of literary example. The sight of

broad vellum-bound quartos, the very mention of Greek and German

names, the glimpse of a dusty, tugging scholar, will wake you up to

emulation for a month."

After leaving College, and while studying Divinity, Emerson employed a

part of his time in giving instruction in several places successively.

Emerson's older brother William was teaching in Boston, and Ralph Waldo,

after graduating, joined him in that occupation. In the year 1825 or

1826, he taught school also in Chelmsford, a town of Middlesex County,

Massachusetts, a part of which helped to constitute the city of Lowell.

One of his pupils in that school, the Honorable Josiah Gardiner Abbott,

has favored me with the following account of his recollections:--

The school of which Mr. Emerson had the charge was an old-fashioned

country "Academy." Mr. Emerson was probably studying for the ministry

while teaching there. Judge Abbott remembers the impression he made

on the boys. He was very grave, quiet, and very impressive in his

appearance. There was something engaging, almost fascinating, about him;

he was never harsh or severe, always perfectly self-controlled, never

punished except with words, but exercised complete command over the

boys. His old pupil recalls the stately, measured way in which, for some

offence the little boy had committed, he turned on him, saying only

these two words: "Oh, sad!" That was enough, for he had the faculty of

making the boys love him. One of his modes of instruction was to give

the boys a piece of reading to carry home with them,--from some book

like Plutarch's Lives,--and the next day to examine them and find out

how much they retained from their reading. Judge Abbott remembers a

peculiar look in his eyes, as if he saw something beyond what seemed to

be in the field of vision. The whole impression left on this pupil's

mind was such as no other teacher had ever produced upon him.

Mr. Emerson also kept a school for a short time at Cambridge, and among

his pupils was Mr. John Holmes. His impressions seem to be very much

like those of Judge Abbott.

My brother speaks of Mr. Emerson thus:--

"Calm, as not doubting the virtue residing in his sceptre. Rather

stern in his very infrequent rebukes. Not inclined to win boys by a

surface amiability, but kindly in explanation or advice. Every inch

a king in his dominion. Looking back, he seems to me rather like a

captive philosopher set to tending flocks; resigned to his destiny,

but not amused with its incongruities. He once recommended the use

of rhyme as a cohesive for historical items."

In 1823, two years after graduating, Emerson began studying for the

ministry. He studied under the direction of Dr. Charming, attending some

of the lectures in the Divinity School at Cambridge, though not enrolled

as one of its regular students.

The teachings of that day were such as would now be called

"old-fashioned Unitarianism." But no creed can be held to be a finality.

From Edwards to Mayhew, from Mayhew to Channing, from Channing to

Emerson, the passage is like that which leads from the highest lock of

a canal to the ocean level. It is impossible for human nature to remain

permanently shut up in the highest lock of Calvinism. If the gates are

not opened, the mere leakage of belief or unbelief will before long fill

the next compartment, and the freight of doctrine finds itself on

the lower level of Arminianism, or Pelagianism, or even subsides to

Arianism. From this level to that of Unitarianism the outlet is freer,

and the subsidence more rapid. And from Unitarianism to Christian

Theism, the passage is largely open for such as cannot accept the

evidence of the supernatural in the history of the church.

There were many shades of belief in the liberal churches. If De

Tocqueville's account of Unitarian preaching in Boston at the time of

his visit is true, the Savoyard Vicar of Rousseau would have preached

acceptably in some of our pulpits. In fact, the good Vicar might have

been thought too conservative by some of our unharnessed theologians.

At the period when Emerson reached manhood, Unitarianism was the

dominating form of belief in the more highly educated classes of both of

the two great New England centres, the town of Boston and the University

at Cambridge. President Kirkland was at the head of the College, Henry

Ware was Professor of Theology, Andrews Norton of Sacred Literature,

followed in 1830 by John Gorham Palfrey in the same office. James

Freeman, Charles Lowell, and William Ellery Channing were preaching in

Boston. I have mentioned already as a simple fact of local history, that

the more exclusive social circles of Boston and Cambridge were chiefly

connected with the Unitarian or Episcopalian churches. A Cambridge

graduate of ambition and ability found an opening far from undesirable

in a worldly point of view, in a profession which he was led to choose

by higher motives. It was in the Unitarian pulpit that the brilliant

talents of Buckminster and Everett had found a noble eminence from which

their light could shine before men.

Descended from a long line of ministers, a man of spiritual nature, a

reader of Plato, of Augustine, of Jeremy Taylor, full of hope for his

fellow-men, and longing to be of use to them, conscious, undoubtedly, of

a growing power of thought, it was natural that Emerson should turn from

the task of a school-master to the higher office of a preacher. It is

hard to conceive of Emerson in either of the other so-called learned

professions. His devotion to truth for its own sake and his feeling

about science would have kept him out of both those dusty highways. His

brother William had previously begun the study of Divinity, but found

his mind beset with doubts and difficulties, and had taken to the

profession of Law. It is not unlikely that Mr. Emerson was more or less

exercised with the same questionings. He has said, speaking of his

instructors: "If they had examined me, they probably would not have let

me preach at all." His eyes had given him trouble, so that he had not

taken notes of the lectures which he heard in the Divinity School, which

accounted for his being excused from examination. In 1826, after three

years' study, he was "approbated to preach" by the Middlesex Association

of Ministers. His health obliging him to seek a southern climate, he

went in the following winter to South Carolina and Florida. During this

absence he preached several times in Charleston and other places. On his

return from the South he preached in New Bedford, in Northampton, in

Concord, and in Boston. His attractiveness as a preacher, of which we

shall have sufficient evidence in a following chapter, led to his

being invited to share the duties of a much esteemed and honored city

clergyman, and the next position in which we find him is that of a

settled Minister in Boston.

CHAPTER III.

1828-1833. AET. 25-30.

Settled as Colleague of Rev. Henry Ware.--Married to Ellen Louisa

Tucker.--Sermon at the Ordination of Rev. H.B. Goodwin.--His Pastoral

and Other Labors.--Emerson and Father Taylor.--Death of Mrs.

Emerson.--Difference of Opinion with some of his Parishioners.--Sermon

Explaining his Views.--Resignation of his Pastorate.

On the 11th of March, 1829, Emerson was ordained as colleague with

the Reverend Henry Ware, Minister of the Second Church in Boston. In

September of the same year he was married to Miss Ellen Louisa Tucker.

The resignation of his colleague soon after his settlement threw all the

pastoral duties upon the young minister, who seems to have performed

them diligently and acceptably. Mr. Conway gives the following brief

account of his labors, and tells in the same connection a story of

Father Taylor too good not to be repeated:--

"Emerson took an active interest in the public affairs of Boston.

He was on its School Board, and was chosen chaplain of the State

Senate. He invited the anti-slavery lecturers into his church, and

helped philanthropists of other denominations in their work. Father

Taylor [the Methodist preacher to the sailors], to whom Dickens gave

an English fame, found in him his most important supporter when

establishing the Seaman's Mission in Boston. This was told me by

Father Taylor himself in his old age. I happened to be in his

company once, when he spoke rather sternly about my leaving the

Methodist Church; but when I spoke of the part Emerson had in it, he

softened at once, and spoke with emotion of his great friend. I have

no doubt that if the good Father of Boston Seamen was proud of any

personal thing, it was of the excellent answer he is said to have

given to some Methodists who objected to his friendship for Emerson.

Being a Unitarian, they insisted that he must go to"--[the place

which a divine of Charles the Second's day said it was not good

manners to mention in church].--"'It does look so,' said Father

Taylor, 'but I am sure of one thing: if Emerson goes to'"--[that

place]--"'he will change the climate there, and emigration will set

that way.'"

In 1830, Emerson took part in the services at the ordination of the

Reverend H.B. Goodwin as Dr. Ripley's colleague. His address on giving

the right hand of fellowship was printed, but is not included among his

collected works.

The fair prospects with which Emerson began his life as a settled

minister were too soon darkened. In February, 1832, the wife of

his youth, who had been for some time in failing health, died of

consumption.

He had become troubled with doubts respecting a portion of his duties,

and it was not in his nature to conceal these doubts from his people. On

the 9th of September, 1832, he preached a sermon on the Lord's Supper,

in which he announced unreservedly his conscientious scruples against

administering that ordinance, and the grounds upon which those scruples

were founded. This discourse, as his only printed sermon, and as one

which heralded a movement in New England theology which has never

stopped from that day to this, deserves some special notice. The sermon

is in no sense "Emersonian" except in its directness, its sweet temper,

and outspoken honesty. He argues from his comparison of texts in a

perfectly sober, old-fashioned way, as his ancestor Peter Bulkeley might

have done. It happened to that worthy forefather of Emerson that upon

his "pressing a piece of _Charity_ disagreeable to the will of the

_Ruling Elder_, there was occasioned an unhappy _Discord_ in the Church

of _Concord_; which yet was at last healed, by their calling in the help

of a _Council_ and the _Ruling Elder's_ Abdication." So says Cotton

Mather. Whether zeal had grown cooler or charity grown warmer in

Emerson's days we need not try to determine. The sermon was only a more

formal declaration of views respecting the Lord's Supper, which he had

previously made known in a conference with some of the most active

members of his church. As a committee of the parish reported resolutions

radically differing from his opinion on the subject, he preached this

sermon and at the same time resigned his office. There was no "discord,"

there was no need of a "council." Nothing could be more friendly, more

truly Christian, than the manner in which Mr. Emerson expressed himself

in this parting discourse. All the kindness of his nature warms it

throughout. He details the differences of opinion which have existed

in the church with regard to the ordinance. He then argues from the

language of the Evangelists that it was not intended to be a permanent

institution. He takes up the statement of Paul in the Epistle to the

Corinthians, which he thinks, all things considered, ought not to alter

our opinion derived from the Evangelists. He does not think that we are

to rely upon the opinions and practices of the primitive church. If that

church believed the institution to be permanent, their belief does not

settle the question for us. On every other subject, succeeding times

have learned to form a judgment more in accordance with the spirit of

Christianity than was the practice of the early ages.

"But, it is said, 'Admit that the rite was not designed to be

perpetual.' What harm doth it?"

He proceeds to give reasons which show it to be inexpedient to continue

the observance of the rite. It was treating that as authoritative which,

as he believed that he had shown from Scripture, was not so. It confused

the idea of God by transferring the worship of Him to Christ. Christ is

the Mediator only as the instructor of man. In the least petition to God

"the soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no more present to your

mind than your brother or child." Again:--

"The use of the elements, however suitable to the people and the

modes of thought in the East, where it originated, is foreign and

unsuited to affect us. The day of formal religion is past, and we

are to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul. The Jewish

was a religion of forms; it was all body, it had no life, and the

Almighty God was pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach

men that they must serve him with the heart; that only that life was

religious which was thoroughly good; that sacrifice was smoke and

forms were shadows. This man lived and died true to that purpose;

and with his blessed word and life before us, Christians must

contend that it is a matter of vital importance,--really a duty to

commemorate him by a certain form, whether that form be acceptable

to their understanding or not. Is not this to make vain the gift of

God? Is not this to turn back the hand on the dial?"

To these objections he adds the practical consideration that it brings

those who do not partake of the communion service into an unfavorable

relation with those who do.

The beautiful spirit of the man shows itself in all its noble sincerity

in these words at the close of his argument:--

"Having said this, I have said all. I have no hostility to this

institution; I am only stating my want of sympathy with it. Neither

should I ever have obtruded this opinion upon other people, had I

not been called by my office to administer it. That is the end of

my opposition, that I am not interested in it. I am content that it

stand to the end of the world if it please men and please Heaven,

and I shall rejoice in all the good it produces."

He then announces that, as it is the prevailing opinion and feeling

in our religious community that it is a part of a pastor's duties to

administer this rite, he is about to resign the office which had been

confided to him.

This is the only sermon of Mr. Emerson's ever published. It was

impossible to hear or to read it without honoring the preacher for his

truthfulness, and recognizing the force of his statement and reasoning.

It was equally impossible that he could continue his ministrations

over a congregation which held to the ordinance he wished to give up

entirely. And thus it was, that with the most friendly feelings on

both sides, Mr. Emerson left the pulpit of the Second Church and found

himself obliged to make a beginning in a new career.

CHAPTER IV.

1833-1838. AET. 30-35.

Section 1. Visit to Europe.--On his Return preaches in Different

Places.--Emerson in the Pulpit.--At Newton.--Fixes his Residence at

Concord.--The Old Manse.--Lectures in Boston.--Lectures on

Michael Angelo and on Milton published in the "North American

Review."--Beginning of the Correspondence with Carlyle.--Letters to the

Rev. James Freeman Clarke.--Republication of "Sartor Resartus."

Section 2. Emerson's Second Marriage.--His New Residence in

Concord.--Historical Address.--Course of Ten Lectures on English

Literature delivered in Boston.--The Concord Battle Hymn.--Preaching

in Concord and East Lexington.--Accounts of his Preaching by

Several Hearers.--A Course of Lectures on the Nature and Ends of

History.--Address on War.--Death of Edward Bliss Emerson.--Death of

Charles Chauncy Emerson.

Section 3. Publication of "Nature."--Outline of this Essay.--Its

Reception.--Address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

Section 1. In the year 1833 Mr. Emerson visited Europe for the first

time. A great change had come over his life, and he needed the relief

which a corresponding change of outward circumstances might afford

him. A brief account of this visit is prefixed to the volume entitled

"English Traits." He took a short tour, in which he visited Sicily,

Italy, and France, and, crossing from Boulogne, landed at the Tower

Stairs in London. He finds nothing in his Diary to publish concerning

visits to places. But he saw a number of distinguished persons, of whom

he gives pleasant accounts, so singularly different in tone from the

rough caricatures in which Carlyle vented his spleen and caprice, that

one marvels how the two men could have talked ten minutes together,

or would wonder, had not one been as imperturbable as the other was

explosive. Horatio Greenough and Walter Savage Landor are the chief

persons he speaks of as having met upon the Continent. Of these he

reports various opinions as delivered in conversation. He mentions

incidentally that he visited Professor Amici, who showed him his

microscopes "magnifying (it was said) two thousand diameters." Emerson

hardly knew his privilege; he may have been the first American to look

through an immersion lens with the famous Modena professor. Mr. Emerson

says that his narrow and desultory reading had inspired him with the

wish to see the faces of three or four writers, Coleridge, Wordsworth,

Landor, De Quincey, Carlyle. His accounts of his interviews with

these distinguished persons are too condensed to admit of further

abbreviation. Goethe and Scott, whom he would have liked to look upon,

were dead; Wellington he saw at Westminster Abbey, at the funeral of

Wilberforce. His impressions of each of the distinguished persons whom

he visited should be looked at in the light of the general remark which,

follows:--

"The young scholar fancies it happiness enough to live with people

who can give an inside to the world; without reflecting that

they are prisoners, too, of their own thought, and cannot apply

themselves to yours. The conditions of literary success are almost

destructive of the best social power, as they do not have that

frolic liberty which only can encounter a companion on the best

terms. It is probable you left some obscure comrade at a tavern, or

in the farms, with right mother-wit, and equality to life, when you

crossed sea and land to play bo-peep with celebrated scribes. I

have, however, found writers superior to their books, and I cling to

my first belief that a strong head will dispose fast enough of these

impediments, and give one the satisfaction of reality, the sense of

having been met, and a larger horizon."

Emerson carried a letter of introduction to a gentleman in Edinburgh,

who, being unable to pay him all the desired attention, handed him over

to Mr. Alexander Ireland, who has given a most interesting account of

him as he appeared during that first visit to Europe. Mr. Ireland's

presentation of Emerson as he heard him in the Scotch pulpit shows

that he was not less impressive and attractive before an audience of

strangers than among his own countrymen and countrywomen:--

"On Sunday, the 18th of August, 1833, I heard him deliver a discourse in

the Unitarian Chapel, Young Street, Edinburgh, and I remember distinctly

the effect which it produced on his hearers. It is almost needless to

say that nothing like it had ever been heard by them before, and many of

them did not know what to make of it. The originality of his thoughts,

the consummate beauty of the language in which they were clothed, the

calm dignity of his bearing, the absence of all oratorical effort, and

the singular directness and simplicity of his manner, free from the

least shadow of dogmatic assumption, made a deep impression on me. Not

long before this I had listened to a wonderful sermon by Dr. Chalmers,

whose force, and energy, and vehement, but rather turgid eloquence

carried, for the moment, all before them,--his audience becoming like

clay in the hands of the potter. But I must confess that the pregnant

thoughts and serene self-possession of the young Boston minister had a

greater charm for me than all the rhetorical splendors of Chalmers. His

voice was the sweetest, the most winning and penetrating of any I ever

heard; nothing like it have I listened to since.

'That music in our hearts we bore

Long after it was heard no more.'"

Mr. George Gilfillan speaks of "the solemnity of his manner, and the

earnest thought pervading his discourse."

As to the effect of his preaching on his American audiences, I find the

following evidence in Mr. Cooke's diligently gathered collections. Mr.

Sanborn says:--

"His pulpit eloquence was singularly attractive, though by no means

equally so to all persons. In 1829, before the two friends had met,

Bronson Alcott heard him preach in Dr. Channing's church on 'The

Universality of the Moral Sentiment,' and was struck, as he said,

with the youth of the preacher, the beauty of his elocution and the

direct and sincere manner in which he addressed his hearers."

Mr. Charles Congdon, of New Bedford, well known as a popular

writer, gives the following account of Emerson's preaching in his

"Reminiscences." I borrow the quotation from Mr. Conway:--

"One day there came into our pulpit the most gracious of mortals,

with a face all benignity, who gave out the first hymn and made the

first prayer as an angel might have read and prayed. Our choir was

a pretty good one, but its best was coarse and discordant after

Emerson's voice. I remember of the sermon only that it had an

indefinite charm of simplicity and wisdom, with occasional

illustrations from nature, which were about the most delicate and

dainty things of the kind which I had ever heard. I could understand

them, if not the fresh philosophical novelties of the discourse."

Everywhere Emerson seems to have pleased his audiences. The Reverend Dr.

Morison, formerly the much respected Unitarian minister of New Bedford,

writes to me as follows:--

"After Dr. Dewey left New Bedford, Mr. Emerson preached there

several months, greatly to the satisfaction and delight of those who

heard him. The Society would have been glad to settle him as their

minister, and he would have accepted a call, had it not been for

some difference of opinion, I think, in regard to the communion

service. Judge Warren, who was particularly his friend, and had at

that time a leading influence in the parish, with all his admiration

for Mr. Emerson, did not think he could well be the pastor of a

Christian church, and so the matter was settled between him and his

friend, without any action by the Society."

All this shows well enough that his preaching was eminently acceptable.

But every one who has heard him lecture can form an idea of what he must

have been as a preacher. In fact, we have all listened, probably, to

many a passage from old sermons of his,--for he tells us he borrowed

from those old sermons for his lectures,--without ever thinking of the

pulpit from which they were first heard.

Among the stray glimpses we get of Emerson between the time when he

quitted the pulpit of his church and that when he came before the public

as a lecturer is this, which I owe to the kindness of Hon. Alexander H.

Rice. In 1832 or 1833, probably the latter year, he, then a boy, with

another boy, Thomas R. Gould, afterwards well known as a sculptor, being

at the Episcopal church in Newton, found that Mr. Emerson was sitting in

the pew behind them. Gould knew Mr. Emerson, and introduced young Rice

to him, and they walked down the street together. As they went along,

Emerson burst into a rhapsody over the Psalms of David, the sublimity of

thought, and the poetic beauty of expression of which they are full, and

spoke also with enthusiasm of the Te Deum as that grand old hymn which

had come down through the ages, voicing the praises of generation after

generation.

When they parted at the house of young Rice's father, Emerson invited

the boys to come and see him at the Allen farm, in the afternoon. They

came to a piece of woods, and, as they entered it, took their hats off.

"Boys," said Emerson, "here we recognize the presence of the Universal

Spirit. The breeze says to us in its own language, How d' ye do? How d'

ye do? and we have already taken our hats off and are answering it with

our own How d' ye do? How d' ye do? And all the waving branches of

the trees, and all the flowers, and the field of corn yonder, and the

singing brook, and the insect and the bird,--every living thing and

things we call inanimate feel the same divine universal impulse while

they join with us, and we with them, in the greeting which is the

salutation of the Universal Spirit."

We perceive the same feeling which pervades many of Emerson's earlier

Essays and much of his verse, in these long-treasured reminiscences

of the poetical improvisation with which the two boys were thus

unexpectedly favored. Governor Rice continues:--

"You know what a captivating charm there always was in Emerson's

presence, but I can never tell you how this line of thought then

impressed a country boy. I do not remember anything about the

remainder of that walk, nor of the after-incidents of that day,--I

only remember that I went home wondering about that mystical dream

of the Universal Spirit, and about what manner of man he was under

whose influence I had for the first time come....

"The interview left impressions that led me into new channels of

thought which have been a life-long pleasure to me, and, I doubt

not, taught me somewhat how to distinguish between mere theological

dogma and genuine religion in the soul."

In the summer of 1834 Emerson became a resident of Concord,

Massachusetts, the town of his forefathers, and the place destined to

be his home for life. He first lived with his venerable connection, Dr.

Ripley, in the dwelling made famous by Hawthorne as the "Old Manse." It

is an old-fashioned gambrel-roofed house, standing close to the scene

of the Fight on the banks of the river. It was built for the Reverend

William Emerson, his grandfather. In one of the rooms of this house

Emerson wrote "Nature," and in the same room, some years later,

Hawthorne wrote "Mosses from an Old Manse."

The place in which Emerson passed the greater part of his life well

deserves a special notice. Concord might sit for its portrait as an

ideal New England town. If wanting in the variety of surface which

many other towns can boast of, it has at least a vision of the distant

summits of Monadnock and Wachusett. It has fine old woods, and noble

elms to give dignity to its open spaces. Beautiful ponds, as they

modestly call themselves,--one of which, Walden, is as well known in our

literature as Windermere in that of Old England,--lie quietly in their

clean basins. And through the green meadows runs, or rather lounges,

a gentle, unsalted stream, like an English river, licking its grassy

margin with a sort of bovine placidity and contentment. This is the

Musketaquid, or Meadow River, which, after being joined by the more

restless Assabet, still keeps its temper and flows peacefully along by

and through other towns, to lose itself in the broad Merrimac. The names

of these rivers tell us that Concord has an Indian history, and there is

evidence that it was a favorite residence of the race which preceded our

own. The native tribes knew as well as the white settlers where were

pleasant streams and sweet springs, where corn grew tall in the meadows

and fish bred fast in the unpolluted waters.

The place thus favored by nature can show a record worthy of its

physical attractions. Its settlement under the lead of Emerson's

ancestor, Peter Bulkeley, was effected in the midst of many

difficulties, which the enterprise and self-sacrifice of that noble

leader were successful in overcoming. On the banks of the Musketaquid

was fired the first fatal shot of the "rebel" farmers. Emerson appeals

to the Records of the town for two hundred years as illustrating the

working of our American institutions and the character of the men of

Concord:--

"If the good counsel prevailed, the sneaking counsel did not fail to

be suggested; freedom and virtue, if they triumphed, triumphed in a

fair field. And so be it an everlasting testimony for them, and so

much ground of assurance of man's capacity for self-government."

What names that plain New England town reckons in the roll of its

inhabitants! Stout Major Buttrick and his fellow-soldiers in the war of

Independence, and their worthy successors in the war of Freedom; lawyers

and statesmen like Samuel Hoar and his descendants; ministers like Peter

Bulkeley, Daniel Bliss, and William Emerson; and men of genius such as

the idealist and poet whose inspiration has kindled so many souls; as

the romancer who has given an atmosphere to the hard outlines of our

stern New England; as that unique individual, half college-graduate and

half Algonquin, the Robinson Crusoe of Walden Pond, who carried out a

school-boy whim to its full proportions, and told the story of Nature in

undress as only one who had hidden in her bedroom could have told it. I

need not lengthen the catalogue by speaking of the living, or mentioning

the women whose names have added to its distinction. It has long been an

intellectual centre such as no other country town of our own land, if of

any other, could boast. Its groves, its streams, its houses, are haunted

by undying memories, and its hillsides and hollows are made holy by the

dust that is covered by their turf.

Such was the place which the advent of Emerson made the Delphi of New

England and the resort of many pilgrims from far-off regions.

On his return from Europe in the winter of 1833-4, Mr. Emerson began to

appear before the public as a lecturer. His first subjects, "Water," and

the "Relation of Man to the Globe," were hardly such as we should have

expected from a scholar who had but a limited acquaintance with physical

and physiological science. They were probably chosen as of a popular

character, easily treated in such a way as to be intelligible and

entertaining, and thus answering the purpose of introducing him

pleasantly to the new career he was contemplating. These lectures are

not included in his published works, nor were they ever published, so

far as I know. He gave three lectures during the same winter, relating

the experiences of his recent tour in Europe. Having made himself at

home on the platform, he ventured upon subjects more congenial to his

taste and habits of thought than some of those earlier topics. In 1834

he lectured on Michael Angelo, Milton, Luther, George Fox, and Edmund

Burke. The first two of these lectures, though not included in his

collected works, may be found in the "North American Review" for 1837

and 1838. The germ of many of the thoughts which he has expanded in

prose and verse may be found in these Essays.

The _Cosmos_ of the Ancient Greeks, the _piu nel' uno_, "The Many in

One," appear in the Essay on Michael Angelo as they also appear in his

"Nature." The last thought takes wings to itself and rises in the little

poem entitled "Each and All." The "Rhodora," another brief poem, finds

itself foreshadowed in the inquiry, "What is Beauty?" and its answer,

"This great Whole the understanding cannot embrace. Beauty may be felt.

It may be produced. But it cannot be defined." And throughout this Essay

the feeling that truth and beauty and virtue are one, and that Nature is

the symbol which typifies it to the soul, is the inspiring sentiment.

_Noscitur a sociis_ applies as well to a man's dead as to his living

companions. A young friend of mine in his college days wrote an essay on

Plato. When he mentioned his subject to Mr. Emerson, he got the caution,

long remembered, "When you strike at a _King_, you must kill him."

He himself knew well with what kings of thought to measure his own

intelligence. What was grandest, loftiest, purest, in human character

chiefly interested him. He rarely meddles with what is petty or ignoble.

Like his "Humble Bee," the "yellow-breeched philosopher," whom he speaks

of as

"Wiser far than human seer,"

and says of him,

"Aught unsavory or unclean

Hath my insect never seen,"

he goes through the world where coarser minds find so much that is

repulsive to dwell upon,

"Seeing only what is fair,

Sipping only what is sweet."

Why Emerson selected Michael Angelo as the subject of one of his

earliest lectures is shown clearly enough by the last sentence as

printed in the Essay.

"He was not a citizen of any country; he belonged to the human race;

he was a brother and a friend to all who acknowledged the beauty

that beams in universal nature, and who seek by labor and

self-denial to approach its source in perfect goodness."

Consciously or unconsciously men describe themselves in the characters

they draw. One must have the mordant in his own personality or he will

not take the color of his subject. He may force himself to picture that

which he dislikes or even detests; but when he loves the character he

delineates, it is his own, in some measure, at least, or one of which he

feels that its possibilities and tendencies belong to himself. Let us

try Emerson by this test in his "Essay on Milton:"--

"It is the prerogative of this great man to stand at this hour

foremost of all men in literary history, and so (shall we not say?)

of all men, in the power to _inspire_. Virtue goes out of him into

others." ... "He is identified in the mind with all select and holy

images, with the supreme interests of the human race."--"Better than

any other he has discharged the office of every great man, namely,

to raise the idea of Man in the minds of his contemporaries and of

posterity,--to draw after nature a life of man, exhibiting such a

composition of grace, of strength, and of virtue as poet had not

described nor hero lived. Human nature in these ages is indebted to

him for its best portrait. Many philosophers in England, France, and

Germany, have formally dedicated their study to this problem; and

we think it impossible to recall one in those countries who

communicates the same vibration of hope, of self-reverence, of

piety, of delight in beauty, which the name of Milton awakes."

Emerson had the same lofty aim as Milton, "To raise the idea of man;"

he had "the power _to inspire_" in a preëminent degree. If ever a man

communicated those _vibrations_ he speaks of as characteristic of

Milton, it was Emerson. In elevation, purity, nobility of nature, he is

worthy to stand with the great poet and patriot, who began like him as a

school-master, and ended as the teacher in a school-house which had for

its walls the horizons of every region where English is spoken. The

similarity of their characters might be followed by the curious into

their fortunes. Both were turned away from the clerical office by a

revolt of conscience against the beliefs required of them; both lost

very dear objects of affection in early manhood, and mourned for them

in tender and mellifluous threnodies. It would be easy to trace many

parallelisms in their prose and poetry, but to have dared to name any

man whom we have known in our common life with the seraphic singer

of the Nativity and of Paradise is a tribute which seems to savor of

audacity. It is hard to conceive of Emerson as "an expert swordsman"

like Milton. It is impossible to think of him as an abusive

controversialist as Milton was in his controversy with Salmasius. But

though Emerson never betrayed it to the offence of others, he must have

been conscious, like Milton, of "a certain niceness of nature, an honest

haughtiness," which was as a shield about his inner nature. Charles

Emerson, the younger brother, who was of the same type, expresses the

feeling in his college essay on Friendship, where it is all summed up in

the line he quotes:--

"The hand of Douglas is his own."

It must be that in writing this Essay on Milton Emerson felt that he was

listening in his own soul to whispers that seemed like echoes from that

of the divine singer.

* * * * *

My friend, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, a life-long friend of Emerson,

who understood him from the first, and was himself a great part in the

movement of which Emerson, more than any other man, was the leader, has

kindly allowed me to make use of the following letters:--

TO REV. JAMES F. CLARKE, LOUISVILLE, KY.

PLYMOUTH, MASS., March 12, 1834.

MY DEAR SIR,--As the day approaches when Mr. Lewis should leave

Boston, I seize a few moments in a friendly house in the first of

towns, to thank you heartily for your kindness in lending me the

valued manuscripts which I return. The translations excited me much,

and who can estimate the value of a good thought? I trust I am to

learn much more from you hereafter of your German studies, and much

I hope of your own. You asked in your note concerning Carlyle. My

recollections of him are most pleasant, and I feel great confidence

in his character. He understands and recognizes his mission. He is

perfectly simple and affectionate in his manner, and frank, as he

can well afford to be, in his communications. He expressed some

impatience of his total solitude, and talked of Paris as a

residence. I told him I hoped not; for I should always remember

him with respect, meditating in the mountains of Nithsdale. He was

cheered, as he ought to be, by learning that his papers were read

with interest by young men unknown to him in this continent; and

when I specified a piece which had attracted warm commendation from

the New Jerusalem people here, his wife said that is always the way;

whatever he has writ that he thinks has fallen dead, he hears of

two or three years afterward.--He has many, many tokens of Goethe's

regard, miniatures, medals, and many letters. If you should go to

Scotland one day, you would gratify him, yourself, and me, by your

visit to Craigenputtock, in the parish of Dunscore, near Dumfries.

He told me he had a book which he thought to publish, but was in

the purpose of dividing into a series of articles for "Fraser's

Magazine." I therefore subscribed for that book, which he calls the

"Mud Magazine," but have seen nothing of his workmanship in the two

last numbers. The mail is going, so I shall finish my letter another

time.

Your obliged friend and servant,

R. WALDO EMERSON.

CONCORD, MASS., November 25, 1834.

MY DEAR SIR,--Miss Peabody has kindly sent me your manuscript piece

on Goethe and Carlyle. I have read it with great pleasure and a

feeling of gratitude, at the same time with a serious regret that it

was not published. I have forgotten what reason you assigned for not

printing it; I cannot think of any sufficient one. Is it too late

now? Why not change its form a little and annex to it some account

of Carlyle's later pieces, to wit: "Diderot," and "Sartor Resartus."

The last is complete, and he has sent it to me in a stitched

pamphlet. Whilst I see its vices (relatively to the reading public)

of style, I cannot but esteem it a noble philosophical poem,

reflecting the ideas, institutions, men of this very hour. And it

seems to me that it has so much wit and other secondary graces as

must strike a class who would not care for its primary merit, that

of being a sincere exhortation to seekers of truth. If you still

retain your interest in his genius (as I see not how you can avoid,

having understood it and cooperated with it so truly), you will be

glad to know that he values his American readers very highly;

that he does not defend this offensive style of his, but calls it

questionable tentative; that he is trying other modes, and is about

publishing a historical piece called "The Diamond Necklace," as a

part of a great work which he meditates on the subject of the French

Revolution. He says it is part of his creed that history is poetry,

could we tell it right. He adds, moreover, in a letter I have

recently received from him, that it has been an odd dream that he

might end in the western woods. Shall we not bid him come, and be

Poet and Teacher of a most scattered flock wanting a shepherd? Or,

as I sometimes think, would it not be a new and worse chagrin to

become acquainted with the extreme deadness of our community to

spiritual influences of the higher kind? Have you read Sampson

Reed's "Growth of the Mind"? I rejoice to be contemporary with that

man, and cannot wholly despair of the society in which he lives;

there must be some oxygen yet, and La Fayette is only just dead.

Your friend, R. WALDO EMERSON.

It occurs to me that 't is unfit to send any white paper so far as

to your house, so you shall have a sentence from Carlyle's letter.

[This may be found in Carlyle's first letter, dated 12th August, 1834.]

Dr. Le Baron Russell, an intimate friend of Emerson for the greater part

of his life, gives me some particulars with reference to the publication

of "Sartor Resartus," which I will repeat in his own words:--

"It was just before the time of which I am speaking [that of

Emerson's marriage] that the 'Sartor Resartus' appeared in 'Fraser.'

Emerson lent the numbers, or the collected sheets of 'Fraser,' to

Miss Jackson, and we all had the reading of them. The excitement

which the book caused among young persons interested in the

literature of the day at that time you probably remember. I was

quite carried away by it, and so anxious to own a copy, that I

determined to publish an American edition. I consulted James Munroe

& Co. on the subject. Munroe advised me to obtain a subscription to

a sufficient number of copies to secure the cost of the publication.

This, with the aid of some friends, particularly of my classmate,

William Silsbee, I readily succeeded in doing. When this was

accomplished, I wrote to Emerson, who up to this time had taken no

part in the enterprise, asking him to write a preface. (This is the

Preface which appears in the American edition, James Munroe & Co.,

1836. It was omitted in the third American from the second London

edition,[1] by the same publishers, 1840.) Before the first edition

appeared, and after the subscription had been secured, Munroe & Co.

offered to assume the whole responsibility of the publication, and

to this I assented.

[Footnote 1: Revised and corrected by the author.]

"This American edition of 1836 was the first appearance of the

'Sartor' in either country, as a distinct edition. Some copies of

the sheets from 'Fraser,' it appears, were stitched together and sent

to a few persons, but Carlyle could find no English publisher willing

to take the responsibility of printing the book. This shows, I think,

how much more interest was taken in Carlyle's writings in this country

than in England."

On the 14th of May, 1834, Emerson wrote to Carlyle the first letter of

that correspondence which has since been given to the world under the

careful editorship of Mr. Charles Norton. This correspondence lasted

from the date mentioned to the 2d of April, 1872, when Carlyle wrote his

last letter to Emerson. The two writers reveal themselves as being in

strong sympathy with each other, in spite of a radical difference of

temperament and entirely opposite views of life. The hatred of unreality

was uppermost with Carlyle; the love of what is real and genuine with

Emerson. Those old moralists, the weeping and the laughing philosophers,

find their counterparts in every thinking community. Carlyle did not

weep, but he scolded; Emerson did not laugh, but in his gravest moments

there was a smile waiting for the cloud to pass from his forehead. The

Duet they chanted was a Miserere with a Te Deum for its Antiphon; a _De_

_Profundis_ answered by a _Sursum Corda_. "The ground of my existence

is black as death," says Carlyle. "Come and live with me a year," says

Emerson, "and if you do not like New England well enough to stay, one of

these years; (when the 'History' has passed its ten editions, and been

translated into as many languages) I will come and dwell with you."

Section 2. In September, 1835, Emerson was married to Miss Lydia

Jackson, of Plymouth, Massachusetts. The wedding took place in the fine

old mansion known as the Winslow House, Dr. Le Baron Russell and his

sister standing up with the bridegroom and his bride. After their

marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Emerson went to reside in the house in which

he passed the rest of his life, and in which Mrs. Emerson and their

daughter still reside. This is the "plain, square, wooden house," with

horse-chestnut trees in the front yard, and evergreens around it, which

has been so often described and figured. It is without pretensions, but

not without an air of quiet dignity. A full and well-illustrated account

of it and its arrangements and surroundings is given in "Poets' Homes,"

by Arthur Gilman and others, published by D. Lothrop & Company in 1879.

On the 12th of September, 1835, Emerson delivered an "Historical

Discourse, at Concord, on the Second Centennial Anniversary of

the Incorporation of the Town." There is no "mysticism," no

"transcendentalism" in this plain, straightforward Address. The facts

are collected and related with the patience and sobriety which became

the writer as one of the Dryasdusts of our very diligent, very useful,

very matter-of-fact, and for the most part judiciously unimaginative

Massachusetts Historical Society. It looks unlike anything else Emerson

ever wrote, in being provided with abundant foot-notes and an appendix.

One would almost as soon have expected to see Emerson equipped with

a musket and a knapsack as to find a discourse of his clogged with

annotations, and trailing a supplement after it. Oracles are brief and

final in their utterances. Delphi and Cumae are not expected to explain

what they say.

It is the habit of our New England towns to celebrate their own worthies

and their own deeds on occasions like this, with more or less of

rhetorical gratitude and self-felicitation. The discourses delivered

on these occasions are commonly worth reading, for there was never a

clearing made in the forest that did not let in the light on heroes and

heroines. Concord is on the whole the most interesting of all the inland

towns of New England. Emerson has told its story in as painstaking,

faithful a way as if he had been by nature an annalist. But with this

fidelity, we find also those bold generalizations and sharp picturesque

touches which reveal the poetic philosopher.

"I have read with care," he says, "the town records themselves.

They exhibit a pleasing picture of a community almost exclusively

agricultural, where no man has much time for words, in his search

after things; of a community of great simplicity of manners, and of

a manifest love of justice. I find our annals marked with a uniform

good sense.--The tone of the record rises with the dignity of the

event. These soiled and musty books are luminous and electric

within. The old town clerks did not spell very correctly, but

they contrive to make intelligible the will of a free and just

community." ... "The matters there debated (in town meetings) are

such as to invite very small consideration. The ill-spelled pages

of the town records contain the result. I shall be excused for

confessing that I have set a value upon any symptom of meanness and

private pique which I have met with in these antique books, as

proof that justice was done; that if the results of our history are

approved as wise and good, it was yet a free strife; if the

good counsel prevailed, the sneaking counsel did not fail to be

suggested; freedom and virtue, if they triumphed, triumphed in a

fair field. And so be it an everlasting testimony for them, and so

much ground of assurance of man's capacity for self-government."

There was nothing in this Address which the plainest of Concord's

citizens could not read understandingly and with pleasure. In fact Mr.

Emerson himself, besides being a poet and a philosopher, was also a

plain Concord citizen. His son tells me that he was a faithful attendant

upon town meetings, and, though he never spoke, was an interested and

careful listener to the debates on town matters. That respect for

"mother-wit" and for all the wholesome human qualities which reveals

itself all through his writings was bred from this kind of intercourse

with men of sense who had no pretensions to learning, and in whom, for

that very reason, the native qualities came out with less disguise in

their expression. He was surrounded by men who ran to extremes in their

idiosyncrasies; Alcott in speculations, which often led him into the

fourth dimension of mental space; Hawthorne, who brooded himself into

a dream--peopled solitude; Thoreau, the nullifier of civilization, who

insisted on nibbling his asparagus at the wrong end, to say nothing of

idolaters and echoes. He kept his balance among them all. It would

be hard to find a more candid and sober record of the result of

self-government in a small community than is contained in this simple

discourse, patient in detail, large in treatment, more effective than

any unsupported generalities about the natural rights of man, which

amount to very little unless men earn the right of asserting them by

attending fairly to their natural duties. So admirably is the working of

a town government, as it goes on in a well-disposed community, displayed

in the history of Concord's two hundred years of village life, that

one of its wisest citizens had portions of the address printed

for distribution, as an illustration of the American principle of

self-government.

After settling in Concord, Emerson delivered courses of Lectures in

Boston during several successive winters; in 1835, ten Lectures on

English Literature; in 1836, twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of

History; in 1837, ten Lectures on Human Culture. Some of these lectures

may have appeared in print under their original titles; all of them

probably contributed to the Essays and Discourses which we find in his

published volumes.

On the 19th of April, 1836, a meeting was held to celebrate the

completion of the monument raised in commemoration of the Concord Fight.

For this occasion Emerson wrote the hymn made ever memorable by the

lines:--

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

The last line of this hymn quickens the heartbeats of every American,

and the whole hymn is admirable in thought and expression. Until the

autumn of 1838, Emerson preached twice on Sundays to the church at East

Lexington, which desired him to become its pastor. Mr. Cooke says that

when a lady of the society was asked why they did not settle a friend of

Emerson's whom he had urged them to invite to their pulpit, she replied:

"We are a very simple people, and can understand no one but Mr.

Emerson." He said of himself: "My pulpit is the Lyceum platform."

Knowing that he made his Sermons contribute to his Lectures, we need not

mourn over their not being reported.

In March, 1837, Emerson delivered in Boston a Lecture on War, afterwards

published in Miss Peabody's "Aesthetic Papers." He recognizes war as one

of the temporary necessities of a developing civilization, to disappear

with the advance of mankind:--

"At a certain stage of his progress the man fights, if he be of a

sound body and mind. At a certain high stage he makes no offensive

demonstration, but is alert to repel injury, and of an unconquerable

heart. At a still higher stage he comes into the region of holiness;

passion has passed away from him; his warlike nature is all

converted into an active medicinal principle; he sacrifices himself,

and accepts with alacrity wearisome tasks of denial and charity;

but being attacked, he bears it, and turns the other cheek, as one

engaged, throughout his being, no longer to the service of an

individual, but to the common good of all men."

In 1834 Emerson's brother Edward died, as already mentioned, in the West

India island where he had gone for his health. In his letter to Carlyle,

of November 12th of the same year, Emerson says: "Your letter, which

I received last week, made a bright light in a solitary and saddened

place. I had quite recently received the news of the death of a brother

in the island of Porto Rico, whose loss to me will be a lifelong

sorrow." It was of him that Emerson wrote the lines "In Memoriam," in

which he says,--

"There is no record left on earth

Save on tablets of the heart,

Of the rich, inherent worth,

Of the grace that on him shone

Of eloquent lips, of joyful wit;

He could not frame a word unfit,

An act unworthy to be done."

Another bereavement was too soon to be recorded. On the 7th of October,

1835, he says in a letter to Carlyle:--

"I was very glad to hear of the brother you describe, for I have one

too, and know what it is to have presence in two places. Charles

Chauncy Emerson is a lawyer now settled in this town, and, as I

believe, no better Lord Hamlet was ever. He is our Doctor on

all questions of taste, manners, or action. And one of the pure

pleasures I promise myself in the months to come is to make you two

gentlemen know each other."

Alas for human hopes and prospects! In less than a year from the date of

that letter, on the 17th of September, 1836, he writes to Carlyle:--