Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most original and independent thinker and greatest moral teacher that America has produced, was born at Boston in 1803. He was a legitimate product of Puritanism. As far back as his family is traced it has been represented by ministers of the old faith of New England, the founder of it having journeyed thither with his congregation from Gloucestershire, in England, in 1635, and each of these ministers was associated with some phase of that faith, whether Calvinism, Universalism, or Unitarianism. His ancestry on both sides forms an indispensable explanation and background of every page of his writings. The Emerson family were intellectual, eloquent, with a strong individuality of character, robust and vigorous in their thinking—practical and philanthropic. His father was the Rev. William Emerson, pastor of the First (Unitarian) Church of Boston, and was noted for his vigorous mind, earnestness of purpose, and gentleness of manner. The boy lost his father when he was but eight years old. His mother was a woman of great sensibility, modest, serene, and very devout. "She was possessed of a thoroughly sincere nature, devoid of all sentimentalism, and of a temper the most even and placid-(one of her sons said that in his boyhood, when she came from her room in the morning, it seemed to him as if she always came from communion with God)-knew how to guide the affairs of her house, had the sweetest authority, and manners of natural grace and dignity. Her dark, liquid eyes, from which old age did not take away the expression, were among the remembrances of all on whom they ever rested." The young Emerson was very carefully educated, and entered Harvard University at an early age, where he graduated in 1821. Every graduating class in that institution elects a poet and an orator for its celebration, which is called " class-day," and Emerson was chosen as the poet of his class. In his junior year he received a Bowdoin prize for an essay on "The Character of Socrates," and in his senior year he again

gained a prize, his subject being "The Present State of Ethical Philosophy." Among his companions he was already distinguished for literary attainments, and more especially for a certain charm in the delivery of his addresses. After graduation he entered upon his studies in the Unitarian • Divinity College connected with the University. After he had graduated from the Divinity College and been "approbated" for the ministry, he was led to visit the far South-South Carolina and Florida-on account of impaired health. On his return, he was settled as the junior pastor of a large congregation in Boston, and was afterwards appointed chaplain to the State Legislature. His preaching attracted considerable attention, though it brought no crowd. Many an old hearer afterwards remembered these discourses in reading his essays. A venerable lady of those days, a member of his congregation, when asked what was his chief characteristic as a minister, said: "On God's law doth he meditate day and night."

Finding himself unable to continue to hold the creed and perform the rites of the sect with which he was connected, he decided to relinquish his pulpit. He gave his reasons for this in a remarkable discourse. The Rev. Henry Ware, whose colleague Emerson was, addressed to him a friendly expostulation. against the doctrines of this discourse. In reply Emerson said: "What you say about the discourse is just what I might expect from your truth and charity, combined with. your known opinions. I am not a stick or a stone, as one said in the old time, and could not feel but pain in saying some things in that place and presence which I supposed would meet with dissent, I may say, of dear friends and benefactors of mine. Yet, as my conviction is perfect in the substantial truth of the doctrines of this discourse, and is not very new, you will see at once that it must appear very important that it be spoken; and I thought I could not pay the nobleness of my friends so mean a compliment as to suppress

my opposition to their supposed views, out of fear of offence. I would rather say to them-these things look thus to me, to you otherwise. Let us say our uttermost word, and let the all-pervading truth, as it surely will, judge between us.. Either of us would, I doubt not, be willingly apprised of his error. Meanwhile, I shall be admonished by this experience of your thought to revise with great care the address before it is printed, and I heartily thank you for this expression of your tried toleration and love." This was followed by a sermon against Emerson's views, a copy of which was sent to him, with a letter, to which he replied. A few sentences may be given from the reply. "There is no scholar less willing or less able than myself to be a polemic. I could not give an account of myself, if challenged. I could not possibly give you one of the arguments you cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands. For I do not know what arguments are in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me why I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. When I see myself suddenly raised to the importance of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I advert to the supposed duties of such a personage, who is to make good his thesis against all comers. I certainly shall do no such thing. I shall read what you and other good men write, as I have always done, glad when you speak my thoughts, and skipping the page that has nothing for me. I shall go on just as before, seeing whatever I can, and telling what I see." This was the date of his emancipation from the trammels of creed. Shaking off all traditions of creed and authority, he stepped, as he said, into the free and open world to utter his private thought to all who were willing to hear it. Thenceforth he became "the chartered libertine" of thought, as he sometimes humorously called himself.

Emerson's earliest appearance in print, we believe, was in an address, "The Right Hand of Fellowship," delivered

at the ordination of H. B. Goodwin (1830), and his next, "Sermon and Letter" to the Second Church, Boston (1832). He finally bade farewell to his Boston parish in December, 1832, and early in 1833 embarked on his first voyage to Europe. He sailed up the Mediterranean in a vessel bound for Sicily, and went as far eastward as Malta. Returning through Italy,. where he dined with Walter Savage Landor in Florencefinding him "noble and courteous, living in a cloud of pictures at his villa Gherardesca"-he visited France, and in July reached London. There he saw Wellington in Westminster Abbey at the funeral of Wilberforce, and called on Coleridge. In August of the same year (1833) he made a pilgrimage to Scotland. He remained some days in Edinburgh, and delivered a discourse in the Unitarian Chapel there, recollections of which happily still survive. Desirous of personally acknowledging to Carlyle his indebtedness for the spiritual benefit he had derived from certain of his writingsnotably the concluding passage in the article on German Literature, and the paper entitled "Characteristics"-he found his way, after many hindrances, to Craigenputtock, among the desolate hills of the parish of Dunscore, in Dumfriesshire, where Carlyle was then living with his bright and accomplished wife in perfect solitude, without a person to speak to, or a post office within seven miles. There he spent twentyfour hours, and became acquainted with him at once. They walked over miles of barren hills, and talked upon all the great questions which interested them most. The meeting is described in his "English Traits," published twenty-three years afterwards, and the account of it there given is reprinted by Mr. Froude in his "Life of Carlyle," &c., lately issued. Carlyle and his wife ever afterwards spoke of that visit as if it had been the coming of an angel. They regarded Emerson as a "beautiful apparition" in their solitude. A letter exists, written to a friend a few days after this visit, which gives an account of it, as well as of one to Wordsworth. This letter, written

on the spur of the moment, and not intended for publication, contains some details not to be found in the published account of these two visits. It is now printed for the first time in the Appendix to this Memoir. Mr. Froude says of this visit: "The fact itself of a young American having been so affected by his writings as to have sought him out on the Dunscore moors, was a homage of the kind which he (Carlyle) could especially value and appreciate. The acquaintance then begun to their mutual pleasure ripened into a deep friendship, which has remained unclouded in spite of wide divergencies of opinion throughout their working lives, and continues warm as ever at the moment when I am writing these words (June 27, 1880), when the labours of both of them are over, and they wait in age and infirmity to be called away from a world to which they have given freely all that they had to give."

Emerson has the distinction of having been the first eminent literary man of either continent to appreciate and welcome "Sartor Resartus." The book was written in 1831 at Craigenputtock, but could find no publisher for two years. At last it appeared in "Fraser's Magazine" in successive chapters, in 1833-4 (Carlyle having to accept reduced remuneration); and it was not till 1838 that it appeared as a volume in England. While subscribers were complaining of the "intolerable balderdash" appearing from month to month in the magazine under the title of "Sartor Resartus," and threatening to withdraw their subscriptions if that "nonsense" did not speedily cease, Emerson was quietly collecting the successive numbers with a view to its publication on completion. In 1836 the American edition of the work appeared in Boston, printed, we believe, at Emerson's risk. The publication was sufficiently successful to yield a profit of £150, which Emerson sent to Carlyle-the most important sum which he had, up to that time, received for any of his works. In Emerson's modest preface to the book (on its first appear