Chapter Ralph Waldo Emerson of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

within the limits of Franklin Park. The lines are significant of the spirit of this nature lover at the age of twenty.

"O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools and the learned clan;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?"

Emerson was also employed in a characteristic New England "academy" in the country near Lowell. His manner in the school-room was impressive; his self-control was perfect, he never punished except with words. His last experience as a schoolmaster was in Cambridge. Here he is remembered as appearing "every inch a king in his dominion, or rather like a captive philosopher set to tending flocks; resigned to his destiny, but not amused with its incongruities."¹

Theology.

In 1823, Emerson began studying for the ministry. Descended from a long line of ministers, deeply spiritual in nature and equally a passionate seeker after truth, full of ideals of helpfulness and philanthropy, this was the natural course; but his activities in this profession were brief. He was ordained in 1829 as associate pastor of the Second Church in Boston, the historic Old North, which in the preceding century had flourished for sixty years under the ministry of the Mathers, father and son. It was now one of the important pulpits of Unitarianism. The young minister, who in a few months became the sole incumbent, took an active interest in public affairs; he was a member of the school board and was chosen chaplain of the State Senate. He invited anti-slavery lecturers into his pulpit and helped philanthropists of all denominations in their work. Three months after his ordination, however, Emerson found himself fettered even by the liberal doctrines of the Unitarians; and in 1832, disapproving the continuance of the Lord's Supper as a permanent rite, he presented his scruples in a sermon to his parishioners. His views not receiving their support, he quietly withdrew from the church.

First European Visit.

The young wife, Ellen, a delicate girl of seventeen when Emerson married her soon after his ordination, died in 1831. The strain of this bereavement, combined with that of his separation from his church, affected his own health, and on Christmas Day, 1832, Emerson, urged by his friends to take a sea voyage, sailed from Boston on a small vessel bound for the Mediterranean. He visited Italy, France, and England; and apparently found his greatest satisfaction in the opportunity thus afforded to meet the noted men whom he had long wished to see.

Acquaintances in England.

Coleridge he visited just one year before that writer's death; he saw Wordsworth also, then sixty-three years old, and past the time of poetical power. And then he went to see Carlyle, who was living on his lonely farm at Craigenputtock. "Of course we could do no other than welcome him," wrote Carlyle to his mother, "the rather as he seemed to be one of the most lovable creatures in himself we had ever looked on. He stayed till next day with us, and talked and heard talk to his heart's content, and left us all really sad to part with him." With this congenial introduction began the life-long friendship of the two great moralists. The Scotch essayist was seven years the senior of his guest.

By his translations, his essays, and his Life of Schiller, Carlyle had already won recognition from many like Emerson, who were deeply interested in the newly discovered fields of German literature. This was also the year, 1833, in which Carlyle was putting forth his most characteristic work, the Sartor Resartus; and one result of this visit was the publication of that work during the following year, in America, under the direction of Emerson.