Ames.] '^'J^ [Nov. 3, 



tlie State lias sAvelled to four millions aud one-half of i)eople, and that of 

 the City of Philadelphia to one million. 



Of all tlie history of State and City we may be justly proud, for the 

 foundations on -which it was built have been preserved and strengthened. 



Of this vast growth our Society has been the living witness, for it was 

 founded only sixty years after the landing of William Penn; and it is fit- 

 ting that in addition to the full accounts that will be given by chroniclers 

 of this great event and which will form part of our library, this brief no- 

 tice of it should constitute part of our Minutes. 



Pending nomination No. 969 and new nomination.'^ No.s. 970 

 to 976 were read. 



And the meeting w^as adjourned. 



Obituary Notice of Ralph Waldo Emerson. By Charles G. Ames. 

 {Read before the American Philosophical Society, Nov. 3, 1S82.) 



Ealph "Waldo Emerson, whose name has honored the records of this So- 

 ciety since 1868, was born in Boston, May 25, 1803, and died in Concord, 

 Mass., April 28, 1882. Of mixed Puritan and Huguenot ancestry, hebrought 

 into the 19th century the essences rather than the forms of Calvinistic creed 

 and culture ; and grew up as the handsome flower of a sturdy stock. His 

 being was like a retort into which manj' generations of thoughtful piety had 

 been distilled ; for never was a clearer case of hereditary marking than in 

 his tendency to the independent pursuit of high and sober studies. He 

 had the pliysical make-up of a student, with just enough of healthy 

 muscular development to furnish sheathing for a nervous structure of ex- 

 traordinarj' fineness and vigor. 



Of how many New England lads, in the early part of this century, may 

 the same story be told : Graduating from Harvard at 18, then teaching 

 for a while, then settling to the study of divinity. Already familiar with 

 Plato and Montaigne, whose mixed coloring matter had passed into his 

 blood, tlie lad was yet fond of Augustine, Pascal, and Jeremy Taylor. 

 He had also come in contact with the free devoutness and benevolence of 

 Dr. Channing, and had yielded to the spell of Wordsworth and Coleridge. 

 A little later he was to feel the powerful influence of Carlyle and Goethe. 



In 1826 he began to preach ; in 1829 he was ordained and installed min- 

 ister of a Unitarian Church in Boston. His sermons struck the dominant 

 note of all his later thinking and writing, their evident purpose being to 

 induce in each hearer the assurance of "life in himself" It was this in- 

 tensity of faith in the inlimntc rcbiiions of cncli human spirit to the Di- 



