404 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 



Ralph, as our Associate was called in his boyhood, did not distinguish 

 himself in scholarship at school or college, but from very early years 

 he was a diligent reader of English poetry, and showed much facility 

 in versification. He entered Harvard College in 1817, and was 

 graduated in 1821, receiving while there two Bowdoiu prizes for dis- 

 sertations and a Boylston prize for declamation, and he was chosen 

 class poet. On leaving college he kept school, as his father and his 

 grandfather had done before him, until he could find opportunity to 

 follow the ancestral vocation of jireaching. In 182G he was " appro- 

 bated to preach " by the Middlesex Association of Ministers, and iu 

 1829 he was ordained at the Second Church in Boston as colleague of 

 Rev. Henry Ware, Jr. Finding that the lecturer's desk would be 

 more convenient for his purposes than the pulpit, he severed his formal 

 connection with the church in the autumn of 1832, but continued all 

 his life long a diligent seeker after and expounder of truth as applied 

 to the conduct of life. 



It would be out of place here to undertake to follow his fortunes in 

 detail, or to attempt to determine his place as a moralist or as a man 

 of letters. A full account of the occurrences of his life and a discrim- 

 inating analysis of his jjhilosophy may be found in the excellent work 

 of the Rev. G. W. Cooke. (Boston : J. R. Osgood & Co., 1881.) 

 Here it may be sufficient to recount some of the more prominent facts 

 of his history. 



In 1831-2 Mr. Emerson travelled in Europe, making acquaintance 

 with many persons in England, particularly with Carlyle, whose first 

 book, " Sartor Resartus," made its first appearance, in book form, in this 

 country, with a preface by Emerson. In 1847-8 he again went to 

 England, and there lectured extensively, being received with cordiality 

 anji with a lively interest by all classes of people. After his return 

 home, his lecturing tours, which had been confined to New England 

 and the cities of New York and Philadelphia, were extended to the 

 West, and in 1871 he visited California. 



In the summer of 1872 his house was partly burned, and although, 

 by the prompt assistance of his friends and neighbors, his manuscripts 

 and books were removed almost without injury, he received from this 

 disturbance of his home a shock from which he never entirely recovered. 

 His physical health, which, in spite of some delicacy of constitution, 

 had been, since his early manhood, upon the whole remarkably good, 

 continued unabated, but his command of words failed, and his mind 

 lost its spring. Henceforth he wrote little or nothing, and altliougli 

 upon special invitation he would occasionally read one of his old lee- 



