428 GEORGE B. EMERSON. 



selected as the first principal, and gave complete satisfliction. In 1823 

 he organized his private school for ladies, which helped to mould a 

 whole generation of the young, and was the great work of his life. 

 It was not only what he taught, but what he was, that lent weight to 

 his teaching. He gave up his school when the time came for seeking 

 recreation in Europe. He often expressed his regret that he did not 

 resume it, on his return. But his high office, as an educator, was not 

 confined to his school, or to Boston, but was as broad as New Eng- 

 land ; and that office he never resigned. It is idle to speculate as to 

 what his career would have been, if his mother's wishes had not pre- 

 vailed over a fancy of his boyhood which looked to West Point rather 

 than to Harvard. If, however, he had carried out the maturer purpose 

 of his heart, which was to enter the Christian ministry, though his suc- 

 cess there was assured, he would have left vacant a place uot easily 

 filled by any other man. 



Next to Mr. Emerson's services in education, — to which his life 

 was early consecrated, — ■ his services to natural sciences, especially to 

 their popularization, and their proper teaching, are most worthy of 

 remembrance in this Academy. At one time the course of his life 

 might have wholly turned in this direction, when, as he himself in- 

 formed us, the new Fisher Professorship of Natural History and the 

 direction of the Botanic Garden, having been declined by Dr. Francis 

 Boott, were offered to him. The offer was a tempting one, and very 

 congenial to his tastes; but he had successfully entered upon his 

 chosen career, had proved his powers in it, and he preferred not to 

 break away from it. No doubt he felt that it was too late for him to 

 do justice to himself and to the cause of science in this vocation ; for, 

 although natural history had not yet asserted itself at Cambridge, and 

 hardly elsewhere, he in some degree foresaw its rising importance. 

 All natural science was to deal with deeper and larger questions, by 

 new methods and exacter researches, and its votaries needed long and 

 special training. To the advance that has been made within the last 

 forty years and more, his helping hand and his weighty influence have 

 largely contributed. He was one of the originators of the Boston 

 Society of Natural History, and he was its second President. He 

 was, in the time of Edward Everett's governorship, one of the pro- 

 jectors of the Geological Survey of the Conuuon wealth, and he bore 

 a leading part in settling its plan and in perfecting its organization. 

 Assigning to the late Professor Dewy — then of "Williams College — 

 the report upon the herbaceous vegetation, he himself drew up the ac- 

 count of the Trees and Shrubs of the State in a volume which, next 



