the hardships of early years and from anxiety for his family. But the outer events sink into insignificance before the importance of the mental life he was living. The long lists of books suggested by the Journal of those years show that he was pursuing a course of study that was bringing him into the great current of the thought of his age. The number and variety of these literary influences must have proved distracting to a less balanced intellect, but to Emerson they were all leading quietly to one belief that was to give direction to his whole life. He was making a thoughtful comparative study of the old Greek philosophers and the modern thinkers in the same line, with close attention to psychology and science. His favorite authors still appear in the lists, but several are added,-Landor, Goethe, Carlyle, and Swedenborg. The sense of the beauty and harmony of the world that had often wakened him at night when he was a boy with a feeling of indescribable happiness, was deepened by this reading; and to it was added a growing reverence for the mysterious working of man's mind. The sermons in which he gave public expression to these thoughts are unpublished, but those who have read them in manuscript describe them as conventional in tone, differing little from the usual sermon of his day and church. Those who heard them, however, say they had a singular power of making the life of everyday seem. new and very real.

The years of this service were limited. In 1831 Mrs. Emerson died. September of the following year ended Emerson's connection with his church. He proposed that they should adopt a simpler form of the communion. service in which the elements of bread and wine should not be used. He had come to feel acutely that for him worship must be absolutely free from formalism, and if

the church did not adopt his suggestion he must resign. But the church stood by the traditional form, although there was no unkindliness of spirit on either side. In December Emerson, practically severed from the profession for which he had been preparing all his life, set sail for Europe. His farewell letter to his church is the best comment on the situation; one feels on reading it that he would always be a leader of men's thoughts whether he held a pulpit or not.

Of his European trip we have an account in his Journal and letters, and in the beginning of English Traits. He went by way of the Mediterranean and traveled northward through Italy. The churches made a great impression upon him; again and again he describes the feeling of awe they awakened. His comments on Italian art are full of self-revelation: "I make a continual effort not to be pleased except by that which ought to please me," he notes in Florence, "and I walked coolly round and round the marble lady”; “I collect nothing that can be touched or tasted or smelled, neither cameo, painting, nor medallion, but I value much the growing picture which the ages have painted and which I reverently survey." Throughout his journey his supreme interest was in men. He reconstructed in his imagination the cities of the past and brought their heroes back to walk their streets; and he visited the great men of the present. In Florence he became acquainted with Landor, and in England he saw Coleridge and Wordsworth.

But the event of his journey was his visit to Carlyle, then comparatively unknown. He made his way from Dumfries to Craigenputtock, where he found the "tall, gaunt man of clifflike brow" with whom he had formed a book acquaintance in America. He stayed only over

night, but he "talked and heard talk to his heart's content," as Carlyle wrote to his mother. One may well believe it from the range of topics that were discussed in the short visit, from favorite books to "that plastic little animal man" and the immortality of the soul. In August he wrote to Mr. Ireland after his visit to Carlyle, "The comfort of meeting a man is that he speaks sincerely, . . that he is above the meanness of pretending to knowledge which he has not." He had not found. Carlyle all that he had expected, but he had found him a man, and the two sealed a lifelong friendship. It was Emerson who first published Sartor Resartus in its non-periodical form, and later other works of Carlyle, sparing neither time nor expense in the service of his friend. Carlyle for his part interested himself in Emerson's literary success in England. The friendship is left to us in permanent record in one of the most interesting books of the nineteenth century, The Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson.

In 1833 Emerson returned to America, confirmed in his determination to wait patiently the issue of events. Already he was revolving plans for his first book. He settled in Concord, drawn partly by his brother Charles's influence and partly by his boyhood love of the place. It was convenient also to East Lexington, where he accepted a call to act as temporary pastor. He and his mother first lived in the Old Manse; but in 1835, upon his engagement to Lydian Jackson, he bought the house on the old stage road to Boston which became his home. for the rest of his life. The early days in Concord were saddened by news of the death of his brother Edward, for whom Emerson had cherished an almost adoring admiration. The youngest brother Charles did not long survive; he died two years later, in 1836. Him Emerson

describes as "clean and sweet in life, untempted almost." The loss of these brothers was too sore ever to be repaired, for they had been from earliest years so closely bound to Emerson that it was as if a part of his mental faculty had gone with them. He bore their death bravely, as he had borne that of his wife, but it is undeniable that to this bereavement must be traced in some measure that gentle reticence of spirit which marked his social intercourse outside his own family circle.

Emerson began his literary career in 1836 with the publication of Nature, "the azure book" that Carlyle welcomed with warm praise as a foundation for work of real value to the race. Carlyle's prophecy proved true, but at first there were few who shared his enthusiasm. This first book of Emerson may almost be called an epitome of his later teaching. It is remarkable as well for the beauty of its expression; many of its passages are prose poetry of delicate but inspiring imagination.

Two years earlier, by speaking before the Mechanic Institute of Boston, Emerson had entered on the field of lecturing. New England lyceums, called into existence by a general desire for culture, attracted many speakers from home and abroad, but none who exerted a deeper influence than he. Almost every year as long as his health permitted him, he delivered lecture courses in Boston. At first he gave besides only an occasional address in his own village or in some other New England town, but gradually his engagements called him farther and farther from home,-to New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and westward, until after 1850 he made trips even beyond the Mississippi. In the winter of 1847-48 he gave a series of courses in England and Scotland. Of Emerson as a lecturer we have many descriptions. He was singularly impressive, though his

manner was quiet and his style unoratorical. He read from notes, handling his manuscripts with hesitation and looking out over his audience with a farseeing gaze that was at once kindly and remote. He had his hearers with him from the start, even those who did not understand what he was saying, and passed from one of his quaintly humorous illustrations to his gravest teachings without a break in their responsive attention. The compelling principle was his high, serene character; that was "the something deeper than his words" to which Lowell alludes in his essay on Emerson as a lecturer. It spoke in every word and in his quiet presence, but especially in his voice,-"that undertow of the rich baritone that swept minds from their foothold into deeper waters with a drift they could not and would not resist." By force of this quiet, impressive personality Emerson made the lecture platform take the place of the pulpit he had left, and in a few years ceased even to serve as supply, devoting himself instead to this lay preaching. His lecture work extended over a period of forty-seven years, the last address being that of 1881.

Two of his addresses deserve especial mention as of historical importance. One is The American Scholar, the Phi Beta Kappa oration of 1837; and the other the address before the senior class of Divinity College, Cambridge, in 1838. The first because of its strong appeal for a truly American thought and literature has been called "our intellectual Declaration of Independence." The second is scarcely less significant in its bearing on religious history. In it Emerson eloquently urges the need for simplifying and spiritualizing faith. This address set a ban upon his religious teaching and closed the doors of Harvard against him for nearly thirty years. The change of sentiment wrought during that