VI.

APPROBATION.

HE determination of his brother William not to

enter the ministry, which caused his mother sorrow, may have inclined Emerson to that profession, but probably Dr. Channing was the determining influence. He began the study of theology when he was twenty years of age-not entering Divinity College, but keeping abreast of its classes - and after three years was "approbated to preach" by the Middlesex Association of Preachers. Unitarianism had no written creed, but it had certain forms, concerning which Emerson already had doubts. It looks as if he had not quite kept Lord Bacon's prescription for health, "Never to do anything contrary to your genius," for Emerson went South for his health, and probably his first public sermon was given in Charleston, which then had the only Unitarian pulpit south of the Potomac. In college his room-mate had been a South Carolinian (John Gourdin), and Emerson always had a pleasant feeling towards the South ("except those bonds"), and in after life would have gladly passed some winters in Florida, where the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" now finds a congenial home. Part of that winter (1826-27) was indeed passed in beautiful Florida,

whose fragrance is in his early song, "To Ellen at the South."

On his return from the South, in the spring of 1827, his first sermons were given at New Bedford. The impression made by Emerson at this time on best persons was remarkable. His earliest sermons are almost forgotten in the charm of his personality and in the warm glow of his sympathies, in his das Dämonische, which, in Emerson, was known in a peculiar joy felt in his presence. In the privately printed Life of the late Mrs. Lyman of Northampton, written by her daughter, Mrs. Lesley, there are some pages that show the young preacher's footprints already traceable in flowers. They who know anything of the late Mrs. Lyman need not be told that one fourteen years her junior must have possessed extraordinary character and powers to make such an impression upon her as appears in this volume, which my friend who wrote it kindly permits me to use. In the autumn of 1827, Mr. Hall, the minister at Northampton, being in ill health, his pulpit was supplied by young ministers from Boston. " During this autumn my mother heard that Mrs. Hall was expecting one of the preachers to stay at her house for a fortnight. She did not even know the name of the expected guest, but she knew Mrs. Hall was not well, so she sent her word that, when the preacher came, she would like to have him transferred to her house. It was Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, then a young man, who took up his abode for a fortnight under her friendly roof. I have no power to convey in words the impression she used to give me of this visit, or its effect upon her appreciative mind. To

her sister she mirthfully quoted an expression sometimes used by her orthodox neighbours about certain students at Amherst, and wrote, "O Sally! I thought to entertain a pious indigent,' but lo! an angel unawares!" Not long after this visit, my brother Joseph became intimate with Charles Emerson at Cambridge, a friendship which my mother hailed as one of the highest and holiest influences in the life of her beloved son. She rarely saw Mr. Emerson in later life; a few letters passed between them. Once (in 1849) he spent a few days at her house while lecturing in Northampton, and after her removal to Cambridge he called to see her. The personal feeling towards him thus engendered burned henceforth with a flame that threw light upon every passage of his writings, gilded the gloom of many a weary day, and made her fine face shine with responsive sympathy for the author as she read aloud. She was wont to feel a certain property in him and his works; and I have seen her ready to shed tears when she could not see any appreciation of his thought in her listener. To one I have heard her say, "Well, you call that transcendental, and that's all you have to say about it. I call it the profoundest common sense." To another, "You think it very arrogant of me to pretend to understand Mr. Emerson. Well, I tell you I have the key to him; and I am not going to pretend I have not, whatever any one thinks." And so as the years went by, and volume after volume appeared of the Essays, she hailed them with delight and read them till they became part of herself.

It is the best benefit of searching into genealogies that

it brings us on so many fair fulfilments reversing ill omens. That beautiful and happy wife of Judge Lyman was a descendant of Anne Hutchinson, whose genius re-appeared in her. Emerson's ancestor, Rev. Peter Bulkeley, presided over the Synod which banished Anne Hutchinson to Rhode Island and to death. Now these two meet in near friendship, and in the sorrows that were presently the portion of Anne Lyman the word of consolation and sympathy from Emerson never failed.

The first sentences of Emerson which I have read are in a letter written from Divinity Hall, Cambridge, February 11, 1828, to Mrs. Lyman on the death of her brother-in-law, Judge Howe, resulting from devotion to the duties of his office. "In such a death of such a man, if there must be to his family and friends the deepest grief, there must also be to them a feeling of deep and holy joy. There is something in his character which seems to make excessive sorrow unseasonable and unjust to his memory, and all who have heard of his death have derived from it new force to virtue and new confidence to faith."

In a letter dated "Boston, August 25, 1829," to the same friend, he introduces Mr. George Bradford : "But who is Mr. Bradford? He is Mrs. Ripley's brother, and a fine classical and Biblical scholar, and a botanist, and a lover of truth, and an Israelite in whom is no guile,' and a kind of Cowper, and a great admirer of all admirable things; and so I want him to go to your house, where his eyes and ears shall be enriched with what he loves."

It is a little droll to find him in this note speaking of

getting Mr. Upham to point him out the lions on a public occasion at Cambridge. Speaking of some pecuniary losses sustained by their friends, Emerson says: "God seems to make some of his children for prosperity, they bear it so gracefully, and with such good-will of society; and it is always painful when such suffer. But I suppose it is always dangerous, and especially to the very young. In college, I used to echo a frequent ejaculation of my wise aunt's, 'Oh, blessed, blessed poverty!' when I saw young men of fine capabilities, whose only and fatal disadvantage was wealth. It is sad to see it taken from those who know how to use it, but children whose prospects are changed may hereafter rejoice at the event."

The question of immortality, so anxiously discussed with Carlyle at Craigenputtock, is touched in a letter. to Mrs. Lyman, January 6, 1830, on the death of her father, in which he speaks of the "hopes which our Saviour has imparted to us." "Take away these hopes, and death is more ghastly to the soul than the corpse to the eye. Receive them, and the riddle of the universe is explained; an account given of events perfectly consistent with what we feel in ourselves. when we are best." Six years later, in his first book, Emerson wrote, "Even the corpse has its own beauty."

In a letter to this lady on the occasion of a heavy bereavement, the death of a lovely daughter, he — writes (1837): "How gladly have I remembered the glimpses I had of her sunny childhood, her winning manners, her persuading speech, that then made her father, I believe, call her his lawyer.' In the pleasant