Emerson may think this or that, but he is more like Jesus Christ than any one I have ever known. I have seen him when his religion was tested, and it bore the test." The report was circulated among the Unitarians and believed that Emerson was insane! The extent to which Unitarian churches in Boston have discontinued the Eucharist, and the recent encomiums on Emerson delivered in them, warrant the hope that, some day, the Unitarians will adopt the rule of making an annual pilgrimage to the grave at Concord, in remembrance that when the intellectual flower of the New World rose before them, some cried, Infidel!" and others "Madman !"

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But the impression made by Emerson's brief ministry in Boston was lasting. From that day to this there have been men and women, well known for their leading part in all high works and movements, whose lives and characters were mainly influenced by his sermons.

VIII.

A SEA-CHANGE.

MERSON'S nerves were a good deal strained by the trouble with his church. He had already formed friendships, in his high way, with individual hearts and minds in his congregation; and though his spiritual sword, with the fine edge of Saladin's, was able to cut even the silken thread of affection if it withheld him from his aim, it was not without the laceration of his sensibility in all such relations. His mother had received another blow to her hopes concerning her sons. William had abandoned the ministry because of sceptical opinions; Edward had been compelled to give up the law and go south on the voyage from which he never returned; and now Ralph Waldo was severed from the traditional profession of the family. All this Emerson felt deeply. There had also come upon him a heavy bereavement. In the February of 1832, a few months before the difficulty with his church, his young wife had died of consumption. Under these troubles, and the sharp words of his disappointed fellow-ministers, his health suffered, and he resolved on an excursion to Europe. He had an ardent desire to converse with the English authors who had become important to him, especially Carlyle,

Above all, he

Coleridge, Landor, and Wordsworth. wished Carlyle to know that his voice had been heard in New England, and to bear him a prophecy of the response that awaited him. Early in the spring of 1833 he sailed for Europe, and though he was at home again by the close of August, he had visited Sicily, Italy, France, and England. He visited Landor in Florence. With reference to Emerson's visits to Carlyle and Wordsworth at that time, he wrote at once to Alexander Ireland, whose acquaintance he had made in Edinburgh, and whose friendship was of much value to him. A very interesting account of this visit to Edinburgh, and of the impression made on him by Emerson's sermon in that city, is given in Mr. Ireland's memorial of his friend. I was indebted to Mr. Ireland for Emerson's letter to him, on Carlyle, and from which here.

which appears in my book extracts may be made

"The comfort of meeting a man of genius is that he speaks sincerely; that he feels himself to be so rich, that he is above the meanness of pretending to knowledge which he has not, and Carlyle does not pretend to have solved the great problems, but rather to be an observer of their solution as it goes forward in the world. My own feeling was that I had met with men of far less power who had yet greater insight into religious truth. He is, as you might guess from his papers, the most catholic of philosophers; he forgives and loves everybody, and wishes each to struggle on in his own place and arrive at his own ends. But his respect for eminent men, or rather his scale of eminence, is about the reverse of the popular scale.

Scott, Mackintosh. Jeffrey, Gibbon, even Bacon, are no heroes of his; stranger yet, he hardly admires Socrates, the glory of the Greek world; but Burns, and Samuel Johnson, and Mirabeau, he said interested him, and I suppose whoever else has given himself with all his heart to a leading instinct, and has not calculated too much. But I cannot think of sketching even his opinions, or repeating his conversations here. I will cheerfully do it when you visit me in America. He talks finely, seems to love the broad Scotch, and I loved him very much at once. . . . I could not help congratulating him upon his treasure in his wife, and I hope he will not leave the moors; 'tis so much better for a man of letters to nurse himself in seclusion than to be filed down to the common level by the compliances and imitations of city society."

Emerson called on Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, and was cordially received, the poet remembering up all his American acquaintance. "He had very much to say about the evils of superficial education, both in this country and in mine. He thinks that the intellectual tuition of society is going on out of all proportion faster than its moral training, which last is essential to all education. He does not wish to hear of schools of tuition; it is the education of circumstances which he values, and much more to this point. . . He led me out into a walk in his grounds, where he said many thousands of his lines were composed, and repeated to me three beautiful sonnets, which he had just finished, upon the occasion of his recent visit to Fingal's Cave at Staffa. I hope he will print them speedily. The third is a gem. He was so

benevolently anxious to impress upon me my social. duties as an American citizen, that he accompanied me near a mile from his house, talking vehemently, and ever and anon stopping short to imprint his words. I noted down some of these when I got to my inn, and you may see them in Boston, Massachusetts, when you will. I enjoyed my visits greatly, and shall always esteem your Britain very highly in love for its wise and good men's sake. I remember with much pleasure my visit to Edinburgh, and your good parents. . . . It will give me very great pleasure to hear from you, to know your thoughts. Every man that ever was born has some that are peculiar."

Carlyle's tones were tenderer even than his words when, in the evening after his inauguration as Lord Rector at Edinburgh, he told me of this visit. "He came from Dumfries in an old rusty gig; came one day and vanished the next. I had never heard of him : he gave us his brief biography. We took a walk while dinner was prepared. We gave him welcome; we were glad to see him. I did not then adequately recognise Emerson's genius; but she and I thought him a beautiful transparent soul, and he was always a very pleasant object to us in the distance. Now and then a letter still comes from him, and amid the smoke and mist of the world it is always as a window flung open to the azure."

Emerson's hopes in this pilgrimage were too high to be realised. Though eight years younger than Carlyle, he was really older. The hermit of Craigenputtock was still at heart involved in beliefs that Emerson's fathers had outgrown for him before he was born, and