Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson

1811; family cares and difficulties; Emerson's aunt, Mary
Moody Emerson, and her influence upon him; Emerson
at the Boston Latin School, 1813; enters Harvard College
"President's freshman," 1817; not remarkably dis-

tinguished as a collegian; graduates, 1821; assists his

elder brother in school-keeping; his first poetry and his

love of nature; enters Divinity College, Cambridge, to

study for the ministry, 1825

CHAPTER II.

Condition of the times when Emerson entered Cambridge; his

admiration for Channing's discourses; want of personal

sympathy; Emerson's studies interrupted by illness; re-

turns for a time to school-keeping; "approbated to

preach," October 10, 1826; his first sermon; goes to

Florida for the recovery of his health; returns home, June,

1827; continues his studies at Divinity Hall; temporary

insanity of his brother Edward, June, 1828; elected assis-

tant minister, and shortly afterwards sole minister of the

Second Church, Boston, 1829; betrothed to Ellen Tucker

PAGE

in December, 1828, and married in September, 1829;

Ellen Emerson's beauty,' accomplishments, and delicacy of

constitution; Emerson as a minister; death of his wife,

February, 1831; his differences with his congregation re-

specting the administration of the Lord's Supper; resigns

his pulpit, September, 1832; his discouragement; goes on

a voyage to Europe, December 25, 1832; arrives at Malta,

February 2, 1833

PAGB

CHAPTER III.

Intellectual condition of Europe at the period of Emerson's

arrival; Emerson's impressions of Italy; his visit to Lan-

dor; proceeds to England; visits Coleridge, Carlyle, and

Wordsworth; Mr. Alexander Ireland's recollections of him

in Edinburgh; he returns to America, September, 1833;

in request as preacher and lecturer; declines to connect

himself with a congregation; his scientific lectures; death

of his brother Edward; takes up his residence at Concord;

description of Concord and its scenery; Emerson's oration

on the bi-centennial anniversary of Concord, and poem on

the monument commemorating the Battle of Lexington;

he marries Lidian Jackson, September, 1835; death of his

brother Charles, May, 1836; lectures on biography; on

English literature; edits Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus "; his

essay on "Nature," September, 1836

CHAPTER IV.

The years between 1830 and 1840 pregnant with intellectual
change; origin of American Transcendentalism, 1836;
Emerson's lectures on the philosophy of history; his
gradual estrangement from the pulpit; oration on the
American Scholar, August, 1837; discourse to the gradua-
ting Divinity Class of Cambridge, July, 1838; opposition
excited by this address; Emerson eschews controversy;
his religious views; his friends at this time, Margaret
Fuller, Alcott, Jones Very, W. H. Channing; Nathaniel
Hawthorne ; establishment of "The Dial," 1840; its cha-
racteristics, and Emerson's connection with it; its discon-

tinuance, 1844; the Brook Farm community, 1840;

Emerson's opinion of the project; his life among his

Concord neighbours; interest in local affairs and partiality

for plain rustic society; his methods of study and compo-

sition; use of books, and literary predilections

CHAPTER V.

PAGE

Emerson's excellence as a father; sudden death of his eldest
boy, January, 1842; his grief and consolation; his efforts
and sacrifices in the circulation of Carlyle's writings in
America; publication of the first series of his Essays, 1841;
criticism of the book; Carlyle's opinion of it; Emerson's
pecuniary embarrassments; his remuneration as a lecturer;
discourse on "The Method of Nature," 1841; second
series of his Essays published, 1844; criticism of the book;
Emerson's correspondence with Carlyle; Lowell's charac-
ter and contrast of the two; Emerson as a poet; his
"intellectual solstice"; proceeds to lecture in Great
Britain at the suggestion of Mr. Alexander Ireland, 1847 . III

CHAPTER VI.

Emerson arrives in England; visits Carlyle; takes up his head-

quarters at Manchester; lectures in the provinces and in

Scotland; proceeds to London; a lion in London society;

his relations with Carlyle; trip to Paris; lectures in Lon-

don; returns to America, July, 1848; his "English Traits";

his "Representative Men"; the Massachusetts Quarterly

Review; Theodore Parker; Thoreau; death of Margaret

Fuller Ossoli; Emerson's share in her biography; sketches

of Emerson by Clough and Frederika Bremer, 1852;

Carlyle on "Representative Men”.

CHAPTER VII.

Emerson's views on American politics; their dangerous tenden-
cies corrected by the anti-slavery agitation; he advocates
emancipation by purchase of the slaves; his resentment at
the truculence of the South; his Federal sympathies on the
outbreak of the Civil War; letters to Carlyle; temporarily

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