The card between your fingers— You ask for explanation, Can you reach the riddle right? Yes, we met, and loved, and parted, "Pour prendre congé." Learn the lesson, NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS. THE Editor of the CHRISTIAN WORLD MAGAZINE begs respectfully to intimate to voluntary contributors that she will not hold herself responsible for MSS. sent on approval. Unaccepted MSS. of any great length will be returned, provided the name and address of the owner is written on the first or last page, and provided also that the necessary stamps are enclosed for transmission through the post. Authors are recommended to keep copies of verses, short essays, and minor articles generally, since they cannot, under any circumstances, be returned. Miscellaneous contributions are not requested. THE CHRISTIAN WORLD MAGAZINE. JULY, 1882. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. THE death of Ralph Waldo Emerson on the evening of Thursday, April 27th, at his home in Concord, removed one of Mr. Longfellow's oldest friends, in scarcely more than a month from the poet's own decease. The American nation has sustained a double bereavement. If a writer who gave evidence of possessing marked ability used highly exaggerated language, when he said, "With Emerson dead, it seems almost folly to live"-it may well be affirmed that American literature has lost by his death one of its earliest and greatest writers. When Emerson was born in 1803, America had no literature at all. If she had produced no other writer besides Emerson, she could make a substantial claim upon the readers of books throughout the world. In 1818 there had positively been but one professional author in the States, and he had died in obscurity. One of the greatest men of his time— William Ellery Channing-had then only published a sermon. Emerson was at Harvard College when Hawthorne and Longfellow were schoolboys. Bryant published his "Thanatopsis" in 1815; Irving his "Sketch-Book" in 1818-1820; Cooper his "Spy" in 1822. It was in that year that Sydney Smith wrote to Lord Grey: "There does not appear to be in America one man of any considerable talents." It has been remarked, that when the early literature of America attracted European attention, it was mainly as an interesting phenomenon; and Irving accounted for his own popularity in England, by saying, that the "English were amazed to find an American holding a quill in his fingers instead of wearing it on bis head." We shall see that Mr. Emerson was fathered in a good and helpful past. Eight generations of his family have had worthy name and place in New England. It is not wonderful that this man should have believed in the advantage of a good moral heredity. Many generations of ministers held the ground before him. His ancestry has been traced back to the thirteenth century. One of them was a Magna Charta baron, one Robert Bulkeley. A descendant of this baron was a Bedfordshire rector in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, and wrote a supplement to Foxe's "Book of Martyrs." There was a strong Puritan conviction among the Bulkeleys; and although these tendencies in the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, of Bedfordshire, were connived at by his bishop for twenty-five years-when the matter came under the notice of Archbishop Land, the reverend gentleman was at once silenced. In common with many others at that period, he decided to seek freedom to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience in the New World, and many of his congregation accompanied him thither. Late in the year 1634, this sturdy little band of Puritans landed in Boston, and remained in New Town, afterwards Cambridge, for nearly a year. Mr. Bulkeley seems to have been both a good and a wise man, having much skill in the management of people, and being blessed with considerable means for carrying forward his various enterprises. Cotton Mather bears. testimony that "he was a most exalted Christian, full of those devotions which accompany a conversation in heaven, and conscientions even to a degree of scrupulosity." He became the preacher of the Concord Church, organised in Cambridge, in 1636-7, and continued to exercise a useful and earnest influence upon the colony until his death in 1859, when he was succeeded in the Concord pastorate by his son Edward, who was born and educated in England. Mr. Edward Bulkeley's daughter Elizabeth became the second wife of the Rev. Joseph Emerson, of Mendon, in 1665. The Emerson family was from Durham County, England, and one of its ancestors was knighted by Henry VIII. It had long been a family of ministers. Thomas Emerson was the first who went to America, in 1635. The son of this man was Mr. Joseph Emerson, of Mendon. Edward, the son of Joseph and Elizabeth Emerson, born in Concord in 1670, married Rebecca Waldo, of Chelmsford, in 1697. It is interesting to observe, that the Waldo family had been London merchants, and descended from a stock of the Waldenses. Minister after minister in this family continued to do good work, until we meet with William Emerson, who was a moderate Calvinistic minister at Concord in 1765, for whom the "Old Manse" was built two years afterwards. Hawthorne says that "in its near retirement and accessible seclusion it was the very spot for the residence of a clergyman." He was a stout supporter of the revolutionary cause, and died in 1776, apparently through having joined the patriot army, and from the effects of a fever incident to army life. His widow was married to Ezra Ripley in 1778, who was now the Concord pastor, and whose connection with the Church continued for sixty-three years, until his death on September 21st, 1841. In his house Emerson spent many of his boyhood days, and of him he spoke after his death in most touching and beautiful language. "He was a natural gentleman; courtly, hospitable, manly, and public-spirited; his nature social, his house open to all men. In his house dwelt order, and prudence, and plenty; there was no waste and no stint; he was open-handed, and just and generous. He knew everybody's grandfather, and seemed to talk with each person rather as a representative of his house and name than as an individual. Many and many a felicity he had in his prayers, now for ever lost, which defied all the rules of all the rhetoricians. He did not know when he was good in prayer or sermon, for he had no literature and no art, but he believed, and therefore spoke." Mr. Ripley was in his earlier years somewhat of an Arminian, but eventually became a Unitarian, as also did the Concord Church. Mrs. Ripley's son by her first husband, William Emerson, took his father's name. He was born on May 6th, 1769, and entered Harvard in his seventeenth year. He became minister of the First Church at Boston on October 16th, 1799. He was the father of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and died just before the latter had reached his eighth year, in 1811. He was a man of unquestionable parts, and would have attained undoubted eminence, but for his premature decease; so that we can understand the force of some of Emerson's own words, when he asks," How shall a man escape from his ancestors ?" "In different hours a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each other's skin-seven or eight ancestors at least— and they constitute the variety of notes of that new piece of music which his life is." The mother was a Ralph Waldo was the second of five sons. woman of unusual character and influence. One of her sons said, that in his boyhood, when she came from her room in the morning, it seemed to him as if she always came from communion with God. One who knew her testified after her decease, "Her sen sible and kindly speech was always as good as the best instruction; her smile, though it was ever ready, was a reward. Her dark, liquid eyes, from which old age could not take away the exp ression, will be among the remembrances of all those on whom they ever rested." But Waldo owed much also to the example and guidance of his father's sister, Miss Mary Moody Emerson, concerning whom he declared, that her influence upon his education had been as great as that of Greece or Rome; and he described her as a great genius and a remarkable writer. These five boys were trained in all honest and unselfish ways, as well as in great thrift and economy on account of the limited means upon which they had to depend. Boston, in Emerson's boyhood, was full of lessons for open-eyed and thoughtful children. There were men of power and wisdom in the sturdy little town. When he was born in 1803, there were 25,000 inhabitants. In thirty years it numbered 65,000, and now more than 350,000. He was brought under the effect of the religion of those days, to which he himself refers, when he says: "What a debt is ours to that old religion which in the childhood of most of us still dwelt like a Sabbath morning in the country of New England, teaching privation, self-denial, and sorrow." I pause to remark, in parenthesis, that no three words could be less descriptive of the lessons taught by much of the religion of Old England at the present time. His college career brought him into contact with some remarkable men. Edward Everett was Professor of Greek Literature, and Edward Channing and George Ticknor were among the other professors, while Caleb Cashing was one of the tutors. In the class before his own was Mr. Furness, who has outlived him, and took part in the funeral services. It is said that he was well liked by class-mates and teachers, although his habits were not in harmony with those of many of his fellow-students. He was a great reader, and showed some skill in the writing of poetry. The mother had removed to Cambridge from Boston, and her sons, with certain other students, boarded at her table. "Although his quiet nature kept him out of most convivial societies, he was always genial, fond of hearing or telling a good story, and ready to do his share towards an evening's entertainment." William Emerson, the eldest brother, opened a school in his mother's house, and was assisted by Waldo. Later on he opened a young ladies' school in Boston, and the family moved back again to that city. In 1823 Mr. Emerson began the study of theology, but the principal influence of that kind which was then exerted upon his character, must be connected with Dr. Channing's conversation and preaching. "The outcome of that great preacher's most cherished ideas was a fine practical reliance on the soul of man as a medium of truth and goodness. Emerson eagerly embraced the essential spirit of Channing's teaching, while the lovable spirit of this man, the high character of his thought, the loftiness of his religious purpose, made a deep impression on the young student." Emerson was accustomed to refer to Dr. Channing as one of the three most |