ter
he would been tried and imprisoned; less than fifty years ago he was
called infidel and atheist; names which are fast becoming relinquished
to the intellectual half-breeds who sometimes find their way into
pulpits and the so-called religious periodicals.

It is not within our best-fenced churches and creeds that the
self-governing American is like to find the religious freedom which the
Concord prophet asserted with the strength of Luther and the sweetness
of Melancthon, and which the sovereign in his shirt-sleeves will surely
claim. Milton was only the precursor of Emerson when he wrote:--

"Neither is God appointed and confined, where and out of what place
these his chosen shall be first heard to speak; for he sees not as man
sees, chooses not as man chooses, lest we should devote ourselves again
to set places and assemblies, and outward callings of men, planting our
faith one while in the old convocation house, and another while in the
Chapel at Westminster, when all the faith and religion that shall be
there canonized is not sufficient without plain convincement, and
the charity of patient instruction, to supple the least bruise of
conscience, to edify the meanest Christian who desires to walk in the
spirit and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of
voices that can be there made; no, though Harry the Seventh himself
there, with all his liege tombs about him, should lend their voices from
the dead, to swell their number."

The best evidence of the effect produced by Emerson's writings and life
is to be found in the attention he has received from biographers and
critics. The ground upon which I have ventured was already occupied by
three considerable Memoirs. Mr. George Willis Cooke's elaborate work is
remarkable for its careful and thorough analysis of Emerson's teachings.
Mr. Moncure Daniel Conway's "Emerson at Home and Abroad" is a lively
picture of its subject by one long and well acquainted with him. Mr.
Alexander Ireland's "Biographical Sketch" brings together, from a great
variety of sources, as well as from his own recollections, the facts of
Emerson's history and the comments of those whose opinions were best
worth reproducing. I must refer to this volume for a bibliography of the
various works and Essays of which Emerson furnished the subject.

From the days when Mr. Whipple attracted the attention of our
intelligent, but unawakened reading community, by his discriminating and
apprec