eed, so softly did the old religious forms slip away from
Emerson, that when he informed his congregation that he could not
longer administer the sacrament to them, they could not associate any
formidable heresy with his position. They were loath to part with him.
In the three years of his ministry he had reflected honor upon their
pulpit. He had been active in the philanthropic work of Boston, was
chaplain of the Legislature, and on the School Board. A few months
after his settlement in Boston he had married Ellen Louisa Tucker and
a few months before he gave up his pulpit she died. Under these
circumstances of depression Emerson came on his first visit to Europe.
The record of his pilgrimage to Coleridge's house at Highgate, to
Rydal Mount, and to Craigenputtock, is given in Emerson's "English
Traits." He came, hoping to find light upon more serious questions
than any that had arisen between him and his Boston congregation; he
returned with but one thing made clearer, namely that he had begun an
ascent which each must climb alone.

The Old Manse was built in 1767 for Emerson's grandfather, who had
become minister of Concord church. Emerson's father was the first
child born in it, and used to claim that he was "in arms" on the field
when the British were repulsed, being six years old when the fight
occurred close to the windows. In this house we now find Emerson, at
the age of thirty-one, studying Plato and Plotinus, and the English
mystics, but also, with Sarah Ripley, studying Goethe and savants of
the new school, like Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire. Here was conceived his
first book, "Nature." This essay was published in 1836, the same year
in which he wrote the Concord hymn, since annually sung, with its line
about "the shot heard round the world." The little book was not at
once heard so far, but it proved also the first shot of a revolution.
A writer in the _Saturday Review_ speaks of "the great men whom
America and England have jointly lost"--Emerson and Darwin--and
remarks that "some of those who have been forward in taking up and
advancing the impulse given by Darwin, not only on the general ground
where it started, but as a source of energy in the wider application
of scientific thought, have once and again openly declared that they
owe not a little to Emerson." This just remark may be illustrated by
Dr. Tyndall's words, in 1873: "The first time I ever knew Waldo
Emerson was when, years ago, I picked up at a stall a