Ralph Waldo Emerson - Recollections of His Visits to England in 1833, 1847-8, 1872-3, and Extracts from Unpublished Letters (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: RECOLLECTIONS Emerson's Visits To England In 1833, 1847-8, And 1872-3. It was in the month of August, 1833?nearly fifty years ago?that I had the singular good fortune to make the acquaintance of Mr. Emerson, and to enjoy the privilege of several days' intercourse with him. I was then residing in Edinburgh, my native city, and he was on his way home, after his first visit to Europe. He had with him a letter of introduction to a friend of mine, who, luckily for me, was then so much engaged in professional duties, that he was unable to spare even a few hours to do the honours of the old Scottish metropolis; so the young American traveller was handed over to me, and I thus became "an entertainer of angels unawares." In those early days Mr. Emerson was about thirty years of age, andhis name was then utterly unknown in the world of letters; for the period to which I refer was anterior, by several years, to his delivery of those remarkable addresses which took by surprise the most thoughtful of his countrymen, as well as of cultivated English readers. Neither had he published any of those addresses or essays which afterwards stamped him as the most original thinker in America. On Sunday, the 18th of August, 1833, I heard him deliver a discourse in the Unitarian Chapel, Young Street, Edinburgh, and I remember distinctly the effect which it produced on his hearers. It is almost needless to say that nothing like it had ever been heard by them before, and many of them did not know what to make of it. The originality of his thoughts, the consummate beauty of the language in which they were clothed, the calm dignity of his bearing, the absence of all oratorical effort, and the singular directness and simplicity of his manner, free from the least shadow of dogmatic assumption, made a d...