After engaging for a short time, as is usual with most of our clergy, in the care of a school, he completed his theological studies, and in the year 1792 was ordained over the church in Harvard. From this place he was called to a sphere of wider usefulness in the metropolis, and was installed in the First Church, Boston, October, 1799. Here the suavity and courtesy of his manners and the fidelity and ability with which he discharged his pastoral duties secured to him a great share of public esteem and affection. He became a member of nearly all the learned and charitable societies, which in this town are so numerous, and in most of them was intrusted with some important office. He was never weary in contriving and encouraging plans for the improvement of the moral and literary character of the community. In the year 1804 he undertook the conduct of the Monthly Anthology and Boston Review, a literary journal which, in conjunction with several friends whom he interested in its fate, he gratuitously supported, and which sustained a reputation not inferior to any similar work which had preceded it in this country. He continued in the uninterrupted discharge of these multiplied duties to great acceptance till May, 1808, when his friends perceived the first indications of his precarious health. The manner in which he bore the violence of a disease which attacked him at this period cannot be better described than in the language of one of his friends,* who, already, alas! himself claims from us the same sad tribute which he gave to his deceased brother. "Of the practical strength of his faith and piety he was permitted to give us a memorable example during the sudden attack which he sustained a few years since in all the fulness of his health and expectations, when he was busily preparing for a public service. Those who then saw him brought down in an instant and without any previous warning to the gates of death can never forget the steadfastness with which he received the alarm and the singular humility and composure with which he waited during many days, doubtful of life and expecting to leave all that was dear to him on earth to present himself before God." From this attack, however, he apparently recovered and resumed all his usual employments with his accustomed activity and interest. The occasion of the erection of a new place of public worship for the First Church suggested to him the plan of a history of that ancient and respectable society. It has been published since his decease by his friends, and, though laboring under the disadvantage of being posthumous and incomplete, it displays great accuracy and minuteness of research and is read with pleasure and profit by those who take an interest in the early history and ecclesiastical antiquities of our country. In preparing this work, he was engaged till the symptoms of the disease which finally closed his life interrupted his Rev. J. S. Buckminster's sermon at the funeral of Mr. Emerson. labors, while employed in an analysis of the works and character of Chauncy. He sustained the severity of a lingering and distressing disorder with the most exemplary fortitude and Christian tranquillity, till at length he sunk under its force on 11th of May, 1811. Such are the few incidents possessing sufficient general interest to be here recorded, which are to be found in the peaceful and even tenor of the life of this excellent man. In reviewing his character and attainments, it is not difficult to show the grounds of that reputation which during his life he enjoyed. He was a man of lively and vigorous talents, and possessed the rare felicity of having them so constantly at command that his literary efforts are almost all of nearly equal excellence. He possessed great diligence and activity in every pursuit in which he engaged, and was remarkably methodical and exact in the distribution of his time. If we were to select any single feature as marking his character more distinctly than any other, we should say it was the singular propriety with which he filled every station to which he was called. His strong curiosity led him to engage in a great variety of studies; and his love of activity allowed his friends to lay upon him the burden of a great multitude of occupations in the various literary and charitable societies of which he was a member. This variety and number of his duties — though they did not leave him leisure to carry his researches very deeply into many sciences-enabled him to gain a merited fame for active usefulness and devotion to the cause of benevolence; a fame, in the eye of reason and religion, far more valuable than any renown which can be claimed by a man of barren though ever so profound speculation. As a clergyman, he was greatly endeared to his society. His manner in the pulpit was graceful and dignified, though seldom impassioned. His sermons were remarkably chaste and regular in their structure, correct and harmonious in their style, seldom aiming at the more daring graces of rhetoric, but always clear and accurate and, to a great majority of hearers, particularly acceptable. In all the private relations of life he was most exemplary and conscientious. His purity was without a stain. His integrity was above all suspicion. No man delighted more in the happiness of his friends, or would more actively and disinterestedly exert himself to promote it. How deeply he felt the truth and value of the religion. which he preached no one could doubt who witnessed the consolation and support which they gave him in his dying moments. By a life uniformly devoted to the cause of truth and of the best interests of mankind, he has left to his children and friends a rich legacy in the remembrance of his virtues. He has given them one more motive to form their lives on the principles which governed his, that they may hereafter share with him the rewards which we trust he has already gone to receive. The following is given as a correct list of Mr. Emerson's acknowledged publications: 1. Sermon at Harvard, July 4, 1794. 2. Sermon at the Artillery election, Boston, 1799. 3. Sermon before the Roxbury Charitable Society, 1800. 4. Sermon at the ordination of Rev. Robert Smiley, Sept. 23, 1801. 5. Boston Oration, July 4, 1802. 6. Sermon on the death of Rev. Dr. Thacher, 1802. 7. Sermon at the ordination of Rev. Thomas Bedé, 1803. 8. Sermon on the death of Madam Bowdoin, 1803. 9. Sermon before the Boston Female Asylum, 1805. 12. The first, second, third, and seventh discourses in the fourth number of the Christian Monitor, with the prayers annexed to each discourse. 13. A selection of psalms and hymns, embracing all the varieties. of subject and metre, suitable for private devotion and the worship of churches, 12mo, 1808. 14. Sermon at the ordination of Rev. Mr. Clark, Burlington, 1810. Beginning with 1783, a public oration has been given in Boston on the 4th of July each year, under the auspices of the City. The first orator was Dr. John Warren, brother of General Joseph Warren who feil at Bunker Hill. In 1802 the oration was given by Rev. William Emerson, the minister of the First Church, father of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was born on May 25 of the next year. Mr. Emerson's cration is here printed in full, together with the Memoir prepared for the Massachusetts Historical Society after his death in 1811 by Rev. Samuel Cooper Thacher, who was ordained as minister of the New South Church just as Mr. Emerson died, while indeed his body still lay awaiting burial. To the list of Mr. Emerson's publications given by Mr. Thacher should be added the Historical Sketch of the First Church, left unfinished and published after his death with the brief memoir embodied in the funeral sermon by Rev. J. S. Buckminster, and the two sermons preached by Mr. Emerson July 17 and 21, 1808, upon the occasion of leaving the old meeting-house in Cornhill (Washington Street) and the dedication of the new one in Chauncy Place. The funeral sermon by Buckminster was printed in full in pamphlet form, ard is the most important tribute to William Emerson. See the brief biographical notice by Josiah Quincy in his History of the Boston Athenæum; also by Loring in his "Hundred Boston Orators." There may be seen in the libraries the "Catalogue of Books, comprising the Library of the late Rev. William Emerson, to be sold at Public Auction, on Tuesday, 27th of August instant, at the Theological Library in Chauncey Place. Sale to commence at 10 o'clock A.M. Whitwell & Bond, auctioneers." There are 212 titles in the catalogue, mostly of religious works, but not a few volumes in general literature and history, among the latter being the American Biographical and Historical Dictionary, Adams's History of New England, Belknap's American Biography, Bancroft's Life of Washington, Eulogies on Washington, Holmes's American Annals, Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts, Eliot's New England Biographical Dictionary, Neal's Puritans. Rollin's Ancient History, Robertson's Charles the Fifth, Trumbull's History of Connecticut, Winthrop's Journal, and Washington's Political Legacies. The first of Mr. Emerson's published discourses, given at Harvard, Mass., July 4, 1794, is interesting in comparison with the Boston 4th of July oration in 1802. It was given at the request of the military officers of the town of Harvard, who, with the militia under their command, assembled to hear it. It dwelt largely upon the importance of morals and religion in the nation. Referring to dangers then confronting, or likely to confront, the nation, the preacher said, "If ever called to the field, we trust ye will remember from whom ye descend." The motto for the whole might very well have been that often attributed to Cromwell's Puritans: "Trust in God, and keep your powder dry." This, too, might well have served for the sermon, "Piety and Arms," preached in 1799 before the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in Boston. The actual text was, "Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hands." Ps. cxlix. 6. "We vindicate no war," the preacher said, "which is not the legitimate offspring of selfdefence; none incompatible with any sober construction of the precept, Resist not evil; none which embraces other objects than such a restitution to the injured state as shall inhibit future aggressions; none in which a Christian country cannot consistently appeal to the sovereign arbiter of nations for the rectitude of its cause and confide the issue to his just decision." Referring to the unhappy conditions which still made arms and military organizations necessary, he said to the company which he was addressing: "Consider those arms as the sad emblems of an unnatural and depraved state of society. Under this impression you will not bear them with pride, out reluctance, and will consider the necessity of their assumption as a source of humiliation, and not of glory, to you in common with our kind." The word makes us think of his great son's denunciation of "musket worship" and of passages in his lecture on War. Turning to the general subject of public morals, the preacher said: "Vain is it for you, legislators, to levy taxes and establish armies for the safety of the republic if we, the subjects, by our luxuries and sloth, consume the political body." There was a warm tribute to Washington, then in the last year of his life; and we have a reflection of the Federalist spirit of the time in the word: You see the triumphs of Gallic infidelity in that factious and disorganizing spirit which has stalked through the United States for the purpose of destroying our confidence in the officers of the Federal government and of undermining the government itself." Mr. Emerson's History of the First Church is a scholarly and valuable work. His collection of psalms and hymns shows a distinctly finer feeling than what we had had before. In some of the psalms and hymns which are used in our country, the voice of poetry is silent," is one reason which he gives for preparing his new hymn-book; and he hopes the book will promote the interests of congregational singing, in the growth of which in the country he rejoices. The book contains 150 psalms and 150 hymns, one on each page, the page numbers and hymn numbers corresponding,- a distinctly convenient arrangement. The study of Mr. Emerson's various published works confirms the judgment pronounced upon him by his contemporaries as a thoughtful, cultivated, public-spirited, high-minded man, whose influence upon his gifted son during the tender years over which that influence extended must have been refining and ennobling. The pilgrims of Plymouth set the first example not only to our own country, but to the civilized world, of a system of free schools, at which were educated together, not by compulsion, but from mutual choice, all classes of the community, the high, the low, the rich, and the poor,- a system, by which the state so far assumed the education of the youth, as to make all property responsible for the support of common schools for the instruction of all children. This institution was indeed the foster child, and has justly been the pride, of Massachusetts and of New England. Its influences were strong, and they still are strong, upon the moral and political character of the people. so. If our ancestors were stern republicans, this institution did more than any and all others to make them so and to keep them While the best schools in the land are free, all the classes of society are blended. The rich and the poor meet and are educated together. And, if educated together, nature is so evenhanded in the distribution of her favors that no fear need be entertained that a monopoly of talent, of industry, and consequently of acquirements, will follow a monopoly of property. The principle upon which our free schools are established is in itself a stern leveller of factitious distinctions. Every generation, while the system is executed according to the true spirit of it, as conceived by our ancestors, will bring its quota of new men to fill the public places of distinction,- men who owe nothing to the fortunes or the crimes of their fathers, but all, under |