resigned.

He parted from his people in all kindness, but the wrench was felt. His
wife had recently died, he was ill himself, his life seemed to others
broken up. But meantime voices from far away had reached him. He sailed
for Europe, landed in Italy, saw cities, and art, and men, but would not
stay long. Of the dead, Michael Angelo appealed chiefly to him there;
Landor among the living. He soon passed northward, making little stay in
Paris, but sought out Carlyle, then hardly recognized, and living in the
lonely hills of the Scottish Border. There began a friendship which had
great influence on the lives of both men, and lasted through life. He
also visited Wordsworth. But the new life before him called him home.

He landed at Boston within the year in good health and hope, and joined
his mother and youngest brother Charles in Newton. Frequent invitations
to preach still came, and were accepted, and he even was sounded as to
succeeding Dr. Dewey in the church at New Bedford; but, as he stipulated
for freedom from ceremonial, this came to nothing.

In the autumn of 1834 he moved to Concord, living with his kinsman, Dr.
Ripley, at the Manse, but soon bought house and land on the Boston Road,
on the edge of the village towards Walden woods. Thither, in the autumn,
he brought his wife. Miss Lidian Jackson, of Plymouth, and this was
their home during the rest of their lives.

The new life to which he had been called opened pleasantly and increased
in happiness and opportunity, except for the sadness of bereavements,
for, in the first few years, his brilliant brothers Edward and Charles
died, and soon afterward Waldo, his firstborn son, and later his mother.
Emerson had left traditional religion, the city, the Old World, behind,