his inner life, at this and later periods, reveal the rigid
self-scrutiny, the tender idealism, with which he began his
ministerial career.

But as a scheme of life for Ralph Waldo Emerson this vocation
would not satisfy. The sexton of the Second Church thought that
the young man was not at his best at funerals. Father Taylor, the
eccentric Methodist, whom Emerson assisted at a sailor's Bethel
near Long Wharf, considered him "one of the sweetest souls God
ever made," but as ignorant of the principles of the New
Testament as Balaam's ass was of Hebrew grammar. By and by came
an open difference with his congregation over the question of
administering the Communion. "I am not interested in it," Emerson
admitted, and he wrote in his "Journal" the noble words: "It is
my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing
which I cannot do with my whole heart." His resignation was
accepted in 1832. His young wife had died of consumption in the
same year. He now sailed for Italy, France, and England, a
memorable journey which gave him an acquaintance with Landor,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle, but which was even more
significant in sending him, as he says, back to himself, to the
resources of his own nature. "When shows break up," wrote Whitman
afterward, "what but oneself is sure?" In 1834 and 1835 we find
Emerson occupying a room in the Old Manse at Concord, strolling
in the quiet fields, lecturing or preaching if he were invited to
do so, but chiefly absorbed in a little book which he was
beginning to write--a new utterance of a new man.

This book, the now famous "Nature" of 1836, contains the essence
of Emerson's message to his generation. It is a prose essay, but