rally separated by a very distinct line of
social cleavage. A certain exclusiveness and fastidiousness, not
reminding us exactly of primitive Christianity, was the inevitable
result. This must always be remembered in judging the men and women
of that day and their immediate descendants, as much as the surviving
prejudices of those whose parents were born subjects of King George in
the days when loyalty to the crown was a virtue. The line of social
separation was more marked, probably, in Boston, the headquarters of
Unitarianism, than in the other large cities; and even at the present
day our Jerusalem and Samaria, though they by no means refuse dealing
with each other, do not exchange so many cards as they do checks and
dollars. The exodus of those children of Israel from the house of
bondage, as they chose to consider it, and their fusion with the mass of
independent citizens, got rid of a class distinction which was felt even
in the sanctuary. True religious equality is harder to establish than
civil liberty. No man has done more for spiritual republicanism than
Emerson, though he came from the daintiest sectarian circle of the time
in the whole country.

Such were Emerson's intellectual and moral parentage, nurture, and
environment; such was the atmosphere in which he grew up from youth to
manhood.

CHAPTER I.

Birthplace.--Boyhood.--College Life.

1803-1823. To _AET_. 20.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 25th of
May, 1803.

He was the second of five sons; William, R.W., Edward Bliss, Robert
Bulkeley, and Charles Chauncy.

His birthplace and that of our other illustrious Bostonian, Benjamin
Franklin, were within a kite-string's distance of each other. When
the baby philosopher of the last century was carried from Milk Street
through the narrow passage long known as Bishop's Alley, now Hawley
Street, he came out in Summer Street, very nearly opposite the spot
where, at the beginning of this century, stood the parsonage of the
First Church, the home of the Reverend William Emerson, its pastor, and
the birthplace of his son, Ralph Waldo. The oblong quadrangle between
Newbury, now Washington Street, Pond, now Bedford Street, Summer Street,
and the open space called Church Green, where the New South Church was
afterwards erected, is represented on Bonner's maps of 1722 and 1769 as
an almost blank area, not crossed or penetrated by a single passageway.

Even so late as less