city of his manner, free from the
least shadow of dogmatic assumption, made a deep impression on me. Not
long before this I had listened to a wonderful sermon by Dr. Chalmers,
whose force, and energy, and vehement, but rather turgid eloquence
carried, for the moment, all before them,--his audience becoming like
clay in the hands of the potter. But I must confess that the pregnant
thoughts and serene self-possession of the young Boston minister had a
greater charm for me than all the rhetorical splendors of Chalmers. His
voice was the sweetest, the most winning and penetrating of any I ever
heard; nothing like it have I listened to since.

'That music in our hearts we bore
Long after it was heard no more.'"

Mr. George Gilfillan speaks of "the solemnity of his manner, and the
earnest thought pervading his discourse."

As to the effect of his preaching on his American audiences, I find the
following evidence in Mr. Cooke's diligently gathered collections. Mr.
Sanborn says:--

"His pulpit eloquence was singularly attractive, though by no means
equally so to all persons. In 1829, before the two friends had met,
Bronson Alcott heard him preach in Dr. Channing's church on 'The
Universality of the Moral Sentiment,' and was struck, as he said,
with the youth of the preacher, the beauty of his elocution and the
direct and sincere manner in which he addressed his hearers."

Mr. Charles Congdon, of New Bedford, well known as a popular
writer, gives the following account of Emerson's preaching in his
"Reminiscences." I borrow the quotation from Mr. Conway:--

"One day there came into our pulpit the most gracious of mortals,
with a face all benignity, who gave out the first hymn and made the
first prayer as an angel might have read and prayed. Our choir was
a pretty good one, but its best was coarse and discordant after
Emerson's voice. I remember of the sermon only that it had an
indefinite charm of simplicity and wisdom, with occasional
illustrations from nature, which were about the most delicate and
dainty things of the kind which I had ever heard. I could understand
them, if not the fresh philosophical novelties of the discourse."

Everywhere Emerson seems to have pleased his audiences. The Reverend Dr.
Morison, formerly the much respected Unitarian minister of New Bedford,
writes to me as follows:--

"After Dr. Dewey left New Bedford, Mr. Emerson prea