Ralph Waldo Emerson
14.
the errors of his time,
have wrought a certain
He was
which
I
am
sorry to see
effect already in history.
born in Boston, under as favorable
auspices as could wait on the birth of any child. He had what Dr. Holmes says is the first of
advantages, a line of New England ancestors of the best stock, running back on both sides to the
In the generation of Winthrop and Brewster. lines of that ancestry there were enough ministers
of religion to satisfy Dr. Holmes' requi-
sition.
For
this
genealogy, that
in a
means,
there were so
New many
England lives
of
which, withtemptations of the
quiet, thoughtful, faithful duty, in
out large incomes or
many men and women were
bred to high thinkconscientious and to ing, sharing life with duty, God. William Emerson, his father, was the
flesh,
and
useful, eloquent,
beloved minister of the
First Church of Boston. This is the church to which John Cotton, two hundred and fifty years
ago, gave dignity
;
where, by John Cotton's elo-