William Emerson left four children, a son bearing the same name, and three daughters, one of whom, Mary Moody Emerson, is well remembered as pictured for us by her nephew, Ralph Waldo.  His widow became the wife of the Reverend Ezra Ripley, Doctor of Divinity, and his successor as Minister at Concord.

The Reverend William Emerson, the second of that name and profession, and the father of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born in the year 1769, and graduated at Harvard College in 1789.  He was settled as Minister in the town of Harvard in the year 1792, and in 1799 became Minister of the First Church in Boston.  In 1796 he married Ruth Haskins of Boston.  He died in 1811, leaving five sons, of whom Ralph Waldo was the second.

The interest which attaches itself to the immediate parentage of a man like Emerson leads us to inquire particularly about the characteristics of the Reverend William Emerson so far as we can learn them from his own writings and from the record of his contemporaries.

The Reverend Dr. Sprague’s valuable and well-known work, “Annals of the American Pulpit,” contains three letters from which we learn some of his leading characteristics.  Dr. Pierce of Brookline, the faithful chronicler of his time, speaks of his pulpit talents as extraordinary, but thinks there was not a perfect sympathy between him and the people of the quiet little town of Harvard, while he was highly acceptable in the pulpits of the metropolis.  In personal appearance he was attractive; his voice was melodious, his utterance distinct, his manner agreeable.  “He was a faithful and generous friend and knew how to forgive an enemy.—­In his theological views perhaps he went farther on the liberal side than most of his brethren with whom he was associated.—­He was, however, perfectly tolerant towards those who differed from him most widely.”

Dr. Charles Lowell, another brother minister, says of him, “Mr. Emerson was a handsome man, rather tall, with a fair complexion, his cheeks slightly tinted, his motions easy, graceful, and gentlemanlike, his manners bland and pleasant.  He was an honest man, and expressed himself decidedly and emphatically, but never bluntly or vulgarly.—­Mr. Emerson was a man of good sense.  His conversation was edifying and useful; never foolish or undignified.—­In his theological opinions he was, to say the least, far from having any sympathy with Calvinism.  I have not supposed that he was, like Dr. Freeman, a Humanitarian, though he may have been so.”

There was no honester chronicler than our clerical Pepys, good, hearty, sweet-souled, fact-loving Dr. John Pierce of Brookline, who knew the dates of birth and death of the graduates of Harvard, starred and unstarred, better, one is tempted to say (Hibernice), than they did themselves.  There was not a nobler gentleman in charge of any Boston parish than Dr. Charles Lowell.  But after the pulpit has said what it thinks of the pulpit, it is well to listen to what the pews have to say about it.