“On Sunday, the 18th of August, 1833, I heard him deliver a discourse in the Unitarian Chapel, Young Street, Edinburgh, and I remember distinctly the effect which it produced on his hearers.  It is almost needless to say that nothing like it had ever been heard by them before, and many of them did not know what to make of it.  The originality of his thoughts, the consummate beauty of the language in which they were clothed, the calm dignity of his bearing, the absence of all oratorical effort, and the singular directness and simplicity 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:—­