Emerson's decision to quit the ministry, arrived at painfully
during the summer and fall of 1832, was accompanied by illness so
severe that he was forced to give up any immediate thought of a new
career. Instead, in December, he embarked on a tour of Europe that
was to take him to Italy, France, Scotland, and England. Within a
year after his return in the fall in 1833, his health largely
restored, he went to live in the town of Concord, his home from
then on.
The record of Emerson's ten months in Europe which makes up a
large part of this book is unusually detailed and personal,
actually a diary recording what Emerson saw and did as well as what
he thought. He describes cities, scenes, and buildings that he
found striking in one way or another and he gives impressions of
the people he met. During his travels he made the acquaintance of
Landor, of Lafayette, and of Carlyle, Wordsworth, and Coleridge,
all of whom stimulated him. In Paris he was so much stirred by a
visit to the Jardin des Plantes that he determined "to become a
naturalist."
On his return to America, still without a profession, he
reverted in his journals to the more impersonal form they had taken
in his days as a minister, focusing on his inner experiences rather
than on external events. Notes start dotting the pages once again,
this time not so much for future sermons--although for years he did
a certain amount of occasional preaching as for the addresses of
the public lecturer he would soon become.
Through the thirty-four months covered by this volume, the
journals continue to he the advancing record of Emerson's mind,
demonstrating a growing maturity and firmness of style by
compression and aphorism.
General
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