to that point, believing himself entitled to a full explanation, and whatever relief to the conscience of both parties plain speech could effect was sure to be procured. In all such passages he justified himself to the conscience, and commonly to the love, of the persons concerned. He was the more competent to these searching discourses from his knowledge of family history. He knew everybody’s grandfather, and seemed to address each person rather as the representative of his house and name, than as an individual. In him have perished more local and personal anecdotes of this village and vicinity than are possessed by any survivor. This intimate knowledge of families, and this skill of speech, and still more, his sympathy, made him incomparable in his parochial visits, and in his exhortations and prayers. He gave himself up to his feelings, and said on the instant the best things in the world. Many and many a felicity he had in his prayer, now forever lost, which defied all the rules of all the rhetoricians. He did not know when he was good in prayer or sermon, for he had no literature and no art; but he believed, and therefore spoke. He was eminently loyal in his nature, and not fond of adventure or innovation. By education, and still more by temperament, he was engaged to the old forms of the New England Church. Not speculative, but affectionate; devout, but with an extreme love of order, he adopted heartily, though in its mildest form, the creed and catechism of the fathers, and appeared a modern Israelite in his attachment to the Hebrew history and faith. He was a man very easy to read, for his whole life and conversation were consistent. All his opinions and actions might be securely predicted by a good observer on short acquaintance. My classmate at Cambridge, Frederick King, told me from Governor Gore, who was the Doctor’s classmate, that in college he was called Holy Ripley. And now, in his old age, when all the antique Hebraism and its customs are passing away, it is fit that he too should depart,--most fit that in the fall of laws a loyal man should die. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 12: This sketch was written for the Social Circle, a club in Concord, now more than a century old, and said to be the lineal descendant of the Committee of Safety in the Revolution. Mr. Emerson was a member for many years and greatly valued its weekly evening meetings, held, during the winter, at the houses of the members. After the death of Dr. Ripley, an early member and connected with him by marriage, Mr. Emerson was asked to prepare the customary Memoir for the Club Book.] [Footnote 13: Rev. Joseph Emerson.] MARY MOODY EMERSON.