Emerson's pastoral salary and the likelihood of prosperity through Ellen's inheritance from her father gave Emerson a new, welcome financial security. He bought books for his personal library and enjoyed the benefits of urban life, including a subscription to the Boston Athenaeum and access to the Harvard College Library and the Boston Library Society. He read Aristotle, Plato, Montaigne, and British Romantic writers Coleridge and Carlyle, among other authors. Coleridge made a particularly deep impression on him. At the same time, Emerson's life expanded in other ways. He accepted roles in public life that never interested his future friend Henry David Thoreau. In 1829, Emerson was chaplain of the Massachusetts Senate, in 1830 and 1831 a member of the Boston School Committee. Later, when he moved to Concord, he would assume an important place in community life. Moreover, in 1863, he would serve on the West Point Board of Visitors, and from 1867 to 1879 as an overseer at Harvard.
In December of 1830, Emerson's brother Edward, also tubercular, sailed to Puerto Rico in search of a more healthful climate. Emerson's wife, Ellen Tucker Emerson, died on February 8, 1831, at the age of nineteen. Emerson was desolate, but quickly returned to his duties at the Second Church. After Ellen's death, he had an increasingly difficult time pushing back the doubts that he had long felt about orthodox Christianity. In the summer of 1832, Emerson wrote a letter to his church, recommending the observation of the Lord's Supper (the communion) as a remembrance rather than a sacrament, and asking to discontinue the use of bread and wine. The church rejected his proposal. On September 9, 1832, Emerson delivered a sermon in which he explained his position and resigned from his pastorate.
Still grieving for Ellen, shaken by Edward's condition, and exhausted by the soul-searching that had led to his resignation, Emerson sailed for Europe on December 25, 1832. He arrived at Malta, traveled through Italy, visited Paris, and headed for England and Scotland. The trip opened his eyes to the world and provided opportunities to meet people who stimulated and influenced him. He met English writer Walter Savage Landor in Florence, American sculptor Horatio Greenough in Rome, Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth in England, and Thomas Carlyle — with whom he developed a lasting friendship and correspondence — in Scotland. Emerson arrived back in the United States in October of 1833.
