exceptional gifts, and wide attainments. They included the arch-mystic Alcott, who, despite his proneness to utter bewildering oracles, was a man of insight (especially on educational matters) and power; George Ripley, the enthusiastic reformer, who founded the Brook Farm Community; the scholarly Dr. Hedge; that strange man, the rapt religionist, Jones Very; the passionate and brilliant Margaret Fuller; Theodore Parker, the robust, eloquent, and erudite pulpit apostle of the new faith; and lastly-not to make the list wearisome-there was Thoreau, that soothsayer of the woods, the rarest spirit of them all, a man who combined with a certain hardihood and perversity an observation so quick, a temperament so fine, and a wit so pungent, as to entitle him to almost equal rank with Emerson himself. These men and women, with Emerson and others, met in 1836 and subsequent years to discuss the problems of life and thought which the times had raised, and formed themselves into a society called the Transcendental Club. The chief outcome of their meetings was the establishment of the famous Dial, a quarterly magazine, edited by Margaret Fuller, and afterwards by Emerson, for which all the elect of Transcendentalism wrote. Amidst much writing that was weak and futile, the contributions of the editors and Thoreau and Hedge stand out for their exceptional merit. The four volumes of the magazine constitute a unique record of the movement in the hey-day of its

success.

But it did not suffice to preach the new gospel; it must be realised in action. And it was here that the Puritan thoroughness and sincerity, and the Yankee practicality showed themselves. These people were in earnest at any rate; and mystical and visionary as they might be, they were also resolute reformers. They dreamt their dream, but strove to give it actuality. They were, says Mr. Frothingham, replying to Utilitarian detractors, "the most strenuous workers of their day, and at the problems which the day flung down before them; the most strenuous and the most successful too." Whilst there were some striving

souls who sought the solitary place where there were no impediments to fine indulgences of temperament, others of the "level-headed" majority established themselves in communities, feeling that it was a social ideal that needed exemplification. The most remarkable of these experiments was the Brook Farm Association, at West Roxbury, where very valuable results in education of both young and old were achieved. Here Hawthorne came, and (it must be told) did duty for a time as milk-man; here Margaret Fuller visited occasionally to enrich the circle with her brilliant monologues; here were healthy out-door occupations, with recreation in dancing, music, reading and lecturing, and even courtship. Although the scheme was rather rashly prosecuted, the undertaking succeeded for a while; but the destruction of the place by fire dealt a blow which was fatal to its continuance. Of the part taken by the Transcendentalists in educational reform, in the first efforts towards the emancipation of women, in the Anti-slavery Agitation, and other movements, detailed mention cannot now be made; it must suffice to say that they were active leaders in all.

This very brief sketch of the Transcendental Movement must serve as a slight historic background for our delineation of Emerson's teaching. Emerson, whilst he was undoubtedly the dominating influence in this movement, was not, it must be understood, either its initiator or its indispensable support: it had an independent life and virtue of its own.

Amidst the stir of these transcendental times and the conflict which raged round his own disquieting utterances, Emerson lived serene and uncompromised. He held aloof, as a rule, from the practical reformers, although he was almost persuaded to join in the Brook Farm venture. Upon the greater issues of the time he courageously spoke his own radical convictions; and his brave advocacy of the liberation of the slaves in the face of intimidation, showed the heroic strain in the man. No nobler words, no more splendid scorn, came from the lips of any of his contemb

poraries than fell from him when speaking of slavery, of the Fugitive Slave Law, of the glorious martyr, John Brown. His speeches still thrill us with their glowing affirmations of the sacredness of freedom and justice, and their withering denunciations of meanness and tyranny. Whenever occasion made the call upon him, he emerged from the quiet of his scholar's home at Concord, and faced the crowds of Boston and the towns. In this he realised

his own conception of the scholar, as one who should keep before his fellows the pure ideal of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, and encourage them to remain faithful to its high demands.

Emerson seems to have selected Concord for his home both because of its family associations, and because, whilst it allowed him the solitude which he coveted, it was near the town, and itself afforded opportunities for the limited social intercourse which even this lover of seclusion found desirable. Clough, who had a fine eye for landscape, calls it a bare place, and so Emerson himself describes it to a correspondent. Like everything else, it brought the true Emersonian compensations. He says:

"Because I was content with these poor fields,
Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams,
And found a home in haunts which others scorned,

The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,

And granted me the freedom of their state."

Besides, what mattered the absence of lesser attractions?– while, as he said :—

"Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity."

Yet Concord was rich in historic memories, and had a genius loci of its own. Nor was it indeed without some graces and glories of scenery; for had it not the haunted pine woods and crystal ponds of Walden; its distant boundary hills, the stately Monadnoc and Wachusett; its winding stream, Musketaquit ?

Musketaquit, a goblin strong,
Of shard and flint makes jewels gay;
They lose their grief who hear his song,
And where he winds is day of day."

Amid these simple surroundings the gracious scholar spent his days of quiet study and reverie, taking his share like a loyal citizen in the public affairs of his township, and winningly filling his part as father, husband, and host. Here was the citadel of the new truth; the head-quarters of the forces of Transcendentalism, which, mainly through the genius of this man, became a movement that has left a noble and indelible mark upon the life of growing America, and constitutes an attractive and stimulating chapter in the history of human development.*

II.

"I am born a poet-of a low class, no doubt, yet a poet. My singing, be sure, is very husky, and is for the most part in prose. Still I am a poet in the sense of a perceiver and dear lover of the harmonies that are in the soul and in matter, and specially of the correspondencies between these and those. A sunset, a forest, a snowstorm, a certain river view, are more to me than many friends, and do ordinarily divide my day with my books." This is what Emerson said of himself; and in self-portraiture he is nearly always searching and accurate. Nevertheless, we have not here a full view of the subject; he is sketching himself at side face only, and emphasizing his prominent features. Emerson is, no doubt, before all else a poet; for he habitually views life, and would have others view it, through the imagination. But he is, besides being a poet, a philosopher and moralist; and it is the unique and vital union in him of the poetic and speculative with the practical bias that constitutes his peculiar attractiveness and worth. Move, as he constantly does, on the mountain-heights

* The writer has avoided traversing ground covered by Mr. Dircks in his sketch of Concord and Transcendental times and persons prefixed to Thoreau's Walden in this Series.

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of imagination and abstraction, he never forgets the presence of the every-day world of familiar sights and common occupations that lies busy in the plain below. It is, indeed, his chief aim to invest the ordinary actualities of life with the deeper meaning and ever fresh interest and beauty which they have for the poet and seer, and to show that celestial side" of them which we may see if we will but look aright. He is no seeker and praiser of the rare and exquisite, but would make common things poetic and ordinary duties admirable. With this practical purpose he seeks not only to help to that poetic apprehension of the world which redeems life from vulgarity and insipidity, but also to aid noble living. These two things, insight and conduct, talent and character, are for him inseparable.

It hardly needed Mr. Matthew Arnold's insistence on the fact to convince us that Emerson is not a system-builder. In truth, he does not believe in systems. The thing of first importance to him is, not that a man should have logical and well-arranged thoughts, but that he should have a right mental attitude, should preserve an original relation to the universe, should be fully alive. It was a man's tone (if we may use a word which has now an unfortunate suggestion of cant) that he cared most about. "It was a

maxim with him," says Mr. Cabot, "that power is not so much shown in talent or in successful performance as in tone; the absolute or victorious tone, the tone of direct vision, disdaining all definitions." So that before knowledge, and before dialectical skill, he placed faculty of perception and responsiveness to impressions. He recognised. that opinion was less important than the spirit in which it is held; how, as Mr. Pater happily says in regard to Sir Thomas Browne, "fallacy, like truth itself, is a matter so dependent on innate gift of apprehension, so præterlogical and personal; the original perception counting for almost everything, the mere inference for SO little." Το the same effect Emerson himself says, ""Tis cer

tain that a man's whole possibility lies in that habitual first look which he casts on all objects." With this