unsel did not always find listeners in a
fitting condition to receive it. He was a sower who went forth to sow.
Some of the good seed fell among the thorns of criticism. Some fell on
the rocks of hardened conservatism. Some fell by the wayside and was
picked up by the idlers who went to the lecture-room to get rid of
themselves. But when it fell upon the right soil it bore a growth of
thought which ripened into a harvest of large and noble lives.

Emerson shows up the weakness of his young enthusiasts with that
delicate wit which warns its objects rather than wounds them. But he
makes it all up with the dreamers before he can let them go.

"Society also has its duties in reference to this class, and must
behold them with what charity it can. Possibly some benefit may yet
accrue from them to the state. Besides our coarse implements, there
must be some few finer instruments,--rain-gauges, thermometers, and
telescopes; and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers,
there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges
and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct,
who note the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the
by-stander. Perhaps too there might be room for the exciters and
monitors; collectors of the heavenly spark, with power to convey the
electricity to others. Or, as the storm-tossed vessel at sea speaks
the frigate or "line-packet" to learn its longitude, so it may not
be without its advantage that we should now and then encounter rare
and gifted men, to compare the points of our spiritual compass, and
verify our bearings from superior chronometers."

It must be confessed that it is not a very captivating picture which
Emerson draws of some of his transcendental friends. Their faults were
naturally still more obvious to those outside of their charmed circle,
and some prejudice, very possibly, mingled with their critical
judgments. On the other hand we have the evidence of a visitor who knew
a good deal of the world as to the impression they produced upon him:--

"There has sprung up in Boston," says Dickens, in his "American
Notes," "a sect of philosophers known as Transcendentalists. On
inquiring what this appellation might be supposed to signify, I
was given to understand that whatever was unintelligible would be
certainly Transcendental. Not deriving much comfort from this
eluc