idation, I pursued the inquiry still further, and found that the
Transcendentalists are followers of my friend Mr. Carlyle, or, I
should rather say, of a follower of his, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson.
This gentleman has written a volume of Essays, in which, among much
that is dreamy and fanciful (if he will pardon me for saying
so), there is much more that is true and manly, honest and bold.
Transcendentalism has its occasional vagaries (what school has
not?), but it has good healthful qualities in spite of them; not
least among the number a hearty disgust of Cant, and an aptitude to
detect her in all the million varieties of her everlasting wardrobe.
And therefore, if I were a Bostonian, I think I would be a
Transcendentalist."

In December, 1841, Emerson delivered a Lecture entitled "The
Conservative." It was a time of great excitement among the members of
that circle of which he was the spiritual leader. Never did Emerson
show the perfect sanity which characterized his practical judgment more
beautifully than in this Lecture and in his whole course with reference
to the intellectual agitation of the period. He is as fair to the
conservative as to the reformer. He sees the fanaticism of the one as
well as that of the other. "Conservatism tends to universal seeming and
treachery; believes in a negative fate; believes that men's tempers
govern them; that for me it avails not to trust in principles, they will
fail me, I must bend a little; it distrusts Nature; it thinks there is a
general law without a particular application,--law for all that does
not include any one. Reform in its antagonism inclines to asinine
resistance, to kick with hoofs; it runs to egotism and bloated
self-conceit; it runs to a bodiless pretension, to unnatural refining
and elevation, which ends in hypocrisy and sensual reaction. And so,
whilst we do not go beyond general statements, it may be safely affirmed
of these two metaphysical antagonists that each is a good half, but an
impossible whole."

He has his beliefs, and, if you will, his prejudices, but he loves fair
play, and though he sides with the party of the future, he will not be
unjust to the present or the past.

We read in a letter from Emerson to Carlyle, dated March 12, 1835, that
Dr. Charming "lay awake all night, he told my friend last week, because
he had learned in the evening that some young men proposed to issue
a journal, to be called