'The Transcendentalist,' as the organ of a
spiritual philosophy." Again on the 30th of April of the same year, in
a letter in which he lays out a plan for a visit of Carlyle to this
country, Emerson says:--

"It was suggested that if Mr. C. would undertake a journal of which
we have talked much, but which we have never yet produced, he would
do us great service, and we feel some confidence that it could be
made to secure him a support. It is that project which I mentioned
to you in a letter by Mr. Barnard,--a book to be called 'The
Transcendentalist;' or, 'The Spiritual Inquirer,' or the like....
Those who are most interested in it designed to make gratuitous
contribution to its pages, until its success could be assured."

The idea of the grim Scotchman as editor of what we came in due time to
know as "The Dial!" A concert of singing mice with a savage and hungry
old grimalkin as leader of the orchestra! It was much safer to be
content with Carlyle's purring from his own side of the water, as
thus:--

"'The Boston Transcendentalist,' whatever the fate or merit of it
may prove to be, is surely an interesting symptom. There must be
things not dreamt of over in that _Transoceanic_ parish! I shall
certainly wish well to this thing; and hail it as the sure
forerunner of things better."

There were two notable products of the intellectual ferment of the
Transcendental period which deserve an incidental notice here, from the
close connection which Emerson had with one of them and the interest
which he took in the other, in which many of his friends were more
deeply concerned. These were the periodical just spoken of as a
possibility realized, and the industrial community known as Brook Farm.
They were to a certain extent synchronous,--the Magazine beginning in
July, 1840, and expiring in April, 1844; Brook Farm being organized in
1841, and breaking up in 1847.

"The Dial" was edited at first by Margaret Fuller, afterwards by
Emerson, who contributed more than forty articles in prose and verse,
among them "The Conservative," "The Transcendentalist," "Chardon Street
and Bible Convention," and some of his best and best known poems, "The
Problem," "Woodnotes," "The Sphinx," "Fate." The other principal writers
were Margaret Fuller, A. Bronson Alcott, George Ripley, James Freeman
Clarke, Theodore Parker, William H. Channing, Henry Thoreau, Eliot
Cabot, John S. Dwight, C.P. Cr