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. Cranch, William Ellery Channing, Mrs.
Ellen Hooper, and her sister Mrs. Caroline Tappan. Unequal as the
contributions are in merit, the periodical is of singular interest.
It was conceived and carried on in a spirit of boundless hope and
enthusiasm. Time and a narrowing subscription list proved too hard
a trial, and its four volumes remain stranded, like some rare and
curiously patterned shell which a storm of yesterday has left beyond
the reach of the receding waves. Thoreau wrote for nearly every number.
Margaret Fuller, less attractive in print than in conversation, did her
part as a contributor as well as editor. Theodore Parker came down with
his "trip-hammer" in its pages. Mrs. Ellen Hooper published a few poems
in its columns which remain, always beautiful, in many memories. Others,
whose literary lives have fulfilled their earlier promise, and who are
still with us, helped forward the new enterprise with their frequent
contributions. It is a pleasure to turn back to "The Dial," with all its
crudities. It should be looked through by the side of the "Anthology."
Both were April buds, opening before the frosts were over, but with the
pledge of a better season.

We get various hints touching the new Magazine in the correspondence
between Emerson and Carlyle. Emerson tells Carlyle, a few months before
the first number appeared, that it will give him a better knowledge
of our _young people_ than any he has had. It is true that unfledged
writers found a place to try their wings in it, and that makes it more
interesting. This was the time above all others when out of the mouth
of babes and sucklings was to come forth strength. The feeling that
intuition was discovering a new heaven and a new earth was the
inspiration of these "young people" to whom Emerson refers. He has to
apologize for the first number. "It is not yet much," he says; "indeed,
though no copy has come to me, I know it is far short of what it should