us the
changes which time has wrought in the four decades of years which have
elapsed (quite or nearly) since the appearance of the last number.

A melancholy touches us as we glance hither and thither among its pages.
How bright are the morning hours marked on this Dial! How merged now in
the evening twilight and darkness! Here is Ralph Waldo Emerson, with
life's meridian still before him. Here are printed some of his earliest
lectures and some of the most admired of his poems. Here are the
graceful verses of Christopher P. Cranch, artist and poet. Here are the
Channing cousins, nephews of the great man by different brothers, one,
William Henry Channing, then, as always, fervid and unrelinquishing in
faith; the other, William Ellery, a questioner who, not finding himself
answered to his mind, has ceased to ask. Here is Theodore Parker, a
youthful critic of existing methods and traditions, already familiar
with the sacred writings of many religions. A. Bronson Alcott appears in
various forms, contributing "Days from a Diary," "Orphic Sayings," and
so on. Here are, from various authors, papers entitled: "Social
Tendencies," "The Interior or Hidden Life," "The Pharisees," "Prophecy,
Transcendentalism, and Progress," "Leaves from a Scholar's Journal,"
"Ethnic Scriptures," "The Preaching of Buddha," "Out-World and
In-World,"--headings which themselves afford an insight into the
direction of the speculative thought and fancy of the time. An article
on the Hollis Street Council presents to us the long-forgotten
controversy between Rev. John Pierpont and his congregation, to settle
which a conference of the Unitarian clergy was summoned. Another,
entitled "Chardon Street and Bible Conventions," records the coming
together of a company of "madmen, mad women, men with beards, Dunkers,
Muggletonians, Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Seventh-day Baptists,
Quakers, Abolitionists, Calvinists, Unitarians, and Philosophers," to
discuss church discipline and the authenticity of the Bible. Among those
present were Dr. Channing, Father Taylor, Mr. Alcott, Mr. Garrison,
Jones Very, and Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman. The chronicler says that "the
assembly was characterized by the predominance of a certain plain,
sylvan strength and earnestness, while many of the most intellectual and
cultivated persons attended its councils. Mrs. Little and Mrs. Lucy
Sessions took a pleasing and memorable part in the debate, and _that
flea of Conventions_, Mr