etent and brilliant men and women there, whose attainments
not only qualified them amply for the tasks they then assumed, but
have since made them prominent in American letters and journalism.
Mr. Ripley lectured on modern philosophy to all who desired an
acquaintance with Spinoza, Kant, Cousin, and their compeers. George
P. Bradford was a thorough classical scholar. Charles A. Dana, then
fresh from Harvard, was an enthusiast for German literature, and
successful in imparting both knowledge and enthusiasm to his pupils.
There were classes in almost everything that any one cared to study.
French and music, as we learn from one of Isaac's letters home, were
what he set himself to at the first. The latter was taught by so
accomplished a master as John S. Dwight, who conducted weekly
singing-schools for both children and adults.

To what other studies Isaac may have applied himself we hardly know.
It will be noticed that Mr. George William Curtis, in the kindly
reminiscences which he permits us to embody in this chapter, says
that he does not remember him as "especially studious." The remark
tallies with the impression we have gathered from the journal kept
while he was there. His mind was introverted. Philosophical
questions, then as always, interested him profoundly, but only in so
far as they led to practical results. It might be truer to say that
philosophy was at no time more than the handmaid of theology to him.
At this period he was in the thick of his struggle to attain
certainty with regard to the nature and extent of the Christian
revelation, and what he sought at Brook Farm was the leisure and
quiet and opportunity for solitude which could not be his at home.
"Lead me into Thy holy Church, which I now am seeking," he writes as
the final petition of the prayer with which the first bulky volume of
his diary opens. With the burden of that search upon him, it was not
possible for such a nature as his to plunge with the unreserve which
is the condition of success into any study which had no direct
reference to it. We find him complaining at frequent intervals that
he cannot give his studies the attention they demand. Nor were his
labors as the community baker of long continuance. They left him too
little time at his own disposal, and in a short time he became a full
boarder, and occupied himself only as his inclinations directed.

It may occur to some of our readers to wonder why a man like
Brownson, who was then fa