l years in the Custom-House at Boston, while Mr. Bancroft was
collector, and afterwards had joined that remarkable association, the
"Brook Farm Community," at West Roxbury, where, with others, he appears
to have been reconciled to the old ways, as quite equal to the
inventions of Fourier, St. Simon, Owen, and the rest of that ingenious
company of schemers who have been so intent upon a reconstruction of the
foundations of society. In 1843, he went to reside in the pleasant
village of Concord, in the "Old Manse," which had never been profaned by
a lay occupant until he entered it as his home. In the introduction to
_The Mosses_ he says:

"A priest had built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other
priestly men, from time to time, had dwelt in it; and children,
born in its chambers, had grown up to assume the priestly
character. It was awful to reflect how many sermons must have
been written there. The latest inhabitant alone--he, by whose
translation to Paradise the dwelling was left vacant--had
penned nearly three thousand discourses, besides the better, if
not the greater number, that gushed living from his lips. How
often, no doubt, had he paced to and fro along the avenue,
attuning his meditations, to the sighs and gentle murmurs, and
deep and solemn peals of the wind, among the lofty tops of the
trees! In that variety of natural utterances, he could find
something accordant with every passage of his sermon, were it
of tenderness or reverential fear. The boughs over my head
seemed shadowy with solemn thoughts, as well as with rustling
leaves. I took shame to myself for having been so long a
writer of idle stories, and ventured to hope that wisdom would
descend upon me with the falling leaves of the avenue; and that
I should light upon an intellectual treasure, in the Old Manse,
well worth those hoards of long-hidden gold, which people seek
for in moss-grown houses. Profound treatises of morality--a
layman's unprofessional, and therefore unprejudiced views of
religion;--histories (such as Bancroft might have written, had
he taken up his abode here, as he once purposed), bright with
picture, gleaming over a depth of philosophic thought;--these
were the works that might fitly have flowed from such a
retirement. In the humblest event, I resolved at least to
achieve a novel, that shou