never a member of the community; there had been a spectral appearance
there, sounding the horn at daybreak, and milking the cows, and hoeing
the potatoes, and raking hay, toiling in the sun, and doing me the
honor to assume my name. But this spectre was not myself." The
Transcendental Club, too, which preceded this, and which met a few
times at the house of Dr. Channing (who tried to comprehend the new
ideas, and was always the friend of Emerson), failed. The quarterly
magazine that was started, the _Dial_, did more. Four volumes of it
appeared, and to this day they are so interesting that it is a wonder
they have not been reprinted; but the serene hours thereon marked were
speedily succeeded by days of strife and storm, in which the writers
of that periodical were summoned to be leaders. Emerson remained in
his home. He now and then visited Brook Farm, but was shrewd enough to
foresee its catastrophe from the first. The child who sought her lost
butterfly with tears, not knowing that it was softly perched upon her
head, had a counterpart in the many enthusiasts, who continued to seek
in communities or new sects the beauty which had floated before their
eyes; but some there were who made the happier discovery that a quiet
New England village, with its cultivated families, in whose Town Hall
Emerson taught, was ideal enough. Gradually Prospero drew around him
the spirits to which he was related, and Concord became the
intellectual centre of the country.

Emerson, as has been stated, at the beginning of his career had
assumed the truth of evolution in nature. More and more this idea
became fruitful to him. His friend Agassiz, on the appearance of "The
Vestiges of Creation," had committed himself warmly against it, but
Emerson felt certain that the future of science belonged to that
principle, which he had reached by his poetic intuition. Nearly thirty
years ago, when I was a member of Divinity College, the theology
taught was still a slightly rationalistic Unitarianism and the science
qualified by it (though Agassiz would not admit miracle). Some of the
students were finding their real professor in Concord. On one evening
we went out, travelling the seventeen miles in sleighs, to hear a
lecture that was to have been given by him; it had been unavoidably
postponed, but Emerson, hearing of our arrival, invited us to his
house, and we had no reason to feel any disappointment. Nevertheless,
Emerson wrote me that if I would