Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis to John S. Dwight; Brook Farm and Concord

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EARLY LETTERS OF GEORGE WM. CURTIS

TO

JOHN S. DWIGHT:
Brook Farm and Concord

Edited by
George Willis Cooke

CONTENTS

EARLY LIFE AT BROOK FARM AND CONCORD EARLY LETTERS TO JOHN S. DWIGHT LETTERS OF LATER DATE

EARLY LIFE AT BROOK FARM AND CONCORD

George William Curtis was born in Providence, February 24, 1824. From the age of six to eleven he was in the school of C.W. Greene at Jamaica Plain, and then, until he was fifteen, attended school in Providence. His brother Burrill, two years older, was his inseparable companion, and they were strongly attached to each other. About 1835 Curtis came under the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was heard by him in Providence, and who commanded his boyish admiration. Burrill Curtis has said of this interest of himself and his brother that it proved to be the cardinal event of their youth; and what this experience was he has described.

"I still recall," he says, "the impressions produced by Emerson's delivery of his address on 'The Over-Soul' in Mr. Hartshorn's school-room in Providence. He seemed to speak as an inhabitant of heaven, and with the inspiration and authority of a prophet. Although a large part of the matter of that discourse, when reduced to its lowest terms, does not greatly differ from the commonplaces of piety and religion, yet its form and its tone were so fresh and vivid that they made the matter also seem to be uttered for the first time, and to be a direct outcome from the inmost source of the highest truth. We heard Emerson lecture frequently, and made his personal acquaintance. My enthusiastic admiration of him and his writings soon mounted to a high and intense hero-worship, which, when it subsided, seems to have left me ever since incapable of attaching myself as a follower to any other man. How far George shared such feelings, if at all, I cannot precisely say; but he so far shared my enthusiastic admiration as to be led a willing captive to Emerson's attractions, and to the incidental attractions of the movement of which he was the head; and Emerson always continued to command from us both the sincerest reverence and homage."

Burrill went so far as to discontinue the use of money and animal food; both the brothers discarded the conventional costumes in matters of dress, and their interest was enlisted in the reforms of the day. The family removed to New York in 1839, George studied at home with tutors, and was an attendant at the church of Dr. Orville Dewey.

I

The warm and active interest of the brothers in the Transcendental movement, in all its phases, led them to propose to their father that he permit them to attend the school connected with the Brook Farm Association. Permission having been granted, they became boarders there in the spring or summer of 1842. At no time were they members of the association, and they paid for their board and tuition as they would have done at any seminary or college.

At this time the Brook Farm Association had two sources of income—the farm of about two hundred acres, and the school which was carried on in connection therewith. In fact, the school was more largely profitable than the farm, and was for a time well patronized by those who were in general sympathy with the leaders of the association. George Ripley was the teacher in philosophy and mathematics, George P. Bradford in literature, John S. Dwight in Latin and music, Charles A. Dana in Greek and German, and John S. Brown in theoretical and practical agriculture. A six years' course was arranged in preparation for college, and three years were given to acquiring a knowledge of farming. The pupils were required to work one hour each day, the idea being that this was conducive to sound intellectual training.

It would seem, however, that Curtis gave only a part of his time to study, as is indicated in a letter written to his father in June, 1843, and published in the admirable biography by Mr. Edward Gary. "My life is summery enough here," he writes. "We breakfast at six, and from seven to twelve I am at work. After dinner, these fair days permit no homage but to their beauty, and I am fain to woo their smiles in the shades and sunlights of the woods. A festal life for one before whom the great stretches which must be sailed; yet this summer air teaches sea life-navigation, and I listen to the flowing streams, and to the cool rush of the winds among the trees, with an increase of that hope which is the only pole-star of life."

At Brook Farm, Curtis studied Greek, German, music, and agriculture. The teaching was of the best, as good as could have been had in any college of the country at that time, and was thorough and efficient. Much more of freedom was allowed the students than was usual elsewhere, both as to conditions of study and recitation, and as to the relations of the pupils to the instructors. The young people in the school were treated as friends and companions by their teachers; but this familiarity did not breed contempt for the instructors or indifference to the work of the school. On the other hand, it secured an unusual degree of enthusiasm both for the teachers and for the subjects pursued. The work of the school went on with somewhat less of system than is thought desirable in most places of instruction; but in this instance the results justified the methods pursued. The teachers were such as could command success by their personal qualities and by their enthusiastic devotion to their work.

The two years spent at Brook Farm formed an important episode in the life of George William Curtis. It is evident that he did not surrender himself to the associationist idea, even when he was a boarder at Brook Farm and a member of its school. He loved the men and women who were at the head of the community; he found the life attractive and genial, the atmosphere was conducive to his intellectual and spiritual development; but he did not surrender himself to the idea that the world can be reformed in that manner. In a degree he was a curious looker-on; and in a still larger way he was a sympathetic, but not convinced, friend and well-wisher. If not a member, he retained throughout life his interest in this experiment, and remembered with delight the years he spent there. He more than once spoke in enthusiastic terms of Brook Farm, and gave its theories and its practice a sympathetic interpretation. In one of his "Easy Chair" essays of 1869 he described the best side of its life:

"There is always a certain amount of oddity latent in society which rushes to such an enterprise as a natural vent; and in youth itself there is a similar latent and boundless protest against the friction and apparent unreason of the existing order. At the time of the Brook Farm enterprise this was everywhere observable. The freedom of the antislavery reform and its discussions had developed the 'come-outers,' who bore testimony in all times and places against church and state. Mr. Emerson mentions an apostle of the gospel of love and no money who preached zealously but never gathered a large church of believers. Then there were the protestants against the sin of flesh-eating, refining into curious metaphysics upon milk, eggs, and oysters. To purloin milk from the udder was to injure the maternal affections of the cow; to eat eggs was Feejee cannibalism and the destruction of the tender germ of life, to swallow an oyster was to mask murder. A still selecter circle denounced the chains that shackled the tongue and the false delicacy that clothed the body. Profanity, they said, is not the use of forcible and picturesque words; it is the abuse of such to express base passions and emotions. So indecency cannot be affirmed of the model of all grace, the human body….

"These were harmless freaks and individual fantasies. But the time was like the time of witchcraft. The air magnified and multiplied every appearance, and exceptions and idiosyncrasies and ludicrous follies were regarded as the rule, and as the logical masquerade of this foul fiend Transcendentalism, which was evidently unappeasable, and was about to devour manners, morals, religion, and common-sense. If Father Lamson or Abby Folsom were borne by main force from an antislavery meeting, and the non-resistants pleaded that these protestants had as good right to speak as anybody, and that what was called their senseless babble was probably inspired wisdom, if people were only heavenly minded enough to understand it, it was but another sign of the impending anarchy. And what was to be said—for you could not call them old dotards—when the younger protestants of the time came walking through the sober streets of Boston and seated themselves in concert-halls and lecture-rooms with hair parted in the middle and falling upon their shoulders, and clad in garments such as no known human being ever wore before—garments which seemed to be a compromise between the blouse of the Paris workman and the peignoir of a possible sister? For tailoring underwent the same revision to which the whole philosophy of life was subjected, and one ardent youth, asserting that the human form itself suggested the proper shape of its garments, caused trowsers to be constructed that closely fitted the leg, and bore his testimony to the truth in coarse crash breeches.

"These were the ludicrous aspects of the intellectual and moral fermentation or agitation that was called Transcendentalism. And these were foolishly accepted by many as its chief and only signs. It was supposed that the folly was complete at Brook Farm, and it was indescribably ludicrous to observe reverend Doctors and other Dons coming out to gaze upon the extraordinary spectacle, and going about as dainty ladies hold their skirts and daintily step from stone to stone in a muddy street, lest they be soiled. The Dons seemed to doubt whether the mere contact had not smirched them. But droll in itself, it was a thousandfold droller when Theodore Parker came through the woods and described it. With his head set low upon his gladiatorial shoulders, and his nasal voice in subtle and exquisite mimicry reproducing what was truly laughable, yet all with infinite bonhomie and with a genuine superiority to small malice, he was as humorous as he was learned, and as excellent a mime as he was noble and fervent and humane a preacher. On Sundays a party always went from the Farm to Mr. Parker's little country church. He was there exactly what he was afterwards when he preached to thousands of eager people in the Boston Musichall; the same plain, simple, rustic, racy man. His congregation were his personal friends. They loved him and admired him and were proud of him; and his geniality and tender sympathy, his ample knowledge of things as well as of books, drew to him all ages and sexes and conditions.

"The society at Brook Farm was composed of every kind of person. There were the ripest scholars, men and women of the most aesthetic culture and accomplishment, young farmers, seamstresses, mechanics, preachers—the industrious, the lazy, the conceited, the sentimental. But they were associated in such a spirit and under such conditions that, with some extravagance, the best of everybody appeared, and there was a kind of high esprit de corps—at least, in the earlier or golden age of the colony. There was plenty of steady, essential, hard work, for the founding of an earthly paradise upon a rough New England farm is no pastime. But with the best intention, and much practical knowledge and industry and devotion, there was in the nature of the case an inevitable lack of method, and the economical failure was almost a foregone conclusion. But there was never such witty potato-patches and such sparkling cornfields before or since. The weeds were scratched out of the ground to the music of Tennyson or Browning, and the nooning was an hour as gay and bright as any brilliant midnight at Ambrose's. But in the midst of all was one figure, the practical farmer, an honest neighbor who was not drawn to the enterprise by any spiritual attraction, but was hired at good wages to superintend the work, and who always seemed to be regarding the whole affair with the most good-natured wonder as a prodigious masquerade….

"But beneath all the glancing colors, the lights and shadows of its surface, it was a simple, honest, practical effort for wiser forms of life than those in which we find ourselves. The criticism of science, the sneer of literature, the complaint of experience is that man is a miserably half-developed being, the proof of which is the condition of human society, in which the few enjoy and the many toil. But the enjoyment cloys and disappoints, and the very want of labor poisons the enjoyment. Man is made, body and soul. The health of each requires reasonable exercise. If every man did his share of the muscular work of the world, no other man would be overwhelmed by it. The man who does not work imposes the necessity of harder toil upon him who does. Thereby the first steals from the last the opportunity of mental culture—and at last we reach a world of pariahs and patricians, with all the inconceivable sorrow and suffering that surround us. Bound fast by the brazen age, we can see that the way back to the age of gold lies through justice, which will substitute co-operation for competition.

"That some such generous and noble thought inspired this effort at practical Christianity is most probable. The Brook Farmers did not interpret the words,'the poor ye have always with ye,' to mean,'ye must always keep some of you poor.' They found the practical Christian in him who said to his neighbor, 'Friend, come up higher.' But, apart from any precise and defined intention, it was certainly a very alluring prospect—that of life in a pleasant country, taking exercise in useful toil, and surrounded with the most interesting and accomplished people. Compared with other efforts upon which time and money and industry are lavished, measured by Colorado and Nevada speculations, by California gold-washing, by oil-boring, and by the stock exchange, Brook Farm was certainly a very reasonable and practical enterprise, worthy of the hope and aid of generous men and women. The friendships that were formed there were enduring. The devotion to noble endeavor, the sympathy with all that is most useful to men, the kind patience and constant charity that were fostered there, have been no more lost than grain dropped upon the field. It is to the Transcendentalism that seemed to so many good souls both wicked and absurd that some of the best influences of American life to-day are due. The spirit that was concentrated at Brook Farm is diffused, but it is not lost. As an organized effort, after many downward changes, it failed; but those who remember the Hive, the Eyrie, the Cottage; when Margaret Fuller came and talked, radiant with bright humor; when Emerson and Parker and Hedge joined the circle for a night or a day; when those who may not be publicly named brought beauty and wit and social sympathy to the feast; when the practical possibilities of life seemed fairer, and life and character were touched ineffaceably with good influence, cherish a pleasant vision which no fate can harm, and remember with ceaseless gratitude the blithe days of Brook Farm."

Curtis returned to the same subject in 1874, in discussing Frothingham's biography of George Ripley. Some of the errors into which writers about Brook Farm had fallen he undertook to correct, to point out the real character of the association, and its effort at the improvement of society.

"The Easy Chair describes Brook Farm as an Arcadia, for such in effect was the intention, and such is the retrospect to those who recall the hope from which it sprang…. The curious visitors who came to see poetry in practice saw with dismay hard work on every side, plain houses and simple fare, and a routine with little aesthetic aspect. Individual whims in dress and conduct, however, were exceptional in the golden age or early days at Brook Farm, and those are wholly in error who suppose it to have been a grotesque colony of idealogues. It was originally a company of highly educated and refined persons, who felt that the immense disparity of condition and opportunity in the world was a practical injustice, full of peril for society, and that the vital and fundamental principle of Christianity was universally rejected by Christendom as impracticable. Every person, they held, is entitled to mental and moral culture, but it is impossible that he should enjoy his rights as long as all the hard physical work of the world is done by a part only of its inhabitants. Were that work limited to what is absolutely necessary, and shared by all, all would find an equal opportunity for higher cultivation and development, and the evil of an unnatural and cruelly artificial system of society would disappear. It was a thought and a hope as old as humanity, and as generous as old. No common mind would have cherished such a purpose, no mean nature have attempted to make the dream real. The practical effort failed in its immediate object, but, in the high purposes it confirmed and strengthened, it had remote and happy effects which are much more than personal.

"It is an error to suppose that many of the more famous 'Transcendentalists' were of the Brook Farm company. Mr. Emerson, for instance, was never there except as a visitor. Margaret Fuller was often a visitor, and passed many days together as a guest, but she was never, except in sympathy, one of the Brook Farmers. Theodore Parker was a neighbor, and had friendly relations with many of the fraternity, but he seldom came to the farm. Meanwhile the enterprise was considered an unspeakable folly, or worse, by the conservative circle of Boston. In Boston, where a very large part of the 'leaders' of society in every way were Unitarians, Unitarian conservatism was peremptory and austere. The entire circle of which Mr. Ticknor was the centre or representative, the world of Everett and Prescott and their friends, regarded Transcendentalism and Brook Farm, its fruit, with good-humored wonder as with Prescott, or with severe reprobation as with Mr. Ticknor. The general feeling in regard to Mr. Emerson, who was accounted the head of the school, is well expressed by John Quincy Adams in 1840. The old gentleman, whose glory is that he was a moral and political gladiator and controversialist, deplores the doom of the Christian Church to be always racked with differences and debates, and after speaking of 'other wanderings of mind' that 'let the wolf into the fold,' proceeds to say: 'A young man named Ralph Waldo Emerson, a son of my once-loved friend William Emerson, and a classmate of my lamented son George, after failing in the every-day avocations of a Unitarian preacher and school-master, starts a new doctrine of Transcendentalism, declares all the old revelations superannuated and worn out, and announces the approach of new revelations.' Mr. Adams was just on the eve of his antislavery career, but he continues: 'Garrison and the non-resistant Abolitionists, Brownson and the Marat Democrats, phrenology and animal magnetism, all come in, furnished each with some plausible rascality as an ingredient for the bubbling caldron of religion and politics.' C.P. Cranch, the poet and painter, was a relative of Mr. Adams, and then a clergyman; and the astonished ex-President says: 'Pearse Cranch, ex ephebis, preached here last week, and gave out quite a stream of Transcendentalism most unexpectedly.'

"This was the general view of Transcendentalism and its teachers and disciples held by the social, political, and religious establishment. The separation and specialty of the 'movement' soon passed. The leaders and followers were absorbed in the great world of America; but that world has been deeply affected and moulded by this seemingly slight and transitory impulse. How much of the wise and universal liberalizing of all views and methods is due to it! How much of the moral training that revealed itself in the war was part of its influence! The transcendental or spiritual philosophy has been strenuously questioned and assailed. But the life and character it fostered are its sufficient vindication."

The school at Brook Farm brought together there a large number of bright young people, and they formed one of the chief characteristics of the place. The result was that the life was one of much amusement and healthy pleasure, as George P. Bradford has said:

"We were floated away by the tide of young life around us. There was always a large number of young people in our company, as scholars, boarders, etc., and this led to a considerable mingling of amusement in our life; and, moreover, some of our company had a special taste and skill in arranging and directing this element. So we had very varied amusements suited to the different seasons—tableaux, charades, dancing, masquerades, and rural fetes out-of-doors, and in winter, skating, coasting, etc."

In her "Years of Experience," Mrs. Georgiana Bruce Kirby, who was at Brook Farm for very nearly the same period as Curtis, has not only given an interesting account of the social life there, but she has especially described the entertainments mentioned by Mr. Bradford. Two of these occasions, when Curtis was a leading participant, she mentions with something of detail.

"At long intervals in what most would call our drudgery," she says, "there came a day devoted to amusement. Once we had a masquerade picnic in the woods, where we were thrown into convulsions of laughter at the sight of George W. Curtis dressed as Fanny Ellsler, in a low-necked, short-sleeved, book-muslin dress and a tiny ruffled apron, making courtesies and pirouetting down the path. It was much out of character that I, a St. Francis squaw, in striped shirt, gold beads, and moccasins, should be guilty of such wild hilarity. Ora's movements were free and graceful in white Turkish trousers, a rich Oriental head-dress, and Charles Dana's best tunic, which reached just below her knee. She was the observed of all observers.

"In the midwinter we had a fancy-dress ball in the parlors of the Pilgrim House, when the Shaws and Russells, generous friends of the association, came attired as priests and dervishes. The beautiful Anna Shaw was superb as a portly Turk in quilted robe, turban, mustache, and cimeter, and bore herself with grave dignity.

"George W. Curtis, as Hamlet, led the quadrille with Carrie Shaw as a Greek girl. His sad and solemn 'reverence' contrasted charmingly with her sunny ease. He acted the Dane to the life, his bearing, the melancholy light in his eyes, his black-plumed head-cover, and his rapier glittering under his short black cloak, which fell apart in the dance, were all perfect. It was a picture long to be remembered, and as long as I could watch these two I had no desire to take part in the dance myself."

Another phase of Curtis's life at Brook Farm she also mentions, and it gives a new insight into his character. The occasion described was a social Sunday evening spent in the parlor of the Eyrie:

"At supper it was whispered that George W. Curtis would sing at the Eyrie, upon which several young men volunteered to assist with the dishes. My services were also cordially accepted…. And now we ascended the winding, moonlit path to the Eyrie, where Curtis was already singing. We went up the steps of the building cautiously, lest a note of the melody which floated through the open French windows should be lost to us. Entering the large parlor, we found not only the chairs and sofas occupied, but the floor well covered with seated listeners.

"I did not at first recognize the operatic air, so admirably modified and retarded it was, and its former rapid words replaced by a sad and touching theme, which called for noble endurance in one borne down by suffering. The accompaniment consisted of simple chords and arpeggios, a very plain and sufficient background. Curtis, though not yet twenty—not nineteen, if I remember rightly—had a grave and mature appearance. He was full of poetic sensibility, and his pure, rich voice had that sympathetic quality that penetrates to the heart…. Curtis was not ever guilty of singing a comic song. It would indeed have been most inappropriate to our intensely earnest mood. Often his brother would join him in a duet with his agreeable tenor.

"Low praises and half-spoken thanks were murmured as the grave and gracious young friend, at the expiration of an hour, swung round on the piano-stool and attempted to make his exit."

In his "Cheerful Yesterdays," Colonel T.W. Higginson has described the same life as an onlooker. Although not a member of the community at Brook Farm, he was somewhat in sympathy with it—at least, with the people of whom it was composed. At the time he was living in Brookline and teaching the children of a cousin. "Into this summer life," he writes, "there occasionally came delegations of youths from Brook Farm. Among these were George and Burrill Curtis, and Larned, with Charles Dana—all presentable and agreeable, but the first three peculiarly costumed. It was then very common for young men in college and elsewhere to wear what were called blouses—a kind of hunter's frock, made at first of brown holland, belted at the waist, these being gradually developed into garments of gay-colored chintz, sometimes, it was said, an economical transformation of their sisters' skirts or petticoats. All the young men of this party but Dana wore these gay garments, and bore on their heads little round and visorless caps with tassels."

"I was but twice at Brook Farm," Higginson continues, "once driving over there to a fancy ball at 'the Community,' as it was usually called, where my cousin Barbara Channing was to appear in a pretty Creole dress made of madras handkerchiefs. She was enthusiastic about Brook Farm, where she went often, being a friend of Mrs. Ripley…. Again, I once went for her in summer and stayed for an hour, watching the various interesting figures, including George William Curtis, who was walking about in shirtsleeves, with his boots over his trousers, yet was escorting a young maiden with that elegant grace which never left him. It was a curious fact that he, who was afterwards so eminent, was then held wholly secondary in interest to his handsome brother Burrill, whose Raphaelesque face won all hearts, and who afterwards disappeared from view in England. But if I did not see much of Brook Farm on the spot, I met its members frequently at the series of exciting meetings for Social Reform in Boston."

Other reminiscences of Brook-Farmers tell of the Curtis brothers and their active part in the amusements of the place. They were leaders among the young people, and they had those gifts of social guidance which placed them at the head of whatever entertainment was being organized. Their grace of manner and beauty of face and figure also won consideration for them, so that they were accepted into every circle and found friends on every hand. It seems that Burrill was at this time regarded as the handsomer, but in time George gained the chief place in this regard. Their courtesy led them to help those whose labors were hard, to aid the women in the laundry at their tasks, and to assist them in hanging out the clothes on washing-days. In the evening the clothes-pins which had been thrust into a pocket found their way to the floor of the dancing-room.

One of the members of the community has written that the brothers "looked like young Greek gods. Burrill, the elder, with a typical Greek face and long hair falling to his shoulders in irregular curls," she says, "I remember as most unconscious of himself, interested in all about him, talking of the Greek philosophers as if he had just come from one of Socrates' walks, carrying the high philosophy into his daily life, helping the young people with hard arithmetic lessons, trimming the lamps daily at the Eyrie, where the two brothers came to live (my sister saw George assisting him one day, and occasionally, she says, he turned his face with a disgusted expression, trying to puff away the disagreeable odor), never losing control of himself, with the kindest manner to every person. He and George seemed very companionable and fond of each other.

"George, though only eighteen, seemed much older, like a man of twenty-five, possibly, with a peculiar elegance, if I may so express it; great and admirable attention, as I recollect, when listening to any one; courteous recognition of others' convictions and even prejudices; and never a personal animosity of any kind—a certain remoteness of manner, however, that I think prevented persons from becoming acquainted with him as easily as with Burrill."

In his "Memories of Brook Farm," Dr. John T. Codman mentions the occasional returns of Curtis to the Farm after he had left it, and says he heard him singing the "Erl King," "Kathleen Mavourneen," and "Good-night to Julia" "in his inimitable manner." Everything goes to indicate that he was a favorite, not only with the younger persons, but with those who were older. He had already developed a mature thoughtfulness, and gave indications of his power as a writer and speaker. His fondness for music, and his enthusiastic study of it under Dwight's leadership is an indication of that aesthetic appreciation which he kept through life, and which appeared in his mastership of prose style.

At first each one helped himself to the food placed on the table in the dining-room at the Hive, or those at the table helped each other. In this way more or less confusion was produced, and the results were unsatisfactory. Accordingly, Charles Dana organized a group, including Curtis and other young men of character and good breeding, to act as waiters. Dana took his place at the head of this group of voluntary servants, who performed their duties with grace and alacrity. "It is hardly necessary to observe," says Mrs. Kirby, "that the business was henceforth attended to with such courtly grace and such promptness that the new regime was applauded by every one, although it did appear at first as if we were all engaged in acting a play. The group, with their admired chief, took dinner, which had been kept warm for them, afterwards, and were themselves waited upon with the utmost consideration."

II

While at Brook Farm, Curtis was on intimate terms with most of the persons there. He greatly admired Mr. and Mrs. Ripley, and he frequently wrote to Mrs. Ripley and made of her a sort of mother-confessor. He also highly appreciated the scholarly qualities of Charles Dana, and his capacity as a leader. In his letters he frequently mentions "the two Charleses," who were Charles Dana and Charles Newcomb. The latter has been described by Dr. Codman as "the mysterious and profound, with his long, dark, straight locks of hair, one of which was continually being brushed away from his forehead as it continually fell; with his gold-bowed eye-glass, his large nose and peculiar blue eyes, his spasmodic expressions of nervous horror, and his cachinnatious laugh." Newcomb was for many years a resident of Providence, afterwards finding a home in England and in Paris. He was early a member of Brook Farm—a solitary, self-involved person, preferring to associate with children rather than with older persons. He read much in the literature of the mystics, and was laughingly said to prefer paganism to Christianity. He had a feminine temperament, was full of sensibility, and of an indolent turn of mind. Emerson was attracted to him, and at one time had great expectations concerning his genius. His paper, published in The Dial, under the title of "The Two Dolons," was much admired by some of the Transcendentalists when it was printed there; and it is referred to by Hawthorne in his "Hall of Phantasy." In June, 1842, Emerson wrote to Margaret Fuller: "I wish you to know that I have 'Dolon' in black and white, and that I account Charles N. a true genius; his writing fills me with joy, so simple, so subtle, and so strong is it. There are sentences in 'Dolon' worth the printing of The Dial that they may go forth." This paper was given him for publication at Emerson's urgent request, and it is not known that Newcomb has published anything else. In 1850 Emerson said he had come to doubt Newcomb's genius, having found that he did not care for an audience.

Another person of whom Curtis speaks is Isaac Hecker, who became a member of the Catholic Church, under the guidance of Orestes Brownson. He was born in New York City, was brought up under Methodist auspices, became a baker, developed a strong taste for philosophy, and went to Brook Farm at the age of twenty-two. He remained for a few months as a student, and then tried Alcott's Fruitlands for a fortnight. He was naturally of an ascetic turn of mind, loved mystic books and philosophy, and found in the Catholic Church his true religious home. He secured at Brook Farm a kind of culture which he much needed, and his abilities were seen by those around him. After his return to New York, Ripley, and Charles Lane, of Fruitlands, wrote him in a way which indicated their faith in him as a man of judgment and liberal aims. He spent some months in Concord, had George P. Bradford for his tutor, and he rented a room of Mrs. Thoreau, the mother of Henry D. Thoreau. There again he met the Curtis brothers; but soon after he went to Holland to prepare for the priesthood, and then entered upon his life-work. A curious phase in the life of this time was the effort of Hecker to convert Curtis to his own way of religious thinking, as Curtis relates in his letters. Even more singular was the attempt of Hecker to persuade Thoreau into the Catholic Church. Mr. Sanborn has read a letter in which he proposed to Thoreau to travel on foot with him in Europe. His real purpose seems to have been to get Thoreau away from Protestants, and among the influences of the Catholic churches and traditions, and thus to make a convert of him. In a letter printed in Father Elliott's biography of Father Hecker, Curtis gave an account of his acquaintance with the founder of the order of the Paulist Fathers.

"WEST NEW BRIGHTON, STATEN ISLAND, February 28, 1890.

Dear Sir,—I fear that my recollections of Father Hecker will be of little service to you, for they are very scant. But the impression of the young man whom I knew at Brook Farm is still vivid. It must have been in the year 1843 that he came to the Farm in West Roxbury, near Boston. He was a youth of twenty-three, of German aspect, and I think his face was somewhat seamed with small-pox. But his sweet and candid expression, his gentle and affectionate manner, were very winning. He had an air of singular refinement and self-reliance combined with a half-eager inquisitiveness, and upon becoming acquainted with him, I told him that he was Ernest the Seeker, which was the title of a story of mental unrest which William Henry Channing was then publishing in The Dial.

Hecker, or, as I always called him and think of him, Isaac, had apparently come to Brook Farm because it was a result of the intellectual agitation of the time which had reached and touched him in New York. He had been bred a baker, he told me, and I remember with what satisfaction he said to me, 'I am sure of my livelihood, because I can make good bread.' His powers in this way were most satisfactorily tested at the Farm, or, as it was generally called, 'the Community,' although it was in no other sense a community than an association of friendly workers in common. He was drawn to Brook Farm by the belief that its life would be at least agreeable to his convictions and tastes, and offer him the society of those who might answer some of his questions, even if they could not satisfy his longings.

By what influence his mind was first affected by the moral movement known in New England as Transcendentalism, I do not know. Probably he may have heard Mr. Emerson lecture in New York, or he may have read Brownson's 'Charles Elwood,' which dealt with the questions that engaged his mind and conscience. But among the many interesting figures at Brook Farm I recall none more sincerely absorbed than Isaac Hecker in serious questions. The merely aesthetic aspects of its life, its gayety and social pleasures, he regarded good-naturedly, with the air of a spectator who tolerated rather than needed or enjoyed them. There was nothing ascetic or severe in him, but I have often thought since that his feeling was probably what he might have afterwards described as a consciousness that he must be about his Father's business.

I do not remember him as especially studious. Mr. Ripley had classes in German philosophy and metaphysics, in Kant and Spinoza, and Isaac used to look in, as he turned wherever he thought he might find answers to his questions. He went to hear Theodore Parker preach in the Unitarian Church in the neighboring village of West Roxbury. He went to Boston, about ten miles distant, to talk with Brownson, and to Concord to see Emerson. He entered into the working life at the Farm, but always, as it seemed to me, with the same reserve and attitude of observation. He was the dove floating in the air, not yet finding the spot on which his foot might rest.

The impression that I gathered from my intercourse with him, which was boyishly intimate and affectionate, was that of all 'the apostles of the newness,' as they were gayly called, whose counsel he sought, Brownson was the most satisfactory to him. I thought then that this was due to the authority of Brownson's masterful tone, the definiteness of his views, the force of his 'understanding,' as the word was then philosophically used in distinction from the reason. Brownson's mental vigor and positiveness were very agreeable to a candid mind which was speculatively adrift and experimenting, and, as it seemed to me, which was more emotional than logical. Brownson, after his life of varied theological and controversial activity, was drawing towards the Catholic Church, and his virile force fascinated the more delicate and sensitive temper of the young man, and, I have always supposed, was the chief influence which at that time affected Hecker's views, although he did not then enter the Catholic Church.

He was a general favorite at Brook Farm, always equable and playful, wholly simple and frank in manner. He talked readily and easily, but not controversially. His smile was singularly attractive and sympathetic, and the earnestness of which I have spoken gave him an unconscious personal dignity. His temperament was sanguine. The whole air of the youth was that of goodness. I do not think that the impression made by him forecast his career, or, in any degree, the leadership which he afterwards held in his Church. But everybody who knew him at that time must recall his charming amiability.

I think that he did not remain at Brook Farm for a whole year, and when later he went to Belgium to study theology at the seminary of Mons he wrote me many letters, which, I am sorry to say, have disappeared. I remember that he labored with friendly zeal to draw me to his Church, and at his request I read some writing of St. Alphonse of Liguori. Gradually our correspondence declined when I was in Europe, and was never resumed; nor do I remember seeing him again more than once, many years ago. There was still in the clerical figure, which was very strange to me, the old sweetness of smile and address; there was some talk of the idyllic days, some warm words of hearty good-will, but our interests were very different, and, parting, we went our separate ways. For a generation we lived in the same city, yet we never met. But I do not lose the bright recollection of Ernest the Seeker, nor forget the frank, ardent, generous, manly youth, Isaac Hecker.

Very truly yours,

George William Curtis."

One of the teachers at Brook Farm was George P. Bradford, who left there at about the same time Curtis did, and was then a tutor in Concord. When the account of philosophy in Boston was left uncompleted by Ripley, Bradford finished it for the "Memorial History of Boston." While living in the Old Manse in Concord, Hawthorne wrote to Margaret Fuller: "I have thought of receiving a personal friend, and a man of delicacy, into my household, and have taken a step towards that object. But in doing so I was influenced far less by what Mr. Bradford is than by what he is not; or, rather, his negative qualities seem to take away his personality, and leave his excellent characteristics to be fully and fearlessly enjoyed. I doubt whether he be not precisely the rarest man in the world." Mrs. Hawthorne wrote of Bradford, that "his beautiful character makes him perennial in interest." After the death of Bradford, Curtis wrote of him in one of the most appreciative of the biographical papers which the "Easy Chair" gave to the public:

"Whoever had the happiness of knowing the late George P. Bradford, upon reading that he was the son of a stout sea-captain of Duxbury, must have recalled Charles Lamb's description of one of his comrades at the old South Sea House—'like spring, gentle offspring of blustering winter.' A more gentle, truthful, generous, constant, high-minded, accomplished man, or, as Emerson, his friend of many years, said of Charles Sumner, 'a whiter soul,' could not be known. However wide and various and delightful your acquaintance may have been, if you knew George Bradford, you knew a man unlike all others. His individuality was entirely unobtrusive, but it was absolute.

"The candor of his nature refused the least deceit, and rejected every degree of indirectness without consciousness or effort. His admirable mind, the natural loftiness of his aim, his instinctive sympathy with every noble impulse and humane endeavor, his fine intellectual cultivation, all made him the friend of the best men and women of his time and neighborhood, and none among them but acknowledged the singular charm of a companion who asserted his convictions by his character, and with whom controversy was impossible. Mr. Bradford had the temperament, the tastes, and the acquirements of a scholar; a fondness for nature, and a knowledge which made him her interpreter; yet still more obvious were the social sympathy and tenderness of feeling that brought him into intimate personal relations which time could not touch.

"Something in his appearance and manner, a half-shrinking and smiling diffidence, an unworn and childlike ardor and unconsciousness, a freshness of feeling and frankness of address, invested his personality with what we call quaintness. He was always active, even to apparent restlessness, not from nervous excitement, but from fulness of life and sympathy. You might think of a humming-bird darting from flower to flower, of a honey-bee happy in a garden. He graduated at Harvard, meaning to be a clergyman, but the publicity, the magisterial posture, the incessant constraint of the liberty which he valued more than all else, with the lack of oratorical gifts and of the self-asserting disposition, soon closed that career to him; afterwards he was one of the most cheerful and charming figures at Brook Farm in its pleasantest day. All his life he was a teacher, mainly of private classes, and generally of women, now in Plymouth, now in Cambridge, now elsewhere, but, wherever he was, always beloved and welcomed, and bewailed when he departed.

"Mr. Bradford was unmarried, and there was a sentiment of solitude in his life, but it was scarcely more, so affectionate and devoted were his relations to his kindred and his friends. His elder sister, Mrs. Samuel B. Ripley, was one of the most admirably accomplished women in New England, living for some years in the Old Manse in Concord in which Hawthorne had lived. Mr. Ripley was the son of the clergyman who married the widow of his fellow-clergyman who saw from the Manse the battle at Concord Bridge. Mr. Bradford was very fond of the old town, and Mr. Emerson had no friend who was a more welcome or frequent guest than George Bradford, who came to look after the vegetable garden and to trim the trees, and in long walks to Walden Pond or Fairhaven Hill to discuss with his host philosophy and poetry and life. The small gains of a teacher were enough for the simple wants of the scholarly gentleman, and after middle life he went often to Europe, and few Americans have ever gone more admirably equipped. He travelled sometimes with a tried comrade, sometimes alone, and a life already full was enriched and enchanted still more by the happy journeys.

"Indeed, the recollection of George Bradford is that of a long life as serene and happy as it was blameless and delightful to others. It was a life of affection and many interests and friendly devotion; but it was not that of a recluse scholar like Edward Fitzgerald, with the pensive consciousness of something desired but undone. George Bradford was in full sympathy with the best spirit of his time. He had all the distinctive American interest in public affairs. His conscience was as sensitive to public wrongs and perilous tendencies as to private and personal conduct. He voted with strong convictions, and wondered sometimes that the course so plain to him was not equally plain to others.

"It was a life of nothing of what we call achievement, and yet a life beneficent to every other life that it touched, like a summer wind laden with a thousand invisible seeds that, dropping everywhere, spring up into flowers and fruit. It is a name which to most readers of these words is wholly unknown, and which will not be written, like that of so many of the friends of him who bore it, in our literature and upon the memory of his countrymen. But to those who knew him well, and who therefore loved him, it recalls the most essential human worth and purest charm of character, the truest manhood, the most affectionate fidelity. To those who hear of him now, and perhaps never again, these words may suggest that the personal influences which most ennoble and sweeten life may escape fame, but live immortal in the best part of other lives."

Another member of Brook Farm in its earlier period was Minott Pratt, who had been a printer, and the foreman in the office of the Christian Register, the Unitarian paper published in Boston. Dr. Codman says of him that he was "a finely formed, large, graceful-featured, modest man. His voice was low, soft, and calm. His presence inspired confidence and respect. Whatever he touched was well done. He was faithful and dignified, and the serenity of his nature welled up in genial smiles. In farm-work he was Mr. Ripley's right hand. They agreed in practical matters, and Ripley deferred to his judgment. His wife was an earnest, strong, faithful worker. They entered into the scheme with fervor." Another Brook Farmer said of him: "No one can ever forget the entire freedom from fret and fume and worry he evinced, while he never neglected a duty or failed to accomplish his full share of work. No one can fail to recall how peaceful and free from criticism his life was, with what rare fidelity he estimated his fellows, and how little apparent thought or recognition of self there was in all his actions. Indeed, the loveliness of his spirit shone through the bodily vesture, and his smile itself was a blessing which one might seek to win, and be proud to have gained by one's exertions. His presence, in all the various spheres of active life and industry, had a wonderful educational power upon both old and young; and to the influence of several individuals of similar beauty of character I attribute the harmony and beauty, in considerable degree, of our Brook Farm life."

Pratt spent the remainder of his life, after the Brook Farm episode, in Concord, and there he has, even now, the reputation of having been a model farmer. He was an extremely modest man, very little forthputting, gentle in manner, and most neighborly in spirit. He wrote many papers for the Concord Farmers' Club, and some of these were printed in the Boston Commonwealth. In that paper, when Mr. Frank B. Sanborn was the editor, he published a series of articles on country life, which were delightful to read. He was a fine writer, and what he wrote showed the grace and charm of the man. He gave much attention to botany, knew all the plants and flowers in Concord, and knew them both as a scientist and poet.

For several years Pratt was in the habit of gathering on the lawn in front of his house, under a large elm-tree, a picnic of such of his Brook Farm associates as he could bring together. Emerson, Phillips, Thoreau, Curtis, George Bradford, and others of note, often attended. The gathering was a delightful one, and it was made an occasion of happy reminiscences and a renewal of old personal ties and affections.

Some of the reminiscences of Brook Farm mention that Curtis walked in the moonlight with Caroline Sturgis, who, over the signature of "Z," contributed a number of poems to The Dial. She was an intimate friend of Margaret Fuller, and she afterwards published "Rainbows for Children," "The Magician's Show-box," and other children's books. She married William A. Tappan, who rented to Hawthorne the cottage in which he lived at Lenox. Mrs. Lathrop's book about her mother contains many reminiscences of them. She was a daughter of William Sturgis, a wealthy Boston merchant. A sister, Mrs. Ellen H. Hooper, was also a contributor to The Dial, in which appeared her poem beginning with the line:

"I slept and dreamed that life was beauty."

Another well-known poem was written by her:

"She stood outside the gate of heaven and saw them entering in."

Colonel Higginson speaks of her as "a woman of genius," and Margaret Fuller wrote of her from Rome: "I have seen in Europe no woman more gifted by nature than she."

Under date of October 25, 1845, Curtis mentions a religious meeting which had been recently held at Brook Farm. This was a reference to one of the many occasions on which William Henry Channing conducted religious services there, for he was listened to with greater satisfaction than any one else who spoke on religious subjects. When the weather was suitable he preached in the grove near the Margaret Fuller cottage (so called); and on the present occasion he asked those present to join hands and to repeat with him a bond of union or confession of faith, and constitute themselves into a church. Before this time no religious organization had existed at Brook Farm, the utmost liberty of opinion being cultivated there. In fact, the leaders of the movement had been strongly opposed to any religious formalism or organized effort at religious instruction. The freedom of belief was such that Freethinkers on the one side, and devout Catholics on the other, were welcomed with equal cordiality. The majority of the members were undoubtedly of the "liberal" school in theology, and found in the preaching of Theodore Parker the kind of spiritual instruction they desired. At one time there was an enthusiastic interest in the teachings of Swedenborg.

It was the tendency towards what was at once practical and mystical which drew the large majority of the Farmers to the preaching of William Henry Channing, who was one of the most gifted preachers which America has produced. He was imaginative, mystical, and eloquent, liberal in his thinking, progressive in his social ideals, and profoundly religious. He was thoroughly in sympathy with the Associationist movement, and more than any other man he was the spiritual leader and confessor of those who found in that movement a practical realization of their religious convictions.

The organization which began on that Sunday afternoon in October, 1845, continued to exist at Brook Farm until January, 1847, when "The Religious Union of Associationists" was organized in Boston, with Channing as the minister. For a few years it was successful, and it gave union and purpose to the Associationist movement in Boston and the vicinity. A considerable number of the members of Brook Farm were connected with it actively—as officers, members of the choir, or regular attendants.

The organization effected in the pine woods in so informal a manner was quite in harmony with the Brook Farm spirit and methods. Formalism of every kind was dreaded, but yet there was a deeply religious interest pervading the whole life of the community. At all the meetings held by the Farmers, even at little social gatherings, the conversation was likely to run on high themes. While there was present the utmost freedom of opinion and expression, and while there was the greatest effort to avoid cant and conventional phraseology, yet there was in the community a very strong religious feeling; and nearly all the members held serious and earnest convictions, to which they were unusually faithful in their daily living.

III

The relations of Curtis to his teachers at Brook Farm were cordial and appreciative, but they were especially so with John S. Dwight, with whom he studied music. When he left the farm, an intimate and confidential correspondence began between them, and this continued until Curtis went to Europe. After he returned it was resumed, but the interchange of letters was not so frequent. They continued to write to each other almost to the end of Dwight's life, however, and their friendship was always sympathetic and confidential. The letters of Dwight have not been preserved, with two or three exceptions, but those of Curtis still exist in unbroken succession, and are presented to the public in this volume. In these days, when we complain of the decay of letter-writing, they afford a remarkably good specimen of youthful effort in that kind of literature.

To Dwight there were sent by Curtis several poems, which were printed in the Harbinger, and he also sent two letters from New York on musical topics. Two of his letters to Dwight from Europe were also printed in the Harbinger. After he was settled in New York, Curtis did his part in an effort to get Dwight established in that city. When Dwight began his Journal of Music, Curtis wrote for it frequently over the signature of "Hafiz." It is safe to say that these contributions were not paid for, but were the result of a desire to aid his friend in his musical enterprise. They were of the nature of passing comments on the musical performances of the day, but they were worthy of the pages in which they appeared.

John Sullivan Dwight was born in Court Street, Boston, May 13, 1813, the son of Dr. John Dwight and his wife Mary. He was educated at the Derne Street Grammar School and the Boston Latin School, from which he entered Harvard College. As a boy he was a devoted reader of books, studious in his habits, but little inclined to active or practical pursuits. When about fifteen, he began to take an interest in music, and from his father he received the best instruction in that art.

Young Dwight entered Harvard in 1829, and he carried through the studies of the course with a fair degree of success. He gave much attention to music, joined the Pierian Sodality, and was an earnest reader of the best poetry. He gave the class poem on his graduation, in 1832. During his Senior year he taught at Northborough, and following his graduation he spent a year as a tutor in a family at Meadville, Pennsylvania. In the autumn of 1834 he entered the theological school at Harvard, and graduated therefrom in August, 1836, his dissertation being on "The Proper Character of Poetry and Music for Public Worship," which was published in the Christian Examiner for that year.

Dwight's interest in music led him to take a leading part in bringing together, in 1837, those recent graduates of the college who were of like mind with himself; and a society was organized for the purpose of promoting its study. In 1840 the name was changed to that of the "Harvard Musical Association"; in 1845 it was incorporated, and in 1848 the place of meeting was transferred to Boston.

It was three years and a half after Dwight left the theological school before he had secured a pulpit. He preached nearly every Sunday, but he had become a member of the Transcendental Club, he was in sympathy with Emerson and Parker, and the churches did not find his preaching acceptable. He wrote several papers for the Christian Examiner, and reviewed a number of books in the same periodical. The first review of Tennyson published in this country he gave to the public in that journal. In 1838 he published in the series of translations edited by George Ripley, under the general title of "Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature," a volume of "Select Minor Poems, Translated from the German of Goethe and Schiller, with Notes." Several of Dwight's friends aided him in this translation, especially on the poems of Schiller; but the valuable notes appended were furnished by himself. The volume was dedicated to Carlyle, who wrote a characteristic letter in giving his permission, and a still more interesting one in acknowledging the receipt of the book.

In May, 1840, Dwight became the minister of the little Unitarian parish at Northampton, and the ordination sermon was preached by George Ripley, the address to the minister being given by Dr. W.E. Channing. From the first the people were not fully agreed as to Dwight's preaching, and the objections gradually increased as his strong Transcendental habits of thought began to be more clearly manifest. A few persons of thoughtful and more distinctly spiritual cast of mind were warmly drawn to him, but the majority grew more and more opposed to him, and he withdrew from the parish after a year and a half. During his stay in Northampton he wrote for The Dial, for one or two musical journals, planned several extended literary undertakings, and gave lectures before the American Institute of Instruction and the Harvard Musical Association. In The Dial was published one of his sermons, under the title of "Religion of Beauty," and another called "Ideals of Every-day Life." At the end of that on the religion of beauty was printed a poem of Dwight's, which has been often credited to Goethe, and is usually given the title of

"REST

Sweet is the pleasure,
Itself cannot spoil!
Is not true leisure
One with true toil?

Thou that wouldst taste it,
Still do thy best;
Use it, not waste it,
Else 'tis no rest.

Wouldst behold beauty
Near thee, all round?
Only hath duty
Such a sight found.

Rest is not quitting
The busy career;
Rest is the fitting
Of self to its sphere.

'Tis the brook's motion,
Clear without strife,
Fleeing to ocean
After its life.

Deeper devotion
Nowhere hath knelt;
Fuller emotion
Heart never felt.

'Tis loving and serving
The Highest and Best!
'Tis onwards! unswerving,
And that is true rest."

As an intimate friend of George Ripley, Dwight had discussed with him the project of a community at Brook Farm; and it was natural that he should find his place there in November, 1841. Many years later Dwight said of the purposes of Ripley, in this effort to improve upon the usual forms of social life: "His aspiration was to bring about a truer state of society, one in which human beings should stand in frank relations of true equality and fraternity, mutually helpful, respecting each other's occupation, and making one the helper of the other. The prime idea was an organization of industry in such a way that the most refined and educated should show themselves practically on a level with those whose whole education had been hard labor. Therefore, the scholars and the cultivated would take their part also in the manual labor, working on the farm or cultivating nurseries of young trees, or they would even engage in the housework."

In the Brook Farm community, Dwight was one of the leaders, his place being next after Ripley and Dana. In the school he was the instructor in Latin and music. His love for music began to make itself strongly manifest at this time; he brought out all the musical talent which could be developed among the members of the community. Of this phase he said: "The social education was extremely pleasant. For instance, in the matter of music we had extremely limited means or talent, and very little could be done except in a very rudimentary, tentative, and experimental way. We had a singing-class, and we had some who could sing a song gracefully and accompany themselves at the piano. We had some piano music; and, so far as it was possible, care was taken that it should be good—sonatas of Beethoven and Mozart, and music of that order. We sang masses of Haydn and others, and no doubt music of a better quality than prevailed in most society at that date, but that would be counted nothing now. Occasionally we had artists come to visit us. We had delightful readings; and, once in a while, when William Henry Channing was in the neighborhood, he would preach us a sermon."

At this time a musical awakening was taking place in Boston, a genuine taste for and appreciation of Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn was being developed. Dwight was instrumental in promoting a love for these masters, and out of his classes for their study grew what were called "Mass Clubs." He and his pupils often went into Boston to hear the best music, walking both ways. In The Dial, and especially in the Harbinger, Dwight wrote with enthusiasm and poetic charm of the merits of classical music. He wrote afterwards that the treatment of music in these periodicals told the time of day far ahead; and "such discussion did at least contribute much to make music more respected, to lift it in the esteem of thoughtful persons to a level with the rest of the humanities of culture, and especially to turn attention to the nobler compositions, and away from that which is but idle, sensual, and vulgar."

To the Christian Examiner, Boston Miscellany, Lowell's Pioneer, and the Democratic Review, Dwight was an occasional contributor at this period. His chief literary work, however, was in the form of lectures on musical subjects, especially on the great composers already named. He gave a successful course of musical lectures in New York, and he lectured in a number of other cities.

To the Harbinger, which was the organ of Brook Farm after the Fourierite period began, as well as the best advocate of associated life ever published in the country, Dwight was one of the chief contributors. He wrote much in behalf of association, but he also discussed literary topics. His chief contributions were on the subject of music, which was then, as always, so near his heart. He conducted the department devoted to musical criticism and interpretation. During the last year of the publication of the paper at Brook Farm he was associated with Ripley in the editorial management.

In 1847 Brook Farm came to an end. The Harbinger was removed to New York, and Ripley was its editor; but it was discontinued in less than two years. Dwight was the Boston correspondent, and continued his editorial connection with the paper. He removed to Boston, continued his interest in association, was an active member of W.H. Channing's "Religious Union of Associationists," was one of the most zealous workers in the organization for promoting associated life, and began to write for the Daily Chronotype on musical subjects. In 1849 he edited a department in the Chronotype devoted to the interests of association, and he had the assistance of Channing, Brisbane, Dana, and Cranch. This arrangement was continued for only a few months, not proving a success. In 1851 he was for six months the musical editor of the Boston Commonwealth, he wrote for Sartain's Magazine and other periodicals on musical topics, and he continued to lecture. Ripley and Dana made an earnest effort to secure him a place on one of the daily journals in New York. In February, 1851, Dwight and Mary Bullard, who had been a frequent visitor at Brook Farm, and a member of the choir at Channing's church in Boston, of which Dwight was the musical leader, were married. She was a beautiful and attractive woman, of some musical talent, and of a most unselfish and winning character. They went to live in Charles Street, and there had Dr. O.W. Holmes and his wife for near neighbors.

In April, 1852, Dwight issued the first number of Dwight's Journal of Music. He was able to do this with the aid of several of his associationist and musical friends, who generously contributed to a guarantee fund for the purpose. The Harvard Musical Association lent its aid to the project, and made it financially possible. In the first number Dwight said of his purposes and plans:

"Our motive for publishing a musical journal lies in the fact that music has made such rapid progress here within the last fifteen, and even the last ten, years. Boston has been without such a paper, and Boston has thousands of young people who go regularly to hear all the good performances of the best classic models in this art. Its rudiments are taught in all our schools….

"All this requires an organ, a regular bulletin of progress; something to represent the movement, and at the same time help to guide it to the true end. Very confused, crude, heterogeneous is this sudden musical activity in a young, utilitarian people. A thousand specious fashions too successfully dispute the place of true art in the favor of each little public. It needs a faithful, severe, friendly voice to point out steadfastly the models of the true, the ever beautiful, the divine.

"We dare not promise to be all this; but what we promise is, at least, an honest report, week by week, of what we hear and feel and in our poor way understand of this great world of music, together with what we receive through the ears and feeling and understanding of others, whom we trust; with every side-light from the other arts."

What was thus promised was carried out successfully, so far as the spirit and purpose were concerned, for more than thirty years. At first the Journal of Music was an eight-page weekly, of about the size of Harper's Weekly. After a time it was issued fortnightly, and the number of pages was increased. Though small the Journal of Music was varied in contents, and published much that was of great value. The selections from English, French, and German musical publications were well adapted to give music a higher position in American society. Many works of great value were translated for its pages; and whatever new or of importance was taking place or being said in the musical world was faithfully reported. The circulation was small at the best, for the high quality of the paper, and the refusal of the editor to make it an organ of the interests of publishers did not help to bring it widely before the public. Dwight would make no compromises with what was sensational or merely popular.

At the beginning of 1859 the Journal of Music was put into the hands of Oliver Ditson & Co., who undertook its publication, paying Dwight a stated salary for his labors upon it. This arrangement relieved him of much drudgery as publisher, which he had hitherto undertaken. The conduct of the paper did not essentially change, but with each number was added a musical composition; the best works of Mendelssohn, Schubert, Wagner, Gluck, Mozart, and many other composers were thus issued. Dwight also did much translating for Ditson, turning into English the words which accompanied some of the best German music.

In July, 1860, Dwight went to Europe for purposes of travel and study. Shortly after his departure his wife was taken ill, and died in a few weeks. The blow nearly crushed him, and it took many months for him to recover himself. In a most sympathetic letter Dr. Holmes told him of the illness, and the scenes which followed:

"I listened to the sweet music which was sung over her as she lay, covered with flowers, in the pleasant parlor of her house, by the voices of those that loved her—I and my wife with me—and then we followed her to Mount Auburn, and saw her laid in the earth, and the blossoms showered down upon her with such tokens of affection and sorrow that the rough men, whose business makes them callous to common impressions, were moved as none of us ever saw them moved before. Our good James Clarke, as you know, conducted the simple service. It was one which none of us who were present will ever forget; and in every heart there was one feeling over all others, that for the far-distant husband, brother, friend, as yet unconscious of the bereavement he was too soon to learn."

Dwight spent a few days in England, was for a fortnight in Paris, went through Switzerland, and then on to Germany. He went to Frankfort, then to Bonn, where he was for some weeks. In Berlin some months were passed, and visits were made to Leipzig, Dresden, Munich, and other cities. He gave much attention to music, taking every opportunity of making himself better acquainted with its traditions and spirit. He then went to Italy, passed on to France, and reached England in July, 1861. Early in September he sailed on the trial trip of the Great Eastern, which encountered a fearful storm, and was nearly wrecked. Dwight landed on the Irish coast, made his way back to London, thought of remaining another year in Europe, but finally returned home in November.

In Dwight's absence the Journal had been conducted by Henry Ware, a young musical friend. He now established himself in the Studio Building on Tremont Street, and went on with his tasks as usual. He became an active member of the Saturday Club, and was a constant attendant. He helped to organize, in 1863, the Jubilee Concert, at which Emerson read his "Boston Hymn." On the other hand, he severely criticised Gilmore's National Peace Jubilee of 1869.

In 1878 the desire of the Ditson publishing house to make the Journal of Music more popular in its character, and more directly helpful to their business interests, led Dwight to transfer its management to the firm of Houghton, Osgood & Co. It was better printed, the list of contributors was enlarged, and in many ways the paper was improved. A number of Dwight's friends promised to stand behind it for a year or two with definite sums of money, that it might be improved, and an effort made to reach a larger public. From some cause, not easy to understand, the response on the part of the public was not large enough to warrant the additional outlay; the list of paid contributors had to be abandoned, and the paper returned gradually to its old ways. In December, 1880, Dwight's friends joined with the musicians of Boston in giving a testimonial concert for the benefit of the paper, which yielded the sum of $6000. In an editorial Dwight said of this expression of interest in his work: "Greetings and warmest signs of recognition, kindliest notes of sympathy (often from most unexpected quarters), prompt, enthusiastic offers of musical service in any concert that might be arranged, poured in upon the editor, who, all at once, found himself the object of unusual attention. Hand and heart were offered wherever he met an old acquaintance; everybody seemed full of the bright idea that had struck somebody just in the nick of time. We never knew we had so many friends."

In September, 1881, the Journal of Music came to an end. The position taken by Dwight was not that of the self-seeker; he had no gift for turning his love for the art of music into financial results. He would not lower the critical attitude of his journal for the sake of pleasing the publishers of music; and he would not pretend to a love of those popular forms of music which he held to be inferior in their character. It may be he was not a great critic, certainly he had not the technical knowledge of music which is desirable in its scientific expositor; but his whole soul was in the art, and he gave it the devotion of his life. His preference was for the older composers, and he did not yield a ready homage to those of the newer schools. Of this he speaks in the closing number of his journal: "Startling as the new composers are, and novel, curious, brilliant, beautiful at times, they do not inspire us as we have been inspired before, and do not bring us nearer heaven. We feel no inward call to the proclaiming of the new gospel. We have tried to do justice to these works as they have claimed our notice, and have omitted no intelligence of them which came within the limits of our columns, but we lack motive for entering their doubtful service; we are not ordained their prophet."

Dwight frankly admitted that the causes for the limited success of his journal lay in himself, and said, truly, "We have long realized that we were not made for the competitive, sharp enterprise of modern journalism. The turn of mind which looks at the ideal rather than the practical, and the native indolence of temperament which sometimes goes with it, have made our movements slow. To be the first in the field with an announcement, or a criticism, or an idea, was no part of our ambition; how can one recognize competitors, or enter into competition, and at the same time keep his eye on truth?"

The real value of Dwight's work in his Journal of Music was expressed in a letter sent him by Richard Grant White, when the closing number appeared: "I regret very much this close of your valuable editorial labors. You have done great work; and have that consciousness to be sure—some comfort, but it should not be all. There is not a musician of respectability in the country who is not your debtor." In the "Easy Chair" Curtis gave a worthy account of the labors of his friend, and showed how deserving he was of a far greater success than he had reached.

"In the midst of the great musical progress of the country," he wrote, "it is a curious fact that the oldest, ablest, and most independent of musical journals in the United States has just suspended publication, on the eve of the completion of its thirtieth year, for want of adequate support. We mean, of course, Dwight's Journal of Music, which ended with an admirably manly, candid, and sagacious, but inevitably pathetic, valedictory from its editor—veteran editor, we should say, if the atmosphere of good music in which he has lived had not been an enchanted air in which youth is perpetually renewed…. A more delightful valedictory it would not be easy to find in the swan song of any journal….

"Mr. Dwight does not say, what the history of music in this country will show, that to no one more than to him are we indebted for the intelligent taste which enjoys the best music. His lectures upon the works of the great Germans at the time of their performance by the Boston Academy of Music in the old Odeon forty years ago were a kind of manual for the intelligent audience. They showed that an elaborate orchestral musical composition might be as serious a work of art, as full of thought and passion, and, in a word, of genius, as a great poem, and that no form of art was more spiritually elevating. They lifted the performance of such music from the category of mere amusement, and asserted for the authors a dignity like that of the master poets. If to some hearers the exposition seemed sometimes fanciful and remote, it was only as all criticism of works of the imagination often seems so. If the spectator sometimes sees in a picture more than the painter consciously intended, it is because the higher power may work with unconscious hands, and because beauty cannot be hidden from the eye made to see it. Beethoven, for instance, had never a truer lover or a subtler interpreter than Dwight, and Dwight taught the teachers, and largely shaped the intelligent appreciation of the unapproached master.

"Those were memorable evenings at the old Odeon. Francis Beaumont did not more pleasantly recall the things that he and Ben Jonson had seen done at the Mermaid than an old Brook Farmer remembers the long walks, eight good miles in and eight miles out, to see the tall, willowy Schmidt swaying with his violin at the head of the orchestra, to hear the airy ripple of Auber's 'Zanetta,' the swift passionate storm of Beethoven's 'Egmont,' the symphonic murmur of woods and waters and summer fields in the limpid 'Pastorale,' or the solemn grandeur of sustained pathetic human feeling in the 'Fifth Symphony.' The musical revival was all part of the new birth of the Transcendental epoch, although none would have more promptly disclaimed any taint of Transcendentalism than the excellent officers of the Boston Academy of Music. The building itself, the Odeon, was the old Federal Street Theatre, and had its interesting associations…. To all there was now added, in the memory of the happy hearers, the association of the symphony concerts.

"As the last sounds died away, the group of Brook Farmers, who had ventured from the Arcadia of co-operation into the Gehenna of competition, gathered up their unsoiled garments and departed. Out of the city, along the bare Tremont road, through green Roxbury and bowery Jamaica Plain, into the deeper and lonelier country, they trudged on, chatting and laughing and singing, sharing the enthusiasm of Dwight, and unconsciously taught by him that the evening had been greater than they knew. Brook Farm has long since vanished. The bare Tremont road is bare no longer. Green Roxbury and Jamaica Plain are almost city rather than suburbs. From the symphony concerts dates much of the musical taste and cultivation of Boston. The old Odeon is replaced by the stately Music Hall. The Journal of Music, which sprang from the impulse of those days, now, after a generation, is suspended; nor need we speculate why musical Boston, which demands the Passion music of Bach, permits a journal of such character to expire. Amid all these changes and disappearances two things have steadily increased—the higher musical taste of the country, and the good name of the critic whose work has most contributed to direct and elevate it. If, as he says, it is sad that the little bark which the sympathetic encouragement of a few has kept afloat so long goes down before reaching the end of its thirtieth annual voyage, it does not take down with it the name and fame of its editor, which have secured their place in the history of music in America."

From the beginning Dwight was intimately connected with the Harvard Musical Association, which has done so much to promote the interests of music in Boston. He was its first vice-president and chairman of its board of directors. He was active in providing its meetings with attractive musical programmes; about 1844 he secured for it a series of chamber concerts; he took part in procuring the building of Music Hall, and in bringing to it the great organ which was for many years an attraction. From 1855 to 1873 he continuously filled the position of vice-president of the association; and in the latter year was elected president, which place he held until his death. Beginning about 1850 he worked steadily for securing a good musical library, that should be as nearly complete as possible; and his desire was to make this a special feature in the activities of the association. In 1867 a room was secured for it; and in 1869 a suite of rooms was rented for the gatherings, both social and musical, of the members of the association. On his election as president, Dwight went to live in those rooms, cared for the library, and received the members and guests of the association whenever they chose to frequent them. This was in Pemberton Square; but in 1886 there was a removal to Park Square, and another in 1892 to West Cedar Street. Dwight's connection of forty or fifty years with the Harvard Musical Association was most intimate, so that he and the association came to be almost identical in the minds of Boston people. Whatever it accomplished was through his initiative or with his active cooperation.

In 1865 Dwight proposed the organization of a Philharmonic Society among the members of the association, and also that a series of concerts be undertaken. This suggestion was carried out, and the concerts were for many years very successful. In time their place was taken by the concerts of Theodore Thomas, and the Symphony Concerts generously sustained by Mr. H.L. Higginson; but it must be recognized that Dwight and the Harvard Musical Association taught the Boston public to appreciate only those concerts at which the best music was produced.

One special object in the organization of the Harvard Musical Association was the securing of a place for music in the curriculum of Harvard College. That was an object very dear to the heart of Dwight, and one which he brought forward frequently in the pages of his Journal of Music. He maintained that music was not merely for amusement, but that it is the most human and spiritual of all the arts, and must find its place in any systematic effort to secure a full-rounded culture. In a few years Harvard appointed an instructor in music. Mr. John K. Paine was called to that position in 1862, and was made a professor in 1876.

Dwight gave a most generous welcome to all young musicians of promise as they came forward. Such men as John C.D. Parker, John K. Paine, Benjamin J. Lang, George W. Chadwick, Arthur Foote, and William F. Apthorp were generously aided by him; and the Journal of Music never failed to speak an appreciative word for them. However Dwight might differ from some of them, he could recognize their true merits, and did not fail to make them known to the public. When Mr. Paine, who had been watched by Dwight with appreciation and approval from the beginning of his musical career, was made a professor of music in Harvard University, when his important musical compositions were published, and when his works were given fit interpretation in Cambridge and elsewhere, these events were welcomed by him as true indications of the development of music in this country.

For many years John S. Dwight was the musical autocrat of Boston, and what he approved was accepted as the best which could be obtained. His knowledge of music was literary rather than technical, appreciative rather than scientific; but his qualifications were such as to make him an admirable interpreter of music to the cultivated public of Boston. What a musical composition ought to mean to an intelligent person he could make known in language of a fine literary texture, and with a rare spiritual insight he voiced its poetic and aesthetic values. If the better-trained musicians of more recent years look upon his musical judgments with somewhat of disapproval, as not being sufficiently technical, they ought not to forget that he prepared the way for them as no one else could have done it, and that he had a fine skill in bringing educated persons to a just appreciation of what music is as an art. As Mr. William F. Apthorp has well said, "his musical instincts and perceptions were, in a certain high respect, of the finest. He was irresistibly drawn towards what is pure, noble, and beautiful, and felt these things with infinite keenness."

Dwight's last years were spent in furthering the interests of the Harvard Musical Association, in writing about his beloved art, and in the society of his many generous friends. He had a talent for friendship, and during his lifetime he was intimately associated with almost every man and woman of note in Boston. He was of a quiet, gentlemanly habit of life, took the world in the way of one who appreciates it and desires to secure from it the most of good, was warmly attached to the children of his friends and found the keenest delight in their presence, loved all that is graceful and beautiful, and devoted himself with unceasing ardor to the art for which he did so much to secure a just appreciation.

On the occasion of his eightieth birthday his friends and admirers were brought together in the rooms of the Harvard Musical Association. It was a red-letter day in his life, and he greatly appreciated it. A few months later, September 5, 1893, his life came to an end—a life that had been in no way great, but that had been spent in the loving and faithful service of his fellow-men. At his funeral, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, an intimate friend of many years, read this just and appreciative tribute:

"O Presence reverend and rare,
Art thou from earth withdrawn?
Thou passest as the sunshine flits
To light another dawn.

Surely among the symphonies
That praise the Ever-blest,
Some strophe of surpassing peace
Inviteth thee to rest.

Thine was the treasure of a life
Heart ripened from within,
Whose many lustres perfected
What youth did well begin.

The noble champions of thy day
Were thy companions meet,
In the great harvest of our race,
Bound with its priceless wheat.

Thy voice its silver cadence leaves
In truth's resistless court,
Whereof thy faithful services
Her heralds make report.

Here thou, a watchful sentinel,
Didst guard the gates of song,
That no unworthy note should pass
To do her temple wrong.

Dear are the traces of thy days
Mixed in these walks of ours;
Thy footsteps in our household ways
Are garlanded with flowers.

If we surrender, earth to earth,
The frame that's born to die,
Spirit with spirit doth ascend
To live immortally."

The letters contained in this volume give fullest indication of the cordial and intimate relations which existed between Dwight and Curtis. This may be seen more distinctly, perhaps, with the help of a few letters not there given, including two or three written by Dwight to his friend. In a letter to Christopher P. Cranch, the preacher, poet, and artist, written at the time when he was starting his Journal of Music on its way, Dwight said: "If you see the Howadji, can you not enlist his active sympathy a little in my cause? A letter now and then from him on music or on art would be a feather in the cap of my enterprise. It is my last, desperate (not very confident), grand coup d'etat to try to get a living; and I call on all good powers to help me launch the ship, or, rather, little boat."

Curtis seconded his friend's efforts cordially, subscribed for the new journal, persuaded a number of his friends to subscribe, and wrote frequently for it. He wrote Dwight this letter of appreciation and advice:

"Your most welcome letter has been received, and its contents have been submitted to the astute deliberations of the editorial conclave [Tribune]. We are delighted at the prospect—but we do not love the name. 1st. Journal of Music is too indefinite and commonplace. It will not be sufficiently distinguished from the Musical Times and the Musical World, being of the same general character. 2d. 'Side-glances' is suspicious. It 'smells' Transcendentalism, as the French say, and, of all things, any aspect of a clique is to be avoided.

"That is the negative result of our deliberations; the positive is, that
you should identify your name with the paper, and call it Dwight's
Musical Journal, and you might add, sotto voce, 'a paper of Art and
Literature.'

"Prepend: I shall be very glad to send you a sketch of our winter doings in music, especially as I love Steffanone, although she says, 'I smoke, I chew, I snoof, I drink, I am altogether vicious.' You shall have it Sunday morning. Give my kindest regards to your wife. I wish she could sing in your paper."

In a letter written in March, 1882, Dwight expressed to Curtis his appreciation of the most friendly words which the "Easy Chair" had said of him and his work as an editor, in making mention of the fact that the Journal of Music had come to the end of its career:

"My dear George,—With this I send you formal invitation, on the part of the committee of arrangements, for the celebration of the anniversary of the foundation, by Dr. Howe, of the Institution for the Blind…. We wish to have an address—not long, say half an hour—partly historical; and we all (committee, director, teachers, pupils) have set our hearts upon having you perform that service. It would delight us all; and I know that you would find the occasion, the very sight of those sightless children made so happy, most inspiring…. A more responsive audience than the blind themselves cannot be found. Dear George, do think seriously of it, and tell me you will come. Your own wishes in respect to the arrangements and conditions shall in all respects be consulted. But come, if you wish to have a good time, a memorable time, and make a good time for us.

"George, how many times have I been on the point of writing to you since that delightful week we spent at dear old Tweedy's. To me it was a sweet renewal of good old days, and I came away feeling that it must have added some time to my life. Then, too, I wished to thank you for your most friendly, hearty, and delightful talk about me and my Journal in the 'Easy Chair.' It was so like you, like the dear old George. I tell you, it made me feel good, as if life wasn't all a failure. And now I am finding laziness agreeing with me too—too well…. And if I were not so very, very old, if it were not my fate to have been sent into the world so long before my time, I verily believe I should confess myself over head and ears in love! At any rate, I love life. Yet nearly all my old friends seem to be dead or dying. When I write you again, I hope to be able to say that I am well at work again; but how?—on what? Thank God, I am not a 'critic!'"

IV

The winter of 1843-44 was spent by the Curtis brothers at their father's house in New York. George studied somewhat, heard much music, and read extensively. In the spring of 1844 they went to live in Concord for purposes of study and recreation. They wished to know country life, and they regarded it as a desirable part of education that they should become acquainted with practical affairs, and especially with agriculture. That tendency of the time which established Brook Farm and sent Thoreau into the Concord woods, worked itself out in this desire of two young men to find life at first hand. Colonel Higginson has said of the fresh life started by the transcendental movement: "Under these combined motives I find that I carefully made out, at one time, a project of going into the cultivation of peaches, thus securing freedom for study and thought by moderate labor of the hands. This was in 1843, two years before Thoreau tried a similar project with beans at Walden Pond; and also before the time when George and Burrill Curtis undertook to be farmers at Concord. A like course was actually adopted and successfully pursued through life by another Harvard man a few years older than myself, the late Marston Watson, of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Such things were in the air, and even those who were not swerved by 'the Newness' from their intended pursuits were often greatly as to the way in which they were undertaken."

A letter written by Burrill Curtis, and printed in part by Mr. Cary, gives the reasons for this experiment. He says it was "for the better furtherance of our main and original end—the desire to unite in our own persons the freedom of a country life with moderate out-door occupation, and with intellectual cultivation and pursuits. At Concord we first took up our residence in the family of an elderly farmer, recommended by Mr. Emerson. We gave up half the day (except in hay-time, when we gave the whole day) to sharing the farm-work indiscriminately with the farm-laborers. The rest of the day we devoted to other pursuits, or to social intercourse or correspondence; and we had a flat-bottomed rowing-boat built for us, in which we spent very many afternoons on the pretty little river. For our second season we removed to another farm and farmer's house, near Mr. Emerson and Walden Pond, where we occupied only a single room, making our own beds, and living in the very simplest and most primitive style. A small piece of ground, which we hired of the farmer, we cultivated for ourselves, raising vegetables only, and selling the superfluous product, and distributing our time much as before."

It was to the house of Captain Nathan Barrett, one mile north of Concord village, west of the river, and overlooking it and its meadows, that the Curtis brothers went. Barrett was born in October, 1797, and was of the seventh generation of his family in the town. His house on Punkatassett Hill was pleasantly located, and the farm was large and well cultivated. Judge John S. Keyes, in the sketch of Barrett's life printed in the second series of the "Memoirs of Members of the Social Circle in Concord," says of him: "His house was the resort of many of the connections of himself and wife, who had there gay and jolly frolics. He was a captain of the Light Infantry company of the town. He was naturally of an easy, somewhat indolent disposition, so that he did little of the harder work of the farm, but he looked after everything, and he became a thoroughly skilled, practical farmer. His position as the principal man of his section of the town, and his own good sense, made him the leading person in his neighborhood. In person he was tall, nearly six feet, of large frame, and good proportions, weighing two hundred pounds, had a frank, open face, a high forehead, and a large head. He lived plainly but comfortably; drove a poor horse but a good carriage to church and visiting; dressed like his brother farmers about his work, but neatly and in good style when at leisure. He loved good fruit, raised it in large amounts. Neither witty nor humorous, he was slow to appreciate a joke, but he had a hearty laugh when he did comprehend it. He was liberal in his habits, genial in his temperament, and kindly in his disposition. He was very modest, though firm and reliable; honest in every fibre, without guile and cunning; thoroughly simple, and yet clear-headed, cool, and sensible. He was slow in his mental processes, but no one doubted that he believed all that he thought and said and did. His apples were not deaconed, his seeds were sure and reliable, and his milk was never watered. He never made a mistake in his accounts but once, and then it was against himself. Everybody knew him and liked him and praised him, and was sorry when he died."

Captain Barrett had a farm of five hundred acres, the largest in the town. He was a large raiser of sheep and milk. He was a deacon in the First Parish Church, thoroughly honest, most neighborly and accommodating in his ways, a loyal citizen, and a true-hearted man. He died in February, 1868, and was lamented by every resident of the town. A typical farmer was Captain Barrett, thoroughly human, loving life and all there is good in it, hard-headed, practical, of sturdy common-sense, faithful to every obligation as he understands it, of a kindly nature, enjoying the doing of good in a plain, simple way, caring little for the supernatural, and yet having a very sturdy faith in the few convictions of a rational religion, without high spiritual insight, he lived his religion in a very honest fashion.

It was quite in keeping with the character of Captain Barrett that he put the Curtis brothers at the task of getting out manure, as almost the first labor he required of them after their arrival on his farm. His idea was to "test their metal," to find what stuff they were made of, and to what extent they were in earnest in their expressed wish to become acquainted with practical agriculture. He spoke of it with glee to his neighbors, that he had put such refined gentlemen at that kind of work. It is needless to say that they bore the test well. They were not domiciled in the farm-house, but in a small cottage somewhat lower down the hill, yet in the immediate neighborhood.

The love of music which George Curtis had developed at Brook Farm continued during his stay in Concord. He sang on occasion, and he often played a flute. The young singer he mentions was Belinda Randall, a sister of John Randall, who published a volume of poems. She was a daughter of Dr. Randall, of Winter Street, Boston, who had a summer place in Stowe. From there she often visited in Concord, perhaps attended school there, and was an intimate friend of Elizabeth Hoar, the betrothed of Edward Emerson, and the sister of Judge Hoar and Senator Hoar, who, when she visited Mrs. Hawthorne, was described as coming "with spirit voice and tread." Belinda Randall has recently died, and left half a million dollars to Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Cambridge Prospect Union. Her sister Elizabeth married Colonel Alfred Cumming, of Georgia, afterwards Governor of Utah. Dr. Randall did not approve of the marriage, and would not have the wedding take place in his house. They were married at the house of Judge Hoar, the father of Elizabeth. She was an excellent musician, but Belinda was the musical genius of the family.

Another person mentioned by Curtis was Almira Barlow, who was at Brook Farm during the time he was there. She had been a Miss Penniman of Brookline, and had the reputation of being a famous beauty. She married David Hatch Barlow, a graduate of Harvard in 1824, and of the Theological School in 1829. Their marriage took place in Brookline about 1830, and they were regarded as the handsomest couple that had been seen in the town. He had a parish in Lynn, and was afterwards settled in Brooklyn; but his habits became irregular, he remained but a short time in any place, and he separated from his wife in 1838. There was much gossip about her, owing to her beauty and her fondness for the society of men.

With Mrs. Barlow at Brook Farm and Concord was her son Francis Channing, born in 1834, who graduated at Harvard in 1855, was a lawyer in New York, rose to the rank of Major-General during the Rebellion, and was afterwards prominent in his profession. He married as his second wife Miss Ellen Shaw, the sister of Colonel Robert G. Shaw and of Mrs. George William Curtis.

Curtis mentions hearing Emerson's address on the anniversary of emancipation in the West Indies, which was delivered in Concord, August 1, 1844. There had existed in Concord for a number of years a Woman's Antislavery Society, of which Mrs. Emerson was a member. Of this society, Mrs. Mary Merrick Brooks was the president, and its most active worker. She invited Emerson to speak on this occasion. He felt that he was excused from political action by virtue of his having been a clergyman, and because of his life as a man of letters. Mrs. Brooks thought otherwise, and she gave him good and urgent reasons why he ought to speak, and to speak then. At last she prevailed, partly because she gave him no rest until he had complied with her request, and partly because his conscience went with her arguments. His attitude hitherto had been such as in part justified the statement made by Carlyle to Theodore Parker in 1843, that the negroes were fit only for slavery, and that Emerson agreed with him.

V

The second abiding place of Curtis and his brother in Concord was the farm of Edmund Hosmer, which was one-half mile east of Emerson's house, about that distance from Walden Pond, and nearly the same from Hawthorne's Wayside of later years, which faced it, and from which it could be seen. Hosmer was a native of Concord, gave his earlier years to his trade as a tanner, and then spent the remainder of his life as a Concord farmer. He was Emerson's authority on agriculture and gardening more than any one; though in later years Samuel Staples (usually known and spoken of as "Sam") superseded him because he was a nearer neighbor. In 1843, when Emerson wrote to George Ripley declining to join the Brook Farm community, he referred to the opinions of Edmund Hosmer, "a very intelligent farmer and a very upright man in my neighborhood." He gave in full his neighbor's reasons for want of faith in the community idea, that co-operation in farming was not successful, that the word of gentlemen-farmers could not be trusted, that the equal payment of ten cents an hour to every laborer was unjust, and that good work could not be secured if the worker was not directly benefited.

In his notes on the agriculture of Massachusetts, published in The Dial, Emerson described his neighbor in these words: "In an afternoon in April, after a long walk, I traversed an orchard where boys were grafting apple-trees, and found the farmer in his cornfield. He was holding the plough, and his son driving the oxen. This man always impresses me with respect, he is so manly, so sweet-tempered, so faithful, so disdainful of all appearances—excellent and reverable in his old weather-worn cap and blue frock bedaubed with the soil of the field; so honest, withal, that he always needs to be watched lest he should cheat himself. I still remember with some shame that in some dealing we had together a long time ago, I found that he had been looking to my interest, and nobody had looked to his part. As I drew near this brave laborer in the midst of his own acres, I could not help feeling for him the highest respect. Here is the Caesar, the Alexander of the soil, conquering and to conquer, after how many and many a hard-fought summer's day and winter's day; not like Napoleon, hero of sixty battles only, but of six thousand, and out of every one he has come victor; and here he stands, with Atlantic strength and cheer, invincible still. These slight and useless city limbs of ours will come to shame before this strong soldier, for his having done his own work and ours too. What good this man has or has had, he has earned. No rich father or father-in-law left him any inheritance of land or money. He borrowed the money with which he bought his farm, and has bred up a large family, given them a good education, and improved his land in every way year by year, and this without prejudice to himself the landlord, for here he is, a man every inch of him, and reminds us of the hero of the Robin Hood ballad:

'Much, the miller's son,
There was no inch of his body
But it was worth a groom.'

"Innocence and justice have written their names on his brow. Toil has not broken his spirit. His laugh rings with the sweetness and hilarity of a child; yet he is a man of a strongly intellectual taste, of much reading, and of an erect good sense and independent spirit which can neither brook usurpation nor falsehood in any shape. I walked up and down the field as he ploughed his furrow, and we talked as we walked. Our conversation naturally turned on the season and its new labors." The conversation went on, leading to a discussion of the agricultural survey of the State; Hosmer's opinions of it are quoted as of much worth, and as sounder than anything which the writer could himself say on the subject.

Mr. Sanborn is of the opinion that Edmund Hosmer was described as Hassan in Emerson's fragments on the "Poet and the Poetic Gift," in the complete edition of his poems:

"Said Saadi, 'When I stood before
Hassan the camel-driver's door,
I scorned the fame of Timour brave;
Timour, to Hassan, was a slave:
In every glance of Hassan's eye
I read great years of victory,
And I, who cower mean and small
In the frequent interval
When wisdom not with me resides,
Worship Toil's wisdom that abides.
I shunned his eyes, that faithful man's,
I shunned the toiling Hassan's glance.'"

Hosmer was also described by William Ellery Channing in his "New England":

"This man takes pleasure o'er the crackling fire,
His glittering axe subdued the monarch oak;
He earned the cheerful blaze by something higher
Than pensioned blows—he owned the tree he stroke,
And knows the value of the distant smoke,
When he returns at night, his labor done,
Matched is his action with the long day's sun."

Channing spoke of him again as the

"Spicy farming sage,
Twisted with heat and cold and cramped with age,
Who grunts at all the sunlight through the year,
And springs from bed each morning with a cheer.
Of all his neighbors he can something tell,
'Tis bad, whate'er, we know, and like it well!
The bluebird's song he hears the first in spring—
Shoots the last goose bound south on freezing wing."

Hosmer was also one of the farmer friends of Thoreau, who much enjoyed his society and the vigor of his conversation. He is described in the fourteenth chapter of "Walden" as among Thoreau's winter visitors at his hut: "On a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard the cronching of the snow made by the step of a long-headed farmer, who from far through the woods sought my house, to have a social 'crack'; one of the few of his vocation who are 'men on their farms'; who donned a frock instead of a professor's gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard. We talked of rude and simple things, when men sat about large fires in cold, bracing weather, with clear heads; and when other dessert failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for those which have the thickest shells are commonly empty." In W.E. Channing's book about Thoreau as the "Poet-Naturalist," there is a passage from his journal in which Thoreau speaks of Hosmer as the last of the farmers worthy of mention. "Human life may be transitory and full of trouble," he says, "but the perennial mind whose survey extends from that spring to this—from Columella to Hosmer—is superior to change. I will identify myself with that which will not die with Columella and will not die with Hosmer."

At Hosmer's house the two young men lived in a single room, and did their own cooking and house-keeping. Mrs. Hosmer furnished them with milk, and they ate crackers, cheese, and fruit largely. They were Grahamites, and used no meat. They read much, and had with them a large number of books. It was their custom here, as well as at Captain Barrett's, to spend much time in the woods. They were enthusiastic students of botany, and came home from their excursions in the woods with their arms loaded with flowers, and often searched out the rarest which could be found in the Walden and Lincoln woods.

It was while the Curtises were living at Hosmer's that they assisted Thoreau in building his hut at Walden Pond. Thoreau says that in March, 1845, he borrowed an axe and went into the woods to build him a house. The axe was procured of Emerson, and he says he returned it sharper than when he received it. He was assisted in building the house, he says, by some of his acquaintances, "rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity." These acquaintances were Emerson, Alcott, W.E. Charming, Burrill and George Curtis, Edmund Hosmer and his sons John, Edmund, and Andrew. Thoreau said that he wished the help of the young men because they had more strength than the older ones, and that no man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers than he. It was Thoreau's custom while at Walden to dine on Sundays with Emerson, and to stop at Hosmer's on his way back to the pond, often remaining to supper. After the failure of his experiment at Fruitlands, it was into Hosmer's house that Alcott found himself welcomed; and he was given much of help and encouragement by the farmer and his wife.

VI

At this time several of the Brook Farmers were living in Concord, and among them were Bradford, Pratt, and Mrs. Barlow; and later on Marianne Ripley, the sister of George Ripley, found a home there, and kept a school for small children. On the third return of the Curtises to Concord, in the summer of 1846, they found a home in the house of Minott Pratt, who was living at the foot of Punkatassett Hill, on the top of which was the house of Captain Barrett. In the same neighborhood lived William Ellery Channing, the poet, whose wife was a sister of Margaret Fuller. They are frequently mentioned in Hawthorne's and his wife's letters from the Old Manse. Pratt's cottage was in a quiet, delightful location; and in the family George Curtis found himself quite at home.

Curtis made a very pleasant impression in Concord, for he was social in his ways, paid much deference to others, and always exemplified a fine etiquette. The brothers are remembered by one person who then knew them as having no mannerisms, and as being perfect gentlemen. His article on Emerson, in the "Homes of American Authors," gave much offence in the town, and by Mrs. Alcott, as well as others, was warmly resented. He was exact enough as to facts, but he drew from them wrong inferences. He afterwards said that there was nothing romantic in his paper, and that every incident mentioned was an actual occurrence. He had letters from Emerson and Hawthorne before he wrote his papers on those two authors, to enable him to verify certain details.

The relations of Curtis and Hawthorne were cordial if not intimate. In a letter to Hawthorne, written from Europe, Curtis said: "Does Mrs. Hawthorne yet remember that she sent me a golden key to the studio of Crawford, in Rome? I shall never forget that, nor any smallest token of her frequent courtesy in the Concord days." In another letter to Hawthorne he speaks of Concord as "our old home, which is very placid and beautiful in my memory." In his paper on Hawthorne, in the "Homes of American Authors," Curtis gave an interesting account of his acquaintance with that reticent genius during these Concord days:

"There glimmer in my memory a few hazy days, of a tranquil and half-pensive character, which I am conscious were passed in and around the house, and their pensiveness I know to be only that touch of twilight which inhered in the house and all its associations. Beside the few chance visitors there were city friends occasionally, figures quite unknown to the village, who came preceded by the steam shriek of the locomotive, were dropped at the gate-posts, and were seen no more. The owner was as much a vague name to me as any one.

"During Hawthorne's first year's residence in Concord, I had driven up with some friends to an aesthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. It was in the winter, and a great wood fire blazed upon the hospitable hearth. There were various men and women of note assembled, and I, who listened attentively to all the fine things that were said, was for some time scarcely aware of a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a little withdrawn, his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and his bright eyes clearly burning under his black brow. As I drifted down the stream of talk, this person, who sat silent as a shadow, looked to me as Webster might have looked had he been a poet—a kind of poetic Webster. He rose and walked to the window, and stood quietly there for a long time, watching the dead, white landscape. No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after him, the conversation flowed steadily on, as if every one understood that his silence was to be respected. It was the same at table. In vain the silent man imbibed aesthetic tea. Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at his lips. But there was a light in his eye which assured me that nothing was lost. So supreme was his silence that it presently engrossed me to the exclusion of everything else. There was very brilliant discourse, but this silence was much more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said by the philosophers, but much finer things were implied by the dumbness of this gentleman with heavy brows and black hair. When he presently rose and went, Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over his face like day over the sky, said, 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night.'

"Thus he remained in my memory, a shadow, a phantom, until more than a year afterwards. Then I came to live in Concord. Every day I passed his house, but when the villagers, thinking that perhaps I had some clew to the mystery, said, 'Do you know this Mr. Hawthorne?' I said, 'No,' and trusted to time.

"Time justified my confidence, and one day I too went down the avenue and disappeared in the house. I mounted those mysterious stairs to that apocryphal study. I saw 'the cheerful coat of paint, and golden-tinted paper-hangings, lighting up the small apartment; while the shadow of a willow-tree, that swept against the overhanging eaves, attempered the cheery western sunshine.' I looked from the little northern window whence the old pastor watched the battle, and in the small dining-room beneath it, upon the first floor, there were

'Dainty chicken, snow-white bread,'

and the golden juices of Italian vineyards, which still feast insatiable memory.

"Our author occupied the Old Manse for three years. During that time he was not seen, probably, by more than a dozen of the villagers. His walks could easily avoid the town, and upon the river he was always sure of solitude. It was his favorite habit to bathe every evening in the river, after nightfall, and in that part of it over which the old bridge stood, at which the battle was fought. Sometimes, but rarely, his boat accompanied another up the stream, and I recall the silence and preternatural vigor with which, on one occasion, he wielded his paddle to counteract the bad rowing of a friend who conscientiously considered it his duty to do something and not let Hawthorne work alone, but who, with every stroke, neutralized all Hawthorne's efforts. I suppose he would have struggled until he fell senseless, rather than ask his friend to desist. His principle seemed to be, if a man cannot understand without talking to him, it is useless to talk, because it is immaterial whether such a man understands or not. His own sympathy was so broad and sure that, although nothing had been said for hours, his companion knew that nothing had escaped his eye, nor had a single pulse of beauty in the day or scene or society failed to thrill his heart. In this way his silence was most social. Everything seemed to have been said. It was a Barmecide feast of discourse from which a greater satisfaction resulted than from an actual banquet.

"When a formal attempt was made to desert this style of conversation, the result was ludicrous. Once Emerson and Thoreau arrived to pay a call. They were shown into the little parlor upon the avenue, and Hawthorne presently entered. Each of the guests sat upright in his chair like a Roman senator. 'To them,' Hawthorne, like a Dacian King. The call went on, but in a most melancholy manner. The host sat perfectly still, or occasionally propounded a question which Thoreau answered accurately, and there the thread broke short off. Emerson delivered sentences that only needed the setting of an essay to charm the world; but the whole visit was a vague ghost of the Monday Evening Club at Mr. Emerson's—it was a great failure. Had they all been lying idly on the river brink or strolling in Thoreau's blackberry pastures, the result would have been utterly different. But imprisoned in the proprieties of a parlor, each a wild man in his way, with a necessity of talking inherent in the nature of the occasion, there was only a waste of treasure. This was the only 'call' in which I ever knew Hawthorne to be involved.

"In Mr. Emerson's house I said it seemed always morning. But Hawthorne's black-ash trees and scraggy apple boughs shaded

'A land in which it seemed always afternoon.'

"I do not doubt that the lotus grew along the grassy marge of the Concord behind his house, and that it was served, subtly concealed, to all his guests. The house, its inmates, and its life lay dream-like upon the edge of the little village. You fancy that they all came together and belonged together, and were glad that at length some idol of your imagination, some poet whose spell had held you, and would hold you forever, was housed as such a poet should be.

"During the lapse of the three years since the bridal tour of twenty miles ended at the 'two tall gate-posts of roughhewn stone,' a little wicker wagon had appeared at intervals upon the avenue, and a placid babe, whose eyes the soft Concord day had touched with the blue of its beauty, lay looking tranquilly up at the grave old trees, which sighed lofty lullabies over her sleep. The tranquillity of the golden-haired Una was the living and breathing type of the dreamy life of the Old Manse. Perhaps, that being attained, it was as well to go. Perhaps our author was not surprised or displeased when the hints came, 'growing more and more distinct, that the owner of the old house was pining for his native air.' One afternoon I entered the study and learned from its occupant that the last story he should ever write there was written."

In the midnight chapter of his "Blithedale Romance," Hawthorne described an incident which actually took place in Concord. A young girl drowned herself, and her body was found as there set forth. Hawthorne wrote a full account of the drowning in his journal, which is printed by Julian Hawthorne in his biography of "Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife." No mention is made of Curtis, who took part in the search, and who gave his own account of the affair in his paper on Hawthorne. When Thoreau went to New York, in 1843, he put his boat into the keeping of Curtis, and he and Channing made their excursions on the river in it. In it they searched for Mary Hunt, who lived near Channing. Curtis's account of this affair deserves to be placed by the side of Hawthorne's:

"Martha was the daughter of a plain Concord farmer, a girl of delicate and shy temperament, who excelled so much in study that she was sent to a fine academy in a neighboring town, and won all the honors of the course. She met at the school and in the society of the place a refinement and cultivation, a social gayety and grace, which were entirely unknown in the hard life she had led at home, and which by their very novelty, as well as because they harmonized with her own nature and dreams, were doubly beautiful and fascinating. She enjoyed this life to the full, while her timidity kept her only a spectator; and she ornamented it with a fresher grace, suggestive of the woods and fields, when she ventured to engage in the airy game. It was a sphere for her capacities and talents. She shone in it, and the consciousness of a true position and genial appreciation gave her the full use of all her powers. She admired and was admired. She was surrounded by gratifications of taste, by the stimulants and rewards of ambition. The world was happy, and she was worthy to live in it. But at times a cloud suddenly dashed athwart the sun—a shadow stole, dark and chill, to the very edge of the charmed circle in which she stood. She knew well what it was, and what it foretold, but she would not pause nor heed. The sun shone again, the future smiled; youth, beauty, and all hopes and thoughts bathed the moment in lambent light.

"But school-days ended at last, and with the receding town in which they had been passed, the bright days of life disappeared, and forever. It was probable that the girl's fancy had been fed, perhaps indiscreetly pampered, by her experience there. But it was no fairy-land. It was an academy town in New England, and the fact that it was so alluring is a fair indication of the kind of life from which she had emerged, and to which she now returned. What could she do? In the dreary round of petty details, in the incessant drudgery of a poor farmer's household, with no companions or any sympathy—for the family of a hard-working New-England farmer are not the Chloes and Clarissas of pastoral poetry, nor the cowboys Corydons—with no opportunity of retirement and cultivation, for reading and studying—which is always voted 'stuff' under such circumstances—the light suddenly quenches out of life, what was she to do?

"The simple answer is that she had only used all her opportunities, and that, although it was no fault of hers that the routine of her life was in every way repulsive, she did struggle to accommodate herself to it, and failed. When she found it impossible to drag on at home, she became an inmate of a refined and cultivated household in the village, where she had opportunity to follow her own fancies and to associate with educated and attractive persons. But even here she could not escape the feeling that it was all temporary, that her position was one of dependence; and her pride, now grown morbid, often drove her from the very society which alone was agreeable to her. This was all genuine. There was not the slightest strain of the femme incomprise in her demeanor. She was always shy and silent, with a touching reserve which won interest and confidence, but left also a vague sadness in the mind of the observer. After a few months she made another effort to rend the cloud which was gradually darkening around her, and opened a school for young children. But although the interest of friends secured her a partial success, her gravity and sadness failed to excite the sympathy of her pupils, who missed in her the playful gayety always most winning to children. Martha, however, pushed bravely on, a figure of tragic sobriety to all who watched her course. The farmers thought her a strange girl, and wondered at the ways of the farmer's daughter who was not content to milk cows and churn butter and fry pork, without further hope or thought. The good clergyman of the town, interested in her situation, sought a confidence she did not care to bestow, and so, doling out a, b, c to a wild group of boys and girls, she found that she could not untie the Gordian knot of her life, and felt with terror that it must be cut.

"One summer evening she left her father's house and walked into the fields alone. Night came, but Martha did not return. The family became anxious, inquired if any one had noticed the direction in which she went, learned from the neighbors that she was not visiting, that there was no lecture nor meeting to detain her, and wonder passed into apprehension. Neighbors went into the adjacent woods and called, but received no answer. Every instant the awful shadow of some dread event solemnized the gathering groups. Every one thought what no one dared whisper, until a low voice suggested the river. Then with the swiftness of certainty all friends far and near were roused, and thronged along the banks of the stream. Torches flashed in the boats that put off in the terrible search. Hawthorne, then living in the Old Manse, was summoned, and the man whom the villagers had only seen at morning as a musing spectre in his garden, now appeared among them at night, to devote his strong arm and steady heart to their service. The boats drifted slowly down the stream, the torches flashed strangely upon the black repose of the waters, and upon the long slim grasses that weeping fringed the marge. Upon both banks silent and awe-stricken crowds hastened along, eager and dreading to find the slightest trace of what they sought. Suddenly they came to a few articles of dress, heavy with the night dew. No one spoke, for no one had doubted the result. It was clear that Martha had strayed to the river, and quietly asked of its stillness the repose she sought. The boats gathered around the spot. With every implement that could be of service the melancholy search began. Long intervals of fearful silence ensued, but at length, towards midnight, the sweet face of the dead girl was raised more placidly to the stars than ever it had been to the sun.

"So ended a village tragedy. The reader may possibly find in it the original of the thrilling conclusion of the 'Blithedale Romance,' and learn anew that dark as is the thread with which Hawthorne weaves his spells, it is no darker than those with which tragedies are spun, even in regions apparently so torpid as Concord."

Far too much has been made of the realistic elements in the "Blithedale Romance." Hawthorne says in his preface that "he has occasionally availed himself of his actual reminiscences;" but it cannot be claimed that he did anything more. The fact seems to be that he used such reminiscences and incidents merely as stimuli to his imagination, that the real romance of the story was purely of his own creation. So far as he used the facts of his life at Brook Farm it was to give an air of reality to his story; and in no other sense can it be accepted as truthful to Brook Farm life. For instance, his Zenobia was in every sense an original creation, and not a description of any person he had known. Three persons he knew at Brook Farm gave him hints, traits of character, and points of departure for the activity of his imagination. The stately elements in Zenobia resembled those of Mrs. George Ripley, her luxurious tastes were like those of Mrs. Almira Barlow, while her genius and brilliancy had a few similarities to Margaret Fuller. His habit seems to have been to take a single incident in the life of a person, and to make that the chief one in a character. In this way his romances gained a realistic phase of a very impressive kind; but the character of a person as a whole he never copied. It is a strange comment on his powerful writing that so much should have been made of his superficial realism, while the persistent and profound romanticism of his work is too often overlooked. Yet this was one of the weird results of his genius, that his imagination weaves for itself a world more real than life itself, and that claims for itself an acceptance as truer to facts than the word of the historian.

In his paper on Emerson, Curtis gives further account of his life in Concord. He said that "Thoreau lives in the berry-pastures upon a bank over Walden Pond, and in a little house of his own building. One pleasant summer afternoon a small party of us helped him raise it—a bit of life as Arcadian as any at Brook Farm. Elsewhere in the village he turns up arrow-heads abundantly, and Hawthorne mentions that Thoreau initiated him into the mystery of finding them." His account of the club which gathered for a few evenings in Emerson's study deserves to be placed here in order to complete his story of Concord experiences, the fictitious names used by him being changed to the real ones:

"It was in the year 1845 that a circle of persons of various ages, and differing very much in everything but sympathy, found themselves in Concord. Towards the end of the autumn, Mr. Emerson suggested that they should meet every Monday evening through the winter in his library. 'Monsieur Aubepine,' 'Miles Coverdale,' and other phantoms, since known as Nathaniel Hawthorne, who then occupied the Old Manse; the inflexible Henry Thoreau, a scholastic and pastoral Orson, then living among the blackberry pastures of Walden Pond; Plato Skimpole [Margaret Fuller's name for Alcott], then sublimely meditating impossible summer-houses in a little house on the Boston Road; the enthusiastic agriculturist and Brook Farmer [George Bradford], then an inmate of Mr. Emerson's house, who added the genial cultivation of a scholar to the amenities of the natural gentleman; a sturdy farmer-neighbor [Edmund Hosmer], who had bravely fought his weary way through inherited embarrassment to the small success of a New England husbandman; two city youths [George and Burrill Curtis], ready for the fragments from the feast of wit and wisdom; and the host himself, composed the club. Ellery Channing, who had that winter harnessed his Pegasus to the New York Tribune, was a kind of corresponding member. The news of this world was to be transmitted through his eminently practical genius, as the club deemed itself competent to take charge of tidings from all other spheres.

"I went the first evening very much as Ixion may have gone to his banquet. The philosophers sat dignified and erect. There was a constrained but very amiable silence, which had the impertinence of a tacit inquiry, seeming to ask, 'Who will now proceed to say the finest thing that has ever been said?' It was quite involuntary and unavoidable, for the members lacked that fluent social genius without which a club is impossible. It was a congress of oracles on the one hand, and of curious listeners upon the other. I vaguely remember that the Orphic Alcott invaded the Sahara of silence with a solemn 'Saying,' to which, after due pause, the honorable member for Blackberry Pastures responded by some keen and graphic observations, while the Olympian host, anxious that so much material should be spun into something, beamed smiling encouragement upon all parties. But the conversation became more and more staccato. Hawthorne, a statue of night and silence, sat a little removed, under a portrait of Dante, gazing imperturbably upon the group; and as he sat in the shadow, his dark hair and eyes and suit of sables made him, in that society, the black thread of mystery which he weaves into his stories; while the shifting presence of the Brook Farmer played like heat lightning around the room.

"I remember little else but a grave eating of russet apples by the erect philosophers, and a solemn disappearance into night. The club struggled through three Monday evenings. Alcott was perpetually putting apples of gold in pictures of silver; for such was the rich ore of his thoughts coined by the deep melody of his voice. Thoreau charmed us with the secrets won from his interviews with Pan in the Walden woods; while Emerson, with the zeal of an engineer trying to dam wild waters, sought to bind the wide-flying embroidery of discourse into a whole of clear, sweet sense. But still in vain. The oracular sayings were the unalloyed saccharine element; and every chemist knows how much else goes to practical food—how much coarse, rough, woody fibre is essential. The club struggled on valiantly, discoursing celestially, eating apples, and disappearing in the dark, until the third evening it vanished altogether. But I have since known clubs of fifty times the number, whose collected genius was not more than that of either of the Dii Majores of our Concord coterie. The fault was its too great concentration. It was not relaxation, as a club should be, but tension. Society is a play, a game, a tournament; not a battle. It is the easy grace of undress; not an intellectual, full-dress parade."

VII

As will have been seen, Curtis never lost his interest in Brook Farm or his faith in the principles on which it was founded. In his letters to Dwight he clearly pointed out its defects, and he indicated in an emphatic manner that he could not accept some of its methods. He showed that he was an individualist rather than an associationist or socialist, that his supreme faith was in individual effort, and in each person making himself right before he undertook to reform society. His "Easy Chair" essays make it clear that he saw with keen vision the limitations of Brook Farm; but it had for him a distinct charm, and one that increased rather than grew less as the years went on. The Brook Farm effort to right the wrongs of society, to give all persons an opportunity in life, and to bring the help of all to the aid of each one, he heartily accepted in its spirit and intent; and to that faith he ever held with unswerving confidence.

Not less did the Concord episode remain with Curtis as a bright spot in his life. He gladly went to Concord whenever the opportunity offered; he frequently lectured there, and was always heard with delight; and he gave the Centennial Address, April 19, 1875, on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of the battle at the old north bridge.

It was a part of the Brook Farm and Concord life which Curtis continued in his intimacy with Dwight. So great was the confidence of this friendship that he wrote to Dwight as soon as his marriage had been arranged, telling him of his happiness, and telling him that the promised bride was the daughter of their old Brook Farm friends, the Francis George Shaws. "Do you remember her in Brook Farm days?" he asked. "There was never anything that made parents and children happier." In closing his letter he wrote: "When do you come to New York? I so want you to see her and know her; then of course you will love her. Give my love to your wife—think that love is not for this world, but forever!—and remember your friend who remembers you." In his reply, Dwight said:

"You are right, George; link your destinies with youth. I scarcely believe in anything else—except Spring and Morning. But then, there is a way of making these—the soul of them—perpetual; and you have the secret of it, I am sure, better than most of us.

"To think of that child, who used to play about Brook Farm, and go through finger drudgery under my piano-professorship (Heaven save the mark!), the child of our young friends, Mr. and Mrs. F.S. (how can you think of them as parents?) being the future Mrs. Howadji! or I a dull drudge of an editor! I do wish indeed to see and know her, and doubt not I shall find your glowing statements all confirmed, and that in your height of joy you need not be ashamed to 'blush it east and blush it west.' There is a certain 'Maud'-like ecstasy in your note that makes me think of that.

"A small bird had already sung the news in my ear. But it was doubly pleasant to have it straight from you. It was good in you to remember me so…. Would that I might see you in New York! but I must content myself with the not very remote prospect of having you by the hand here. Till then, believe me happy in your happiness, and faithfully as ever your friend."

Francis George Shaw, and his wife Sarah B. Shaw, were not members of the Brook Farm community; but they lived in the immediate vicinity, often visited the farm, joined in its entertainments, and were intimate friends of the leaders of the association. He was a contributor to the Harbinger, for which he wrote a number of articles in favor of the associationist social movement. He made an admirable translation of George Sand's "Consuelo" for the paper, in which that novel was for the first time printed in this country. Their children were frequently at the farm, and grew up in the midst of such ideas and influences as it fostered. One of them was that Colonel Robert G. Shaw who was "buried with his niggers" at Fort Wagner, after having led one of the most gallant military movements of modern times. Three of the daughters married, Curtis, General Barlow, and General Charles Russell Lowell. Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell has made for herself a lasting name by her philanthropies, and her generous interest in all good causes. Mrs. Shaw wrote the biography of her son Robert, which was published in the work devoted to the Harvard graduates who fell in the Civil War.

The real effect of Brook Farm, and that movement of which it was a part, can be rightly understood only when there is taken into consideration what they did for such persons as Shaw, Curtis, Barlow, Lowell, and Mrs. Lowell. These persons were trained by Brook Farm and Transcendentalism; and their aspirations, philanthropies, chivalrous spirit, and romantic courage were fostered and developed by them. The tone and quality of Shaw's courage, and of his heroic effort for the colored men, found in Brook Farm their motive and incentive; and in Brook Farm because it represented a phase of life much larger than itself, one that fosters the noblest faith in men and in the spiritual future of humanity. Of Barlow and Lowell it may be also said that their heroism and their patriotism were the legitimate products of that movement whose hope and faith were the inspiration of their youth. To this source was due Barlow's love of justice, his unflinching courage in opposing self-seekers and partisan patriots, and his trust in the ultimate worth of what is right and true.

The letters printed in this volume have a large interest as indications of how George William Curtis was making ready for his life-work. His independence, his love of humanity, his courage in maintaining his own convictions, his chivalrous and romantic spirit, his literary skill and charm, his profound spiritual convictions, that would not be limited by any sectarian bounds, all find expression here in such form as to give sure promise for his future. It was a somewhat erratic kind of training which Curtis received; but for him it was better than any college of his day could have given him. Admirably fitted to his tastes, it was no less well adapted to his needs. It fostered in him all that was best in his character, and it served to bring out his genius to its rounded expression.

The two years which Curtis spent in Concord must have been of the greatest value to him. His contact with Emerson was of itself of inestimable worth, for it gave him that enthusiasm for ideas, that contact with a noble life lived for the highest ends of spiritual development, which fostered in him the enthusiasms which were so genuine a part of his life. Without Brook Farm, Transcendentalism, and Emerson, it is quite safe to say that the life of Curtis would have been less worthy of our admiration. The stay in Concord was a time of seed-planting, and the harvest came in all that the man was in later years. Without the enthusiasms then cherished the independent in politics would have been less courageous. And these letters may suggest anew one of the most important lessons of education, that without enthusiasms no man can do any great or noble work in the world. What will give to youth visions, ideals, and enthusiasms is worth all other parts of culture, for out of these grow the noblest results of human willing, thinking, and doing.

EARLY LETTERS TO JOHN S. DWIGHT

I

PROVIDENCE, August 18, 1843.

Are you quite recovered from those divine enchantments which held us bound so long? Memory preserves for me those silvery sounds, and almost I seem to catch their echo. Have we indeed heard the Siren song—are we unscathed? Let me be your Father John, and to these reverend years commit the tale of youthful fervor. So good a Catholic as I, of course, has long ago made confession. But another yet remains for me—namely, that I cannot get that song. Yesterday I heard from Isaac, who cannot buy it in New York. Nothing but a copy for the guitar and that Rosalie. Would it be an expensive thing to import? Reed told me he could do that, but as I supposed there was no doubt of its being in New York, I said nothing about it. She should have the song; it would be so fine falling out of her mouth. Mouth-dropped gems would be no longer a fable. As, indeed, we have seen already. For what so universal an Interpreter as music? That art has the gift of tongues (ecce, the Singing-School).

Burrill met with a mishap on Wednesday. We were walking out of town, and he, springing from a wall, turned his ankle and sprained it. He is therefore laid up for some days. It is a disappointment to him, for he hoped to leave on Monday next, and meanwhile see several persons. I doubt if he can step on his foot so soon.

I had yesterday a German letter from Isaac; German in spirit, not in language. He has certainly a great heart, more delicate in his character than I thought, with a constant force, nervous, not muscular strength.

Will you accept so city-like a letter? I am busy or I should write more; another time will suffice. Let me accept from you a country-like letter.

Yours in the bonds,

G.W.C.

II

PROVIDENCE, September 1, 1843.

My dear Friend,—Your letter did not reach my hands until last evening, when I returned from Newport, where I have passed the last eight days, how pleasantly I need not tell you. After the quiet beauty of our farm home, there was a striking grandeur in the sea that I never beheld so plainly before. There is something sublimely cheerful about the ocean, altho' it is so stored with woe, and so constantly suggestive it is of that ocean, life, whereon we all float.

It was pleasant to me that Nature confirmed my judgment of Tennyson. The little poem that closes one of the volumes, "Break, break, break," etc., is so exquisitely human and tender, with all its vague and dim beauty, that the waves dashed to its music, and silently the whole sea sung the song. Just so the jottings down of poets, the few words that must be said, tho' the Nature which they sing is so limitless, and inexpressible are the blossoms of poetry and all literature. Will not the little song of Shakespeare's, "Take, oh! take those lips away," be as immortal as Hamlet? Not because chance may print them together, but because it is as universal and more delicate an expression. That charm pervades our favorite, Tennyson. There is no rough-marked outline, all fades away upon earnest contemplation into the tones of his songs, into the colors of the sky. So in the landscape, tint fades gently into tint, and the beauty that attracts spreads from leaf to hill, from hill to horizon, till the whole is bathed in sunlight. Is not this fact also recognized in other arts? In painting, the great picture is without marked outline; in music, the truest and deepest is undefined. Beethoven is greater than Haydn. The precision which offends in manner is as disagreeable everywhere else. Is it not because when named as Precision, the depth which necessarily means a graceful form is absent? As when we say a woman has beautiful eyes we indirectly acknowledge her want of universal beauty. Certainly a man of elegant manners is admired not for himself, but what he represents. Indeed, all society is only thus endurable. Nature, and to me particularly the ocean, makes no such partial impression; and therefore the poet who sits nearest to the great heart sings rather the sense of vague beauty and aspiration, of tender remembrance and gentle hope, than a bald description of the sight. The ocean is not fathomless water nor the woods green trees to him, but a presence, and a key that unlocks the chambers of his soul where the diamonds are. Therefore, when I have been into nearer conversation with Nature I have little to say, but my life is deepened. The poet is he who with deepened life chants also a flowing hymn which utters the music of that life. You will understand why the little poem seems to me so fine, therefore. This water I also see; but not in me lies the power of the due expression of its influence.

There was another pleasant aspect in Newport, of persons. I walked one evening towards the town (for I was boarding in the outskirts), and passed an encampment of soldiers, who in their gay uniforms glittered among the lighted tents like soldier fays. The band in the shadow of the camp was playing very sweetly airs proper for that fading light, half-mournful, half-tender and hopeful. I passed by the houses brilliantly lighted and filled with finely dressed people, who also thronged the streets. Before one of the principal hotels was a band from the fort serenading, and surrounded with a crowd of easy listeners. The ice-cream resort was filled, the cottages shone among the trees, and an air of entire abandonment to joy filled the place. Old men and young men, women and girls, seemed to have laid aside all business, all care, and to be only gay. It was a vision of the Lotos islands, an earthly portrait of that meek repose which haunts us ideally sometimes.

I was surprised upon my return to find Burrill still here. He is able only to crutch about the house, but will probably return to Brook Farm with me during the latter part of next week, which is the commencement week here….

I should have been glad to have seen the gay picnic, and to have heard the O.; let me hope she will not be gone when I return. I am exceedingly obliged for your kind suggestion of "Adelaide," and if you choose to present it as a joint gift, you confer a great pleasure upon me.

Commend me particularly to Almira; to the young men whom you will, including mainly Charles D. and James S.; to Mr. and Mrs. R.; and if you will write me again you will be sure that your proxy will be welcome to

Your friend,

G.W. CURTIS.

Will you say to Miss Russell that I shall see my aunt this afternoon, and will perform her commission. Moreover, that I am gratified at so distinguished a mark of her approbation as the permission to escort a plant to her garden.

G.W.C.

III

NEW YORK, Saturday eve'g, November 11, 1843.

Your letter has just reached me, my dear friend, loaded with much that was not in it, and which needed only a person or a letter from a region so delightful to bear it to me. Already my life at the Farm is removed and transfigured. It stands for so much in my experience, and is so fairly rounded, that I know the experience could never return, tho' the residence might be renewed. When we mend the broken chain, we see ever after the point of union.

To-night the wind sighs thro' the chimney, complaining and wailing and melting away in a depth of sadness, as if it would pacify its own sorrow, and found newer grief in that need. The clouds break and roll away in the sky, and the wan moon sails up as if to a weary duty. Yet so calm it is, so pure, that it chides weariness and preaches a deep, still hope. In the city I seem not to breathe quite freely yet, but daily I gain ground and air. It is so different, even more than I tho't; so new, tho' I had seen it for years; so full, tho' I walk miles without speaking or seeing a face seen before. I must constantly say to myself, "Be quiet, be quiet. This huge enigma will gradually explain itself, and out of these conventions and courtesies you shall see the same tender Nature looking that so enchanted your country life."

Here is Burrill, and we are of more worth to each other than ever before.
Sometimes I fear to think how much. He was as glad to see me as the old
Christians a prophet, for I know him best of all.

The aspect of things here impresses me mainly with the absolute necessity and duty of making our place good. The stern, stirring activity around me compels me to give account to myself of my silence and repose. The answer is always clear and steady. I have not heard the voice. Yet my mind begins to shape some outline of life. Of this I am assured, that in this world of work, where the hum of business makes music with the stars, I must work too. And how I must work, by what handle I shall grasp the world and justify my consumption of its food, that begins to appear. My Genius is not decided enough to lead me unquestioning in any one direction, and my taste is so equally cultivated and developed that choice seems somewhat arbitrary. Yet it is not so. Above all, I regret no culture, tho' it may have thus multiplied the roads to be chosen. It is a tinge and charm to whatever is performed.

A gentleman in never so ragged clothes is a gentleman still. You may be sure nothing has charmed me more than my meeting with Isaac in his mealy clothes and brown-paper cap. His manner had a grand dignity, because he was universally related by his diligent labor, and my conversation with him was as earnest and happy as any intercourse I have had with him. This general activity does not reprove me, for my silence respects itself and gives good reasons why judgment should not proceed. And therefore it views more lovingly what surrounds it. The God stirs within, and presently will say something. Let us plant ourselves there and be lawyers that we may so dispense justice, not that we may get bread; and priests, because the Divine will speaks thro' us; and merchants and doctors and shoemakers and bakers, from the same reason. If we honestly serve in any such profession, bread will come of course.

Your letter has quickened my thought upon these things, quite active before. My impulse is to say at once, go. The worst and all you can dread is the foul breath that will befog your fair name, because E.W. has done what he has, because you were a minister and are a Transcendentalist and a seceder from the holy office, and a dweller at that place, unknown to perfumed respectability and condemned of prejudice and error. This is the first great reason, and the second is not unlike unto it. It is that you retard your preparation for any permanent pursuit, as a centre of your sensuous life, by passing two or three years in Europe. With respect to the first reason, not your own feelings, but those of your friends, demand some consideration. In Heaven's court will their sorrow at your departure and intimacy with E.W. at this time outweigh your own happiness at the trip, and because so you lend your own good character to one perhaps unjustly condemned. Such a sudden departure and intimacy with him might have an indirect influence upon your future attempts to base yourself in some way. If your mind is determining itself towards no pursuit, and you anticipate the same general employment that has filled the last year or two, I should say go. If God doesn't call here, he may in Europe; and if not for years, your voyage cannot interfere with him. There are privater reasons, which you know, of his character and of your probability of assimilation, and of your independence in intimacies. Perhaps you may link little fingers, if you cannot clasp the whole hand. On the whole, I should say go, though not without due thought of friends, to whom your name and relation may be more than your friendship. You will soon let me know of your movements, will you not?

For a week or two, I am man of the house for my cousin, whose husband is in Boston. Burrill fulfils the same duty for an aunt. It is a great separation, though only a step separates us when I am at home; but the fine social sympathy of actual contact, in the early morning and late night, the kind deeds that link the minutes and adorn the hours, the tender sweets of the dignity of friendship without its form—these are buds that bloom only in the warmth of hands perpetually united.

To-night Charles Dana and Isaac and Burrill came to see me. I smelled summer leaves and heard summer flutes as I stood with them and talked. Charles was never so important to me; he was himself and all Brook Farm beside. We are all going to hear William Henry Channing in the morning. Last Sunday at the church door I met C.P. Cranch and his wife. I mean to go and see them very soon, though they live streets away. Of Isaac I have seen much for a week's space. He lives two miles or more from us.

I have heard no music yet. Max Bohrer concerts on Monday with Timm, Mrs. Sutton, Antogigni, and Schafenberg; I mean to go. The Philharmonic concerts begin a week from this evening. They have four concerts, and the subscription is $10, for which one obtains three tickets to each concert, and the privilege of buying two occasional tickets at $1.50 each. A singular arrangement. They are to play the 8th Symphony next Saturday. I know not what else.

Give Almira a great deal of love from me. I shall sing a song to her solitude and patiently await the response. I have begun to read "Wilhelm Meister" in German. I read about three or four hours a day, then an hour or two in Latin, and the rest to poetical reading—Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, Massinger, Shakespeare, and the Bible, at present. In Worcester I found Montaigne, whom I devoured. What cheerful good sense! I have begun also to learn two or three of B.'s waltzes from note. "La Dobur" I have almost accomplished. Possibly I shall thus pick up some note knowledge, though I do not build any castles. Good-night. Could I but send myself in my letter! Your friend,

G.W.C.

Tuesday morning. I concluded to retain my letter for Charles, who leaves to-day. Charles and Isaac and Burrill and I all went to Max Bohrer's concert last evening. The hall was full, 1000 or 1500 people present. I was glad to go, for he introduced me to the Instrument, but no more. He has great skill, and has fully mastered it. That is what persevering talent can always do. Bohrer loved his instrument because he could display himself by its aid, not because it was through his genius a minister and revealer of the art to himself and others. His conceit is sublime. It was entire and unique. His posture and air were ridiculously Olympian. Mrs. Sutton is very fat and has a thin voice. There are some good tones in it, but she undertakes the most difficult music. Antignini sings pleasantly but with great effort. All his songs were his own composition, and all Max Bohrer's his. In fact, it was not a musical festival so much as a gymnasium for musical instruments, both mechanical and human. Timm and Scharfenberg both played admirably. I saw Fred'k Rakemann in the crowd; could not conveniently speak to him, and am going, as soon as I can find out where he lives, to see him. His face was so sad that I wanted to go to him and say some tenderer word than I should have said had I spoken. Yet after all he doesn't need tender words, but a calm, grateful demeanor towards him.

I wish that I could tell all the glories of my trip to New York. I went from Worcester over the Western R.R. to Albany and down the river. Some other day shall be consecrated to their fit celebration when the recollection may be pleasant and soothing among cares that disturb. Now I expect Charles every moment to go with me to see Cranch.

Ask Charles for all news about our "externe." Remember me most tenderly to my many friends at Brook Farm.

G.W.C.

IV

NEW YORK, November 20, '43.

Certainly, my dear Friend, the concert of the Philharmonic Society on Saturday evening was the finest concert ever given in the country. It is pleasant to see the homage paid to the art indirectly by the whole style of the concert. The room is small, holding 1000 people. Every gentleman goes in full-dress, and the ladies in half-dress. Various members of the society are appointed managers, distinguished by a ribboned button-hole, and they provide seats for the audience. No bills are issued before the night, so there are only rumors of what the particular will be, with a quiet consciousness that the general will be fine. So we arrived on Saturday evening and found the following bill: Symphony No. 7 in A minor (Beethoven); Cavatina from an opera of Nini's (Signora Castellan); Overture to "Zauberflote" (Mozart); Cavatina from Donizetti (Signora Castellan); Overture to "The Jubilee" (Weber). I think we have not had many such concerts.

The symphony was interpreted upon the bills as a musical presentment of the mythological story of Orpheus and Eurydicc. That did very well as a figure to represent it, but it was taken by the audience as a theme; and they all fixed their eyes upon the explanation, thereby to judge the symphony. It was grand, and full of his genius. It was another of those earnest, hopeless questionings of Destiny. The very first bars were full of this. It opens with a crash of the whole orchestra, determined and inexorable. Then follows a low deep wailing of the flutes and horns, full of tenderness, of aspiration, of subdued hope; and another crash of the whole, like a lightning flash, instantaneous and scathing the world, sweeps across the plaintiveness of the wind instruments and as instantly is gone. The sad inquiry continues, the determined Thunder of Fate drowns it constantly, and it is lost. Then it becomes more imperious and active, and the call upon the Invisible and the Unanswerable sounds on every side, rises to the top of the flutes, sinks to the lowest bases, appears now among the violins, now vanishes to the rest, until it has disciplined the whole, and the whole orchestra together thunders out the call. Then comes the adagio, where, as always, the mystery seems to be developing itself, where the earnest-seeking solemnly consecrates itself to success; and the minuet and finale conclude—the soaring, mocking, hellish laughter of fiends and demons of the air, at baffled curiosity and blighted hope. Is not that what these symphonies express? The pith of the matter is never reached. The very movement of the adagio, while it expresses a deep, solemn hope, seems to mourn with unutterable sorrow that the hope must be only consecrated and profound, never realized. The climax of the music and the sentiment seems to be always in the adagio.

What remained for such a man as he, separate from all others and alone with his life, but to question the Fate that impelled him, now in this tone and now in that? What remained for such unsatisfied, joyless strength but the stern, wild laughter of fiends that the question could not be answered—and the deep wail of Fate, which also is sung in his music, that such strength should have the ruggedness of endurance but not the gracefulness of Faith? How I wished you had been there!

Castellan's voice is full and rich; it was very sweet, and she sang with warmth but no passion. She needs some cultivation yet, for her shake is not good. Why did we not hear Mali-bran? who was also so great an actor that she would have been famous without a voice. I could not for a moment suffer my idea of her to be compared with Castellan. Malibran must have been so lovely from her sensibility and passion, so commanding from the majesty of her voice, that the art and not the woman must have found newer worshippers with every new audience.

I hope to hear Cinto Damoreau this week. You have heard "The Magic Flute" overture, I think, so fairy-like and graceful, full of tender shadows and heart-rejoicing sunlight and aerial shapes that fade and glint like stars. And the magnificent "Jubilee" concluded with "God save the King."

Evening. My aunt sent for me to hear Timm play the "Pathetique." His playing is wonderfully graceful, his touch more delicate than either of the R.'s. But he lacks genius; and time and practice will give Fred. R. all that Timm has. He is very enthusiastic. I spoke to him of "Egmont;" he seemed delighted, said he hadn't heard it for 12 years, but instantly sat down and played portions of it. He promised to play the adagio of the "Pathetique" on the organ next Sunday. We had but a few moments, for his time is all devoted to teaching, or I should have kept him till midnight. He is so simple and natural about the matter that it is very pleasant to be with him. If you mention anything to him, he instantly runs to the piano and plays something from it. Imagine him the other evening standing up straddling the stool, a roll of music under each arm, gloves in hand, and playing a movement from one of the symphonies!

I have been to see Cranch; found his wife at home, whom I have not seen since January. They are pleasantly situated, though a good way off. He has a room in the house where he paints. I saw two of his landscapes, views from nature, that were very striking. If I should find fault, I should say they were too warmly colored; and I suspect that is his error, if he has any, from what his wife told me he said of one of Durand's.

Mr. Furness preached finely for us on Sunday. Mr. Dewey does not charm me at all. Have heard W.H.C. once, as Charles will have told you. Have not yet seen him, for I have been out to see people hardly at all. Met Isaac at the Saturday concert. He looks fresh and well. Seems better every way than I ever knew him. Has he not found his place? I must see him again to discern the direction of Almira, to whom I have a letter written partly, and know not how to address it.

Are you singing Eastward ho! or do you remain? Remember that he who criticises Handel and Mozart, as the "Democratic" witnesseth, owes something to the art—shall I say his life? What literary work are you about, or have you still the same reluctance to assume the pen that you had? Let the consideration that the pen is so invaluable a minister to friendship tempt you to honor it more by use.

I have squeezed myself into such little space that I must defer an outline of my days till I write again. One moral inquiry for your wits, and I will withdraw into silence and the infinite. Does not one friend who indites many letters, unanswered, to another, thereby heap coals of fire upon somebody's head as effectually as if he fed the hungry? Scatter my love as broadly as you think it will bear, and reserve the carver's share for yourself.

G.W.C.

V

Saturday night, November 25, '43.

Why do I love music enough to be only a lover, and cannot offer it a life-devoted service? Yet the lover serves in his sort, and if I may not minister to it, it cannot fail to dignify and ennoble my life. I am just from hearing Ole Bull, who this evening made his first appearance in America. How shall I fitly speak to you of him, how can I now, while the new vision of beauty that he caused to sweep by still lingers? Yet itself shall inspire me. The presence of so noble a man allures to light whatever nobility lies in us.

He came forward to a house crowded in every part with the calm simplicity of Genius. There was no grimace, no graces, but a fine grace that adorned his presence and assured one that nothing could disappoint—that the simplicity of the man was the seal and crown of his genius. A fair-haired, robust, finely formed man, the full bloom of health shining on his face, he appeared as the master of the great instrument, as the successor, in point of time, of the world-famous Paganini. Yet was one confident that here was no imitator, but a pupil who had sat thoughtfully at the master's feet and felt that beneath the depth of his expression there was yet a lower depth, who knew himself consecrated by a will grander than his will to the service of an art so divine and so loved. In him there was that sure prophecy of latent power which surrounds genius, and assures us that the thing done is an echo only and shadow of the possible performance.

The playing followed this simple, majestic appearance. It was full of music, irregular, wild, yearning, trembling. His violin lay upon his arm tenderly as a living thing; and such rich, mellow, silver, shining tones followed his motion that one seemed to catch echoes of that eternal melody whereof music itself is but the shadow and presentment. The adagios reminded me of Beethoven, not as they were imitated, but as all the great ones, in their appearing, summon all the rest. The mechanical execution was faultless. I detected no thick note. It was smooth as the sea of summer, embosoming only deep cloud-shadows and the full sunlight, but no lesser thing. Then he came, and he withdrew; and my heart followed him.

Do not be alarmed if the critics call him cold, and speak of him disparagingly when others are mentioned. The noble and heroes serve divine powers, and at last win men. Men of talent and application love their instrument as it introduces the world to them; men of genius as it interprets to them and to the world the mystery of music. Genius men must reverence, and they are not apt to do it boisterously. Is not the influence of fine character, which is only genius for virtue, like the brooding of God over chaos? Which is chaos only to the blind, but teems with generous, melodious laws to the spiritually discerned. Creation is the opening of eyes, not the fabrication of objects. "Let there be light" is the creative fiat, spoken by every God-filled soul. Yet how sure is this power of Genius.

The world henceforth gives to Ole Bull the full and generous satisfaction of his needs. It cannot fail to esteem God's messengers when they come, if they be true and collected. Talent wins the same subsistence; earnest, unfailing, unshrinking endeavor wins it anywhere; but what does Talent and Trial do but imitate the action of the result of Genius! How sublime the revelations it makes in this art! While the rest have risen and culminated and paused, this seeks a zenith ever loftier and diviner. That deep nature, that central beauty, which all art strives to reveal, floats to us in these fine harmonies, to me more subtly and surely than elsewhere. But in this region, where my thought bears me, they are all united. This soft, silent face of Urania, which looks upon me sleeplessly and untired, is not its wonderful influence woven of that same essence that has ravished me tonight in the tones of the violin? In the coolness of thought, do not the masters of song, of painting, of sculpture meet in eternal congress, for in each is the appearance of equal skill? Raphael could have sung as Shakespeare, and Milton have hewn these massy forms as Angelo. Yet a divine economy rules these upper spiritual regions, as sure and steadfast as the order of the stars. Raphael must paint and Homer sing, yet the same soul gilds the picture and sweetens the song. So Venus and Mars shine yellow and red, but the same central fire is the light of each. In the capacity of doing all things well lies the willingness to serve one duty. The Jack of all trades is sure to be good at none, for who is good at all is Jack of one only. It seemed a bitter thing to me, formerly, that painters must only paint and sculptors carve; but I see now the wisdom. In one thing well done lies the secret of doing all.

Music, painting, are labels that designate the form of action; the soul of it lies below. The earnest merchant and the earnest anti-tradesman do join hands and work together. Not ends are demanded of them, but vital strength and soul. The world does not need that I name my work, but that the work be accomplished.

The midnight warns me to pause. The stillness accords with the intercourse of friendship, as the silence of space with the calm, speechless recognition of the planets. Thoughts of all friends circle round me like gentle breezes from the black wing of the night. Friends are equal and noble always to friends. Lovers only know the depths and the heights of lovers. Love prophesies only a surer, diviner friendship, crowned with the dignity and composure of God.

I shall re-enter the world through the white gate of dreams, yet more quiet and resolved that I have heard this man, more tender, more tolerant. He has touched strings of that harp whose vibrations never cease, but affirm the infiniteness of our being and its present habitation in Eternity. Your friend,

G.W.C.

Wednesday. Sunday P.M. I passed with Fred. Rakemann. He was very glad to see me, and I him. His fine face lighted with enthusiasm as we spoke of music, of Germany and its poets. He played magnificently, among others "Adelaide," translated for the piano by Liszt, a beautiful andante of Chopin, some of Henselt, etc., until it was quite twilight. Then I went away. He promised to come and see me, nor shall I fail to see him as often as I think he will endure, though his days are so busy with teaching that I do not hope to find him except on Sundays.

To-night Ole Bull plays the second time. I shall go to hear him. The Frenchmen are cliqued against him, for Vieuxtemps has arrived, and they mean to maintain his superiority. He has no announcement as yet. My letter I will not close until to-morrow, and say a final word about Ole Bull. Wednesday night. I have heard him again, and the impression he made on Saturday is only deepened. He played an adagio of Mozart's. It was simple and severely chaste. His beautiful simplicity is just the character to apprehend the delicate touches of the Master, which he drew to us, without any ornament or addition. It was as if Mozart had been in spirit in the instrument, and given us, with all the freshness of creation, the music that can never lose its bloom. Scharfenberg was in the box with us, Fred. Rakemann in the next box. I saw Castellan in a private box, and Isaac H. The evening was glorious. Had you only been there! Yet you will see him in Boston. Do not fail to write me how he impresses you—that is, particularly. I cannot misapprehend his power so much as not to feel that it will seem to you very grand. Observe his manner towards the orchestra, how Olympian, how supreme, yet with all the gentle grace and tenderness of power! Good-night. May you ever hear sweet music!

VI

N.Y., Friday, Dec. 15, 1843.

Truly the musical art culminates in our zenith this winter. It gives me other thoughts than of music only, unfolds to me something more of art, and I am charmed constantly to see how calmly we receive the great artists, after the noise of their entry, as the world quietly accepts the light of stars and swings unastonished on its wonderful way. Ole Bull and the rest are the scouts we have sent on before us, and they return to tell us of the Wonderful Land, and bring mementos and captives from the rich Eldorado of our hopes. That country to which nature points, of which all art is the flaming beacon, and which the weary voyager home-returning from fruitless search tells us is in ourselves—not the less far away for that.

Ole Bull's quiet, rapt manner is the full remembrance of that land which he has seen, and which he unfolds to us—is always the character and expression of the deepest insight. Just look at our bill for the week which ends to-night: Monday, Vieuxtemps; Tuesday, Artot and Damoreau; Wednesday, Ole Bull, Miss Sperty (the new pianist), and Madame Sphor Zahn; Thursday, Castellan, Antoquin Brough and Sphor Zahn in the "Stabat Mater," followed by the "Battle of Waterloo Symphony," by Beethoven; Friday, Vieuxtemps again! Monday evening I could not hear Vieuxtemps, but went on Tuesday to hear C. Damoreau and Artot. The former, with the smallest voice, sings pleasantly from her wonderful cultivation, of which, however, the technicalities, so to say, are too much obtruded. She shakes through all her songs, and this power, which would render her plain singing so sure and pleasing, demands attention for itself, not because it improves the tone of the singing. Artot is an elegant artist. He plays very finely, wonderfully; but the greater his execution the more marked appeared to me the difference between the highest cultivated talent and the supremacy of Genius. He played difficult music, he shook and warbled and imitated, some of his tones were very exquisite, but it was all lifeless, the passionless semblance of beauty. I was as if walking in a Gorgon's ice-palace, with magnificent, clear crystals, and noble, transparent pillars, and all the artifice of beauty and comfort, but evermore a deep chill from the lavish elegance. When he had done, I knew he had done his utmost, that he had exhausted hope. In him I found none of that depthless background which genius ever offers. He made sing in my ears the old text, "The things seen are temporal; the things unseen are eternal." His performance is a thing seen, not a dim beacon on the outskirts of an unexplored country, wherein we hear birds singing and rivers flowing, and see the great cloud-shadows fall upon the hills, where in the dim distance stately palaces are faintly traced, and the depthless woods fringe unknown seas. Artot's playing seemed to me like the full flower exhausting the plant; Ole Bull's like a star shining out of the infinite space.

Flowers wither, but the stars do not fade. We gather the blossoms with joy and hurry home; but the stars light us on our way and make our homes beautiful. Talent has something familiar and social in its impression and greeting; but Genius receives us with a calm dignity that transfigures courtesy and complaisance, and makes our relations healthy and grand. The whole tone of Artot's violin differs from Bull's. I felt they must not be compared, and so listened delightedly, but with a pale, ghastly joy. When I heard Ole, I could not sleep. It was like a fire shining out of heaven, sudden and bright. It kindled within me flames which seek heaven, disturbed the surface of my soul, evoking spirits out of that depth I did not know were there, and it was as if a thousand hopes, which were the substance and object of memory, rose out of their graves and held long vigil with me in those silent hours. How few of us can keep our balance when a regal soul dashes by. I presently recover myself, and serve with a milder and firmer persistence my own nature. The way is made clearer by these bright lights, universal nature shines fairer that there are so many single stars; but they must only be stars in my heaven and fires upon my hearth, nor burn out my heart by inserting themselves in my bosom.

The next night I went to hear Ole Bull again at the Tabernacle, which holds 3000 persons. The doors were open at 6, the concert began at 8. At quarter-past 6 the house was full, and at 7 was jammed, and hundreds went away. I arrived too late, but was so satisfied at the triumph that I went gladly home again, pleased to be one who could not hear.

Last evening I heard the "Stabat." Castellan has a magnificent voice. Does she not lack passion? She certainly needs cultivation. The symphony was merely a musical picture of the battle—a battle of Prague for the orchestra! It begins with a drum, a bugle-call follows; a march—and what march do you think? "Malbrook." Imagine me, a fervid worshipper of Beethoven, rushing in the crowd to hear a symphony wherein, with all orchestral force, the old song, L-a-w, Law, was banged into my ears. I sat in motionless dismay, while there followed another trumpeting and drumming and marching and imitations of musketry by some watchman's rattle. Then came some good passages, which confounded me only the more. Then, "God save the King," which announced the British victory. Anon followed some marches, with the occasional bang of the bass drum to "disfigure or present" the distant cannon; and then there was a pause, and the people began to get up. I was confounded, looked towards the orchestra, and they were moving away; and I discovered I had heard the whole—alas! the day. What it meant, what Beethoven meant by writing it, how he could be so purely external, how he could so use the orchestra, I cannot comprehend. Perhaps it was a curious relaxation with him, as artists imitate other instruments upon their own—perhaps it is a joke—but that it was a sad disappointment to me admits no perhaps. Since the limitations of life appear most forcibly to correspondents in limited sheets of paper, let me bear away abruptly from music. My German progresses finely. I have read Novalis's poetry, and am just now finishing the "Lehrjahre." I read three or four hours daily, and am pleased at my progress. Burrill and I have just finished Johnson's "Elements of Agricultural Chemistry" and Buel's book. I read to him daily from Bunyan. I am also busy with Beaumont and Fletcher, Paul's Epistles, and St. Augustine. You will easily imagine that my whole day is devoted to literature. After dinner, at 5 o'clock, I sally down Broadway for exercise; and in the evening, if I go to no concert, usually seek my room and books. To-night, for the first time, I am going out to a ball at a friend's, the girl of whom you have heard me speak as singing so well. Cranch I meet very rarely. Have been only once to see him. W.H. Channing do not yet know. At his meeting I see Isaac and C.P. Cranch, and Rufus Dawes, and Parke Godwin, William Chace, and a host of the unconverted and heretical. Him I do not yet know personally, nor Vathek. His enthusiastic manner, and the tranquil fervor of his character, charm me very much.

I find that I do not care to go after people. Perhaps I have been rather too much with them; at all events, I will go to see none for curiosity. Isaac is my good friend, and passed Sunday P.M. in my room. We spoke of the church and society, and all topics that do so excite the youthful mind. I must break short off to dress for my party. I shall speak to you again before you know that I have been.

Saturday. To-day I have finished the "Lehrjahre." It is very calm and wise. It is full of Goethe, and therefore leaves behind in its impression that almost indefinite want which his character leaves, a want apparently readily designated. Yet to say his intellect was disproportionately developed leaves us in doubt whether a pure natural growth of the moral nature would have harmonized with his peculiar manifestation of intellect. He is to me as a blind God, made wise by laborious experience, not perpetual sight. He is at least too large for the tip of a letter.

What do you read, or don't you read? Sunday. To-day I heard a fine sermon from W.H. Channing. There I met Isaac and C.P. Cranch. Walked home with the latter, who during the week had heard Ole Bull. I suppose he will write you of it. Prof. Adam, from Northampton, was there. At our church, a few Sundays since, I saw Mrs. Delano, late Kate Lyman, and her sister Susan. The latter was beautiful. She seemed like a pure, passionless saint. Had I been in a Catholic church I had imagined her to have been some holy being, incarnated by her deep sympathy with the worshippers. I hardly saw her, just enough to receive a poetic impression.

How little I have said! My life is very quiet, yet very full. Your letters are very grateful to me. One dares trust so much more to paper than to conversation. Friends living intimately learn of each other from tones and glances, not by conversation. Friends meet intellectually in words, lovers heartfully in words.

Macready has gone and I did not see him; he played nothing of Shakespeare.
Shall I direct to Brook Farm or Boston? More anon. Yrs ever,

G.W.C.

VII

NEW YORK, Friday, Dec. 22, '43.

A merry Christmas to you, and to all Christian souls. How brave goes the year to its setting! These calm, cold days impress me like the fine characters of history and the elder time, inspired with a generous wisdom, and prophesying what shall be the newest and best word of hope in our day. The season embraces and surpasses those old men, even the finest. To-day, as I walked, the magnificence of the closing year, so steadfast and sure, sparing no sunshine nor rain, passing quietly out to be renewed nevermore, quite reproved the solemn martyrdoms of men, upon which we hang our hopes.

Nature is great that she does not suffer us to define her influence upon ourselves. Like all greatness, she suggests to us beauty and grace, not as attributes of hers, but fair buds and flowers of the soul. Therefore, in the full presence of nature, the grandest deeds seem harmonious and the wisdom of Plato, and actions whose greatness is the centre, not the utmost compression, of our life are harmonious and symmetrical. To the Greeks and Jews the Gospel is blindness and a stumbling-block, but joy and peace to the elect.

Nothing is so stern and lofty a cordial to me as this severe inscrutability of nature. I must obey or die, and dying is no help to me, for the spirit that rules now rules evermore. How like a god sits she brooding over the world, announcing her laws by blows and knocks, by agonies and convulsions, by the mouths of wise men, affirming that as the sowing so also is the harvest. And there is no alleviation, no palliation. She heeds no prayers, no sighs; those who fall must raise themselves; the sick must of their own force recover or perish. When thus she has set us upon our legs everything works for us, and the sun and moon are great lamps for our enlightenment, and men and women leaves of a wondrous book. Then, imperceptibly to us, in these snows and blossoms and fruits annually all history is rewritten, and the honest man who knows nothing of Greece and Rome derives from the swelling trees and the bending sky the same subtle infusion of heroism and nobility that is the vitality of history. The vice of our mode of education is that we do not regard life from an eternal point. We want magnanimity and truth, not the names of those who have been magnanimous and true; and I see not why nature to-day does not offer to me all the grandeur of character that has illustrated any period. Men and nature and art all seek to say the same thing. Could we search deeply enough, I doubt not we should find all matter to be one substance; and could we appreciate the worth of every art and every landscape and man, they would be identical. As I am a better man, the more soluble is the great outspreading riddle of nature, and the more distinct and full the delicate grace of art. As an old, quaint divine said of fate and free-will, they are two converging lines which of necessity must somewhere unite, though our human vision does not see the point; so all mysteries are radii, and could we follow one implicitly, then we have found the centre of all. Therefore the best critic of art is the man whose life has been hid with God in nature; and therefore the triumph of art is complete when birds peck at the grapes.

I felt this yesterday while looking at Cole's paintings. Each picture of "The Voyage of Life" impressed me somewhat as the voyage itself does. Especially the cold, subdued tone of the last, which suggests infinity by the tone merely. Perhaps you have not seen them, and will suffer a brief account. The pictures are four. The first represents a boat of golden prow and sides wrought into the images of the hours, bearing an infant in a bed of roses, and issuing from a dim cave in a dark, indefinable mountain, and hasting down a flower-crowned stream. The second shows the babe grown to manhood, and, assuming himself the guidance, leaves the guardian spirit upon the bank, and upon a wider stream, piercing a wider prospect, sails away, allured by a dim cloud-castle which seems to hang over the river, yet from which the stream turns. The next shows him dashing along amid clouds and whirlpools and tempests, without rudder or compass, towards threatening rocks, yet serenely, with clasped hands, abiding the issue. In the last, grown to old age, he sails forth upon a fathomless, shoreless sea, leaving behind all rocks and tempests, while the guardian angel again at the helm points to regions of cloudless day. Though very beautiful of themselves, they suggested to me grander pictures of this grandest theme, and so interested me very much.

Truly there is nothing final; all is suggestive. When, entranced in summer woods, we demand that nature lend our homes somewhat of her beauty, she replies to us that beauty is so subtle, residing not in the green of this leaf nor in the curve of that branch, and not in the whole, but in the soul that contemplates it, that of herself she has none, and that we her lovers have invested her with such golden charms. The universal wish to realize is only typified by the grasping gain. Most men live to acknowledge in heart the superiority of young dreams over old possessions; and the world feels that in the unshrinking aspirations of the youth lies the hope of the world. That is the lightning that purifies the dense atmosphere, and, glancing for an instant, reveals the keenest light known to men. So the old year sings to me as it goes crowned with crystals and snow-drops to its end. Without shrinking, without sorrow, it folds its white garment around unwithered limbs, and submits gracefully to the past. Nature regards it with that calm face whereon no emotions are written, but a wise serenity forever sits. This year, too, is to many lonely hearts a redeemer; and no heavens will be darkly clouded when it is over, but still stars will shine unsurprised. Pale scholars in midnight vigils, golden gayety wreathing the hours with flowers and gems, unbending sorrow pressing heavy seals upon yielding wretchedness, it will steal surely from all these, and on the morrow be a colorless ghost in the distant past. Its constancy will secure our immortality. The grandeur of the year may be the strength of our character; and as the East receives it, we may enter the inscrutable future reverently and with folded hands.

Sunday. I am going to F. Rakemann's to pass the afternoon and give him this for you. He proposes to pass a week in Boston. I have heard Wallace during the week. He has great talent; but I had heard Ole Bull, and Wallace's violin-playing was only good. What think you of Vieuxtemps, who, I see, is in Boston? Shall you not send Knoop hither? So many things I would say! It is wiser to say nothing. Remember me to my West Roxbury friends, Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Shaw and their spouses.

Ever your friend,

G.W.C.

VIII

N.Y., Thursday, January 18, '44.

I have not yet answered your letter by W.H. Channing in words, though I have said a great deal to you that you have not heard. What an interrupter of conversation is this absence! Neither have I told you of my Vieuxtemps experience, nor shall I close my letter without speaking of Knoop, who by the gods' favor concerts to-night. Your letter by W.H. Channing crystallized a resolution which has been quiet in me for the winter, so still that it needed only a powerful jerk to induce crystallization at once. So the day or two succeeding its receipt found me busy in expressing some thoughts about reform and association which I meant for The Present. But the necessity for expression seems to have been satisfied without publication. The essay remains as quietly in my portfolio as did the idea in my mind. So it was with an article on Ole Bull that I wrote some weeks since for the Tribune. The need seems to give the thought expression and form, whether it then lay still or fly abroad upon paper wings. Besides, printing does give a dignity to thoughts that the author should feel that they deserve, a permanency too. The newspaper that escapes the turmoil and tear and dust of years bears the same aspect as all its fellows of the same date that were ushered into the morning parlors with it; and so some commentator on Ole Bull and Vieuxtemps or what not shall run down to the lower generations more noiselessly, yet as certainly, as Shakespeare and Plato. There is a singular pleasure, too, in publishing what nobody thinks is yours. It is addressing the world not as Geo. Curtis, but as some distinguished messenger, the mystery of whom is a charm, if nothing more. Yet unfortunate me! I could never maintain the secret long. Is that from pride or because you cannot endure to see men go wrong, if you can help them? When Charles Dana came running to me with what he thought Emerson's poem, how could I help saying, "It is mine." In that case, at least, it was sympathy for Emerson's reputation that prompted the speech.

There is something that pleases me much in the united works of young authors. Sands and who? in our country published "Yamoyden" and some other poems together. C. Lamb and Lloyd (was not Coleridge one?) published some small verses in company. There is a sort of meanness in it, too, as if they should say, "Here we come, two scribblers, not worthy singly to attract your attention, but together making out something worth your money." After all, a single failure may be better than a double respectability. Imagine the united literary works of Dwight and Curtis rotting in an odd drawer of Ticknor's or James Munroe's; could we ever look each other in the face again? What a still, perpetual suspicion there would be that the one swamped the other.

Do you not mean some day to gather your musical essays together, like a whorl of leaves, and suffer them to expand into a book, though not with the cream—colored calyx that Ticknor affects, I beg. Nay, might you not make some arrangements with Greeley to publish them here, in a cheap way, if you would make money, for those who valued them would of course obtain more durable copies. If not, and you would think dignity compromitted, some of the regular publishers might be diplomatized with. They would make an unique work. You know we have nothing similar in American literature, no book of artistic criticism, have we? Why will you not think of it, if you have not done so? And what so poor a man as Hamlet is may do, you shall command. How recreant am I to this noble art, that listen only and celebrate with feeble voice its charms.

Tuesday evening, at a small musical party, I heard Euphrasia Borghese sing, whom you may have heard, and who is to be Prima Donna at the new Opera-house, which opens on the 25th or 2eth of the present month. They begin with the "Puritani." It will be altogether devoted to Italian music, I suppose, from the tendency of the New York taste and the collection of musicians.

I heard Vieuxtemps both times he played after his return. I was very much delighted; he was so modest and composed and refined. His playing is as wonderful as Ole Bull's, but not so fascinating; his compositions more contemplative and regular, not so wild and throbbing with the irregular pulsations of unsatisfied genius, as are Ole Bull's. I felt no disposition to compare, feeling how different they were. I thanked God when I came away that no one man has sole power, but that many may serve in this boundless temple, each in its various offices. Yet in my memory is Ole Bull the only man who has stirred me up as genius always must. When I heard Vieuxtemps, I knew what to anticipate; the grandeur of the instrumental and the human possibility upon it had been revealed to me, therefore he could not surprise me, and for that revelation I am indebted to Ole Bull. Vieuxtemps prolonged the echo of the deep tone that had been sounded into my spiritual ear. I must say that the first was grandest to me, and remains so.

I passed Sunday P.M. with Rakemann; he played all the time, told me of you and Boston and his love for it, asked me if I had heard more of the concerts you mentioned. Timm on Monday played me the "Invitation to the W." very beautifully, beside some Mazurkas of Chopin, also the "Egmont" overture grandly. Saturday evening the second Philharmonic, the "Jupiter Symphony," and some Septuats, etc. It was not a good concert. Castellan sang for the last time. Not a note of Beethoven! Yesterday afternoon and evening I passed with Josephine Maman, who plays and sings finely. We had some of Beethoven, the "Pathetique," etc., and some songs of Schubert, which I had never heard. A singular girl, but delightful to me. My musical appetite has been well appeased; can it ever be satisfied? To-night, Knoop, for whom I have left little space, especially as I find my paper is torn.

Evening. Have just come from Knoop's. It was beautiful to see the worthy mate of such men as Ole Bull and Vieuxtemps. From what you and others had told me, I knew I should like him. So calm and grand. Yet when I left the room a mournful feeling came over me, that so he must leave and be heard no more. Beethoven is not done when he is dead, nor Raphael nor Shakespeare; but for him whose glory is action, which leaves no trace but upon the heart, what shall remain? The notes he may transcribe for others, but the charm of the musical artist lies not therein; it is a personal effluence; how shall we measure it? I felt to-night that he played not for an audience, but to the private heart. He was singing to me his deep searching thought, his star-lost aspiration. Indeed, he is worthy to close the brilliant winter; a calm planet fading from us, but with a mild, steady lustre that condemns sorrow. How invisible, insensibly proceeds his fame! My character must needs be strengthened and mellowed by such men, and so my influence upon others is moulded, till perhaps it meets him again. Surrounded by these intimate relations, we cannot touch one but all thrill. In such a subtle shrine is the influence of genius fitly embalmed and there worshipped. How grand an era in my life, when through a winter I may justly use the word genius many times!

Good-night!

G.W.C.