We have recently had our
attention called to the last remnants of that village life so reverently
gathered up by Miss Wilkins, and of which Miss Emily Dickinson was the
last authentic voice. The spirit of this age has examined with an almost
pathological interest this rescued society. We must go to it if we would
understand Emerson, who is the blossoming of its culture. We must study
it if we would arrive at any intelligent and general view of that
miscellaneous crop of individuals who have been called the
Transcendentalists.
Between 1830 and 1840 there were already signs in New England that the
nutritive and reproductive forces of society were not quite wholesome,
not exactly well adjusted. Self-repression was the religion which had
been inherited. "Distrust Nature" was the motto written upon the front
of the temple. What would have happened to that society if left to
itself for another hundred years no man can guess. It was rescued by the
two great regenerators of mankind, new land and war. The dispersion
came, as Emerson said of the barbarian conquests of Rome, not a day too
soon.
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