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. It happened that the country at large stood in need of New England
as much as New England stood in need of the country. This congested
virtue, in order to be saved, must be scattered. This ferment, in order
to be kept wholesome, must be used as leaven to leaven the whole lump.
"As you know," says Emerson in his Eulogy on Boston, "New England
supplies annually a large detachment of preachers and schoolmasters and
private tutors to the interior of the South and West.... We are willing
to see our sons emigrate, as to see our hives swarm. That is what they
were made to do, and what the land wants and invites."

For purposes of yeast, there was never such leaven as the Puritan stock.
How little the natural force of the race had really abated became
apparent when it was placed under healthy conditions, given land to
till, foes to fight, the chance to renew its youth like the eagle. But
during this period the relief had not yet come. The terrible pressure of
Puritanism and conservatism in New England was causing a revolt not only
of the Abolitionists, but of another class of people of a type not so
virile as they. The times have been smartly described by Lowell in his
essay on Thoreau:--

"Every possible form of intellectual and physical dyspepsia brought
forth its gospel. Bran had its prophets.... Everybody had a Mission
(with a capital M) to attend to everybody else's business. No brain
but had its private maggot, which must have found pitiably short
commons sometimes. Not a few impecunious zealots abjured the use of
money (unless earned by other people), professing t