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theories, by the Romantic spirit, by the new zeal for science and pseudo-science, and by the unrest of a fermenting age.
Our present concern is with the impact of this cosmopolitan current upon the mind and character of a few New England writers.
Channing and Theodore Parker, Margaret Fuller and Alcott, Thoreau and Emerson, are all representative of the best thought and the noblest ethical impulses of their generation.
Let us choose first the greatest name: a sunward-gazing spirit, and, it may be, one of the very Sun-Gods.
The pilgrim to Concord who stops for a moment in the village library to study French's statue of Emerson will notice the asymmetrical face.
On one side it is the face of a keen Yankee farmer, but seen from the other side it is the countenance of a seer, a world's man. This contrast between the parochial Emerson and the greater Emerson interprets many a puzzle in his career.
Half a mile beyond the village green to the north, close to the “rude bridge” of the famous Concord fight in 1775, is the Old Manse, once tenanted and described by Hawthorne.
It was built by Emerson's grandfather, a patriot chaplain in the Revolution, who died of camp-fever at Ticonderoga.
His
New Haven. Yale University. Press. 1921.
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