then, your ideal.”  Hence, among the strong, withdrawal to private study and contemplation, that they might be “alone with the Alone;” solemn yet glad devotedness to the Divine leadings in the inmost will; calm concentration of thought to wait for and receive wisdom; dignified independence, stern yet sweet, of fashion and public opinion; honest originality of speech and conduct, exempt alike from apology or dictation, from servility or scorn.  Hence, too, among the weak, whimsies, affectation, rude disregard of proprieties, slothful neglect of common duties, surrender to the claims of natural appetite, self-indulgence, self-absorption, and self-idolatry.

By their very posture of mind, as seekers of the new, the Transcendentalists were critics and “come-outers” from the old.  Neither the church, the state, the college, society, nor even reform associations, had a hold upon their hearts.  The past might be well enough for those who, without make-belief, could yet put faith in common dogmas and usages; but for them the matin-bells of a new day were chiming, and the herald-trump of freedom was heard upon the mountains.  Hence, leaving ecclesiastical organizations, political parties, and familiar circles, which to them were brown with drought, they sought in covert nooks of friendship for running waters, and fruit from the tree of life.  The journal, the letter, became of greater worth than the printed page; for they felt that systematic results were not yet to be looked for, and that in sallies of conjecture, glimpses and flights of ecstasy, the “Newness” lifted her veil to her votaries.  Thus, by mere attraction of affinity, grew together the brotherhood of the “Like-minded,” as they were pleasantly nicknamed by outsiders, and by themselves, on the ground that no two were of the same opinion.  The only password of membership to this association, which had no compact, records, or officers, was a hopeful and liberal spirit; and its chance conventions were determined merely by the desire of the caller for a “talk,” or by the arrival of some guest from a distance with a budget of presumptive novelties.  Its “symposium” was a pic-nic, whereto each brought of his gains, as he felt prompted, a bunch of wild grapes from the woods, or bread-corn from his threshing-floor.  The tone of the assemblies was cordial welcome for every one’s peculiarity; and scholars, farmers, mechanics, merchants, married women, and maidens, met there on a level of courteous respect.  The only guest not tolerated was intolerance; though strict justice might add, that these “Illuminati” were as unconscious of their special cant as smokers are of the perfume of their weed, and that a professed declaration of universal independence turned out in practice to be rather oligarchic.

Of the class of persons most frequently found at these meetings Margaret has left the following sketch:—­