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 to live on the
internal revenues of the spirit. Some had an assurance of instant
millennium so soon as hooks and eyes should be substituted for
buttons. Communities were established where everything was to be
common but common sense.... Conventions were held for every hitherto
inconceivable purpose."

Whatever may be said of the Transcendentalists, it must not be forgotten
that they represented an elevation of feeling, which through them
qualified the next generation, and can be traced in the life of New
England to-day. The strong intrinsic character lodged in these recusants
was later made manifest; for many of them became the best citizens of
the commonwealth,--statesmen, merchants, soldiers, men and women of
affairs. They retained their idealism while becoming practical men.
There is hardly an example of what we should have thought would be
common in their later lives, namely, a reaction from so much ideal
effort, and a plunge into cynicism and malice, scoundrelism and the
flesh-pots. In their early life they resembled the Abolitionists in
their devotion to an idea; but with the Transcendentalists self-culture
and the aesthetic and sentimental education took the place of more
public aims. They seem also to have been persons of greater social
refinement than the Abolitionists.