The Transcendentalists were sure of only one thing,--that society as
constituted was all wrong. In this their main belief they were right.
They were men and women whose fundamental need was activity, contact
with real life, and the opportunity for social expansion; and they
keenly felt the chill and fictitious character of the reigning
conventionalities. The rigidity of behavior which at this time
characterized the Bostonians seemed sometimes ludicrous and sometimes
disagreeable to the foreign visitor. There was great gravity, together
with a certain pomp and dumbness, and these things were supposed to be
natural to the inhabitants and to give them joy. People are apt to
forget that such masks are never worn with ease. They result from the
application of an inflexible will, and always inflict discomfort. The
Transcendentalists found themselves all but stifled in a society as
artificial in its decorum as the court of France during the last years
of Louis XIV.

Emerson was in no way responsible for the movement, although he got the
credit of having evoked it by his teaching. He was elder brother to it,
and was generated by its parental forces; but even if Emerson had never
lived, the Transcendentalists would have appeared. He was their victim
rather than their cause. He was always tolerant of them and sometimes
amused at them, and disposed to treat them lightly. It is impossible to
analyze their case with more astuteness than he did in an editorial
letter in The Dial. The letter is cold, but is a masterpiece of good
sense. He had, he says, received fifteen letters on the Prospects of
Culture. "Excellent reasons have been shown us why the writers,
obviously persons of sincerity and elegance, should be dissatisfied with
the life they lead, and with their company.... They want a friend to
whom they can speak and from whom they may hear now and then a