cruel, and oppressive, and being kind-hearted and sympathetic they hate
it; but they might as well hate the earth itself because there are
deserts and swamps and malarious places on its surface. It is, no doubt,
the special business of man to remodel the earth as much as possible; to
drain its swamps, and level its forests; but in spite of that its rivers
and mountains will always remain the same, and separate ourselves from
it we cannot.

The greater number of the Brook Farm community were transcendentalists,
and we have no desire to depreciate the work which the transcendentalists
accomplished. They were the needful men and women of their time; the
importers of fresh thought and a more elevated mental activity. The most
critical and conservative of American reviews has said of them:

"They put aside worldly ambition and desire as truly as ever did
medieval monk or oriental ascetic, and thus gave what was essential in
their surroundings, a practical proof of their sincerity. The result was
almost startling. Their Yankee audience first ridiculed them as
dreamers; but when they found that what the transcendentalists actually
recommended to them was dreaming, their ridicule changed to wonder, and
finally to a sort of awe-struck admiration, something like that we
imagine a Roman to have felt on learning that a Christian was capable of
giving up his fish-ponds and nightingales' tongues, and his afternoons
at the amphitheatre, for the sake of what he called 'Truth' proclaimed
by an obscure few."

This is not saying too much, but if anything too little. Since the time
of the early Christians there was never a more pure-minded and
loyal-hearted congregation than that which was gathered at Brook Farm.
They were really the best society of the day. George Ripley himself, one