’I feel that my impatient nature needs the dark days.  I would learn the art of limitation, without compromise, and act out my faith with a delicate fidelity.  When loneliness becomes too oppressive, I feel Him drawing me nearer, to be soothed by the smile of an All-Intelligent Love.  He will not permit the freedom essential to growth to be checked.  If I can give myself up to Him, I shall not be too proud, too impetuous, neither too timid, and fearful of a wound or cloud.’

III.

Transcendentalism.

* * * * *

The summer of 1839 saw the full dawn of the Transcendental movement in New England.  The rise of this enthusiasm was as mysterious as that of any form of revival; and only they who were of the faith could comprehend how bright was this morning-time of a new hope.  Transcendentalism was an assertion of the inalienable integrity of man, of the immanence of Divinity in instinct.  In part, it was a reaction against Puritan Orthodoxy; in part, an effect of renewed study of the ancients, of Oriental Pantheists, of Plato and the Alexandrians, of Plutarch’s Morals, Seneca and Epictetus; in part, the natural product of the culture of the place and time.  On the somewhat stunted stock of Unitarianism,—­whose characteristic dogma was trust in individual reason as correlative to Supreme Wisdom,—­had been grafted German Idealism, as taught by masters of most various schools,—­by Kant and Jacobi, Fichte and Novalis, Schelling and Hegel, Schleiermacher and De Wette, by Madame de Stael, Cousin, Coleridge, and Carlyle; and the result was a vague yet exalting conception of the godlike nature of the human spirit.  Transcendentalism, as viewed by its disciples, was a pilgrimage from the idolatrous world of creeds and rituals to the temple of the Living God in the soul.  It was a putting to silence of tradition and formulas, that the Sacred Oracle might be heard through intuitions of the single-eyed and pure-hearted.  Amidst materialists, zealots, and sceptics, the Transcendentalist believed in perpetual inspiration, the miraculous power of will, and a birthright to universal good.  He sought to hold communion face to face with the unnameable Spirit of his spirit, and gave himself up to the embrace of nature’s beautiful joy, as a babe seeks the breast of a mother.  To him the curse seemed past; and love was without fear.  “All mine is thine” sounded forth to him in ceaseless benediction, from flowers and stars, through the poetry, art, heroism of all ages, in the aspirations of his own genius, and the budding promise of the time.  His work was to be faithful, as all saints, sages, and lovers of man had been, to Truth, as the very Word of God.  His maxims were,—­“Trust, dare and be; infinite good is ready for your asking; seek and find.  All that your fellows can claim or need is that you should become, in fact, your highest self; fulfil,