“Dr. Brownson was then in the very prime of manhood.  He was a handsome man, tall, stately, and of grave manners.  His face was clean-shaved.  The first likeness of him that I remember appeared in the Democratic Review. It made him look like Proudhon, the French Socialist.  This was all the more singular because at that time he was really the American Proudhon, though he never went so far as ’La propriete, c’est le vol.’ As he appeared on the platform and received our greeting he was indeed a majestic man, displaying in his demeanor the power of a mind altogether above the ordinary.  But he was essentially a philosopher, and that means that he could never be what is called popular.  He was an interesting speaker, but he never sought popularity.  He never seemed to care much about the reception his words received, but he exhibited anxiety to get his thoughts rightly expressed and to leave no doubt about what his convictions were.  Yet among a limited class of minds he always awakened real enthusiasm—­among minds, that is, of a philosophical tendency.  He never used manuscript or notes; he was familiar with his topic, and his thoughts flowed out spontaneously in good, pure, strong, forcible English.  He could control any reasonable mind, for he was a man of great thoughts and never without some grand truth to impart.  But to stir the emotions was not in his power, though he sometimes attempted it; he never succeeded in being really pathetic.

“It must be remembered that although Dr. Brownson was technically classed among the reverends, he was not commonly so called.  It may be said that he was still reckoned among the Unitarian ministry, owing mostly to his connection with Dr. Channing, of Boston, who took a great interest in the Workingman’s party.  But I do not think he was advertised by us as reverend or publicly spoken of as a clergyman.  He may have been yet hanging on the skirts of the Unitarian movement.  But his career had become political, and his errand to New York was political.  He had given up preaching for some years, and embarked on the stormy waves of social politics, and had by his writings become an expositor of various theories of social reform, chiefly those of French origin.  So that the dominant note of his lectures was not by any means religious, but political.  He was at that time considered as identified with the Workingman’s party, and came to New York to speak as one of our leaders.  The general trend of his lectures was the philosophy of history as it bears on questions of social reform.  At bottom his theories were Saint-Simonism, the object being the amelioration of the condition of the most numerous classes of society in the speediest manner. This was the essence to our kind of Democracy. And Dr. Brownson undertook in these lectures to bring to bear in favor of our purpose the life-lessons of the providential men of human history.  Of course, the life and teachings of our Saviour Jesus Christ were brought into use, and the upshot of the lecturer’s thesis was that Christ was the big Democrat and the Gospel was the true Democratic platform!