Bronson Alcott seems to have been by nature what the French call a poseur; or, as one of his own not unkindly intimates has described him, “an innocent charlatan.”  Although not altogether empty, he was vain; full of talk which had what was most often a false air of profundity; unpractical and incapable in the ordinary affairs of life to a degree not adequately compensated for by such a grasp as he was able to get on the realities that underlie them; and with an imposing aspect which corresponded wonderfully well with his interior traits.  That, in his prime, his persuasive accents and bland self-confidence, backed by the admiration felt and expressed for him by men such as Emerson, and some of the community at Brook Farm, should have induced an open-minded youth like Isaac Hecker to take him for a time at his own valuation, is not strange.  The truth is, that it was one of Father Hecker’s life-long traits to prove all things, that he might find the good and hold fast to it.  There was an element of justice in his make-up which enabled him to suspend judgment upon any institution or person, however little they seemed to deserve such consideration, until he was in a condition to decide from his own investigations.  We shall see, later on, how he tried all the principal forms of Protestantism before deciding upon Catholicity, strong as his tendency toward the Church had become.  We have never known any other man who, without exhibiting obstinacy, could so steadfastly reserve his judgment on another’s statement, especially if it were in the nature of a condemnation.

When Isaac Hecker first made his acquaintance, Mr. Alcott had but recently returned from England, whither he had gone on the invitation of James P. Greaves, a friend and fellow-laborer of the great Swiss educator, Pestalozzi.  Mr. Alcott had gained a certain vogue at home as a lecturer, and also as the conductor of a singular school for young children.  Among its many peculiarities was that of carrying “moral suasion” to such lengths, as a solitary means of discipline, that the master occasionally publicly submitted to the castigation earned by a refractory urchin, probably by way of reaching the latter’s moral sense through shame or pity.  This was, doubtless, rather interesting to the pupils, whether or not it was corrective.  Mr. Alcott’s peculiarities did not stop here, however, and Boston parents, when he began to publish the Colloquies on the Gospels which he held with their children, concluded, on the evidence thus furnished, that his thought was too “advanced” to make it prudent to trust them longer to his care.  Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, since so well known as an expositor of the Kindergarten system, had been his assistant.  She wrote a Record of Mr. Alcott’s School which attracted the attention of a small band of educational enthusiasts in England.  They gave the name of “Alcott House” to a school of their own at Ham, near London, and hoped for great things from the personal advice and presence of the “Concord Plato.”  He was petted and feted among them pretty nearly to the top of his bent; but his visit would have proved a more unalloyed success if the hard Scotch sense of Carlyle, to whom Emerson had recommended him, had not so quickly dubbed his vaunted depths deceptive shallows.