It must be confessed that it is not a very captivating picture which Emerson draws of some of his transcendental friends.  Their faults were naturally still more obvious to those outside of their charmed circle, and some prejudice, very possibly, mingled with their critical judgments.  On the other hand we have the evidence of a visitor who knew a good deal of the world as to the impression they produced upon him:—­

“There has sprung up in Boston,” says Dickens, in his “American Notes,” “a sect of philosophers known as Transcendentalists.  On inquiring what this appellation might be supposed to signify, I was given to understand that whatever was unintelligible would be certainly Transcendental.  Not deriving much comfort from this elucidation, I pursued the inquiry still further, and found that the Transcendentalists are followers of my friend Mr. Carlyle, or, I should rather say, of a follower of his, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson.  This gentleman has written a volume of Essays, in which, among much that is dreamy and fanciful (if he will pardon me for saying so), there is much more that is true and manly, honest and bold.  Transcendentalism has its occasional vagaries (what school has not?), but it has good healthful qualities in spite of them; not least among the number a hearty disgust of Cant, and an aptitude to detect her in all the million varieties of her everlasting wardrobe.  And therefore, if I were a Bostonian, I think I would be a Transcendentalist.”

In December, 1841, Emerson delivered a Lecture entitled “The Conservative.”  It was a time of great excitement among the members of that circle of which he was the spiritual leader.  Never did Emerson show the perfect sanity which characterized his practical judgment more beautifully than in this Lecture and in his whole course with reference to the intellectual agitation of the period.  He is as fair to the conservative as to the reformer.  He sees the fanaticism of the one as well as that of the other.  “Conservatism tends to universal seeming and treachery; believes in a negative fate; believes that men’s tempers govern them; that for me it avails not to trust in principles, they will fail me, I must bend a little; it distrusts Nature; it thinks there is a general law without a particular application,—­law for all that does not include any one.  Reform in its antagonism inclines to asinine resistance, to kick with hoofs; it runs to egotism and bloated self-conceit; it runs to a bodiless pretension, to unnatural refining and elevation, which ends in hypocrisy and sensual reaction.  And so, whilst we do not go beyond general statements, it may be safely affirmed of these two metaphysical antagonists that each is a good half, but an impossible whole.”

He has his beliefs, and, if you will, his prejudices, but he loves fair play, and though he sides with the party of the future, he will not be unjust to the present or the past.