It is impossible to mention them all, and to single out a few from a
multitude must not be done. I should like to commemorate those who came
nearest to me by their earnest work and faithful allegiance, but these
cannot be spoken of, and I prefer to enumerate some of those with whom I
was less intimate.
Alice and Ph[oe]be Cary came to New York in 1852, and were prominent
when I was there; their famous Sunday evenings, which were frequented by
the brightest minds and were sought by a large class of people, being
then well established. These were altogether informal and gave but
little satisfaction to the merely fashionable folks who now and then
attended them. The sisters were in striking contrast. Ph[oe]be, the
younger, was a jocund, hearty, vivacious, witty, merry young woman,
short and round; her older sister, Alice, was taller and more slender,
with large, dark eyes; she was meditative, thoughtful, pensive, and
rather grave in temperament; but the two were most heartily in sympathy
in every opinion and in all their literary and social aims. Horace
Greeley, one of their earliest and warmest friends, was a frequent
visitor at their house. There I met Robert Dale Owen, Oliver Johnson,
Dr. E. H. Chapin, Rev. Charles F. Deems, Justin McCarthy and his wife,
Mrs. Mary E. Dodge, Madame Le Vert, and several others.
Among my friends was President Barnard, of Columbia College, the only
man I ever knew whose long ear-trumpet was never an annoyance; Ogden N.
Rood, the Professor of Physics at Columbia, a man of real genius, whose
studies in light and color were a great assistance to artists, himself
an artist of no mean order and an ardent student of photography; Charles
Joy, Professor of Chemistry, a most active-minded man, who received
honors at Goettingen and at Paris, and contributed largely to the
scientific journals; a man greatly interested in the union of charitable
societies in New York; Robert Carter, then a co-worker in the making of
Appleton's Cyclopedia; Bayard Taylor, novelist, poet, translator of
Goethe, traveller; Richard Grant White, the Shakesperian scholar;
Charles L. Brace, the philanthropist; E. L. Youmans a man fairly
tingling with ideas, and peculiarly gifted in making popular, as a
lecturer, the most abstruse scientific discoveries. The breadth of my
range of acquaintances is illustrated by such men as Roswell D.
Hitchcock, of Union Seminary, the learned student, the impressive
speaker; Isaac T. Hecker, the founder of the Congregation of the
Paulists; Dr. Washburn, the model churchman of "Calvary"; Henry M.
Field, editor of the _Evangelist_, a most warm-hearted man, so large in
his sympathies that he could say to Robert G. Ingersoll, "I am glad that
I know you, even though some of my brethren look upon you as a monster
because of your unbelief," and welcomed as an example of "constructive
thought," Dr. Charles A. Briggs' Inaugural Address as Professor of
Biblical Theology at Union College; John G. Holland (Timothy Titcomb), a
copious author. The _Tribune_ company was most distinguished: There was,
first of all, the founder, Horace Greeley, a unique personality, simple,
unaffected, earnest, an immense believer in American institutions, a
stanch friend of the working-man, and a brave lover of impartial
justice; Whitelaw Reid, who was, according to George Ripley, the ablest
newspaper manager he ever saw; and Mrs. Lucia Calhoun (afterward Mrs.
Runkle), one of the most brilliant contributors to the _Tribune_. Of
George Ripley I may speak more at length, as he was my parishioner and
close friend. In my biography of him, written for the "American Men of
Letters" series, I spoke of him as a "remarkable" man. One of my critics
found fault with the appellation, and said it was not justified by
anything in the book, as perhaps it was not, though intellectual vigor,
range, and taste like his must be called "remarkable"; such industry is
"remarkable"; no common man could have instituted "Brook Farm" and
administered it for six or seven years; could have maintained its
dignity through ridicule, misunderstanding, and fanaticism; could have
cleared off its liabilities; could have turned his face away from it on
its failure, with such patience, or in his later age, could have alluded
to it so sweetly; no ordinary person could have adopted a new and
despised career so bravely as he did. No journalist has raised
literature to so high a distinction, or derived such large rewards for
that mental labor. He deserves to be called "remarkable," who can do all
this or but a part of it, and, all the time, preserve the sunny serenity
of his disposition. If the biography failed to present these traits it
was, indeed, unsuccessful. Yes, Mr. Ripley was an extraordinary man. It
is seldom that one carries such qualities to such a degree of
perfection, and it may be worth while to look more closely at his
character.
George Ripley had a passion for literary excellence. From his boyhood
he possessed a singularly bright intelligence, a clear appreciation of
the rational aspect of questions. He was not an ardent, passionate,
enthusiastic man, of warm convictions, vehement emotions, burning ideas.
His feelings, though amiable and correct, were of an intellectual cast.
They sprang from a naturally affectionate heart, rather than from a
deeply stirred conscience, or an enchanted soul. If he had been less
healthy, eupeptic, he would scarcely have been so gay; a vehement
reformer he was not; a leader of men he could not be. He had not the
stuff in him for either. The element of giving was not strong in him. He
was not an originator in the sphere of thought; not a discoverer of
theories or facts; not an innovator on established customs. But mentally
he was so quick, eager, receptive, that he seemed a pioneer, an
enthusiast, a saint; his quickness passing for insight, his eagerness
for a passionate love of progress, his receptivity for charitableness.
He appeared to be more of an image-breaker than he really was. In fact,
the propensity to iconoclasm was not part of his constitution. But his
mind was wonderfully alert. He had his antipathies, and they were strong
ones, his likes and dislikes, his tastes and distastes, but these were
instinctive rather than the expression of rational principle or a
deliberate conclusion of his judgment. In one instance that I know of,
he threw off a man with whom he had been associated for many years, and
in connection with whom he labored daily for a time, a very accomplished
and agreeable person to whom he was indebted for some services, because
he thought that the individual in question had been unjust to some of
his friends; but that this was not entirely a matter of conscience would
seem to be indicated by the fact that he sent a message of affection to
this man, as he neared the grave. In the main, so far as he was under
control, intellectual considerations determined his course. He was
prevailingly under the influence of mind; he acted in view, a large
view, of all the circumstances; as one who takes in the whole situation,
and has himself under command. This is not said in the least tone of
disparagement, but entirely in his praise, for the supremacy of reason
is more steady, even, reliable than the supremacy of feeling however
exalted in its mood. He that is under the control of mind is at all
times _under control_, which cannot be said of one who is borne along by
the sway of even devout emotion. I have in memory cases where passion
might have betrayed Mr. Ripley into conduct he would have regretted, had
it not been for the restraining power of purely rational considerations.
His early religious training may have produced some effect on his
character, but this is more likely to have operated at first than at the
later stages of his career. The love of old hymns, the habit of
attending sacred services, the fondness for Watts' poems, a copy of
whose holy songs always lay on his table, showed a lingering attachment
to this kind of sentiment up to the end of his life; but it existed in
an attenuated form, and at no period after his youth exerted much sway
over him. His predominating bent was intellectual, and this caused a
certain delicacy, fastidiousness, aloofness, which kept him in the
atmosphere of love as well as of light.
From his youth this was his leading characteristic. As a boy he was
ambitious of making a dictionary, a sign of his carefulness in the use
of words, and an omen of the value he was to set on definitions and on
exactness in the employment of language. At school he was an excellent
scholar, at college he stood second, but was graduated first owing to
the "suspension" of a brilliant classmate who might have excelled him
but for the mishap of a college "riot" in which he took part. In the
languages and in literature he was unusually proficient, while in
mathematics,--that most abstract, severe, precise of pursuits,--his
success was distinguished. In later-life his devotion to philosophy
marked the man of speculative tastes. His early letters to his father,
mother, sister, reveal a consciousness of his own peculiarities. Here
are extracts:
The course of studies adopted here [Cambridge], in the opinion of
competent judges, is singularly calculated to form scholars, and
moreover, correct and accurate scholars; to inure the mind to
profound thought and habits of investigation and reasoning.
The prospect of devoting my days to the acquisition and
communication of knowledge is bright and cheering. This employment
I would not exchange for the most elevated situation of wealth or
power. One of the happiest steps, I think, that I have ever taken
was the commencement of a course of study, and it is my wish and
effort that my future progress may give substantial evidence of it.
I know that my peculiar habits of mind, imperfect as they are,
strongly impel me to the path of active intellectual effort; and if
I am to be at any time of any use to society, or a satisfaction to
myself or my friends, it will be in the way of some retired
literary situation, where a fondness for study and a knowledge of
books will be more requisite than the busy, calculating mind of a
man in the business part of the community. I do not mean by this
that any profession is desired but the one to which I have been
long looking. My wish is only to enter that profession with all the
enlargement of mind and extent of information which the best
institutions can afford.
These quotations are enough to show what was the prevailing impulse of
the man. An intellectual nature like this, calm, studious, accomplished,
eager, is subject to few surprises and experiences rarely, if ever,
marked by crises, cataclysms, eruptions, in passing from one condition
of thought to another at the opposite extreme of the spiritual universe.
A process of growth, gradual, easy, motionless, takes the place of
commotion and violent uproar such as passionate temperaments are exposed
to. In 1821 he writes to his sister from Harvard College: "We are now
studying Locke, an author who has done more to form the mind to habits
of accurate reasoning and sound thought than almost any other." On the
19th of September, 1836, the first meeting of the Transcendental Club
was held at his house in Boston. In 1838 he replied to Andrews Norton's
criticism of Mr. Emerson's Address before the Alumni of the Cambridge
Divinity School. In 1840 he said to his congregation in Purchase Street:
There is a faculty in all--the most degraded, the most ignorant,
the most obscure--to perceive spiritual truth when distinctly
presented; and the ultimate appeal on all moral questions is not to
a jury of scholars, a conclave of divines, or the prescriptions of
a creed, but to the common-sense of the human race.
But this substitution of the intuitive for the sensational philosophy--a
change which affected all the processes of his thought and actually
caused a revolution in his mind--was made silently, quietly, without
agitation, without triumph, in a sober, conservative manner, very
different from that of his friend Theodore Parker, who carried the same
doctrines a good deal further, and advocated them with more heat like
the burly reformer he was.
In religion, Mr. Ripley's position was the same that it was in
philosophy. In fact the intellectual side of religion interested him
more than the spiritual or experimental side. It was mainly a
speculative matter, where it was not speculative it was practical; in
each event it concerned the head rather than the heart, as being an
opinion rather than a feeling. He was instructed in the school of
orthodoxy, and, as a youth, was strict in his allegiance to the old
system of belief; but he became a disciple of Dr. Channing, and later a
rationalist of the order of Theodore Parker, a friend of Emerson, an
adherent of what was newest in theology. Yet, in this extreme departure
from the views of his early years, he betrayed no sign of agitation, no
trace of internal suffering. He wished to go to Yale instead of Harvard,
because "the temptations incident to a college, we have reason to think,
are less at Yale than at Cambridge." He preferred Andover to Cambridge,
being "convinced that the opportunities for close investigation of the
Scriptures are superior to those at Cambridge, and the spirit of the
place, much relaxed from its former severe and gloomy bigotry is more
favorable to a tone of decided piety." Still, he goes to Cambridge, is
"much disappointed in what he had learned of the religious character of
the school," and, on more intimate acquaintance is impressed by "the
depth and purity of their religious feeling and the holy simplicity of
their lives"; "enough to humble and shame those who had been long
professors of Christianity, and had pretended to superior sanctity." In
1824 a bold article in the _Christian Disciple_, a Unitarian journal,
the precursor of the _Christian Examiner_, excited a good deal of
comment, not to say apprehension. He writes to his sister about it as
follows:
You asked me to say something about the article in the _Disciple_.
For myself, I freely confess that I think it a useful thing and
correct. The vigor of my orthodoxy, which is commonly pretty
susceptible, was not offended. Now, if you have any objections
which you can accurately and definitely state, no doubt there is
something in it which had escaped my notice. If your dislike is
only a misty, uncertain feeling about something, you know not what,
it were well to get fairly rid of it by the best means.
The same year he writes to his mother:
I am no partisan of any sect, but I must rejoice in seeing any
progress towards the conviction that Christianity is indeed "_glad
tidings of great joy_," and that in its original purity it was a
very different thing from the system that is popularly preached,
and which is still received as reasonable and scriptural by men and
women, who in other respects are sensible and correct in their
judgments. When shall we learn that without the spirit of Christ we
are none of us His? I trust I am not becoming a partisan or a
bigot. I have suffered enough, and too much, in sustaining those
characters, in earlier, more inexperienced, and more ignorant
years; but I have no prospects of earthly happiness more inviting
than that of preaching the truth, with the humble hope of
impressing it on the mind with greater force, purity, and effect
than I could do with any other than my present conviction.
In 1840 the ministry was abandoned forever, for more secular pursuits.
After 1849 his activities were wholly literary; he had no connection
with theology, and none who did not know his past suspected that he had
once been a clergyman.
The same cast of thought, not "pale" in his case, suffused his action
at Brook Farm and made a Utopia quiet, calm, dignified, pervaded by the
radiance of mind, the gentle enthusiasm of the intellect. The heat came
in the main from other sources. He was receptive rather than original,
inflammable rather than fiery, brilliant rather than warm. The heat was
supplied by those near him, by those he trusted, and by those he loved.
Not that he was deficient in concern for society; far from it; but his
interest was more philosophical than philanthropic. The subject of an
association that should combine intellectual and mechanical labor and
should diminish the distance between the tiller of the ground and the
educator was agitated among the thinkers he was intimate with. Dr.
Channing had such a project at heart. Mrs. Ripley burned with humane
anticipations. Plans for social regeneration were in the air. It was
impossible for one who lived in the midst of ardent spirits, or was
sensitive to fine impressions, or was cultivated in an ideal wisdom that
was not of this world, to escape the contagion of this kind of optimism;
Emerson was saved by his belief in individual growth; Parker by his
steady common-sense; others were protected by their conservatism of
temperament or of association, by their want of courage, or their want
of faith; but men and women of ideal propensities, like Nathaniel
Hawthorne, W. H. Channing, J. S. Dwight, joined the community, which
promised a new era for Humanity. Mr. Ripley would probably have left the
ministry at any rate, for it had become distasteful to him, but it is
not likely that he would have undertaken the management of Brook Farm
unless he had been assured of its success; for he was a New England
youth by birth and by disposition, prudent, careful, thrifty; his very
enthusiasm was of the New England type, the product of theological
ideas, a creation of the gospels, a desire to introduce the "Kingdom of
Heaven," a continuance of the prophetic calling. New England is as noted
for its fanaticism as it is for its theology. Its fanaticism is the
offspring of its theology, and in proportion as its theology disappears
its fanaticism decreases. In Mr. Ripley's case the theology had reached
very near to its last attenuation and the fanaticism had tapered off
into a gentle enthusiasm. He undertook to establish a kingdom of heaven
on earth because he had given up the expectation of a kingdom of heaven
in the skies; and he undertook to establish a kingdom of heaven on earth
by rational, economic means, not by religious interventions. He was
subject to that peculiar kind of excitement that comes to a few people
in connection with the keen exercise of their intellectual powers, when
they have laid hold of what seems to them a principle--an excitement
that is easily mistaken for moral earnestness even by one who is under
its influence, which, indeed, lies so close to moral earnestness as to
feel quickly the effect of moral earnestness in others, notwithstanding
the checks applied by practical wisdom. Mr. Ripley had struck on a
theory of society, which at that time was passing from the phase of
feeling into the phase of philosophy. The theory was in the air; the
most susceptible spirits were full of it; all noble impulses were in its
favor, it belonged to the order of thought he had attained; it was
native to the aspirations that inflamed the men and women with whom he
was most intimate; their feelings awoke his intellect, and he was
carried away by a stream whereof he appeared to himself to be a
tributary and whereof he appeared to others as the main current, on
account of his impetuosity, and the vigor with which he proceeded to put
the idea into practice. In his own mind he was realizing the dream of
the New Testament, but, in fact, he was testing a principle of which the
New Testament was quite unconscious, the modern principle of the equal
destinies of all men. He had abandoned the New Testament ground of
allegiance to Jehovah, and had adopted the human ground of fidelity to
social law. He was still under the spell of religious emotions, but they
had become merged in the abstractions of rationalism and merely lent an
added glow to his ideas, so that he could readily imagine that he was
actuated by spiritual convictions when, in fact, he was doing duty as a
disciple of socialist philosophers. His own interest in Brook Farm was
in the main speculative, though through his personal sympathies he was
moved toward an enterprise that had moral ends in view.
Once embarked in it, he gave his whole mind to its
accomplishment,--all his industry, all his organizing talent, all his
high sense of duty. He worked day and night; he wrote letters; he
answered inquiries; he mastered the science of agriculture; he did the
labor of a practical farmer; he maintained the supervision of the
strange family that gathered about him. Very remarkable was his success
in keeping the intellectual side uppermost, in keeping clear of the
temptations to give way to instinctive leanings. His associations were
with books and study and bright people. He brought the most brilliant
men and women of the day to the place. He awakened the interest of the
general community. He diffused an atmosphere of cheerful hope around the
experiment. It is easy to make sport of Brook Farm; to laugh at the odd
folks who came there; to ridicule their motives and actions; to repeat
stories of extravagant conduct; to tell of the eccentric behavior of men
and maidens who were right-minded but impulsive; to follow
spontaneousness to its results; to trace the course of unrestricted
liberty. But it is not fair to remember these things as peculiarities of
Brook Farm, as incidents of its conception, or as incidents that were
agreeable to Mr. Ripley. He exerted the whole weight of his character
against them. He watched and guarded. We do not hear of him in
connection with the scandals, the laxities, or the frolics. His efforts
were directed to the supremacy of ideas over instinct, the idea of a
regenerated society, something very different from joyousness, or
merriment, or the fun of having a good time. He, too, was gay; he felt
the delight of freedom; but his gayety was born of happy confidence in
the principle at stake, his delight was connected with the advent of a
new method of intercourse among men. I remember hearing him once deliver
a speech in Boston. In it he spoke of the "foolishness of preaching,"
and avowed his willingness to be a pioneer in the task of breaking out a
new future for humanity, a ditcher and delver in the work of
constructing the new building of God. He had the coming time continually
in view. Others might enjoy themselves, others might grow tired of
waiting, but he held smiling on his way, determined to carry out the
idea to the end. There was something grand in the steady intellectual
force with which he did his best to carry through a principle that
commanded more and more the assent of his reason. When the demonstration
of Charles Fourier was laid before him, no argument was required to
persuade him to adopt it. He took it up with all his energy; his
enthusiasm rose to a higher pitch than ever; the rationale of the
movement was revealed to him, and apparently he saw for the first time
the full significance of the scheme he had been conducting. The
impelling power of an intellectual conviction was never more splendidly
illustrated. Nobody discerned so clearly as he did the financial
hopelessness of the experiment. Nobody felt the burden of responsibility
as he felt it. Yet he did not flinch for a moment, and his patient
assumption of the indebtedness at last had the stamp of real heroism
upon it. His renewal of the most painful traditions of "Grub Street"
until the liabilities of Brook Farm were cleared off is one of the noble
histories, a history that cannot be told in detail because of the
modesty which has left no record of toil undergone or duty done. The old
simile of the sun struggling with clouds, and gradually clearing itself
as the day wears on, best illustrates my view of this man's
accomplishment. There were the clouds of orthodoxy which were burned
away at Cambridge. Then came the clouds of Unitarian divinity, which
were dispelled by the transcendental philosophy. These were succeeded by
the dark vapors of the ministry, and these by the sentimental
philanthropy of New England rationalism. At length his intellect broke
through these obscurations and showed what it truly was.
On the failure of Brook Farm and the final dismissal of all plans for
creating society anew, Mr. Ripley's faculties emerged in their full
strength. The New England element was withdrawn. There was no longer
thought for theology or reform, but solely for knowledge and literature.
In Boston he had taken on himself every opprobrious epithet. In his
final letter to his congregation he avows his interest in temperance,
anti-slavery, peace, the projects for breaking down social distinctions;
simply, it would seem, because his philosophy, falling in with popular
sentiment, pointed that way; for he was never publicly identified with
any of these causes, or ranked by reformers in the order of innovators.
Indeed, one of the old Abolitionists told me that she had never
associated him with the anti-slavery people, though her family went to
his church. In New York there was no pretence of this kind. The devotion
to literature absorbed his attention. His democratic concern for the
workingmen continued, but in a theoretical manner, if we may judge from
the fact that he took no part in domestic or foreign demonstrations,
that he made no speech, attended no meeting, consorted with no social
reformers, did not even keep up his intimacy with the original leaders
of socialism in this country. When the sadness of his first wife's death
was over, and the drudgery of toil was ended, he was happier than he had
ever been. No time was wasted; no talent was misused. Mental labor was
incessant, but in performing it there was pure delight. It is usual to
think of his early life as his best, and there were some who regarded
him as an extinct volcano; but I am of the opinion that his latter years
were his most characteristic, and that he was most entirely himself when
his intellectual nature came to its full play. In proportion as the
"olden thoughts, the spirit's pall," fell off, he became peaceful and
sweet; his view backward and forward became clear, his purpose steady,
his will serene. The past was distasteful to him and he seldom alluded
to it; but as one puts his childhood and his age together, a steady
development is seen to run through both. His could not be a cloudless
day, but he went on from glory to glory. His age more than justified the
promise of his youth. In his latter years he befriended aspiring young
men; he made literature a power in America; he threw a dignity around
toil; he associated knowledge with happiness, and rendered light and
love harmonious. His favorite author was Goethe, the apostle of culture.
His familiarity with Sainte-Beuve, the master of literary criticism, was
so great, that on occasion of that writer's decease, he sat down and
wrote an account of him without recourse to books. Though without
knowledge of art, destitute of taste for music, and deficient in
aesthetic appreciation, his sympathy was so large and true that these
deficiencies were not felt. The intellectual sunshine was shed over the
entire nature, and the book was so universal that it seemed to embrace
everything.
This is the property of pure mind, rarely seen in such perfection of
lucidity. Such a mind is at once conservative and radical; conservative
as treasuring the past, radical as anticipating improvement in the
future. There is nothing like fanaticism, but a bright look in every
direction, a place for all sorts of accomplishments, hospitality to each
new invention, a radiant acceptance of all temperaments. The mind cannot
be superstitious, for it cannot believe that divine powers are
identified with material objects or occasional accidents; it cannot be
ever sanguine as those are who indulge in abstract visions of good, for
it knows that progress is very slow and gradual, and that the welfare of
mankind is advanced by the process of civilization, by cultivation,
acquirement, refinement, the gains of wealth, elegance, and delicacy of
taste. It judges by rational standards, not by sentimental feelings,
accepting imperfection as the inevitable condition of human affairs and
bounded characters. It is not exposed to the convulsions that accompany
even the most exalted moods, but calmly labors and quietly hopes for the
future.
I do not say that George Ripley was such a mind, merely that his
tendency was in that direction. He was limited by traditions; he had too
many prejudices. The axioms of the transcendental philosophy clung to
him. The shreds of religion hung about him. He could not divest himself
of the ancient clerical memories and ways, nor wholly throw off the
mantle of personal sympathy he had so long worn. He was not completely
secular.
That he was a perfect man is less evident still. His sunny quality was
due in some degree to a happy temperament, and was subject to the
eclipses that darken the blandest natures, and render sombre the most
hilarious spirits. He lacked the steadfast courage of conviction, was
somewhat over-prudent and timid, afraid of pain, of popular disapproval,
of criticism and opposition. This may have been due in part to his
frequent disappointments and the carefulness they forced upon him, to
the distrust in his own judgment which he had occasion to learn, and the
necessity of confining his action to the point immediately before him.
But I am inclined to think that this apprehensiveness was
constitutional. If it is suggested by way of objection that the bold
experiment of Brook Farm, made in the face of obloquy and derision,
indicated moral courage of a high stamp, I would remind the critic of
the warm approbation of his friends, and the confident expectation of
success on the part of those he was intimate with. His wife not merely
gave him her countenance but stimulated his zeal, and surrounded him
every day with an atmosphere of faith. He had the applause of Dr.
Channing, and the support of his brilliant nephew. Men like Hawthorne,
Ellis Gray Loring, George Stearns, not to mention others, urged him on.
His own well-beloved sister was one of his ardent coadjutors. He had
hopes of Emerson. In short, so far from being alone, he stood in an
influential company, and instead of his being altogether unpopular was
encompassed by the good-will of those he prized most. It would have
required courage to resist such influences. Besides, he was inflated by
a momentary enthusiasm which carried him along in spite of himself and
would not allow his judgment to work. A sudden storm struck him, lifted
unusual waves, caused unexampled spurts of foam, made the ordinarily
quiet water boisterous and dangerous, and threw long lines of breakers
on the coast, so that what was a still lake became of a sudden a
tempestuous sea. One must not hastily imagine that the water had become
an ocean, or that it was really an Atlantic formerly supposed to be a
pool.
Then it must be said he loved money too well. This infirmity was not
native to him, but must probably be imputed to early poverty, the
necessity of working hard in order to pay debts not altogether of his
own contracting, thus pledging the meagre income of the first sixty
years of his life. His final income was large, but it was earned by
incessant literary toil, which naturally rendered him avaricious of the
rewards that might come to him. His generosity did not have a fair
chance to show itself outside of his family. There it was lavish, but
there it was too much mixed up with affection, duty, and pride to be
credited to his manhood. He did not live long enough, either, to attain
complete superiority over his accidents. He was already an old man
before he had money for his wants. I remember meeting him on Broadway in
1861, the year of his wife's death, and he said: "My grief is embittered
by the thought that she died just as I was getting able to obtain for
her what she needed." He was then fifty-nine years of age. It cannot be
expected that any impulse of generosity will overcome the habits of a
life-time at so advanced a period as this. That they showed themselves
at all is remarkable, and establishes as well their power as their
existence.
In a word, this man was too heavily weighted by circumstances to do his
genius full justice. He seemed to be two individuals, with little in
common between them. As one looked at his past or at his present, his
real character was differently judged. The most plausible account of him
was that which supposed the experiences to be buried in a deep grave,
which was seldom uncovered even by the man himself, who lived in the day
before him, and rarely glanced back save to mourn over or to make sport
of his former career. The only way of establishing a unity in his
history is to concede the supremacy of the intellectual quality over the
moral in his first endeavors. The prejudice in favor of the moral was
and is so strong that to maintain this supremacy will seem like a
condemnation of him, though meant in his praise. He probably would so
have considered it, especially when carried away by the flood of
memories. It was easy for him to be mistaken. His merit consists in the
energy of the reason which made headway against a host of disadvantages
and achieved something resembling a victory in the end. Some time hence,
when the homage paid to sentiment shall have yielded to the worship of
knowledge, George Ripley will be regarded as one of the earliest
apostles of the light.
All these greatly enriched my life in New York, opened new spheres of
activity, and enlarged my whole horizon, both intellectually and
socially. Their variety, elasticity, and vigor in many fields of
intellectual force added much to the extension of my view, and acted,
not merely as a refreshment, but also as a stimulus.