these persons, particularly with Mr. Heraud, a literary man, and Mr. Greaves, a disciple and friend. of Pestalozzi. Mr. Emerson entered cordially into Mr. Alcott's plans in this respect, and was the principal person who contributed to the fund which was raised for this Transcendental embassy. Writing to Mr. Alcott on the 12th of February, 1842, Mr. Emerson said:

"I am far from thinking that the project should be dropped. If it shall continue to seem profitable and desirable to you, as it has appeared, it will seem so to me. I think you need the diversion and the stimulus which so total a change in your habits and company will afford, without considering what farther contingencies may accrue."

Accordingly, on the 8th of May, Mr. Alcott sailed for England, and there spent several months, returning Oct. 20, 1842, accompanied by two English Socialists, Charles Lane and Henry C. Wright, who afterwards joined in his experiment' of an ideal community at Fruitlands, in the town of Harvard. Before his return, Emerson, who was then editing "The Dial," printed in that magazine (October, 1842) an excellent account of Mr. Alcott's mission to England and the companionship which he found there :

ENGLISH REFORMERS.

Whilst Mr. Sparks visits England to explore the manuscripts of the Colonial Office, and Dr. Waagen on a mission of art, Mr. Alcott, whose genius and efforts in the great

art of education have been more appreciated in England than in America, has now been spending some months in that country, with the aim to confer with the most eminent educators and philanthropists, in the hope to exchange intelligence, and import into this country whatever hints have been struck out there on the subject of literature and the First Philosophy. The design was worthy, and its first results have already reached us. Mr. Alcott was received with great cordiality of joy and respect by his friends in London, and presently found himself domesticated at an institution managed after his own methods and called after his name, the School of Mr. Wright, at Alcott House, Ham, Surrey. He was introduced to many men of literary and philanthropic distinction, and his arrival was made the occasion of meetings for public conversation on the great ethical questions of the day.

Mr. Alcott's mission, besides making us acquainted with the character and labors of some excellent persons, has loaded our table with a pile of English books, pamphlets, periodicals, flying prospectuses, and advertisements proceeding from a class very little known in this country and on many accounts important, the party, namely, who represent Social Reform. Here are Educational Circulars and Communist Apostles, Alists, Plans for Syncretic Associations and Pestalozzian Societies, Self-supporting Institutions, Experimental Normal Schools, Hydropathic and Philosophical Associations, Health Unions and Phalansterian Gazettes, Paradises within the reach of all men, Appeals of Man to Woman, and Necessities of Internal Marriage, illustrated by Phrenological Diagrams. These papers have many sins to answer for. There is an abundance of superficialness, of pedantry, of inflation, and want of thought.

It seems as if these sanguine schemers rushed to the press with every notion that danced before their brain, and clothed it in the most clumsily compound and terminated words, for want of time to find the right one. But although these men use a swollen and vicious diction, yet they write to ends which raise them out of the jurisdiction of ordinary criticism. They speak to the conscience, and have that superiority over the crowd of their contemporaries which belongs to men who entertain a good hope. Moreover, these pamphlets may well engage the attention of the politician, as straws of no mean significance to show the tendencies of the time.

Mr. Alcott found little in the condition or the population of England in 1842 to encourage his labors there; but he did find a few enthusiastic persons who partook of his own philanthropic idealism, and were eager to join his private efforts at social reform in New England. Some of his observations on persons and events in the mother country may here be cited :

"July 18, 1842. Returned to Alcott House. 19th. Had much conversation with Mr. Wright on our union in New England. He inclines to return with me. Evening. We walked to Wandsworth (six miles), and had a lively conversation there on education, and engaged to resume our conversation there on Tuesday evening next.

"July 20. Dined with W. J. Fox, and met Harwood, Dr. Elliotson, Mr. Lalor, and others. The conversation was prolonged till late in the evening, and ran on various topics, Pythagorean diet, taxes, government, magnetism,

poetry, 'The Dial,' Emerson, etc. It gave me little satisfaction. There was much argument, protestation, and but little from the heart. Our Club in its dotage, even, was wiser far. I seemed to have fallen on Dr. Channing and the Unitarian Association.

I

"July 21. Called on J. M. Morgan, and saw his painting of a design for his 'Self-Supporting Institution,' at his rooms in Holborn. He discoursed long, and with great good-will, on his plans for relieving the needy and distressed; but relies on the Church for support, and seeks to redeem his own name from disgrace by denying his former intimacy with Mr. Owen. He is another sad instance of apostasy from the principles so livingly affirmed by Mr. Greaves. I recognized but little of the wide humanity that pervades his Hampden in the Nineteenth Century.' Morgan, Biber, Heraud, Oldham, Smith, Marston, these are all fallen; and there remain but Lane and Wright in whom the divine fire still burns. saw George Thompson again, and heard O'Connell, Joseph. Hume, M. P., Joseph Sturge, and Sydney Smith, at the Anti-Corn-Law Conference at the King's Arms, Westminster. The meeting reminded me of our Abolition and Non-resistance conventions; and the speakers, of Garrison, Wright, and Phillips. Fierce denunciation, discontent, sedition, desperation, rang throughout the hall; but neither people, delegates, nor leaders seemed at all aware of the remedy for the social evils under which they are now writhing in sorrow, disappointment, hunger. It is not bread nor wages (and so I told Thompson), but property, gain, and the lust of gain, these are the parents of the ills they suffer. But Thompson is too busy to hear, and the people too hungry to believe.

"Had a short interview with Robert Owen at his rooms. in Pall Mall. He read me a letter which he had just written, addressed to Sir Robert Peel, proposing his remedy for the distress of the nation; but he seemed but little wiser than the Premier, Parliament, and Reformers. Property, property still, and the people still left enslaved to their lusts and passions. He asked me to breakfast with him at my convenience, which I promised to do, but scarce know why. 'Tis a base errand, this of eating and drinking with lions, and I am getting heartily ashamed of it. Surely, I am made for better things. Evening.— At Heraud's. Barham, Marston, Wright, and others, were there. We discussed printing a new journal, to be supported by contributions from the Old World and the New, and issued quarterly. A good deal was said. Heraud and Barham deem Carlyle's interest essential to its success with the public. I put the work on its own merits, quite independent of names, and Wright agrees with me. I gave them the theory of my new journal: the hopes it must meet, the audience it must create, the contributors it must secure. I proposed that it should answer to something like this: 'The Janus: An Ephemeris of the Permanent in Religion, Philosophy, Science, Art, and Letters.' My idea was obviously too broad and daring for them, and so we separated.

"Two letters from my wife at the close of this stormful day. I read them, and found peace in the gardens of Concordia."

Nearly twenty years later Mr. Alcott's project of an international magazine was carried out in some degree by the establishment of the "Atlantic