Mr. Wright has more genius for teaching than any person I have before seen—his method and temper are admirable, and all parties, from assistants, of which there are several, to the youngest child delight in his presence and influence. He impersonates and realizes my own idea of an education, and is the first person whom I have met that has entered into this divine art of inspiring the human clay, and moulding it into the stature and image of divinity. I am already knit to him by more than human ties, and must take him with me to America, as a coadjutor in our high vocation, or else remain with him here. But I hope to effect the first. * * * * * _The Healthian_ is edited here by Mr. Wright and Mr. Lane, and they contribute to almost every reform journal in the kingdom. They are not ignorant of our labors in the United States, almost every work of any value I find in the library at Alcott House,—your own works, those of Mr. Graham (a vegetarian), besides foreign authors not to be found with us. I shall bring with me many books, both ancient and modern, on my return to America. * * * * * It was during his sojourn in England in 1842 that the idea of creating “a New Eden,” as he loved to call it, took firm root in Alcott’s mind. A more quaintly unique character than his cannot be found in all the annals of our literary history. His unquenchable aspirations after the ideal life caught the imagination of men and women ready to break away from the narrowing tendency of the Orthodox faith of the time. He was both loved and derided. A transcendentalist pure and simple; unpractical; a dreamer and visionary in every sense of the word; yet his mind emitted flashes of genius so unerring and decisive as to elicit the spontaneous admiration of Ralph Waldo Emerson and impel him to write in his journal the following tributes:— [Illustration: A. BRONSON ALCOTT AT THE AGE OF 53 From the portrait by Mrs. Hildreth. ] [Illustration: ABIGAIL MAY, MRS. A. BRONSON ALCOTT From a daguerreotype. ] “The comfort of Alcott’s mind is, the connection in which he sees whatever he sees. He is never dazzled by a spot of colour, or a gleam of light, to value the thing by itself; but forever and ever is prepossessed by the individual one behind it and all. I do not know where to find in men or books a mind so valuable to faith in others.