“For every opinion or sentence of Alcott a reason may be sought and found, not in his will or fancy, but in the necessity of Nature itself, which has daguerred that fatal impression on his susceptible soul. He is as good as a lens or a mirror, a beautiful susceptibility, every impression on which is not to be reasoned against, or derided, but to be accounted for, and until accounted for, registered as an indisputable addition to our catalogue of natural facts. There are defects in the lens, and errors of retraction and position, etc., to be allowed for, and it needs one acquainted with the lens by frequent use, to make these allowances; but ‘tis the best instrument I have met with.”[1] Footnote 1: Emerson’s _Journal_, 1856. * * * * * “Once more for Alcott it is to be said that he is sincerely and necessarily engaged to his task and not wilfully or ostentatiously or pecuniarily. Mr. Johnson at Manchester said of him, ‘He is universally competent. Whatever question is asked, he is prepared for.’ “I shall go far and see many, before I find such an extraordinary insight as Alcott’s. In his fine talk last evening, he ran up and down the scale of powers with much ease and precision as a squirrel the wires of his cage, and is never dazzled by his means, or by any particular, and a fine heroic action or a poetic passage would make no impression on him, because he expects heroism and poetry in all. Ideal Purity, the poet, the artist, the man must have. I have never seen any person who so fortifies the believer, so confutes the skeptic. And the almost uniform rejection of this man by men of parts, Carlyle and Browning inclusive, and by women of piety, might make one despair of society. If he came with a cannonade of acclaim from all nations, as the first wit on the planet, these masters would sustain the reputation; or if they could find him in a book a thousand years old, with a legend of miracles appended, there would be churches of disciples; but now they wish to know if his coat is out at the elbows, or whether somebody did not hear from somebody, that he has got a new hat etc. He has faults, no doubt, but I may safely know more about them than he does; and some that are most severely imputed to him are only the omissions of a preoccupied mind.”[2] * * * * *