The philosophy known as transcendentalism left its impress on much of the work of this age. The transcendentalists believed that human mind could "transcend" or pass beyond experience and form a conclusion which was not based on the world of sense. They were intense idealists and individualists, who despised imitation and repetition, who were full of the ecstasy of discoveries in a glorious new world, who entered into a new companionship with nature, and who voiced in ways as different as _The Dial_ and Brook Farm their desire for an opportunity to live in all the faculties of the soul. The fact that the thought of the age was specially modified by the question of slavery is shown in Webster's orations, Harriet Beecher Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, the poetry of Whittier and Lowell, and to a less degree in the work of Emerson, Thoreau, and Longfellow. We have found that Emerson's aim, shown in his _Essays_ and all his prose work, is the moral development of the individual, the acquisition of self-reliance, character, spirituality. Some of his nature poetry ranks with the best produced in America. Thoreau, the poet-naturalist, shows how to find enchantment in the world of nature. Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the great romance writers of the world, has given the Puritan almost as great a place in literature as in history. In his short stories and romances, this great artist paints little except the trial and moral development of human souls in a world where the Ten Commandments are supreme. Longfellow taught the English-speaking world to love simple poetry. He mastered the difficult art of making the commonplace seem attractive and of speaking to the great common heart. His ability to tell in verse stories like _Evangeline_ and _Hiawatha_ remains unsurpassed among our singers. Whittier was the great antislavery poet of the North. Like Longfellow, he spoke simply but more intensely to that overwhelming majority whose lives stand most in need of poetry. His _Snow-Bound_ makes us feel the moral greatness of simple New England life. The versatile Lowell has written exquisite nature poetry in his lyrics and _Vision of Sir Launfal_ and _The Biglow Papers_. He has produced America's best humorous verse in _The Biglow Papers_ and _A Fable for Critics_. He is a great critic, and his prose criticism in _Among My Books_ and the related volumes is stimulating and interesting. His political prose, of which the best specimen is _Democracy_, is remarkable for its high ideals. Holmes is especially distinguished for his humor in such poems as _The Deacon's Masterpiece, or the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay_ and for the pleasant philosophy and humor in such artistic prose as _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_. He is the only member of this group who often wrote merely to entertain, but his _Chambered Nautilus_ shows that he also had a more serious aim.