It was in Concord that the poet and essayist, as the prophet of the advanced thought of his age, gathered around him those leading spirits who were dissatisfied with the selfishness and shallowness of existing society, and, who had been led by him to dream of an ideal condition in which all should live as one family. Out of this grew the famous “Brook Farm Community.” This was not an original idea of Emerson’s, however. Coleridge and Southey, of England, had thought of founding such a society in Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River. Emerson regarded this community of interests as the clear teachings of Jesus Christ; and, to put into practical operation this idea, a farm of about two hundred acres was bought at Roxbury, Mass., and a stock company was formed under the title of “The Brook Farm Institution of Agriculture and Education.” About seventy members joined in the enterprise. The principle of the organization was coöperative, the members sharing the profits. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest of romancers, Chas. A. Dana, of the New York Tribune, Geo. W. Curtis, of Harper’s Monthly, Henry D. Thoreau, the poet naturalist, Amos Bronson Alcott, the transcendental dreamer and writer of strange shadowy sayings, and Margaret Fuller, the most learned woman of her age, were prominent members who removed to live on the farm. It is said that Emerson, himself, never really lived there; but was a member and frequent visitor, as were other prominent scholars of the same school. The project was a failure. After five years of experience, some of the houses were destroyed by fire, the enterprise given up, and the membership scattered. But the Brook Farm served its purpose in literature by bringing together some of the best intellects in America, engaging them for five years in a common course of study, and stimulating a commerce of ideas. The breaking up of the community was better, perhaps, than its success would have been. It dispersed and scattered abroad the advanced thoughts of Emerson, and the doctrine of the society into every profession. Instead of being confined to the little paper, “The Dial,” (which was the organ of the society) its literature was transferred into a number of widely circulated national mediums.