Mr. and Mrs. Ripley were the life of the Brook Farm Association. Their unfaltering energy, unfailing cheer, inexhaustible sweetness and gayety, availed to keep up the tone of the institution, to prevent its becoming common-place, and to retain there the persons on whose character the moral and intellectual standard depended. It was due to them that the experiment was tried as long as it was--six years;--that while it went on, it avoided, as it did, the usual scandal and reproach that bring ruin on schemes of that description; and that, when finally it ended in disaster, it commanded sympathy rather than contempt, and left a sweet memory behind. The originator was the last to leave the place of his toil and vain endeavor; he left it, having made all necessary provision for the discharge of debts, which only through arduous labors in journalism he was able afterwards to pay. In Mr. Ripley's mind the Idea was supreme. In 1844 he, with Mr. Dana and Mr. Channing, lectured and spoke on the principles of Association,--the foreign literature on the subject being more familiar to him then,--commended the doctrine of Fourier, and was prepared for a more sympathetic propagandism than he had meditated hitherto. In 1845, the "Harbinger" was started,--a weekly journal, devoted to Social and Political Progress; published by the Brook Farm Phalanx. The Prospectus, written by Mr. Ripley, made this announcement: "The principles of universal unity taught by Charles Fourier in their application to society, we believe are at the foundation of all genuine social progress; and it will ever be our aim to discuss and defend those principles without any sectarian bigotry, and in the catholic and comprehensive spirit of their great discoverer." An introductory notice by the same pen, among other things pertaining to the aims and intentions of the paper, contained this passage: