He was the senior member of the "Transcendental Club," composed of the liberal thinkers who met to discuss literary and spiritual subjects on the ground of reason and the soul's intuitive perceptions. With deep interest he followed the course of speculative and practical reform to the close of his life. Some, of whom he was not one, engaged in the discussions for a little while, attended the meetings, and set forth bold opinions, but retired within their close fellowships as soon as plans for propagandism or schemes of organization were proposed. Their sympathies were literary and within the recognized limits of literature; but they had either too little courage of conviction, or too little conviction, to depart from accustomed ways or break with existing associations. The number of professed transcendentalists in the restricted sense, was never large, and, after the first excitement, did not greatly increase. There was but one generation of them. The genuine transcendentalists became so in their youth, ripened into full conviction in middle life, and, as a rule, continued so to old age. The desertions from the faith were not many. Half a dozen perhaps became catholics; as many became episcopalians; but by far the greater part maintained their principles and remained serene dissenters, "in the world, but not of it." Transcendentalism was an episode in the intellectual life of New England; an enthusiasm, a wave of sentiment, a breath of mind that caught up such as were prepared to receive it, elated them, transported them, and passed on,--no man knowing whither it went. Its influence on thought and life was immediate and powerful. Religion felt it, literature, laws, institutions. To the social agitations of forty years ago it was invaluable as an inspiration. The various reforms owed everything to it. New England character received from it an impetus that never will be spent. It made young men see visions and old men dream dreams. There were mounts of Transfiguration in those days, upon which multitudes thought they communed visibly with lawgivers and prophets. They could not stay there always, but the memory will never cease to be glorious. Transcendentalism as a special phase of thought and feeling was of necessity transient--having done its work it terminated its existence. But it did its work, and its work was glorious. Even its failures were necessary as showing what could not be accomplished, and its extravagances as defining the boundaries of wise experiment. Its successes amply redeemed them all, and would have redeemed them had they been more glaring and grotesque. Had it bequeathed nothing more than the literature that sprung from it, and the lives of the men and women who had their intellectual roots in it, it would have conferred a lasting benefit on America. XV. LITERATURE.