14 ELIZABETH GARY AGASSIZ 



music in Boston and refined taste in selection. An 

 orchestra of twenty-three musicians, some of them 

 amateurs, gave concerts in the Odeon and among 

 other great compositions rendered Beethoven's Fifth 

 Symphony. All Boston went to hear these concerts, 

 and the aesthetes from Brook Farm took possession 

 of the gallery and listened no doubt to the music of the 

 spheres. Their generous experiment in democracy was 

 then at the full tide of its hopes for humanity. Mar- 

 garet Fuller's talks were the wonder of the times; 

 Alcott and Thoreau were trying experiments in liv- 

 ing, and Emerson looked on, sympathized and held 

 himself aloof from all that savored of exaggeration 

 or bad taste. Transcendentalism was at its height, 

 indignation at the negro slavery was surging in many 

 hearts, and meanwhile alongside of all these enthu- 

 siasms a most conventional social world moved on 

 as placidly as if nothing in Boston would ever change. 

 Boston was then a small and very pretty city. 

 The Common was in its perfection, a charming little 

 park. The streets around it were picturesque with 

 houses individual in style and of a comfortable char- 

 acter. The Back Bay was still a bay. There was an 

 odd attempt made to turn the Public Garden into a 

 private park owned in shares, where there was a con- 

 servatory, an aviary, and a faint attempt at a menag- 

 erie. I remember my boundless pride when our 

 grandfather gave to me among others, a life ticket 

 to this infant Jardin des Plantes, but our lives would 

 have been short indeed, if we had not survived the 

 utility of our tickets, for this enterprise was soon 



