No. 4.] THE ETHICS OF BOOKS. 131 



principles. It proved a failure. Geo. Ripley, a Unitarian 

 clergyman, was its leading man. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 

 descendant of eight generations of clergymen, was the 

 foremost spirit among these Transcendentalists. Theodore 

 Parker was their pulpit orator. This was still another 

 departure from conservative Unitarianism. 



The Charming Unitarians, while denying that Christ was 

 God, held him to be divine. "While rejecting the vicarious 

 sacrifice, they accepted him as a mediator, and believed in 

 miracles. The Transcendentalists called Christ simply a 

 good and great man, divine only in the sense that God pos- 

 sessed him more fully than any other known. They placed 

 him with Buddha, Socrates and Confucius, and the Bible 

 with all other ethnical writings. Among these writers were 

 Thoreau, Alcott and Margaret Fuller. They published two 

 papers, the "Dial" and the "Harbinger." Upon their pages 

 were found the names of such men as Horace Greeley, Geo. 

 W. Curtis and T. W. Higginson. Emerson sweetened and 

 brightened all the byways and places in rural life by his 

 highly idealist views, and his books are dear to all nature 

 lovers. He was called the "glorified farmer," because he 

 so much loved secluded places, w T here he could commune 

 alone with nature. He was exalted in thought and aspira- 

 tion. He said, "Let every man live as upon a mountain, 

 so the world may see how God intended a true man to live." 

 He tells us to "hitch our wagon to a star," etc. 



Later these writers made Concord, Mass., their home. 

 That village has done more for American letters than some 

 cities. The men who made it famous are asleep in Sleepy 

 Hollow, yet their memory and what they have done is still 

 able to draw many people to the spot. There was the home 

 of Hawthorne. In the "Old Manse "he carried on his liter- 

 ary work. We call him the greatest American romancer. 

 With the conscience for his theme, and the subtle ways in 

 which sin works out its own retribution, he tells us of the 

 sombre lives of the early settlers. His "Scarlet Letter" is 

 pronounced the best novel written on this side of the water. 



Emerson, Holmes, Phillips, Motley, Prescott, Longfel- 

 low, Lowell, Felton and Edward Everett Hale were a bril- 



