Ch. 4 - Brook Farm and Concord

The history of the little industrial and intellectual association
which formed itself at this time in one of the suburbs of Boston has
not, to my knowledge, been written; though it is assuredly a curious
and interesting chapter in the domestic annals of New England. It
would of course be easy to overrate the importance of this ingenious
attempt of a few speculative persons to improve the outlook of
mankind. The experiment came and went very rapidly and quietly,
leaving very few traces behind it. It became simply a charming
personal reminiscence for the small number of amiable enthusiasts who
had had a hand in it. There were degrees of enthusiasm, and I suppose
there were degrees of amiability; but a certain generous brightness of
hope and freshness of conviction pervaded the whole undertaking and
rendered it, morally speaking, important to an extent of which any
heed that the world in general ever gave to it is an insufficient
measure. Of course it would be a great mistake to represent the
episode of Brook Farm as directly related to the manners and morals of
the New England world in general--and in especial to those of the
prosperous, opulent, comfortable part of it. The thing was the
experiment of a coterie--it was unusual, unfashionable, unsuccessful.
It was, as would then have been said, an amusement of the
Transcendentalists--a harmless effusion of Radicalism. The
Transcendentalists were not, after all, very numerous; and the
Radicals were by no means of the vivid tinge of those of our own day.
I have said that the Brook Farm community left no traces behind it
that the world in general can appreciate; I should rather say that the
only trace is a short novel, of which the principal merits reside in
its qualities of difference from the affair itself. _The Blithedale
Romance_ is the main result of Brook Farm; but _The Blithedale
Romance_ was very properly never recognised by the Brook Farmers as an
accurate portrait of their little colony.

Nevertheless, in a society as to which the more frequent complaint is
that it is monotonous, that it lacks variety of incident and of type,
the episode, our own business with which is simply that it was the
cause of Hawthorne's writing an admirable tale, might be welcomed as a
picturesque variation. At the same time, if we do not exaggerate its
proportions, it may seem to contain a fund of illustration as to that
phase of human life with which our author's own history mingled
itself. The most graceful account of the origin of Brook Farm is
probably to be found in these words of one of the biographers of
Margaret Fuller: "In Boston and its vicinity, several friends, for
whose character Margaret felt the highest-honour, were earnestly
considering the