IX.
A LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN.
Apart from every word she ever wrote, Margaret Fuller will always be an important figure in American history, for this plain reason: that she was the organizer and executive force of the first thoroughly American literary enterprise. The intellectual and spiritual excitement, popularly called “Transcendentalism,” had at least this one merit, that, whatever else it was, it was indigenous. To determine its real worth and weight, beyond this, we must go back to the “Dial.” That is its only authentic record. To know what Emerson individually was, we can go to his books; it is the same with Parker, Thoreau, Alcott. But what it was which united these diverse elements, what was their central spirit, what their collective strength or weakness, their maximum and minimum, their high and low water mark, this must be sought in the “Dial.” That was the alembic into which they were all distilled, and the priestess who superintended this intellectual chemic process happened to be Margaret Fuller. It is a curious fact that this aspect of her life — being that which will, on the whole, make her most interesting to
