the trophies of Heraud would not suffer Bostonians to sleep. There was great interchange of pamphlets and new books, and Mr. Alcott, while planning to reprint a little work of Heraud’s from an English volume called “The Educator,” — a reprint actually accomplished by him two years later, in a small volume called “Spiritual Culture,” — followed the matter up still further, as may be seen in the following extract from his diary: —
“I had an agreeable talk with G. Ripley on the Times, and particularly on my transatlantic friends. He is much taken with Heraud’s journal, which he has read from January last. He wishes to establish a journal of like character among ourselves. We need such an organ, but lack the ability to make it worthy of our position. There are but few contributors, and those not at all free from the influences of the past. Yet such a journal we must have in due time. Doubtless it would succeed even now. Brownson’s ‘Boston Quarterly’ is pledged to a party in politics, and takes narrow ground both in philosophy and literature. We must have a free journal for the soul which awaits its own scribes.”[1]
Before this, however, as appears from other memoranda by Mr. Alcott in my possession, Margaret Fuller, at a meeting of the “Symposium” Club, September 18, “gave her views of the proposed ‘Dial,’ which she afterwards edited.” This is the first instance I have found of the introduc-
- ↑ Alcott’s MS. Diary, xiii. 264.
