"Some time afterwards Dr. Channing opened his mind to Mr. and Mrs.
Ripley, and with some care they invited a limited party of ladies
and gentlemen. I had the honor to be present.--Margaret Fuller,
George Ripley, Dr. Convers Francis, Theodore Parker, Dr. Hedge, Mr.
Brownson, James Freeman Clarke, William H. Channing, and many others
gradually drew together, and from time to time spent an afternoon at
each other's houses in a serious conversation."

With them was another, "a pure Idealist,--who read Plato as an
equal, and inspired his companions only in proportion as they were
intellectual." He refers, of course to Mr. Alcott. Emerson goes on to
say:--

"I think there prevailed at that time a general belief in Boston
that there was some concert of _doctrinaires_ to establish certain
opinions, and inaugurate some movement in literature, philosophy,
and religion, of which design the supposed conspirators were quite
innocent; for there was no concert, and only here and there two or
three men and women who read and wrote, each alone, with unusual
vivacity. Perhaps they only agreed in having fallen upon Coleridge
and Wordsworth and Goethe, then on Carlyle, with pleasure and
sympathy. Otherwise their education and reading were not marked, but
had the American superficialness, and their studies were solitary.
I suppose all of them were surprised at this rumor of a school or
sect, and certainly at the name of Transcendentalism, given, nobody
knows by whom, or when it was applied."

Emerson's picture of some of these friends of his is so peculiar as to
suggest certain obvious and not too flattering comments.