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Ralph Waldo Emerson by Oliver Wendell Holmes
page 132 of 449 (29%)
intuition was discovering a new heaven and a new earth was the
inspiration of these "young people" to whom Emerson refers. He has to
apologize for the first number. "It is not yet much," he says; "indeed,
though no copy has come to me, I know it is far short of what it should
be, for they have suffered puffs and dulness to creep in for the sake
of the complement of pages, but it is better than anything we had.--The
Address of the Editors to the Readers is all the prose that is mine, and
whether they have printed a few verses for me I do not know." They did
print "The Problem." There were also some fragments of criticism from
the writings of his brother Charles, and the poem called "The Last
Farewell," by his brother Edward, which is to be found in Emerson's
"May-day and other Pieces."

On the 30th of August, after the periodical had been published a couple
of months, Emerson writes:--

"Our community begin to stand in some terror of Transcendentalism;
and the _Dial_, poor little thing, whose first number contains
scarce anything considerable or even visible, is just now honored
by attacks from almost every newspaper and magazine; which at least
betrays the irritability and the instincts of the good public."

Carlyle finds the second number of "The Dial" better than the first, and
tosses his charitable recognition, as if into an alms-basket, with
his usual air of superiority. He distinguishes what is Emerson's
readily,--the rest he speaks of as the work of [Greek: oi polloi] for
the most part. "But it is all good and very good as a _soul;_ wants only
a body, which want means a great deal." And again, "'The Dial,' too, it
is all spirit like, aeri-form, aurora-borealis like. Will no _Angel_
body himself out of that; no stalwart Yankee _man_, with color in the
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