..."
Hawthorne remained at Brook Farm for only one of the six years of its
existence. An important building, on which there was no insurance, burned
in 1846, and the next year the association was forced for financial reasons
to disband. This was probably the most ideal of a series of social
settlements, every one of which failed. The problem of securing sufficient
leisure to live in all the faculties of the soul has not yet been solved,
but attempts toward a satisfactory solution have not yet been abandoned.
The influence of Brook Farm on our literature survives in Hawthorne's
_Blithedale Romance_ (p. 219), in his _American Note Books_, in Emerson's
miscellaneous writings, and in many books and hundreds of articles by less
well-known people. Almost all of those who participated in this social
experiment spoke of it in after years with strong affection.
IDEALS OF THE NEW ENGLAND AUTHORS.--When we examine with closest scrutiny
the lives of the chief New England authors, of Emerson and Thoreau,
Longfellow and Whittier, Holmes and Lowell, we find that all were men of
the highest ideals and character. Not one could be accused of double
dealing and intentional misrepresentation, like Alexander Pope; not one was
intemperate, like Robert Burns or Edgar Allan Poe; not one was dissolute,
like Byron; not one uttered anything base, like many a modern novelist and
dramatist.
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