Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/193

Rh ects of the period become fulfilled. The eighty-two pestilent heresies that were already reckoned up in Massachusetts before 1638, or the “generation of odd names and natures” which the Earl of Strafford found among the English Roundheads, could hardly surpass those of which Boston was the centre during the interval between the year 1835 and the absorbing political upheaval of 1848. The best single picture of the period is in Emerson’s lecture on “New England Reformers,” delivered in March, 1844; but it tells only a part of the story, for one very marked trait of the period was that the agitation reached all circles. German theology, as interpreted by Brownson, Parker, and Ripley, influenced the more educated class, and the Second Advent excitement equally prepared the way among the more ignorant. The anti-slavery movement was the profoundest moral element, on the whole, but a multitude of special enterprises also played their parts. People habitually spoke, in those days, of “the sisterhood of reforms,” and it was in as bad taste for a poor man to have but one hobby in his head as for a rich man to keep but one horse in his stable. Mesmerism was studied; gifted persons gave private sittings for the reading of character through handwriting; phrenology and physiology were ranked together; Alcott preached what Carlyle called a “potato gospel;” Graham denounced bolted flour; Edward Palmer wrote tracts against money. In a paper published in the “Dial” for July, 1842, on