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Loyal Words that Grate the Ears

and expand their horizons. On the one hand, they lost an institutional base and became more isolated from conventional society — and I would argue thus less of a social movement. On the other hand, they gained more freedom to challenge the existing order and build, as Ripley put it, their own city of God. This change was not merely emotional or intellectual, it was also geographic. By the early 1840's many of the transcendentalists had actually deserted Boston for Concord and some had traveled even farther afield to the Utopian communities of Fruitlands and Brook Farm. Throughout these transitions, the transcendentalists, or at least those whose lives are chronicled by Rose, seemed to have maintained communication with each other if not always with the outside world. Rose concludes by praising the transcendentalists for trying—through their break with Boston society and their encouragement of individual and communal experimentation — to offer real alternatives to industrialized, competitive America. The fact that the transcendentalists failed in most cases to make any real contact with either workers or politicians is not presented as an overwhelming weakness. In this, I think Rose is wrong. A social movement does not have to arise out of existing institutions but at some point it must touch base with either those it intends to help or those who control the destinies of the victim class. For this reason, Rose fails to convince me that transcendentalism was totally a social movement. But she has written a very worthwhile book about a sometimes idiosyncratic, always interesting intellectual community.