Then and
there he was a dreamer, and showed relatively little interest in this
present material, workaday world. Dr. Gladden says in his
_Recollections_ that he could never find out how he got down from
cloudland to Franklin Square. But as a matter of fact, in whatever
hostile regions he may have sojourned, he never quite lost his
residence in the supersensual world. Somehow he succeeded in reaching
Franklin Square and becoming an editor without ceasing to be a mystic.
The literary history of Mr. Alden the mystic, as distinguished from
the editor, seems to have begun with the appearance of an essay on
"The Philosophy of Art" in the _Williams Quarterly_ for December,
1856. Then, three or four years later, came "The Eleusinia," two
articles printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_. These papers led to the
delivery in 1864 of a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute
on "The Structure of Paganism." Some thirty years afterward two books
appeared--_God in His World_ in 1893 and _The Study of Death_ in
1895--which may be regarded as the culmination of the mental and
spiritual characteristics revealed in the _Williams Quarterly_ essay
and in the _Atlantic_ papers.
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