I began to experiment now with lenses, placing various kinds and powers one above another. It occurred to me that I had hitherto brought their power to bear only upon whole, objects. But what would be the result of magnifying an object daguerrotyped until it covered the disc of the reflector, then photographing it, and afterward magnifying a central segment of the picture to its utmost, and again renewing the experiment on this? An infinite series of analyses might be carried into the heart of an image; and might not something therein, invisible not only to the naked eye, but to the strongest magnifier, be revealed? Following this reflection, I took a common stereoscopic view and subjected it to my lenses. It was an ordinary view of a Swiss hamlet, the chief object of which was an inn with a sign over the door surmounted by a bush. The only objects upon the sign discernible with a common convex eye-glass were a mug of beer on one side and a wine-bottle on the other. Their position indicated that something else was on the sign: the stronger diameters presently brought out "CARL ELZNERS"; the strongest I had were exhausted in bringing out "GARTEN UND GASTHAUS." When this, the utmost dimension, was reached, I photographed it. Then, taking ordinary magnifiers, I began upon that part of the sign where, if anything remained unevoked, it would be found. The reader will observe, that, each time that the result of one enlargement was made the subject for another, the loss was in the field or range which must be paid for intensity and minuteness. Thus, in the end, there might appear but one letter of a long sentence, or a part of a letter. In this case, however, the result was better than I had expected: I read distinctly, "—EIN, WEI—"; and Luther's popular lines, "Wer liebt nicht wein, weib," etc., were brought to my mind at once. Thus I had the sign in full: the powerful agent of the sun on earth had fixed Carl Elzner and his Protestant beer-garden on the stereoscopic view forever, whether the dull eyes of men could read them or not.

Thrilled and animated by this success, I hastened to apply the same plan of magnifying segment by segment to my photograph of Jupiter. But, alas, although something suggestive did appear, or so I fancied, the image grew dimmer with each analysis, until, under the higher powers, it disappeared, and the grainings of the card superseded the planet. Had I not proved that my principle was good in the case of the Swiss sign-board, I should now have given it up as the whim of an over-excited brain. But now I thought only of the assertion of the daguerrotypist, that "the nitrate was limited in sensitiveness only by the imperfection of the materials," (i. e. plates, glass, reflectors, etc.,) and I had heard the same repeated by the paper which had finally replaced the picture it held. I now determined to risk on the experiment the elegant steel plate on whose polish I had spent so much pains and time. I took the portrait of Jupiter thereon, and fixed it forever. This time I could not be mistaken in supposing that as the field of vision shrank some strange forms appeared; but I could be certain of none which were essentially different from those revealed by the largest telescopes. My narrowing and intensifying process then began to warn me of another failure: when I had reached the last point at which the image could be held at all, the grain of the steel plate was like great ropes, and it was only after resting my eyes for some time, then suddenly turning them upon it, that I could see any picture at all. For an instant it would look like an exceedingly delicate lichen,—then nothing was visible but huge bars of steel.

Ah, with what despair did I see the grand secret which had so long hovered before me and led my whole life now threatening to elude and abandon me forever! "But," I cried, "it shall not go so easily, by Heaven! If there be a genius in the casket, unsealed it shall be!"

I resolved to give up steel for some metal or substance of finer grain. I almost impoverished myself in purchasing plates of the finer metals, before it occurred to me to try glass, and had to laugh at my own stupidity when I discovered that in the last analysis glass showed much smoother than any of the rest. I immediately obtained a great many specimens of glass, and spent much time in subjecting them to my lenses only to see how much fibrous appearance, or unevenness, could be brought before the eye from a smooth surface. I found one excellent specimen, and gave myself up to grinding it to the utmost extent consistent with its strength.

I felt now that I was about to make a final test. It would be not only a test of my new plate, but of my own sanity, which I had at various times doubted. I felt, that, unless my idea should be proved true, I could no longer trust my reason, which had at every step beckoned me on to the next. I had studied medicine enough in my father's office long ago to know that either sanity or insanity may come as a reality from a mind's determined verdict on itself. When, therefore, I again sat down to analyze my daguerrotype of the planet, it was with the awe and fear which might beset one standing on a ledge between a frightful chasm and a transcendent height, and not knowing which was to receive him.

From the first burst of the sunlight over the world, I sat at my task. Each instrument, each lens I used, I spent an hour or hours over, giving it the finest polish or nicety of adjustment to which it could be brought. Into that day I had distilled my past; into it I was willing to distil the eternity that was before me. With each now application, the field of the planet shrank a thousand leagues, but each time the light deepened. According to my principle, there was no doubt that some object would be revealed before the space became too limited, provided nothing interfered with the distinctness of the picture. At length I calculated that I was selecting about twenty square miles from about seven hundred. Forms were distinct, but they were rigid, and painfully reminded me of the astronomic maps. About five removes from this, I judged that the space I was looking at must be about ten feet square. I was sure that the objects really occupying those ten feet must be in my picture, if I could evoke them.

On this I placed a mild power, and was startled at finding something new. The picture which had been so full of rigid and sharp outlines now became a confusion of ever-changing forms. Now it was light,—now shadow; angles faded into curves; but out of the swarming mass of shapes I could not, after hours of watching, obtain one that seemed like any form of life or art that I had ever seen.

Had I, then, come to the end of my line? My eyes so pained me, and had been so tried, that I strove to persuade myself that the evanescent forms resulting from my unsatisfactory experiment must be optical illusions. I determined to let matters rest as they were until the next day, when my brain would be less heated and my eye calmer and steadier.

They will never let a man alone,—they, the herd, who cry "Madman!" when any worker and his work which they cannot comprehend rise before them. In the great moment when, after years of climbing, I stood victorious on the summit, they claimed that I had fallen to the chasm's depths, and confined me here at Staunton as a hopeless lunatic. This heart of mine, burning with the grandest discovery ever made, must throb itself away in a cell, because it could not contain its high knowledge, but went forth among men once more to mingle ideal rays with their sunshine, and make every wind, as it passed over the earth, waft a higher secret than was ever before attained. A lunatic! I! But next me in array are the prisons of the only sane ones of history, the cells dug by Inquisitorial Ignorance in every age for its wisest men. Now I understand them; walls cannot impede the hands we stretch out to each other across oceans and centuries. One day the purblind world will invoke in its prayers the holy army of the martyrs of Thought.

Yes, I was mad,—mad to think that the world's horny eyes could not receive the severe light of knowledge,—mad as was he who ran through the streets and cried, "Eureka!" The head and front of my madness have this extent,—no more. And for this I must write the rest of my story here amid iron gratings, through which, however, thank God, my familiars, the stars, and the red, blue, and golden planets, glance kindly, saying, "Courage, brother! soon thou shaft rise to us, to whom thou belongest!" Yet I will write it: one day men will read, and say, "Come, let us garnish the sepulchre of one immured because his stupid age could not understand!" and then, doubtless, they will go forth to stone the seer on whose tongue lies the noblest secret of the Universe for that day.

When I left the last experiment mentioned in these pages, in order to recover steadiness of brain and nerve, and to relieve my overtaxed eyes, I had no hope of reaching success in any other way than that pointed out in the principle which I was pressing,—a principle whose importance is proved in the familiar experiments on stereoscopic views, whereby things entirely invisible to the naked eye are disclosed by lenses. But that night I dreamed out the success which had eluded my waking hours. I have nothing to say here about the phenomenon of dreaming: I state only the fact. In my dream there appeared to me my father, bearing in his left hand a plate of glass, and in his right a phial of bright blue liquid which he seemed to be pouring on the polished surface. The phial was of singular shape, having a long slender neck rising from a round globe. When I awoke, I found myself standing in the middle of the floor with hands stretched out appealingly to the vacant air.

Acknowledging, as I did, nothing but purely scientific methods,—convinced that nothing could be reached but through all the intervening steps fixed by Nature between Reason and Truth,—I should, at any other than such a weary time, have forgotten the vision in an hour. But now it took a deeper hold on my imagination. That my father should be associated in my dream with these experiments was natural; the glass plate which he had held was the same I was using; as for the phial, might it not be some old compound that I had known him or the daguerrotypist use, now casually spun out of the past and woven in with my present pursuits? Nevertheless, I was glad to shove aside this rationalistic interpretation: on the verge of drowning, I magnified the straw to a lifeboat, and caught at it. I pardoned myself for going to the shelves which still held my father's medicines, and examining each of the phials there. But when I turned away without finding one which at all answered to my dream, I felt mean and miserable; deeply disappointed at not having found the phial, I was ashamed at my retrogression to ages which dealt with incantations, and luck, and other impostures. I was shamed to the conclusion that the phial with its blue liquid was something I had read of in the curious old books which my father had hidden away from me, and which, strange to say, I had never been able to find since his death.

Whilst I was meditating thus, there was a knock at my door, and a drayman entered with a chest, which he said had belonged to my father, and had been by him deposited several years before with a friend who lived a few miles from our village. I could scarcely close and bolt the door after the man had departed; as he brought in the chest, I had seen through the lid the phial with the blue liquid. So certain was I of this, that before I opened it I went and withdrew my glass plate, repolished it, and made all ready for a final experiment. Opening the chest, I found the old books which had been abstracted, and a small medicine-box, in which was the phial seen in my dream.

But now the question arose, How was the blue fluid to be applied? I had not looked closely at the plate which my father held to see whether it was already prepared for an impression; and so I was at a loss to know whether this new fluid was to prepare the glass with a more perfect polish, or to mingle with the subtile nitrate itself. Unfortunately I tried the last first, and there was no result at all,—except the destruction of a third of the precious fluid. Cleaning the plate perfectly, I burnt into it, drop by drop, the whole of the contents of the phial. As I drained the last drop from it, it reddened on the glass as if it were the last drop of my heart's blood poured out.

At the first glance on the star-picture thus taken, I knew that I was successful. Jupiter shone like the nucleus of a comet, even before a second power was upon it. As picture after picture was formed, belts of the most exquisite hues surrounded the luminous planet, which seemed rolling up to me, hurled from lens to lens, as if wrested from its orbit by a commanding force. Plainer and plainer grew its surface; mountain-ranges, without crags or chasms, smooth and undulating, emerged; it was zoned with a central sunlit sea. On each scene of the panorama I lingered, and each was retained as well as the poor materials would allow. I was cautious enough to take two pictures of each distinct phase,—one to keep, if this happy voyage should be my last, and the other of course as the subject from which a centre should be selected for a new expansion.

At last there stood plainly before my eye a tower!—a tower, slender and high, with curved dome, the work of Art! A cry burst from my lips,—I fainted with joy. Afraid to touch the instrument with my trembling hand, I walked the floor, imploring back my nervous self-possession. Fixing the tower by photograph, I took the centre of its dome as the next point for expansion. Slowly, slowly, as if the fate of a solar system depended on each turn of the screw, I drew on the final view. An instant of gray confusion,—another of tremulous crystallization,—and, scarcely in contact with the tower's dome, as if about to float from it, hovered an aerial ship, with two round balls suspended above it. Again one little point was taken, for I felt that this was not the culmination of my vision; and now two figures appeared, manifestly human, but their features and dress as yet undistinguishable.

Another turn, and I looked upon the face of a glorious man!

Another, and the illusion, Space, shrank away beneath my feet, my eye soared over her abysses, and gazed into the eye of an immortal.

But now,—oh, horror!—turning back to earth, I remembered that I had not analyzed the precious liquid which could so link world with world. Seized with a sudden agony, I tried to strain one least drop more; but, alas! the power had perished from the earth!

For this loss I deserve all that has happened to me. My haste to fulfil my life's object proved me the victim of a mental lust, and I saw why the highest truth is not revealed: simply, it awaits those who can receive and not be intoxicated by it. And now the planet which I had disobeyed for another avenges itself,—seeing, naturally, in strange results, whose methods are untraceable, nothing but monomania. The photographs, in which the pollens of two planet-flowers mingle, lie in my attic, dust-eaten:—"Above all, the patient must not see anything of that kind," has been the order ever since I published a card announcing my discovery to my fellow-citizens.

But they were gentle; they did not take away all. The old books are with me, each a benison from a brother. The best works of ancient times are, I think, best understood when read by prison-light.

Hist! some visitor comes! Many come from curiosity to see one who thinks he descried a man in a planet "Distinguished man of science from Boston to see me,"—ah, indeed! Celebrated paper on tadpoles, I suppose! But now that I look closer, I like my Boston man-of-science's eye, and his voice is good. I have not yet exhausted the fingers of one hand in counting up all the sane people who have visited me since I have been immured.

How do I test them?

As now I test you.

Here my treasure of treasures I open. It is the old suppressed volume of John de Sacro Bosco, inscribed to that Castilian Alphonso who dared to have the tables of Ptolemy corrected. (Had he not been a king, he had been mad: such men as Bosco were mad after Alphonso died.) And thus to my curious scientific visitor I read what I ask may go into his report along with the description of my case.

"John de Sacro Bosco sendeth this book to Alphonso de Castile. A. D. 1237."

"They alone are kings who know."

"Ken and Can are twins."

"God will not be hurried."

"Sacred are the fools: God understandeth them."

"Impatient, I cried, 'I will clear the stair that leadeth to God!' Now sit I at His feet, lame and weak, and men scoff at knowledge, —'Aha, this cometh of ascending stairways!'"

"The silk-worm span its way up to wings. I am ashamed and dumb, who would soar ere I had toiled.

"When riseth an Ideal in the concave of some vaulting heart or brain, it is a new heaven and signeth a new earth."

"Each clear Idea that ascendeth the vault of Pure Reason is a Bethlehem star; be sure a Messias is born for it on the Earth; the new sign lit up in the heaven of Vision is a new power set in motion among men; and, do what the Herods will, Earth's incense, myrrh, yea, even its gold, must gather to the feet of the Omnipotent Child,—the IDEA."



IN WAR-TIME.

INSCRIBED TO W.B.

As they who watch by sick-beds find relief Unwittingly from the great stress of grief And anxious care in fantasies outwrought From the hearth's embers flickering low, or caught From whispering wind, or tread of passing feet, Or vagrant memory calling up some sweet Snatch of old song or romance, whence or why They scarcely know or ask,—so, thou and I, Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is strong In the endurance which outwearies Wrong, With meek persistence baffling brutal force, And trusting God against the universe,— We, doomed to watch a strife we may not share With other weapons than the patriot's prayer, Yet owning, with full hearts and moistened eyes, The awful beauty of self-sacrifice, And wrung by keenest sympathy for all Who give their loved ones for the living wall 'Twixt law and treason,—in this evil day May haply find, through automatic play Of pen and pencil, solace to our pain, And hearten others with the strength we gain. I know it has been said our times require No play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre, No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform To calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm, But the stern war-blast rather, such as sets The battle's teeth of serried bayonets, And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with these Some softer tints may blend, and milder keys Believe the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet, If so we may, our hearts, even while we eat The bitter harvest of our own device And half a century's moral cowardice. As Nrnberg sang while Wittenberg defied, And Kranach painted by his Luther's side, And through the war-march of the Puritan The silver stream of Marvell's music ran, So let the household melodies be sung, The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung,— So let us hold against the hosts of Night And Slavery all our vantage-ground of Light. Let Treason boast its savagery, and shake From its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake, Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan, And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of man, And make the tale of Fijian banquets dull By drinking whiskey from a loyal skull,— But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease, (God grant it soon!) the graceful arts of peace: No foes are conquered who the victors teach Their vandal manners and barbaric speech.

And while, with hearts of thankfulness, we bear Of the great common burden our full share, Let none upbraid us that the waves entice Thy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint device, Rhythmic and sweet, beguiles my pen away From the sharp strifes and sorrows of to-day. Thus, while the east-wind keen from Labrador Sings in the leafless elms, and from the shore Of the great sea comes the monotonous roar Of the long-breaking surf, and all the sky Is gray with cloud, home-bound and dull, I try To time a simple legend to the sounds Of winds in the woods, and waves on pebbled bounds,— A song of breeze and billow, such as might Be sung by tired sea-painters, who at night Look from their hemlock camps, by quiet cove Or beach, moon-lighted, on the waves they love. (So hast thou looked, when level sunset lay On the calm bosom of some Eastern bay, And all the spray-moist rocks and waves that rolled Up the white sand-slopes flashed with ruddy gold.) Something it has—a flavor of the sea, And the sea's freedom—which reminds of thee. Its faded picture, dimly smiling down From the blurred fresco of the ancient town, I have not touched with warmer tints in vain, If, in this dark, sad year, it steals one thought from pain.



AMY WENTWORTH.

Her fingers shame the ivory keys They dance so light along; The bloom upon her parted lips Is sweeter than the song.

O perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles! Her thoughts are not of thee: She better loves the salted wind, The voices of the sea.

Her heart is like an outbound ship That at its anchor swings; The murmur of the stranded shell Is in the song she sings.

She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise, But dreams the while of one Who watches from his sea-blown deck The icebergs in the sun.

She questions all the winds that blow, And every fog-wreath dim, And bids the sea-birds flying north Bear messages to him.

She speeds them with the thanks of men He perilled life to save, And grateful prayers like holy oil To smooth for him the wave.

Brown Viking of the fishing-smack! Fair toast of all the town!— The skipper's jerkin ill beseems The lady's silken gown!

But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear For him the blush of shame Who dares to set his manly gifts Against her ancient name.

The stream is brightest at its spring, And blood is not like wine; Nor honored less than he who heirs Is he who founds a line.

Full lightly shall the prize be won, If love be Fortune's spur; And never maiden stoops to him Who lifts himself to her.

Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street, With stately stair-ways worn By feet of old Colonial knights And ladies gentle-born.

Still green about its ample porch The English ivy twines, Trained back to show in English oak The herald's carven signs.

And on her, from the wainscot old, Ancestral faces frown,— And this has worn the soldier's sword, And that the judge's gown.

But, strong of will and proud as they, She walks the gallery-floor As if she trod her sailor's deck By stormy Labrador!

The sweet-brier blooms on Kittery-side, And green are Elliot's bowers; Her garden is the pebbled beach, The mosses are her flowers.

She looks across the harbor-bar To see the white gulls fly, His greeting from the Northern sea Is in their clanging cry.

She hums a song, and dreams that he, As in its romance old, Shall homeward ride with silken sails And masts of beaten gold!

Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair, And high and low mate ill; But love has never known a law Beyond its own sweet will!



THOREAU.

Henry David Thoreau was the last male descendant of a French ancestor who came to this country from the Isle of Guernsey. His character exhibited occasional traits drawn from this blood in singular combination with a very strong Saxon genius.

He was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on the 12th of July, 1817. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1837, but without any literary distinction. An iconoclast in literature, he seldom thanked colleges for their service to him, holding them in small esteem, whilst yet his debt to them was important. After leaving the University, he joined his brother in teaching a private school, which he soon renounced. His father was a manufacturer of lead-pencils, and Henry applied himself for a time to this craft, believing he could make a better pencil than was then in use. After completing his experiments, he exhibited his work to chemists and artists in Boston, and having obtained their certificates to its excellence and to its equality with the best London manufacture, he returned home contented. His friends congratulated him that he had now opened his way to fortune. But he replied, that he should never make another pencil. "Why should I? I would not do again what I have done once." He resumed his endless walks and miscellaneous studies, making every day some new acquaintance with Nature, though as yet never speaking of zoology or botany, since, though very studious of natural facts, he was incurious of technical and textual science.

At this time, a strong, healthy youth, fresh from college, whilst all his companions were choosing their profession, or eager to begin some lucrative employment, it was inevitable that his thoughts should be exercised on the same question, and it required rare decision to refuse all the accustomed paths, and keep his solitary freedom at the cost of disappointing the natural expectations of his family and friends: all the more difficult that he had a perfect probity, was exact in securing his own independence, and in holding every man to the like duty. But Thoreau never faltered. He was a born protestant. He declined to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living well. If he slighted and defied the opinions of others, it was only that he was more intent to reconcile his practice with his own belief. Never idle or self-indulgent, he preferred, when he wanted money, earning it by some piece of manual labor agreeable to him, as building a boat or a fence, planting, grafting, surveying, or other short work, to any long engagements. With his hardy habits and few wants, his skill in wood-craft, and his powerful arithmetic, he was very competent to live in any part of the world. It would cost him less time to supply his wants than another. He was therefore secure of his leisure.

A natural skill for mensuration, growing out of his mathematical knowledge, and his habit of ascertaining the measures and distances of objects which interested him, the size of trees, the depth and extent of ponds and rivers, the height of mountains, and the air-line distance of his favorite summits,—this, and his intimate knowledge of the territory about Concord, made him drift into the profession of land-surveyor. It had the advantage for him that it led him continually into new and secluded grounds, and helped his studies of Nature. His accuracy and skill in this work were readily appreciated, and he found all the employment he wanted.

He could easily solve the problems of the surveyor, but he was daily beset with graver questions, which he manfully confronted. He interrogated every custom, and wished to settle all his practice on an ideal foundation. He was a protestant l'outrance, and few lives contain so many renunciations. He was bred to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; be never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. He chose, wisely, no doubt, for himself, to be the bachelor of thought and Nature. He had no talent for wealth, and knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inelegance. Perhaps he fell into his way of living without forecasting it much, but approved it with later wisdom. "I am often reminded," he wrote in his journal, "that, if I had bestowed on me the wealth of Croesus, my aims must be still the same, and my means essentially the same." He had no temptations to fight against,—no appetites, no passions, no taste for elegant trifles. A fine house, dress, the manners and talk of highly cultivated people were all thrown away on him. He much preferred a good Indian, and considered these refinements as impediments to conversation, wishing to meet his companion on the simplest terms. He declined invitations to dinner-parties, because there each was in every one's way, and he could not meet the individuals to any purpose. "They make their pride," he said, "in making their dinner cost much; I make my pride in making my dinner cost little." When asked at table what dish he preferred, he answered, "The nearest." He did not like the taste of wine, and never had a vice in his life. He said,—"I have a faint recollection of pleasure derived from smoking dried lily-stems, before I was a man. I had commonly a supply of these. I have never smoked anything more noxious."

He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them himself. In his travels, he used the railroad only to get over so much country as was unimportant to the present purpose, walking hundreds of miles, avoiding taverns, buying a lodging in farmers' and fishermen's houses, as cheaper, and more agreeable to him, and because there he could better find the men and the information he wanted.

There was somewhat military in big nature not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, I may say required a little sense of victory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into full exercise. It cost him nothing to say No; indeed, he found it much easier than to say Yes. It seemed as if his first instinct on hearing a proposition was to controvert it, so impatient was he of the limitations of our daily thought. This habit, of course, is a little chilling to the social affections; and though the companion would in the end acquit him of any malice or untruth, yet it mars conversation. Hence, no equal companion stood in affectionate relations with one so pure and guileless. "I love Henry," said one of his friends, "but I cannot like him; and as for taking his arm, I should as soon think of taking the arm of an elm-tree."

Yet, hermit and stoic as he was, he was really fond of sympathy, and threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of young people whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by field and river. And he was always ready to lead a huckleberry-party or a search for chestnuts or grapes. Talking, one day, of a public discourse, Henry remarked, that whatever succeeded with the audience was bad. I said, "Who would not like to write something which all can read, like 'Robinson Crusoe'? and who does not see with regret that his page is not solid with a right materialistic treatment, which delights everybody?" Henry objected, of course, and vaunted the better lectures which reached only a few persons. But, at supper, a young girl, understanding that he was to lecture at the Lyceum, sharply asked him, "whether his lecture would be a nice, interesting story, such as she wished to hear, or whether it was one of those old philosophical things that she did not care about." Henry turned to her, and bethought himself, and, I saw, was trying to believe that he had matter that might fit her and her brother, who were to sit up and go to the lecture, if it was a good one for them.

He was a speaker and actor of the truth,—born such,—and was ever running into dramatic situations from this cause. In any circumstance, it interested all bystanders to know what part Henry would take, and what he would say; and he did not disappoint expectation, but used an original judgment on each emergency. In 1845 he built himself a small framed house on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two years alone, a life of labor and study. This action was quite native and fit for him. No one who knew him would tax him with affectation. He was more unlike his neighbors in his thought than in his action. As soon as he had exhausted the advantages of that solitude, he abandoned it. In 1847, not approving some uses to which the public expenditure was applied, he refused to pay his town tax, and was put in jail. A friend paid the tax for him, and he was released. The like annoyance was threatened the next year. But, as his friends paid the tax, notwithstanding his protest, I believe he ceased to resist. No opposition or ridicule had any weight with him. He coldly and fully stated his opinion without affecting to believe that it was the opinion of the company. It was of no consequence, if every one present held the opposite opinion. On one occasion he went to the University Library to procure some books. The librarian refused to lend them. Mr. Thoreau repaired to the President, who stated to him the rules and usages, which permitted the loan of books to resident graduates, to clergymen who were alumni, and to some others resident within a circle of ten miles' radius from the College. Mr. Thoreau explained to the President that the railroad had destroyed the old scale of distances,—that the library was useless, yes, and President and College useless, on the terms of his rules,—that the one benefit he owed to the College was its library,—that, at this moment, not only his want of books was imperative, but he wanted a large number of books, and assured him that he, Thoreau, and not the librarian, was the proper custodian of these. In short, the President found the petitioner so formidable, and the rules getting to look so ridiculous, that he ended by giving him a privilege which in his hands proved unlimited thereafter.

No truer American existed than Thoreau. His preference of his country and condition was genuine, and his aversation from English and European manners and tastes almost reached contempt. He listened impatiently to news or bon mots gleaned from London circles; and though he tried to be civil, these anecdotes fatigued him. The men were all imitating each other, and on a small mould. Why can they not live as far apart as possible, and each be a man by himself? What he sought was the most energetic nature; and he wished to go to Oregon, not to London. "In every part of Great Britain," he wrote in his diary, "are discovered traces of the Romans, their funereal urns, their camps, their roads, their dwellings. But New England, at least, is not based on any Roman ruins. We have not to lay the foundations of our houses on the ashes of a former civilization."

But, idealist as he was, standing for abolition of slavery, abolition of tariffs, almost for abolition of government, it is needless to say he found himself not only unrepresented in actual politics, but almost equally opposed to every class of reformers. Yet he paid the tribute of his uniform respect to the Anti-Slavery party. One man, whose personal acquaintance he had formed, he honored with exceptional regard. Before the first friendly word had been spoken for Captain John Brown, he sent notices to most houses in Concord, that he would speak in a public hall on the condition and character of John Brown, on Sunday evening, and invited all people to come. The Republican Committee, the Abolitionist Committee, sent him word that it was premature and not advisable. He replied,—"I did not send to you for advice, but to announce that I am to speak." The hall was filled at an early hour by people of all parties, and his earnest eulogy of the hero was heard by all respectfully, by many with a sympathy that surprised themselves.

It was said of Plotinus that he was ashamed of his body, and it is very likely he had good reason for it,—that his body was a bad servant, and he had not skill in dealing with the material world, as happens often to men of abstract intellect. But Mr. Thoreau was equipped with a most adapted and serviceable body. He was of short stature, firmly built, of light complexion, with strong, serious blue eyes, and a grave aspect,—his face covered in the late years with a becoming beard. His senses were acute, his frame well-knit and hardy, his hands strong and skilful in the use of tools. And there was a wonderful fitness of body and mind. He could pace sixteen rods more accurately than another man could measure them with rod and chain. He could find his path in the woods at night, he said, better by his feet than his eyes. He could estimate the measure of a tree very well by his eye; he could estimate the weight of a calf or a pig, like a dealer. From a box containing a bushel or more of loose pencils, he could take up with his hands fast enough just a dozen pencils at every grasp. He was a good swimmer, runner, skater, boatman, and would probably outwalk most countrymen in a day's journey. And the relation of body to mind was still finer than we have indicated. He said he wanted every stride his legs made. The length of his walk uniformly made the length of his writing. If shut up in the house, he did not write at all.

He had a strong common sense, like that which Rose Flammock, the weaver's daughter, in Scott's romance, commends in her father, as resembling a yardstick, which, whilst it measures dowlas and diaper, can equally well measure tapestry and cloth of gold. He had always a new resource. When I was planting forest-trees, and had procured half a peck of acorns, he said that only a small portion of them would be sound, and proceeded to examine them, and select the sound ones. But finding this took time, he said, "I think, if you put them all into water, the good ones will sink"; which experiment we tried with success. He could plan a garden, or a house, or a barn; would have been competent to lead a "Pacific Exploring Expedition"; could give judicious counsel in the gravest private or public affairs.

He lived for the day, not cumbered and mortified by his memory. If he brought you yesterday a new proposition, he would bring you to-day another not less revolutionary. A very industrious man, and setting, like all highly organized men, a high value on his time, he seemed the only man of leisure in town, always ready for any excursion that promised well, or for conversation prolonged into late hours. His trenchant sense was never stopped by his rules of daily prudence, but was always up to the new occasion. He liked and used the simplest food, yet, when some one urged a vegetable diet, Thoreau thought all diets a very small matter, saying that "the man who shoots the buffalo lives better than the man who boards at the Graham House." He said,—"You can sleep near the railroad, and never be disturbed: Nature knows very well what sounds are worth attending to, and has made up her mind not to hear the railroad-whistle. But things respect the devout mind, and a mental ecstasy was never interrupted." He noted, what repeatedly befell him, that, after receiving from a distance a rare plant, he would presently find the same in his own haunts. And those pieces of luck which happen only to good players happened to him. One day, walking with a stranger, who inquired where Indian arrow-heads could be found, he replied, "Everywhere," and, stooping forward, picked one on the instant from the ground. At Mount Washington, in Tuckerman's Ravine, Thoreau had a bad fall, and sprained his foot. As he was in the act of getting up from his fall, he saw for the first time the leaves of the Arnica mollis.

His robust common sense, armed with stout hands, keen perceptions, and strong will, cannot yet account for the superiority which shone in his simple and hidden life. I must add the cardinal fact, that there was an excellent wisdom in him, proper to a rare class of men, which showed him the material world as a means and symbol. This discovery, which sometimes yields to poets a certain casual and interrupted light, serving for the ornament of their writing, was in him an unsleeping insight; and whatever faults or obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, "The other world is all my art: my pencils will draw no other; my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I do not use it as a means." This was the muse and genius that ruled his opinions, conversation, studies, work, and course of life. This made him a searching judge of men. At first glance he measured his companion, and, though insensible to some fine traits of culture, could very well report his weight and calibre. And this made the impression of genius which his conversation sometimes gave.

He understood the matter in hand at a glance, and saw the limitations and poverty of those he talked with, so that nothing seemed concealed from such terrible eyes. I have repeatedly known young men of sensibility converted in a moment to the belief that this was the man they were in search of, the man of men, who could tell them all they should do. His own dealing with them was never affectionate, but superior, didactic,—scorning their petty ways,—very slowly conceding, or not conceding at all, the promise of his society at their houses, or even at his own. "Would he not walk with them?" He did not know. There was nothing so important to him as his walk; he had no walks to throw away on company. Visits were offered him from respectful parties, but he declined them. Admiring friends offered to carry him at their own cost to the Yellow-Stone River,—to the West Indies,—to South America. But though nothing could be more grave or considered than his refusals, they remind one in quite new relations of that fop Brummel's reply to the gentleman who offered him his carriage in a shower, "But where will you ride, then?"—and what accusing silences, and what searching and irresistible speeches, battering down all defences, his companions can remember!

Mr. Thoreau dedicated his genius with such entire love to the fields, hills, and waters of his native town, that he made them known and interesting to all reading Americans, and to people over the sea. The river on whose banks he was born and died he knew from its springs to its confluence with the Merrimack. He had made summer and winter observations on it for many years, and at every hour of the day and the night. The result of the recent survey of the Water Commissioners appointed by the State of Massachusetts he had reached by his private experiments, several years earlier. Every fact which occurs in the bed, on the banks, or in the air over it; the fishes, and their spawning and nests, their manners, their food; the shad-flies which fill the air on a certain evening once a year, and which are snapped at by the fishes so ravenously that many of these die of repletion; the conical heaps of small stones on the river-shallows, one of which heaps will sometimes overfill a cart,—these heaps the huge nests of small fishes; the birds which frequent the stream, heron, duck, sheldrake, loon, osprey; the snake, muskrat, otter, woodchuck, and fox, on the banks; the turtle, frog, hyla, and cricket, which make the banks vocal,—were all known to him, and, as it were, townsmen and fellow-creatures; so that he felt an absurdity or violence in any narrative of one of these by itself apart, and still more of its dimensions on an inch-rule, or in the exhibition of its skeleton, or the specimen of a squirrel or a bird in brandy. He liked to speak of the manners of the river, as itself a lawful creature, yet with exactness, and always to an observed fact. As he knew the river, so the ponds in this region.

One of the weapons he used, more important than microscope or alcohol-receiver to other investigators, was a whim which grew on him by indulgence, yet appeared in gravest statement, namely, of extolling his own town and neighborhood as the most favored centre for natural observation. He remarked that the Flora of Massachusetts embraced almost all the important plants of America,—most of the oaks, most of the willows, the best pines, the ash, the maple, the beech, the nuts. He returned Kane's "Arctic Voyage" to a friend of whom he had borrowed it, with the remark, that "most of the phenomena noted might be observed in Concord." He seemed a little envious of the Pole, for the coincident sunrise and sunset, or five minutes' day after six months: a splendid fact, which Annursnuc had never afforded him. He found red snow in one of his walks, and told me that he expected to find yet the Victoria regia in Concord. He was the attorney of the indigenous plants, and owned to a preference of the weeds to the imported plants, as of the Indian to the civilized man,—and noticed, with pleasure, that the willow bean-poles of his neighbor had grown more than his beans. "See these weeds," he said, "which have been hoed at by a million farmers all spring and summer, and yet have prevailed, and just now come out triumphant over all lanes, pastures, fields, and gardens, such is their vigor. We have insulted them with low names, too,—as Pigweed, Wormwood, Chickweed, Shad-Blossom." He says, "They have brave names, too,—Ambrosia, Stellaria, Amelanchia, Amaranth, etc."

I think his fancy for referring everything to the meridian of Concord did not grow out of any ignorance or depreciation of other longitudes or latitudes, but was rather a playful expression of his conviction of the indifferency of all places, and that the best place for each is where he stands. He expressed it once in this wise:—"I think nothing is to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under your feet is not sweeter to you to eat than any other in this world, or in any world."

The other weapon with which he conquered all obstacles in science was patience. He knew how to sit immovable, a part of the rock he rested on, until the bird, the reptile, the fish, which had retired from him, should come back, and resume its habits, nay, moved by curiosity, should come to him and watch him.

It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own. He knew every track in the snow or on the ground, and what creature had taken this path before him. One must submit abjectly to such a guide, and the reward was great. Under his arm he carried an old music-book to press plants; in his pocket, his diary and pencil, a spy-glass for birds, microscope, jack-knife, and twine. He wore straw hat, stout shoes, strong gray trousers, to brave shrub-oaks and smilax, and to climb a tree for a hawk's or a squirrel's nest. He waded into the pool for the water-plants, and his strong legs were no insignificant part of his armor. On the day I speak of he looked for the Menyanthes, detected it across the wide pool, and, on examination of the florets, decided that it had been in flower five days. He drew out of his breast-pocket his diary, and read the names of all the plants that should bloom on this day, whereof he kept account as a banker when his notes fall due. The Cypripedium not due till to-morrow. He thought, that, if waked up from a trance, in this swamp, he could tell by the plants what time of the year it was within two days. The redstart was flying about, and presently the fine grosbeaks, whose brilliant scarlet makes the rash gazer wipe his eye, and whose fine clear note Thoreau compared to that of a tanager which has got rid of its hoarseness. Presently he heard a note which he called that of the night-warbler, a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush, and which it was vain to seek; the only bird that sings indifferently by night and by day. I told him he must beware of finding and booking it, lest life should have nothing more to show him. He said, "What you seek in vain for, half your life, one day you come full upon all the family at dinner. You seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it you become its prey."

His interest in the flower or the bird lay very deep in his mind, was connected with Nature,—and the meaning of Nature was never attempted to be defined by him. He would not offer a memoir of his observations to the Natural History Society. "Why should I? To detach the description from its connections in my mind would make it no longer true or valuable to me: and they do not wish what belongs to it." His power of observation seemed to indicate additional senses. He saw as with microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and his memory was a photographic register of all he saw and heard. And yet none knew better than he that it is not the fact that imports, but the impression or effect of the fact on your mind. Every fact lay in glory in his mind, a type of the order and beauty of the whole.

His determination on Natural History was organic. He confessed that he sometimes felt like a hound or a panther, and, if born among Indians, would have been a fell hunter. But, restrained by his Massachusetts culture, he played out the game in this mild form of botany and ichthyology. His intimacy with animals suggested what Thomas Fuller records of Butler the apiologist, that "either he had told the bees things or the bees had told him." Snakes coiled round his leg; the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them out of the water; he pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail, and took the foxes under his protection from the hunters. Our naturalist had perfect magnanimity; he had no secrets: he would carry you to the heron's haunt, or even to his most prized botanical swamp,—possibly knowing that you could never find it again, yet willing to take his risks.

No college ever offered him a diploma, or a professor's chair; no academy made him its corresponding secretary, its discoverer, or even its member. Whether these learned bodies feared the satire of his presence. Yet so much knowledge of Nature's secret and genius few others possessed, none in a more large and religious synthesis. For not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to the truth itself; and as he discovered everywhere among doctors some leaning of courtesy, it discredited them. He grew to be revered and admired by his townsmen, who had at first known him only as an oddity. The farmers who employed him as a surveyor soon discovered his rare accuracy and skill, his knowledge of their lands, of trees, of birds, of Indian remains, and the like, which enabled him to tell every farmer more than he knew before of his own farm; so that he began to feel a little as if Mr. Thoreau had better rights in his land than he. They felt, too, the superiority of character which addressed all men with a native authority.

Indian relics abound in Concord,—arrow-heads, stone chisels, pestles, and fragments of pottery; and on the river-bank, large heaps of clam-shells and ashes mark spots which the savages frequented. These, and every circumstance touching the Indian, were important in his eyes. His visits to Maine were chiefly for love of the Indian. He had the satisfaction of seeing the manufacture of the bark-canoe, as well as of trying his hand in its management on the rapids. He was inquisitive about the making of the stone arrow-head, and in his last days charged a youth setting out for the Rocky Mountains to find an Indian who could tell him that: "It was well worth a visit to California to learn it." Occasionally, a small party of Penobscot Indians would visit Concord, and pitch their tents for a few weeks in summer on the river-bank. He failed not to make acquaintance with the best of them; though he well knew that asking questions of Indians is like catechizing beavers and rabbits. In his last visit to Maine he had great satisfaction from Joseph Polis, an intelligent Indian of Oldtown, who was his guide for some weeks.

He was equally interested in every natural fact. The depth of his perception found likeness of law throughout Nature, and I know not any genius who so swiftly inferred universal law from the single fact. He was no pedant of a department. His eye was open to beauty, and his ear to music. He found these, not in rare conditions, but wheresoever he went. He thought the best of music was in single strains; and he found poetic suggestion in the humming of the telegraph-wire.

His poetry might be bad or good; he no doubt wanted a lyric facility and technical skill; but he had the source of poetry in his spiritual perception. He was a good reader and critic, and his judgment on poetry was to the ground of it. He could not be deceived as to the presence or absence of the poetic element in any composition, and his thirst for this made him negligent and perhaps scornful of superficial graces. He would pass by many delicate rhythms, but he would have detected every live stanza or line in a volume, and knew very well where to find an equal poetic charm in prose. He was so enamored of the spiritual beauty that he held all actual written poems in very light esteem in the comparison. He admired Aeschylus and Pindar; but, when some one was commending them, he said that "Aeschylus and the Greeks, in describing Apollo and Orpheus, had given no song, or no good one. They ought not to have moved trees, but to have chanted to the gods such a hymn as would have sung all their old ideas out of their heads, and new ones in." His own verses are often rude and defective. The gold does not yet run pure, is drossy and crude. The thyme and marjoram are not yet honey. But if he want lyric fineness and technical merits, if he have not the poetic temperament, he never lacks the causal thought, that his genius was better than his talent. He knew the worth of the Imagination for the uplifting and consolation of human life, and liked to throw every thought into a symbol. The fact you tell is of no value, but only the impression. For this reason his presence was poetic, always piqued the curiosity to know more deeply the secrets of his mind. He had many reserves, an unwillingness to exhibit to profane eyes what was still sacred in his own, and knew well how to throw a poetic veil over his experience. All readers of "Walden" will remember his mythical record of his disappointments:—

"I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks, and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud; and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves." [Walden, p. 20.]

His riddles were worth the reading, and I confide, that, if at any time I do not understand the expression, it is yet just. Such was the wealth of his truth that it was not worth his while to use words in vain. His poem entitled "Sympathy" reveals the tenderness under that triple steel of stoicism, and the intellectual subtilty it could animate. His classic poem on "Smoke" suggests Simonides, but is better than any poem of Simonides. His biography is in his verses. His habitual thought makes all his poetry a hymn to the Cause of causes,

"I hearing get, who had but ears, And sight, who had but eyes before; I moments live, who lived but years, And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore."

And still more in these religious lines:—

"Now chiefly is my natal hour, And only now my prime of life; I will not doubt the love untold, Which not my worth or want hath bought, Which wooed me young, and wooes me old, And to this evening hath me brought."

Whilst he used in his writings a certain petulance of remark in reference to churches or churchmen, he was a person of a rare, tender, and absolute religion, a person incapable of any profanation, by act or by thought. Of course, the same isolation which belonged to his original thinking and living detached him from the social religious forms. This is neither to be censured nor regretted. Aristotle long ago explained it, when he said, "One who surpasses his fellow-citizens in virtue is no longer a part of the city. Their law is not for him, since he is a law to himself."

Thoreau was sincerity itself, and might fortify the convictions of prophets in the ethical laws by his holy living. It was an affirmative experience which refused to be set aside. A truth-speaker he, capable of the most deep and strict conversation; a physician to the wounds of any soul; a friend, knowing not only the secret of friendship, but almost worshipped by those few persons who resorted to him as their confessor and prophet, and knew the deep value of his mind and great heart. He thought that without religion or devotion of some kind nothing great was ever accomplished: and he thought that the bigoted sectarian had better bear this in mind.

His virtues, of course, sometimes ran into extremes. It was easy to trace to the inexorable demand on all for exact truth that austerity which made this willing hermit more solitary even than he wished. Himself of a perfect probity, he required not less of others. He had a disgust at crime, and no worldly success would cover it. He detected paltering as readily in dignified and prosperous persons as in beggars, and with equal scorn. Such dangerous frankness was in his dealing that his admirers called him "that terrible Thoreau," as if he spoke when silent, and was still present when he had departed. I think the severity of his ideal interfered to deprive him of a healthy sufficiency of human society.

The habit of a realist to find things the reverse of their appearance inclined him to put every statement in a paradox. A certain habit of antagonism defaced his earlier writings,—a trick of rhetoric not quite outgrown in his later, of substituting for the obvious word and thought its diametrical opposite. He praised wild mountains and winter forests for their domestic air, in snow and ice he would find sultriness, and commended the wilderness for resembling Rome and Paris. "It was so dry, that you might call it wet."

The tendency to magnify the moment, to read all the laws of Nature in the one object or one combination under your eye, is of course comic to those who do not share the philosopher's perception of identity. To him there was no such thing as size. The pond was a small ocean; the Atlantic, a large Walden Pond. He referred every minute fact to cosmical laws. Though he meant to be just, he seemed haunted by a certain chronic assumption that the science of the day pretended completeness, and he had just found out that the savans had neglected to discriminate a particular botanical variety, had failed to describe the seeds or count the sepals. "That is to say," we replied, "the blockheads were not born in Concord; but who said they were? It was their unspeakable misfortune to be born in London, or Paris, or Rome; but, poor fellows, they did what they could, considering that they never saw Bateman's Pond, or Nine-Acre Corner, or Becky-Stow's Swamp. Besides, what were you sent into the world for, but to add this observation?"

Had his genius been only contemplative, he had been fitted to his life, but with his energy and practical ability he seemed born for great enterprise and for command; and I so much regret the loss of his rare powers of action, that I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition. Wanting this, instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry-party. Pounding beans is good to the end of pounding empires one of these days; but if, at the end of years, it is still only beans!

But these foibles, real or apparent, were fast vanishing in the incessant growth of a spirit so robust and wise, and which effaced its defeats with new triumphs. His study of Nature was a perpetual ornament to him, and inspired his friends with curiosity to see the world through his eyes, and to hear his adventures. They possessed every kind of interest.

He had many elegances of his own, whilst he scoffed at conventional elegance. Thus, he could not bear to hear the sound of his own steps, the grit of gravel; and therefore never willingly walked in the road, but in the grass, on mountains and in woods. His senses were acute, and he remarked that by night every dwelling-house gives out bad air, like a slaughter-house. He liked the pure fragrance of melilot. He honored certain plants with special regard, and, over all, the pond-lily,—then, the gentian, and the Mikania scondens, and "life-everlasting," and a bass-tree which he visited every year, when it bloomed, in the middle of July. He thought the scent a more oracular inquisition than the sight,—more oracular and trustworthy. The scent, of course, reveals what is concealed from the other senses. By it he detected earthiness. He delighted in echoes, and said they were almost the only kind of kindred voices that he heard. He loved Nature so well, was so happy in her solitude, that he became very jealous of cities, and the sad work which their refinements and artifices made with man and his dwelling.

The axe was always destroying his forest. "Thank God," he said, "they cannot cut down the clouds!" "All kinds of figures are drawn on the blue ground with this fibrous white paint."

I subjoin a few sentences taken from his unpublished manuscripts, not only as records of his thought and feeling, but for their power of description and literary excellence.

"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk."

"The chub is a soft fish, and tastes like boiled brown paper salted."

"The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them."

"The locust z-ing."

"Devil's-needles zigzagging along the Nut-Meadow brook."

"Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear."

"I put on some hemlock-boughs, and the rich salt crackling of their leaves was like mustard to the ear, the crackling of uncountable regiments. Dead trees love the fire."

"The bluebird carries the sky on his back."

"The tanager flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves."

"If I wish for a horse-hair for my compass-sight, I must go to the stable; but the hair-bird, with her sharp eyes, goes to the road."

"Immortal water, alive even to the superficies."

"Fire is the most tolerable third party."

"Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that line."

"No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an instep as the beech."

"How did these beautiful rainbow-tints get into the shell of the fresh-water clam, buried in the mud at the bottom of our dark river?"

"Hard are the times when the infant's shoes are second-foot."

"We are strictly confined to our men to whom we give liberty."

"Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself."

"Of what significance the things you can forget? A little thought is sexton to all the world."

"How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time of character?"

"Only he can be trusted with gifts who can present a face of bronze to expectations."

"I ask to be melted. You can only ask of the metals that they be tender to the fire that melts them. To nought else can they be tender."

There is a flower known to botanists, one of the same genus with our summer plant called "Life-Everlasting," a Gnaphalium like that, which grows on the most inaccessible cliffs of the Tyrolese mountains, where the chamois dare hardly venture, and which the hunter, tempted by its beauty, and by his love, (for it is immensely valued by the Swiss maidens,) climbs the cliffs to gather, and is sometimes found dead at the foot, with the flower in his hand. It is called by botanists the Gnaphalium leontopodium, but by the Swiss Edelweisse, which signifies Noble Purity. Thoreau seemed to me living in the hope to gather this plant, which belonged to him of right. The scale on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity, and we were the less prepared for his sudden disappearance. The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost. It seems an injury that he should leave in the midst his broken task, which none else can finish,—a kind of indignity to so noble a soul, that it should depart out of Nature before yet he has been really shown to his peers for what be is. But he, at least, is content. His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home.



A SUMMER DAY.

At daybreak, in the fresh light, joyfully The fishermen drew in their laden net; The shore shone rosy purple, and the sea Was streaked with violet,

And, pink with sunrise, many a shadowy sail Lay southward, lighting up the sleeping bay, And in the west the white moon, still and pale, Faded before the day.

Silence was everywhere. The rising tide Slowly filled every cove and inlet small: A musical low whisper, multiplied, You heard, and that was all.

No clouds at dawn,—but, as the sun climbed higher, White columns, thunderous, splendid, up the sky Floated and stood, heaped in the sun's clear fire, A stately company.

Stealing along the coast from cape to cape, The weird mirage crept tremulously on, In many a magic change and wondrous shape, Throbbing beneath the sun.

At noon the wind rose,—swept the glassy sea To sudden ripple,—thrust against the clouds A strenuous shoulder,—gathering steadily, Drove them before in crowds,

Till all the west was dark, and inky black The level ruffled water underneath, And up the wind-cloud tossed, a ghostly rack, In many a ragged wreath.

Then sudden roared the thunder, a great peal Magnificent, that broke and rolled away; And down the wind plunged, like a furious keel Cleaving the sea to spray,

And brought the rain, sweeping o'er land and sea. And then was tumult! Lightning, sharp and keen, Thunder, wind, rain,—a mighty jubilee The heaven and earth between!

And loud the ocean sang,—a chorus grand,— A solemn music sung in undertone Of waves that broke about, on either hand, The little island lone,

Where, joyful in His tempest as His calm, Held in the hollow of that hand of His, I joined with heart and soul in God's great psalm, Thrilled with a nameless bliss.

Soon lulled the wind,-the summer storm soon died; The shattered clouds went eastward, drifting slow; From the low sun the rain-fringe swept aside, Bright in his rosy glow,

And wide a splendor streamed through all the sky O'er land and sea one soft, delicious blush, That touched the gray rocks lightly, tenderly, A transitory flush.

Warm, odorous gusts came off the distant land, With spice of pine-woods, breath of hay new-mown, O'er miles of waves and sea-scents cool and bland, Full in our faces blown.

Slow faded the sweet light, and peacefully The quiet stars came out, one after one,— The holy twilight deepened silently, The summer day was done.

Such unalloyed delight its hours had given, Musing, this thought rose in my grateful mind, That God, who watches all things, up in heaven, With patient eyes and kind,

Saw and was pleased, perhaps, one child of His Dared to be happy like the little birds, Because He gave His children days like this, Rejoicing beyond words,—

Dared, lifting up to Him untroubled eyes In gratitude that worship is, and prayer, Sing and be glad with ever new surprise He made His world so fair!



REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

Ravenshoe. By HENRY KINGSLEY, Author of "Geoffry Hamlyn." Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

This novel belongs to that class which has been most in favor of late years, in which the incidents and characters are drawn from the daily life that is going on around us, and the sources of interest are sought in the acts, struggles, and sufferings of the world that lies at our feet, discarding the idealizing charm which arises from distance in space or remoteness in time. The novels of Disraeli, Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, Miss Bront, Mrs. Gaskell, Miss Muloch, and Miss Evans, differing as they do so widely in style, treatment, and spirit, all come under this general division. Fictitious compositions of this class have difficulties peculiar to themselves, but success, when attained, is proportionally great; and from the sympathetic element in man they can secure the interest of their readers, though their plots may be improbable and their characters unnatural. The scene of "Ravenshoe" is laid in England, the time is the present, and the men and women are such as may be seen at a flower-show at Chiswick or on the race-course at Epsom on a Derby day. The plot is ingenious, thickly strewn with sudden and startling incidents, though very improbable; but the story flows on in so rapid and animated a current that the reader can never pause long enough for criticism, and it is not till he lays the volume down, and recalls the ground he has been over, that he has leisure to remark that the close has been reached by such stepping-stones as are never laid down in the path of real life.

The characters are various, drawn with the greatest spirit, but not all of them natural. Lord Saltire, for instance, is a portrait with which the author has evidently taken much pains; but the elements we see in him are such as never were, never could be, combined in any living and breathing man. Father Mackworth is elaborately drawn, but the sketch wants vitality and unity. Adelaide and Ellen present essentially the same type, modified by difference of position and circumstances, and, in the latter, by the infusion of a fanatical religious element. Charles Ravenshoe, the hero, is well conceived and consistently carried; and the same may be said of Cuthbert. But the best character in the book is old Lady Ascot. She is quite original, and yet quite natural; and we guess that some of her peculiarities are drawn from life.

The descriptions of scenery are admirable,—so admirable that we pardon the author for introducing them a little too frequently. He is evidently one of those few men who love Nature with a manly and healthy love,—by whom the outward world is not sought as a shelter against invading cares, or as balm for a wounded spirit, but who find in the sunshine, the play of the breeze, and the dance of the waves, a cheerful, enduring, and satisfying companionship. The scenery is English, and South English too: the author's pictures are drawn from memory, and not from imagination. And the whole tone and spirit of the book are thoroughly English. It represents the best aspects of English life, character, and manners as they are to-day. Whatever is most generous, heroic, tender, and true in the men and women of England is here to be seen, and not drawn in colors any more flattering than it is the right of fiction to use. We think the author carries us too much into the stable and the kennel; but this, we need not say, is also English.

But we have yet to mention what we consider the highest charm of this charming book, and that is the combination which we find in it of healthiness of tone and earnestness of purpose. A healthier book we have never read. Earnestness of purpose is apt to be attended with something of excess or extravagance; but in "Ravenshoe" there is nothing morbid, nothing cynical, nothing querulous, nothing ascetic. The doctrine of the book is a reasonable enjoyment of all that is good in the world, with a firm purpose of improving the world in all possible ways. It is one of the many books which have appeared in England of late years which show the influence of the life and labors of the late Dr. Arnold. It is as inspiriting in its influence as a gallop over one of the breezy downs of Mr. Kingsley's own Devonshire.

It is, in short, a delightful book, in which all defects of structure and form are atoned for by a wonderful amount of energy, geniality, freshness, poetical feeling, and moral elevation. And furthermore, we think, no one can read it without saying to himself that he would like to see and know the writer. Long may he live to write new novels!



Vanity Fair. Volumes I.-V. New York: Louis H. Stephens, Publisher for the Proprietors.

The American is often considered to be by nature unadapted for jollity, if not positively averse to it. This supposition is not without some reasonable foundation, and the stranger may be readily excused for adopting it as an axiomatic truth. Busy calculation and restless labor appear at first to be the grand elements of American life; mirth is apparently excluded, as the superfluous members of his equations are eliminated by the algebraist. Fun is not practical enough for the American, and subserves none of his profitable projects; it provokes to idle laughter, and militates against the unresting career of industry which he has prescribed, and his utilitarian spirit thinks it were as well abolished. His recreations are akin to his toil. If he give to study such hours as business spares, fates first claim his attention, and then philosophy or ethics: he cannot resign himself to lighter topics. When he reads in his Horace, "Dulce est desipere in loco," he grants the proposition, with the commentary that he, at least, has very rarely been "in loco." He reads tragedies, and perhaps writes one; but he does not affect comedies, and he could have no sympathy with an uproarious burlesque or side-shaking Christmas pantomime. His brethren who seek the theatre for amusement are of similar opinion, and so are they who stand behind the foot-lights. Therefore it is, that, for every passable comedian, America can produce a whole batch of very fair tragic actors.

This serious character the American is apt to wear abroad as well as at home. When he travels, he is wont to be in a hurry, and to examine curious cities as if he were making sharp bargains against time. In spite of the wonderful power of adaptation which makes him of all men the best cosmopolitan, he never is quite perfect in his assumption of another nationality, and he generally falls short of a thorough appreciation of its mirthful principle. If he emigrate to France, he soon feasts upon frogs as freely and speaks with as accurate an accent as the Parisian, but he cannot quite assume the gay insouciance of the French; if to England, he adores method, learns to grumble and imbibe old ale, yet does not become accustomed to the free, blunt raillery,—the "chaff,"—with which Britons disport themselves; if to China, he lives upon curries and inscribes his name with a camel's-hair pencil, but all Oriental bizarrerie fails to thoroughly amuse him. Wherever he may go, he settles at once and easily into the outward life of the people among whom he is,—while he always reserves within himself a cold, stern individuality; he often is angered when he should be amused, and retorts with resentment when he should reply in repartee. Still, the American is not sombre to the core. He has a kind of grim merriment bestowed somewhere in the recesses of his being. It is quaint and severe, however, and abounding in dry conceits. It inclines more to the nature of sarcasm than of flashing wit or genial humor. There is apt to be the bitterness about it which would provoke a heavy blow, unless it had been itself so weighty in attack as to crush what might have sprung into resistance. It passes from badinage into personalities and recriminations. In these respects it is consonant with the general bearing of the American character. The levity of wit and the pleasantry of humor appear at first purposeless; they are immaterial, and, even when most palpably present, seem, like Macbeth's encountering witches, to make of themselves air, into which they vanish. But sarcasm, and the direct application of ridicule, effect something at once; their course may be swift and cloudy, like that of the bullet, but it has a definite end in view; they are discharged and sweep away invisibly, or like a dark speck at most, but the crash and shiver of the distant target show that the shot has told. They are practical, and the American understands them; as for mere wit and humor, he will perhaps investigate them when there shall come to him that season of leisure which he mythically proposes to enjoy when there shall be no more work to do, and into which he is usually ushered by one busier even than himself, and less tolerant of idleness and folly,—Death, the great Chamberlain of Eternal Halls.

There is another characteristic of American wit and humor: they are evanescent and keen, escaping adroitly from the snares of the printer. America cannot boast of her satirists or humorists as forming a class like the great English and European groups, and yet her literature is enriched with many volumes wherein may be found the most brilliant wit and the most genial, genuine humor. Seldom, however, are these the main features of the books in which they occur; they are not bound in the great, all-important chain, but are woven into the little threads which underlie it; the obtuse or careless reader may easily overlook them, passing on to the end without suspecting the treasures which he has missed; and the foreigner, who does not look for such qualities among a people so perversely practical as Americans, will be apt entirely to ignore their possible existence. Again, if the writers are first-class men, their birth is the most purely American characteristic they possess. Their cast of thought and culture denotes that they belong to other times and lands as well as to this. They would have been at home among the literati of Queen Anne's day,—for their fellowship has been with such in spirit, if not in the flesh. Therefore the prejudiced, and they whose perceptions are not quick to recognize the finer traits which indicate the real character of men and of their works, are wont to say that here is nothing new, nothing indigenous to the soil, only an outgrowth of the Old World,—merely exotics, which would soon perish from the pains of transplanting, if they were not carefully fostered.

As a bit of drift-wood warns the most unpractised eye of the direction which a current takes, so the light, ephemeral brochures of any epoch give a plain hint of the tendency of its thought. The librarian and historian know the value of newspapers and pamphlets, for in them can be found what big books and voluminous records do not contain. From pasquinades, caricatures, and bits of comedy or satire can be drawn an idea of the popular humor of any era, which the works of great authors fail to convey. They are spontaneous and unstudied, regardless alike of reputation already established, which must be maintained, and of that which may yet be won; for they come from unknown sources, and exist solely for their own sakes and by their own vitality. They are, therefore, trustworthy assistants to him who studies the spirit of any people or generation.

In this respect American humor has been ill represented. Comic publications have appeared only at rare intervals, and comic journals have soon degenerated into stupidity or coarseness. Yet this has not been for lack of material, but of a proper editorial faculty, and from the want of a habitude or a willingness on the part of those who conceive clever things to note them down and give them out in black and white. When "Vanity Fair" first appeared, we thought we saw in it the germ of a journal which might be an exponent of our national spirit of mirthfulness, and we took occasion to say so briefly. We have not been disappointed. The five volumes which have already been published in weekly numbers have been true to the honest purpose which the conductors proposed to themselves and the public in their prospectus, and are fair representatives of the wit and humor which are in their essence allied to the merriment and the satire of Hawthorne and Lowell, Holmes and Saxe, although, of course, they are not yet developed with like delicacy and brilliance. There is in these pages a vast deal of genuine, hearty fun, and of sharp, stinging sarcasm; there are also hundreds of cleverly drawn and cleanly cut illustrations. Better than these, there is a fearlessness of consequences and of persons, when a wrong is to be combated, an error to be set right. And this Touchstone has been impartial as well as sturdy in his castigation; he has not been blind to the faults of his friends, or slow in bidding them imitate the excellences of his enemies; he had "a whip of scorpions" for the late Administration, when others, whose intuitions were less quick, saw nothing to chastise, and he has not hesitated to rebuke the official misdemeanors of these days, because officers have per contra done other portions of their duties well. According to his creed, a wrong cannot be palliated into a right, but must be reformed thereto; he has no tolerance for that evil whose cure is obvious and possible, and he treats boldly and severely the subjects of which the timid scarcely dare to speak.

It cannot, of course, be claimed for "Vanity Fair" that it is all clever. The brightest wit must say some dull things, and a comic journal can hardly help letting some dreary attempts at mirth slip into its columns. We could point out paragraphs in this serial which are most chaotic and unmeaning, and some, indeed, which fall below its own excellent standard of refinement; but we do not remember ever to have met in its pages a double-entendre or a foulness of speech. We must advise its conductor (who, we may say in passing, is a gentleman whose writings have not infrequently appeared in the "Atlantic") never to allow his paper to descend to the level of the ignoble vulgus; and we are glad that in wishing "Vanity Fair" long life and prosperity we have to censure it only for some slight violations of good taste, not for any offence against modesty or decorum. It deserves admission to the library and the drawing-room.



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Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, in April, May, and June, 1861. By Max Miller, M.A., Fellow of All-Souls College, Oxford, Corresponding Member of the Institute of France. From the Second London Edition, revised. New York. C. Scribner. 12mo. pp. 416. $1.50.

Ballads of the War. No. I. The March to the Capitol. No. II. Sumter. By Augustine J.H. Duganne. Illustrated. New York. John Robins. 4to. paper, each number, pp. 12, 25 cts.

Les Misrables. Par Victor Hugo. Premire Partie. Fantine. 2 vols. New York. F.W. Christen. Paris. Pagnerre. 8vo. pp. 355, 376. $3.00.

Journal of Alfred Ely, a Prisoner of War in Richmond. Edited by Charles Lanman. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 359. $1.00.

The Indian Scout; or, Life on the Frontier. By Gustave Aimard. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp. 202. 50 cts.

The Law and Practice of the Game of Euchre. By a Professor. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 16mo. pp. 134. 50 cts.

Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church. With an Introduction, on the Study of Ecclesiastical History. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Regius Professor of Ecclesiatical History in the University of Oxford, and Canon of Christ Church. From the Second London Edition, revised. New York. Charles Scribner. 8vo. pp. 551. $2.50.

Lyrics for Freedom, and other Poems. Under the Auspices of the Continental Club. New York. G.W. Carleton. 16mo. pp. xvi., 243. $1.00.

The C.S.A. and the Battle of Bull Run. A Letter to an English Friend. By J.G. Barnard, Major of Engineers, U.S.A., Brigadier-General and Chief Engineer, Army of the Potomac. With Five Maps. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 8vo. pp. 136. $1.50.

Artemus Ward, his Book. With Many Comic Illustrations. New York. G.W. Carleton. 12mo. pp. 264. $1.00.

A Life's Secret. A Story of Woman's Revenge. By Mrs. Henry Wood, Author of "East Lynne," etc. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 8vo. pp. 144. $1.00.

Why Paul Ferroll killed his Wife. By the Author of "Paul Ferroll." New York. G. W. Carleton. 12mo. paper, pp. 235. 50 cts.

Les Misrables. Fantine. A Novel. By Victor Hugo. Translated from the Original French, by Charles E. Wilbour. New York. G.W. Carleton. 8vo. pp. 171. $1.00.

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THE END