394 THOREAU. 



whose delights he sought under the rustling leaves of the 

 aspen and the musical moaning of the pine. " The uni- 

 verse," he said, " constantly and obediently answers to our 

 conceptions ; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is 

 laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving them. 

 The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a 

 design, but some of -his posterity at least could accom- 

 plish it" 



He desired a life without laborious study or toil, not 

 from indolence, which he never felt, but that he might 

 exemplify the benevolence of nature in his own system 

 of living. It was a sublime thought which only a 

 poet could conceive and only a brave man could carry 

 out. Some of the eremites of old believed that by 

 dwelling alone, and giving themselves up to contempla- 

 tion, they might gradually attain some of the perfection 

 of the Deity. Thoreau had a grand conception of a cer- 

 tain simplicity of life, like that of rustic laborers, without 

 their slavish toil, which he desired to illustrate by his 

 own experiment. Could he have attained his end, we 

 should have seen in his experience a signal exemplification 

 of the ideal life of a shepherd as described by the poets. 

 His was not the fanaticism of a religionist : it was the 

 inspiration of a poet seeking manifestation in his walks, 

 in his employments, and at the domestic board. If the 

 rural gods had not forsaken the earth, they would have 

 assembled in his hut to listen to his words, and would 

 have sat with him in his house. His simple rustic neigh- 

 bors respected him as a saint, and felt honored in his 

 presence. 



When enshrined in his own solitude, he devoted him- 

 self to the observation of everything around him. He 

 listened to sounds as the ancient augurs listened to the 

 oracles of Dodona, not to interpret from them a prophetic 

 meaning, but to discover the effects they produce upon 



