THOREAU. 149 



fineness of material, unobtrusive lowness of tone and simplicity 

 of fashion, the most high-bred garb of expression. Whatever 

 may be said of his thought, nothing can be finer than the deli- - 

 cious limpidness of his phrase. If it was ever questionable 

 \vhether democracy could develop a gentleman, the problem has 

 been affirmatively solved at last. Carlyle, in his cynicism and 

 his admiration of force in and for itself, has become at last 

 positively inhuman ; Emerson, reverencing strength, seeking 

 the highest outcome of the individual, has found that society and 

 politics are also main elements in the attainment of the desired 

 end, and has drawn steadily manward and worldward. The 

 two men represent respectively those grand personifications in 

 the drama of ^schylus, Bla and Kparoc. 



Among the pistillate plants kindled to fruitage by the Emer- 

 sonian pollen, Thoreau is thus far the most remarkable ; and 

 it is something eminently fitting that his posthumous works 

 should be offered us by Emerson, for they are strawberries 

 from his own garden. A singular mixture of varieties, indeed, 

 there is; alpine, some of them, with the flavour of real 

 mountain air ; others wood, tasting of sunny roadside banks or 

 shy openings in the forest ; and not a few seedlings swollen 

 hugely by culture, but lacking the fine natural aroma of the 

 more modest kinds. Strange books these are of his, and in 

 teresting in many ways, instructive chiefly as showing how 

 considerable a crop may be raised on a comparatively narrow 

 close of mind, and how much a man may make of his life if he 

 will assiduously follow it, though perhaps never truly finding it 

 at last. 



We have just been renewing our recollection of Mr. Thoreau s 

 writings, and have read through his six volumes in the order of 

 their production. We shall try to give an adequate report of j &amp;gt; 

 their impression upon us both as critic and as mere reader. 

 He seems to us to have been a man with so high a gonceit of 

 himself that he accepted without questioning, and insisted on 

 our accepting, his defects and weaknesses of character as 

 virtues and powers peculiar to himself. Was he indolent, he 

 finds none of the activities which attract or employ the rest of 

 mankind worthy of him. Was he wanting in the qualities that 

 make success, it is success that is contemptible, and not himself 

 that lacks persistency and purpose. Was he poor, money was 

 an unmixed evil. Did his life seem a selfish one, he condemns 

 doing good as one of the weakest of superstitions. To be of 

 use was with him the most killing bait of the wily tempter Use- 



