THOREAU. 137 



a smack of sensation, but a very different thing from 

 the settled will which would be really perilous. 

 Shakespeare, always true to Nature, makes Hamlet dally 

 with the same exciting fancy. Alas ! self is the one thing 

 the sentimentalist never truly wishes to destroy ! One 

 remarkable gift Percival seems to have had, which may be 

 called memory of the eye. What he saw he never forgot, 

 and this fitted him for a good geological observer. How 

 great his power of combination was, which alone could have 

 made him a great geologist, we cannot determine. But he 

 seems to have shown but little in other directions. His 

 faculty of acquiring foreign tongues we do not value so 

 highly as Mr. Ward. We have known many otherwise 

 inferior men who possessed it. Indeed, the power to 

 express the same nothing in ten different languages is 

 something to be dreaded rather than admired. It gives a 

 horrible advantage to dulness. The best thing to be 

 learned from Percival s life is that he was happy for the 

 first time when taken away from his vague pursuit of the 

 ideal, and set to practical work. 



THOREA U. 



WHAT contemporary, if he was in the fighting period of his 

 life (since Nature sets limits about her conscription for 

 spiritual fields, as the state does in physical warfare), will 

 ever forget what was somewhat vaguely called the &quot; Tran 

 scendental Movement &quot; of thirty years ago 1 Apparently 

 set astirring by Carlyle s essays on the &quot; Signs of the 

 Times,&quot; and on &quot; History,&quot; the final and more immediate 

 impulse seemed to be given by &quot;Sartor Kesartus.&quot; At 

 least the republication in Boston of that wonderful 

 Abraham a Sancta Clara sermon on Lear s text of the 

 miserable forked radish gave the signal for a sudden mental 

 and moral mutiny. Ecce nunc tempus acceptabile I was 

 shouted on all hands with every variety of emphasis, and by 



