204 THOREAU. 



dained a severe apprenticeship to law, and even ceremo- 

 nial, in order to the gaining of freedom and mastery over 

 these. Seven years of service for Rachel were to be 

 rewarded at last with Leah. Seven other years of faith- 

 fulness with her were to win them at last the true bride 

 of their souls. Active Life was with them the only path 

 to the Contemplative. 



Thoreau had no humor, and this implies that he was 

 a sorry logician. Himself an artist in rhetoric, he con- 

 founds thought with style when he undertakes to speak 

 of the latter. He was forever talking of getting away 

 from the world, but he must be always near enough to 

 it, nay, to the Concord corner of it, to feel the impres- 

 sion he makes there. He verifies the shrewd remark of 

 Sainte-Beuve, " On touche encore a son temps et tres- 

 fort, meme quand on le repousse." This egotism of his 

 is a Stylites pillar after all, a seclusion which keeps him 

 in the public eye. The dignity of man is an excellent 

 thing, but therefore to hold one's self too sacred and 

 precious is the reverse of excellent. There is something 

 delightfully absurd in six volumes addressed to a world 

 of such " vulgar fellows " as Thoreau affirmed his fellow- 

 men to be. We once had a glimpse of a genuine solitary 

 who spent his winters one hundred and fifty miles be- 

 yond all human communication, and there dwelt with 

 his rifle as his only confidant. Compared with this, the 

 shanty on Walden Pond has something the air, it must 

 be confessed, of the Hermitage of La Chevrette. We do 

 not believe that the way to a true cosmopolitanism 

 carries one into the woods or the society of musquashes. 

 Perhaps the narrowest provincialism is that of Self ; that 

 of Kleinwinkel is nothing to it. The natural man, like 

 the singing birds, comes out of the forest as inevitably 

 as the natural bear and the wildcat stick there. To seek 

 to be natural implies a consciousness that forbids all 



