Also by Robert Finch The Primal Place Common Ground: A Natriralist's Cape Cod Outlands: Journeys to the Outer Edges of Cape Cod The Cape Itself (with Ralph MacKenzie) Death of a Hornet
Also by Iohn Elder Imagining the Earth: Poetry and the Vision of Nature Following the Brush and JOHN ELDER Reading the Mountains of Home Middlebury College The Frog Run CONTENTS
PREFACE INTRODU~ON INTRODUC~ONto the 1990 Norton Book of Nature Writing GILBERTWHITE (1720-1793) From The Natural History and Antiquities of Selbome HECTORST. JOHN DE CR~VECOEUR(173 5-18 13) From Letters from an American Farmer 51LXI:L From Sketches of Eighteenth century America , 599Iil ': WILLIAMBARTRANI (1739-1823) i Copyright O 2002,1990 by Robert Finch and John Elder From Travels Through North & South Carolina, Trade edition published as Nature Writing: The Tradition in English. Georgia, East & West Florida, . . . ALEXANDERWILSON (1766-1 813) rights resewed From American Ornithology; or, The Natural History t Printed in the United States of America of the Birdsof the United States Since this page cannot legibly accommodate all the copyright notices, pages JOHN LEONARDKNAPP (1 767-1 845) 1137-1 146 constitute an extension of the copyright page. From The Journal of a Naturalist DAVIDTHOMPSON (1770-1 857) The text of this book is composed in Electra with the display set in From David Thompson's Narrative of His Explorations Bemhard Modern in Western America, 1784-1812 Composition by Tom Emst DOROTHYWORDSWORTH (177 1-1 85 5) Manufacturing by the Haddon Craftsmen, Inc. From Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth Production manager: Julia Druskin MERIWETHERLEWIS (1774-1 809) From The Journals of Lewis and Clark 1 ISBN 0-391-97816-8 (pbk.) CHARLESWATERTON (1 782-1865) From Wanderings in South America, the North-West W. W.Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 101 1Q www.wwnorton.com of the United States, and the Antilles JOHN JAMES AUDUBON(1785-1851) W. W. Norton & Company-Ltd.,Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London - - From Ornithological Biography JOHNCy(1793-1864). . fl ($ !: ':, 'i , . The Natural World
34567890 1 From The Natural History Prose Writings of John Clare
I 180 Henry David Thoreau
a slanting flight.of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which was left of undying adyenture, never to return,-prepared to send Sack our free; but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden embalhd hearts only as relics toour desolate kingdoms. If you are, I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do. ready to leave fathcr and dother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never seethem again,-if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man, thenyou are ready for a walk. To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolutg,freedomand wildness, as knights of a new, or rather an old, order,-\ot Equestrians or Chevaliers, contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,-to regard man as not Ritte~or Riders, *butWalkers, a still more ancient and honorable an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of class, I trust. The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an hder seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the miqis- Walker;-not the Gight, .but Walker, Errant. He is a sort of fourth terand the schoolcommittee and every one of you will t&e care of that. estate, outside of Church and State and People. We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble I I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who are though, to tell the truth, at least; if their own assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, understood the that is, of taking walks,-who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived but they cannot. No wtealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, independence which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by and asked charity, under pretense of going b la Sainta Terre," to the the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation 'from Heaven to Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a become a walker. Yod must be born into the family of the Walkers. Saunterer, +I Holy-Lander. They who never go to ,the ,Holy Land in Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some of my townsmen, it is true, can their walks, as*+ey pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vqgabonds; but remember and have described to me some walks which they took ten they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. years ago, in which they were so blessed as to lose themselves for half Some, however, would derive the word from sans terrq, without land or an hour in the woods; but I know very well that they have confined themselves to the highway ever since, whatever pretensions they may Ii home, which, thqrefore, in the good sense, will meas, haKing no par- !I ticular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of make to belong to this select class. No doubtathey were elevated for a successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house ,all the time m;yr_be moment as by the reminiscence of a previous state of existence, when I even they were foresters and outlaws. I thhreatest v a m b u tthe saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than +e meandering river, which is all the while sedu- lously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But. I prefer the first, "When he came to grene wode, In a mery momynge, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort There he herde the notes small of qrusade, reached by some Peter. the Hermit in us, to,go forth and Of byrdes mery syngynge. reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the,Infidels. , It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowa- "It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn, 7- days, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our That I was last here; expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old Me lyste a lytell for to shote At the donne dere." hearth-side from \yhich we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our , steps. We sh~uldgo forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit I think that I cannot preserve-- . m~health-and .- spirjts, unless I spend fourhours a day at le-me maxc thanhawan- Excursione (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1863). tering thou& the wood~~f~kabsolutely free 182 Henry ,?avid Thoreau Walking 182 from all,~orldly~ehgagements~ You may! safely say, A penny br your But the walking of which I speak has lo&il.lg&_n_itakin to _taking thoughts, or a thyissindl paunds. When sdmetimes I am reminded that gwck, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours,-as the I the mechanics atdi-shopkeepers stay, iriittheir shops not only all the swinging of dumbbells or chairs, but itj itself the enterprise and adven- forenoon, butdl1 theiaftemaon tooi:sittingwjth crossed legs, so many of ture of the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of them,-as ;if+thp~Ia@werermsde,to sit upon, and not to stand or walk life. Think of a man's swinging dumbbells for his health, when those upon,-I think that they deserve some cxedit for not having all commit- springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him! Moreover, you must walk like atcamel,which is said to be the only ted suicids,l~ng i~., . ' , . , , I, do?nwtt$ayinjmy chamber f0r.a single day without acquiring beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth's servant to show him her master's wdy, she answered, some ru~g&IM~VS~ i$ometimes I have, stoTEnirth for a walk at the , eleventh,httur, ofi~fow~b'clock in the afternaon, too late to redeem the 0- day,&enl&~j~desiofinightwere already btgiwing to be mingled Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt pro- wfthtthabfl&&t, felt as if I hqd committed some sin to be atoned duce a certain roughness of character,-will cause a thicker cuticle f~~dIm&ssrthtIt,a am astonished at the power of endurance, to say to grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face nothing of the moral insensibility, of; tny neighbors who confine and hands, or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their .bh$mset#$$>t~:&pp~and,offtces the whole day for weeks and months, delicacy of touch. So staying in .the house, on the other hand, may #eta& p++ra+ost,hgether. I kpow not what manner of stuff they produce a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accom- & p&r&~~&srR8maw at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it panied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we ~srfe,~&ae~3o'&j~kfin, the .morning. ,Bonaparte may talk of the should be more susceptible to some influences important to our ctht9~'&&dtbe-~~rning cQwrage, but it is nothing to the courage intellectual and moral growth, if the sun had shone and the wind &tii&&;P& &&wn cbeehlly at this hour in the afternoon over against blown on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion '"&f&a$ have known all the morning, to starve out a garri- rightly the thick and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will '#$$~(~;#~IQNv~u are ,bound by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder fall off fast enough,-that the natural remedy is to be found in the &t#kq&,fiioi~~p, or say between four and five o'clock in the after- proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the sum.: ~~~~~llqte;Ifot;the morning papers and too early for the evening mer,.thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and &qbk;@$~:iwnot a genefa1 explosion heard up and down the street, susshine in our thoughts., The carious paims X-the Lborer 'are con- #kvdflgaTlt;gjp~4 antiquated and house-bred notions and whims to versant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose. touch lh$cjpg@iQds f0r.m airing,-and so the evil cure itself. thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere l1Irrsrf$~,~~n)~~kifidi L1 whs ate confined to the house still more than sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of the tan and callus of experience. theni do not stand it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we When we walk, we nahrally go to the fields and woods: what would have been shaking the dust of the village from the skirts of our gar- become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects ments, making! haste past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic of philosophers have feltthe necessity of importing the woods to them- fronts, which have such an air of repose about them, my companion selves, since they did not go to the woods. "They planted groves and whispers that probably about these times their occupants are all gone to walks of Platanes," where they took subdiales arnbulationes in porticos bed. Then it is that I appreciate the beauty and the glory of architec- open to the air. Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, ture, which its6lf never turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keep if they do not carry us thither. 1 am alarmed when it happens that I ing watch over the slumberers. have walked a mile into the woods bodilv, without "eettine " there in No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do spirit. In my afternoon walk 1 would fain forget all my morning occupa- with it: As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor --tions axmLabli tions to socieb: But it sometimes happens that I occiy Iltivds increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the evening cannot easily shake-- o e vi age The thought- of some work will run of 1'2 e appdoachbs, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, in my head and I am not wheremy body is,-! am out of my senses. In adgeb all.the walk that he requires in half an hour. my walks I would fain return ta my senses. What business have I in the 184 Henry David Thoreau ,L . Walking 18 F woods, if I am thinking of something' outjof the woods? I suspect from it as from a bean-fieldtinto *theforest, and it is forgotten. In one myself, and cannot help a shuddel;, when I find myseif so implicated half-hour I can walk off to some portion of fhe earth's surface where a , even in what are called good works,-for this may sometimes happen. man does not stand from one year's end to another, and there, conse- i My vicinq affords many good walks; and though for so hany years I quently, politics are not, for they Are but as the cigar-smoke of a man. have walked ahnost every day, and someti~esfor several days together, The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion I have not yet exhausted them. An ab~lutelynew prospect is a great of the highway, as a lake of a river. It is the body of which roads are the happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two:cdr zthree ~hpurs' arms and legs,-a trivial or q.uadrivia1place, fie thoroughfare and ordi- waking will carry me to as stradge a couhkry as I expect ever to see. A nary of travelers. The wqd,is horq the Latin villa, which together with single farm-house which I had not seen before is hometimes as good as via, a way, or more anciently ved and vella, Varro derives from veho, to the dominions of the King of Dah~mey.~There>iscin fact a sorbof ha- carry, because the villa, is the place to and from which things are car- mony discoverable between the capabilities of the: landscape within a ried. They who got their living by teaming were said vellaturam facere. 91 // circle of ten miles' radius, or the limits of an afidrnoon walk, and the Hence, too, the Latin word vilis and our vile; also villain. This suggests :#I I threescore years and ten of humm life. It will never become quite what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to. They are wayworn by familiar to you. the travel that goes by and'over them, without traveling themselves. Nowdays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building Some do n-o-alk at all; others, . few walk across of houses, and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, sim- lots.c_- Roads are made Morses anhmenafhu&s I do not travel in ply deform the landscape, and make ib more and more tame and them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tav- cheap. A people who would begin by burning the fences and let the em or grocery or livery-stable or depot to A c hthey lead. I am a good forest stand! I saw the fences half c~nsumed,~theirend$ lost in the mid- horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses dle of the prairie, and some worldly miser witha surveyor looking after the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my his bbhds, while heaven had taken place around him, and he did' not figure. I walk out into a Nature such as the old prophets and poets, seb the angels going to and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole 'm Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, the midst of paradise. I looked again, and saw him standing in the mid; but it is not America; neither hricusVespucius, nor Columbus, nor dle of a boggy stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he had,foundhis the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in bo~nds.~withouta doubt, three little stones, dhere a stake hed been mythology than in any history of America, so called, that I have seen. drisren;and looking nearer, I saw hat the Prince of Darkness was his However, there are a 'few old roads that may be trodden with profit, , . mmyor. I (1 I as if they led somewhere now that they are nearly discontinued. There ~II~I~CWIeasily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, corn is the Old Marlborough Road, which does not go to Marlborough now, mencing at my own door, without going by any house, withbut crossing methinks, unless that is Marlborough where it carries me. I am the hlroad 'mcept where the fox and the mink do: first along by the river, bolder to speak of it here, because I presume that there are one or two abd&hthan,thebrook, and then the meadow and the woodside. There are such roads in every town. squaklhles in my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From many a hidl E,.eawsee civilization and the abodes of mgn afar. The farmers and theit[wquksare scarcely more obvious than woodchucks and their bur- dw1A4ahend his affairs, church and state and school, trade and com- Where they once dug for money, hk~h~~~imanufacturesand agriculture, ltven politics, the most But never found any; ahdg&them ail,-I am pleased to see how little space they occupy Where sometimes Martial Miles Singly files, irx~thm~bw&cape.Politics is but a narrow ifield+ad-that still narrowr And Elijah Wood, hib&t~ay~wpn&~:~-1aads~o~sometimew direct the ,&aveler thither.. df I fear for no good: pa huldtgs to.th:pditial world, follow the great rod,-follow,that No other man, . rriarkt~mm\rIiee~p~his~dustin your eyes, and it will lead you sMight to Save Elisha Dugan,- ib for it;tao) has~k~lhcemerely, anddoes not occupy'all space. pass O man of wild Gabits, 186 Henry David Thoreau !-% Walking '$7
1 Literatute that might stand , Partridges and rabbits, I Who hast no cares All over the land, 1 ,'Y Only to set snares, Which a man could p'emepber
Who liv'st all alone, k , Till next Deaqqber,,. ; ! 10 j Close to the bone, And read again i,n Spring, And where life is sweetest , After the thawing.,, , . t , Constantly eatest. If with fancy'unfurle~ I When the spring stirs my blood You leave your abode,
With the instinct to travel You may go round the world I) 1 I can get enough gravel By the Old Marlbor8ugh Road. On the Old Marlborough Road. .. . Nobody repairs it, At present, in his vicinity, thl best' pad of the land is not private For nobody wears it; property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker etijoys compara- It is a living way, tive freedom. But possibly the day kill &he when it will be partiiidned As the Christians say. off into so-called pIeasore-grounds, in &ich a few wiIF take h narrow Not many there be and exclusive pleasure only,-wlien fen~esshall be multipled, and Who enter therein, man-traps and other engines invented kc) confine mensto the public Only the guests of the Irishman Quin. road, and walking oveT the surface of God's earth sbll be constiGed.to What is it, what is it, mean trespassing oh some gentleman's grounds. To enjoy 'a. thing exclusively is commonly to ~udeepourselffrom the t&uzqby -ment But a direction out there, - --- And the bare possibility of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the 'evil days come. Of going somewhere? - j. I Great guide-boards of stone, What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we But travelers none; will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, il a I Cenotaphs of the towns if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.'It is not indiffefent ,i 1 I , Named on their crowns. to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very lisrble , . . , ! - , . , , It is worth going to see ,. . from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrbng one. We would fain .,T,,j,l, i>,!jb,;:,,,4,, ,; ' , Where you.might be. take walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is What king, that ,.,,,.,,I!!:gj(; :,\,i/.j..:l ' Did the th'ing, petfectly symbolical of the pdth Which we love to travel in the interior 'stir !ill: , ..!, .. ,i- I and ideal world; and sotnetimes, no doubt, we find'it di6cult to chgnse , . I am still:kondering; II?;f'i''>:!,' ' I"". ' Setupho~orwhen, our direction, because it does ribtriet exist distinctl? in our idea, By what selectmen, When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I Gourgas or Lee, will bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct t6'decide'for me, I Clark or Darby? find, strange and whifnsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably They're a great endeavor settle southwest, toward some particular wood or meaddw or deserted To be something forever; pasture or hill in that directioh. My needle is slow to1se&~&;-vftrieia Blank tablets of stone, few degrees, and does not aIways pdint due southwest it is true, and it Where a traveler might groan, has good authority for this variation, but it always settles' between wdst And in one sentence Grave all that is known; and south-southwest. The future lies that way to me; ahd the laith Which another might read, seems more unexhausted and richer on that side; The outline which In his extreme need. would bound my walks would be, not a ~ircle,but atparabola, or rather I know one or two like one of those cometary orbits which have bee^^ 'thought to be Lines that would do, non-returning curves, in this case opening westward, in which my 188 Henry David Thoreau Walking 189 house occupies the place of the sun. I turn round and round irresolute 1 Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to.some extent sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide, for a thousandth I unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker, I should , time, that I will walk into the !southwestor west. Eastward I go only by probably take that disturbance'into account. force; but westward I go free. Thither no business leads me. It is hard for me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes or sufficient wildness "Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, and freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am not excited by the And palmeres for to seken strange strondes." prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that the forest which I see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly toward the setting sun, Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a and there are no towns nor, cities in it of enough consequence to dis- West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. He turb me. Let me live where I will, on this side is the city, on that the appears to migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him. He is wildemess, and ever I am lewing the city more and more, and with- the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all drawing into the wildernqs, I should not lay so much stress on this fact, night of those rnountain-ridges in the horizon, though they may be of if I did n~tbelieve that somethi~glike this is the prevailing tendency of vapor only, which were last gilded by his rays. The island of Atlantis, wy countrymen, I must-walk toward Oregon, anhot t0wadA.q~e. and the islands and gardens of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial para- And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind I dise, appear to have been the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in progress from east to west. Within a few years we have witnessed the 1 mystery and poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when looking phenomenon of a southeas,tward migration, in the settlement of 1 into the sunset sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the foundation Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and, judging t of all those fables? from the .moral and physical character of the first generatian of 1 Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The eastern I befoie. He obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon. Tartars think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet. "The world The herd of men in tliose days scented fresh pastures from afar. ends there," say they; "beyond there is nothing but a shoreless sea." It is upmitigated East where they live. "And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, s ;We go eastward ta realize history and study the works of art and liter- And now was dropped into the western bay:
ahyre, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward- -. as ---- into the future, At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue; a y&h ,a spirit~fxnkjp-riseand adventure. The Atlantic is a Lethean- To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new." I qppap,,in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget fherQldWorld and its institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there Where on the globe can there be found an area of equal extent with is,,~$aps one more chance f~rthe race left before it arrives on the that occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and SO rich and varied banks oflthe Styx; and that is in the Lethe of the Pacific, which is three -in its productions, and at the same time so habitable by the ~uro~ez, +qyhas wide. as this is? Michaux, who knew but part of them, says that "the species 1 Jk~ot.,nothow significant it is, or how far it is an evidence of singu- of large trees are'much more numerous in North America than in li$n(, fiat qp iqlividual should thus consent in his pettiest walk with Europe; in the United States there are more than one hundred and #q,g~qrpl~~vepent of the race; but I know that something akin to forty species that exceed thirty feet in height; in France there are but +e, migatw,instinct in birds and quadrupeds,-which, in some thirty that attain this size." Later botanists more than confirm his obser- ipsfapce$,,js,kwwn to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them vations. Humboldt came to America to realize his yo~ithfuldreams of a @,a, gpe,rd,aw$qmysterious movement, in which they were seen, say tropical vegetation, and he beheld it in ,its greatest perfection in the sg~e;,cpj~ss,&g @,e, broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its primitive forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic wildemess on the tqjl,jraiy$ .for J 1 sail, and bridging narrower streams with their earth, which he has so eloquently described. The geogapher Guyot, d~d,,~,+gtsqaqthing like the furor which affects the domestic cattle himself a European, goes farther,-fa* than I am ready to follow in1 the spxirlg,,aq)(i hi+ is referred to a worm in their tails,-affeots him; yet not when he says: "As the @ is made for the animal, as the bpth, nati~s~pnd,individuals, either perennially or from time to time. vegetable world is made for the.--- animal -- world,- America is made for the '90 Henry David Thoreau Walking l9l man of the Old World. . . . The man of the Old World sets out upon his these facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and way. Leaving the highlands of Asia, he descends from station to station poetry and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, per- * towards Europe. Each of his steps is marked by a new ci~ilizationsupe- chance, the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the rior to the preceding, by a greater power of development. Arrived at the American mind, and the intimations that star it as much brighter. For I Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of this unknown ocean, the bounds of believe that climate daes thus react on man,-as there is ~oqg~ig in which he knows not, and turns upon his footprints for an instant." the m~unt~in-&~&&e&&~e_s~iritand inspires. Will not man grow When he has exhausted the rich soil of Europe, and reinvigorated him- to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these self, "then recommences his adventurous career westward as in the ear- influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his liest ages." So far Guy&. life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be From this wtstern impulse coming in contact with the barrier of the clearer,. fesher, 'and more ethereal, as our sky,-our understanding Atlantic sprang the commerce and enterprise of modern times. The more comprehensive and broader, like our plains,-our intellect gen- younger Michaux, in his 'Travels West of the Alleghanies in-1802,'' says erally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and that the common inquiry in the nkwly settled West was, "'Fiorn what mountains ahd forests,-and oar hearts shall even correspond in part of the world have you come?' As if these vast and fertile regions breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there would naturally be the place of meeting and common country of all will appear to the traveler something, he knows not what, of loeta and the inhabitants of the globe." glabra, of joyaus and serene, in our very faces, Else to what end does To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say, Ex Oriente lux; -ex the world go on, and why was America discovered? Occidente FRUX. From the Eastkht; from the westfruit. To Americans I hardly deed to say, - --SFEGG ~ead,an English 6axdor-~eneralof J Ganada, tells us that "in bog the northern and southern hemispheres 'Westward the star of empire takes its way." of the New World, Nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has painted the whole picture with brighter and more As a true~patriot,I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise costly colors than she used in delineating and in beautifying the Old was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in World. . . . The heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the sky this country. 8. is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England; the stars are brighter, the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the though we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers the West. There is the home of the younger sons, as among the lbg&: the forest bigger, the plains broader." This statement will do Scandinavians they took to the sea for their inheritance. It is too late &leasti&o set against Buffon's account of this part of the world and its to be studying Hebrew; it is more important tb understand even the prodyctims. slang of to-day. ,.~.rLima?rlshid long ago, "Nescio quz facies lceta, glabra plantis Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was like kmsricanis; I know not what there is of joyous ahd smooth in the a dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in some- hpedt of American plants;" and 1 think that in this country there are thing more than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans, and traj anat mest very few, Afiicance bestice, African beasts, as the Romans repaired by later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names were caUed them, and that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for the music to my ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend Th e hdbitabironbfrman.We are told that within three miles of the centre of were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblenb, which d w thb East4dkn dty of Singapore, some of the inhabitants are annually , only in history. They were ruins that interested me chiefly. There oa&ired &by,tigers;.but the traveler can lie down in the woods at night seemed to come up from its waters and its vine-clad hills and valleys a aJqoStiw&hege in North America without fear of wild beasts, hushed music as of Crusaders departing for the H ly Land. I floated 1, Tkse ah. encoutagiing testimonies. If the moon looks larger here along under the spell of enchantment, as if I had !een transported to th~r~rin~&u~qe;lprobablythe sun looks ,larger also. If the heavens of an heroic age, and breathed an atmosphere of chivalry. Mericaiappear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I 192 Henry Da3id Thoreau
worked my way up the river in the light of today, and saw the steam- should thus sweetly advertise our sensesof his presence, and remind us boats wooding up, counted the rising cities, gazed on thelfresh ruins of of those parts of Naturelwhich he most haunts. I fetl no disposition to Nauwo, beheld the Indians moving west across the stream, and, as be satirical, when the trapper's coat emits the odor ofmusquash even; it before I had looked up the Moselle, now looked up the Ohioiand the is a sweeter scent to me thansthat which~commonlyexhales from the Missouri and heard the legends of Dubuque and ,of Wenona's merchant's OT the~scblar'sgrments. When I go intatheir wardrobes Cliff,-still thinking more ,of the future than of the past or present,-I and handle their vestments, I am reminded of no grassy plains and saw that this was a Rhine stream of a different kind; that the founda- flowery meads 'which they have frequented; but of dustybmerchants' 1 tions of castles were yet to be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to exchanges and:librari& rather.. I be thrown aver the river; and I felt that t&s -was tfie-heroic age-eft A tamed skfn issomething more than respectable, and perhaps thou& we know lt n0t~fo5.h~hem- is .sann~~only~hsimpLes~d olive is a fitter color than white'for a rnanra denizen.of the woods. obscurestof men. I/ "The 'pale white man!" Iedo not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin the mhralist say% "A white pnanl'bathing by the side of a T~I West .of_y4&lh I_ lsg_akjs-,b~~g&f:,r~aameeforthe WZ; and Tahitian wag like a$lant bleachdd .by @e gardener's art, compared with what I have been prepbring tolssy is, that in Wildness is the preserva: a fine, dark green-one, growing vigorously in the open fields." tion of the World. Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. Ben Jonson exclaims,- : . The cities import it at any price, Men plough and>sail for it. From the : I,
forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace inankind. ::'How near to good is what is fair!" ' '\ .I I I Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Rernus being 1 ll suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every So I would say,- .
fr,, state which has risen to eminence have d~wn-their pxurkhrnent and I, ~~~~ -~igor~ro-~a simikr wild source. It was because the children of the How near to gwd is what is wild! Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and dis- ' 1- 1 ' II , placed by the children of the northern forests who. wke. , I Life consists kith wildness. The most alive is the dirildest. Not yet sub 1 believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which dued to mah, its prednce' refreshes him, One who pre'ssed foiward the dorn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock-spruce or arbor-vik incessantly and never rested frQm his labors, wha grew fastland made in1 our tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking for infinite aeman$s onllife, yould aldays,find himselPin a new country or Zen& and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots, eagerly devour the wilderness, and:surrounded~.bythe* raw material of life. He mufd be
dtlircnv of athe koodoo and other antelopes raw, as ,a matter of course. climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest-trees. 3 ' i Sdmemf our Northern Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic rein- Ho$e and the *future,for he ace not hlawns and cultivated Gelds, deer, as well as the various other parts, including the summits of the not iA .townstand cities,&ut in the impeivious hndl quaking mikps. arbders:las long as they are soft. And herein, perchance, they have stolen When, former]+, I have analyzed my partiality for sohfdrm which I armrch on the cooks of Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the had contemplated purchasing,. Iuhave frequently fo-d 'that I was Em.%,is probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughter-house pork attrdcted solely by8afew square rods of impermeabJe and unfathomable b m & l a man of. Give me a~fldnesswhose gI,ance no civilizahuan bog,-a natural sink in or& corner of if. That was the jewel which daz- -*as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw. ded me! I derive rhore of my subsistence from the swamps whichsur- / '.vs!X!hdrebre some intervals which border the strain of the wood-thrush, round my native tohn,than frorrl the cultivated gardens in the v3lage. todliich9 wbuld migrate,-wild lands where no settler has squatted; to There are no richQ'parterres to eyes than the dense beds of dwarf whioH~.&i&, It am already acclimated. andromeda (Casandm calyculuta) which &ver hsetender places on l~,tiFbk Miaari hunter Cummings tells us that the skin of the eland, as the earth's surface. Botany cannot go &her than tell me the names of hdeihdwtrof most'other antelopes just killed, emits the host delicious the shrubs 'which grow
In lkrature.- it is -o-nb- wild that. ~tra.~_~,_us.Dullnessis but was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with another name for tamen_essl It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking blight; and which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated. ___I--. -.. in "Hamlet" and the "Iliad," in all the Scriptures and Mythologies, not All other, literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our learned in the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift houses; but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Westero Isles, as old and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild-the mallard-thought, as mankind, and, whether that does or not, will endure as long; for the which 'mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives. is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The val- and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in leys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine having yielded their crop, it the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visi- remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the --ble, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of orinocb, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. knowledge itself,-and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of the Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become a race, which pales before the light of common day. fiction of the past,-as it is to some extent a fiction ~f the present,-the English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology. Poets,-Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare, I The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, included,-breathes no quite fresh and, in this sense, wild strain. It is though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is an essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and most common among Englishmen and Americans today. It is not Rome. Her wilderness is a greenwood, her wild man a Robin Hood. every truth that recommends itself ta the common sense. weehas There is plenty of genial love of Nature, but not so much of Nature aplace for the wild clem&s as well. as for the cabbxe. Some expres- herself. Her chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not when sions of truth are reminiscen~~rel~se~sible,as the phrase the wild man in her, became extinct. is,-others prophetic. Some forms of disease, even, may prophesy The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The forms of health. The,geologist has discovered that the figures of ser- poet today, notwithstanding all the discoveries o6,science, and the pents, griffins, flying dragons, and other fanciful embellishments of accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer. heraldry, have their prototypes in the forms of fossil species which
Where is the literature ~&h.~ives'expression---T -----to Nature? -...-, He would were extinct before man was created, and hence "indicate a faint and be a poet who Ciessthe winds and streams into his service, to shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence." The speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers Hindoos dreamed that the earth rested on an elephant, and the ele- drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who phant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent; and though it may derived his words as often as he used them,-transplanted them to his be an unimportant coincidence, it will not be out of place here to page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and state, that a fossile tortoise has lately been discovered in Asia large fresh and .natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the enough to support an elephant. I confess that I am partial to these approach of spring, though they lay half-smothered between two musty wild fancies, which transcend the order of time and development. leaves inta library,-ay, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, They are the sublimest recreation of the intellect. The partridge loves annually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature. peas, but not those that go with her into the pot. I doc not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this In short, all good things are wild and free. There is\< something in ywning for the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is a strain of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the tame. I.do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, human voice,-take the sound of a bugle in a summer night, for any accountrwhich eontents me of that Nature with which'even I am instance,-which by its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me a'cquaimted. You will perceive that I demand something which no of the cries emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It is so much of Augwtan indr Elizabethan age, which no kulture, in short, can give, their wildness as I can understand. Give me for my friends and neigh- ~~logy~~.~mesnearerh it than anything. How much more fertile a bors wild men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage is' but a faint Nature, at least; )has Grecian mythology its root in than English litera- symbol of the awful ferity with which good men and lovers meet. ture! Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil I love eveq to see the domestic animals reassert their native 108 Henrv David Thoreau ?. Walking 199 rights,-any evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles habits and vigor; as wheh my neighbor's cow breaks out of her pastue and Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had beb early in the spring and boldly swims the river, a cold, gray tide, named by the child's rigmarole,-lery wiery ichery van, tittle-tol-tan: I twenty-five or thirty rods wide, swolien by the melted snow. It is the see in my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and buffalo crossing the Mississippi. This exploit confers some dignity on to each the herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in his own the herd in my,eyes,--already dignified. The seeds of instinct are pre- dialect. The names of men are of course as cheap and meaningless as served under the thick hides of cattle and horses, like seeds in the bow- Bose and Tray, the names of dogs. els of the earth? ~IIindefinite period. Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy, if men were Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I saw one day a herd of a named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary dozen~bullbcksand cows funning about and frisking in unwieldy sport, only to know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the like huge rats, eve; like kittkns. They shook their heads, raised their individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a tails, and rushed up and down a hill, and I perceived by their horns, as Roman army had a name of his own,-because we have not supposed well as by their activity, their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas! a sud- that he had a character of his own. den laud Whou! would have damped their ardor at once, reduced At present our only true names are nicknames. I knew a boy who, them fiom venison to beef, and stiffened their sides and sinews like the from his peculiar energy, was called "Buster" by his playmates, and this locomdtivive. 'Who but the Evil One has cried, "Whoa!" to mankind? rightly supplanted his Christian name. Some travelers tell us that an Indeed: the I'ie of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of locomo- Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was tiveness; they mbve a side at a time, and man, by his machinery, is his fame; and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every meeting the horse and the ox half-way. Whatever part the whip has new exploit. It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience todhed is thenceforth palsied. Who would ever think of a side of any merely, who has earned neither name nor fame. of the supple cat tribe, as we 'speak of a side of beef? I will not allow mare names to make distinctions for me, but still see d'rej~icethat horses and steers have to be broken before they can be men in herds for all them. A familiar name cannot make a man !ess hide the slaves sf men, and that men themselves have some wild oats strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his qwn stifl left tb sb~~!befotethey become submissive members of society. wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a'sav- ~Wdoubtedly;all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization; and age name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see that- bdea~iehe mAjority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited dispo- neighbor, who bears the familiar epithet William, or Edwin, takes it off ditidn, &P$!~srid ieesori why the others should have their natures broken with his jacket. It does not adhere to him when asleep or in anger, or &at&ey~mdybe ieducecl to the same level. Men are in the main alike, aroused by any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by b~~ihk~Cere m~de several in order that they might be various. If a low some of his kin at such a time his original wild name in some jb td balsemed, oie man will do nearly or quite as well as another; if jaw-breaking or else melodious tongue. rlrttighme, ihdividual excellence is to be regarded. Any man can stop a Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all hole to keep the wind away, but no other man could serve so tare a use around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the as the author of this illustration did. Confucius says, "The skins of the leopard; and yet we are so early weankd from her breast to society, to tiget and the leopard, when they are tanned, are as the skins of the dog that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,-a sort and desheep tanned." But it is not the part of a true culture to tame of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobil- tQjerhiiahfi more than it is to make sheep ferocious; and tanning their ity, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit. ~kih$!fdrshoesis not the best use to which they can be put. In society, in the best institutioqs of men, it is easy to detect a cer- I0 tain precocity. When we should stjll be growing children, we are When tEookihg over a list of men's names in a foreign language, as of already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from hilitary officers, or of authors who have written on a particular subject, the meadows, and deepens the sqj1,-not that which trusts tq heating I am rivemhded ofice more that there is nothing in a name. The name manures, and imsroved implements and hodes of culture onljr! Mdnbchiboff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human Many a poor sore-eyed student that f have heard of would grow Walking 201 200 Henry David Thoreau ,A ~rhan's ighorance sometimes is noto- faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very -while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless; , f late, he honestly slumbered a fool's allowance. besides being ugl!ly: Which is the best man to deal with,-he who There may be an excess even of informing light. Niepce, a knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that Frenchman, discovered "actinism:' that powu in the sun's rays which he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but produces a chemical e&ct; that granite rocks, and stone structures, and thinks that he knows all? statues of metal, "are all alike destructively acted bpon during the hdurs My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my of sunshine, and, but for provisions of Nature no less wonderful;, would head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. soon perish under the delicate touch of the most subtile of the agencies Thk.highest\that M can attain to is not howledge, but Sympathy with of the universe." But he observed that "those bodies which. underwent Intdkgmce. I do not hwthat this higher knowledge amounts to any- this change during the daylight possessed the power of restoringthem- thing more!definitl than a ndvel and grand surprise on a sudden revela- selves to the& original conditions, during the hours .of night, when this tion of he inaufficienoy of all that we kalled Knowledge before,-5 excitement \,was do ,longer influencing them." Hence .it has ..been discovew that there are. more thin~s-inheaven and d than are inferred that "the hours of darkness are as necessary to &e inorganic cre- dreamed! d in our I- It is the lighting up of the mist by the ation as ke. know night and sleep are to the organic kingdom:' Noteven sun:Man cannot know in any higher sense than this, any more than he , does the XIPEK)~shine every night, bdt gives place to darkness. can look serenely and with impunity in the face of the sun: '115 .ri vo&v, I would Ba.t have every man nor every .part 0f.a man cultivated, any oe q~~'vvavvo+ue~<,-'You will n&.perceive that, as perceiving a par- more)than ,I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part.will be ticulh thing," say the Chaldean Oracles. ' tiilage,(but.the greaker part wiU!be meadow and forest, not anly s~rving There isnsomething sewile in the habit of seeking after a law which an khmedlate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by we may obey. We may study the Iaws of matter at and for our conven- the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports. 5' ience, but a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery ,~,%&rk~dre,lmbrletters for the child to learn than those which certainl~cthat of a law which binds us where we did not know before Gdmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist,-and with respect to and &sky knowledge, Gramdtica par&, tawny grammar, a kind of knowle-. The man who takes the lib motherwit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred. ecty to live is superior total1 the laws, by virtue of his relation to the ,r I ,We haw l-kard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It lawmaker. 'That is active duty," says the Vishnu Purana, "which is not ik~s~illhnt~knowledgeis power; and the like. Methinks there is equal for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our liberation: all other necdplia Society for the Dihsion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Outy is gbod anly unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the clev-\ Bkautifd~~ledge,a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is erness of an artist," m& oftour bboastsd socalled knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our histories; mt we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our bwMe exercised we havetbeen inour minds; how few experiences we dgative-hiowledge.By long years of patient industly hnd rdading of the haw had. I would fain be assured that I am growing apace and rankly, nkwtpapas,-for what are the libraries of science but files of nwspa- though my very growth disturb this dull equanimity,-though it be with pesst-a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his memory, struggle through long, dark, muggy nights or seasons of gloom. It would --- and then when in some spring of his life he saunters intwthe GI-t be weH, if all our lives \ a r e r e d v even, instead of this trivial Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to grass like a hone and leaves all come,darkDante, Bunyan, and others appear to have been exer- his harness behind in the stable. I would say to the, Society for the cised in their minds more than we: they were subjected to a kind of eul- Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, somebmes,-Go to grass. You, ha~e bre such as ourdistrict schools and colleges do not contemplate. Even eaten hay long enough. The spring has come with its green [email protected] blahmet, though many may scream at his name, had a good deal more very cows ate driven to their country pastures before the end of Map to live for, aye, and to die for, than ,they have commonly. though 1 have heard of one unnatural fanner who kept his! cow in the Men, at rark intervaIs, some thought visits one, as perchance he is barn and fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently, the Society for walking an a railroad, thenindeed the cars go by without his hearing the Dihsion of Useful Knowledge treats its cattle. PtE35.e: 2.; 03% =,5- g3%g G E n!s SL lp g =r ~f-3.$0;5P a- g!$h: B & 5.3 $52 7'; 5 2 g 2-w, $ am -r- 0 v' $0
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But, above all, I discovered zon, and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and around me,-it was near the end of June,-on the ends of the topmost on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of branches only, a fe~aminuteand delicate red cone-like blossoms, the the shrub-oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long over fertile flower of the wHite pine looking heavenward. I carried straight- the meadow eastward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was way to the village the'tobmost spire, and showed it to stranger jurymen such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the who walked the st.eets,Lfor it was court-week,-and the farmers and air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a lumberdealers end intaod-choppers and hunters, and not one had ever paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary seen the like bef6ie, but they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it'would happen forever of ancientraikMtects finishing their works on the tops of columns as and ever an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and rGssure the perfectly as ofC thklower and more visible parts! Nature has from the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious still. first ekpanded~thtminute blossoms of the forest only toward the heav- The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, eri~;.abbvelmeh'kheads and unobserved by thtm. We see only the flow- with all the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance ers &at itte%ti&t40hr feet in the meadows. The pines have developtd as it has never set before,-where there is but a solitary marsh-hawk to theilr'dkfi~hkk~bloksomson the higbest'twigs of the wood every summer have his wings gilded by 'it, or only a musquash looks out from his fdi A@$;%Y well over the heads of Nature's red children as of her white cabin, arld there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the o~&g')kt%dtc~l~a farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen them. marsh, just beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stuinp. We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered ~''cm~Ik&e)~ali,~viecannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never btfi.@P&dft~h who loses no moment of the passing life in remember- bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The +ii@ht!lc st. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary lH#if-&ii? Hthin our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman 5 @Wsrthatwe are growing rusty and antique in our employments drivirrg us home at evening. Ah$ lidbits of thought. His philosophy comes down to a more recent So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine burs. There is something suggested by it that is a newer testa- more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our h&,~~dCgospelaccording to this moment. He has not fallen astern; minds and hearts; and light up our whole lives with a great awakening k46dgdt up early and kept up early, and to be where he is is to be in light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn. Yt!tI#~fff~lhitheforemost rank of time. It is an expression of the health d#khdness of Nature, a brag for all the world,-healthiness as of a @urst forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate this last 9 #st;bf time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws are passed. Who From THEMAINE WOODS hfiMbt bettayed his master many times since last he heard that note? ht&-bbrit of this bird's strain is in its freedorfi from all plaintiveness. KTAADN FW8*efrcan easily move us to tears or to laughter, but where is he 'Md&\an:'excitein us a pure morning joy? When, in doleful dumps, o o * Inbthemorning, after whetting our appetite on some raw brdhkifig the awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, pork, a wafer of hard bread, and a dipper of condensed cloud or water- peichance, a watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow spout, we all together began to make our way up the falls, which I have f&dd%ear, I think to myself, "fiere is one of us well, at any described; this time choosing the right hand, or highest peak, which x%~~!fa#tidwith a sudden gush return to my senses. was not the one I had approached before. But soon my companions I, kt-. not were lost to my sight behind the mountain ridge in my rear, which still (>Wd#Haili( remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking seemed ever retreating before me, and I climbed alone over huge ifi3i~~do~;the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just befuies&ng, after a cold gray day, reached a clear stratum in the hori- The Maine Woods (Boston:Ticknor and Fields, 1864). 1 If,fli, 1, t* '