yed and second-hand. It seems the
first resumption--unless here again we must link his name with
Emerson's--of that great strain of thought of which Epictetus the slave
and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus the sovereign were the last previous
examples. Amid the general _Miserere_, here is one hymn of lofty cheer.
There is neither weak conceit nor weak contrition, but gratitude for
existence, and a sublime aim. "My actual life," he says, "is a fact in
view of which I have no occasion to congratulate myself; but for my
faith and aspiration I have respect. It is from these that I speak.
Every man's position is, in fact, too simple to be described.... I am
simply what I am, or I begin to be that.... I know that I am. I know
that another is who knows more than I, who takes interest in me, whose
creature, and yet whose kindred, in one sense, am I. I know that the
enterprise is worthy. I know that things work well. I have heard no bad
news." (p. 45.)

"Happy the man," he elsewhere nobly says, "who observes the heavenly
and the terrestrial law in just proportion; whose every faculty, from
the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, obeys the law of its
level; who neither stoops nor goes on tiptoe, but lives a balanced life,
acceptable to Nature and to God." And then he manfully adds,--"These
things I say; other things I do." Manfully, not mournfully; for his
life, though in many ways limited, was never, in any high sense,
unsuccessful; nor did he ever assume for one moment the attitude of
apology.

These limitations of his life no doubt impaired his thought also, in
certain directions. The letters might sometimes exhibit the record of
Carlyle's lion, attempting to live on chicken-weed. Here is a man of
vast digestive power, who, prizing the flavor of whortleberries and wild
apples, insists on making these almost his only food. It is amazing to
see what nutriment he extracts from them; yet would not, after all, an
ampler bill of fare have done better? Is there not something to be got
from the caucus and from the opera, which Thoreau abhorred, as well as
from the swamps which he justly loved? Could he not have spent two hours
rationally in Boston elsewhere than at the station-house of the railway
that led to Concord? His habits suggest a perpetual feeling of privation
and effort, and he has to be constantly on the alert to repel
condolence. This one-sidedness of result is a constant drawback on the
reader's enjoyment, and it is im