an is
lord of his own hours and of his own purse; his days are long and
unbroken, he escapes from every form of ostentation, and may live quite
simply and sincerely in great calm breadths of leisure. I knew one who
passed his summers in the heart of a vast forest, in a common thatched
cottage with furniture of common deal, and for this retreat he quitted
very gladly a rich fine house in the city. He wore nothing but old
clothes, read only a few old books, without the least regard to the
opinions of the learned, and did not take in a newspaper. On the wall of
his habitation he inscribed with a piece of charcoal a quotation from De
Senancour to this effect: "In the world a man lives in his own age; in
solitude, in all the ages." I observed in him the effects of a lonely
life, and he greatly aided my observations by frankly communicating his
experiences. That solitude had become inexpressibly dear to him, but he
admitted one evil consequence of it, which was an increasing unfitness
for ordinary society, though he cherished a few tried friendships, and
was grateful to those who loved him and could enter into his humor. He
had acquired a horror of towns and crowds, not from nervousness, but
because he felt imprisoned and impeded in his thinking, which needed the
depths of the forest, the venerable trees, the communication with
primaeval nature, from which he drew a mysterious yet necessary
nourishment for the peculiar activity of his mind. I found that his case
answered very exactly to the sentence he quoted from De Senancour; he
lived less in his own age than others do, but he had a fine compensation
in a strangely vivid understanding of other ages. Like De Senancour, he
had a strong sense of the transitoriness of what is transitory, and a
passionate preference for all that the human mind conceives to be
relatively or absolutely permanent. This trait was very observable in
his talk about the peoples of antiquity, and in the delight he took in
dwelling rather upon everything which they had in common with ourselves
than on those differences which are more obvious to the modern spirit.
His temper was grave and earnest, but unfailingly cheerful, and
entirely free from any tendency to bitterness. The habits of his life
would have been most unfavorable to the development of a man of
business, of a statesman, of a leader in practical enterprise, but they
were certainly not unfavorable to the growth of a tranquil and
comprehensive i