ore
interested in birds and fishes than in his fellow-men. For he was
neither loveless nor brooding, and the characteristics that have proved
most puzzling arose from the mingled strain in his nature of the Eastern
quietist and the shrewd Western. These may now be considered more
leisurely. I will deal with the less important first of all.

II

Some of his earlier work suffers somewhat from a too faithful
discipleship of Emerson; but when he had found himself, as he has in
_Walden_, he can break away from this tendency, and there are many lovely
passages untouched by didacticism.

"The stillness was intense and almost conscious, as if it were a
natural sabbath. The air was so elastic and crystalline that it had
the same effect on the landscape that a glass has on a picture--to
give it an ideal remoteness and perfection. The landscape was bathed
in a mild and quiet light, while the woods and fences chequered and
partitioned it with new regularity, and rough and uneven fields
stretched far away with lawnlike smoothness to the horizon, and the
clouds, finely distinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang
over fairyland."

But while there is the Wordsworthian appreciation of the peaceful moods
of Nature and of the gracious stillnesses, there is the true spirit of
the Vagabond in his Earth-worship. Witness his pleasant "Essay on
Walking":--

"We are but faint-hearted crusaders; even the walkers nowadays
undertake no persevering world's end enterprises. Our expeditions
are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearthside
from which we set out. Half of the walk is but retracing our steps.
We should go forth on the shortest walks, perchance, in the spirit of
stirring adventure, never to return, prepared to send back our
embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdom. If you have
paid your debts and made your will and settled all your affairs, and
are a free man, then you are ready for a walk."

There is a relish in this sprightly abjuration that is transmittible to
all but the dullest mind. The essay can take its place beside Hazlitt's
"On Going a Journey," than which we can give it no higher praise.

With all his appreciation of the quieter, the gentler aspects of nature,
he has the true hardiness of the child of the road, and has as cheery a
welcome for the east wind as he has for the gentlest of sum