horeau--for Thoreau is one of the few Vagabonds whom his
admirers have tried to canonize. Not content with the striking qualities
which the Vagabond naturally exhibits, some of his admirers cannot rest
without dragging in other qualities to which he has no claim. Why try to
prove that Thoreau was really a most sociable character, that Whitman was
the profoundest philosopher of his day, that Jefferies was--deep down--a
conventionally religious man? Why, oh why, may we not leave them in
their pleasant wildness without trying to make out that they were the
best company in the world for five-o'clock teas and chapel meetings?

For--and it is well to admit it frankly--the Vagabond loses as well as
gains by his deliberate withdrawal from the world. No man can live to
himself without some injury to his character. The very cares and
worries, the checks and clashings, consequent on meeting other
individualities tend to keep down the egotistic elements in a man's
nature. The necessary give and take, the sacrifice of self-interests,
the little abnegations, the moral adjustment following the appreciation
of other points of view; all these things are good for men and women.
Yes, and it is good even to mix with very conventional people--I do not
say live with them--however distasteful it may be, for the excessive
caution, the prudential, opportunistic qualities they exhibit, serve a
useful purpose in the scheme of things. The ideal thing, no doubt, is to
mix with as many types, as many varieties of the human species, as
possible. Browning owes his great power as a poet to his tireless
interest in all sorts and conditions of men and women.

It is idle to pretend then that Thoreau lost nothing by his experiments,
and by the life he fashioned for himself. Nature gives us plenty of
choice; we are invited to help ourselves, but everything must be paid
for. There are drawbacks as well as compensations; and the most a man
can do is to strike a balance.

And in Thoreau's case the balance was a generous one.

Better than his moralizing, better than his varied culture, was his
intimacy with Nature. Moralists are plentiful, scholars abound, but men
in close, vital sympathy with the Earth, a sympathy that comprehends
because it loves, and loves because it comprehends, are rare. Let us
make the most of them.

In one of his most striking Nature poems Mr. George Meredith exclaims:--

"Enter these enchanted woods,
You who