by "imagination" do
not in the least understand how _actual_ the life in Nature may become to
us. Reflect for a minute, thou whose whole soul is in gossip and petty
chronicles of fashion, and "sassiety," that in that life thou _wert_ a
million years ago, and in it thou wilt be a million years hence, ever
going on in all forms, often enough in rivers, rock, and trees, and yet
canst not realise with a sense of awe that there are in these forms,
passing to others--ever, ever on--myriads of men and women, or at least
their _life_--_how_ we know not, as _what_ we know not--only this, that
the Will or creative force of the Creator or Creating is in it all. This
was the serious yet unconscious inspiration of my young life in those
days, in even more elaborate or artistic form, which all went very well
hand in hand with the Euclid and Homer or Demosthenes and Livy with which
my tutor Mr. Schenk (pronounce _Skank_) was coaching me.

My reading may seem to the reader to have been more limited than it was,
because I have not mentioned the historians, essayists, or belletrists
whose works are read more or less by "almost everybody." It is hardly
worth while to say, what must be of course surmised, that Sterne,
Addison, Goldsmith, Johnson, Swift, and Macaulay--in fine, the leading
English classics--were really well read by me, my ambition being not to
be ignorant of anything which a literary man should know. Macaulay was
then new, and I devoured not only his works, but a vast amount by him
suggested. I realised at an early age that there was a certain cycle of
knowledge common to all really cultivated minds, and this I was
determined to master. I had, however, little indeed of the vanity of
erudition, having been deeply convinced and constantly depressed or
shamed by the reflection that it was all worse than useless, and
injurious to making my way in life. When I heard that Professor Dodd had
said that at seventeen there were not ten men in America who had read so
much, while Professor Joseph Henry often used words to this effect, and
stern James Alexander in his lectures would make deeply learned allusions
intended for me alone--as, for instance, to Kant's "AEsthetik"--I was
anything but elated or vain in consequence. I had read in _Sartor
Resartus_, "If a man reads, shall he not be learned?" and I knew too well
that reading was with me an unprofitable, perhaps pitiable, incurable
mania-amusement, which might ruin me for li