dead fifty years ago and now canonised, can be seen
yet in one of the monasteries of North Lebanon, keeping well his flesh
and bones together--divinely embalmed. It has been truly said that the
work of a good man never dies; and these leathery hermits continue in
death as in life to counsel and console the Faithful.

"In the past, these Larvae, not being cultivated for the market,
continued their natural course of development and issued out of their
silk prisons full fledged moths. But those who cultivate them to-day
are in sore need. They have masses and indulgences to sell; they have
big bills to pay. But whether left to grow their wings or not, their
solitude is that of a cocoon larva, narrow, stale, unprofitable to the
world. While that of a philosopher, a Thoreau, for instance, might be
called Nature's filter; and one, issuing therefrom benefited in every
sense, morally, physically, spiritually, can be said to have been
filtered through Solitude."

"The study of life at a distance is inutile; the study of it at close
range is defective. The only method left, therefore, and perhaps the
true one, is that of the artist at his canvas. He works at his picture
an hour or two, and retires a little to study and criticise it from a
distance. It is impossible to withdraw entirely from life and pretend
to take an interest in it. Either like my brother Hermit in these
parts, a spiritual larva in its cocoon, or like a Thoreau, who during
his period of seclusion, peeped every fortnight into the village to
keep up at least his practice of human speech. Else what is the use of
solitude? A life of fantasy, I muse, is nearer to the heart of Nature
and Truth than a life in sack-cloth and ashes....

"And yet, deeply considered, this eremitic business presents another
aspect. For does not the eremite through his art of prayer and
devotion, seek an ideal? Is he not a transcendentalist, at least in
the German sense of the word? Is not his philosophy above all the
senses, as the term implies, and common sense included? For through
Mother Church, and with closed eyes, he will attain the ideal, of
which my German philosopher, through the logic-mill, and with eyes
open, hardly gets a glimpse.

"The devout and poetic souls, and though they walk among the crowd,
live most of their lives in solitude. Through Mother Sorrow, or Mother
Fancy, or Mother Church, they are ever seeking the ideal, which to
them is otherwise unattainable. And whethe