ith dash and freedom, and that fears the
bracing contact of the world. In one word, Thoreau was a skulker. He did
not wish virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into a
corner to hoard it for himself. He left all for the sake of certain
virtuous self-indulgences. It is true that his tastes were noble; that
his ruling passion was to keep himself unspotted from the world; and
that his luxuries were all of the same healthy order as cold tubs and
early rising. But a man may be both coldly cruel in the pursuit of
goodness, and morbid even in the pursuit of health. I cannot lay my
hands on the passage in which he explains his abstinence from tea and
coffee, but I am sure I have the meaning correctly. It is this: He
thought it bad economy and worthy of no true virtuoso to spoil the
natural rapture of the morning with such muddy stimulants; let him but
see the sun rise, and he was already sufficiently inspirited for the
labours of the day. That may be reason good enough to abstain from tea;
but when we go on to find the same man, on the same or similar grounds,
abstain from nearly everything that his neighbours innocently and
pleasurably use, and from the rubs and trials of human society itself
into the bargain, we recognise that valetudinarian healthfulness which
is more delicate than sickness itself. We need have no respect for a
state of artificial training. True health is to be able to do without
it. Shakespeare, we can imagine, might begin the day upon a quart of
ale, and yet enjoy the sunrise to the full as much as Thoreau, and
commemorate his enjoyment in vastly better verses. A man who must
separate himself from his neighbours' habits in order to be happy, is in
much the same case with one who requires to take opium for the same
purpose. What we want to see is one who can breast into the world, do a
man's work, and still preserve his first and pure enjoyment of
existence.

Thoreau's faculties were of a piece with his moral shyness; for they
were all delicacies. He could guide himself about the woods on the
darkest night by the touch of his feet. He could pick up at once an
exact dozen of pencils by the feeling, pace distances with accuracy, and
gauge cubic contents by the eye. His smell was so dainty that he could
perceive the foetor of dwelling-houses as he passed them by at night;
his palate so unsophisticated that, like a child, he disliked the taste
of wine--or perhaps, living in America, had never