possible to leave it out of sight. Yet
all criticism seems like cavilling, when one comes upon a series of
sentences like these:--

"Do what you love.... Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good
for something. All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent
enjoy the story. Let nothing come between you and the light. Respect men
as brothers only. When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter
of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God,--none of the servants.
In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions; know
that you are alone in the world." (p. 46.)

This suggests those wonderful strokes in the "Indenture" in "Wilhelm
Meister," and Goethe cannot surpass it.

His finest defence of his habitual solitude occurs in these letters
also, and has some statements whose felicitousness can hardly be
surpassed. "As for any dispute about solitude and society, any
comparison is impertinent.... It is not that we love to be alone, but
that we love to soar; and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and
thinner, till there is none at all. It is either the tribune on the
plain, a sermon on the mount, or a very private ecstasy still higher up.
We are not the less to aim at the summits, though the multitude does not
ascend them. Use all the society that will abet you." (p. 139.)

And since the unsocial character of Thoreau's theory of life has been
one of the most serious charges against it, his fine series of thoughts
on love and marriage in this volume become peculiarly interesting. "Love
must be as much a light as a flame." "Love is a severe critic. Hate can
pardon more than love." "A man of fine perceptions is more truly
feminine than a merely sentimental woman." "It is not enough that we are
truthful; we must cherish and carry out high purposes to be truthful
about." These are sentences on which one might spin commentaries and
scholia to the end of life; and there are many others as admirable.

His few verses close the volume,--few and choice, with a rare flavor of
the seventeenth century in them. The best poem of all, "My life is like
a stroll upon the beach," is not improved by its new and inadequate
title, "The Fisher's Boy." The three poems near the end, "Smoke,"
"Mist," and "Haze," are marvellous triumphs of language; the thoughts
and fancies are as subtile as the themes, and yet are embodied as
delicately and accurately as if uttered in Greek.

_France and England in N