rth. If we attempt to explain, the very process implies
the generation of new ideas and the modification of old, so that
long before the explanation of what we meant by the use of a given
word is finished, the meaning has undergone a change, and we
perceive that what we thought we meant by no means included all
that lurked in the mind.

In every-day speech we are obliged to distinguish by elaborate
circumlocution between a man's place of residence and that larger
and truer life,--his sphere of sympathies. Emerson lived in
Concord, Carlyle in Chelsea; to the casual reader these phrases
convey the impression that the life of Emerson was in some way
identified with and bounded by Concord; that the life of Carlyle
was in some way identified with and bounded by Chelsea; that in
some subtle manner the census of those two small communities
affected the philosophy of the two men; whereas we know that for a
long time the worlds in which they really did move and have their
being so far overlapped that they were near neighbors in thought,
much nearer than they would have been if they had "lived" in the
same village and met daily on the same streets.

The directory gives a man's abode, but tells us nothing,
absolutely nothing, about his life; the number of his house does
not indicate where he lives. It is possible to live in London, in
Paris, in Rome without ever having visited any one of those
places; in truth, millions of people really live in Rome in a
truer sense than many who have their abodes there; of the
inhabitants of Paris comparatively few really live there,
comparatively few have any knowledge of the city, its history, its
traditions, its charms, its treasures, but outside Paris there are
thousands of men and women who spend many hours and days and weeks
of their time in reading, learning, and thinking about Paris and
all it contains,--in very truth living there.

Many a worthy preacher lives so exclusively in Jerusalem that he
knows not his own country, and his usefulness is impaired; many an
artist lives so exclusively in Paris that his work suffers; many
an architect lives so long among the buildings of other days that
he can do nothing of his own. In fact, most men who are devoted to
intellectual, literary, and artistic pursuits live anywhere and
everywhere except at home.

The one great merit of Walt Whitman is that he lived in America
and in the nineteenth century; he did not live in the past; he did
not li