unge into my past being, and revel there, as the
sunburnt Indian plunges headlong into the wave that wafts him to his
native shore. Then long-forgotten things, like 'sunken wrack and sunless
treasures,' burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to feel, think, and be
myself again."

IV

Taken on the whole, the English literary Vagabond is a man of joy, not
necessarily a cheerful man. There is a deeper quality about joy than
about cheerfulness. Cheerfulness indeed is almost entirely a physical
idiosyncrasy. It lies on the surface. A man, serious and silent, may be
a joyful man; he can scarcely be a cheerful man. Moody as he was at
times, sour-tempered and whimsical as he could be, yet there was a fine
quality of joy about Hazlitt. It is this quality of joy that gives the
sparkle and relish to his essays. He took the same joy in his books as
in his walks, and he communicates this joy to the reader. He appears
misanthropic at times, and rages violently at the world; but 'tis merely
a passing gust of feeling, and when over, it is easy to see how
superficial it was, so little is his general attitude affected by it.

The joyfulness of the Vagabond is no mere light-hearted, graceful spirit.
It is of a hardy and virile nature--a quality not to be crushed by
misfortune or sickness. Outwardly, neither the lives of Hazlitt nor De
Quincey were what we would call happy. Both had to fight hard against
adverse fates for many years; both had delicate constitutions, which
entailed weary and protracted periods of feeble health.

But there was a fundamental serenity about them. At the end of a hard
and fruitless struggle with death, Hazlitt murmured, "Well, I've had a
happy life." De Quincey at the close of his long and varied life showed
the same tranquil stoicism that had carried him through his many
difficulties.

Joyfulness permeates Thoreau's philosophy of life; and until his system
was shattered by a painful and incurable complaint, Jefferies had the
same splendid capacity for enjoyment, a huge satisfaction in noting the
splendour and rich plenitude of the Earth. Whitman's fine optimism
defied every attack from without and within; and the deliberate happiness
of Stevenson, when temptation to despondency was so strong, is one of his
most attractive characteristics.

Yet the characteristic belongs to the English race, and it is quite other
with the Russian. Melancholy in his cast of thought, and pessimistic in