The R. J. Schoolmaster. AUGUST, 1862. VOLUME EIGHT. For the Schoolmaster. Thoreau's Writings. NUMBER EIGHT. inner, spiritual man. He went to Walden Pond, committed to no system of theology or of parlor ethics. A poor man, apparently, with his THE recent death of Thoreau, and the repub- living to earn, and intent on earning it without lication of his works, which had fallen out of defiling his soul. He had tried this business of print, seem to give occasion for a notice of books teaching; but concluded that, because he taught which, we believe, are not so well known as for a livelihood, and not for the good of the they deserve to be. race, his teaching was a failure. Therefore he Henry D. Thoreau was a resident of Concord, goes into the woods to live; and lives there an Massachusetts, and he shared the literary and elegant and ideal life, hoeing beans, cooking philosophical spirit which, to many minds, have corn-cake, and learning God's truth, as cannot invested that village with all imaginable excel- be done by men who are sunk to their necks in lence and beauty of life. Of his life we know the mire of human institutions. but little, nor expect to know much more. For It is from being the perfection of a man's though our biographers are a numerous tribe, principles of life, that they secure to him social they are, by a wise Frovidence, incapable of respect and influence: though we naturally look seeing materials for a biography where there for these as a result of genuineness of character. are no outward events or conspicuous actions. On the contrary, we find evidence of a deficienOnly when some deep-seeing Carlyle feels the cy of character, when a person modifies his sacred duty, does the world see what precious thinking, or adopts principles of action, with John Sterlings, possessing their souls in pa- the direct and conscious purpose of gaining tience, it contains. friends. You think you derive great advantage Thoreau's life was meditative, rather than from your artificial fellowships and freemasonactive. To an extent almost unparalleled, so ries; but I find that for your miserable little far as we know, he carried out the tendency of mysteries you have paid the most ruinous price; the idealist thinkers of New England to specu- for you are incrusted with mud, and no longer late on life and men, unrestrained by social or reflect the light of heaven. A man cannot catch religious relations. This freedom is what we friends with bird-lime. His concern is to exlove in Thoreau. It is the very air in which he press himself in word and deed, and to care no lived. Wishing to live simply for a time, he more for his social estimation than for his statbuilt himself a hut on the shore of Walden ure. "God will see that you do not want soPond, in Concord, and supported himself by ciety." We care not to justify further Thoreau's raising beans, aloof from men, and once put in- seclusion. He was not terrified by the charge to jail for non-payment of taxes,- not precisely of selfishness. He knew for what he lived. the "correct thing" for a Cambridge graduate Who will criticize the manner of his life? A of scholarly address and respectability,-yet self-reliant man is quite out of the sphere of the thing he chose to do. Yet this freak pos- criticism, while he does not intermeddle in your sesses no interest for us, except as a type of the affairs, and if you undertake to advise him, will probably not think it necessary to show plausi- cannot discover, he sees, because he is transpable reasons for rejecting the advice. rent to the light. Objects reveal to him a deep We would like to know in what estimation sense: deeper than men less simple could exhe was held by the villagers. To us there must tract from libraries and colleges. Hence we find be an ideal fairness in his life, which looked sensual persons ridiculing the passages of his otherwise to the people who saw him at his books in which he states the truths of his phiwork or met him on his rambles. But we are losophy, and praising only the descriptions or sure that his contemporaries never charged him humorous parts. Ruskin loves nature with Thoreau's with sentimentality or moroseness of temper. more than the mère artist's love, and he has He is cheery, gay and earnest, and fits into his written books invaluable to all who undertake place in the woods as naturally as the birds and to cultivate the æsthetic part of the character. squirrels, which always chirp and leap, but are Yet Ruskin disgusts us with a cheap whining never seen to do anything trivial. He finds over the damage done to his fine scenery by the himself no more lonesome than are the pond sacrilegious railway-cutting, and the blaspheand the trees. Second-rate spirits, disgusted mous renovation of old buildings. with the hollowness and vanity of the things of spirit is immeasurably above such sentimentalithe world, often enough grow sour and misan-ty. His railroad prompts him to frequent morthropic. There are wails and shrieks of such, alizing, which he indulges in the pleasantest written at length in poetry and prose, which mood, while he considers how these gigantic are greedily caught up by the great mass of utilities affect the souls of men. Thoreau loves readers. Most of our recent poetry seems to us nature, but does not say so directly. There are of this sort. But Thoreau's spirit is healthy persons enough who will profess to admire the and serene, untouched by any of the diseases of landscape and the flowers, while their life and special reforms and philanthropies. He has no conversation belie their professions. Thoreau's indigestion, or disappointed hope, or dead friend, love of nature is so simple, and so much a part that he thinks it worth while to trouble the of himself, that it expresses itself as surely as the emotions of children. He is not guilty of world about. Like every healthy man, he is a that awkward solecism of the current religious reporter of things as he sees them, and not as he thinks you would like to have him see them. ideas, that a man should look away from nature, when he has enjoyed its beauty and its Thoreau's relation to nature is almost unique, use, in order to thank its Author. He knows and yet, if we consider it, the most proper to a the etiquette of the temple too well to make so sound man. The landscape is his home. He is domesticated in the forest, and is fully initiated in all the secrets of wood-craft, and of animal and vegetable life. Yet his interest in these things is not a scientific one. He does not dissect the birds, nor count the stamens of the flowers; unless, perhaps, some wanton mood cle on "Walking," in the June number of the falls upon him, when he would doubtless do as Atlantic, is from his pen, and the publishers of he liked at the time, without recollecting his that magazine promise several more articles to creed concerning the matter. His interest in appear in early numbers. gross a blunder in ceremony. Thoreau published two books: "A Week on 66 Walthe Concord and Merrimac Rivers," and He was a contriden, or Life in the Woods." The artibutor to Margaret Fuller's "Dial." nature is better than scientific: it is the feeling These writings bear evidence of culture and of oneness with nature, a sympathy with his refinement. The author's humor, far more than own thoughts expressed in hills, rivers, animals his discontent, determines the manner in which and plants. He rejoices in the purity and depth he views men and things. He is satirical: but of Walden Pond, he bathes in its water, drinks his satire is genial, and your better nature at His from it, watches the beautiful changes of hue once sides with it against its object. which the heavens reflect upon its surface, and thought frequently flows into the metrical form, makes the acquaintance of the otters and loons so that his pages abound in poetical passages, with which he shares its bounty. In winter he many of which are very beautiful and natural. surveys the pond on the ice, sounds its depth, The details which he gives of his domestic ecotakes its dimensions, and comes to know it as nomy are interesting. You learn that the necesintimately as you know your back-yard. But sary expense of boarding in this world is very neither utility nor beauty form the limit of his small. These things also go into the business thought concerning nature. That which study of living. His philosophy is not systematized: perhaps it is not to be named by any of the cur- with the window behind you, and next to that, rent names of philosophies. He utters his doc- with the light coming over the left side-then trines when they are suggested. This desulto- the light illumines the paper or book, and does riness renders his books attractive, readable and not shine abruptly upon the eye-ball. The same familiar. remarks are applicable to artificial light. We We esteem these writings as valuable in our are often asked which is the best light-gas, literature, because they are an expression of the candles, oil or camphene. Our answer is, it is freedom, both of the outward and of the inner immaterial which, provided the light of either life. which is the birth-right of every man. be strong enough, and does not flicker.-ScienThat is the rare and exemplary person, who tific American. does not suffer himself to be cheated of his in Illustrated by Anecdotes. heritance by the conspiracy of society. When Pursuits of Knowledge Under Difficultie one such appears, we lay our course by him as by a star. Wise counsellors, men of sagacity THE cultivation of science and literature has and common sense, avail us not. Our genuine often been united with the most active and sucman is a ray of light, an inspiration, under whose influence we undertake new enterprises of the most laborious professions. It has been cessful pursuit of business, and with the duties of thought, and dare to explore perilous regions. It is when we think we are most respectable, been spent in study, ever left more numerous or and that we are most comfortably filling our place in life, that we are most asleep. I see that the common estimate of success is very base. A drowsy nightmare oppresses men so heavily that they grow used to it, and scorn the call of him who bids them come out of their foul dream. We are all revellers, more or less drunken, most of us irrecoverably so, reeling among the shadows of the world, dupes of every bloated utility and sensual good that mock us in our lethargy. In the darkness and din perhaps there are a few who whisper hints of light, or can even produce a ray. To listen to these warnings, to discern and acknowledge the light, are the sole conditions of life. Contempt of the prophecy is the unpardonable sin. The noble success in life is perception of the truth, and stern obedience to it. Your mumbling of this high doctrine, as a tradition out of antiquity, means nothing. You do not believe it, while you despise your contemporary prophets, and "make the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition." said of Cicero, that "no man whose life has more valuable fruits of his learning in every branch of science and the polite arts-in oratory, poetry, philosophy, law, history, criticism, politics, ethics: in each of which he equalled the greatest masters of his time; in some of them excelled all men of all times. His remaining works, as voluminous as they appear, are but a small part of what he really published. His industry was incredible, beyond the example or even conception of our days: this was the secret by which he performed such wonders, and reconciled perpetual study with perpetual affairs. He suffered no part of his leisure to be idle, or the least interval of it to be lost." These are the words of his learned and eloquent biographer, Dr. Middleton. He says of himself, in one of his orations - What others give to their own affairs, to the public shows and other entertainments, to festivity, to amusement, nay even to mental and bodily rest, I give to study and philosophy." He tells us, too, in his letters, that on days of business when he had any thing particular to compose, THE CARE OF THE EYES.-First, never use a he had no other time for meditating but when desk or a table with your face toward a window. he was taking a few turns in his walks, where In such case the rays of light coming directly he used to dictate his thoughts to his amanuenupon the pupil of the eyes, and causing an un-ses, or scribes, who attended him. His letters natural and forced contraction thereof, soon afford us, indeed, in every way, the most repermanently injures the sight. Next, when markable evidence of the active habits of his your table or desk is near a window, sit so that life. Those that have come down to us are all your face turns from, not towards, the window written after he was forty years old; and, alwhile you are writing. If your face is towards though many of course are lost, they amount the window, the oblique rays strike the eye and in number to a thousand. "We find many of injure it nearly as much as the direct rays when them," says Middleton, "dated before daylight; you sit in front of the window. It is best al- some from the senate; others from his meals, ways to sit or stand, while reading or writing, and the crowd or morning levee." "For me," T. he himself exclaims, addressing one of his and here is the account, as found among his pafriends, "ne otium quidem unquam otiosum-even pers, of how he was accustomed to spend his my leisure hours have their occupation." day during the long vacation in 1785. In the morning, after writing one letter, he read ten In modern times the celebrated Sir William chapters of the Bible, and then studied Sanscrit Jones afforded the world, in this respect, a like grammar and Hindoo law; the afternoon was example. All his philosophical and literary given to the geography of India, and the evestudies were carried on among the duties of a ning to Roman history; when the day was clostoilsome profession, which he was, nevertheless, ed by a few games at chess, and the reading of so far from neglecting, that his attention to all a portion of Ariosto. Already, however, his its demands upon his time and faculties consti- health was beginning to break down under the tuted one of the most remarkable of his claims climate; and his eyes had become so weak that to our admiration. But he was, from his boy- he had been obliged to discontinue writing by hood, a miracle of industry, and shewed, even candle-light. But nothing could prevent him in his earliest years. how intensely his soul from pursuing the studies he loved, while any glowed with the love of knowledge. He used strength remained to him. Even while confinto relate that, when he was only three or four ed by illness to his couch he taught himself years of age, if he applied to his mother, a wobotany; and it was during a tour he was adman of uncommon intelligence and acquire-vised to take for the recovery of his health, that ments, for information upon any subject, her he wrote his learned Treatise on the Gods of constant answer to him was, "Read and you Greece, Italy and India—as if he had actually will know." He thus acquired a passion for so disciplined his mind that it adopted labor books, which only grew in strength with in- like this almost for a relaxation. His health, creasing years. Even at school his voluntary after a time, was partially restored; and we find exertions exceeded in amount his prescribed him again devoting himself both to his profestasks; and Dr. Thackeray, one of his masters, sional duties and his private studies, with more was wont to say of him, that he was a boy of zeal and assiduity than ever. When business so active a mind, that if he were left naked and required his attendance daily in Calcutta, he refriendless on Salisbury Plain, he would, never-sided at a country-house on the banks of the theless, find the road to fame and riches. At Ganges, almost five miles from the city. "To this time he was frequently in the habit of de- this spot," says his amiable and intelligent bivoting whole nights to study. when he would ographer, Lord Teignmouth, "he returned eve generally take coffee or tea, to keep off sleep. ry evening after sunset, and in the morning rose He had, even already, merely to divert his lei- so early as to reach his apartments in town, by sure, commenced his study of the law; and it walking, at the first appearance of dawn. The is related that he would often amuse and sur- intervening period of each morning, until the prise his mother's legal acquaintances, by put- opening of court, was regularly allotted and ting cases to them from an abridgement of Coke's applied to distinct studies." At this time his Institutes, which he had read and mastered. In hour of rising was between three and four. after life his maxim was, never to neglect any During the vacation of the court he was equalopportunity of improvement which presented ly occupied. Writing from Crishna, his vacation residence, in 1787, he says: "We are in itself. In India, where he filled the office of Judge love with this pastoral cottage; but though in the Supreme Court of Bengal, and where his these three months are called a vacation, yet I professional duties were of the most laborious have no vacant hours. It rarely happens that nature, he contrived to do more than ever in favorite studies are closely connected with the the study of general literature and philosophy. strict discharge of our duty, as mine happily He had scarcely arrived in the country when he are; even in this cottage I am assisting the exerted himself to establish a society in Calcut- court by studying Arabic and Sanscrit, and ta, on the model of the Royal Society of Lon- have now rendered it an impossibility for the don, of which he officiated as president as long Mahometan or Hindoo lawyers to impose upon as he lived, enriching its Transactions every year us with erroneous opinions." It was these conwith the most elaborate and valuable disquisi- stant exertions, in truth, that gave its chief entions on every department of oriental philology joyment to his life. "I never was happy," he and antiquities. Almost his only time for stu- says in this very letter, till I was settled in dy now was during the vacation of the courts; India." For the Schoolmaster. "Bur is it not beginning at the wrong end?" said I. The gentlemanly agent had been showing me a beautiful slate globe, neatly mounted ; had explained to me how easily spherical triangles can be drawn upon it; how the apparent daily path of the sun in the heavens, the points tude and its zenith distance for each day can be on the horizon where it rises and sets, its alti This eminent and admirable man, however, at last fell a sacrifice to his zeal in the discharge How to Commence the Study of Geography. of his duty; and if it has been accounted a befitting fate for a great captain to die in the field of battle, surely his is to be deemed an equally appropriate and a far more enviable lot, who, after a life, whether of many or of few years, in which he has done enough for his fame, sinks to his rest in the full brightness of a career made glorious by many peaceful triumphs. The greatest literary achievement of Sir William Jones was his last ― the digest he under- mapped out thereon, and I had admired the took to superintend of a complete body of Hin-dexterity with which he handled the globe, as doo and Mahometan jurisprudence. It was by a persevering observance of a few simple maxims that Sir William Jones was principally enabled to accomplish what he did. One of these, as we have already mentioned, was, never to neglect an opportunity of improve cess. well as the globe itself. 'Twas a pretty toy for difficult problems of mathematical geography are not generally taught." "With this globe a good idea of latitude and longitude can be givtrial in the schools; and we have found that en to young children, for we have proved it by children can be made to understand many things about the shape of the earth, latitude and longitude and the use of the globes, that are not generally understood." "Can be made to: granted. But is it not beginning at the wrong end, to use the globe in this way?" ment: another was, that whatever had been attained was attainable by him, and that, therefore, the real or supposed difficulties of any pursuit formed no reason why he should not en-have one: but then in our district schools the gage in it, and with perfect confidence of suc"It was also,” Lord Teignmouth tells us, a fixed principle with him, from which he never voluntarily deviated, not to be deterred, by any difficulties which were surmountable, from prosecuting to a successful termination what he had once deliberately undertaken." "But what appears to me," adds his Lordship, "more particularly to have enabled him to employ his talents so much to his own and the public advantage, was the regular allottment of his time to particular occupations, and a scrupuIt is easy for a child to repeat what is told lous adherence to the distribution which he had him, and to say that the earth is round like a fixed: hence all his studies were pursued withball, but the conception of the sphericity of the out interruption or confusion. Nor can I omit earth is not fully grasped till later in life. And remarking the candor and complacency with in regard to the use of the globe, I would say, which he gave his attention to all persons, of whatever quality, talents or education: he just- the recitation-room, yet it is not to be depended that while it may occasionally be brought into ly concluded that curious or important inforupon, to any great extent, in teaching geography mation might be gained even from the illiterate; to children under twelve years old, as it tends and whatever it was to be obtained, he sought and seized it." By these methods it was that older scholars the globe can be used to advanto perplex rather than to inform them. With he accumulated that vast mass of knowledge, tage, especially for laying down the continents and enabled himself to accomplish those pro- and for getting their relative position, as well found and extended labors, which remain, even now that he is dead, for the benefit of us who lakes. How many persons think England to be as the comparative size of large islands and live, and of those who are to come after us. exactly east of New England, and South CaroThis is truly to make a short life long-to exist, lina just west from Spain. The shape of that in spite of death, for unnumbered generations." great"ocean-stream," the Atlantic, is not easiExchange. ly learned from seeing portions of it on each of ALWAYS use plain and correct language be- the several large maps of the continents. As fore children. all parts of the earth are drawn on a globe on |