combined with an unfriendly criticism of life as it goes on
in our societies; it is there that he best displays the
freshness and surprising trenchancy of his intellect; it is
there that his style becomes plain and vigorous, and
therefore, according to his own formula, ornamental. Yet he
did not care to follow this vein singly, but must drop into
it by the way in books of a different purport. WALDEN, OR
LIFE IN THE WOODS, A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK
RIVERS, THE MAINE WOODS, - such are the titles he affects.
He was probably reminded by his delicate critical perception
that the true business of literature is with narrative; in
reasoned narrative, and there alone, that art enjoys all its
advantages, and suffers least from its defects. Dry precept
and disembodied disquisition, as they can only be read with
an effort of abstraction, can never convey a perfectly
complete or a perfectly natural impression. Truth, even in
literature, must be clothed with flesh and blood, or it
cannot tell its whole story to the reader. Hence the effect
of anecdote on simple minds; and hence good biographies and
works of high, imaginative art, are not only far more
entertaining, but far more edifying, than books of theory or
precept. Now Thoreau could not clothe his opinions in the
garment of art, for that was not his talent; but he sought to
gain the same elbow-room for himself, and to afford a similar
relief to his readers, by mingling his thoughts with a record
of experience.

Again, he was a lover of nature. The quality which we should
call mystery in a painting, and which belongs so particularly
to the aspect of the external world and to its influence upon