been as fully recognized as his political genus has been. As an orator and writer his style was clear and forcible. His very dogmatism brought him many enemies, but at times, especially when he went in advance of his time, he was a much mis- understood man. These misunderstandings, frequently wilful, extended often beyond the domain of pure politics. Thus, by his enemies, Thorbecke was often held up to scorn as a pure materialist and no friend of the fine arts, because at a sitting of the states-general in 1862 he had said that it is not the duty of the state, nor in the true interest of art itself, for the government to " protect " art, since all state-aided art must be artificial, like any forced plant. This was popularly condensed into the aphor- ism, yet current in Holland, that " Art is not the business of the government," and Thorbecke was condemned as the author of it. Again, his adversaries used to call him a dangerous dema- gogue. As a matter of fact; there was no more ardent royalist than Thorbecke. He believed in constitutional monarchy, as offeiing the best guarantees both for sovereign and people, and he was bitterly opposed to all forms of state socialism. Long before his death he realized that he had outlived his own prin- ciples, and many of his former admirers had commenced to dub him a " rank conservative," whose political aims and reforms were no longer adequate. But Thorbecke's life-work will endure, and the Dutch constitution of 1887 practically embodied his principles, as laid down in the constitution of 1848. The former is the outcome of the latter and could not have been made without it.
The best biographical sketch of Thorbecke we owe to the late Professor Buys, his principal scholar and devoted friend, whose biography appeared in 1876 at Tiel. Another biography which deserves mention was issued in the same year at the Hague, from the pen of Dr J. A. Levy, an Amsterdam lawyer.
(H. Ti.)
THOREAU, HENRY DAVID (1817-1862), American recluse,
naturalist and writer, was born at Concord, Massachusetts, on
the 12th of July 1817. To Thoreau this Concord country
contained all of beauty and even grandeur that was necessary
to the worshipper of nature: he once journeyed to Canada; he
went west on one occasion; he sailed and explored a few rivers;
for the rest, he haunted Concord and its neighbourhood as
faithfully as the stork does its ancestral nest. John Thoreau,
his father, who married the daughter of a New England clergyman, was the son of a John Thoreau of the isle of Jersey, who,
in Boston, married a Scottish lady of the name of Burns. This
last-named John was the son of Philippe Thoreau and his wife
Marie le Gallais, persons of pure French blood, settled at St
Helier, in Jersey. From his New England Puritan mother, from
his Scottish grandmother, from his Jersey-American grandfather
and from his remoter French ancestry Thoreau inherited
distinctive traits: the Saxon element perhaps predominated, but
the “hauntings of Celtism” were prevalent and potent. The
stock of the Thoreaus was a robust one; and in Concord the
family, though never wealthy nor officially influential, was ever
held in peculiar respect. As a boy, Henry drove his mother's
cow to the pastures, and thus early became enamoured of certain
aspects of nature and of certain delights of solitude. At school
and at Harvard University he in nowise distinguished himself,
though he was an intelligently receptive student; he became,
however, proficient enough in Greek, Latin, and the more
general acquirements to enable him to act for a time as a master.
But long before this he had become apprenticed to the learning
of nature in preference to that of man: when only twelve years
of age he had made collections for Agassiz, who had then just
arrived in America, and already the meadows and the hedges
and the stream-sides had become cabinets of rare knowledge
to him. On the desertion of schoolmastering as a profession,
Thoreau became a lecturer and author, though it was the labour
of his hands which mainly supported him through many years
of his life: professionally he was a surveyor. In the effort to
reduce the practice of economy to a fine art he arrived at the
conviction that the less labour a man did, over and above the
positive demands of necessity, the better for him and for the
community at large; he would have had the order of the week
reversed — six days of rest for one of labour. It was in 1845 he
made the now famous experiment of Walden. Desirous of
proving to himself and others that man could be as independent
of this kind as the nest-building bird, Thoreau retired to a hut
of bis own construction on the pine-slope over against the shores
of Walden Pond — a hut which he built, furnished and kept
in order entirely by the labour of his own hands. During
the two years of his residence in Walden woods he lived by the
exercise of a little surveying, a little job-work and the tillage
of a few acres of ground which produced him his beans and
potatoes. His absolute independence was as little gained as if
he had camped out in Hyde Park; relatively he lived the life of
a recluse. He read considerably, wrote abundantly, thought
actively if not widely, and came to know beasts, birds and fishes
with an intimacy more extraordinary than was the case with St
Francis of Assisi. Birds came at his call, and forgot their
hereditary fear of man; beasts lipped and caressed him; the very
fish in lake and stream would glide, unfearful, between his hands.
This exquisite familiarity with bird and beast would make us
love the memory of Thoreau if his egotism were triply as arrogant,
if his often meaningless paradoxes were even more absurd,
if his sympathies were even less humanitarian than we know
them to have been. His Walden, the record of this fascinating
two years' experience, must always remain a production of
great interest and considerable psychological value. Some
years before Thoreau took to Walden woods he made the chief
friendship of his life, that with Emerson. He became one of
the famous circle of the transcendentalists, always keenly
preserving his own individuality amongst such more or less
potent natures as Emerson, Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller.
From Emerson he gained more than from any man, alive or dead;
and, though the older philosopher both enjoyed and learned
from the association with the younger, it cannot be said that the
gain was equal. There was nothing electrical in Thoreau's
intercourse with his fellow men; he gave off no spiritual sparks.
He absorbed intensely, but when called upon to illuminate in
turn was found wanting. It is with a sense of relief that we read
of his having really been stirred into active enthusiasm anent
the wrongs done the ill-fated John Brown. With children he was
affectionate and gentle, with old people and strangers considerate.
In a word, he loved his kind as animals, but did not seem to
find them as interesting as those furred and feathered. In
1847 Thoreau left Walden Lake abruptly, and for a time occupied
himself with lead-pencil making, the parental trade. He
never married, thus further fulfilling his policy of what one of
his essayist-biographers has termed “indulgence in fine renouncements.”
At the comparatively early age of forty-five he died,
on the 6th of May 1862. His grave is in the Sleepy Hollow
cemetery at Concord, beside those of Hawthorne and Emerson.
Thoreau's fame will rest on Walden; or, Life in the Woods
(Boston, 1854) and the Excursions (Boston, 1863), though he wrote
nothing which is not deserving of notice. Up till his thirtieth
year he dabbled in verse, but he had little ear for metrical music,
and he lacked the spiritual impulsiveness of the true poet. His
weakness as a philosopher is his tendency to base the laws of the
universe on the experience-born, thought-produced convictions
of one man — himself. His weakness as a writer is the too
frequent striving after antithesis and paradox. If he had had
all his own originality without the itch of appearing original,
he would have made his fascination irresistible. As it is,
Thoreau holds a unique place. He was a naturalist, but
absolutely devoid of the pedantry of science; a keen observer, but
no retailer of disjointed facts. He thus holds sway over two
domains: he had the adherence of the lovers of fact and of the
children of fancy. He must always be read, whether lovingly
or interestedly, for he has all the variable charm, the strange
saturninity, the contradictions, austerities and delightful
surprises, of Nature herself.
After Thoreau's death were also published: The Maine Woods (Boston, 1863); Cape Cod (Boston, 1865); A Yankee in Canada (Boston, 1866). In the Atlantic Monthly, in 1862, appeared “Walking,” “Autumn Tints” and “Wild Apples”; in 1863, “Night and
