Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/299

 TO HARRISON BLAKE. 275

fences him, and is read by the clerk of the court, and published to the world, and executed by the sheriff ; but the criminal s opinion of the judge has the weight of a sentence, and is pub lished and executed only in the supreme court of the universe, a court not of common pleas. How much juster is the one than the other? Men are continually sentencing each other ; but, whether we be judges or criminals, the sentence is ineffectual unless we continue ourselves.

I am glad to hear that I do not always limit your vision when you look this way ; that you sometimes see the light through me ; that I am here and there windows, and not all dead wall. Might not the community sometimes petition a man to remove himself as a nuisance, a dark- ener of the day, a too large mote ?

TO HARRISOX BLAKE (AT WORCESTER).

CONCORD, August $, 1854.

MR. BLAKE, Methinks I have spent a rather unprofitable summer thus far. I have been too much with the world, as the poet might say. 1 The completest performance of the highest du ties it imposes would yield me but little satis faction. Better the neglect of all such, because your life passed on a level where it was impossi ble to recognize them. Latterly, I have heard

1 &quot; The world is too much with us.&quot; Wordsworth.