Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/400

 374 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1857,

third volumes (not parts) of his &quot; Modern Paint ers.&quot; I am now reading the fourth, and have read most of his other books lately. They are singularly good and encouraging, though not without crudeness and bigotry. The themes in the volumes referred to are Infinity, Beauty, Imagination, Love of Nature, etc., all treated in a very living manner. I am rather surprised by them. It is remarkable that these things should be said with reference to painting chiefly, rather than literature. The &quot; Seven Lamps of Architecture,&quot; too, is made of good stuff: but, as I remember, there is too much about art in it for me and the Hottentots. We want to know about matters and things in general. Our house is as yet a hut.

You must have been enriched by your solitary walk over the mountains. I suppose that I feel the same awe when on their summits that many do on entering a church. To see what kind of earth that is on which you have a house and gar den somewhere, perchance ! It is equal to the lapse of many years. You must ascend a moun tain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not. It might have been composed there, and will have no farther to go to return to dust there, than in your garden; but your spirit inevitably comes away, and brings your