Page:Sir Walter Raleigh by Thoreau, Henry David,.djvu/37

 eyes on him; and when I spoke he said, with drawling, sultry sympathy, 'Henry, I know all you would say, I understand you perfectly,—you need not explain anything to me.' He could tell in a dark room, with his eyes blinded, and in perfect stillness, if there was one there whom he loved What a relief to have heard the ring of one healthy, reserved tone." This satirical tone is seldom found in the essay on Ralegh, which, like most of the essays and verses before 1845 are in a serious and often paradoxical spirit, suggesting laughter only by their extravagance, which the young author did not seem to perceive.

The tone of The Service was probably suggested by those numerous discourses on peace and non-resistance to which he was obliged to listen from 1840 to 1848, and which he resented then, as he also did in 1859 when writing with some heat on the capture and martyrdom of John Brown, which he compared to that of Ralegh. "I speak for the slave," he said, "when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor