Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/61

 the surface, and rivers of ore in the bowels of the earth. And our thoughts flow and circulate, and lapse into the current year. As things flow they circulate, and all streams are tributary to the ocean, which itself does not stream.

There are moments when all anxiety and stinted toil and desires must cease, in the infinite leisure and repose of Nature. Laborers must have their nooning undisturbed. The sailor, in a sultry day, stretched on the deck of his craft, and drifting with the sluggish water, is even more of a philosopher than a reformer. Sometimes we cease to row against the stream, and float or sail upon the tide of life,—rock, tree, kine, knoll, and all the panorama of the shore assuming new and varying positions as wind and water shift the scene, favoring the liquid lapse of thought.

When I go into the Museum and see the mummies, wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the times began to need reform as long ago as when these walked the earth. I go out into the streets, and meet men who declare that other times and other dynasties [13]