Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/333

Rh of Homer or Chaucer or Linnæus. Greece and Asia Minor should henceforth bear Iliads and Odysseys, as their trees lichens. But, no; if the works of nature are, to any extent, collected in the forest, the works of men are, to a still greater extent, collected in the city. I have sometimes imagined a library, i. e., a collection of the works of true poets, philosophers, naturalists, etc., deposited not in a brick or marble edifice in a crowded and dusty city, guarded by cold-blooded and methodical officials, and preyed on by bookworms, in which you own no share, and are not likely to, but rather far away in the depths of a primitive forest, like the ruins of Central America, where you could trace a series of crumbling alcoves, the older books protecting the more modern from the elements, partially buried by the luxuriance of nature, which the heroic student could only reach after adventures in the wilderness amid wild beasts and wild men. That, to my imagination, seems a fitter place for these interesting relics which owe no small part of their interest to their antiquity, and whose occasion is nature, than the well-preserved edifice, with its well-preserved officials, on the side of a city's square. More terrible than lions and tigers, these libraries. Access to nature for original observation is secured by one ticket, by one kind of expense; but access to the