expedition. When Captain Brown lay in prison, Thoreau did not wait for a public meeting, but went about among his neighbors, summoning them to come together to hear what he had to say. The Last Days of John Brown was read for the author at North Elba, July 4, 1860, and was printed in The Liberator on the 27th of the same month. After the Death of John Brown contains the remarks made at Concord by Thoreau on the day of the execution. This and A Plea for Captain John Brown were printed in James Redpath's Echoes of Harper's Ferry (Boston, 1860).

Life without Principle is a posthumous paper first published in The Atlantic Monthly, October, 1863.

The Dial published besides various original papers by Thoreau compilations made by him from ancient writings, translations, and poems. The compilations, representing his taste and judgment only, are not here preserved, but his translations of the Prometheus Bound and of some of the verses of Pindar, published originally in 1843 and 1844, are given. His translations from Anacreon are included in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. In that volume also and in Walden are imbedded many of Thoreau's poems, and it has not been found expedient to reproduce them in a collec

tion here, but to gather the few, already printed in The Dial and by Mr. Sanborn in The Critic, which are not found in other volumes in this series.

The General Index covers the contents of the ten volumes, and has been prepared for this edition.

The portrait of Thoreau prefixed to this volume is from an ambrotype taken in 1861 at New Bedford. Mr. Ricketson, for whom the picture was made, writes: "His health was then failing, — he had a racking cough, but his face, except a shade of sadness in the eyes, did not show it." He quotes from a letter of Miss Sophia Thoreau these words: "I discover a slight shade about the eyes, expressive of weariness; but a stranger might not observe it. I am very glad to possess a picture of so late a date. The crayon, drawn eight years ago next summer [i. e., in 1854], we considered good; it betrays the poet. Mr. Channing, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Alcott, and many other friends who have looked at the ambrotype, express much satisfaction."

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

BY R. W. EMERSON

Henry David Thoreau was the last male descendant of a French ancestor who came to this country from the Isle of Guernsey. His character exhibited occasional traits drawn from this blood in singular combination with a very strong Saxon genius.

He was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on the 12th of July, 1817. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1837, but without any literary distinction. An iconoclast in literature, he seldom thanked colleges for their service to him, holding them in small esteem, whilst yet his debt to them was important. After leaving the University, he joined his brother in teaching a private school, which he soon renounced. His father was a manufacturer of lead-pencils, and Henry applied himself for a time to this craft, believing he could make a better pencil than was then in use. After completing his experiments, he exhibited his work to chemists and artists in Boston, and having obtained their certificates to its excellence and to its equality with the

best London manufacture, he returned home contented. His friends congratulated him that he had now opened his way to fortune. But he replied, that he should never make another pencil. "Why should I? I would not do again what I have done once." He resumed his endless walks and miscellaneous studies, making every day some new acquaintance with Nature, though as yet never speaking of zoology or botany, since, though very studious of natural facts, he was incurious of technical and textual science.

At this time, a strong, healthy youth, fresh from college, whilst all his companions were choosing their profession, or eager to begin some lucrative employment, it was inevitable that his thoughts should be exercised on the same question, and it required rare decision to refuse all the accustomed paths, and keep his solitary freedom at the cost of disappointing the natural expectations of his family and friends: all the more difficult that he had a perfect probity, was exact in securing his own independence, and in holding every man to the like duty. But Thoreau never faltered. He was a born protestant. He declined to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living