be formidable, must always engage the poet's and the man's regards. Of such an immortal youth the force would be felt. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. (Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which, when quite young, I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with

the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested-"But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names, very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition. as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies. and dead institutions. Every decent and wellspoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this

bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, "Go, love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest; have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy

1

love afar is spite at home." Rough and grace-
less would be such greeting, but truth is hand-
somer than the affectation of love. Your good-
ness must have some edge to it-else it is none.
The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the
counteraction of the doctrine of love when that
pules and whines. I shun father and mother
and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.
I would write on the lintels of the door-post,
Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim
at last, but we cannot spend the day in explana-
tion. Expect me not to shew cause why I seek
or why I exclude company. Then, again, do
not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my
obligation to put all poor men in good situa-
tions. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou
foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar,
the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not
belong to me, and to whom I do not belong.
There is a class of persons to whom by all spiri-
tual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I
will go to prison, if need be; but your miscel-
laneous popular charities; the education at col-
lege of fools; the building of meeting-houses to
the vain end to which many now stand; alms to
sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies;-
though I confess with shame I sometimes suc-

cumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,—as invalids and the insane. pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself, and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my

own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

What I must do, is all that concerns me; not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you, is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time, and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-Society, vote with a great party either for the Government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, under all these screens, have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man's-buff is this game of conformity. If

I