was Emerson’s chosen retreat,--brought those literary men here. Thoreau, the most original and peculiar genius of the whole group, was born here, and never had much inclination to leave Concord, although in youth he talked of adventuring to the wild West,--Kentucky and Illinois at that time,--whither his friend, Ellery Channing, afterward did in fact go. Around Emerson, this circle, with many who only lived here temporarily (like Margaret Fuller and George William Curtis), or not at all, gathered as friends and brothers, or else as disciples,--and thus the name of Concord became associated, and justly, with a special and remarkable school of thought and literature. Thousands now visit the graves of these worthies, to which, and to their haunts in life--their walks and seats and sylvan places of resort,--an increasing host of pilgrims come year by year. The Arabs have a proverb,--“Though a hundred deserts separate the heart of the Faithful from the Kaaba of Mecca, yet there opens a window from its sanctuary into thy soul.” For those who have the true inward illumination, therefore, pilgrimage is not needful; yet to all it is agreeable, and it has been the practice of mankind for ages, and will be, so long as we remain ourselves but pilgrims and wayfarers on this earth. Nasar, the son of Khosrou, who wrote in the time of Haroun Al-Rashid, and called his book _The Traveller’s Wallet_, was not the first, nor Bunyan, with his _Pilgrims Progress_, the last, to look on life as a journey; but let us hear what that Persian says of it: “Man, endowed with intellect, must search into the origin of his existence,--whence he came, and whither he shall go,--reflecting that in this world he is making a toilsome journey, without stop or stay,--not even for the twinkling of an eye,--until he has traversed the measure of that line which marks the time allotted for his existence. For that we are but pilgrims here on earth, God has mysteriously declared.”