Emerson's style is condensed. He spoke of his own paragraphs as incompressible, "each sentence an infinitely repellent particle." Because of this condensation, it is best not to read more than one essay at a time. Years ago some joker said that Emerson's _Essays_ could be read as well backward as forward, because there was no connection between the sentences. The same observation could have been made with almost equal truth about _Proverbs_, some of Bacon's _Essays_, Polonius's _Advice to Laertes_, parts of Hamlet's _Soliloquy_, and, in general, about any condensed sentences that endeavor to convey a complete, striking truth. Lowell remarks acutely: "Did they say he was disconnected? So were the stars ... And were _they_ not knit together by a higher logic than our mere sense could master?" We should look for unity and connection in Emerson's chosen subject matter and trend of thought. We must not forget that Emerson has in his prose as well as in his verse many of the general characteristics of a poet. In his _Essays_, he sometimes avails himself of the poetic license to be obscure and contradictory and to present philosophy that will not walk on all fours. When we examine some of the best passages on nature in his early prose (_e.g._ p. 158), we shall find that they are highly poetical. Much of his verse is filled with the charm of nature and shows here and there remarkable power of putting great riches in a little room, although there may be intervening waste spaces. Critics may say that his poetry lacks deep feeling, that it is mostly intellectual; if so, it is nobly intellectual. Both his poetry and prose, to use an Emersonian expression, "sail the seas with God." HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 1817-1862 [Illustration: HENRY DAVID THOREAU] LIFE.--Henry David Thoreau, America's poet-naturalist, was born in 1817 at Concord, Massachusetts. He was one of the youngest of the famous Concord group of writers and the only one who could claim Concord as his birthplace He was a lifelong student of nature, and he loved the district around Concord. As a boy he knew its woods and streams because he had hunted and fished in them. After his graduation from Harvard in 1837, he substituted for the fishing rod and gun, the spyglass, microscope, measuring tape, and surveying instruments, and continued his out-of-door investigations. [Illustration: THOREAU'S SPY-GLASS, FLUTE, ETC.]