If one would find the wealth of wit there is in this plain man, the information, the sagacity, the poetry, the piety, let him take a walk with him, say of a winter’s afternoon, to the Blue Water, or anywhere about the outskirts of his village-residence.  Pagan as he shall outwardly appear, yet he soon shall be seen to be the hearty worshipper of whatsoever is sound and wholesome in Nature,—­a piece of russet probity and sound sense that she delights to own and honor.  His talk shall be suggestive, subtile, and sincere, under as many masks and mimicries as the shows he passes, and as significant,—­Nature choosing to speak through her chosen mouth-piece,—­cynically, perhaps, sometimes, and searching into the marrows of men and times he chances to speak of, to his discomfort mostly, and avoidance.  Nature, poetry, life,—­not politics, not strict science, not society as it is,—­are his preferred themes:  the new Pantheon, probably, before he gets far, to the naming of the gods some coming Angelo, some Pliny, is to paint and describe.  The world is holy, the things seen symbolizing the Unseen, and worthy of worship so, the Zoroastrian rites most becoming a nature so fine as ours in this thin newness, this worship being so sensible, so promotive of possible pieties,—­calling us out of doors and under the firmament, where health and wholesomeness are finely insinuated into our souls,—­not as idolaters, but as idealists, the seekers of the Unseen through images of the Invisible.

I think his religion of the most primitive type, and inclusive of all natural creatures and things, even to “the sparrow that falls to the ground,”—­though never by shot of his,—­and, for whatsoever is manly in man, his worship may compare with that of the priests and heroes of pagan times.  Nor is he false to these traits under any guise,—­worshipping at unbloody altars, a favorite of the Unseen, Wisest, and Best.  Certainly he is better poised and more nearly self-reliant than other men.

Perhaps he deals best with matter, properly, though very adroitly with mind, with persons, as he knows them best, and sees them from Nature’s circle, wherein he dwells habitually.  I should say he inspired the sentiment of love, if, indeed, the sentiment he awakens did not seem to partake of a yet purer sentiment, were that possible,—­but nameless from its excellency.  Friendly he is, and holds his friends by bearings as strict in their tenderness and consideration as are the laws of his thinking,—­as prompt and kindly equitable,—­neighborly always, and as apt for occasions as he is strenuous against meddling with others in things not his.

I know of nothing more creditable to his greatness than the thoughtful regard, approaching to reverence, by which he has held for many years some of the best persons of his time, living at a distance, and wont to make their annual pilgrimage, usually on foot, to the master,—­a devotion very rare in these times of personal indifference, if not of confessed unbelief in persons and ideas.