It has been written by one who had the poet’s understanding of human nature, that

  “Man the hermit pined, till woman smiled”—and that sentiment may well be taken as a guide for all such peculiar subjects as this of which we now speak. It is a law of nature to be social, to seek communion, to gather friends; and the history of man is fraught with examples which prove that they who are the readiest to seek solitude and separate themselves from the world, have had bitter experience as the moving impulse, and checked and dried-up sympathies to make them weak enough to forego companionship. The would-be hermit of Concord may or may not be a worldly-disappointed man: better for him that he were, then he should deliberately sit down in the woods, A Timon without cause, to reject and despise the common charities and duties, the pleasures and pains of life, among his fellow men. We would not be thought worldly beyond bounds; but in our estimation, every man should make his life useful to the extent of his ability.—there is upon us all the obligation of labor; it is the command of the Creator: but let it be supposed that each individual following the example of this idle young student, were simply to comply with the duty as he has done,—hide away in the bush, laboring no more than barely to maintain his own single, selfish existence,—where, then, would be obedience to the divine command and all the immense and beneficent consequences of obedience—the increase and happiness of the human race—union, communion, civilization to the masses; with—to the individual—all those sweet amenities, the silent but powerful influences which exalt as well as restrain; which give to morality her sway and to religion her true observance? Where would be the gentle ties of kindred, the love which glows around the family hearth, and the confidence which derives support from the faith and truth of other? Where would be the learning which has attested the power, at the same time that it has elevated the ming?—the healing arts,—the knowledge which has resolved the uses and the order of elements, the planets and the stars? What would follow, but mental and moral degradation? What is such solitary life, after all, but a voluntary abandonment of civilization and return to barbarism?

  Reason this subject as they may, those who encourage such economic and philosophic perversion of life, encourage idleness and the most egotistic meanness, and the exemplification is given by the young student himself. Does he live for others or for himself? For himself solely; and if his own statement be true, while starving his body and depriving himself of the opportunities of doing any good service to his fellow man, he has been continually dependent, himself, upon the kindness of others for his subsistence. He “squats” upon another man’s land, where he is permitted to live rent-free; but something more is necessary to supply even his narrow wants than his garden and his own solitary effort can supply. He flies his philosophic cell, at intervals, to seek the aid of those who live by aiding one another—to ask the place of the prodigal or the beggar among the swine and their husks, or at the foot of the rich man’s—or the poor man’s table,—to purchase with his labor, or obtain from their liberality, the necessaries of life which the desert refuses,—then, suddenly, to turn his back upon the world which had befriended him in his hour of need, and resume the life of fancied independence and philosophy, which is only of uselessness, folly and mendicancy. What can there be in a mind, so trained, in the slightest degree tinctured with one generous sentiment? Such a life affords no example that can be imitated or ought to be imitated,—that can be or ought to be tolerated, or spoken of in any terms short of censure, Such a life is, indeed, above all other lives,

  It is a weakness of mind to be afraid of annoyances; and they who look upon evils and afflictions and meet them with the boldest aspect and the stoutest heart, will have a far greater and more keenly appreciated allotment of pleasure than those who flee from pain and trouble by self-isolation.

  The remark at the close of the paragraph quoted, conveys a just and proper warning. But while it is a perilous adventure often too rashly resolved on by young men who rush from the country into crowded cities, or spread their sails for California, in the quest of sudden wealth, it would be an infinitely worse and more dangerous speculation to abscond from society and attempt the existence of a wild Indian in the forest, in the dream of happiness and conceit of merit. He who lives thus for himself alone, should expect to forego the needed aid of friends to meliorate the bed of sickness by patient care and assiduous kindness, and, on that of death should hope for no hand of affection to close the filming eye, and no voice of love to sob the last farewell to the fleeting spirit. There can be no fate more terrible than that of him who finds that, having, miser-like, hoarded up, during life, his sympathies and refused all exchange of regard with others, he is himself at length deserted at that moment when he would give worlds for the support of one friendly, or the devotion of one living spirit. There must come a day in the existence of every solitary man when the scales will fall from his eyes, and in bitterness of regret, he will be forced to say, as was said, in the beginning of the world, by Him who rules it,—“it is not good that man should be alone.”