{Tboreau 



chief lurks in a sneer than about a cannon's mouth, 

 Thoreau stands for two conditions which neither 

 Emerson nor Lowell nor any great man of letters 

 or of science or of political economy has ever 

 dreamed of displaying upon his banner : Simplicity 

 and sincerity. This was an ambition far higher, 

 far better fitted to secure the welfare of man and 

 the permanency of his own fame (if he ever thought 

 of the latter), than anything that Emerson ever 

 thought of. Of course we must always bear in 

 mind that Thoreau died before the youth of old age 

 had commenced, and it is obviously unfair to pass 

 too critically upon his writings. But two of the 

 eleven volumes that complete his works were is- 

 sued in his lifetime, and what he might have done 

 with the mass that has since been printed, what 

 omitted and what elaborated, cannot even be con- 

 jectured. That the best results should be realized, 

 Thoreau should be read first, and what his critics 

 have to say be considered subsequently ; and it is 

 to be regretted that, laudatory as is the biographi- 

 cal sketch by Emerson, it should have contained a 

 single stricture. That stricture was not called for. 

 Lowell's essay on Thoreau, in the former's vol- 

 ume entitled " My Study Windows," though he 

 claims his " most fruitful studies " to have been " in 

 the open air," is eminently unjust. There was not 

 the slightest trace of sympathy between the two 

 men. Lowell is the reporter of the flower-garden ; 

 Thoreau, of the forest. Lowell can ride in a well- 

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