THOEEAU. 



Evert student of nature or admirer of poetry as exem- 

 plified in life and action, who should make a visit to 

 "Walden Pond, would seek the spot which was made sacred 

 hy the two years' solitary residence of Henry D. Thoreau. 

 Walden is known to the public chiefly by what Thoreau 

 has written of it, and by his hermit life upon its borders. 

 Society ought to have exclaimed against the present 

 desecration of that hallowed spot by making it the 

 ground for picnics, — assemblages of people who go there, 

 not for the observation of nature, but for ice-creams 

 and soda-water, and for repeating in the country the 

 amusements of the city. Walden is not simply a beauti- 

 ful sheet of water surrounded by a wUd wood and adorned 

 with water-lilies and pontederia ; it is the scene of a 

 few years of solitary life of a philosopher who lived ac- 

 cording to his own maxims, of a poet who acted up to 

 his own inspiration, a pious devotee who built his altar 

 at the fountain of the Naiad and in the first temple of 

 the gods. 



He made his home under the trees, that he might listen 

 at all hours to the music that fell with the dew-drops 

 from their leaves. " This was an airy unplastered cabin, 

 fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess 

 might trail her garments. The winds," said Thoreau, " that 

 swept over my dwelling, were such as sweep over the 

 ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains or celes- 

 tial parts only of terrestrial music. The morning wind 

 forever blows ; the poem of creation is uninterrupted ; 



