tiousness,
this solemn attitude over the infinitely little, this care to compose
paragraphs out of short sentences completely disconnected, that the
old Concord philosophy was enunciated. Nobody outside the circle ever
caught the exact accent except one of Dickens's characters--Mr. F.'s
aunt--who would interrupt a dinner conversation to observe, "There's
milestones on the Dover road." "Above our heads," says Mr. Channing,
"the nighthawk rips;" "see the frog bellying the world in the warm
pool;" "the rats scrabbling." This sententiousness is consistent, on
Mr. Channing's part, with the most stupefying ignorance of words and
things, as in the sentence, "forced to conceal the raveled sleeve of
care by buttoning up his outer garments." It is particularly imposing
in the judgments, nearly always severe, of individuals, and the reader
lays down the present book sure that here, at last, he has found a
truly superior person. Schoolcraft is simply "poor Schoolcraft," and
of course subsides; Miss Martineau is "that Minerva mediocre;" Carlyle
is "Thomas Carlyle with his bilious howls and bankrupt draughts
on hope." Hawthorne, he learns, though we cannot tell from whence,
"thought it inexpressibly ridiculous that any one should notice man's
miseries, these being his staple product," and was "swallowed up in
the wretchedness of life;" also, "the Concord novelist was a handsome,
bulky character, with a soft rolling gait; a wit said he seemed like a
_boned pirate_." From these more or less contemptuous views of mankind
at large Mr. Channing turns with a kind of somersault to an intense
admiration for Thoreau. Could he but write of him in his own
style--supposing him to have a style--he would have been in danger
of producing a sensible book, and _nous autres_ would have lost one
delight; but it is the perfection of comedy to see the apocalyptic
trio--Emerson stepping off grandly and gladly into the clouds--Thoreau,
his principal disciple, following with a good imitation of the gait, but
with evident self-consciousness--and finally Mr. Channing--

to see him's rare sport
Step in Emerson's tracks with legs painfully short.

It would be unfair to judge Henry D. Thoreau by the indiscreet
laudations of his friends. He was cut out more nearly in the pattern
of a hermit than any man of modern time. His love of solitude was
probably sincere, his surliness was his breeding, and he extracted
from his painful, uns