a tribute in passing to the author of _Walden_.
Whatever question there may be of his talent, there can be none, I
think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked one; but it was
eminently personal. He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was
worse than provincial--he was parochial; it is only at his best that he
is readable. But at his best he has an extreme natural charm, and he
must always be mentioned after those Americans--Emerson, Hawthorne,
Longfellow, Lowell, Motley--who have written originally. He was
Emerson's independent moral man made flesh--living for the ages, and not
for Saturday and Sunday; for the Universe, and not for Concord. In fact,
however, Thoreau lived for Concord very effectually, and by his
remarkable genius for the observation of the phenomena of woods and
streams, of plants and trees, and beasts and fishes, and for flinging a
kind of spiritual interest over these things, he did more than he
perhaps intended toward consolidating the fame of his accidental human
sojourn. He was as shy and ungregarious as Hawthorne; but he and the
latter appear to have been sociably disposed towards each other, and
there are some charming touches in the preface to the _Mosses_ in regard
to the hours they spent in boating together on the large, quiet Concord
river. Thoreau was a great voyager, in a canoe which he had constructed
himself, and which he eventually made over to Hawthorne, and as expert
in the use of the paddle as the Red men who had once haunted the same
silent stream. The most frequent of Hawthorne's companions on these
excursions appears, however, to have been a local celebrity--as well as
Thoreau a high Transcendentalist--Mr. Ellery Channing, whom I may
mention, since he is mentioned very explicitly in the preface to the
_Mosses_, and also because no account of the little Concord world would
be complete which should omit him. He was the son of the distinguished
Unitarian moralist, and, I believe, the intimate friend of Thoreau, whom
he resembled in having produced literary compositions more esteemed by
the few than by the many. He and Hawthorne were both fishermen, and the
two used to set themselves afloat in the summer afternoons. "Strange and
happy times were those," exclaims the more distinguished of the two
writers, "when we cast aside all irksome forms and strait-laced
habitudes, and delivered ourselves up to the free air, to live like the
Indians or any less conventional race, during one