the result is cold, constrained, and grudging. In short,
I might almost everywhere have spoken more strongly than I did.

THOREAU. Here is an admirable instance of the "point of view" forced
throughout, and of too earnest reflection on imperfect facts. Upon me
this pure, narrow, sunnily-ascetic Thoreau had exercised a great charm.
I have scarce written ten sentences since I was introduced to him, but
his influence might be somewhere detected by a close observer. Still it
was as a writer that I had made his acquaintance; I took him on his own
explicit terms; and when I learned details of his life, they were, by
the nature of the case and my own _parti pris_, read even with a certain
violence in terms of his writings. There could scarce be a perversion
more justifiable than that; yet it was still a perversion. The study,
indeed, raised so much ire in the breast of Dr. Japp (H. A. Page),
Thoreau's sincere and learned disciple, that had either of us been men,
I please myself with thinking, of less temper and justice, the
difference might have made us enemies instead of making us friends. To
him, who knew the man from the inside, many of my statements sounded
like inversions made on purpose; and yet when we came to talk of them
together, and he had understood how I was looking at the man through the
books, while he had long since learned to read the books through the
man, I believe he understood the spirit in which I had been led astray.

On two most important points, Dr. Japp added to my knowledge, and with
the same blow fairly demolished that part of my criticism. First, if
Thoreau were content to dwell by Walden Pond, it was not merely with
designs of self-improvement, but to serve mankind in the highest sense.
Hither came the fleeing slave; thence was he despatched along the road
to freedom. That shanty in the woods was a station in the great
Underground Railroad; that adroit and philosophic solitary was an
ardent worker, soul and body, in that so much more than honourable
movement, which, if atonement were possible for nations, should have
gone far to wipe away the guilt of slavery. But in history sin always
meets with condign punishment; the generation passes, the offence
remains, and the innocent must suffer. No underground railroad could
atone for slavery, even as no bills in Parliament can redeem the ancient
wrongs of Ireland. But here at least is a new light shed on the Walden
episode.

Second, it appears, and th