Henry David Thoreau

“ We are so wont only to associate Thoreau with his own immediate world of Nature, that a work like this in which he ventures so far afield, and in which he deals with so much that is stirring, presents him to us in an entirely new light. Perhaps, at first, we may wonder what there was in common between the retiring, home-loving citizen of Concord, and this adventurous knight of "the spacious days of great Elizabeth," which should make Sir Walter Ralegh his favorite character in English history. ”

“ When mere fragments of hitherto unpublished compositions of our foremost American writers are so eagerly sought, it seems strange that a well-rounded work of perhaps the most original of the noteworthy group of Concord (Massachusetts) thinkers should have remained unknown for nearly sixty years. ”