...ght and feeling was American, and his most characteristic style has the raciness of our soil. Nature lovers like to point out the freshness and delicacy of his reaction to the New England scene. Thoreau himself, whom Lowell did not like, was not more veracious an observer than the author of , and . Yet he watched men as keenly as he did laylocks and bobolinks, and no shrewder American essay has b...