...lies to Thoreau the word indolent: but you might as well speak of the indolence of a self-registering thermometer; it does not go about noisily, yet it never knows an idle moment. Lowell says that Thoreau looked with utter contempt on the august drama of destiny, of which his country was the scene, and on which the curtain had already risen; but was it Thoreau, or Lowell, who found a voice when th...