SOURCE: A review of Walden, in Critical Essays on Henry David Thoreau's "Walden," edited by Joel Myerson, G. K. Hall & Co., 1988, pp. 19-20.

In this review, originally published in Dwight's Journal of Music, the critic praises Walden for its originality and common-sense approach to life and nature.

For indoor reading, in the interims of physical fatigue and the lull of social excitement, say, for a few minutes after the evening company have dispersed and left us to our thoughts which will not sleep without some soothing efficacy of thoughts printed and impersonal, we have another book:—kindly placed in our hands upon the eve of starting on our journey, and with a delicate instinct of what was fitting, by our friend Fields, the poet partner in the firm of Ticknor and Co., the publishers,—a copy in advance of publication. In such hours one retires from Nature only...