a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe."
Thoreau's one account of travel outside the United States is "An Excursion to Canada," a work that grew out of an organized trip that the Fitchburg Railroad ran as a promotion in 1850. Thoreau called the work "insignificant"; he commented in a 27 February 1853 letter to his friend Harrison Blake, "I do not wonder that you do not like my Canada story. It concerns me but little, and probably is not worth the time it took to tell it. Yet I had absolutely no design whatever in my mind, but simply to report what I saw. I have inserted all of myself that was implicated or made the excursion." Since Thoreau's own disparaging remarks, most critics have ignored or have commented briefly, mostly unfavorably, upon the work. Walter Harding in The New Thoreau Handbook (1980), for example, calls it "one of Thoreau's least inspired 'excursions.' ... The entire essay seems out of character." William Howarth writes, "'Canada' has a crabbed and peckish humor, clumsy interpolations of guidebook lore, and a didactic air." Robert D.
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