SOURCE: "Thoreau's Walden," in Thoreau: A Century of Criticism, edited by Walter Harding, Southern Methodist University Press, 1954, pp. 8-11.

This anonymous reviewer answers Walden's earlier critics by suggesting that Thoreau's example provides an appealing alternative to the widespread pursuit of material gain.

These books [Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers] spring from a depth of thought which will not suffer them to be put by, and are written in a spirit in striking contrast with that which is uppermost in our time and country. Out of the heart of practical, hard-working, progressive New England come these Oriental utterances. The life exhibited in them teaches us, much more impressively than any number of sermons could, that this Western activity of which we are so proud, these material improvements, this commercial enterprise, this rapid accumulation of wealth, even our external, associated philanthropic action, are very easily...