Contemporary Notices and Reviews of 
Walden; or, Life in the Woods
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"New Publications"
Boston Daily Journal (10 August 1854):  p. 1, col. 6.

             This is a remarkable book.  The thread of the work is a narrative of the personal experience of the eccentric author as a hermit on the shores of Walden Pond.  The body consists of his reflections on life and its pursuits.  Mr. Thoreau carried out his ideas of "communism" by building with his own hands an humble hut, cultivating his own garden patch, earning with the sweat of his brow enough of coarse food to sustain life, and living independent of the world and of its circumstances.  He continued this selfish existence for two years, and then returned to society, but why, he does not inform his readers.  Whether satisfied that he had mistaken the "pleasures of solitude," or whether the self-improvement which the world has charitably supposed was the object of his retirement had been accomplished, it is certain that he was relieved of none of his selfish opinions—that he left behind in the woods of Concord none of his misanthropy, and that he brought back habits of thought which, though profound, are erratic, and often border on the transcendental.

             The narrative of the two years hermit life of such a man can hardly fail to be attractive, and the study of the workings of a mind so constituted must possess a peculiar interest.  But the attraction is without sympathy—the interest is devoid of admiration.  The outre opinions of a mind like that of Mr. Thoreau, while they will attract attention as the eccentric outbursts of real genius, so far from finding a response in the bosom of the reader, will excite a smile, from their very extravagance, and we can easily imagine that if Mr. Thoreau would banish from his mind the idea that man is an oyster, he might become a passable philosopher.

             Mr. Thoreau has made an attractive book—more attractive than his "Week on the Concord and Merrimac." [sic]  But while many will be fascinated by its contents, few will be improved.  As the pantheistic doctrines of the author marred the beauty of his former work, so does his selfish philosophy darkly tinge the pages of "Walden," and the best that can be said of the work in its probable effects is, that while many will be charmed by the descriptive powers of the author, and will smile at his extravagant ideas, few will be influenced by his opinions.  This is a negative virtue in a book which is likely to be widely circulated, and which might do much mischief if the author could establish a bond of sympathy with the reader.

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