He belongs to the Homeric age, and is older than fields and gardens; as virile and talented as Homer’s heroes, and the elements. He seems alone, of all the men I have known, to be a native New Englander,—as much so as the oak, or granite ledge; and I would rather send him to London or Vienna or Berlin, as a specimen of American genius spontaneous and unmixed, than anyone else. I shall have occasion to use him presently in these portraits. We must grind him into paint to help brown and invigorate Channing’s profile, when we come to it. Here is coloring for half a dozen Socialisms. It stands out in layers and clots, like carbuncles, to give force and homeliness to the otherwise feminine lineaments. This man is the independent of independents—is, indeed, the sole signer of the Declaration, and a Revolution in himself—a more than ’76—having got beyond the signing to the doing it our fully. Concord jail could not keep him safely; Justice Hoar paid his tax, too; and was glad to forget thereafter, till now, his citizenship, and omit his existence, as a resident, in the poll list. Lately he has taken to surveying as well as authorship, and make the compass pay for his book on “The Concord and Merrimac Rivers,” which the public is slow to take off his hands. I went with him to the publishers, Monroe and Co., and learned that only about two hundred of an edition of a thousand were sold. But author and book can well afford to wait.