Whitman made little
distinction between nature and human nature, perhaps too little.
But read "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" or "The Song of the
Redwood-Tree," and see how keen and how vital was his instinct for
native soil. As for Hawthorne, you could make a text-book on
nature study from his "Note-Books." He was an imaginative moralist
first of all; but he worked out his visions in terms of New
England woods and hills. So did Emerson. The day was "not wholly
profane" for him when he had "given heed to some natural object."
Thoreau needs no proving. He is at the forefront of all field and
forest lovers in all languages and times.
These are the greater names. The lesser are as leaves in the
forest: Audubon, Burroughs, Muir, Clarence King, Lanier, Robert
Frost, and many more--the stream broadening and shallowing
through literary scientists and earnest forest lovers to romantic
"nature fakers," literary sportsmen, amiable students, and tens of
thousands of teachers inculcating this American tendency in
another generation. The phenomenon asks for an explanation. It is
more than a category of American literature that I am presenting;
it _is_ an American trait.
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