And ever since we began to incur the condescension of foreigners
by trying to be American, we have been conscious of this weak-
rootedness in our literature and trying to remedy it. This is why
our flood of nature books for a century is so significant. They
may seem peculiar instruments for probing tradition--particularly
the sentimental ones. The critic has not yet admitted some of the
heartiest among them--Audubon's sketches of pioneer life, for
example--into literature at all. And yet, unless I am mightily
mistaken, they are signs of convalescence as clearly as they are
symptoms of our disease. These United States, of course, are
infinitely more important than the plot of mother earth upon which
they have been erected. The intellectual background that we have
inherited from Europe is more significant than the moving spirit
of woods and soil and waters here. The graft, in truth, is less
valuable than the tree upon which it is grafted. Yet it determines
the fruit. So with the books of our nature lovers. They represent
a passionate attempt to acclimatize the breed. Thoreau has been
one of our most original writers.
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