In one particular, however, Thoreau’s attitude towards the earth and all that therein is differed from the Buddhist, inasmuch as the fear that enters into the Eastern’s Earth-worship was entirely purged from his mind. Mr. Page has instituted a suggestive comparison between Thoreau and St. Francis d’Assisi. Certainly the rare magnetic attraction which Thoreau seemed to have exercised over his “brute friends” was quite as remarkable as the power attributed to St. Francis, and it is true to say that in both cases the sympathy for animals is constantly justified by a reference to a dim but real brotherhood. The brutes are “undeveloped men”; they await their transformation and stand on their defence; and it is very easy to see that inseparably bound up with this view there are certain elements of mysticism common to the early saint and the American “hut builder.” {106} And yet, perhaps, Mr. Page presses the analogy between the medieval saint and the American “poet-naturalist” too far. St. Francis had an ardent, passionate nature, and whether leading a life of dissipation or tending to the poor, there is about him a royal impulsiveness, a passionate abandonment, pointing to a temperament far removed from Thoreau’s. Prodigal in his charities, riotous in his very austerities, his tenderness towards the animals seems like the overflowing of a finely sensitive and artistic nature. With Thoreau one feels in the presence of a more tranquil, more self-contained spirit; his affection is the affection of a kindly scientist who is intensely interested in the ways and habits of birds, beasts, and fishes; one who does not give them the surplus of the love he bears towards his fellow-men so much as a care and love which he does not extend so freely towards his fellows. I do not mean that he was apathetic, especially when his fellow-creatures were in trouble; his eloquent defence of John Brown, his kindliness towards simple folk, are sufficient testimony on this score. But on the whole his interest in men and women was an abstract kind of interest; he showed none of the personal curiosity and eager inquisitiveness about them that he showed towards the denizens of the woods and streams. And if you are not heartily interested in your fellow-men you will not love them very deeply. I am not sure that Hawthorne was so far out in his characterization “Donatello”—the creature half-animal, half-man, which he says was suggested by Thoreau. It does not pretend to realize all his characteristics, nor do justice to his fine qualities. None the less in its picture of a man with a flavour of the wild and untameable about him—whose uncivilized nature brings him into a close and vital intimacy with the animal world, we detect a real psychological affinity with Thoreau. May not Thoreau’s energetic rebukes of the evils of civilization have received an added zest from his instinctive repugnance to many of the civilized amenities valued by the majority?