In editing the volume, "Summer," Mr. Blake quoted Thoreau's own plan of these journals, to make "a book of the seasons, each page of which should be written in its own season and out-of-doors, or in its own locality, wherever it may be." Acting on this suggestion, the executor sifted and combined the thoughts for each season, a work of exhaustive, loving effort, until now the circle of the year is complete. Alcott well summarized, in his own journal, the value of Thoreau's "masterpieces,—a choice mingling of physical and metaphysical elements. . . . Quick with thought his sentences are colored and consolidated therein by his plastic genius." Perchance, it was to this friend that the thought of publishing these journals, may be first traced;—"A delightful volume might be compiled from Thoreau's journals by selecting what he wrote at a certain date annually, thus giving a calendar of his thoughts on that day from year to year." Such volumes, he adds, would be "instructive alike to naturalist, farmer, woodman and scholar."
While the journals were the granaries from which the larger number of Thoreau's books were to be gathered, his earliest efforts at publication were through the magazines. Dr. Jones, in his valuable bibliography of Thoreau, has collated the few interesting magazine articles published during his
